Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust (91 down, 9 to go)

(translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)

          

...a work of art is the only means of regaining lost time. ~ Marcel Proust from Remembrance of Things Past

Guinness recognizes Remembrance of Things Past as the longest novel in the world: over 9.6 million characters. In my version, that equates to 3,165 pages.

It took me around 100 hours – “lost time” I will never get back. I have never been more relieved to finish a novel.

The unnamed protagonist and narrator is the only child of an upper-class French family, late 19th and early 20th century. He is a sickly, aspiring writer, dilettante, idler, and heir to a comfortable fortune (semi-autobiographical). He has keen insight into the thoughts and hearts of others, but is himself incredibly double minded.

I was not invested in the narrator. He is not likeable, but neither is he unlikeable. Like his name, he is a blatant nullity. The numerous other characters are similarly uninspiring. They are flawed – vain, duplicitous, arrogant, snobbish, ambitious, hypocritical, fickle, insecure, suspicious, and perhaps above all ridiculously pretentious, but in spite of these foibles, they were largely uninteresting.

The plot is a remarkable nothing as well. I believe it is intended to be a philosophical treatise on memory, cyclical patterns in our existence, and the meaningless of life. I think it is also commentary on the vanity and decline of French aristocracy. In 3,000+ pages, there are numerous minor themes such as the arts influence on society, anti-Semitism, homosexuality, and the Dreyfus affair that divided France at the time.

The prose is complex, possibly suffering in translation, but not without truth or beauty:

For my intelligence must be a uniform thing, perhaps indeed there exists but a single intelligence, in which everyone in the world participates, towards which each of us from the position of his own separate body turns his eyes, as in a theatre where, if everyone has his own separate seat, there is on the other hand but a single stage. 

…it has indeed been said that the highest praise of God consists in the denial of Him by the atheist, who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Some have called this “…the most respected novel of the twentieth century” or similar hyperbole. I’ve read numerous commentaries asserting the greatness of this novel, but very little explanation of what makes it great. I know it’s terribly presumptuous of me, but in my opinion it’s the emperor’s new clothes.

I may just be very simple; don’t trust my opinion. Read it yourself when you can spare a couple months.

My Rating: 1 ½ of 5 Stars

The title: À la recherche du temps perdu, has received different English renderings. Today it is commonly known by the literal translation – In Search of Lost Time. However, in the earlier translation that I read, Moncrieff and Kilmartin took poetic license from Shakespeare to render the title Remembrance of Things Past.

When I originally came up with my list of The 100 Greatest Novels, I did not realize the two titles were one and the same novel. Consequently, I did a disservice to the author. This novel should have been ranked #39 vs. #91. It’s complicated, but if you are curious as to why, read my explanation of my rankings HERE.

And now, I’m taking a brief break from my quest to read a couple SHORT Christmas Stories – emphasis on SHORT.

Other excerpts:

Then a new light arose in me, less brilliant indeed than the one that had made me perceive that a work of art is the only means of regaining lost time.

I had lived like a painter climbing a road which overlooks a lake hidden by a curtain of rocks and trees. Through a breach he perceives it, it lies before him, he seizes his brushes, but already darkness has come and he can paint no longer, night upon which day will never dawn again.

I had a feeling of intense fatigue when I realized that all this span of time had not only been lived, thought, secreted by me uninterruptedly, that it was my life, that it was myself, but more still because I had at every moment to keep it attached to myself, that it bore me up, that I was poised on its dizzy summit, that I could not move without taking it with me.

If at least, time enough were allotted to me to accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time, the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force today, and I would therein describe men, if need be as monsters occupying a place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, on the contrary prolonged immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant period they have lived through – between which so many days have ranged themselves – they stand like giants immersed in Time.

Proust makes NUMEROUS references to other authors and literature. Sometimes by naming the author, sometimes by naming the book, other times by referencing characters (Capulets and Mantagues). I probably missed some references, but I know he referred to:

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

Gustave Flaubert

Molière

Balzac

Jonathan Swift

Émile Zola

Shakespeare

Miguel de Cervantes

Henrik Ibsen

Thomas Hardy

Nikolai Gogol

A Thousand and One Nights

But most ironically, Proust referenced The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal, which is next up in my Greatest Novels Quest.

