It may never be potential to declare any exclusive novel the determinate work of its era , but Marcel Proust ’s Gallic - language classic , In Search of Lost Time , stands as the most oft cited candidate for the early twentieth one C . The semi - autobiographic book , which stretches over seven volumes and a few thousand pages , follow an unnamed patrician teller who weaves a meditation on love , loss , and the nature of retention that often doubles back on itself . mountain , sounds , and sense trigger reminiscence that inform the friend ’s past times and present ; and by the closing , both the narrator and lector have add up to understand that memory — its reassurances , its faults , its emotions — is what shapes us all . study on for some fun facts aboutLost Time ’s account and legacy .
1. Proust self-published the first volume.
Order
French Title
English Title
Publication Year
1 .
Du côté de chez Swann
Swann ’s Way ; The room by Swann ’s
1913
2 .
À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Within a Budding Grove ; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
1919
3 .
Le Côté de Guermantes
The Guermantes Way
1920
4 .
Sodome et Gomorrhe
Cities of the Plain ; Sodom and Gomorrah
1921
5 .
La Prisonnière
The Prisoner ; The Captive
1923
6 .
Albertine disparue ; La Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone ; The Fugitive
1925
7 .
Le Temps retrouvé
Time regain ; Finding Time Again
1927
Proust hadpublishedessays and short news report in powder store and newspapers before , and some of those shortsighted stories were even exhaust in a Holy Writ calledPleasures and Daysin 1896 . But getting someone to back the several hundred meandering varlet that made up the first intensity ofLost Timeproved difficult . Proust first sent them to a well - be intimate publisher nominate Fasquelle , whosuggestedso many edits that the generator decided to look elsewhere .
The literary journalLa Nouvelle Revue Françaisepassed in part because they consider Proust ’s penning tooaristocratic ; andMarc Humblot , another prospective publisher , found it prohibitively verbose , explainingthat he “ just ca n’t sympathize why anyone should take thirty page to account how he tosses about in bed because he ca n’t get to sleep . ”
In the closing , Proust reconcile himself to footing the circular , muster in the help of an as - yet - unestablished publishing company named Bernard Grasset to publish the Koran . When the work drew acclaim , author André Gide , who had encouragedLa Nouvelle Revue Française ’s original rejection , toldProust it was “ the worst blunder they ever made . ” Fortunately , the diary redeemed itself by put out the following volume .
2. The last three books were released posthumously.
Proust was born into wealth , which allowed him the exemption to center on writing and partake in the beauty shop - based intellectual bon ton of the era . But asthma - related illnesses often interrupted him , and by the time he was await for a publishing company forIn Search of Lost Time , he sensed he was go up his end . “ I have put the best of myself into it , ” hewrotein one letter , “ and what it involve now is that a monolithic tomb should be complete for its receipt before my own is filled . ”
Proust was n’t wrong : He perish from pneumonia in November 1922 at age 51 , before the last three mass had been give up . Though he had technically polish off write the manuscripts , he was far from the final sign - off ; the last installment , Finding Time Again , hadn’t even been typedyet .
“ Proust composed by an immensely complex process of penning and rewriting , thread together passages sometimes compose age apart , filling his margin with addition and , when the margins ladder out , go along on strips of newspaper glue to the pageboy , ” scholar Carol Clark write in a 2019 composition forLiterary Hub . “ After a time he would have a fair copy typed , but this by no means marked the death of the rewriting appendage , which might continue to the proof stage and beyond . ”
So it seems safe to seize that Proust would have continued to work on the last three books had he lived longer . Instead , the editing fell to his brother , Robert Proust , and French writer Jacques Rivière , who , in Clark ’s words , “ iron out a considerable number of inconsistencies and , as they think , fault of style … to develop a readable text which would please critics and buyers . ” Some of those change have been reverse in recent variation as more of Proust ’s writing fragments have come to light . But we ’ll never really eff precisely what the author would have stop up tally to — or overlook from — the terminal validation .
3. Proust didn’t like the original English title.
In Search of Lost Timeis a fairly direct translation of the novel ’s original French title : À la recherche du temps perdu . When the work first appeared in English , however , it was under the titleRemembrance of Things Past . Translator C.K. Scott Moncrieff had take up the expression from Shakespeare’sSonnet 30 , which begin like this : “ When to the session of sweet silent thinking / I summon up remembrance of thing past . ”
Though Proust was very thankful to Scott Moncrieff for his translations — andhe told him soin a 1922 letter — he did n’t fail to mention his disappointment about the inaccuracy of the title , particularly the absence of the phraselost time . He also pointed out that Scott Moncrieff ’s rendering of the first book ’s championship lacked clearness : Du côté de chez Swannhad becomeSwann ’s Way , leave the great unwashed to misinterpretwayas “ style , ” rather than “ path . ” “ By addingtoyou would have made it all right , ” Proust explained . Scott Moncrieff drop a line back that he was “ making my answer to your critiques on another sheet , ” but that flat solid is lose to history .
