《追忆似水年华》（一译为《追忆逝水年华》）这部被誉为二十世纪最重要的文学作品之一的长篇巨着，以其出色的对心灵追索的描写和卓越的意识流技巧而风靡世界，并奠定了它在当代世界文学中的地位。
多卷集长篇巨着《追忆逝水年华》是法国作家马塞尔.普鲁斯特(1871-1922)的代表作，全书共七部，十五卷，从1905年开始创作，至作者逝世前全部完成。小说的第一部《通往斯万家的路》于1913年问世，但反应冷淡，一些有名的出版社都不愿出版，作者便自费印行。后来《通往斯万家的路》逐渐获得文艺界的赞赏。于是，各大出版社竟相与普鲁斯特签订合同，以求取得出版这部多卷集的其余几部作品的权利。不久，第一次世界大战爆发，出版工作被搁置下来。战争结束后，小说的第二部《在花枝招展的少女们身旁》于1919年出版，获龚古尔文学奖，普鲁斯特名声大振。此后，小说的第三部《盖尔芒家》和第四部《索多姆和郭穆尔》相继于1921和1922年出版，最后三部《女囚犯》(1923)，《逃亡者》(1925)，和《昔日再现》(1927) 则是普鲁斯特逝世后才出版的。
目录
第一部 在斯万家那边
追忆似水年华追忆似水年华
>第一卷 贡布雷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>第二卷 斯万之恋
>第三卷 地名：那个姓氏
第二部 在少女们身旁
>第一卷 斯万夫人周围
>第二卷 地名：地方
第三部 盖尔芒特家那边
>第一卷
>第二卷
>>第一章
>>第二章
第四部
>第一卷
>第二卷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>>第三章
>>第四章
第五部 女囚
第六部 女逃亡者
第七部 重现的时光
《追忆逝水年华》是一部与传统小说不同的长篇小说。全书以叙述者“我”为主体，将其所见所闻所思所感融合一体，既有对社会生活，人情世态的真实描写，又是一份作者自我追求，自我认识的内心经历的记录。除叙事以外，还包含有大量的感想和议论。整部作品没有中心人物，没有完整的故事，没有波澜起伏，贯穿始终的情节线索。它大体以叙述者的生活经历和内心活动为轴心，穿插描写了大量的人物事件，犹如一棵枝丫交错的大树，可以说是在一部主要小说上派生着许多独立成篇的其他小说，也可以说是一部交织着好几个主题曲的巨大交响乐。
小说中的叙述者“我”是一个家境富裕而又体弱多病的青年，从小对书画有特殊的爱好，曾经尝试过文学创作，没有成功。他经常出入巴黎的上层社会，频繁往来于各茶会，舞会，招待会及其它时髦的社交场合，并钟情于犹太富商的女儿吉尔伯特，但不久就失恋了。此外，他还到过家乡贡柏莱小住，到过海滨胜地巴培克疗养。他结识了另一位少女阿尔伯蒂，发现阿尔伯蒂患同性恋，便决心娶她为妻，以纠正她的变态心理。他把阿尔伯蒂禁闭在自己家中，阿尔伯蒂却设法逃跑，于是，他多方打听她，寻找她，后来得知阿尔伯蒂骑马摔死。在悲痛中他认识到自己的禀赋是写作，他所经历的悲欢苦乐正是文学创作的材料，只有文学创作才能把昔日失去的东西找回来。
在小说中，叙述者“我”的生活经历并不占全书的主要篇幅。作者通过故事套故事，故事与故事交叉重迭的方法，描写了众多的人物事件，展示了一幅19世纪与20世纪之交法国上流社会的生活图景。这里有姿色迷人，谈吐高雅而又无聊庸俗的盖尔芒夫人，有道德堕落，行为仇恶的变性人查琉斯男爵，有纵情声色的浪荡公子斯万等等。此外，小说还描写了一些于上流社会有关联的作家，艺术家，他们大都生前落魄失意，而作品却永世长存。小说还描写了一些下层的劳动者。《追忆逝水年华》这部长篇巨着通过上千个人物的活动，冷静，真实，细致地再现了法国上流社会的生活习俗，人情世态。因此有些西方评论家把它与巴尔扎克的《人间喜剧》相提并论，称之为“风流喜剧”。