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The Captive (1923)

by Marcel Proust

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: In Search of Lost Time (5)

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1,0371419,630 (4.3)1 / 60
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th-century literature. Neville Jason's widely praised 36 CD abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, after numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.

The Captive is the fifth of seven volumes. The Narrator's obsessive love for Albertine makes her virtually a captive in his Paris apartment. He suspects she may be attracted to her own sex.

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 75 Books Challenge for 2011: ***Group Read: The Captive35 unread / 35BookAngel_a, June 2011

» See also 60 mentions

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Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
This one took forever!!!
  RachelGMB | Dec 27, 2023 |
"The most familiar precepts are not always the truest" -- Gisèle as Sophocles, writing to Racine.

The second volume of Proust's Great Novel(TM), À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove, better - but more salaciously - translated as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) is no less magisterial than the last, although one suspects that many more people falter at the posts of this one, given as much of the book is to social commentary and increasingly oblique yet erudite discussions on art, love, culture, and human development. Truthfully, I am more excited for the work after reading this second novel, reminded as I so often am by the depth of Proust's brilliance. (One can surely believe that a man needs an editor even as one entirely supports his artistic innovations!) My review of the first volume can be found here.

Perhaps the more the great writer developed in Bergotte...the more his own personal life was drowned in the flood of all the lives that he imagined...

The second volume of In Search of Lost Time details the young narrator in his late teens, as his love for a young lady named Gilberte blossoms and fades, as his beliefs in art and human nature as shattered and newly built up, as he develops his first real platonic male friendship, and ultimately seeks to understand how he can ever become a writer. The characters of Volume One continue, primarily in the explanation of the family Swann and their tumultuous place in French society, and in Marcel's determined grandmother and his wise simpleton of a maid, Françoise. What draws me to the work is partly Proust's incredible ability to detail the development of the human consciousness. Some of his arguments, about why we fall in love, for instance, could be debated, but nevertheless he lays out his argument so meticulously, it's hard to disagree. Marcel's gradual understanding of the workings of the human heart is layered with his growing up, and with it that shocking experience of getting to know adults and social mores in ways that you had completely mistaken - or completely neglected - as children. The relationship of Odette and Swann, profiled so extensively in the book's first volume, is now placed further under the microscope, with an even less rosy hue.

We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her.

It's worth pointing out that Proust can be very, very funny! This is something they don't teach you in highschool or university lit class, when you are given brief excerpts of the French author to look at, but it comes through clear as a bell for the dedicated reader. True, the humour is of a wry kind no longer in vogue, but it's there, in the constant ironies the older narrator throws in when explaining the motivations of his younger self:
His head reminded one of those old castle keeps on which the disused battlements are still to be seen, although inside they have been converted into libraries."

At the same time, it's worth noting that the book is heavy going. It's well known that Proust's early attempts at getting the work published were stymied by publishers who were dubious of anyone's patience for a book that routinely runs on sentences for half a page, particularly when the sentences themselves are describing an action as simple as eating, or even as nonexistent as the vacillations of brain cells as we move from place to place by public transport. Proust is a great thinker but there is no doubt that the parts of the book that stray furthest into philosophical or artistic commentary can be the hardest, although again it is perchance they are the most rewarding. There is a beautiful quote somewhere which, alas, I cannot find, wherein an author speaks of how, after reading Proust for an extensive period of time, the memories contained within become one's own. That is part of my experience too, as I suspect it is for many. The subjectivity of memory, and the desperate wish to return there, are haunting themes pored over by many authors, but perhaps none found so much human truth as Marcel Proust. Still, I would say to readers who find themselves daunted that it is better to skim the odd 10 pages rather than give up. (At one point, a more recent translator notes, Proust himself made a marginal note on a passage in this volume stating "this is all badly written". It may just be self-doubt, but it sounds plausible!) Around each corner lurks a passage of such sublime beauty that one begins to doubt whether any literature written after 1922 could ever make such intelligent points again.

At the moment at which I entered, the creator was just finishing, with the brush which he had in his hand, the outline of the setting sun.

