One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

The Guermantes Way

Each quote is found at the end of a paragraph. These quotes are from the Penguin edition (this volume is translated by Mark Treharne). I don’t have the MKE translation of this volume so when I had the option I tried to choose quotes that included a proper noun. After each quote I cite the approximate page percentage of the line. The percentage is of the text ISoLT only, excluding introductions and prefaces, end notes and summaries.

May 2
"It causes us pain that she is unaware of them, and we try to console ourselves with the thought that precisely because they are never visible she has perhaps added to her present opinion of us this possibility of undisclosed advantages" (~10.23%).

May 9
"Since this call had come on the very day I had been wanting to telephone my grandmother, I had never for a moment doubted that it was she who was asking for me. it was pure coincidence that both the post-office and the hotel had been jointly mistaken" (~21.81%).

May 16
"She was consoled by the unfailing presence at these Fridays of hers of her dutiful relation, the Princess de Poix, her own special Guermantes, who never went near Mme de Villeparisis, despite the fact that she was an intimate friend of the Duchesse" (~31.88%).

May 23
"So what I need to do is to corner him now, while there are just the two of us, say to him: "Right, vote for me", and he'll have no alternative'" (~41.95%).

May 30
We are reading until the end of Part I, ~51.17%. The last sentence contains a spoiler so I recommend you just read to the end of Part I. (view spoiler)["She smiled at me sadly and gripped my hand. She had realized she had no need to hide from me what I had guessed straight away, that she had had a slight stroke." (hide spoiler)] This week's reading is five pages short and next week's five pages long to coincide with the volume's division.

June 6
"...we are unable to resist a sudden start of alarm or delight if there falls upon us from on high, like an aerolith engraved with our name, which we thought was unknown on Venus or Cassiopeia, an invitation to dinner or a snippet of wicked gossip" (~63.93%). NB: There is a chapter division in this section.

June 13
"...the same aberration that typified court life under Louis XIV, which removes scruples of conscience from the domain of the affections and morality and transforms them into questions of pure form" (~72.32%).

June 20
"Then, as I looked and listened to Mme de Guermantes, I could see, calmly imprisoned in the unending afternoon of her eyes, an expanse of sky of the Ile-de-France of of Champagne, bluish, slanting, at the same angle of incline as in the eyes of Saint-Loup" (~82.38%).

June 27
"'Wrap yourself up properly,' the others would not speak to the man with a cold for a fortnight, out of jealousy for the favour conferred on him" (~92.45%).

July 4
End of The Guermantes Way.

I noticed that I made a counting error in the second week's reading. We'll have to read 10 extra pages that week because I don't want to redo the entire schedule.

Are these the "week-ending" dates as we used before? So there is no break between books?

I do want to share that I have just been adding the page reminders for the book to my calendar and discovered that there are some blank pages in my copy. A quick call to Amazon's Customer Service has another copy on its way to me. This is one time I'm very glad I bought from them!

Yes these are week ending dates. Our schedule will go without breaks until the end of December. Don't worry if you don't stay with the schedule perfectly. I don't. It's just a way to evenly divide the novel over the course of the year.

Thanks Jacob. I probably will start this later this week.