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部有独特风格的长篇小说，他不仅再现了客观世界，同时也展现了叙述者的主观世界，记录了叙述者对客观世界的内心感受。作者感兴趣的不是叙述故事，交代情节和刻画人物形象，而是抒发自己对某一问题的感想和分析。例如，叙述者参加了盖尔芒公爵家的一次晚宴，这使他长期以来对贵族的种种幻想顿时破灭，他意识到过去对他有魅力的只是名称，而不是真实的世界。整部作品对外部世界的描述同叙述者对它的感受，思考，分析浑然一体，又互相引发，互相充实，从而形成了物从我出，物中有我，物我合一的艺术境界。
《追忆逝水年华》这部长篇，除了第一部中关于斯万的恋爱故事采用第三人称描写手法外，其余都是通过第一人称叙述出来的，叙述者“我”的回忆是贯穿全书的重要艺术表现方式。小说开卷，“我”从床上醒来，在梦幻般的状态中千思百想集于心头。这时，由于一杯茶和一块点心的触发，使他回忆起小时候在姑妈莱奥妮家生活的情景。这不仅引出了叙述者的家庭身世和个人经历，还引出了盖尔芒和斯万两大家族，引出了形形色色的人物事件，整部小说的内容就是通过叙述者的回忆向纵深发掘，逐步推进，最后完整地呈现出来。
《追忆逝水年华》共7部，15卷，其中包括《在斯旺家那边》（1913）、《在少女们身旁》（1919）、《盖尔芒特家那边》（1921）、《索多姆与戈摩尔》（1922）和作者死后出版的《女囚》、《女逃亡者》和《重现的时光》。第一部《在斯旺家那边》，没有得到文艺界的认可，第二部《在少女们身旁》（1919），获龚古尔文学奖，从此名声大振。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部巴尔扎克《人间喜剧》那样“规模宏大”的作品。小说的叙述者“我”是一个富于才华，喜爱文学艺术而又体弱多病的富家子弟。作品透过主人公的追忆，表现了作者对家庭、童年和初恋时感情的怀念，对庸俗事物的厌恶，同时也反映了19世纪末20世纪初所谓“黄金时代”的法国巴黎上流社会的种种人情世态。
小说故事套故事，人物事件众多。一方面是遵循法国旧传统习惯的圣·日耳曼贵族、盖尔芒特家族的公爵和公爵夫人、盖尔芒特亲王和王妃、公爵的兄弟等。另一方面是新的资产阶级暴发户和活跃在沙龙里的帮闲人物：斯旺及其情妇、交际花奥黛特、富裕而有文化教养的凡尔杜兰夫妇、外交官、医生、艺术家等。两个对立的社会，原来并不融洽，资产阶级很难跨进古老贵族的门厅。但是随着时间的推移和复杂的联姻关系，鸿沟逐渐被打破。斯旺死后，奥黛特成了盖尔芒特公爵的情妇。凡尔杜兰太太过去不被贵族家所接纳，现在成了亲王夫人。作者在贵族闭塞和悠闲的世外桃源中窥视到了衰败景象，从大资产阶级庸俗狂妄中看到了一种畸形社会的画面。虽然作者在描绘这种种画面时，并没有用尖锐的谴责之词，但从他笔锋转向下层人民时所表现出的好感中，又能体味到他的褒贬之意。那个在上层人家服务多年的老女仆弗朗索瓦兹，虽然满口乡下土话，脑子里有不少迷信和禁忌，但她勤劳、纯朴，有着乡下人的聪明机智，是作者最喜爱的人物之一。小说除了描写上流社会的生活外，还涉及到文学、绘画、音乐、建筑，以及第一次世界大战等诸多方面的内容。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部回忆录式的自传体小说，但没有传统回忆录那样对往事有条理的整理和分析，而是通过一个“非常神经质和过分受溺爱的孩子”对自己“缓慢成长过程”的追忆，渐渐地“意识”到自己周围人们的“存在”。作者只是捕捉自己心头留下并时时浮现在脑际的印象，然后加以展现。对他来说，事情发生的先后没有意义，现实从回忆中形成，通过回忆，既认识到现实世界，也认识到“自我”的存在。儿时早晨起来喝热茶时一块俗名叫“玛德莱娜”的甜糕点泡在茶里，边喝边吃点心所感到的乐处，在最后一卷《重现的时光》重提时，“今”与“昔”的回忆已同时出现在作者脑海里。通过回忆，他解除了“时间”的束缚，获得了过去、现在的重叠和交叉，形成了特殊的回忆结构。
