The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 20 April 2002
by Marcel Proust
(Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncreiff)
This book is the first of seven volumes (C. K. Scott Moncrieff's popular translation of Du Côté de Chez Swann) of Proust's massive novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, whose title is usually translated as Remembrance of Things Past, but more accurately as In Search of Lost Time. In various editions, the book has been divided up in a few ways, with this 1956 Modern Library edition containing the chapters: "Overture", "Combray", "Swann in Love", and "Place-Names: The Name". In the opening chapter is perhaps Proust's most famous contribution to literature, his moment of tea and a madeleine, the taste of which evokes a wave of nostalgic memory. But, within the overture, he also tells an almost disturbing tale of his obsessive attachment to his mother's good-night kisses. Proust goes on to tell the long tale of his childhood memories in the town of Combray (the Loire valley town of Illiers). The descriptions are detailed and powerfully evocative of a soft-focus childhood spring walking along the paths and streets of this countryside town in the late 19th century. The characters, particularly those of Marcel's ailing aunt Léonie and her nurse and housekeeper Francoise, are brilliantly drawn and display a remarkable depth of literary perception.
Just when you think you've launched into a massive meditation on memory and on specific memories, the author changes tone with "Swann in Love", a discourse on the intricate ways that love affects the protagonist, and an acute description of the layers of social life in Paris. Swann, a wealthy art broker, is of a type who can move within many layers of "society". But that society is full of rules and social morés that easily trip one up in the pursuit of position or of love. In a less-than-fashionable salon, he falls for Odette de Crécy, a flighty courtesan, in a fine example of the axiom "love is blind". Proust details the ups and downs of this affair with remarkable, sometimes tedious, detail that reminded this reader of Stendhal. What Proust captures here is the array of psychological layers that make up the personalities he describes. Some of his writing is incredibly insightful, and thus often engrossing. Some readers, though, may find his belaboring of detail to be tedious. Proust is, of course, often noted for the massive density of this tremendous seven-volume novel. This reader felt he read Swann's Way at least twice, with all the sentences, paragraphs and pages re-read in order to decipher Proust's intricate language, with his long sentences and seemingly infinite subordinate clauses. But, just as often, the reader finds himself falling in to the layered cadence of the work, coming up hypnotized a dozen pages later.
The author closes the book, leaving the tale of Swann and Odette inconclusive, by returning to his childhood, now walking the Champs Elysées in Paris with Francoise. Here, Proust at last gives the book a pattern that sets up the later volumes. Though this childhood memory is perhaps not quite as evocative as that which opens the book, he still ends the book in a haze of nostalgia and with a meditation on the meaning of time for all of us. The book is a huge but rewarding challenge.
Also by Proust: [Within a Budding Grove] [The Guermantes Way] [Sodome et Gomorrhe] [The Captive] [The Fugitive] [Time Regained]