The second half of the book is perhaps more successful at retaining reader interest, although it is also slow going. Taken by his grandmother to the seaside town of Balbec for the season, Marcel makes a friend in Robert Saint-Loup, develops an idol in the artist Elstir, witnesses the complex social mores when people are taken outside of their regular society, has some odd interactions with a Baron, Charlus (which will make more sense in the sight of later novels, so I'm told), and finally meets a misty gaggle of girls who hold sway over his evolution into a lover. In this way, the fragmented nature of the whole novel becomes both an asset and a flaw. It's easy to imagine French people of the era being somewhat confused by this occasional dips into the lives of others, which would make sense once all seven novels were published, but not in the moment. And, after centuries of narrative literature, the reader is anxious to get to this young lady Albertine, whom we have heard passing mention of several times in Volume One, but she is constantly overshadowed and eclipsed until the last 100 pages. Even then, Marcel doesn't get anywhere with her that he would like! Instead, this is a novel of personal development, of the ways that the narrator comes to know the world, and himself.

Could it be that this man of genius, this sage, this recluse,this philosopher with his marvellous flow of conversation... was the ridiculous, depraved painter who had at one time been adopted by the Verdurins?

Besides the truthfulness of Proust, I also adore his run-on sentences, and the density of language presents a wonderful challenge. I have no doubt that, if I were to improve my schoolboy French, I would enjoy the works more in their mother tongue, but as that isn't a priority for me, English will have to do. I am not of the school of thought that argues Proust's sentences make no sense in English. Certainly, one must change one's preconceptions about how we use pronouns and modifiers, but it's possible. Even preferable! Open your minds, people! The third of my five reasons for such enjoyment is the complexity of character. In some ways, all non-Marcel characters in the Search betray essential qualities that fail to make them complete humans. Yet, this is precisely the point. We can never truly know another, as Marcel learns so humiliatingly with Albertine here. We the audience get the sense there is more to Saint-Loup then we thus know. By a similar notion, despite Saint-Loup's stories of his uncle Charlus' respectability, something sounds a bit fishy. A man who boasts about bashing up homosexuals and enjoys taking in young men who are down on their luck? I'm not making any allegations, Baron Charlus, but... Let's just say, based on his inability to stop gawking at our young narrator, I have a feeling we'll be learning certain secrets about this character in future volumes! So much of Proust's method of character development comes from anecdotes and moments. This is something that those of us who trained as classical actors learn. Judi Dench, playing Shakespeare's Cleopatra, was confounded by how to suggest her character's majesty, her passion, her silliness, her forethought, and her impulsiveness, all at once. The director wisely told her to play each part in the right moment. In the hands of a good actor, the audience reads each individual element at their time, and puts together a personality. So Proust does here, with everyone from the wackadoodle Verdurins to the irrational Françoise.

Gone are the kings, their ships pierced by arms,
Vanished upon the raging deep, alas,
The long-haired warriors of heroic Hellas


A couple of housekeeping notes: first, while I'm eminently satifised with the Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation, I was a bit confused by the Vintage editions. 14 endnotes for this entire volume? Literally 70 pages will pass full of references to artworks and plays, sometimes without even being clarified (for instance, when characters at a dinner party debate modes of literature) and we will receive no footnote. Then, suddenly, we'll have an endnote as dull as: "Arvede Barine was the pseudonym of Mme Charles Vincens, a French woman writer..." This decision seems to ally with the printing of the Reader's Guide to Proust which is included with the sixth and final volume in the series, Time Regained. So if you're thinking of embarking on this journey, best to get Volume 6 at the same time as the rest, so you can refer in detail to people, places, and themes.
Elsewhere, having read the relevant sections of two Reader's Guides on the subject, I can eminently recommend Patrick Alexander's guide for those who intend either only to skim the volumes or who are very novice readers (it is primarily plot summaries and category listings), or the wonderful David Ellsion's guide for those open to academic interpretation, and to a really grand potted history of Proust and his philosophies. There are many other great books, I'm sure, that I will read once I have finished the Search, but these two are actually structured as guides, chapter-by-chapter, which I find very worthy to consolidate my knowledge.