作品的叙述角度明显区别于传统小说。作者说：“在我们幼小时，我觉得圣书上任何人物和命运都没有像诺亚那样悲惨，他因洪水泛滥，不得不在方舟里度过四十天，后来，我时常卧病，迫不得已成年累月地呆在方舟里过活。这时我才明白，尽管诺亚方舟紧闭着，茫茫黑夜镇住大地，但是诺亚从方舟里看世界是再透彻不过了。”作者也不是站在事物的外部观察世界，而是将客观世界溶入内心，然后再表现出来。他通过对内心世界的探索来发现外部世界，从意识洪流中认识外部世界的价值。作品的人称也有异于传统小说。作品中的“我”并不是传统小说中的第一人称，他只是一个穿针引线的人物，通过“我”的观察、感受引出其他人物和绘成绚丽多姿的画面。普鲁斯特虽然是现代派作家，但他的语言风格深受蒙田、塞维尼夫人和圣·西蒙等法国古典作家的影响，有着旷达、高雅、细腻、婉转的特点。
法国著名传记文学家兼评论家A·莫罗亚（1885—1967）在1954年巴黎伽里玛出版社出版的《七星丛书》本的《追忆逝水年华》序言中写道：“一九○○年至一九五○年这五十年中，除了《追忆逝水年华》之外，没有别的值得永志不忘的小说巨著。不仅由于普鲁斯特的作品和巴尔扎克的作品一样篇帙浩繁，因为也有人写过十五卷甚至二十卷的巨型小说，而且有时也写得文采动人，然而他们并不给我们发现 ‘新大陆’或包罗万象的感觉。这些作家满足于挖掘早已为人所知的‘矿脉’，而马塞尔·普鲁斯特则发现了新的‘矿藏’。”这也是强调《追忆逝水年华》的艺术优点就在于一个“新”字。然而艺术发展的客观规律并不在于单纯的创新，也不在于为创新而创新，更不在于对于传统的优秀艺术传统采取虚无主义的态度，从零开始的创新。创新是艺术的灵魂，然而创新绝不是轻而易举的，绝不是盲目的幻想。《追忆逝水年华》的创新是在传统的优秀艺术基础上的发展。
法国诗人P·瓦莱里（1871—1945）和著名评论家、教授A·蒂博岱（1874—1936）都在他们的评论中夸奖《追忆逝水年华》的艺术风格继承了法国文学的优秀传统。纪德和蒂博岱都提到普鲁斯特和十六世纪的伟大散文作家蒙田（1533—1592）在文风的旷达和高雅方面，似乎有一脉相承之妙。还有别的评论家甚至特意提到普鲁斯特受法国著名的回忆录作家圣·西蒙（1675—1755）的影响。
《追忆逝水年华》的作者逐渐构思这部小说大致在上世纪末年和本世纪初年。一九○七年他下定决心要创作这部小说，一九○八年他开始动笔，到一九二二年他去世前夕，匆匆写完最后一卷《重现的时光》。普鲁斯特创作《追忆逝水年华》的十余年间，完全禁闭在斗室中，与世隔绝。他全部精力与时间集中在回忆与写作上，毫不关心世事，所以第一次世界大战以及它对法国人民生活的强烈影响，在《追忆逝水年华》中几乎毫无反映。这部小说中反映的巴黎是十九世纪八、九十年代的巴黎。十九世纪末叶是法兰西资本主义逐渐由垄断资本进入帝国主义的过程。二十世纪初年，法国资本主义已经达到最高阶段，即帝国主义阶段。在这时期，法国社会出现了物质生活方面的极大繁荣。1900年巴黎举办震动全球的“世界博览会”，就表现出烜赫一时的繁荣景象。凡此种种，都没有引起在斗室中埋头写作的普鲁斯特注意。由此可见，就其所反映的社会生活而言，《追忆逝水年华》是十九世纪末年的小说，是反映临近巨大的变革与转折点时刻的法国社会的小说，因此可以说也是一部反映旧时代的小说。《似水年华》是法国传统小说艺术的最后一颗硕果，最后一朵奇葩，最后一座伟大的里程碑。
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
Print
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .
