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Swann's Way by Marcel Proustis our 2024 1st Quarter Long Read.

This is the No Spoiler Thread
The Spoiler Thread will open on January 1, 2024.

This early posting of the No Spoiler thread is to discuss any non-plot issues pertaining to the book.

Appropriate Posts can contain:
1. Information about the author.
2. Compare editions/translations.
3. Any historical or background information
4. Are you familiar with this author’s work? Do you have any expectations going into the book?
5. What made you decide to read this book?
6. Any fan fiction that you have read or would like to read? Just link the books.
7. If you loved the book and want others to share in that experience, use this thread to motivate others, again save plot specifics for the Spoiler thread
8. If you hated the book, it would be best to keep that for the spoiler page

The most important thing to remember is no plot discussion. Any post that contains plot information or spoilers will be deleted.

Very excited to read this book because I've heard good things about it! Looking forward to reading and participating on the thread.

I'm so happy this book won the poll. I've always felt a bit intimidated by it. But a friend I admire said it's his favorite book. He said, it's not a difficult book; it's a book you can get lost in. He suggested I leave it on the nightstand and read a bit each night, and really savor it.

I'm going to try that.

I'm planning to join, and I am definitely am intimidated as well. I don't get on with stream of consciousness, but I'm willing to give this book a shot.

Yes! Proust on our shelf!

Very much looking forward to starting this. It has been on my “to-read�� and “mega classic�� for many years. I have been holding back expecting it would become a group read someday. Now is the time! I guess it is one of those books there a group read is extremely helpful.


It is on the 100 Best Books of All Time: The World Library List
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A major Danish news paper (Politiken) has since Covid19 been running a series on reading the big classics. The reviewer pointed to The Albertine Workout as his favorite companion read. It is a poetry collection. I am intrigued by that.

Klowey wrote: "... a friend I admire said it's his favorite book. He said, it's not a difficult book; it's a book you can get lost in. He suggested I leave it on the nightstand and read a bit each night, and really savor it."

Sounds good!

I am also planning to join but skeptical. I have been eyeing this book for far too many years, might as well try it and see.

I think (hope) you're right J Blueflower that a group read will be really helpful with this one! I've tried it twice and not been able to get very far. I like Klowey's friend's idea--a little at a time. I really believe it's something I will love if I can get into it, so fingers crossed.

Looks like I may be able to choose between two library translation options: Moncrieff or Davis. I may have to go with whatever is available when the time comes, but would love to hear translation recommendations if anyone has them.

I put off reading Swann's Way for years. We all have those books everybody around has read but us and this is one of them. A group read is actually quite motivational.

Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to 'In Search of Lost Time' seems like a good visual guide to read along. In fact, I'm also thinking of reading Dining with Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Epoque as a backdrop.

Moncrieff is usually recommended if you are serious about the faithfulness of the translation. I've heard the late-Victorian prose really comes alive in his translation.

Ila wrote: "Moncrieff is usually recommended if you are serious about the faithfulness of the translation. I've heard the late-Victorian prose really comes alive in his translation."

Thank you, Ila! I'll try for that one.

Your supplementary reads look great. I don't have access to them, but was thinking of grabbing How Proust Can Change Your Life maybe ...

The library has the Davis translation, but the Moncrieff is inexpensive on Kindle and I can make notes with it. I will probably just go with Moncrieff based on Ila's comment.

Sara wrote: "the Moncrieff is inexpensive on Kindle"

.... and free on Gutenberg

"Translated From The French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff "

I suggest anyone unfamiliar with the Davis and Moncrieff translations sample them to see the difference. Both translations have their merits but there are differences worth noting. For example Davis will probably have longer sentences with numerous dependent clauses that closer emulate the French which is better suited to that style where Moncrieff used more punctuation to get the clarity better suited to English. Moncrieff's would have been the translation that many English authors experienced if they did not read the work in French, so if one wants to feel a kinship with Woolf while reading, Moncrieff is the way to go, but if one wants something more akin to Proust than Davis would be a choice. Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1 translated by Carter in this edition supposedly cleans up some Moncrieff inconsistencies to give one a better Moncrieff.

