Marcel Proust

translations, biography, criticism, web links, commentary

translations, biography, web links, commentary

Guide to Remembrance of Things Past

November 6, 2009 by Roy Johnson

handbook, explanation, plot summary, and characters

After nearly 100 years, Marcel Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past remains as formidable a reading task as when it first appeared. Indeed, possibly more so – since it was originally published in single volumes at intervals, which gave contemporary readers a chance to digest its contents slowly. But it now exists in seven volumes totalling 3,200 pages, a million and a half words, and containing more than 400 characters.

This is not an intellectual journey to be undertaken lightly, and even experienced readers need all the help they can get to deal with a literary construction of this magnitude. Patrick Alexander’s guide is an attempt to provide all the assistance that’s required. The book is in three parts. The first offers an overview then a summary of what takes place in each of the seven volumes of the novel. Part two is a who’s who – thumbnail sketches of the principal characters, what they do, and to whom they are related.

Part three offers a brief account of Proust’s life, notes on Paris and the Belle Epoque, and brief essays on French history and the notorious Dreyfus affair in particular.

During the course of his paraphrase, Alexander examines the ‘epiphanies’ for which Proust is famous; he shows the links between characters and events spanning the whole of the seven volumes which will not be apparent to a first-time reader; and he looks at Proust’s techniques of detailed and protracted analysis which, to anyone who has paid close enough attention, are not simply analyses but highly imaginative and extended metaphors which demonstrate his intellectual skill for seeing similarities between apparently disparate objects.

As Alexander points out, Proust’s novel is also an amazing cultural encyclopedia. Whilst the narrative explores issues of love, friendship, jealousy, memory and time, it is also packed with cultural references:

His literary references range from Xenophon to (then) contemporary novelists such as Zola; his musical references cover western music from Palestrina to Puccini, and he refers to more than one hundred individual painters from Botticelli to the avant garde Léon Bakst. All of these references are used to express and illustrate startlingly original insights into every aspect of the human condition, from love and sex to religion and death – and all with a freshness and comic sense of the absurd.

It is often observed by those who have read Proust that so powerful are the evocations of place and the recreation of his life experiences, that readers afterwards find it difficult to believe that they are not their own. “Yes – That’s exactly how it is!” sums up this sort of reaction, though of course it is his genius to have put it into words in the first place.

And for a writer so renowned for prolixity (even longeurs) what is not so frequently observed is the fact that he is much given to placing pithy aphorisms in his text, deeply embedded in huge paragraphs though they might often be.

This book should appeal to the intelligent ‘Common Reader’ who wants to undertake the extended literary journey that a reading of Proust presents. And it will be a reliable guide mainly because it was written by exactly such a person, composed as a homage to a writer he had come to love.

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Patrick Alexander, Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past, New York: Vintage, 2009, pp.3391, ISBN 0307472329

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In Search of Lost Time

February 11, 2010 by Roy Johnson

characters, resources, video, translations

There’s no doubt about it: if you’re going to tackle In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past as it is also known) you need to be in good intellectual shape. The sentences are long, the paragraphs are huge, and at a million and a half words his great novel is one of the longest ever.

But it can be done – and the benefits are enormous. Proust delivers gems on every page. He is of course celebrated for his psychological insights. His characters live and breathe in a way which makes you feel they become your personal friends. Don’t expect plot, suspense, or even story in a conventional sense. This modern classic is one of characters circling around each other in a way which depicts an entire world of upper-class fin de circle France before and shortly after the First World War.

However, the greatest depths he offers are in the form of profound reflections on some of the most important issues any novelist can approach – love, desire, memory, time, and death. These are written in the form of extended aphorisms, embedded as part of his narrative in such a way that you will hardly be aware where one ends and the other begins.

Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact.

Marcel Proust – portrait by Jaques Emil Blanche

Study resources

In Search of Lost Time – 6 volume boxed set (Modern Library) – UK

In Search of Lost Time – 6 volume boxed set (Modern Library) – US

In Search of Lost Time – 4 volume boxed set (Everyman’s Library) – UK

In Search of Lost Time – 4 volume boxed set (Everyman’s Library) – US

Proust: an illustrated life – short biography with period photos

Proust’s life and works – a detailed chronology

A Reader’s Guide to Proust – Amazon UK

Proust Website – general resources

Proust’s In Search of Lost Time – web site with videos

Reading Proust – various translations compared

Swann’s Way – an essay on translations

Swann in Love – 1984 DVD adaptation in English – Amazon UK

Time Regained – 1999 DVD adaptation (English subtitles) – Amazon UK

Monsieur Proust – the housekeeper’s memoirs – Amazon UK

Marcel Proust at Wikipedia – biographical notes, web links

Marcel Proust at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Proust in the original French

