Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time, #7) in The Year of Reading Proust

Oct 29, 2022 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: french, linguistics-and-philosophy, why-not-call-it-poetry, older-men-younger-women, life-is-proust, older-women-younger-men, transcendent-experiences, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, translation-is-impossible

Given the intense mystique that surrounds Proust, I decided I would try to approach the final volumes with an open mind. It's possible that I went a little too far and that my review of Albertine disparue was insufficiently respectful. Sorry Kalliope! But having now reached the end, I am relieved to say that my fears were unfounded. The final chapter, which I discover Proust wrote immediately after completing the first chapter, pulls everything together; nothing was wasted, nothing was gratuitou Given the intense mystique that surrounds Proust, I decided I would try to approach the final volumes with an open mind. It's possible that I went a little too far and that my review of Albertine disparue was insufficiently respectful. Sorry Kalliope! But having now reached the end, I am relieved to say that my fears were unfounded. The final chapter, which I discover Proust wrote immediately after completing the first chapter, pulls everything together; nothing was wasted, nothing was gratuitous. Although it was not easy to climb this mountain (a metaphor the author uses himself), when you reach the top the view is absolutely worth it. It is of course very sad that Proust died when he did. The three posthumous books are uneven, with strange plot holes and passages that are stylistically in need of revision, but it doesn't really matter; he seems to have known this would happen, and the text contains several references to his "unfinished cathedral". In a strange way, it is almost appropriate.

Some thoughts that have been going through my head the last couple of days:

- Given the construction of the book, I was very lucky to have ended up reading Combray and Le temps retrouvé in parallel: I'm sure it heightened my appreciation of the last volume. If you're also nearing the end of the series, I strongly recommend doing the same. You won't regret the time you spend on this little detour.

- In general, the problem with reading Proust is that you want to keep the whole thing in your head at once, so that you can appreciate all the interconnections, but in practice it's hard to read it quickly enough. I was however encouraged by my recent experiment with creating a multimedia version of the first volume. I will soon get back to this idea.

- A la recherche du temps perdu is formally a novel and always described as such, but it is at least as much a work of philosophy. It is both theoretical (it says deep and provocative things about the nature of the self) and practical (it embodies a highly idiosyncratic set of precepts for how one should live one's life). I wondered what people there might be who have tried to follow this philosophy and extend it; my top suspects are Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I must look around to see if anyone else has had the same thought, and what they have written about it. ...more

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Nov 15, 2013 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow, Proust kills it with this last book in his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. He pulls it all together. I loved Proust's reflections on literary and artistic creation, reality, memory, pain, death and time -- and how in 'Time Regained' he draws all his themes together.

I'm almost sad my stroll with Proust is over. There are few books I've ever wanted to start reading again immediately after finishing. Today as I was setting down 'Time Regained', I almost reached for 'Swann's Way'. I feel l ...more

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Nov 22, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: french

What Didn't Happen In 1927

ANCHORMAN: And now we're going over to Paris, where crowds have been gathering since early evening waiting for the midnight release of Le temps retrouvé, with pre-ordered sales already totalling more than eleven million copies! Margaret FitzWilliam reporting.

[Paris street. Large number of people in fancy dress lining up outside bookstore. Carnival atmosphere]

JOURNALIST: Yes, all the Proust fans are out in force tonight waiting for the conclusion of the series! I can see ...more

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Aug 25, 2009 Bram rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, proustophilia

