In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 6
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Reissued as a tie-in to the film by Raoul Ruiz, this final volume of Proust's masterpiece In Search of Lost Time presents obvious problems for those coming to it without the benefit of having read the previous sections: even with the extensive character guides and synopses which make up the last third of the book (230 pages!) the task is a daunting one, with Proust's notoriously labyrinthine sentences equally likely to impede the unwary reader. However, for those who do not wish to start at the beginning, with Swann's Way, this is paradoxically the one volume with which it might be conceivable to start a non-chronological attempt, for it is here that the narrator, identified as "Marcel" (but not to be confused with Proust himself, or not entirely), encounters characters from earlier books, grown older and bearing the traces of the passage of time, and decides to turn the experiences of his life into fiction, into the book we are holding. Throughout, it is Proust's boundless sensitivity to the variety of human experience and motivation, his delicate understanding of the precarious balance between memory and the present, that captivates and entrances.
Time Regained opens with Marcel visiting Gilberte, for whom he had entertained an adolescent passion. Realising that the places he loved as a child have lost their charm for him, he also reaffirms that he has a "lack of talent for literature"--the possibility of becoming a writer seems to him to be impossible. The remainder of the first half of the volume details the devastations of the First World War, which transforms Paris and the social world Marcel had known, destroying the distinctions, hierarchies and certainties that had previously existed. Many years later, he returns to Paris, and his speculations on memory--that "the true paradises are the paradises we have lost"--begin to awaken in him a sense of how he might at last answer the calling of being a writer that had first impressed itself upon him as a child. But when he revisits the social circles which had once so entranced him, he is appalled at the changes wrought by the passing of years:
I had made the discovery of this destructive action of Time at the very moment when I had conceived the ambition to make visible, to intellectualise in a work of art, realities that were outside Time.It is the moving resolution of this problem that closes the book, and closes one of the supreme acts of literary creation of the 20th century: in its ending we are taken back to the beginning, to experience the variety and complexities of human life again, transmuted into art. --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
"As close to being a definitive English version of the great novel as we are likely to get. This new edition will serve to introduce new generations of readers to what Somerset Maugham rightly described as the greatest novel of our century." -- Allan Massie, "Scotsman"
"The best reading version yet." -- "The Times"
"The best reading version yet." -- "The Times"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
First of all..congrats to anyone who has gotten this far. This last part is probably the most satisfying volume of in Search of lost time.You will definitly be rewarded for all the hard work you put in. I was daunted when I started to read this epic..I thought I would never in my life finish it.But I did finish it and instead of feeling like having run a marathon I felt refreshed and utterly satisfied.
This last part is almost like looking back on the previous volumes. Things start to make sense in this last part of the epic. Plot lines fall into place,things that seemed to have no relation with each other all of a sudden have a link and things become clear. I probably shouldn't talk too much about the story because that would seriuosly spoil the fun..
Even for anyone who hasn't started reading proust yet I recommend reading 'In search of lost Time' I've gotten so much pleasure out of this book. It's just satisfying.....READ IT
This last part is almost like looking back on the previous volumes. Things start to make sense in this last part of the epic. Plot lines fall into place,things that seemed to have no relation with each other all of a sudden have a link and things become clear. I probably shouldn't talk too much about the story because that would seriuosly spoil the fun..
Even for anyone who hasn't started reading proust yet I recommend reading 'In search of lost Time' I've gotten so much pleasure out of this book. It's just satisfying.....READ IT
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This final volume of 'In Search of Lost Time', which in the original French is titled 'Le Temps Retrouvé', has been translated into English at various times as 'Time Regained', 'The Past Recaptured' and, as here, 'Finding Time Again'. These different titles highlight one of the difficulties of translating Proust: do you go for the most literal meaning of the French or do you try to capture the essence of the original and worry less about accuracy? The general consensus seems to be that the earlier translations, by Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, are better at giving us the feel of the original, while the later works such as this recent Penguin edition are more literally accurate and feel less dated, but are not necessarily 'better'.
Proust died before finishing the manuscript and consequently this final volume has even more room for different interpretation than earlier volumes did. This version opens with Proust staying with his old friend Gilberte, now married to Saint-Loupe, at their Tansonville country retreat around the beginning of the First World War, looking back over his life and considering how he should write these memoirs. There are several accounts of visits to Paris, interesting in themselves as accounts of the city during the war.
As with all but the first volume of 'In Search of Lost Time', this book doesn't really work as a stand-alone novel. You need to have read the whole work to know enough about the characters to get the most out of it, so assuming you've already read the first five (or six, depending on which edition) volumes, you're likely going to read this one. The decision therefore is which version to go for. One criticism I would make of this edition is that it crams too many words onto a page, making it more difficult to read, and bearing in mind the long rambling sentences and paragraphs of Proust, this is not helpful. For this reason alone I prefer my 1992 Vintage edition, a DJ Enright revision of the Kilmartin translation (titled 'Time Regained') which runs to 450 pages (not counting all the notes etc) rather than the 355 of this one, the difference being almost entirely due to the type size.
In other respects too I prefer the earlier translation, which, to my mind, flows better. And what is the point in an English translation of keeping some quotes in French, as this new edition does? And also of using the French system of dashes to designate speech instead of quote marks? It all makes it less easy to read. So five stars because this is Proust, but really I don't recommend this particular edition, I'd go for the earlier Vintage version.
Proust died before finishing the manuscript and consequently this final volume has even more room for different interpretation than earlier volumes did. This version opens with Proust staying with his old friend Gilberte, now married to Saint-Loupe, at their Tansonville country retreat around the beginning of the First World War, looking back over his life and considering how he should write these memoirs. There are several accounts of visits to Paris, interesting in themselves as accounts of the city during the war.
As with all but the first volume of 'In Search of Lost Time', this book doesn't really work as a stand-alone novel. You need to have read the whole work to know enough about the characters to get the most out of it, so assuming you've already read the first five (or six, depending on which edition) volumes, you're likely going to read this one. The decision therefore is which version to go for. One criticism I would make of this edition is that it crams too many words onto a page, making it more difficult to read, and bearing in mind the long rambling sentences and paragraphs of Proust, this is not helpful. For this reason alone I prefer my 1992 Vintage edition, a DJ Enright revision of the Kilmartin translation (titled 'Time Regained') which runs to 450 pages (not counting all the notes etc) rather than the 355 of this one, the difference being almost entirely due to the type size.
In other respects too I prefer the earlier translation, which, to my mind, flows better. And what is the point in an English translation of keeping some quotes in French, as this new edition does? And also of using the French system of dashes to designate speech instead of quote marks? It all makes it less easy to read. So five stars because this is Proust, but really I don't recommend this particular edition, I'd go for the earlier Vintage version.
Format:Kindle Edition
It's a great book of course, and also great to see this translation available for the Kindle, but prospective buyers should be aware that the 'Guide to Proust', advertised in the product description, is missing from the Kindle edition. This needs to be fixed quickly by Amazon, either by making that fact clear in the description or, preferably, by amending the e-book to include it.
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