Project marathon reading À la recherche du temps perdu
I woke up to the new year with the bright idea of marathon reading Proust in 2017. I'm reading the Norwegian translation in 7 volumes, and yesterday I finished volume 1: Veien til Swann (Du côté de chez Swann). It consists of the first three original parts, which I'll briefly give my impressions of in what follows.
I. Combray
It's the famous tale of the narrators childhood, during the summer time and the vacations in the rural Combray. It has the famous lines about the Madeleine cake and the sudden eruption of involuntary memory that jettisons the narrator back in time, where all the details of his childhood all of a sudden become conscious, live and vibrant for him. The narrator was a nervous child, and the anxious relationship with his mother sort of stands out as the focus of the story in part 1. His emotional stability is totally dependent on the mother, and especially the ritual they have developed where the mother will come to his room and kiss him goodnight. When they have guests for dinner this ritual would be set aside, and the description of the narrator's anxiety in these situations is sort of the highlight Part I - along with the present time essayistic parts on memory - for me. This anxiety is also an important part of the story going forwards, as it becomes intrinsically connected to how both the narrator and other central characters experience later relationships with women.
II. Un amour de Swann
Almost like a small novel this part makes up a sort of a back story. Told in third person, it tells the story about M. Swann falling in love with Odette. Swann, initially a sort of upper class Don Juan involved in all sorts of short term flirts with various woman, suddenly and sort of against his will falls madly in love with an "cocotte". Initially he feels the same way about her as any other girl, but at some point he connects her facial expression with some Botticelli painting he's obsessed with, and becomes totally obsessed and possessive about her. His love is defined and constituted by his jealousy, or rater: jealousy becomes the main ingredient of his love for her. This plays out tragically, as Odette soon loses interest in him, constantly lies to him, and betrays him with other men and women. Swann, perfectly aware of all this, accepts this as he would accept a disease, and embraces his tragic love and marries Odette, who becomes Mme. Swann. One of the most interesting parts of this story is where the narrator makes an explicit comparison with Swann's love for Odette with the narrator's anxious relationship with his mother.
III. Nom de pays: le nom
We're back to the narrator, this time during his time in Paris. The first part is essayistic, and portrays how the narrator, when hearing names of cities his family was about to visit, brings them to life in his inner self to such a degree that he'll get nervous breakdowns and made to stay in bed by doctor's order, thus missing the journeys to Florence, Venice, Parma etc. Then it goes on to describe the narrator's encounter with Gilberte - Swann and Odette's daughter - and how they becomes friends playing together in a park near Champs Elysee. This relationship is also kind of tragic and troubled - and comparable to the emotional relationships described in part I and II - where the poor kid becomes totally dependent on the girl, while the girl carelessly treats him as any of the other children playing in the park.
On to volume II !!
Still not too late to get on this train!!!
