"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Remembrance of Things Past - The Guermantes Way (Marcel Proust, 1920)

(620 pages)

Continuing an enjoyable and slow-paced re-read of Proust.  This is the third volume (or section), at least in the way my copy ( the Moncrieff-Kilmartin translation) is broken up.

There are several posts already on this blog about this wonderful work.  I don't think I need to repeat what I've written before about the high value and sheer pleasure from reading this.  Four more sections to go in this re-read, looking forward to it!

In this volume/section - 

  • The narrator and his family move into an apartment in a wing of the Hotel de Guermantes.  Narrator becomes infatuated with the Duchess de Guermantes.
  • Narrator visits the Duchess's relative (already his friend) - Saint Loup in barracks at Doncieres, having issues with his mistress (who narrator had met in a different setting).
  • Narrator's grandmother is getting progressively more ill.  These sections are particularly well done.
  • Lengthy discussion of a party at Mme de Villeparisis's residence.  Lots of portrayal of society, the salons.
  • Baron de Charlus - kind of weird behavior.
  • Dreyfus case discussed at length.
  • Albertine visits.
  • Lengthy scenes of dinner with the Guermantes; Faubourg Saint-Germain matters.

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