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A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (99 down, 1 to go)

…literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. ~ Nick Jenkins

 

A few more thoughts from Nick…

 

Yet love, for all the escape it offers, is closely linked with everyday things…

 

One hears about life, all the time, from different people, with very different narrative gifts. Accordingly, not only are many episodes, in which you may even have played a part yourself, hard enough to assess; a lot more must be judged from haphazard accounts given by others. Even if reported in good faith, some choose one aspect on which to concentrate, some another.

 

The title of this novel is taken from a painting by 17^thCentury artist, Nicolas Poussin. The painting has numerous mythological elements: Apollos, Aurora, Time himself playing music, and four dancers (pictured on the book bindings) who probably represent different stages in life.

 

Poussin is not known to have revealed the exact meaning of his dancers; Powell however, leaves a bit more material from which to infer what he thought. He wrote A Dance to the Music of Time in four volumes – that he called movements – each undoubtedly represents one of the dancers. The main character and narrator, Nick Jenkins, considers Poussin’s dancers, concluding that they are:

 

…unable to control the melody, unable perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

 

As the author’s alter ego, Nick thus reveals a distinct fatalism in Powell’s world view.

 

I can’t say for certain what Powell might have labelled the four dancers, but I infer something like:  

Coming of age (ambitiously, awkwardly, recklessly, naively)

Setting course (success, failure, course-correction)

Fates and follies (drudge, disillusionment, despair)

Conclusion

 

"First Movement" – opens on Nick and a few schoolmates, unnamed college, England, late 1920s, early 1930s.

 

"Second Movement" – follows their diverging, and re-converging careers and relationships, presages of looming war.

 

"Third Movement" – their roles in WWII, mostly uninspired and bureaucratic, several fatalities.

 

"Fourth Movement" – Conclusion of the many lives portrayed in this tome, but also…

 

Time dances on. Like the figures in the painting – dancing in a circle – Powell brings the fourth volume full circle, with the aged narrator in a scene very similar to his opening scene of volume one. (Though I'd nearly forgotten the opening scene by this point.)

 

I thought it an impressive work, but not very enjoyable. I wasn’t invested in any of the characters. Nick is a likeable chap, but too dispassionate to be very interesting.

 

To give Powell proper credit, I have to admit, that it was only the first 2,500 pages or so that I didn’t enjoy. The final pages of the final movement, finally got interesting. That might sound like I’m being sarcastic – I’m not. If you dare to start this work – you need to stick it out.

 

I can’t help but compare A Dance to the Music of Time to In Search of Lost Time. Both are roughly 3000 pages, both cover the lifetime of the main character, even the titles are reminiscent – and both were rather a chore to read. I doubt he intended it, but I felt as if Powell’s work is the British answer to the earlier French novel by Proust. I was already making this comparison in my thoughts, when Nick began reading and commenting on Proust’s magnum opus in the second half of Powell’s classic.

 

My rating: 3 ½ of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies – “A Classic that scares you” category of the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

 

 

Excerpts – This first is one of my favorites taking place during a calm moment of Nick’s army days, and is a casual conversation between Nick and his commanding General. The general, knew that Nick was an author, and literary critic.

 

‘Book reader, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What do you think of Trollope?’

‘Never found him easy to read, sir.’

‘You never found Trollope easy to read?’

‘No, sir.’

He was clearly unable to credit my words. This was an unhappy situation. There was a long pause while he glared at me.

 

‘Whom do you like, if you don’t like Trollope?’

‘There’s Balzac, sir.’

‘Balzac!’

General Liddament roared the name. It was impossible to know whether Balzac had been a very good answer or a very bad one. 

 

And although Nick was uncertain, he must have made some points as the general then recommends Nick for a better position.

 

Other Excerpts: Mostly narrative by Nick

 

That illusion – as such a point of view was, in due course, to appear – was closely related to another belief:  that existence fans out indefinitely into new areas of experience, and that almost every additional acquaintance offers some supplementary world with its own hazards and enchantments. As time goes on, of course, these supposedly different worlds, in fact, draw closer, if not to each other, then to some pattern common to all; so that, at last, diversity between them, in truth existent, seems to be almost imperceptible except in a few crude and exterior ways:  unthinkable as formerly appeared any single consummation of cause and effect. In other words, nearly all turn out at last to be tenaciously inter-related; love and hate, friendship and enmity, too, becoming themselves much less clearly defined, more often than not showing signs of possessing characteristics that could claim, to say the least, not a little in common; while work and play merge indistinguishably into a complex tissue of pleasure and tedium.

 

…the persons we see most clearly are not necessarily those we know best.