I am reading the Moncrieff while listening to one of the audio translations. I will also be reading along with Swann's Way James Grieve translation because it is an Australian translation newly published in the U.S. by NYRB and I have a copy. It is supposedly a little more colloquial but I have yet to read it to confirm.

Sam wrote: "I suggest anyone unfamiliar with the Davis and Moncrieff translations sample them to see the difference. Both translations have their merits but there are differences worth noting. For example Davi..."

Great info and advice, Sam. Thank you!

I’ve read the whole of In Search of Lost Time, and have read Swann’s Way four times. I have a goal of reading through the whole thing again, so maybe this will be the jumpstart that will inspire me.

My thoughts:
1. You’re going to feel lost at first. Just try to relax and go with it. Soon you will be caught up in the language and the story of Swann and Odette.
2. Proust isn’t really a stream of consciousness writer like Joyce or Faulkner. He just writes really long sentences. Really long, stunningly beautiful sentences.
3. There are a lot of characters. Again, just relax and let Proust reveal his characters at his own pace.
4. Proust does require attention from the reader, but at the end of the day, he’s just telling the stories of people and the more you read, the more sense it makes. He’s not trying to confuse you.
5. Proust is quite funny.
6. If you can read Dickens, you can read Proust. 😉

I will try to read it, heard it's a challenging one but it should be easier with group read.

Thank you for your insights, Regina! Everything you describe sounds wonderful, especially the long sentences. I'm getting anxious to start now ...

Regina-- thanks for the encouragement and words of wisdom about reading Proust. I've had a copy forever, maybe now's the time to give it a go.

I’ll be reading this on Serial Reader. It has the Montcrief translation. Small doses��

I'm planning to join the group. I'm reading an Italian version by Natalia Ginzburg

I've been wanting to read Proust, and feel that it will be a richer experience in a group. I ordered Swann's Way, the Moncrieff/Kilmartin translation.

I'm in. Reading the Davis translation.

I’m loathe to commit to this as I never seem to get to the long reads, no matter how much I want to read a particular title, but I do have this. We read an excerpt in a college French class (eons ago), which piqued my interest. I’ve had the Modern Library/Moncrieff copy in Mount TBR for ages now. According to my calculations, all I would need to complete it in three months is seven pages a day or forty-eight a week. We shall see�� 🫤

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "I'm in. Reading the Davis translation."

I’m reading Davis, too. Getting excited for this!

I planned on reading the Lydia Davis translation of and bought it last year. My understanding from critics was that her translation was truer to Proust's actual style whereas Moncrieff adapted Proust to a more late Victorian era style that Proust did not write in in order to make Proust more readable to the English speaking public. However, in perusing the Internet, I discovered that a new translation was just issued on December 14, 2023.

Oxford World Classics have issued their translation of the first volume entitled The Way of Swann translated by Brian Nelson. Mr. Nelson previously oversaw the work on all the new translations of Émile Zola that Oxford University Press has done over the past 30 years and translated 8 of Zola's works himself. As I'm not sure I can find this new translation yet on ŷ������, I'm including the pages from Oxford University Press, Amazon and Blackwell's on the work:





I have read four of Brian Nelson's Zola translations: The Fortune of the Rougons The Belly of Paris The Ladies�� Paradise The Assommoir

I have enjoyed all of Brian Nelson's translations. Based on my brief reading of reviews of the work and my own experience with Nelson, I will now read his Proust translation. I have been comfortable with Nelson's translations before so, for me, it is the safe choice. I had also been a little bit wary that I might react to Lydia Davis' translation as I have to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's highly respected Russian translations, which are considered to be much truer to the author's actual style. But after reading several of their translations, I've determined that they just leave me cold.

By choosing the Nelson translation, I will feel more confident in blaming Proust rather than the translator if this reading doesn't work for me. It certainly won't be MY fault.

Getting excited about this one. Here's a fun video, especially if you like lists:


I think I'll be reading this very slowly--just a few pages each day, and take the whole three months to finish.