A la recherche du temps perdu – 10 volumes, illustrated (Kindle) pp.2911 – £2.22 – Amazon UK

Oeuvres complètes de Marcel Proust – Illustrated, with biography and criticisim (Kindle) pp.4100 – £1.32 – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Marcel	the outer narrator of the novel
Bathilde Amedee	the narrator’s grandmother
Francoise	the narrator’s faithful maid
Baron de Charlus	an aristocratic dandy and gay aesthete
Duchesse de Guermantes	the toast of Parisian high society
Robert de Saint-Loup	army officer and narrator’s best friend
Charles Swann	a friend of the narrator’s family
Odette de Crecy	a beautiful Parisian courtesan
Gilberte Swann	the daughter of Swann and Odette
Elstir	a famous painter
Bergotte	a well-known writer
Vinteuil	an obscure but talented musician
Berma	a famous actress
Charles Morel	a gifted violinist, patronised by Charlus
Albertine Simonet	an orphan with whom the narrator has a romance
Madame Verdurin	a rapacious social-climber

In Search of Lost Time – film adaptation

Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich

Proust’s writing – I

Mont Blanc – Marcel Proust special edition

Don’t let this glamorous fountain pen deceive you. Marcel Proust’s writing instruments and his notebooks were quite humble. He used Sergent-Major nibs and pen holder which were the cheapest of their kind. For paper, he used the common French school children’s exercise notebooks which he purchased in bulk.

Parisian interior – La belle epoque

Proust’s writing – II

Revisions to a typescript

Proust’s method of composition was highly accretive. He wrote primarily in children’s exercise books, but his first drafts were supplemented by countless additions, revisions, and extensions of thought which he scribbled down on any paper which came to hand.

Envelopes, magazine covers, scraps of paper of different length and format were glued into the exercise books or joined together to form long scrolls sometimes two metres long.

This process also continued when proofs of his manuscript came back from the printer. This was a habit very similar to that of his illustrious predecessor Balzac. As Terrence Kilmartin observes:

The margins of proofs and typescripts were covered with scribbled corrections and insertions, often overflowing on to additional sheets which were glued to the galleys or to one another to form interminable strips – what Françoise in the novel calls the narrator’s paperoles. The unravelling and deciphering of these copious additions cannot have been an enviable task for editors and printers.

In Search of Lost Time – editions

Click the jacket covers for further details at Amazon UK

Which translation should you read? In English there are three options currently in print. My favourite is the oldest by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. It was the first to appear as the original volumes were published, and it even had Proust’s own blessing. Although it is based on a version of the French original which was not complete, it has a charm all of its own. It is this version which gave the novel its alternative title Remembrance of Things Past when Scott Moncrieff chose a quotation from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX, rather than a literal translation of the original:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past

The jacket cover illustrated here is that of the old Chatto and Windus edition which was presented in twelve volumes. Snap these up if you see them, but in the meantime this translation is available from Penguin books.

So this version comes to us with a guarantee of completeness and accuracy, but with the traces of three different translators’ hands since the original work. Each volume contains its own notes, addenda, and a synopsis, so readers new to Proust can feel supported by this additional material. [It’s available as a boxed set which is also known slightly mischievously as the ‘Proust 6-pack’.]

There’s also a more recent version produced by seven different translators. This has the advantage of being the most up to date. It is based on the latest version of a text with a very tangled provenance, and each translator writes a preface on the problems of translation. This version got a mixed reception when it first appeared. Some people argue that it removes a certain prissiness which had clung to the English version of Proust since Scott Moncrieff’s translation. Others have claimed that it introduces new problems and lacks a unifying voice. Perhaps the best reason for choosing it is that it’s now generally available at a cut-down price.

The Cambridge Companion to Proust provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

Marcel Proust is an excellent biography by George Painter. This study has become famous in its own right, because it combines deep insights with scholarly rigour – and it is also written in a very stylish manner. Painter sketches in the background to Parisian society, which provides a historical context for what follows. He then traces Proust’s singular life (the neurasthenia, the ‘job’ he kept for one day, the cork-lined bedroom) up to his death in 1922 – where he was still revising his masterpiece in bed, which is where he had written most of it. This is regarded as a classic of modern biography, and in 1965 it was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

AND … now for something completely different

Other works by Marcel Proust

Jean Santeuil
This was Proust’s ‘dry run’ for his major work. It’s an unfinished (though quite long) fragment of a novel about the life of a young Parisian man which tells the story of boyhood summers of strawberries and cream cheese, of garlands of pink blossom under branches of white may, of love and its lies, of political scandal and of his deep feeling for his parents.