"I am reading Proust for the first time ...and am surprised to find him a mental defective" - Evelyn Waugh

Anyhow, it is worth stating the last two reasons I am so enamoured of Proust at this stage. There's the lyrical beauty of so many of his passages. As I said, it's not always a light read, but when one reaches a passage like the powerful description of Elstir's painting of the sea, one is illuminated both by the transcendent imagery and the philosophy underpinning it. As the boundaries between sea and land are diffused in a man-made work, as people are placed amongst the grandeur of nature and artists debate as to whether one should focus on the grandeur or the person, Marcel - and by extension, Proust, and by extension, the Western world - discovers an understanding of a world that is both larger than him and yet also contained within him. And also, perhaps most importantly, there is the feeling of inevitability about reading Proust. It is like returning home after three years spent at sea. (I have been spurred on by my Proustian year to start cataloging my own memories chronologically, in the hopes of both recalling all the moments that I have lost to the "involuntary" part of my memory, and also that I may free up some space in there!) There is a warmth, a need, a sensibility, a sense of discovery, a certainty forever bouncing off uncertainty, that plays into Proust's great Search. With my other favourite verbose writers - Pynchon, Mailer, Woolf - I tend to take a year between books to ensure I have the mental energy, and that I don't exhaust the supply. In the case of Proust, I may only give myself a week until I stumble down The Guermantes Way and find what lies next in store for Marcel, and for me.

And when Françoise removed the pins from the top of the window-frame, took down the cloths, and drew back the curtains, the summer day which she disclosed seemed as dead, as immemorial, as a sumptuous millenary mummy from which our old servant had done no more than cautiously unwind the linen wrappings before displaying it, embalmed in its vesture of gold. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Life is too short, and Proust is too long. - Anatole France (attributed, likely apocryphal)

With La Prisonnière (The Captive or The Prisoner), Proust's literary epic takes an unfortunate behind-the-scenes turn. The author had died in 1922, before he could finish the editing and revision of the last three volumes. It is one of those great literary tragedies, that we can never truly reconstruct the climaxes of his work, even if a century of scholarly pursuit has at least got us closer to understanding the intentions behind them. The Captive is, if anything, all the more fascinating because of this, but unfortunately I think it is a noticeable step down from the previous four volumes (reviews of which can be found here, for any newcomers: One Two Three Four).

Giving this book a star rating seems like an exercise in absurdity. At his heights here, Proust's writing remains a rhapsody of social discovery, with scythe-like descriptions of people from all works of life (the social-climbing Madame Verdurin and the simple, superstitious Francoise have nothing in common except that they are perhaps the two most delightful character sketches in all of the Recherche) and utterly gorgeous reflections on the challenges of creating art, and the responsibility of artists to the greater society. There is less humour than in the previous volumes, due to the narrator's agonised state, but when Proust wants to, he can really throw a zinger in the works as well. Nevertheless, I'm afraid a lot of this review is going to be - if not negative, at least ambiguous.

At only 450 pages, this is basically a novella by Proust's standards, but unfortunately the work feels overlong and repetitive, in the extreme. A lot of this no doubt comes from the incomplete status of the work but I believe some of it can be ascribed to cultural differences between 1920s France and the 2010s of the English speaking world, and even perhaps a certain myopia on Proust's part while writing this particular instalment.

"We love only what we do not wholly possess."

The narrator finally has Albertine, but domestic bliss is anything but - and not just because it appears they aren't going "all the way", and he seems to have to resort to getting Marcel Jr out for some daytime creeping while his girlfriend is having her naps. It's... awkward. Like a bird that has lost its colours in captivity, the narrator is finding that the bloom is off the rose. He spends half his time daydreaming about Albertine's friends or wondering what it is about her that has made him lose interest. Not having read the last two volumes yet, I'd venture a guess that the real problem is that the younger version of the narrator (the book is being narrated from 1922 but here we're at about 1908, if the Dreyfus case dating is correct) doesn't yet understand that relationships mature. The first, heady days of love must naturally give way to the next stage of contentment. Having said that, it's not all the narrator's fault. Albertine doesn't seem to have a very mature vision of mutual love (what Proust here calls "reciprocal torture") either, as she seems to enjoy keeping him out of the loop half of the time. She reminds me more of the carer of a mental patient than the willing live-in lover of a handsome young man on the fringes of "society".