Kathleen wrote: "Getting excited about this one. Here's a fun video, especially if you like lists:


I think I'll be reading this very slowly--just a few pages each day, a..."

Thank you for this video link!

I’m tempted too...

I have failed at reading this for a few years now, so maybe now is my chance!

Dianne wrote: "I have failed at reading this for a few years now, so maybe now is my chance!"

Glad you found it Diane! Feel free to say hello in the welcome to the group discussion where you can meet the great moderators and here is a link to the spoiler discussion which has notes about translations background materials, etc. Good Luck! I had to amend this and link the spoiler discussion.
/topic/show/...

Dianne wrote: "I have failed at reading this for a few years now"

You did not read it, you read it 3 times, and you rated it 5 stars? Looks a bit confusing.
/review/show...

Welcome to the discussion anyway.

Kathleen wrote: "I think I'll be reading this very slowly--just a few pages each day, a..."

I thought I'd try reading it slowly too, but the first day I read until the first chapter break, which was 40 pages, and today in the 150+ page chapter I had trouble deciding where to stop. Not only does the lack of chapter breaks cause a problem but the streamy-dreamy style makes stopping like trying to get off a boat while it flows down a river - there are few if any natural stopping points, at least for me.
I generally like to plan how much I will read before I start and it is impossible to decide that prior to starting with this book. Luckily I did find a decent stopping point after 28 pages today but will still have to backtrack a paragraph when returning.
I'll get the hang of it as the book goes on though.

Regina wrote: "Just try to relax and go with it...he’s just telling the stories of people and the more you read, the more sense it makes. "

It was good to know all that going in, so thanks for the pep-talk Coach.
You're right, it is not a difficult read except that the long sentences and word flow sometime lead my brain adrift into its own thoughts and I have to rein myself in to get back to where I am in the book. Oh, and finding the reading breaks.
But these are minor problems as the syntax and wording is pleasant and not difficult. So while it may take a bit more mental discipline to keep me on track, that's just similar to watching a good art house movie.
(view spoiler)[I'm enjoying meeting the characters, such as Aunt Leonie. My break today came right before He was going to start talking about Uncle Adolphe (hide spoiler)] (being careful in the non-spoiler thread)

I agree with others that it is not a difficult read, but the lack of chapters or chapter breaks makes it difficult to find a good stopping point. Definitely not something I can read on my short commute or during breaks.

I'm nervous about this one, but I will be giving it a try. Few pages a day sounds like the way to go. This will be my first attempt at reading Proust. I'm going to order the version below, I think, as I would like to scribble on my copy to help digest it.

Does anyone know who the translator of this edition would be, please?

Terence Kilmartin, I think.


Kathryn wrote: "I'm nervous about this one, but I will be giving it a try. Few pages a day sounds like the way to go. This will be my first attempt at reading Proust. I'm going to order the version below, I think,..."

The lack of chapter breaks is proving irritating so I'm stopping if possible when his topic essentially changes to something new.

Kathryn wrote: "I'm nervous about this one, but I will be giving it a try. Few pages a day sounds like the way to go. This will be my first attempt at reading Proust. I'm going to order the version below, I think,..."

Kathryn, that edition says the editor is Christopher Prendergast which means all volumes are translated by a different person. Swann's Way was translated by Lydia Davis. I have this version as an ebook and it explains the group translation project at the beginning of the edition. That's if Amazon is accurate on the description but they aren't always. You could order it directly from Penguin to be sure.

Here's the link to that edition: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1: The Way by Swann's which confirms Laurie's post.

I read all the books of In Search of Lost Time years ago. It is the best book I have ever read. It contains everything a book should have. While I was reading it, I used to think "That's it. I will never read another book after this one, any book would be tasteless!" It was not so, of course. :D
But you should try to read all the books at least in the same year: it is in the last one that you will find the sense of a long work, a real apotheosis! You should try to think of it like it is only one book, and the different books are only chapters. It was easy for me, my Italian edition had the whole work in only one book.