Sunday was Community Day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which meant free entry to all. Deciding to take advantage of this at the expense of a gorgeous late summer day, I spent a couple of hours wandering through the impressive but under-construction building, primarily in the European and American wings that cover the last few centuries. I stopped in front of 200 or so paintings, but only two “spoke” to me. While in many circumstances a one-percent hit rate implies a horrible failure or d Sunday was Community Day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which meant free entry to all. Deciding to take advantage of this at the expense of a gorgeous late summer day, I spent a couple of hours wandering through the impressive but under-construction building, primarily in the European and American wings that cover the last few centuries. I stopped in front of 200 or so paintings, but only two “spoke” to me. While in many circumstances a one-percent hit rate implies a horrible failure or disappointment, I left the museum with feelings of utter satisfaction and delight at my good fortune. Similar, in fact, to how I feel right now after finishing In Search of Lost Time. The connection between the museum and novel run deeper than that, however. My ability to be transported by art (or music, or _____) has been permanently enriched through reading Proust’s ideas on Lost Time, and how this Time actually can be recaptured in reality (additional and annoyingly incoherent musings on this below). Like many of the ideas contained within this book, this recapturing of Time is something about which I’ve somehow always and never known—that is, I’ve known it intuitively, yet without a concreteness or completeness that would allow for a full experience beyond the fleeting moment it can occasionally inhabit in quotidian existence. The initial lightning strike that leads to a discovery of Lost Time is inevitably involuntary, but it can be harnessed, extended, and savored through recognition and analysis, as old Marcel finally discovers while sitting in the library of the Prince & Princess de Guermantes.

As I gazed at (or more accurately, into) de Crissé’s The Bay of Naples, the unconscious displacement that I began to feel in both time and space was met with a newly-awakened consciousness that tried to hold onto and understand this feeling of joyful abandonment to a past experience. I must admit that, like Marcel in his initial attempts at clarifying The Search by dwelling on the madeleine or the steeples at Martinville, I was not wholly successful. I couldn’t quite understand where I was trying to go temporally or why I was so moved, but thanks to Proust, I understood what was happening. While an explanation of The Search mentioned in the book’s title is probably appropriate here to elucidate my point, I hesitate to summarize the narrator’s precious conclusion (one that offers a revelation at once sui generis and instantly familiar) for fear of doing it, and any readers of this review, an injustice. The Search is a thematic thread that begins almost immediately in the novel with the famous madeleine scene (and who knew that this small part was actually an adumbration of the novel’s key theme?) and reaches a peak with a final discovery that takes place some 200 pages from the end of the book. And despite the fact that this Search is the remarkably robust thread that binds these seven volumes together, it actually makes up very little of the bulk of the novel. But in its entirety, in the perfect satisfaction of its resolution, this theme amounts to a tour-de-force that is, in my humble opinion, unequaled in literature. For how often can I say that I actually experience certain parts of my life differently (and with greater, fuller satisfaction) as a consequence of reading a book?

I didn’t start out so smitten with the book’s final volume. Indeed, I was more bored with the first 150 pages (even with the shocking scene of flagellation) than with any other part of the novel. Now, this was most likely due to reading only three or four pages at a time over a period of a few weeks. I can’t get into a flow with an intermittent pace like that. Luckily, I had to fly to Chicago for work this weekend, and unlike David’s average airborne reading experience, mine is usually filled with uninterrupted stretches of intense reading. Two point five hours of Proust and only Proust each way—a perfect scenario for finishing a book begun over eight months ago when I first cracked open Swann’s Way. And Marcel delivered. Big time. Shortly after the aforementioned flagellation scene, he finally delves into his Lost Time thesis with unfettered ecstasy and pellucidity; sixty straight pages of glorious enlightenment. Honestly, I reread some parts of this section four or five times before moving on. Ever wanted to know how to travel through time and space? Proust tells you. And, perhaps because you already know this is possible in some vague way, it’s convincing as all hell. Seriously. And the joy of reading this section was compounded by a bizarre meta-effect, wherein I experienced the exact feelings Proust was describing as (or because?) he was finally describing them in full. Whoa.