I'm just going to outline the problems with the novel, as they're primarily confined to the first half, namely "Life with Albertine".
Problem 1: The narrator's jealousy is an endless repetition, most of which it seems like we've already experienced ad nauseum in previous volumes. He's convinced that she's a secret lesbian, and he spends his days fuming over all of the little clues, primarily nonexistent although with the occasional genuine red flag. His possessiveness and envy are decidedly unattractive traits, and not in an interesting Flaubertian way. A lot of the self-pity is deliberate evidence of his relative youth but, to be honest, the 200 pages of watching Albertine speak and suspecting that she's still a citizen of Gomorrah ("In reality, alas, Gomorrah was disseminated all over the world") don't pack the same level of subtlety and literary worth as the equally long single-issue ruminations of the previous instalments.
Problem 2: and this is a big one, Albertine remains a cipher. This is in part intentional, absolutely. To the young narrator, Albertine is a blank, who represents different things to him depending on where he is at in his life. And of course, for the jealousy to work, he can't know all about her. There are some very obvious parallels between the pair and that of Charlus and Morel, who spend the entirety of this book growing apart without realising it, as the latter fumes over his role deceiving both his sugar daddy and his young female intended, while the former frets and stews over his own jealousy. But, to be honest? It's not good enough. Even moreso than in previous books, Proust here breaks every convention of first-person narration, dictating the thoughts and intimate moments of Charlus, of the dying Bergotte, and the Verdurins among others. The fact that Albertine is the only major character to lack any particularly interesting traits is distinctly upsetting, and speaks to the fact that Proust was a sheltered and increasingly hermit-like gay man. She is never once real here, and I found myself hoping that the narrator would hook up with Andree just to give them something worth talking about. It doesn't help either that their relationship is so complicated and psychological that we need someone like Flaubert to make the nuances believable. Here, it just doesn't quite work.

(Proust, incidentally, quite liked Flaubert for a different reason, as this wonderful quote shows: "Flaubert is a master at rendering a sense of Time in his works. In my opinion the most beautiful feature of L'Education sentimentale is not a sentence, but an empty space (un blanc)")

I still think [Proust] insane. The structure must be sane & that is raving. - Evelyn Waugh

Problem 3 is the toughest to talk about, but necessary. The narrator's reflections on sexuality here are problematic to say the least. While he was more sympathetic to the gays in earlier volumes, the narrator here seems to see them as genuinely degenerate, and at times it feels like Proust himself speaking. I've read conflicting thoughts on the subject: is this entirely supposed to be the narrator, gradually developing the prejudices of his era? Is this Proust trying to cover up his sexuality as he became more famous, and thus unable to be as open-minded as he had in his earlier novels when he was just a young wannabe struggling to find a publisher? Or was he trying to be "cool" because the social elite were reading his volumes and this was the prevailing attitude of the time? Frankly, if it's supposed to be satire, it doesn't feel like it. Baron Charlus, who was initially so refined that dim readers wouldn't have picked his homosexuality, is now a walking YMCA advert, and Morel is just a scheming little flirt. There's a lovely line in which Proust defends his "weird characters" arguing that weirdness happens all around us, and we should stop expecting all of our literary characters to do the most likely thing, as those who act surprisingly are just as interesting. But it doesn't go far enough to convince me. Also, apparently homosexuality was okay in Ancient Greece because it was a social norm, but now that's now how we do things, and so one of the problems is that these "inverts" have based their actions on a society they admire but are in fact being idiots by refusing to play by the rules of the current game. Meanwhile, lesbians are known for adopting male children just so they can torture them because it's the purest form of hating men. Yep.
And Problem 4, which is perhaps just in my head: I feel as if our culture, our collective intelligence, has matured past the point of some of Proust's revelations. Not all of them, or even most! But some. Much as the audience of 2016 implicitly understands what an establishing shot in a film does, even when we are kids, compared to an audience in the '40s when such shots were essentially unheard of, so too are some of the narrator's revelations a little basic for our tastes. His realisation that love isn't just an endless pancake party are frustrating because they don't lead to anything. The way that the narrator and Albertine act on Page 1 is how they act on Page 445, just before their relationship takes a significant turn.