 

Yet love, for all the escape it offers, is closely linked with everyday things, even with the affairs of others.

 

‘Look here,’ said Stringham, ‘I must be allowed to get in and out of my own bed. That is a fundamental human right. Other people’s beds may be another matter. In them, another party is concerned, but ingress and egress of one’s own bed is unassailable.’

 

‘It seems to me,’ said the General, ‘that he is a typical intuitive extrovert – classical case…’

 

War is not an exact science, but a terrible and passionate drama ~ quoting Foch

 

‘The god, Mars, approaches the earth to lay waste. Moreover, the future is ever the consequence of the past.’

 

‘Adventures only happen to adventurers.’

 

‘The war seems to have altered some people out of recognition and made others more than ever like themselves.’ ~ Isobel (Nick’s wife)

 

…literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

 

Friendship, popularly represented as something simple and straightforward – in contrast with love – is perhaps no less complicated, requiring equally mysterious nourishment…

 

You know growing old’s like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

 

Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them…

 

When people speak of a subject close to them, they can look transformed.

 

One hears about life, all the time, from different people, with very different narrative gifts. Accordingly, not only are many episodes, in which you may even have played a part yourself, hard enough to assess; a lot more must be judged from haphazard accounts given by others. Even if reported in good faith, some choose one aspect on which to concentrate, some another.

 

…a restless soul wandering the vast surfaces of the Earth ~ Nick’s description of his Uncle Giles

 

A Dance to the Remembrance of Time is FILLED with references to classic literature. Nick, being a literary person (and as I said Powell’s alter ego), sometimes referenced an author, a title, or merely a character from some prominent work. These are the ones I caught. There were undoubtedly more.

 

Les Misérables

A Doll’s House

Jude the Obscure

Joseph Conrad

J.M. Barrie

H.G. Wells

Tolstoy

Anna Karenina

Orlando

John Milton

The Idiot

Henry James

Sherlock Holmes

William Thackeray

The Waste Land

Stendhal

D.H. Lawrence

Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov, and "The Grand Inquisitor"

Stavrogin

Ernest Hemingway

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Franz Kafka

Anthony Trollope

Alice in Wonderland

George Orwell

Edgar Allan Poe

Hamlet

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Molly Bloom

Dr. Zhivago

Pilgrim’s Progress

Charles Dickens: Mrs. Nickleby, Mr. Micawber, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, The Old Curiosity Shop, Bob Cratchit

 

A favorite reference: a character concocts their own cocktail and calls it Death Comes for the Archbishop

 

And of course

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

 

A Dance to the Music of Time is officially 12 novels, published 3 at a time in four volumes/movements. Personally, I don’t think the 12 novels are truly novels, but more like rather long chapters. I don’t believe any of the novels, nor any of the volumes stand very well on their own. But of course, to get the full effect, you must commit to nearly 3000 pages.

 

1st Movement

- A Question of Upbringing

- A Buyer’s Market

- The Acceptance World

2nd Movement

- At Lady Molly’s

- Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

- The Kindly Ones

3rd Movement

- The Valley of Bones

- The Soldier’s Art

- The Military Philosophers

4th Movement

- Books Do Furnish a Room

- Temporary Kings

- Hearing Secret Harmonies

 

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The Classic Club 26 in 2026

     

1. When did you join The Classics Club?

May 2014

1.a How many titles have you read for the club so far?

50 for list #1  ç That right there, reddish brown text, that’s a hyperlink. Go ahead and click it. (sorry, you probably know that, but I’m desperate for blog stats)

75 for list #2  

50 for list #3

19 of 50 for list #4

Total of 194

 

2.  What classic are you planning to read next? Why?

Probably Loving by Henry Green. Cuz it’s next on my list.

 

3. Is there a book first published in 1926 that you plan to read this year?

Nope. This sort of makes me feel guilty, as if I should have one…but nope. How about 50 years ago? I may get to The Magus by John Fowles. I’ve been saving it for this year, so I wouldn’t get challenged on whether it’s a classic or not.

 

4. Classic author who has the most works on your club list? Or, classic author you’ve read the most works by?

Dickens: 12 read for the club. I plan to read all of Dickens’ novels, 3 to go, unless I decide to read Edwin Drood, then it's 4 to go, see question #16

 

5. If you could explore one author’s literary career from first publication to last — meaning you have never read this author and want to explore him or her by reading what s/he wrote in order of publication — who would you explore? Obviously this should be an author you haven’t yet read, since you can’t do this experiment on an author you’re already familiar with.  Or, which author’s work you arefamiliar with might it have been fun to approach this way?