Then we get the bal de têtes (masked ball), which contains the illuminating and humorous ruminations on the still-living society characters, each of whom has undergone tremendous physical, social, moral, and intellectual changes since the narrator last saw them years before. And then, quite suddenly, I found myself only a few pages from the end. How could Proust possibly wrap up this book appropriately in so short a space? Not only does he do it appropriately, he does it masterfully. I suppose it’s fitting that the most rewarding read of my life contains the most satisfactory conclusion. But “satisfactory” sounds like it’s easy or happy when it is, in fact, neither. Rather, the ending of the book has a calm inevitability that, when finally reached, reveals itself to be as inescapable and natural as death. Or, of course, life—life, which is finally crystallized for our narrator in the person of Mlle de Saint-Loup, who allows him to reflect on every important character relationship in the book, which together are (mis)woven into an incestuous tangle, all within a single heroic paragraph. In that one paragraph it becomes clear how many variations each character comprises, and it’s likely that if I started rereading this book immediately, I’d find that my “initial” impressions of Odette, Swann, Legrandin, Saint-Loup, Charlus, et al. lined up not at all with the farewell views I’m left with in this final volume. Which, when I think back through my own life and the personal permutations that would make me nigh-unrecognizable to myself, sounds just about right. ...more

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Mar 12, 2017 David Cerruti rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: paris, s-o-c

At last, I finish In Search of Lost Time. Time Regained is my favorite of the 7 volumes. By now, I’m used to his phrasing and style. The words just flow. Proust seems to have mellowed. It now feels like I’m listening to stories told by an old friend. He still rambles on about high society, gossip, social standing, and public snubs, but the edge has softened.

Of course, there were memory triggers. This passage recalls an afternoon from just a few months past.

”As to the niece, I never discovered wh

...more

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Nov 29, 2015 Inderjit Sanghera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Finding Time Again is the final volume of Proust’s in Search of Lost Time. Perhaps the title is something of a misnomer-after all the narrator had re-found time in the first volume when he first tastes the tea-soaked madeleine and the subsequent events described in the novel are caused by flashbacks created by his experience of voluntary memory. Rather, for the narrator, time forms a full circle, and the impact of his tripping over some steps is the culmination of him finally realising that his Finding Time Again is the final volume of Proust’s in Search of Lost Time. Perhaps the title is something of a misnomer-after all the narrator had re-found time in the first volume when he first tastes the tea-soaked madeleine and the subsequent events described in the novel are caused by flashbacks created by his experience of voluntary memory. Rather, for the narrator, time forms a full circle, and the impact of his tripping over some steps is the culmination of him finally realising that his vocation is nothing less than the transmutation of his life via art.

“At the day’s end, amid a soporific fading of all the colours, when the only source of light was an almost curdled sea, tinged with the milky-blue of whey.”

“a dish whose border depicts a little Chinese boy catching with rod and line a fish, the azured silvering of whose belly is an enchantment of nacreous colour.”

“Across all that part of the city dominated by the towers of the Trocadero, the sky looked like a vast turquoise-coloured sea on the ebb, disclosing a whole slender line of black rocks, which might even perhaps have been a row of simple fishing nets, but which were really clouds.”

The narrator’s memory is like a fish-net, thrown into the endless sea of his life, ready to ensnare all the characters who swim in the ocean of his imagination, endlessly transformed, as Charlus metamorphosis from the haughty aristocrat to a pathetic old man, blind and bumbling, to the monstrous and incorrigible philistine Madame Verdurin, who has been transformed from a cantankerous crank to lady of high society as the Princesse de Guermantes, or the irascible Bloch, who sheds his Jewishness to become Jacques du Rozier, the pretentions and portentous writer he was always destined to become. Indeed, the narrator struggles to cope and deal with the endless changes and transformations which have occurred in the world he has created, poor Swann fades into insignificance and Gilberte, the narrator’s first love, marries Robert de Saint-Loup, the narrator’s greatest friend, who sensitivity has been subsumed beneath a veneer of indifference, but who heroically dies during the war.