Anyhow, let's veer away from the negative, shall we?

In abandoning that ambition [of becoming a writer], had I forfeited something real? Could life console me for the loss of art?

The second act of The Captive is much more successful, as Proust returns to his true metier. Before heading off to an important salon at the Verdurins, he learns of the death of Bergotte, in a brief but deeply moving episode. The old artist, living half in exile and unable anymore to create like the greatest of his masterpieces, nevertheless provides some humour in the hot young women whom he lures back to his studio with his fancy celebrity money, seduces, and then uses as temporary muses for more art: "he found some charm in thus transmuting gold into caresses and caresses into gold". His final moments, gazing at Vermeer's View of Delft and at last realising the importance of true simplicity in art, are a powerful statement in the midst of Proust's many, many ideas. And a good place for me to again recommend [b:Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time|3753149|Paintings in Proust A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time|Eric Karpeles|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348882774s/3753149.jpg|3797011] which contains most all of the artwork mentioned in the Search.



Several formerly important characters die in The Captive, but the remainder happen offscreen and are primarily treated with such disregard that it's almost surprising. Proust seems to be clearing house, giving an indication of a new generation rising up as an older one falls, but one feels like this might have been better clarified before the book was published. In fact, there are numerous continuity errors here, with at least one character's death revealed just pages before he engages in conversation at a dinner party! The struggles of posthumously-published works - just ask Puccini and Dickens.

Anyhow, the salon at the Verdurins' allows Proust to again delight in his social anatomising, with another delicious description of the lady of the house as "aloof, a deity presiding over the musical rites, goddess of Wagnerism and sick-headaches, a sort of almost tragic Norn, conjured up by the spell of genius in the midst of all these 'bores'". As they prepare for the long-awaited premiere of Vinteuil's posthumous septet (with Morel among the musicians), Proust discourses at length on great artists, with whom "we really do fly from star to star", reminding us of the importance of the late Bergotte but also of the narrator's other role models: Elstir, Vinteuil, Berma. And at last, spearheaded by the greedy Verdurins, Charlus' social undoing takes place in a grand sequence that is, admittedly, a bit surprising in how willing the Baron is to let loose with a string of half-truths about his homosexual decadences, but ultimately very satisfying. Morel and Charlus have been shaded in far more deftly than Albertine and the narrator, so the development of their relationship feels genuinely earned. And the rudeness of the Madame's guests is truly chilling, as we know just how she feels about the situation! Finally, what a sublime moment, as the disgraced Charlus is compared to the terrified nymphs in ancient art: a suggestion that human society may have changed, but humans themselves haven't. Perhaps in this way, Proust is undercutting the narrator's own allegations about the role of homosexuality? Perhaps.

(It's interesting here that there's a hint Charlus has a young friend in the military; I've been calling it since Book 2 that Saint-Loup might have some man-loving tendencies and I hope yet to be proved right!)

My darling Marcel... - Albertine

Okay, before we move on to the last few pages, it's worth noting that twice in this volume, Proust goes way beyond meta. At one point, the narrator pens a jeremiad to Swann, suggesting that he has - since his death - become justly famous by the publication of Swann in Love. Written by whom? The narrator? Or Proust? Does Marcel Proust exist in the Recherche universe? It's all very out there. And then there's the moment which we've known about since we were first introduced to books, in which Albertine calls the narrator "Marcel". Although she doesn't. Not really. Proust clearly indicates this is for simplicity's sake, to give the narrator the author's name. That's not to say he isn't being all quirky and suggesting the comparison, but it's clearly a placeholder, like the moments in Goodfellas when the lead character's narration cuts in on the story, or a Woody Allen voiceover. Either way, it's fascinating, and suggests the turns this book could have taken had Proust decided to invent the 21st century novel before David Foster Wallace got around to it.