I have “a new translation by Lydia Davis��. Haven’t begun yet, but in the intro she writes that it was meant to be read “in the full, slow reading and rereading of every word, in complete submission to Proust’s subtle psychological analyses, his precise portraits, his compassionate humor, his richly colored and lyrical landscapes, his extended digressions, his architectonic sentences, his symphonic structures, his perfect formal designs.��

Daniela wrote: "It contains everything a book should have..."

I have more pedestrian tastes and usually prefer more of a plot or story. I expect, though, that more of that will come during the novella within the novel, "Swann in Love."
But the writing here does have, in the words of what our narrator likes about favored author Bergotte's writing, a "melodic flow." While a favorite author of mine Thomas Hardy's descriptive writing helps establish a feeling of place, I do find that Proust's melodic and descriptive writing sometimes takes me away from the story and I often have to think and remember where I am in it. (EDIT: Probably during "his extended digressions" that Jerilyn and Lydia Davis refer to) I am enjoying this reading experience though, enough that I'm now thinking about your other comment:

Daniela wrote: "But you should try to read all the books at least in the same year: it is in the last one that you will find the sense of a long work, a real apotheosis! You should try to think of it like it is only one book, and the different books are only chapters."

My plan was to just read this first one, but your comment really inspires me to change course and somehow fit in the whole series. My most memorable reading experiences have been with trilogies and series that often don't achieve their strong impact and greatness until the 2nd, 3rd or ending novel.
So, thanks, I think.

Today I discovered that my Kindle of Brian Nelson's Oxford Press edition called The Swann Way has begun to have a slight break between paragraphs every 18-22 pages (actually page flips) which, in the two I have looked at, seem to designate a change in scenes. I feel like I'd been left in the middle of the ocean and someone dropped a life preserver to me, something that, even if it doesn't rescue me, at least keeps me afloat. I'm thankful.

For those still pondering the translation to choose, this is an article that contains a comparison of three of the various translations of the opening passage of the "Swann in Love" novella:

Strange: My audiobook version starts with a foreword:

“Friendship, the friendship that includes the individual human being, is in its way a superficial thing, and reading is a friendship. But at least it is a sincere friendship, and the fact that it is a friendship with a deceased person, an absent one, gives it a selfless and almost touching quality. Reading is also a friendship that is freed from everything that makes other friendships so hideous. Since all of us who live are nothing but dead, which have not yet taken effect, all these courtesies, all these bows in the vestibule, which we call reverence, gratitude, and affection, and which we mix up with so many lies, barren and tiresome. ��.�� (Google Translate from Danish)

The foreword is about 13 minutes long before “For a long time I used to go to bed early.��

I am reading the old Danish translation by Rimestad.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Strange: My audiobook version starts with a foreword:

“Friendship, the friendship that includes the individual human being, is in its way a superficial thing, and reading is a friendship. But at l..."

Wow. That's some heavy stuff, J_BlueFlower!.Do you know if it's written by the author, or who wrote it? It is strange, but I like the idea of cutting through the courtesies to get to the truth. Thanks for sharing this!

I've started ... for the what? umpteenth time? ... So many times the Recherche du Temps Perdu has been recommended to me, so many times I've made an effort ... and just as many times that I can't get beyond the first pages. I'm afraid Proust and I just don't suit. What drives him to write remains totally alien to my interests in life.

Kathleen wrote: "Wow. That's some heavy stuff..."

"... Since all of us who live are nothing but dead, which have not yet taken effect,..."

Yes.

Alright here is the full thing:

I dumped the audiobook into and then Google Translate:

Friendship, the friendship that includes the individual human being, is in its way a superficial thing, and reading is a friendship. But at least it is a sincere friendship, and the fact that it is a friendship with a deceased person, an absent one, gives it a selfless and almost touching quality. Reading is also a friendship that is freed from everything that makes other friendships so hideous. Since all of us who live are nothing but dead, which have not yet taken effect, all these courtesies, all these bows in the vestibule, which we call reverence, gratitude, and affection, and which we mix up with so many lies, barren and tiresome.