The narrator wonders why all the characters are wearing make-up to make them look older, only to realise that they have grown old. It is a testament to the narrator’s ability to create well-rounded and interesting characters, so that the death of Saint-Loup, or the transformation of Gilberte from a flirtatious young girl into a mature young woman (and mother) or of Charlus into a doddering old man is strangely moving-the reader feels like they have gotten to know and grown up with these characters, so to observe their transformation in the febrile imagination of the narrator is fascinating, yet at the same time rather sad.

The narrator muses on the power of involuntary memory, of the innate power of involuntary memory to triumph over untrammeled power of time, to overcome and reverse the linearity of time, so rather than moving in a straight line, involuntary allows our bodies to zig-zag through time; the power of involuntary memory is in all of us and can be triggered by anything, from the glint of sunlight in our bedroom window to the contact of tea and cake on our tongues; involuntary memory allows us to break free from the cocoon of time which envelops our lives, just as Balbec seems to fall from the narrator’s napkins, so the key to our lives is stored in the key-house of our subconscious.

“Only the impression, however slight its material may seem, however elusive its truth, can be a criterion of truth, and on that account is the only thing worthy of being apprehended by the mind; it alone, if the mind can elucidate its truth, can bring the mind to a more perfected state, and give it pure happiness.”
...more

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Feb 14, 2008 Sir Jack rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Time Regained is weird because it brings the reader up to the point, chronologically in “real” life, at which the narrator has a revelation—during a party at the Guermantes’s—and decides he must leave society to live monastically and work on his monumental writings concerning his existence in time. So the end of the book brings you to the point at which the narrator decides he’s going to begin writing the four-thousand-page multi-volume book you’re about to finish reading.

More than previous vol Time Regained is weird because it brings the reader up to the point, chronologically in “real” life, at which the narrator has a revelation—during a party at the Guermantes’s—and decides he must leave society to live monastically and work on his monumental writings concerning his existence in time. So the end of the book brings you to the point at which the narrator decides he’s going to begin writing the four-thousand-page multi-volume book you’re about to finish reading.

More than previous volumes, this last one exhibits an aimless “superessayism” (a term Nabokov coined to help make fun of Thomas Mann more effectively). If he’d had the time to revise the final volumes Proust probably would’ve minimized this (right?).

In Search of Lost Time is the one literary work that accomplishes the feat of mimicking how time feels; when I look back to Swann’s Way (vol. 1) it’s with a sensation similar to remembering something from my own life years back. It had been twelve or so years since I first read about some of these characters.

At the party, the narrator is more unforgiving of his peers’ intellectual/moral lapses than ever (not to mention his old friends’ physical appearance; a substantial portion of this volume is composed of the narrator being appalled at how hideous people look). Makes for good reading, for all its unfairness.

(After six volumes, I still have no idea what the difference between a princess and a duchess is or numerous other little social codes of Proust’s “set.” I like to think these codes mean nothing now.)

Anyhow, in all of literature, paragraph for paragraph you can’t do better than Proust. The entirety of In Search of Lost Time is one of the best things ever written. On its own this one probably doesn’t deserve five stars, but I gave it five because Proust spoils you with page after page of great writing, and though this volume (along with volume 5) is weaker than the first four, it’s still super good.

It reaches its melancholy pitch near the end, with the narrator, literally closing up his ears in the middle of the party, straining to hear within himself the noise of his parents’ footsteps and the peal of the garden gate’s bell, announcing the departure of M. Swann for the night, a departure that happened an impossible distance in the past.

...more

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Mar 03, 2018 Caroline rated it it was amazing

If you re-read this over and over as you age, you'll find that the ending is no longer sad, but heroic -- these giants!

