In 1981, when a revised English translation of Remembrance of Things Past was published in hardcover in the United States, I bought a massive, three-volume set of what was said to be the greatest novel ever written. (And also the longest.) A friend of mine had been reading it in an older edition around that time, and I was tempted to discover this work that so enthralled him. I remember lugging the huge, black-bound volumes, each of more than 1,000 pages, with me to and from work, and reading on the subway and bus. I had a long subway ride – from 179th St. in Queens to midtown Manhattan – and to come home I would sometimes take an express bus, which took a bit longer, but at least let me read by daylight. It took a very long time to read the entire work – I don’t remember exactly how long – but since the work’s theme is time, this was fitting.
Reading Proust got me interested in French culture. I had already read a number of French authors, such as Camus and Sartre, and Beckett (if you count him as French), and I decided that I wanted to learn French to read them in the original. (I had studied French in high school, so I had some background.) Proust’s writing is more complex than that of many other French authors, so while, at the time, I thought I wanted learn French to read Proust in the original, I never thought that would actually come true. I took some French lessons, then, a few years later, saved up enough money to move to France for a year, and ended up staying.
I came to France in the fall of 1984, where I had rented a house for a year, in the southwest of the country, with the same friend who had introduced me to Proust, and with two others would would come and go during the year. Stopping by Paris first, I visited some bookstores, and my first purchase was the three-volume Pléiade edition of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. (The Pléiade editions are unique. They are small, pocket-sized leather-bound books printed on bible paper, which generally contain complete works of great authors, often in multiple volumes, with from 1,000 to 2,000 pages each. Published by Gallimard, this series is considered to be a pantheon of great writers.) This was the then definitive edition of the novel, published in 1954, and given its compact size, you could have probably fit a half-dozen of them in the huge box that held the English translation.
I would repeat my initial Proustian experience a couple of years later in Paris, when my French, and my vocabulary, did, indeed, reach the level required to read the novel. (I recall reading a book about Proust at some point, in a Paris library, which said that Proust used 18,322 different words in his long novel. Vocabulary was therefore essential.) I carried these smaller volumes with me on the metro and busses in Paris as I went to and from work. At the time, I was teaching English to French executives, and I would always have a book handy to read during my commutes, and when waiting for classes to begin. As I look at these well-worn volumes now, I recall that period with a certain nostalgia; one could say a Proustian nostalgia.
I read La recherche a few more times after that. In the late 1980s, a new Pléiade edition was issued – it contains four volumes, costs more than twice as much as the old edition, and has twice as many pages, as each volume contains huge swaths of “variants,” or drafts that Proust wrote. I haven’t read these variants, in part because they are in tiny type (the Pléiade volumes already use a small font, but the back-of-the-book material is even smaller), and in part because there’s enough to read without going into the variants. I listened to the work once in an audiobook recording of 128 hours, which is a magnificent way to discover Proust. And I’ve just started reading this work again.
Proust has a reputation for being difficult. The novel is long – initially published in seven volumes, it comes to 3,000 to 4,000 pages, depending on the edition and font size. His writing can be hard to follow at times; Proust is known for writing long sentences, one of which is 847 words long. (I append that sentence, in French, at the end of this article for the curious.) And his work contains dozens of major characters and hundreds of minor characters, which can be hard to follow. Nevertheless, his writing is easy to read, not hard. He’s no James Joyce, and he’s no proponent of the nouveau roman. Proust’s writing flows smoothly, lyrically, as if he was speaking to the reader. (All but the Swann in Love – Un amour de Swann – section is written in the first person, so he is actually speaking to you and me.) The important discovery I made about Proust’s style occurred, in fact, when I listened to an audiobook version of La recherche in French. It became immediately apparent that Proust’s style was simply spoken French written down on paper. His long, sinuous, rambling sentences were simply the way people spoke when they went on and digressed. With this understanding, Proust’s style became nearly transparent. (I say “nearly,” because you still have to pay attention when a sentence goes on for a long time; however, if you get lost, just start over and read it out loud.)
Proust’s novel is about time. The first English title, Remembrance of Things Past, was chosen by the translator who had only read the first volume, and who didn’t know where the work was going. It was taken from a sonnet by Shakespeare, and, while it does wax poetic, it is far from the simplicity of the actual title of the work: In Search of Lost Time, or A la recherche du temps perdu. (It’s important to note that, in French, this title is slightly more ambiguous than in English; “temps perdu” is both lost time and wasted time. (An aside: French toast, in French, is “pain perdu,” or lost/wasted bread.)) The first book begins with the word “Longtemps,” or “For a long time,” and the last book ends with the word “temps,” or “time.” The entire story is about the changes that time causes on people, how people react to the passage of time, and the desire, sometimes, to get back the time that has passed.
