Time Regained (1927)

È uno sguardo stanco e quasi disincantato quello che Proust rivolge alla propria vita trascorsa e a quanto l'ha contraddistinta. Uno sguardo ancora curioso e indagatore, acuto e riflessivo, che, giunto a una certa età, contemplando le istantanee dell'esistenza condotta, rinviene solo nel ricordo, in quel vano tentativo di riappropriarsi del Tempo trascorso, l'unica opportunità per goder della vita rimasta. ( )

turns out the *real* time was inside us the whole time

Time Regained opens with Marcel visiting Combray, the village of his childhood which figured prominently in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. He has reconnected with his first love, Gilberte, who is now married to one of Marcel’s best friends. Soon, World War I is upon them and the narrative shifts to the impact of war on the village, on Paris, and on the society in which Marcel circulates. Much later (in the novel as well as in Marcel’s life), he attends a party and encounters many people he doesn’t recognize. This is not because he doesn’t know them, but because Marcel has been absent and everyone has aged considerably. And besides aging, some have fallen in the social hierarchy while others have made astonishing moves up the ladder.

Analysis of society, and the motivations of individuals, is a central theme throughout the work. In this volume, Marcel also reflects on how memories of the same event can vary widely from person to person, and how decisions or actions that seem inconsequential can have long-term effects:
But the truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from.

And finally, as Proust closes a circle by connecting back to the first pages of In Search of Lost Time, I began to grasp the genius of this work. I say “began” because I sense that more insight can be gained by re-reading Proust from time to time. Will I do so? Only time will tell. For now I am perfectly happy to have read it once ( )

Well it took 5 years, but I finished them all, and what a finale. I loved this book the best of them all, it circled back to where we began and yet allowed us to become older and possibly wiser along the way. There was always more plot than I noticed. We have the return of the madeleine. The feel of the book is quite different to the others, possibly because it's post-humous and thus perhaps unfinished, also because it is set in the fragmentary, uncertain world of the Great War and post-war period. The big set piece of attending his first event after time in the sanatorium and seeing all his old set aged and grotesque felt like how I've aged during the reading of Proust.

It is as ever witty and entertaining and with Albertine gone there is less of the creepy controlling behaviour that made the previous few volumes so difficult in places. So it becomes more philosophical and profound and left me feeling both satisfied and relieved to have finished, but also like i needed to go back to the start and read it all again. I've bought the graphic novels to read as a reward.

I'd also recommend the Backlisted podcast which was the deadline I needed to push through the last 2 books relatively quickly, and was a brilliantly entertaining evening. https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/108-marcel-proust-la-recherche-du-temps-perdu ( )

In Time Regained, Proust finds his way back to his initial brilliance after the weaker volumes 5 and 6. Time Regained is a beautiful summing up of this 4000 page book. The beginning of this volume takes place during WWI, though the narrator spends much of it at a sanatarium trying to recover his health. After the war, the narrator returns to Paris and attends a reception at the home of the Princesse de Guermantes. The surprise to the reader is that the title is not held by the Princesse we remember, but now by Mme Verdurin who has finally ascended to the Faubourg St. Germain set. Many of our old favorites are at this reception or remembered in detail by the narrator (even if dead or not present) at it: the Duchesse de Guermantes, Gilberte, Odette, Charlus, Robert Saint-Loup, Rachel, Albertine, grandmother, Francoise, all the artists, etc. At the reception, the narrator comes to the conclusion that he has a special talent for making connections and memory and seeing the whole picture of life and concludes that he must write a book describing it. Of course, death hangs over him and he worries that he won't have time to complete his work.

This volume was an extremely satisfying and poignant conclusion to an unforgettable reading experience. I look forward to thumbing through all of the volumes to look at my notes and highlighted passages before writing and overall conclusion of this reading experience. ( )