Reading Proust.

I am no stranger to lengthy or multi-volume books. I have always enjoyed and found immense satisfaction in books that are immersive, long-winded, and thorough in their exposition. Just to name a few – I have read Gibbon’s six volumes on Roman History (twice in fact), Churchill’s exhaustive and beautiful narratives of the Second World War in six volumes, Toynbee’s majestic eleven-volume study of civilizations, Anthony Trollope’s multi-volume ( around twelve I think) fictional chronicles of English society, Tolstoy’s psychological masterpieces, Michener’s elaborate fictional recreations of the American past, and Anthony Powell’s cycle of twelve novels. Though abridgments are available for many of these works, I don’t prefer abridgments unless the authors themselves have done the abridgment – which is rare. I mentioned this list of books not to pat myself on the back for some kind of academic achievement but just to show that I am capable of applying myself to reading books that are really lengthy, considered difficult, and cognitively challenging. In all these years as a reader, I can think of only two books that I have approached with a bit of trepidation, probably because of the reputation they carried as challenging books to read. One was James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” and the other was Proust’s highly influential novel “In Search of Lost Time” or “À la recherche du temps perdu.” in French. I read “Ulysses” a couple of years ago, and this essay is about my ongoing project of reading Proust.

For more than a decade, Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel “In Search of Lost Time” has remained on my list of books to read. The interesting fact is that I have had all seven volumes with me since 2017. I bought them during a visit to the Atlanta vintage books store in Clairmont Rd. I got them for a pretty good price as well, around twenty-five dollars for all three hard-bound volumes containing all seven books. The translation is by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin – the first translation ever made during the 1940s of this voluminous and complex novel. There have been quite a few translations since, but Moncrieff’s attempt is acknowledged to be the closest to Proust’s French style. Translations are always nebulous territory; we wouldn’t know the difference unless we both both the languages. Anyway, all three volumes together run over four thousand pages of rich, glossy paper with a pleasing font. The last thing you need when you read Proust is a font that is difficult to read. These beautifully bound books have been sitting on the bookshelf right behind my work desk. Every day from the time I bought them till the beginning of 2023, I have walked past them, coffee mug in hand, always casting a yearning glance at the title, itching and resolving each day to start my Proustian journey soon but holding off for reasons I will share in the coming paragraphs. In January 2023, I started with the first novel, “The Swann’s Way,” and my dear readers, I request you to please wait till the end of the essay to know how far I have come. Have I read through all seven books? Or am I still meandering through the first, second, or third part of this epic work? You will know the answer by the end of this essay.

Upon being asked to comment on his brother’s work, Robert Proust, Marcel’s younger brother, summed it up the best. He said:” People have to be very ill or have a broken leg in order to have the opportunity to read ‘In search of lost time.'” Not that Robert wished ill of people, but the point he was making is that in order to read ‘Lo,’ Time,’ one must have enough leisure that precludes the reader from doing anything else. Even that may not be enough! “Lost Time” is not only a long novel, more than four thousand pages, but the structure of Proust’s sentences, especially his stream-of-consciousness style of nesting phrase within a phrase, sentence within a sentence, replete with semicolons and colons, branching off from one thought to another, almost snake-like in its construction, can be cognitively taxing if one doesn’t have all the time in the world at one’s disposal and of course the right frame of mind to focus on the text. It goes without saying that Proust’s sentences are generally lengthy and winding. The longest sentence in “Lost Time” appears in the fifth volume., which, if arranged in a straight line, would exceed four meters in length. It is difficult for people to keep five short sentences in working memory, and here we have a single sentence that runs into four pages ( in my edition). Proust’s style can stretch the limits of one cognitive ability. When Proust sent the first volume of “Lost Time” to his publisher Ollendorf in 1913, Alfred Humblot, its editor, wrote back saying,” I may be dense, but I don’t see why a man requires thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns before falling asleep.” In 1921, after “Lost Time” had been in print for some years, a young American lady wrote to Proust. She had spent the last three years of her life doing nothing but reading his book with no time for anything else., and her question to Proust was this:” I don’t understand a thing, absolutely nothing. Dear Marcel Proust, stop being a poseur and come down to earth. Just tell me in two lines what you really wanted to say”. There are still in vogue literary competitions around Europe that challenge readers to summarize “lost time” in fifteen seconds – an impossibility, of course; no one has come close to condensing this seven-volume work into anything resembling a summary, but it remains a tantalizing and compelling quest.