The Pleasures and the Days
Set amid fin-de-siecle Parisian salon society, these sketches and short stories depict the lives, loves, manners and motivations of a host of characters, all viewed with a characteristically knowing eye. By turns cuttingly satirical and bitterly moving, Proust’s portrayals are layered with imagery and feeling, whether they be of the aspiring Bouvard and Pecuchet, the deluded Madame de Breyves, or Baldassare Silvande, saturated with regret, memory and final understanding at the end of his life.

Contre Saint Beuve
This series of essays has as its centrepiece Proust’s literary manifesto. In it he argues for an essentially modernist position – that works of art should be considered autonomously, rather than objects which we use as a means of exploring the author’s biography.

The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust

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Marcel Proust Illustrated Life

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biographical notes, charming illustrations, and photos

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Proust’s strange life, and his unrelenting devotion to creativity. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Mary Ann Caws admits from the outset that with so many other excellent biographies of Proust available [by George Painter, Ronald Hayman, and William Sansom] there’s no point in writing another.

Instead, she produces an account of Proust which takes themes and motifs from his life as a starting point for meditations upon them – some of them not much longer than a single page, and others stretching out in more leisurely fashion to make well-informed reflections on the social context which gave rise to his work.

For those who don’t know Proust well, she includes a sufficient number of tantalizing biographical details to whet any appetite for more. He slept between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon, then worked late into the night, fueled (like Balzac) by strong coffee and a variety of drugs. He turned up to the best restaurants in the middle of the night and paid for special dinners to be laid on. He left some of his best furniture to a male brothel which he frequented.

Caws is steeped in knowledge about Proust and his background, and her account moves easily from his personal life to cultural issues. Her most extensive chapter is a lengthy analysis of Proust’s relationship to music, and the influence of the Ballets Russes on Paris and London in the early years of the last century. She also discusses the influence of the English art critic Ruskin on Proust’s literary style, and notes in addition his enthusiasm for the work of Thomas Hardy.

The beginner expecting a chronological introduction to the main events in Proust’s life might be disappointed, but by way of compensation it is the photographs and illustrations which make this book such a charming experience. The images of late nineteenth century Paris which inspired so much of his work are surrounded by sketches from his notebooks, paintings of the people who inspired his characters, and photographs that you rarely see elsewhere.

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Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Proust: an illustrated life, New York: Overlook Press. 2005, pp.112, ISBN: 1585676489

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Marcel Proust on Reading

September 9, 2011 by Roy Johnson

the philosophy of books, authors, and their readers

Marcel Proust on Reading is a collection of essays and reflections on the relations between writers, text, and readers. When he was only twenty-six Marcel Proust had already written Jean Santeuil, a thousand page would-be novel. It’s a trial run for his much more successful In Search of Lost Time. He realised that it lacked structure and coherence, and in 1897 he abandoned it unfinished. He turned away from fiction and devoted a number of years to studying and translating the works of John Ruskin, who was then at the height of his popularity and influence as an English cultural critic. Proust learned a great deal from him; he imitated his prose style; and he empathised deeply with Ruskin’s belief in the moral value of high art.

Proust’s English was not very good. As he himself admitted ‘I do not claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin’. And what he also claimed was an ability to read in such a sympathetic manner that he could grasp the underlying personal ‘tune’ of a writer beneath the words on the surface of the page. This skill was something which led him to write a number of Pastiches of famous writers. But it also led him to write the long essay on the philosophy of reading that is at the heart of this collection.

The essaay is his preface to his translation of Ruskin’s famous collection of lectures Sesame and Lilies. The other items in the book are the original Ruskin lecture On Kings’ Treasuries complete with Proust’s extensive footnotes and commentary, and four short prefaces by Proust to his other translations. The book also has both a foreword and an introduction written by two different translators, commenting on the origin of the texts themselves – quite a curious compilation.

Proust starts out in very typical fashion by talking about the pleasures of reading as a child, but he points out that those stories we love and which we wish could go on forever are not a virtue in themselves so much as a trigger for the memories and associations they allow us to carry into our adult lives.

He explores a whole philosophy of books, authors, and reading, throwing off interesting observations and aphorisms on almost every page:

Indeed, this is one of the great and wondrous characteristics of beautiful books (and one which enables us to understand the simultaneously essential and limited role that reading can play in our spiritual life): that for the author they may be called Conclusions, but for the reader, Provocations.

In other words, the author’s work is complete, but for the reader, this is just the start of an imaginative journey. And of course ‘Reading’ is interpreted in its very broadest sense. One moment he is discussing literature, but then the next it’s paintings, architecture, and philosophy – anywhere the creative spirit can leave its mark.

