In Search of Lost Time: Within a Budding Grove V. 2 (Revised)

Perhaps more so than the memory of the madeleines, more so than the study of jealousy and mysteries of love, the unforgettable characters of Charlus and Swann and the last bastion of European taste, Guermantes, the epicenter of Proust's work is the image of the little band, walking along the beach, in a disorienting sunshine, observed from a distance by the narrator with a combination of awe, jealousy, love, and wonder. Each aspect of the novel, whether preceding or following this episode, points to, anticipates, or reflects upon it, directly or indirectly. The volume's title, In the shadow of young girls in flower, is itself a commentary on time's passage, perhaps even more so than the grand title itself, In search of lost time.

A book of this stature hardly needs another review explaining how great it is, and, not being all that cultured, I can't provide a lot of literary context or comparisons with past translations. I can offer a recommendation, though, as a young modern lay reader who suffers the usual hesitations about approaching classic texts. With regard to previous translations, all I know is that this volume apparently used to be called In a Budding Grove - which may be the worst literary title ever - and is now called In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which may be the best literary title ever. As far as I can tell the translation flows very smoothly, too, and even though Proust's style, as most people probably know, features sentences which go on for a very long time and have complex constructions buried in them (sort of like this one), I thought it was more readable than the likes of Joyce and Pynchon, because the power of the first-person voice often makes the meaning clear. There were a couple of points where I thought the translator used a word that seemed too modern and idiomatic - 'hubby' was one - but it's not that much of a distraction. Proust's habit is to spend a lot of time discussing small, specific things, but that isn't to say he describes every single event of his childhood in excruciating detail - he often skips over major events, or describes something's prelude in more detail than the event itself, summarizing the things which had the deepest emotional impact on him at the time. The result is a narrative which is very engaging because all of the details in it, however small they might be, shed light on something deeper. With this specific volume (about the experience of youth), speaking as someone whose own adolesence isn't far behind him, I found it eerily insightful. Reading about people from a different century, I would suddenly come on an insight which might have been a direct comment on me or someone I knew, and what I think really makes Proust one-of-a-kind is that he never stoops to satire, charicature or didactics; it's just straight observation. The people he describes might be the comic relief or even buffoonish villains in the works of a lesser author, but something about the way he describes them so exactly produces sympathy, as if the reader were allied as much with them as with the narrator. Of all the 'classic' books I've read, ISYGIF is one of my favorites, and I recommend it to anyone able to read it. Like I said, I don't think Proust's style is as hard to grasp as certain other modern authors; but if it does seem difficult, then it's certainly worth the effort of becoming accustomed to it, for the beauty which emerges from it and the uncanny human analysis.

"Alas!" Proust writes in the second volume of his attempts to recapture his lost childhood and long-forgotten feelings, "in the freshest flower it is possible to discern those just perceptible signs which the instructed mind already betray what will, by the dessication or fructification of the flesh that is today in bloom, be the ultimate form, immutable and already predestined, of the autumnal seed" (p. 643).Having just finished reading WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE for the fourth time, it remains (with SWANN'S WAY) at the top of my list of favorite novels. Influenced by John Ruskin, Henri Bergson, Wagner and the fiction of Anatole France, in his "universality and deep awareness of human nature," Proust (1871-1922) is considered "as primordial as Tolstoy," and "as wise as Shakespeare" (Harold Bloom, GENIUS, p. 218).I most recently returned to Proust's BUDDING GROVE through the Modern Library's 2003 edition of the Montcrieff/Kilmartin translation of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, Volumes I through VI. Through a continued series of what Walter Pater has called "privileged moments," or what James Joyce might call "epiphanies," the narrative of WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE gracefully transitions away from the childhood recollections of SWANN'S WAY, to the narrator's exquisite memories of his adolescence spent with his grandmother in the seaside setting of Balbec. We find that Charles Swann's turbulent affair with the "illiterate courtesan" (p. 124), Odette de Crecy, has resulted in marriage; and although the narrator's "enchantment" with Swann's daughter, Gilberte, gradually fades, he soon encounters unrequited love once again upon meeting the "charming, pretty, intelligent" and "quite witty" (p. 116) Albertine Simonet. In Volume II, Proust further develops his notion that human love is synonymous with suffering, failure, exhaustion, ruin, and despair. To love and believe in a woman completely becomes the "cause of the greatest suffering" (p. 713). "There can be no peace of mind in love," Proust's narrator reflects, "since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for future desires" (p. 213). "In reality," he adds, "there is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralises, makes potential only, postpones, but which may at any moment become, what it would long since have been had we not obtained what we wanted, excrutiating" (p. 214). WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, much like SWANN'S WAY, is by no means a feel-good novel. Proust reveals that while love may allow us to touch the sublime, it also teaches us that there are no limits to human suffering. In Volume II of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, Proust introduces us to all the major characters of his subsequent volumes. Serious readers will experience uncommon pleasure in reading Proust. SWANN'S WAY and WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE are perfect examples of why it's worth one's time to read "a good book." In fact, a life without experiencing the rich pleasures of reading Prou

