Time Regained

Who finished the never-ending In Search of Lost Time? That's me! It's not a bad item to check off on yourbucket list.

Summary

It is the end of the First World War, and the narrator is nearing the end of his life. He reflects on his memory, on the changes that have taken place in his person, on his extinguished feelings. He realizes that the people around him have changed and aged, and thus realizes that he too has changed and become old. Gilberte, whom he once loved so much, confesses to him that at one time she loved him too; he does not draw any particular emotion from this. His friend Saint-Loup returns transformed from the war. There are now hotels for homosexuals, where he comes across Charlus in a bad way. The social salons he had been frequenting for a long time had changed completely, salons that he had believed to be unchanging.

And above all, it is in this volume, after a lifetime of procrastination, that the narrator has a revelation and finally decides to write. He understands that all we perceive of our life are the images we form in our mind, and which are shaped by our feelings and impressions of the moment. With the passing of time, these feelings and impressions change completely, and the person one was no longer exists. The memories we have of the past also change, since the person who has them today is not the same as the person who lived them. The past literally no longer exists. All we have is the present moment.

As the narrator's health declines, he is now fully determined to write his work. He hurries to do it before he loses his faculties. And obviously, he succeeds, since this work exists and we read it today.

Impressions

I can't believe I'm done. It took me about three years, and that's just fine. I loved the first volume, a little less the second one, I had to reread the whole third one because I didn't understand anything, and from then on I took a steady pace, reading quietly and without pressure. I admired Proust's endless sentences while thinking that they could have been shorter. I was seriously bored at times (I don't share the narrator's interest in noble families and place names at all), and at other times I stopped to better digest a sentence that had hit the nail on the head. I found the narrator adorable and brilliant for a while, only to find him stupid and snobby, and vice versa.

I think it takes a certain type of personality and interest to love Proust, and I was a good candidate, but not entirely. I understand both the people who love this work and the people who hate it. I lean more towards adoration, with caveats.

But I must admit that this conclusion is quite phenomenal, to the point of making me want to reread these seven volumes one day, when I have more general knowledge and maybe a little more developed brain. This work is truly unique. I'm proud that I had the patience to get to know it.