Ruskin’s lecture purports to be on ‘the treasures hidden in books’, and it does take in the form of empathetic reading that Proust describes. But it is largely a rambling series of lofty over-generalisations offered de haut en bas concerning the evils of contemporary society, which include road tunnels in the Alps, iron foundries in the UK, and ‘new hotels and perfumers’ shops’. Proust’s footnotes offer both a critique of Ruskin’s ideas and an appreciative close reading that demonstrates a practical example of sensing the author’s ‘tune’ beneath the surface of his words.

Proust would have loved Hypertext. He is forever inserting examples, asides, correctives, and qualifications into the flow of his text. He is an avid user of footnotes, and of course we know that he composed his works in an accretive manner, with one strip of paper after another glued into the pages of the exercises books he used as he thought of extra things to say.

Proust’s revisions to a typescript

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Marcel Proust, On Reading, London: Hesperus Press, 2011, pp.113, ISBN: 1843916169

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Marcel Proust translations

September 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a comparison of the three generally available versions

Most English-speaking readers will choose to read Marcel Proust in translation. And his literary style is quite demanding. His sentences are long, the paragraphs are huge, and his great novel is one of the longest ever – at a million and a half words. But the effort is worthwhile – and the benefits are enormous. Proust offers gems of psychological perception on every page, and his characters come alive in a way which makes you feel they become your personal friends. There is very little in the way of plot, suspense, or even story in a conventional sense. This modern classic is one which depicts an entire world of upper-class fin de siècle French characters circling round each other before and shortly after the First World War.

The greatest depths of insight he offers are in the form of profound reflections on some of the most important issues any novelist can approach – love, desire, memory, time, and death. These are presented in the form of extended aphorisms, embedded as part of his narrative in such a way that you will hardly be aware where one ends and the other begins.

Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact.

Eventually, it comes down to which translation should you read – and in English there are three options currently in print. My favourite is the oldest by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. It was first to appear as the original volumes were published, and it even had Proust’s own blessing. Although it is based on a version of the French original which was not complete, it has a charm all of its own. There may be technical errors here and there, but it will take a long time for any of the subsequent translations to supersede its elegance and the powerful influence it has had. It is still held in high regard as a work of literary interpretation.

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The second option is an edition which is based on the Scott Moncrieff original translation, but which was revised and re-translated by Terrence Kilmartin in the 1990s. This version is also informed by updated versions of the original text in French, including new material which has come to light since the author’s death. Kilmartin’s work was then itself edited by D.J.Enright. So this version comes to us with a guarantee of completeness and accuracy, but with the traces of three different translators’ hands since the original work. Each volume contains its own notes, addenda, and a synopsis, so readers new to Proust can feel supported by this additional material.

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Buy the book at Amazon US

This same tanslation by Kilmartin and Enright is now also available in Everyman’s Library Classics edition. It’s available in both hardback and paperback versions, and they have the advantage of being presented in just four volumes, which keeps down the cost of the complete work.

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The most recent version was produced by seven different translators. This has the advantage of being the most up to date. It is based on the latest version of a text with a very tangled provenance, and each translator writes a preface on the problems of translation. This version got a mixed reception when it first appeared. Some people argue that it removes a certain prissiness which had clung to the English version of Proust since Scott Moncrieff’s translation. Others have claimed that it introduces new problems and lacks a unifying voice. Perhaps the best reason for choosing it is that it’s now generally available at a cut-down price in a handy boxed set.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Marcel Proust is the definitive biography, by George Painter. This study has become famous in its own right, because it combines deep insights with scholarly rigour – and it is also written in a very stylish manner. Painter sketches in the background to Parisian society, which provides a historical context for what follows. He then traces Proust’s singular life (the neurasthenia, the ‘job’ he kept for one day, the cork-lined bedroom) up to his death in 1922 – where he was still revising his masterpiece in bed, which is where he had written most of it. This is regarded as a classic of modern biography, and in 1965 it was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Marcel Proust at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus production notes, box office, trivia and quiz.

Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

The Kolb-Proust Archive
An online searchable database of Proust’s correspondence in French and English, plus further study resources and related web sites. – located at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.

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Marcel Proust web links

December 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Marcel Proust web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.

WRITING – I

Mont Blanc – Marcel Proust special edition

The Cambridge Companion to Proust
This compilation provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

More on Marcel Proust
Twentieth century literature
More on biography

Guide to Remembrance of Things Past

handbook, explanation, plot summary, and characters

In Search of Lost Time

characters, resources, video, translations

Study resources

Proust in the original French

Principal characters

In Search of Lost Time – film adaptation

Further reading

Proust’s writing – I

Parisian interior – La belle epoque

Proust’s writing – II

In Search of Lost Time – editions

Other works by Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust Illustrated Life

biographical notes, charming illustrations, and photos

Marcel Proust on Reading

the philosophy of books, authors, and their readers

Marcel Proust translations

a comparison of the three generally available versions

Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust web links

a selection of web-based archives and resources

Marcel Proust – web links

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