"Love is space and time made perceptible to the heart."

It's interesting to think of Proust, in the last year of his life, feverishly editing the final volumes, doomed to fail. Apparently he would summon musicians to his bedroom in the wee hours to play Beethoven's late quartets and other such sombre and complex pieces. It's a great pity he didn't live to complete the work, because a large chunk of The Captive remains fascinating, however almost nowhere does it live up to the previous volumes.

The final section is promising at least in that it suggests more exhilarating developments are to come. After a winter of reasonable content with Albertine, "Marcel" continues to doubt, continues to watch her sleep, and - despite the joyous presence of an aeroplane - finally catches her in a lie too big to be stepped around. There are some more authorial problems here, partly due to a seemingly unavoidable translation issue (you know when the translator has to include the original French in brackets that something's not quite right) and partly due to further signs of a draft, unfortunately centered around this very important lie. Either way, the final ten pages finally progress the relationship and leave us hanging for The Fugitive to come.

I wasn't enamoured of this book, whereas I have been of the first three and vast chunks of the fourth. I've been somewhat placated by reading numerous pieces on the book's problems, to know that it's not just me, and that much of the issues come from the unfinished nature of Proust's papers. At the same time, I can't help feeling that The Captive is a bit of a stumbling block. Proust had originally intended the intriguing maid of Mme Putbus, over whom the narrator has spilt much... ink in previous volumes, to become a character, but it seems Albertine overshadowed his plans. To be honest, I think Proust's interest in the subject of jealousy was greater than his ability to write complex heterosexual relationships, and the single-minded focus on this subject takes away from his many, many strengths. The narrator's possessiveness will, I'm sure, become vital to the next volume, and I'm looking forward to reaching the conclusion of it all. I still have faith in this most fascinating of writers. It's just a shame that the distasteful approach to homosexuality is so prominent, and that Albertine herself - intentionally or not - is placed at the centre of the novel and yet given not one ounce of character.

Still, that great disenchantment at the centre of the novel remains hugely resonant. At first, it was place-names, the illusion dissolving into reality as the youthful narrator visited each one, and discovered how quickly truth drains the colour from art (something it took Bergotte until his final moments to realise). That revelation then spread to society and to modernism, and now to individual people, to entire emotions, and even to the status of being an adult. I wrote earlier that some of Proust's 1920s revelations seem less surprising to us, four generations later, with a centuries' worth of additional "social intelligence". But there are some revelations that remain just as poignant. Perhaps it helps that I'm roughly the same age as the narrator is at this point in the work but, ye gods, do I empathise. Still, we can never go back, as Daphne du Maurier would say. So, on to the future...

For reality, even though it is necessary, is not always forseeable as a whole." ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
3.5*
While Proust's style will never be a favorite of mine (what with the extremely long sentences & long digressions), I do find that the further I get in the series, the more interesting I find the books even though (or perhaps because of) Marcel, the narrator, is getting increasingly disturbing in his behaviour. ( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 27, 2023 |
My earlier dislike for the narrator that began in the previous volume has expanded into despise, thanks to his obnoxious jealousy over Albertine with whom I'm relating far more at this stage. It made this volume difficult to read with the same detached pleasure because I kept waiting for her too to become frustrated with the narrator's ridiculous behaviour. The irrational jealously is especially maddening to read when placed alongside his confession that he no longer loves her. Why, in that case, has he taken her captive? As an object, and for the occasional callback to his first impression of her when he desired her mystery - before he wanted that mystery to be expelled, as part of possessing her. He has wrought the destruction of their love through this bottled up madness, ultimately to both their miseries.