多卷集长篇巨着《追忆逝水年华》是法国作家马塞尔.普鲁斯特(1871-1922)的代表作，全书共七部，十五卷，从1905年开始创作，至作者逝世前全部完成。小说的第一部《通往斯万家的路》于1913年问世，但反应冷淡，一些有名的出版社都不愿出版，作者便自费印行。后来《通往斯万家的路》逐渐获得文艺界的赞赏。于是，各大出版社竟相与普鲁斯特签订合同，以求取得出版这部多卷集的其余几部作品的权利。不久，第一次世界大战爆发，出版工作被搁置下来。战争结束后，小说的第二部《在花枝招展的少女们身旁》于1919年出版，获龚古尔文学奖，普鲁斯特名声大振。此后，小说的第三部《盖尔芒家》和第四部《索多姆和郭穆尔》相继于1921和1922年出版，最后三部《女囚犯》(1923)，《逃亡者》(1925)，和《昔日再现》(1927) 则是普鲁斯特逝世后才出版的。
目录
第一部 在斯万家那边
追忆似水年华追忆似水年华
>第一卷 贡布雷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>第二卷 斯万之恋
>第三卷 地名：那个姓氏
第二部 在少女们身旁
>第一卷 斯万夫人周围
>第二卷 地名：地方
第三部 盖尔芒特家那边
>第一卷
>第二卷
>>第一章
>>第二章
第四部
>第一卷
>第二卷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>>第三章
>>第四章
第五部 女囚
第六部 女逃亡者
第七部 重现的时光
《追忆逝水年华》是一部与传统小说不同的长篇小说。全书以叙述者“我”为主体，将其所见所闻所思所感融合一体，既有对社会生活，人情世态的真实描写，又是一份作者自我追求，自我认识的内心经历的记录。除叙事以外，还包含有大量的感想和议论。整部作品没有中心人物，没有完整的故事，没有波澜起伏，贯穿始终的情节线索。它大体以叙述者的生活经历和内心活动为轴心，穿插描写了大量的人物事件，犹如一棵枝丫交错的大树，可以说是在一部主要小说上派生着许多独立成篇的其他小说，也可以说是一部交织着好几个主题曲的巨大交响乐。
小说中的叙述者“我”是一个家境富裕而又体弱多病的青年，从小对书画有特殊的爱好，曾经尝试过文学创作，没有成功。他经常出入巴黎的上层社会，频繁往来于各茶会，舞会，招待会及其它时髦的社交场合，并钟情于犹太富商的女儿吉尔伯特，但不久就失恋了。此外，他还到过家乡贡柏莱小住，到过海滨胜地巴培克疗养。他结识了另一位少女阿尔伯蒂，发现阿尔伯蒂患同性恋，便决心娶她为妻，以纠正她的变态心理。他把阿尔伯蒂禁闭在自己家中，阿尔伯蒂却设法逃跑，于是，他多方打听她，寻找她，后来得知阿尔伯蒂骑马摔死。在悲痛中他认识到自己的禀赋是写作，他所经历的悲欢苦乐正是文学创作的材料，只有文学创作才能把昔日失去的东西找回来。
在小说中，叙述者“我”的生活经历并不占全书的主要篇幅。作者通过故事套故事，故事与故事交叉重迭的方法，描写了众多的人物事件，展示了一幅19世纪与20世纪之交法国上流社会的生活图景。这里有姿色迷人，谈吐高雅而又无聊庸俗的盖尔芒夫人，有道德堕落，行为仇恶的变性人查琉斯男爵，有纵情声色的浪荡公子斯万等等。此外，小说还描写了一些于上流社会有关联的作家，艺术家，他们大都生前落魄失意，而作品却永世长存。小说还描写了一些下层的劳动者。《追忆逝水年华》这部长篇巨着通过上千个人物的活动，冷静，真实，细致地再现了法国上流社会的生活习俗，人情世态。因此有些西方评论家把它与巴尔扎克的《人间喜剧》相提并论，称之为“风流喜剧”。