Probably Stephen King, but I’ve already read The Stand and The Dark Tower series.

 

6. First classic you ever read?

Either The Hobbit or The Call of the Wild. Both sometime in 4th or 5th grade.

 

7. Favorite Children's Classic?

The Chronicles of Narnia, though I'm not quite certain I consider it Children's Lit. So if not Narnia, Winnie the Pooh.

 

8. Which classic is your most memorable classic to date? Why?

Most memorable? Not best?, not favorite? (those are not the same btw). Most memorable, perhaps…no, maybe…no...umm. THIS IS HARD! I’m gonna cheat. The Cellist of Sarajevo (not a classic), but MAN, was it powerful.

 

9. Least favorite classic? Why?

The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I sort of hated it. But I'm very pleased with my review. I usually hate doing bad reviews.

 

10. Favorite movie or TV adaption of a classic?

To Kill a Mockingbird is almost perfect.

 

11. Favorite biography about a classic author you’ve read, or the biography on a classic author you most want to read, if any?

I’d like to read a biography on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince). I remember searching once and didn’t find one; unbelievable right? If anyone knows of one, I’d be grateful for a recommendation.

 

12. Favorite classic author in translation? Do you have a favorite classics translator? What do you look for in a classic translations?

Either Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read: The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot. Well, I didn’t care for The Idiot. I just look for a translator with good score on GR.

 

13. Do you have a favorite classic poet/poem, playwright/play? Why do you love it?

Kipling. Very versatile writer, and even when sticking just to poetry he is very diverse.

 

14. Which classic character most reminds you of yourself?

Tom Sawyer. As a child I was Tom Sawyer.

 

15. What is the oldest classic you have read or plan to read? Why?

Daphnis and Chloe by Longus (200AD), which was pretty good. I’ve also read The Tale of Genji which is sometimes called the oldest novel in the world, even though Daphnis and Chloe predates it by 800 years.

 

16. If a sudden announcement was made that 500 more pages had been discovered after the original “THE END” on a classic title you read and loved, which title would you be happiest to see continued?

I’m tempted to say Wives and Daughters because it is very good but unfinished. It is only barely unfinished. The great dilemma is overcome and a happy ending is ensured, so it’s not had to imagine the ending. So, for my real answer: The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Dickens. What could be worse than an unfinished mystery? I want to read all of Dickens’ novels, and most would say this is one of them, but it seems maddening to read an unfinished mystery. Recommendations?

 

17. Favorite edition (or series) of a classic you own, or wished you owned, if any?

First edition of The Little Prince. Runner up: Deliverance signed by the author James Dickey.

 

18. Do you reread classics? Why, or why not?

Very seldom. I’ve reread The Lord of the Rings at least 6 times, and I’ll reread it yet again someday. But other than that the only rereads are works I read before I started blogging. I will reread them to refresh my memory before writing my blog review. Otherwise, there are too many classics I've yet to read. It will be very rare that I reread.

 

19. Has there been a classic title you simply could not finish?

Nothing I couldn’t finish, because I am very stubborn. Once I start, I’m going to finish. I really wanted to quit In Search of Lost Time (longest novel in the world), but I read every word, and that is lost time I’ll never get back. There have been three that I did not finish, because I found them obscene. I don't want them burned, but I just don't want to read them.

 

20. Has there been a classic title you expected to dislike and ended up loving?

War and Peace.

 

21. List five fellow Classic Clubbers whose blogs you frequent. What makes you love their blogs?

This is a timely question. I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve been book-blogging for nearly 15 years. I used to get a lot of comments, but in the last year or so, I rarely get any. Lest that sound like a complaint, or worse a whine, I must also admit, that I rarely comment on other’s blogs anymore. It says in THE Old Book, "if a man has friends, he must himself be friendly…" Apologies for being a poor correspondent. I’ll try to do better in 2026. Now to answer:

 

With Freedom, Books, Flowers, and the Moon

The Edge of the Precipice

Readerbuzz

Reading, Writing, Working, Playing

Fanda Classiclit

 

Oh, and Anonymous. That guy cracks me up.

Why? Different reasons for each one. Similar world view in some cases, contrasting tastes in other cases which give me pause to my very opinionated opinions. But in all of these a similar diet of classics.