Jealousy is really just the start of it, because the narrator is also extremely possessive and paranoid. He's become certain that Albertine is leading a double life - the one she portrays for his sake, and the other one where her 'true' passions lie. It becomes impossible to know which character to believe. He does seem to catch her in quite a few lies - or is she just that forgetful? She does seem to have an eye for the ladies - or is it just the regular variety of friendships, envies and judgements? It's very hard to guess with only the narrator's (slightly unhinged) perspective as a guide. What is clear either way is that he is transparently controlling, disrupting her plans at every turn for the slim chance that it interferes with some imagined plot she may be hatching. And at the same time, where is his eye wandering? What outrageous lies is he telling? The hypocrosy ... unlike Proust, I have no words. The ending of this volume is extremely satisfying to me and raises the hope I may still enjoy the last two.

This is the first volume to have been published after Marcel Proust's death. What he appears to have done was complete the entire sequence, then was fleshing out each volume before its publication. The last three did not fully receive all the attention he would have intended, or as Wikipedia puts it, "the last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages, as they existed only in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.". In this fifth volume the style is not noticeably different, and is as likely as ever to veer away from the action into prolonged pages of descriptive digression. That said, I did get a taste of the oddities. They include this utterly bizarre line: "Then she would find her tongue and say 'My -' or 'My darling -', followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be 'My Marcel' or 'My darling Marcel.'" That isn't simply breaking the fourth wall, that's the (always unnamed) narrator expressing direct awareness that he is a figment of the author's imagination. After this scene, Albertine address the narrator as Marcel now and then, and it's jarring every time. That's the worst of it, if you don't count the premature death of Mme de Villeparisis who apparently turns up alive in the sixth volume. Only one other peculiarity really stuck out at me, when Marcel dedicates a short paragraph in what sounds like his own voice to the man who inspired the character of Charles Swann.

Among the tricks of memory that Proust explores this time, the standout for me is how items that I remember seeing in one setting, transposed to another, bring memories and impressions of that other place to infect the new one. Conversely, a setting emptied of its customary belongings will tarnish those associated memories. It's why I've never again set foot in my grandparents' former home since my uncle remodeled it. There is also another element that may come into play when Proust finds his ending in the last volume: this growing sense the narrator has of the profundity of artistic heights that gives them a grace larger than life (more real than the false heights he's anticipated before), when a few key notes of a sonata triggers the same taste of happiness he has enjoyed at key moments of reflection over tea or while strolling the Champs-Elysees. A link appears between memory and happiness triggered by art, and I suspect this will feed into the narrator's own artistic attempts. ( )
  Cecrow | Mar 30, 2023 |
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» Add other authors (59 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Proust, Marcelprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Beretta Anguissola, AlbertoContributormain authorsome editionsconfirmed
De Maria, LucianoEditormain authorsome editionsconfirmed
Galateria, DariaContributormain authorsome editionsconfirmed
Berges, ConsueloTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bongiovanni Bertini, MariolinaEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cornips, ThérèseTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
De Maria, LucianoEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Raboni, GiovanniTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Scott Moncrieff, C. K.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Serini, PaoloTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tuomikoski, InkeriTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vallquist, GunnelTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Redan på morgonen, medan jag låg kvar med ansiktet vänt mot väggen och ännu inte hunnit se vilken nyans dagern hade ovanför de tjocka gardinerna, visste jag hurudant vädret var.
At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen about the big inner curtains what tone the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what sort of day it was.
Muy de mañana, mirando todavía la pared y sin haber visto aún el matiz de la raya del día sobre las grandes cortinas de la ventana, sabía ya qué tiempo hacía.
Quotations
For there is no one we appreciate more than a person who combines with other great virtues that of placing those virtues wholeheartedly at the service of our vices.
I could caress her, run my hands lowly over her, but, just as if I had been handling a stone which encloses the salt of immemorial oceans or the light of a star, I felt that I was touching no more than the sealed envelope of a person who inwardly reached to infinity How I suffered from that position to which we are reduced by the obliviousness of nature which, when instituting the division of bodies, never thought of making possible the interpenetration of souls!
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Do not combine this novel (The Captive/La prisonnière) with the English edition that includes both The Captive and The Fugitive!
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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th-century literature. Neville Jason's widely praised 36 CD abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, after numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.

The Captive is the fifth of seven volumes. The Narrator's obsessive love for Albertine makes her virtually a captive in his Paris apartment. He suspects she may be attracted to her own sex.

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