"I now understood why the Duc de Guermantes, whom I admired when he was seated because he had aged so little although he had so many more years under him than I, had tottered when he got up and wanted to stand erect—like those old Archbishops surrounded by acolytes, whose only solid part is their metal cross—and had moved, trembling like a leaf on the hardly approachable summit ...more

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May 06, 2012 Mhgoblue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don’t even know how to start reviewing a story I’ve been reading for the last two years. It was wonderful, of course it was, but while I enjoyed reading it the whole way through, I feel like the real point didn’t become clear until the very end. It was worth waiting for.

So, to start with the plot: through seven volumes, we follow the life of Marcel, apparently the last heterosexual man in all of Paris, from his childhood in the countryside through his ridiculous social-climbing adulthood, all I don’t even know how to start reviewing a story I’ve been reading for the last two years. It was wonderful, of course it was, but while I enjoyed reading it the whole way through, I feel like the real point didn’t become clear until the very end. It was worth waiting for.

So, to start with the plot: through seven volumes, we follow the life of Marcel, apparently the last heterosexual man in all of Paris, from his childhood in the countryside through his ridiculous social-climbing adulthood, all kinds of high society intrigues and scandals, friendships, girlfriends, drag kings and queens, mistresses, weddings, jealousy, death, Venice, S&M brothels, war, infidelity, basically every aspect of the French aristocracy’s snobby, hilarious, superficial existence. The story is completely soapy and addictive, like if The Young and the Restless were a novel that impresses people when they hear you’re reading it. You will not be bored.

So that’s the story. But the real point is how Proust tells the story. In my Goodreads review for the second book I wrote, “Proust explains so many things I always knew somehow, but never recognized or was able to put into words. So many times, I’ve read a paragraph and said to myself, 'I knew that! I’ve thought that!' on some unconscious, nonverbal level. It’s a rare book that can introduce you to parts of yourself that you realize, as you read, have always existed, unrecognized until now.”

At the end of the final volume, when Marcel decides to leave the party and embark on his masterwork (In Search Of Lost Time itself), he clarifies his project to himself using almost the same words I did: he wants to re-create life itself, using exacting descriptions of thoughts and sensations, and thus connect his story with his readers’ own experiences on all levels: emotional, intellectual, and deeply visceral. Proust’s project is to tell a story that will resonate with us on our own terms, that will provide us with the means, not of reading his story, but of reading our own within ourselves.

His project really boils down to the essential problem of literature. What is its purpose? At the end of the book, when Marcel is at the Prince’s party and makes up his mind to go home and write his masterwork, he decides that literature should give readers a means of looking inward, refining and discerning parts of themselves that they may not have been aware of or developed otherwise. At one point in the story, Marcel tells the painter Elstir that, “We cannot receive the truth from anyone; we have to create it for ourselves.” Is there any truer method of communication? You can’t learn about life just through living; that’s only half of it. You must also reflect. In Search Of Lost Time is a book that can introduce you to yourself. As he inventories and records the richness of his character's inner life, Proust invites us to do the same and gives us the tools to make sense of our own experiences.

And, at the end of the book, as he sits in the Prince’s study planning the novel he will finally write, Marcel brings all of the preceding six books’ worth of events together in service to his theme, the true purpose of art and literature: connecting with others by connecting with yourself. It’s beautiful. I don’t know how to describe it except for that. This book changed my life. It really did. ...more

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Nov 30, 2013 Will rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

My year-long odyssey of reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time is done. Finito. No more. And I miss the Monsieur already! The first book I started reading in 2013 was Swann's Way, and it's fitting that the 100th I read was Time Regained, the final volume in this massive, beautiful, touching novel. And what a way to go out, on top, with Time in all its forms mutating and changing our selves and our perceptions of the world. It's beautiful, it's tragic, and I loved this book, it's a perfect way t ...more

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Sep 08, 2007 Dottie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-corner, own, proust, two-box-belgian-library, 1001-read, 2007, keeplist-2022

Sad to end reading this one. Certainly I will return to it in whole or in part in the future -- and yes, life-changing in certain aspects of that cliched statement. I LOVED the discussions with my fellow CR Proustians!

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