Readers today have a much easier time with Proust than I did at first, as there are a number of books that can help you on your journey. Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life is a sometimes serious, sometimes humorous look at Proust, his work, and his way of viewing the world; this is a good introduction to the work. William C. Carter’s Marcel Proust: A Life, sadly out of print, is the best English-language biography of Proust, who famously claimed that one shouldn’t concern oneself with an author’s life when reading their works. Roger Shattuck’s Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time is another useful guidebook, as is Malcolm Bowie’s Proust Among the Stars. Offering less analysis than the previous books, Patrick Alexander’s Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past is a cheat-sheet for readers: it contains a plot summary, a cast of characters, and more useful information to keep you from getting lost. Finally, a wonderful series of video lectures by William C. Carter, Proust scholar and biographer, provides an excellent “course” in Proust. This web site, available on a one-payment lifetime subscription basis, includes lectures and regular Q&A sessions via webcam, as well as a forum. (If you join, you’ll see me on the forum; I’ve volunteered to help moderate and administer it.)
So, where do you begin if you want to read Proust? You should simply dive in and start with the first volume, Swann’s Way, in a recent translation, or Du côté de chez Swann, in the Folio paperback edition, if you read French. The nice leather-bound Pléiade edition is attractive, but the books are too long, in my opinion (much longer than the older edition that I carried around in my Paris days), and at that price, I don’t want to read them in the bathtub. But there are a number of different editions in French: there’s a 2,400-page one-volume edition, which is too bulky to read comfortably, and another edition in two 1,500-page volumes, which is a bit easier to handle. Other French publishers have released their own editions in paperback, since the work went into the public domain.
If you like audiobooks, and you’re a French speaker, you can get a recording of the complete text of La recherche. If you’re not a French speaker, there’s an abridged audiobook version of Remembrance of Things Past (meaning it uses the older translation), from Naxos Audiobooks or an unabridged recording of Swann’s Way, from Tantor Media. (Naxos also has a 3-CD biography of Proust, called The Life and Works of Marcel Proust, written and read by Neville Jason, the narrator of the abridged Naxos version mentioned above. Finally, Jason also narrates The Essential Remembrance of Things Past, a 10-hour version of key scenes from the text. I’ve been informed by Naxos Audiobooks that they’ll be releasing full, unabridged versions of Remembrance of Things Past within the next year.
One other wonderful book that doesn’t fit in any of the above categories is Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time. This book presents all the paintings mentioned in Proust, with excerpts from the text to contextualize them. And, if you read French, go for the French version of the book with the original texts: Le Musée imaginaire de Marcel Proust : Tous les tableaux de A la recherche du Temps Perdu.
Reading Proust is a long process; one that never ends. If you “get” Proust, you’ll realize that when you get to the end of the last volume of In Search of Lost Time, you’ll want to start over. Not right away, of course, but the aftertaste of lost time will linger, and a few years later, you’ll get the itch to read it again. For me, this itch sneaks up on me every five years or so, and with each reading I understand more of the vision of this unique author who managed to write in such a way as the reader can learn to see the world differently. It’s the voyage of a lifetime, and you can start any time.
See other articles about Proust on Kirkville.
