/lit/ - Literature

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20613683]

Just started Swann’s Way lads. In Search of Lost time definitely ranks as some of the best prose I’ve ever read, right from the get go it’s a feast full of the savory and rich. People who talk a lot about prose, this is what you’re looking for. Pure kino

[Anonymous No.20613738]

>>20613683
Are you reading the Lydia translation? I'm looking to get into it

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SLT/in-search-of-lost-time

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20613764]

>>20613738
No, I might look at it in the future though. I didn’t this time because trying to use English words based more on common etymology than common meaning with the French might not be good for a first reading

[Anonymous No.20613799]

>>20613683
post thoughts again if you make it to the end

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20613814]

>>20613799
Of this volume or the whole series? I plan to finish this later this month but I have a lot in my plate and the whole series may take a minute. I’m also reading the Gormenghast trilogy and plan to start the Forsyte saga this month إن شاء الله

[Anonymous No.20614767]

>>20613764
It got an award for the translation if that means anything.

[Anonymous No.20615361]

>>20613683
Would you recommend it?

[Anonymous No.20615531]

>>20613764
I love French translated into English for this reason, feel like a dirty Anglo peasant being edified by a magnificant and wise Norman lord with his Latinate vocabulary.

[Anonymous No.20615570]

>>20613683
What’s the justification to write such a long book though? Also it feels like he’s mocking us with the title: you’re wasting your time by reading this book.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20615584]

>>20614767
I just took a look at it, it is extremely elegant and distinctive as well

>>20615361
If you like outstanding prose then yes, and if the Belle Époque interests you then yes, and if you like a detailed experience of the workings of memory then yes

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20615589]

>>20615570
The theme of the book is memory, specifically the narrator’s memory, and how we become alienated from our memories and strangers to our past. The book is long not for utilitarian considerations but because it’s a grand and detailed description. The length is not a burden on the reader because it’s pleasant

[Anonymous No.20615591]

Post excerpts!

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.20615612]

>>20615591
>But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my grandmother, who held that “It’s a pity to shut oneself indoors in the country,” and used to have endless arguments with my father on the very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book instead of letting me stay out of doors. “That is not the way to make him strong and active,” she would say sadly, “especially this little man, who needs all the strength and will-power that he can get.” My father would shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an interest in meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb him, looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind. But my grandmother, in all weathers, even when the rain was coming down in torrents and Françoise had rushed the precious wicker armchairs indoors so that they should not get soaked, was to be seen pacing the deserted rain-lashed garden, pushing back her disordered grey locks so that her forehead might be freer to absorb the health-giving draughts of wind and rain. She would say, “At last one can breathe!” and would trot up and down the sodden paths—too straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing to the want of any feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father had been asking all morning if the weather were going to improve—her keen, jerky little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon her soul by the intoxication of the storm, the power of hygiene, the stupidity of my upbringing and the symmetry of gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the mudstains beneath which it would gradually disappear to a height that was the constant bane and despair of her maid.

[Anonymous No.20615630]

The second volume, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, it's almost unreadable, so you are going to change you mind.
But in the long run the series worth a lot to read, specially when you get to the final volume, when the connections between the branch of characters reach a climax and the meditation about the involuntary memory links to the beginning of the journey.
In the whole series, in my opinon, the psychological descriptions of the characters are very vivid and one of the strong points of Proust's fiction.