[.ca] In Search of Lost Time Volume 2: Within a Budding Grove (ISBN 0099362317)

The pleasure of reading Proust (Volume II).:
"Alas!" Proust writes in the second volume of his attempts to recapture his lost childhood and long-forgotten feelings, "in the freshest flower it is possible to discern those just perceptible signs which the instructed mind already betray what will, by the dessication or fructification of the flesh that is today in bloom, be the ultimate form, immutable and already predestined, of the autumnal seed" (p. 643). Having just finished reading WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE for the fourth time, it remains (with SWANN'S WAY) at the top of my list of favorite novels. Influenced by John Ruskin, Henri Bergson, Wagner and the fiction of Anatole France, in his "universality and deep awareness of human nature," Proust (1871-1922) is considered "as primordial as Tolstoy," and "as wise as Shakespeare" (Harold Bloom, GENIUS, p. 218). I most recently returned to Proust's BUDDING GROVE through the Modern Library's 2003 edition of the Montcrieff/Kilmartin translation of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, Volumes I through VI. Through a continued series of what Walter Pater has called "privileged moments," or what James Joyce might call "epiphanies," the narrative of WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE gracefully transitions away from the childhood recollections of SWANN'S WAY, to the narrator's exquisite memories of his adolescence spent with his grandmother in the seaside setting of Balbec. We find that Charles Swann's turbulent affair with the "illiterate courtesan" (p. 124), Odette de Crecy, has resulted in marriage; and although the narrator's "enchantment" with Swann's daughter, Gilberte, gradually fades, he soon encounters unrequited love once again upon meeting the "charming, pretty, intelligent" and "quite witty" (p. 116) Albertine Simonet. In Volume II, Proust further develops his notion that human love is synonymous with suffering, failure, exhaustion, ruin, and despair. To love and believe in a woman completely becomes the "cause of the greatest suffering" (p. 713). "There can be no peace of mind in love," Proust's narrator reflects, "since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for future desires" (p. 213). "In reality," he adds, "there is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralises, makes potential only, postpones, but which may at any moment become, what it would long since have been had we not obtained what we wanted, excrutiating" (p. 214). WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, much like SWANN'S WAY, is by no means a feel-good novel. Proust reveals that while love may allow us to touch the sublime, it also teaches us that there are no limits to human suffering. In Volume II of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, Proust introduces us to all the major characters of his subsequent volumes. Serious readers will experience uncommon pleasure in reading Proust. SWANN'S WAY and WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE are perfect examples of why it's worth one's time to read "a good book." In fact, a life without experiencing the rich pleasures of reading Proust would be real poverty. G. Merritt

Open up the floodgates, freedom reigns supreme:
Volume 2 of Marcel Proust's 4000+ page masterpiece, "In Search of Lost Time", is, if it's possible, an even greater book than the first volume. I read Volume 1, "Swann's Way", with the kind of astonishment and joy generally reserved for Tolstoy and Maugham, constantly amazed at Proust's (via Moncrieff, Kilmartin, & Enright) ability to deepen sensation and memory to almost religious proportions, and when I finished I thought, "There's no way he can keep this level of beauty up for another 5 volumes." Judging from Volume 2, I was dead wrong. Proust published "Swann's Way" in 1913, and waited 6 years to publish Volume 2, "Within a Budding Grove"; I presume that in the interim he reorganized his ideas, deciding to expand his novel and explore his themes in greater detail. This volume is much more leisurely and intricately paced than the first, as Proust masterfully tells us of the end of his relationship with Gilberte, his relocation to Balbec, and the beginning of his relationship with Albertine. The slow dying of love, the vaguely confusing experience of a new dwelling as it gradually becomes a home, watching beautiful young girls (the "budding grove" of the title) enjoying their beauty and youth as they walk down a city street...these things and more are plumbed and ruminated upon, with Proust's typically intricate and gorgeous language. These books, if the first two are any guide, are like nothing ever attempted in the history of literature. Rather than dealing with WHAT happened, Proust settles himself in for the long haul to try and understand WHY it happened; to quote Christopher Hitchens, Proust "exposes and clarifies the springs of human motivation...with a transparency unexampled except in Shakespeare or George Eliot." But I don't think Bill nor George ever dug this deep; Marcel Proust is absolutely one of a kind, and he's not easy to read in this world of flash-images and expressways. He takes his time. Though he was dying with every labored breath (he didn't live to see the entire novel published), Proust was in no hurry to finish. His thoughts, like his sentences, have multiple branches. Follow them and you'll cherish the experience like it was your own. Moving on to Volume 3.....

