Launching into À la recherche du temps perdu is a unique experience.
It’s not so much the length (though at 1.5 million words and 2400 pages it is the longest novel ever published), but the baggage that comes with it.
I still remember how small I felt when a fellow student at University told me he was learning French so that he could read Marcel Proust in the original version.
In English culture, we tend to go for humour when faced with complexity. So there are Monty Python sketches about Proust, cartoon versions of Proust, films about Proust, popular books about the experience of reading Proust. But you don’t just pick up and read Proust. If anything, you put it on a bucket list first and then read it. That way you’re not taking yourself for an intellectual – heaven forbid – it’s just this list you’ve got that needs ticking off. And that’s when the shock hits you.
It’s not very difficult.
The Kit
À la recherche du temps perdu comes in seven volumes and there are pocket editions at around 7€ a volume. But it’s in the public domain, so there are also free e-book versions that you can download for your Kindle or tablet.
The first volume – Du côté de chez Swann – is also available as a public domain audiobook. The (sadly anonymous) reader has very clear diction and is pleasant to listen to. By splitting your screen you can easily switch from the text to audio and back again.
The Pace
It’s good to go gently. Reading two or three pages at a time is a good chunk. Try pre-reading the text, then listening to the audio while following the words. Finally – solitude permitting – try reading it out loud along with the audiobook at 0.75% (it’s a setting on Youtube). Follow this method and you can read around 10 pages in an hour’s session.
The Terrain
La Recherche is for those who have attained advanced level French skills. But Proust is not difficult in the way that, say, James Joyce can seem difficult. The thoughts he expresses are accessible, the situations he describes are readily understandable and the basic vocabulary too.
So the context is benign. There are nevertheless challenges to overcome. Some of the vocabulary is outmoded. If you’re using an ebook, you can press and hold a word to get a translation. Some of the verb conjugations may be unfamiliar (for example the imperfect of the subjunctive). In practice, this doesn’t turn out to be a big barrier to understanding.
And the sentences are very long. This is an essential part of the pleasure of reading Proust. Each sentence is in itself a miniature work of art, an exploration of the meandering paths of memory. But tracing the links between long strings of sub-clauses is a skill that needs to be nurtured if you’ve been brought up on a diet of concision.
The Journey
All being well, you’ll find yourself swept away by the beauty of the writing. Here too the work is remarkably accessible: one doesn’t have to learn how to appreciate Proust, the poetry is flagrant for all to see. By way of an example, below is an extract:
Quand ces tours de jardin de ma grand’mère avaient lieu après dîner, une chose avait le pouvoir de la faire rentrer: c’était, à un des moments où la révolution de sa promenade la ramenait périodiquement, comme un insecte, en face des lumières du petit salon où les liqueurs étaient servies sur la table à jeu,—si ma grand’tante lui criait: «Bathilde! viens donc empêcher ton mari de boire du cognac!» Pour la taquiner, en effet (elle avait apporté dans la famille de mon père un esprit si différent que tout le monde la plaisantait et la tourmentait), comme les liqueurs étaient défendues à mon grand-père, ma grand’tante lui en faisait boire quelques gouttes. Ma pauvre grand’mère entrait, priait ardemment son mari de ne pas goûter au cognac; il se fâchait, buvait tout de même sa gorgée, et ma grand’mère repartait, triste, découragée, souriante pourtant, car elle était si humble de cœur et si douce que sa tendresse pour les autres et le peu de cas qu’elle faisait de sa propre personne et de ses souffrances, se conciliaient dans son regard en un sourire où, contrairement à ce qu’on voit dans le visage de beaucoup d’humains, il n’y avait d’ironie que pour elle-même, et pour nous tous comme un baiser de ses yeux qui ne pouvaient voir ceux qu’elle chérissait sans les caresser passionnément du regard. Ce supplice que lui infligeait ma grand’tante, le spectacle des vaines prières de ma grand’mère et de sa faiblesse, vaincue d’avance, essayant inutilement d’ôter à mon grand-père le verre à liqueur, c’était de ces choses à la vue desquelles on s’habitue plus tard jusqu’à les considérer en riant et à prendre le parti du persécuteur assez résolument et gaiement pour se persuader à soi-même qu’il ne s’agit pas de persécution; elles me causaient alors une telle horreur, que j’aurais aimé battre ma grand’tante. Mais dès que j’entendais: «Bathilde, viens donc empêcher ton mari de boire du cognac!» déjà homme par la lâcheté, je faisais ce que nous faisons tous, une fois que nous sommes grands, quand il y a devant nous des souffrances et des injustices: je ne voulais pas les voir; je montais sangloter tout en haut de la maison à côté de la salle d’études, sous les toits, dans une petite pièce sentant l’iris, et que parfumait aussi un cassis sauvage poussé au dehors entre les pierres de la muraille et qui passait une branche de fleurs par la fenêtre entr’ouverte.
And here is the first official translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, published in 1922.
When these walks of my grandmother’s took place after dinner there was one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if (at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her, moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her: “Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!” For, simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my father’s family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops. My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow upon them passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother’s vain entreaties, of her in her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass—all these were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor’s side with a happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, tormenting; but in those days they filled me with such horror that I longed to strike my great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her “Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!” in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window.