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部有独特风格的长篇小说，他不仅再现了客观世界，同时也展现了叙述者的主观世界，记录了叙述者对客观世界的内心感受。作者感兴趣的不是叙述故事，交代情节和刻画人物形象，而是抒发自己对某一问题的感想和分析。例如，叙述者参加了盖尔芒公爵家的一次晚宴，这使他长期以来对贵族的种种幻想顿时破灭，他意识到过去对他有魅力的只是名称，而不是真实的世界。整部作品对外部世界的描述同叙述者对它的感受，思考，分析浑然一体，又互相引发，互相充实，从而形成了物从我出，物中有我，物我合一的艺术境界。
《追忆逝水年华》这部长篇，除了第一部中关于斯万的恋爱故事采用第三人称描写手法外，其余都是通过第一人称叙述出来的，叙述者“我”的回忆是贯穿全书的重要艺术表现方式。小说开卷，“我”从床上醒来，在梦幻般的状态中千思百想集于心头。这时，由于一杯茶和一块点心的触发，使他回忆起小时候在姑妈莱奥妮家生活的情景。这不仅引出了叙述者的家庭身世和个人经历，还引出了盖尔芒和斯万两大家族，引出了形形色色的人物事件，整部小说的内容就是通过叙述者的回忆向纵深发掘，逐步推进，最后完整地呈现出来。
《追忆逝水年华》共7部，15卷，其中包括《在斯旺家那边》（1913）、《在少女们身旁》（1919）、《盖尔芒特家那边》（1921）、《索多姆与戈摩尔》（1922）和作者死后出版的《女囚》、《女逃亡者》和《重现的时光》。第一部《在斯旺家那边》，没有得到文艺界的认可，第二部《在少女们身旁》（1919），获龚古尔文学奖，从此名声大振。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部巴尔扎克《人间喜剧》那样“规模宏大”的作品。小说的叙述者“我”是一个富于才华，喜爱文学艺术而又体弱多病的富家子弟。作品透过主人公的追忆，表现了作者对家庭、童年和初恋时感情的怀念，对庸俗事物的厌恶，同时也反映了19世纪末20世纪初所谓“黄金时代”的法国巴黎上流社会的种种人情世态。
小说故事套故事，人物事件众多。一方面是遵循法国旧传统习惯的圣·日耳曼贵族、盖尔芒特家族的公爵和公爵夫人、盖尔芒特亲王和王妃、公爵的兄弟等。另一方面是新的资产阶级暴发户和活跃在沙龙里的帮闲人物：斯旺及其情妇、交际花奥黛特、富裕而有文化教养的凡尔杜兰夫妇、外交官、医生、艺术家等。两个对立的社会，原来并不融洽，资产阶级很难跨进古老贵族的门厅。但是随着时间的推移和复杂的联姻关系，鸿沟逐渐被打破。斯旺死后，奥黛特成了盖尔芒特公爵的情妇。凡尔杜兰太太过去不被贵族家所接纳，现在成了亲王夫人。作者在贵族闭塞和悠闲的世外桃源中窥视到了衰败景象，从大资产阶级庸俗狂妄中看到了一种畸形社会的画面。虽然作者在描绘这种种画面时，并没有用尖锐的谴责之词，但从他笔锋转向下层人民时所表现出的好感中，又能体味到他的褒贬之意。那个在上层人家服务多年的老女仆弗朗索瓦兹，虽然满口乡下土话，脑子里有不少迷信和禁忌，但她勤劳、纯朴，有着乡下人的聪明机智，是作者最喜爱的人物之一。小说除了描写上流社会的生活外，还涉及到文学、绘画、音乐、建筑，以及第一次世界大战等诸多方面的内容。
《追忆逝水年华》是一部回忆录式的自传体小说，但没有传统回忆录那样对往事有条理的整理和分析，而是通过一个“非常神经质和过分受溺爱的孩子”对自己“缓慢成长过程”的追忆，渐渐地“意识”到自己周围人们的“存在”。作者只是捕捉自己心头留下并时时浮现在脑际的印象，然后加以展现。对他来说，事情发生的先后没有意义，现实从回忆中形成，通过回忆，既认识到现实世界，也认识到“自我”的存在。儿时早晨起来喝热茶时一块俗名叫“玛德莱娜”的甜糕点泡在茶里，边喝边吃点心所感到的乐处，在最后一卷《重现的时光》重提时，“今”与“昔”的回忆已同时出现在作者脑海里。通过回忆，他解除了“时间”的束缚，获得了过去、现在的重叠和交叉，形成了特殊的回忆结构。