Evolving feelings:
In this second volume of "In search of lost time", Marcel shows the evolution of his feelings towards women. The book starts off with his encounters with Gilberte, the daughter of Swann and Odette, in which the enjoy playing with other kids. Marcel finds misterious and fascinating the perspective of being admitted in Gilberte's intimate spaces: her house, the lobby, the rooms. His fascination includes Gilberte's mother, Odette; as well as he finds resistence in Swann's figure. But soon his passion for Gilberte disappears and he forces himself not to see her, in an attempt to make himself more interesting to her. But the unforseen result of his tactics is that his feelings for Gilberte fall into oblivion. Then, Marcel focuses in the meetings of the Swanns with the high society, in which Oddette is not completely well received (given her past as a "cocotte"); but she enters in the circles gradually. Marcel travels to the beaches of Balbec with his grandmother and that's where he meets Albertine and her circle of colorfull and charming young friends. It is also noticeable the character of Norpois, whose words to Marcel are full of double meaning and hidden intentions. Marcel meets his friends Saint-Luop, too. After a few sightings he seems a bit pretentious, but through an aunt of Saint-Loup's (who he meets through his grandmother) he gets to know this young man and they stablish a close friendship. An uncle of his is Charlus, who will turn out to be a very important character. By the end of the book the reader have met the circle of friends that Marcel has stablished as a result of his travel. He has taken the first step to his later relation with Albertine. Proust rejoices in describing things and one has to understand why is that. His references to the Dreyfuss affair serve as a way to show the behaviour of the high society and the snobism, which seems to rule the relationships between the different circles. Everything serves a purpose with Proust, even though an incautious reader may think that it is a long dissapointing book, I find it to be one of the great literary endeavours of the past century. His way of looking in detail the simple and most trivial life in all its seemingly meaningless details, turns such details in evidence of the connection between the big destinies and the low and selfish passions. A great example of this is when he discovers his own place in time, after considering how he relates to Gilberte and with his hobbies. This second volume of "In search of lost time" constitutes an honest, unidealistic view of love and how its nature is actually connected to the low passions that rule societies.

Adolescence narrated with supreme artistry:
Reading Proust presents the challenge of understanding his complex method of conveying the impressions made upon him by various people, places, and things, impressions which are so deeply personal and unique that they can be very difficult for the detached reader to relate to. Proust can recall the torrid emotions of a teenage crush with the articulate language and clarity of an extremely intellectual adult with a literary voice so distinctive it practically exists in a genre of its own; and in "Within a Budding Grove," the second volume of "In Search of Lost Time," he subjects his narrator, now in his young teens, to the charms of two girls who will define for him a youthful ideal by which he standardizes love and beauty. Searching for ideals seems to be the young Marcel's goal in life. Whether he is enamored with the actress Berma at the theater, the writings of his literary model Bergotte, or the paintings of the artist Elstir, he immerses himself headlong into what he believes to be the supreme examples of artistic experience and absorbs the impressions so that he may reflect them in his own future writing. Oddly enough, his feminine ideal is no girl of his own age but Odette, the courtesan who was the obsession of his parents' friend Swann in the previous volume and is now Swann's wife, and whose checkered past casts a lingering shadow over her husband's social status, excluding them from the higher strata of Paris society (the Faubourg Saint-Germain) and keeping Swann suspicious about her behavior with other men. Marcel is trying to develop a relationship with the Swanns' lovely, lively red-haired daughter Gilberte, and he agonizes over the fear that he will not succeed in impressing upon her parents that he is good enough for her. It may seem strange that an adolescent Marcel should spend so much time talking about the Swanns, as though they were potential in-laws, rather than his own parents, but this is an indication of his preoccupying desire for Gilberte's company. Finally he comes to the realization that she does not feel the same way about him as he does about her, which accompanies his bitter shock at seeing her with another boy. Long after his passion for her has faded, however, he still treasures his memories of the time he has spent in Odette's salon. The second half of this volume concerns Marcel's summer sojourn with his grandmother in Balbec, a seaside resort. There he meets his grandmother's friend Madame de Villeparisis, whose father spent the nineteenth century hobnobbing with all the great French writers of the era, and befriends her grandnephew Robert de Saint-Loup, a young man a little older than himself, who is embarking on a military career. One day he notices a remarkably attractive girl walking a bicycle with a group of her friends; this turns out to be Albertine, with whom he forms a relationship that is more playful than the tense one he had with the frigid Gilberte but ends sourly with a refused kiss and a confused Marcel pondering her intentions. Marcel's hypersensitive nature grants him many advantages as a narrator, giving him the ability to overanalyze every situation that shapes his consciousness, but arguably limits his lifestyle. His parents coddle him about his health, even supposing an evening at the theater will debilitate him, and, as we see at Balbec, he accustoms himself to a new setting in an abnormally awkward manner. But perhaps his awkwardness, in love as in life, can be explained partly by the nymphic philosophy by which Odette guides her life: "You can do anything with men when they're in love with you, they're such idiots!" The truth hurts.

*****:
Beautiful writing, and brilliant observations and well-drawn characters. Some caveats are the often labyrinthine sentences and multi-page paragraphs. Most people read SWANN'S WAY and no further, so those who make it through the 2nd volume might praise it excessively out of a slight superiority complex. Also, "Marcel" is also a little bitchy in his tone, and his "happiest when I'm alone" philosophy is kind of sad and self-absorbed, and his visiting whore houses is jolting after you've been reading graceful sentences and events. And some of his anthropological and psychological observations are trite and nothing most readers haven't concluded for themselves, and Proust sounds like he believes he's letting you in on some insights of which you're undoubtedly ignorant. But, yes, many of his insights are brilliant and eye-opening. And the sentences that are over-loaded actually are the exception, and the rest are doubtless among the most beautiful sentences ever written. Proust must have been extremely introspective to have thought so extensively about the most minute of moments...and good for us he was, since we get to enjoy the fruits of his introspection in this book. The humor that comes across is delightful, too. Proust has one thing you can't learn in any MFA creative writing program, and that is CHARM!