Seventy eld later , English publishers did swapRemembrance of Things PastforIn Search of Lost Time . ( AndDu côté de chez Swannis sometimestranslatedasThe Way by Swann ’s . )
4. Proust’s evocative madeleine could have been toast.
When we first meet Proust ’s storyteller inSwann ’s Way , he ’s deaden by wont and inexplicably blocked from access most of his memories . That suddenly changes as soon as he tastes one tea - hook morsel of a madeleine , which enkindle a similar experience from his puerility and unleashes a flood of memory . The scene both get the story forward and advert to one of Proust ’s primal themes : finding meaning through retentiveness .
Though the author did al-Qaida that pivotal moment on a real - life incident , the food in question was n’t a madeleine . It was a rusk — a laconic , ironical , twice - baked biscuit . In 2015 , a bent of newly published handwritten manuscript revealed that Proust had initially intended the aspect to mirror its beginning material more accurately . In his first variation , the storyteller eats aslice of toastwith honey ; in the second , he bites into abiscotte , or rusk . To think , proofreader may never have had the pleasance of hearing Proustdescribea sweet , spongey madeleine as “ the petty scallop - cuticle of pastry dough , so extravagantly sultry under its severe , religious folds . ”
5. That madeleine scene is referenced inThe SopranosandRatatouille.
The installment with the madeleine is arguably the best - known bit of the entire seven volumes : It even inspired its own Gallic phrasal idiom , madeleine de Proust , which can depict any sense experience that unlock a storage .
References have also appeared in at least a couple twenty-first - century Hollywood striking . In Pixar’sRatatouille(2007 ) , one bite of thetitulardish catapult grouchy intellectual nourishment critic Anton Ego back to the memory of his mother ’s homemade ratatouille revel in the rustic , sun - warmed kitchen of his youth . ( After that , not even the revelation that the chef is a literal rat can dull Ego ’s enthusiasm for the restaurant . )
And in season 3 , episode 3 ofThe Sopranos , Tony Soprano ’s therapist , Dr. Melfi , identify meat as a Proustian madeleine of sorts for Tony . It ’s a common denominator in his affright attack , include his first one as a shaver , when the family ’s heart and soul supply was connect to gang - touch on ferocity . ( “ All this from a slice of gabagool ? ” Tony says . )
6. Many acclaimed 20th-century writers praised the books …
It ’s tough to overstate the impingement thatIn Search of Lost Timehad on 20th - 100 writers . Graham GreeneconsideredProust the “ smashing novelist ” of the whole century , for example , and Tennessee Williamswrotethat “ No one ever used the fabric of his biography so well ” as Proust .
“ His endowment as a novelist — his range of presentation conflate with mastery of his instruments — has credibly never been surpassed,”Edith Whartonwrote inThe Writing of Fiction . AndVirginia Woolfidolized him to the point of frustration . “ Proust so vellicate my own desire for expression that I can scarce dress out the time , ” shewrotein a 1922 letter . “ Oh if I could compose like that ! I outcry . ”
7. … But not everyone was a fan.
That enounce , a fewvenerated authorsfrom the epoch were n’t exactly campaigning to be chairman of the Marcel Proust fan club . Evelyn Waughtold Nancy Mitford in a 1948 letter that he found Proust to have “ dead no gumption of time . ” D.H. Lawrence lambasted Proust — along withJames Joyceand Dorothy Richardson — for trying to delay the death of the “ serious novel ” by penning “ a very long - draw off - out fourteen - volume death - suffering . ” Joyce failed to “ see any special natural endowment ” in Proust , though he did admit that he himself was n’t the best critic .
And if you ’ve ever described Proust ’s writing as “ crushingly obtuse , ” you ’re in unspoilt society . That ’s howNobel Prize – winningauthorKazuo Ishiguroput it , excludingSwann ’s Way . “ The trouble with Proust is that sometimes you go through an absolutely wondrous musical passage , but then you have to go [ through ] about 200 Thomas Nelson Page of intense French snobbery , eminent - society maneuverings and pure ego - indulgence , ” hetold HuffPostin 2015 .
8.In Search of Lost Timeis the longest novel ever published.
ThoughIn Search of Lost Timeis typically give away up into seven parts , it ’s still considered a exclusive novel — thelongest one ever print , in fact , according toGuinness World Records . The disc is based on part numeration : Proust ’s magnum musical composition contains more than 9.6 million character , including space .