 

22. If you’ve ever participated in a readalong on a classic, tell us about the experience? If you’ve participated in more than one, what’s the very best experience? the best title you’ve completed? a fond memory? a good friend made?

I tried one once, and there were just two of us. The organizer quit before halfway done.

 

23. If you could appeal for a readalong with others for any classic title, which title would you name? Why?

I’m not really interested in a readalong. Don’t ask why.

 

24. What are your favorite bits about being a part of The Classics Club?

The Bookstore discount.

 

25. What would like to see more of (or less of) on The Classics Club?

I got nothing. So, instead I’ll just say THANK YOU! To the mods for keeping it going. Great job…seriously. And thanks for this questionnaire, lots of fun.

 

26. Question you wish was on this questionnaire? (Ask and answer it!)

Who is your favorite Transcendental Movement novelist of young-adult extraterrestrial mythology written in Romantic Period prose? Millard Fillmore of course. 

 

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Light in August by William Faulkner (60 down 40 to go)

He stepped from the dark porch, into the moonlight, and with his bloody head and his empty stomach hot, savage, and courageous with whiskey, he entered the street which was to run for fifteen years.  The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. ~ Narrative regarding Joe Christmas

This is the first time I’ve read Light in August, and the fourth novel I’ve read by William Faulkner. Light in August is a southern-Gothic, modernist novel, set in early 1930s, Jefferson, Mississippi, a fictional setting based on Faulkner’s hometown. The location is common to most of Faulkner’s novels and many of his short stories.

My rating: 3 1/2 of 5 stars

 

I was prepared to dislike this novel because I haven’t been a big fan of Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absolam, Absolam!. But, you should infer from this ironic foreshadowing, that I found Light in August quite engaging.

I’m happy with the word engaging. In my reviews I’ve often struggled with the words enjoy or like. Think of a miserable novel like Nineteen-Eighty-Four or Under the Volcano. I can’t truly say I enjoyed or liked them. They’re not happy, not hopeful, not uplifting; they’re miserable. But, to borrow from Henry David Thoreau, they are compelling portrayals of the quietly desperate lives of the mass of humanity.

So, I found Light in August engaging. I believe Faulkner has keen insight on humanity, and a gift with words. Another reason I liked this…erm…found this engaging is that it is written mostly in third-person narrative, rather than stream of consciousness.

The story opens on Lena Grove, a poor, white, unmarried, expectant mother traveling by foot from Alabama to Mississippi in search of her child’s father. Lena gives everyone she meets a hopeful story that her “husband” is getting settled and very likely sent for her and that the message got lost in transit. Most of the people she meets are helpful, though dubious, and consider Lena hopelessly naïve and unlikely to find the father.

The reader, this reader at least, got the impression that Lena was not nearly so naïve, but that she kept up the story to avoid anyone’s pity. She was ready to accept help, but prepared to go it alone.

I liked Lena; she was brave and dauntless, as well as resourceful and hopeful.

The story turns to Joe Christmas, who as an infant was left at an orphanage on Christmas morning, hence his name. Even though his parentage is unknown, Joe suspects that he has Negro blood. Consequently he feels a misfit everywhere and is something of a loner and wanderer. He is also brave, but devious, bitter, and desperate.

Lena and Joe never cross paths, but their lives become bizarrely intertwined when Lena finally arrives in Jefferson. On that day the early evening sky is lighted by the flames of a house fire, set to conceal a horrific murder. There is the promise of reward, a fugitive, a manhunt, a birth, a trial, escape, vigilante justice, a new fugitive, and a new manhunt, though no posse this time. The hunters are only two, or three if you count the babe.

The novel ends with circumstances very nearly as they were in the beginning. It isn’t very satisfying, though not without hope. As I implied, it isn’t a happy story, just engaging.

Excerpts:

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

…it is a happy faculty of the mind to slough that which conscience refuses to assimilate.

Two of them are also motionless, the woman with that stonevisaged patience of a waiting rock, the old man with a spent quality like the charred wick of a candle from which the flame has been violently blown away.

A minor character’s description of a secondary character that I found amusing:

Then I saw that he was the kind of fellow you wouldn’t see the first glance if he was alone by himself in the bottom of a empty concrete swimming pool.

And this quotation, notable only because it contains a phrase that Faulkner used as the title for a previous novel:

At last the noise and the alarm, the sound and the fury of the hunt, dies away, dies out of his hearing.

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