“Swann’s Way”, the first volume, begins with this simple sentence:” For a long time, I used to go to bed early.” For the next thirty pages, the author, in a first-person narrative, describes in prolific detail the process of falling asleep. It is an extraordinary piece of writing. Proust literally captures every nuanced movement of a mind drifting in and out of sleep, the tenuous hold of the psyche, and the physical sensations that precede temporary oblivion. The feeling of the head against the pillow, the atmosphere of the room and surroundings, the fleeting thoughts that pile on one after another like a waterfall with every connective memetic image, the associative connections that suddenly stem from the sudden experience of a delectable smell, those physical impressions, ever so light perhaps, which triggers the brain to conjure from the deep recesses of one’s autobiographical existence long-buried memories; vividly brought forth, colored, textured and woven into the tapestry of one’s present state of slow, meandering transition into sleep – that loose edge between consciousness and unconsciousness, where memories take on a vivid, phantasmogiral quality because the sense of agency or will is gradually loosened. Proust is not plotting a tale or narrating a story for us. He is exploring our sensibilities, scraping out images and sensations that lie ignored, lost, and repressed. Proust believed that it is the task of literature to dredge out one’s inner life in all its sensory richness and tactile Immediacy. And boy, he succeeds!! There is relief and richness in the palimpsest of memories that Proust verbally brings to life. The reader has to be ready to step into the copious verbal landscape with Proust. It is not easy to do that. It takes time to settle down to the drift, ebbs, and flows of Proust’s flowing images and incisive observations, and then suddenly, like a gear clicking into place, we are tuned to the Proustian voice, an incredible communion of minds that flowers into a delightful inner journey of recollection and recognition. When this happens, the Proustian journey, which one may have embarked upon with apprehension and fear, becomes worth one’s while. Proust’s genius takes over, and after a hundred pages or so, we become his literary addicts.

