Hard to believe I've finally finished this brilliant, though flawed, masterpiece! It's a maddening piece of work, funny, beautiful, engaging, mind-stretching, tedious, repetitious. I felt the need to take some quite long breaks in between volumes, so it took me a number of years to read, but I'm so glad I stuck with it.

Given Proust's rich references to art work, I highly recommend getting a copy of [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://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348882774l/3753149._SY75_.jpg|3797011][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://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348882774l/3753149._SY75_.jpg|3797011] as a companion value, which is a lovely thing to have in its own right.

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I had to roll my eyes when I saw Gilberte and Albertine's names as early as page two. Was this going to be another obsessive missive about these women? Had Albertine lived! That is the refrain. Not exactly. Time Regained, as the final installment of Remembrance of Things Past is exactly that - a circling back to remembering people, places, and experiences long since past. It is a mediation on society, aging, relationships, art, beauty, and truth. Proust even goes back to the first moments with his mother detailed in the first volume, Swann's Way. We all grow old and we all learn things along the way. I am not sure what message Proust is trying to make with the aging of his nameless protagonist. He never really learns anything profound except that relationships are precious. Gilberte and Albertine are two women he never should have taken for granted. ( )

It seems too short. Like it just scratches the surface. It does make the world seem larger . This last volume is much more depressing than the others mainly because everyone gets old and no one learns anything. i appreciated the philosophical discussions about art. In the end it does give you new eyes to see with but now i want to put on dark glasses and go back into my cave. ( )

Wow. I finished it. And then a sigh of relief, mixed with sadness, and with satisfaction, as upon the end of a magnificent feast. Sigh. It took me about a year to read the whole series, starting soon after the coronavirus pandemic hit and shut everything down, and now finishing just as we are gradually opening up again.

That was my reaction on reaching the final line of Proust’s masterwork, and no doubt the reaction of most others.

The seventh and final volume has its own new developments, along with some revisiting of earlier episodes, such as M’s discussion with Gilberte about that day when they first saw each other in Combray.

There are some vivid scenes of wartime Paris in 1916, and wild sexual nightlife beyond anything hinted at earlier, involving, of course, Charlus.

Later, when M returns to Paris after the war, after a longer absence, he sees his old society friends - the ones that are still alive - and we get their updated status. The one misstep I see is the new marriage of Mme. Verduran - I just don’t buy it.

M himself, the narrator, does seem older in personality, somewhat wiser, more measured and more likeable.

The highlight of this volume is M’s flash of inspiration about the book he must write, inspired by additional incidents of “involuntary memory”, and reflections on the madeleine episode from the very first volume.

Proust more or less directly states the intention and themes of the book, although of course it is not something to be summed up in a sentence or two, or three; I will need to reread it to more fully understand. Yet it is great to hear Proust talk about what the book is going to be, and how it will be something that has never been done before.

And looking at the full seven-volume work, the themes of deep time, of memory (both voluntary and involuntary), of moving our consciousness in time and outside of time, and of art, are all there, deeply embedded in the narrator and all his thoughts, experiences, and the people he knows.

I still question Proust’s intentions on some of the other themes, and two in particular. First, the enormous amount of the work that is spent at dinner parties and similar society events, reciting the meaningless small talk and wry glances passed back and forth. Why does Proust spend so much time and energy on these scenes?

And secondly, the recurring theme of jealous, suspicious love, and specifically the love of men for younger, poorer and more vivacious women (sometimes men). The kind of love that makes the man suffer and lose sleep, distracts him from any other productive life. What is Proust trying to say by going into such psychological depth relating how these men experience such loves?

But the great distinction of Proust is the texture and flow of his sentences, those long rivers stuffed with subclause upon subclause. You have to be in the right mood, and correctly attuned to the rhythm of his prose, to really enter into the work. Some days my mind was flowing along with Proust’s sentences, like a raft handling every little bend in the river; on other days it was a struggle, and I had to reread every sentence multiple times before getting a partial understanding of what it was saying.

The most difficult part of the whole work, for me, was that first few pages of Swann’s Way. Pages with no plot, no clear characters, nothing that really happens, and full of difficult thoughts expressed in roundabout phrasings. But was that difficulty because of Proust’s writing there, because he hadn’t yet mastered his true style? Or was it me, because I was new to Proust, and new to the Moncrieffian prose of the English translation. Before I start delving into the secondary literature, I think I might just open Swann’s Way again, to check on this. ( )

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNCq70DNJA8 ( )