The tiled roof cast upon the pond, translucent again in the sunlight, a dappled pink reflection which I had never observed before. But I was struck by how the narrator caught himself with speechless admiration, and ironically, articulating it with lucidity and humor: Even more a surprising delight is the loquacious way he describes the events, the people, the scenery, and the insights he can generate from the minutest observations.Ī tiled roof is a tiled roof, okay, it looks more beautiful reflected on the river. Insomnia sure has its benefits… arousing volumes of memories for the narrator.įrom this first reading I’m surprised to find Proust’s subject matter comes from the mundane, from people and places in the village Combray where the narrator would go to stay for a period of time every year as a child. Proust must have plowed through his to the single second, and in depth too, as the madeleine-eating episode reveals. Sure, the unexamined life is not worth living. 67-68) in such flowing prose, with such sensitivity and nuanced observations? And I must add, which I read at 1 a.m. Where have I read a sentence of 31 lines (p. But an experience still, and surprisingly, an enjoyable one.

I have to read through ambiguity, discard the expectations of clarity and congruity, accept incomprehension and press on. These first 264 pages of Proust’s seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time for me is a learning experience. I don’t pretend to understand everything I read. Swann’s park, and the waterlilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. … in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Above all, he relays how the very act of eating these madeleines has evoked long-buried childhood memories of Combray: Why, from pages 60 to 64 the narrator details his experience of eating four morsels of the little cakes ‘petites madeleines’, the uplifting sensation, the taste, the action of dipping them into tea before eating, and the diminishing enjoyment after each mouthful. What elicited only single words or phrases from us, Proust could have written pages. We were to describe this particular act of ‘Eating chocolate cake in class’.

He brought into class a chocolate cake, cut it and gave each of us a piece. A fellow student was doing a presentation on phenomenology. Reading these first 264 pages of Proust conjures up some of my own memories…

The swann's way