The story of the first volume of “Lost Time” can easily be summarized in a few lines:” The author’s reminiscence of his childhood at Combray, a French village. The indecisions, insecurities, and then the firm resolution of one Mr. Swann, a young man and a socialite, over his affair with Odette, another socialite, whom he meets at a party. Finally, the narrator of the story meets Albertine, a young girl in Paris.” Proust spends four hundred and eighty pages elaborating on these. There is no plot, no hero, and no twists and turns to keep the reader on the edge. It is page after page of exploring the labyrinth of feelings and memory. Proust teases out the essence of every emotion, mood, and experience that Swann goes through. Nothing is pigeonholed into neat categories. For instance, if Swann feels “insecure,” “homesick,” or “afraid of letting go,” – a bland dismissive phrase just won’t do for Proust. Proust would consider it sheer mental laziness to label an experience without looking into it. He would argue that one of the key reasons we don’t feel the richness of life is that we are forever caught up in such labels. We don’t witness the full movement arc of our daily lives, constantly changing and morphing into something else. We don’t put in the mental work to understand what these labels mean. For instance, Prosut would ask: What does insecurity mean for his character Swann? How does it play out in his mind? What is this feeling all about? How does it color his daily life and interactions? Proust is deeply interested in all this and more. To him, it is an anathema to gloss over life experiences and the memories it dredges up. Dealing with abstractions denies us the possibility of understanding them – and that, according to Proust, is the purpose of literature. To bring out those sensibilities that we recognize but fail or find difficult to express. One of the greatest pleasures of reading Proust is this flowering of literary sensibilities. You can’t read a paragraph without being taken aback by the depth of observation and the minuteness with which Prouts observes an emotion. To read a section from “Lost Time” is like taking in a powerful dose of verbal LSD; it liquifies, transforms, and unravels the subtlest nuances of each experience. It broadens and deepens our empathy. Seen through a Proustian lens, a seemingly straightforward sensory experience, say, a chance fragrance from a cup of tea on the table or a piece of music that wafts in from somewhere, can blossom into something deeper, richer, and meaningful and contains the potential to unlock the vault of memories that can take us deeper into ourselves. In Proust’s own words:” If we read the masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it those reflections of ours that we despised, joys and sorrows that we had repressed, a whole world of feeling we had scorned, and whose value the book in which we discover them suddenly teaches us.” Being a modest man, Proust wouldn’t have viewed “lost time” in this way, but in the whole literature it is difficult to find a work that. is so close and so revealing of the machinations of the human psyche as “lost time”.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about Marcel Proust himself. He began writing “Lost Time” in 1913, and the last volume was published in 1922. Within months after that, Proust died of Pneumonia after stubbornly refusing any treatment beyond his habitual meal of cooked fish. When the food was brought to him, he wouldn’t touch it; he felt nauseous, and a few hours later, he died of a burst lung. Dr. Adrian Proust, Marcel’s father, was a renowned doctor and a recognized authority on public sanitation measures. He authored around 34 books, the popular being an illustrated book of exercise for women. His son, however, had no inclination for anything at all during his youthful years. It was quite possible that to live up to the high reputation of his father weighed heavily on young Proust; even otherwise, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Proust tried working at the Foreign Ministry, then as a lawyer, stockbroker, and assistant at the Louvre Museum. The only job he held for a few years was that of a librarian, and even from there, he was politely asked to leave because he was sick or wouldn’t show up to work or found writing something. In five years at the library, Proust showed up for less than six months. He knew that he could write decently, but his early work was desultory and did not contain the genius that “lost time” would later manifest. As Proust matured as a writer, he became more or more introverted and a man of curious habits. During the entire period that he composed “Lost Time,” he rarely left his room, always worked on his bed, was covered in three blankets whether it was winter or summer, was extremely sensitive to noises inside and outside ( his room was sealed with cotton), and was fastidious about what he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He loved company in the evenings. As a man of independent means, he dined at the best hotels in Paris – The Ritz was his favorite place – often with friends who found his company the most pleasing. He had an incredible capacity to listen without judgment. A trait that perhaps helped him deeply observe human nature. Even during the fiercest summers, his friends couldn’t get him off his coat ( sometimes three of them), even while dining. His idiosyncrasies were tolerated and sometimes admired because he had such a penetrating mind, was a good conversationalist, and could always recast a subject or an opinion into an entirely different perspective. His friends loved that. When he wrote about a subject, it was sure to contain a different take on the matter from the rest of them. The irony, however, is that Proust never considered himself a great author. By the time the final volume of “Lost Time” had come out, critiques had begun comparing his output with Shakespeare and Stendhal, but he never acknowledged this esteem or fame. He understood the limitations of art, especially literature, too well, no matter how refined and thoughtful it can be, to accept its verisimilitude. The fluidity of life can never be caught in a net; the prose of “Lost Time” comes closest to matching it.

I deferred reading Prosut for so long because I am the kind of reader who will not rest until I finish reading the book I started. And I knew from what I read about “Lost Time” that this book isn’t the kind that rushes along or can be read like other works of literature. Reading “Lost Time” meaningfully literally depends upon how much time we can give its pages. I had to mentally prepare myself for a long haul and, more importantly, had to be in the right frame of mind to decipher Proustian prose. I had turned fifty-one years old at the beginning of 2023 and suddenly felt the time is now ripe. With a firm resolve, I started “Swann’s Way” ( the first part of Lost Time) on 7th January 2023. The book is 447 pages long in the edition I have, and I finished reading it on 11th December last year. Nearly twelve months at an average of one page per day. That is an incredibly slow and very long time to read a book, at least at the rate at which I usually read. During the year, I read around fifty other books, which begs the question of why I measured just around one page a day with Proust. The reasons are simple. You can only read a few pages of Proust without getting tired. There is significant linguistic and cognitive involvement in deciphering his prose. No word, no phrase, and no punctuation can be skimmed over; if you do, you are likely to lose the train of thought, and the whole paragraph will spiral rapidly and become unintelligible. Like rare wine, Proust’s prose and observation have to be savored in small doses, mulled over, allowing the freshness of his metaphors and breathtaking psychological insights to settle down and work their magic. It is almost guaranteed that you will have to read a paragraph at least twice before its subtleties begin to open up. The first hundred pages were slow-going for me( and for most people I know who have attempted Proust). One has to warm up cognitively to run this Proustian literary race.