Moreover, from the very earliest expression of sympathy, admiration, and gratitude, we notice that the first words we speak, the first letters we write, begin to weave threads about us into a web of habits. A veritable pattern of behavior that we cannot rid ourselves of in the friendships we later enter into. Not to mention the exaggerated words we have uttered over time will be like promissory notes that must be paid or that we will have to pay even more dearly throughout our lives with the regret that we have not fulfilled them. In the reading, the friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. In relation to the books �� no kindness. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we really want to. Often we leave them reluctantly, and when we have left them, we are not happy with the thoughts that otherwise destroy friendship. What do they think of us? Were we grateful enough? Did they like us? And there is also no fear of being forgotten in favor of someone else. All this uneasiness which belongs to friendship expires on the threshold of the pure and calm friendship which is reading. There is no proximity either. We only learn from what Molière says to the extent that we really find it amusing. When he bores us, we are not afraid that he should be able to see it in us, and when we are tired of him, we put him back in his place, as hard as if he were not a genius or a celebrity.

Respected, quickened by his chisel that is so precise and direct, that moves us in these forms of language, which can be so singularly smooth as to border on impudence, and whose board pattern we see in the gentlest and most tender passages, where they appear in a flash or returns in beautiful broken lines. It is these bygone forms, drawn from the past's own life, that we will seek out in Rasine's work, as in an old city where everything has been preserved. When we see them, we feel the same movement as when we stand before these also past architectural forms, which we can only admire in the rare and magnificent specimens bequeathed to us by the past that shaped them. Such as the city walls, castle towers, city towers and baptismal chapels. Like, for example, the small cemetery next to the monastery or below the ossuary, which hides the fountains of the dead and the lanterns in the sunshine under its flowers and butterflies. And it is not only the sentences that draw the past rare forms for us. The intervening sentences, and I am thinking here of very old books that are originally recited, in the interval which separates them, there is still, as in a pristine tomb, a silence many centuries old that fills the interstices. In Luke's Gospel, when I have come to a colon, which interrupts the text before each of the passages that almost have the form of a hymn and of which the Gospel is full, I have often heard the silence of a believer who has just stopped his reading aloud , to then recite the following verses as a psalm that reminded him of the Bible's oldest psalms. This stillness, still filled the rest of the sentence, which, dividing to enclose it, had preserved its form, and as I read it brought me more than once the fragrance of a rose which the breeze had carried and scattered in the high-ceilinged hall where the council met and which had not weathered away after almost 2,000 years.

The Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's plays also give the impression, interspersed in the moment, of viewing a piece of the past. This breathtaking impression that makes some of the days we roam around in a book look like walks in Venice. On the Piazzetta, for example, when you see in front of you in half-real colors and like things that are here a few steps and many centuries away, the two columns in gray and pink granite, which on their capitals bear respectively the lion of Saint Mark and St. Theodore treading on a crocodile.

These beautiful and slender foreigners came in ancient times from the Orient over the waves that now break at their feet. Unaware of the remarks being exchanged around them, they continue to linger for days in the twelfth century, surrounded by the present-day crowd in this public square, where their distant and absent-minded smiles still glow very near.

One paragraph is similar to this quote:

/quotes/6741...

So I guess it was Prout who wrote. No idea why it is there as a foreword.

Thanks so much for that, J_BlueFlower!

I kind of like it--books are little pieces of memory left by others, and
they're like friends we don't have to worry about offending. :-) "When he bores us, we are not afraid that he should be able to see it in us, and when we are tired of him, we put him back in his place, as hard as if he were not a genius or a celebrity."

OK... I'm ready... I will be taking this day by day, but I am ready to start Proust tomorrow. My book arrived today (tiny text - gah - might end up on Kindle after all) and I've just finished Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Excited!

So excited! I’ve been thinking on starting this one for awhile, so was excited (being new to goodreads) that it was picked for these first few months of 2024!

After some research & being a translator myself, I picked this translation (loving the design too)!

/book/show/4...

Thank you all for the supplemental reading recs too! Already have the Paintings in Proust on my “wishlist�� but also added a couple more!

Anyone already thinking on reading the full seven books this year?