Le Temps Retrouve by Marcel Proust

 Le Temps Retrouve by Marcel Proust

 

After the second reading of most of In Search of Lost Time, I still think that Marcel Proust is the best writer of all time. This opinion will explain the size of these notes, for the longest review I will ever write. Proust’s name has kept coming back to me: from “How Proust Can Change Your Life „to a mention in the lectures of Tal Ben-Shahar at Harvard, where the hypothesis appears that if Proust were positive, optimistic, instead of gloomy, he would have been even more productive, perhaps even more creative…it is mind boggling to think of that possibility.

A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is the ultimate novel, rien ne va plus. I do not know of any other work that can be considered better. Marcel Proust reveals the truth and infinite aspects on nearly any subject under the sun. the main theme I’d say is love, but we go through the names of villages and their origin as well. The readers are not just readers of the book, but they read within themselves. Time is the major issue in this last installment of A La Recherche. What it does to people how changed we all are. Marcel does not recognize people at a kind of a last supper. There is a feeling of deep sadness hanging over the last pages.

I read (fact is I listen to) lectures form Harvard on Positive Psychology. At one point they come to Proust and his well known melancholy and negative moods.  With a more positive attitude, he might have been even more productive: positive, happy people work better, are healthier and live longer. Marcel Proust died quite young.

Death is discussed from a unique perspective. The author has no fear of death: he has seen his various selves die many times. We change so much that we become completely different persons and we do not regret those who have died within us. Very accurate and worth keeping in mind for old age.

In the last “episode “of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu Proust writes quite a few pages about the First World War. Interesting for me was the fact that he mentions Romania and some of the negotiations going on. In order to enter the war on the side of France Romania wanted to obtain the “Great Union”. Monsieur Norpois writes that if there is a delay, Romania may find its dream dead in the water. Proust recounts this with humor: this threat towards Romania was kind of old- if you do not join us, it would be too late…but this had been going on for three years- which seems incorrect, since Romania did enter the war, on the side of France and its allies, in 1916 and if we consider that the war had started in 1914 this means only two years delay.

Most of the characters have been affected by the war- le petit clan de Verdurin, changed location to Venice, in the first place and then to another mansion in Paris. Madame Verdurin needs a prescription from Cotard and is very critical of people who “drove a general through Paris”, but did not go to the front. That proves to be incorrect, some of those accused by Madame Verdurin had gone to the first line.

Morel deserted and Bloch had been very militaristic, until he was declared apt to go to war. Gisele went to her chateau, only to find that the Germans or les “boches” as they were called by their enemies, were at the site. Life is complex and it turns out that the French troops, withdrawing, caused much more damage to the chateau than the Germans did.

We learn that Saint Loup is homosexual and loves Morel, the former lover of Monsieur de Charlus. The latter is in disgrace and finds it difficult to be invited in society. Madame Verdurin et Madame de Bontemps is the leaders of the new wave of people en vogue. Their salons are appreciated and the former “bores „are invited at the parties given by the Verdurins.

Brichot, the academician, is writing for a journal with great success- he is famous now, even if out of favor with Madame Verdurin, who mocks his articles and says they are like “written by a pig” In the morning, while jogging I listen to Le Temps Retrouve. There is talk of the war, with Francoise empathising with soldiers, bombs trown from German planes.

Saint Loup dies, while trying to protect his men.

His uncle, Monsieur de Charlus is in bondage in a „maison de passe” where he is hit by a man called Maurice. The baron is into what we would call today BDSM, I think. Monsieur de Charlus is not to happy with the man found by Jupien, he wants somebody really bad and this Maurice is just faking it and lacks authenticity.

We meet Morel, who is afraid to make peace with the baron and we learn that the baron wanted to kill him. It turns out that we have all the twists and plots of a modern day soap opera and I should add that Gisele is married to Saint Loup, he is unfaithful in an unexpected way, having affairs with men.

In an interesting twist, we learn about La Riviere- the only real name in the book, which the author says that has no other „personages a cle”. Le Baron de Charlus has a stroke and is temporarily blinded. In this state and because of it perhaps, le baron seems to have molested a child who was less than ten years old.

Une heure n’est pas qu’une heure, c’est un vase rempli de parfums, de sons, de projets et de climats. Ce que nous appelons la réalité est un certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs….

Et tout d’un coup je me dis que la vraie Gilberte, la vraie Albertine, c’étaient peut-être celles qui s’étaient au premier instant livrées dans leur regard, l’une devant la haie d’épines roses, l’autre sur la plage… which reminds me of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Proust writes about the way we change, the characters in the last volume of A La Recherche change so much that the hero- author does not recognize them. Indeed, there is the theme of different people having the same name: all the cells in body tend to change, so  much so that we can talk about of a completly different person. The author is at times puzzled and even upset by the way the other guests of Le Prince de Guermantes address him: „mon plus vieux amis or vous, un vieux parisien” . Marcel is the name given to the hero, even if Proust says it is a different person and if we consider only the sexual orientation, the main character has a lot from Proust, but he is not Proust 100%. The author –narrator invites Gilberte de Saint Loup to go out, if she doesn’t mind what one would say of her being accompanied by a young man. People laugh and Marcel corrects himself saying an old man. Some of the former enemies have transfoermed themselves into harmless old men.

The king of Romania is mentioned, with his support of France, in spite of his Germano philia and his German origins. Wonderful passages are written on the work of art. Critics expected books to become short, quick because of the change in society, with the arrival of the „fast”cars. Proust points out a way in which the coming of age of the automobile did help: remote churches would become more visited, when better means of transportation to places where it had been difficult to get to in the past.

A book makes us see the world in a different way, it is like a glass through which we get a different view from the one we had had before we started the book.