Volume 2 of Marcel Proust's 4000+ page masterpiece, "In Search of Lost Time", is, if it's possible, an even greater book than the first volume. I read Volume 1, "Swann's Way", with the kind of astonishment and joy generally reserved for Tolstoy and Maugham, constantly amazed at Proust's (via Moncrieff, Kilmartin, & Enright) ability to deepen sensation and memory to almost religious proportions, and when I finished I thought, "There's no way he can keep this level of beauty up for another 5 volumes." Judging from Volume 2, I was dead wrong.Proust published "Swann's Way" in 1913, and waited 6 years to publish Volume 2, "Within a Budding Grove"; I presume that in the interim he reorganized his ideas, deciding to expand his novel and explore his themes in greater detail. This volume is much more leisurely and intricately paced than the first, as Proust masterfully tells us of the end of his relationship with Gilberte, his relocation to Balbec, and the beginning of his relationship with Albertine. The slow dying of love, the vaguely confusing experience of a new dwelling as it gradually becomes a home, watching beautiful young girls (the "budding grove" of the title) enjoying their beauty and youth as they walk down a city street...these things and more are plumbed and ruminated upon, with Proust's typically intricate and gorgeous language.These books, if the first two are any guide, are like nothing ever attempted in the history of literature. Rather than dealing with WHAT happened, Proust settles himself in for the long haul to try and understand WHY it happened; to quote Christopher Hitchens, Proust "exposes and clarifies the springs of human motivation...with a transparency unexampled except in Shakespeare or George Eliot." But I don't think Bill nor George ever dug this deep; Marcel Proust is absolutely one of a kind, and he's not easy to read in this world of flash-images and expressways. He takes his time. Though he was dying with every labored breath (he didn't live to see the entire novel published), Proust was in no hurry to finish. His thoughts, like his sentences, have multiple branches. Follow them and you'll cherish the experience like it was your own.Moving on to Volume 3.....

Beautiful writing, and brilliant observations and well-drawn characters. Some caveats are the often labyrinthine sentences and multi-page paragraphs. Most people read SWANN'S WAY and no further, so those who make it through the 2nd volume might praise it excessively out of a slight superiority complex. Also, "Marcel" is also a little bitchy in his tone, and his "happiest when I'm alone" philosophy is kind of sad and self-absorbed, and his visiting whore houses is jolting after you've been reading graceful sentences and events. And some of his anthropological and psychological observations are trite and nothing most readers haven't concluded for themselves, and Proust sounds like he believes he's letting you in on some insights of which you're undoubtedly ignorant. But, yes, many of his insights are brilliant and eye-opening. And the sentences that are over-loaded actually are the exception, and the rest are doubtless among the most beautiful sentences ever written. Proust must have been extremely introspective to have thought so extensively about the most minute of moments...and good for us he was, since we get to enjoy the fruits of his introspection in this book. The humor that comes across is delightful, too. Proust has one thing you can't learn in any MFA creative writing program, and that is CHARM!