作品的叙述角度明显区别于传统小说。作者说：“在我们幼小时，我觉得圣书上任何人物和命运都没有像诺亚那样悲惨，他因洪水泛滥，不得不在方舟里度过四十天，后来，我时常卧病，迫不得已成年累月地呆在方舟里过活。这时我才明白，尽管诺亚方舟紧闭着，茫茫黑夜镇住大地，但是诺亚从方舟里看世界是再透彻不过了。”作者也不是站在事物的外部观察世界，而是将客观世界溶入内心，然后再表现出来。他通过对内心世界的探索来发现外部世界，从意识洪流中认识外部世界的价值。作品的人称也有异于传统小说。作品中的“我”并不是传统小说中的第一人称，他只是一个穿针引线的人物，通过“我”的观察、感受引出其他人物和绘成绚丽多姿的画面。普鲁斯特虽然是现代派作家，但他的语言风格深受蒙田、塞维尼夫人和圣·西蒙等法国古典作家的影响，有着旷达、高雅、细腻、婉转的特点。
法国著名传记文学家兼评论家A·莫罗亚（1885—1967）在1954年巴黎伽里玛出版社出版的《七星丛书》本的《追忆逝水年华》序言中写道：“一九○○年至一九五○年这五十年中，除了《追忆逝水年华》之外，没有别的值得永志不忘的小说巨著。不仅由于普鲁斯特的作品和巴尔扎克的作品一样篇帙浩繁，因为也有人写过十五卷甚至二十卷的巨型小说，而且有时也写得文采动人，然而他们并不给我们发现 ‘新大陆’或包罗万象的感觉。这些作家满足于挖掘早已为人所知的‘矿脉’，而马塞尔·普鲁斯特则发现了新的‘矿藏’。”这也是强调《追忆逝水年华》的艺术优点就在于一个“新”字。然而艺术发展的客观规律并不在于单纯的创新，也不在于为创新而创新，更不在于对于传统的优秀艺术传统采取虚无主义的态度，从零开始的创新。创新是艺术的灵魂，然而创新绝不是轻而易举的，绝不是盲目的幻想。《追忆逝水年华》的创新是在传统的优秀艺术基础上的发展。
法国诗人P·瓦莱里（1871—1945）和著名评论家、教授A·蒂博岱（1874—1936）都在他们的评论中夸奖《追忆逝水年华》的艺术风格继承了法国文学的优秀传统。纪德和蒂博岱都提到普鲁斯特和十六世纪的伟大散文作家蒙田（1533—1592）在文风的旷达和高雅方面，似乎有一脉相承之妙。还有别的评论家甚至特意提到普鲁斯特受法国著名的回忆录作家圣·西蒙（1675—1755）的影响。
《追忆逝水年华》的作者逐渐构思这部小说大致在上世纪末年和本世纪初年。一九○七年他下定决心要创作这部小说，一九○八年他开始动笔，到一九二二年他去世前夕，匆匆写完最后一卷《重现的时光》。普鲁斯特创作《追忆逝水年华》的十余年间，完全禁闭在斗室中，与世隔绝。他全部精力与时间集中在回忆与写作上，毫不关心世事，所以第一次世界大战以及它对法国人民生活的强烈影响，在《追忆逝水年华》中几乎毫无反映。这部小说中反映的巴黎是十九世纪八、九十年代的巴黎。十九世纪末叶是法兰西资本主义逐渐由垄断资本进入帝国主义的过程。二十世纪初年，法国资本主义已经达到最高阶段，即帝国主义阶段。在这时期，法国社会出现了物质生活方面的极大繁荣。1900年巴黎举办震动全球的“世界博览会”，就表现出烜赫一时的繁荣景象。凡此种种，都没有引起在斗室中埋头写作的普鲁斯特注意。由此可见，就其所反映的社会生活而言，《追忆逝水年华》是十九世纪末年的小说，是反映临近巨大的变革与转折点时刻的法国社会的小说，因此可以说也是一部反映旧时代的小说。《似水年华》是法国传统小说艺术的最后一颗硕果，最后一朵奇葩，最后一座伟大的里程碑。
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .