synopsis:

'in search of lost time' does not have a clear and continuous plot line. The narrator is Marcel. He is not marcel Proust but resembles him in many ways. Marcel is initially ignorant - only slowly does he begin to grasp the essence of the hidden reality. At the end he is preparing to write a novel which is like the one just presented to the reader. Marcel's childhood memories start to flow when he tastes a madeleine cake dipped in linden tea such as he was given as a child.

Memory takes the central role in 'in search of lost time' and apparently insignificant details prove to be the most important. The first part focuses on Marcel's childhood in Combray. Proust follows the lives of three families, Marcel's own, the aristocratic de Guermantes, and the family of the Jewish Bohemian dilettante Swann. Among the central characters are the faithless cocotte Odette, whom Swann marries, homosexual Baron de Charlus, partly modelled on Count Robert de Montesquiou-Ferensac (1855-1921), an art critic, poet, and essayist, Dutchess, Mme de Villeparisis, Robert Saint-Loup, and Marcel's great love Albertine, who is perhaps lesbian and who dies in a riding accident. The character was partly based on Alfred Agostinelli, Proust's chauffeur, secretary and live-in companion. Proust gradually deepens the portraits of his characters - Vinteuil, a modest piano teacher, turns out to be a great composer. In the climax of the novel the narrator fails to recognize many of his friends because they have changed so much physically during the years. Marcel realizes that his vocation as an artist is to capture the past still alive within us. And being was for Proust the complete past. In the narration past and present merge, reality appears in half-forgotten experiences, and parts of the past are felt differently at different times.

on this book:

'in search of lost time' was influenced by the autobiographies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and François Chateaubriand. it is less a story than an interior monologue. Discursive, but alive with metaphor and sense imagery, the work is rich in psychological, philosophical, and sociological understanding. A vital theme is the link between external and internal reality found in time and memory, to which Proust sees humanity's strivings subjugated - time mocks the individual's intelligence and endeavors; memory synthesizes yet distorts past experience. Most experience causes inner pain, and the objects of human desires are the chief causes of their suffering.

In 1912 Proust produced the first volume of his seven-part major work, 'in search of lost time'. The massive story of 3 000 pages occupied the last decade of his life. Proust published the first volume, 'Du côté de chez Swann' ('Swann's Way'), at his own expense in 1913, after Andre Gide advised the Gallimard publishing house to reject it. 'Swann's Way' gained a modest success. Gide made later an offer to publish the remainder of the work. The second volume, which was delayed by the WW I, appeared in 1919, but the next parts made Proust finally internationally famous. He was still correcting the typescript on his deathbed. He did not manage to finish the final volumes before his death on November 18, 1922.