I read Proust first thing in the morning. I usually wake up early, and I find that the early morning time is best suited to reading Proust. The mind is clear, and my working memory is not yet clogged with impending daily routine. Proust’s long, often interminable sentences, weaving and drawing out a spider-like silken web of ideas, are best processed when one is fresh. There are those rare days that I cherish when I can get through a couple of pages without a re-read. Otherwise, it is mostly a page or a page and a half, often with few re-reads. There is so much packed into Proust’s narrative, language, and sentence construction that it is best to take a break after we have taken in enough. The habit of reading Proust early in the morning also improves my day in subtle and significant ways. I am more alert and able to get more things done. It is as if I have deliberately given my neural pathways a shake-up – the equivalent of a daily gym routine. On days when I skip Proust for whatever reason, I end up feeling a little down, and more caffeine comes into play to compensate for it. Reading Proust has a therapeutic effect despite the effort it demands of one, and interestingly, that is how Proust viewed literature, in fact, art itself – as something that needs active participation from those who engage with it.

I had the same issue with James Joyce’s “Ulysses” as well. Though not as lengthy and sentence-heavy as “Lost Time,” the language in “Ulysses” is symbolic, mythological, and highly cryptic. It is the opposite of Proust’s approach. If Proust revels in profusion, Joyce believes in paucity. The common thing between both is their stream-of-consciousness-like approach and the utmost attention they demand from readers approaching their work. Proust and Joyce happened to meet once for dinner in Paris, and it was expected that literary sparks would fly. As it turned out, both of them barely had anything else to say to each other. Throughout dinner, Joyce replied in monosyllables to whatever little conversation was there between them. For two people who lived and breathed language, this was a most curious interaction indeed.

I don’t know how long it is going to take for me to finish all seven volumes of “Lost Time.” A few years, maybe more. Honestly, I am in no hurry at all. I have realized that reading Proust is a sacrament; it has to be done slowly, deliberately, and with reverence; otherwise, it is a waste of time. “lost time” is literature in its most profound sense with the potential to heal and transform, if one is tuned to its frequency. There are times when I am totally taken aback by a sentence I have just read, and the book involuntarily drops onto my lap. An experience of sheer joy coursing through my body, as if what I read had opened a secret lock in the deepest recesses of my brain, unleashing a flood of memories, emotions, and truths that wouldn’t have surfaced if not for this magical trigger. Proustian memory, a term popular in psychology, means memories involuntarily triggered due to an extraneous sensation. Swann’s tale is full of such movements of memories and recollections. While reading Proust – deeply attentively, it has the same impact. We come face to face with our recalcitrant memories, our affectations, our pretenses, and our rationalizations – in all its honesty and vividness. Nothing more can be expected from art.

For those who wish to embark on a Proustian journey, I recommend that you start with the 1997 book “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton, a Swiss-born British philosopher and author. It is a slim volume and is the best and the most accessible introduction to Proust and his epic “Lost Time” I know of. If you come out of reading Alain’s book inspired and excited about Proust, then you can dive into Proust’s work. Otherwise, you are better off leaving Proust alone. Let me hasten to add that by just reading Proust, nothing is going to change. The work has to be done by us. Great books can only take us as close to what we need to know and feel, but we have to make that leap. Proust himself was very clear about this, and his own words ( which i have paraphrased) on the subject are a fit ending to this essay:

“As long as reading is for us, the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling places deep within us that we should not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary( valuable). However when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of one’s own mind, truth no longer appears to us as an ideal that we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of the heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and sample passively, then reading becomes dangerous.”

Proust’s ” In Search of Lost Time” should be read in this spirit.