Bonus: Proust’s longest sentence, from Sodome et Gomorrhe:
Sans honneur que précaire, sans liberté que provisoire, jusqu’à la découverte du crime; sans situation qu’instable, comme pour le poète la veille fêté dans tous les salons, applaudi dans tous les théâtres de Londres, chassé le lendemain de tous les garnis sans pouvoir trouver un oreiller où reposer sa tête, tournant la meule comme Samson et disant comme lui: “Les deux sexes mourront chacun de son côté”; exclus même, hors les jours de grande infortune où le plus grand nombre se rallie autour de la victime, comme les juifs autour de Dreyfus, de la sympathie – parfois de la société – de leurs semblables, auxquels ils donnent le dégoût de voir ce qu’ils sont, dépeint dans un miroir, qui ne les flattant plus, accuse toutes les tares qu’ils n’avaient pas voulu remarquer chez eux-mêmes et qui leur fait comprendre que ce qu’ils appelaient leur amour (et à quoi, en jouant sur le mot, ils avaient, par sens social, annexé tout ce que la poésie, la peinture, la musique, la chevalerie, l’ascétisme, ont pu ajouter à l’amour) découle non d’un idéal de beauté qu’ils ont élu, mais d’une maladie inguérissable; comme les juifs encore (sauf quelques-uns qui ne veulent fréquenter que ceux de leur race, ont toujours à la bouche les mots rituels et les plaisanteries consacrées) se fuyant les uns les autres, recherchant ceux qui leur sont le plus opposés, qui ne veulent pas d’eux, pardonnant leurs rebuffades, s’enivrant de leurs complaisances; mais aussi rassemblés à leurs pareils par l’ostracisme qui les frappe, l’opprobre où ils sont tombés, ayant fini par prendre, par une persécution semblable à celle d’Israël, les caractères physiques et moraux d’une race, parfois beaux, souvent affreux, trouvant (malgré toutes les moqueries dont celui qui, plus mêlé, mieux assimilé à la race adverse, est relativement, en apparence, le moins inverti, accable celui qui l’est demeuré davantage), une détente dans la fréquentation de leurs semblables, et même un appui dans leur existence, si bien que, tout en niant qu’ils soient une race (dont le nom est la plus grande injure), ceux qui parviennent à cacher qu’ils en sont, ils les démasquent volontiers, moins pour leur nuire, ce qu’ils ne détestent pas, que pour s’excuser, et allant chercher comme un médecin l’appendicite l’inversion jusque dans l’histoire, ayant plaisir à rappeler que Socrate était l’un d’eux, comme les Israélites disent de Jésus, sans songer qu’il n’y avait pas d’anormaux quand l’homosexualité était la norme, pas d’anti-chrétiens avant le Christ, que l’opprobre seul fait le crime, parce qu’il n’a laissé subsister que ceux qui étaient réfractaires à toute prédication, à tout exemple, à tout châtiment, en vertu d’une disposition innée tellement spéciale qu’elle répugne plus aux autres hommes (encore qu’elle puisse s’accompagner de hautes qualités morales) que de certains vices qui y contredisent comme le vol, la cruauté, la mauvaise foi, mieux compris, donc plus excusés du commun des hommes; formant une franc-maçonnerie bien plus étendue, plus efficace et moins soupçonnée que celle des loges, car elle repose sur une identité de goûts, de besoins, d’habitudes, de dangers, d’apprentissage, de savoir, de trafic, de glossaire, et dans laquelle les membres mêmes, qui souhaitent de ne pas se connaître, aussitôt se reconnaissent à des signes naturels ou de convention, involontaires ou voulus, qui signalent un de ses semblables au mendiant dans le grand seigneur à qui il ferme la portière de sa voiture, au père dans le fiancé de sa fille, à celui qui avait voulu se guérir, se confesser, qui avait à se défendre, dans le médecin, dans le prêtre, dans l’avocat qu’il est allé trouver; tous obligés à protéger leur secret, mais ayant leur part d’un secret des autres que le reste de l’humanité ne soupçonne pas et qui fait qu’à eux les romans d’aventure les plus invraisemblables semblent vrais, car dans cette vie romanesque, anachronique, l’ambassadeur est ami du forçat: le prince, avec une certaine liberté d’allures que donne l’éducation aristocratique et qu’un petit bourgeois tremblant n’aurait pas en sortant de chez la duchesse, s’en va conférer avec l’apache; partie réprouvée de la collectivité humaine, mais partie importante, soupçonnée là où elle n’est pas, étalée, insolente, impunie là où elle n’est pas devinée; comptant des adhérents partout, dans le peuple, dans l’armée, dans le temple, au bagne, sur le trône; vivant enfin, du moins un grand nombre, dans l’intimité caressante et dangereuse avec les hommes de l’autre race, les provoquant, jouant avec eux à parler de son vice comme s’il n’était pas sien, jeu qui est rendu facile par l’aveuglement ou la fausseté des autres, jeu qui peut se prolonger des années jusqu’au jour du scandale où ces dompteurs sont dévorés; jusque-là obligés de cacher leur vie, de détourner leurs regards d’où ils voudraient se fixer, de les fixer sur ce dont ils voudraient se détourner, de changer le genre de bien des adjectifs dans leur vocabulaire, contrainte sociale, légère auprès de la contrainte intérieure que leur vice, ou ce qu’on nomme improprement ainsi, leur impose non plus à l’égard des autres mais d’eux-mêmes, et de façon qu’à eux-mêmes il ne leur paraisse pas un vice.