Within a Budding Grove – Part 2
Written by Marcel Proust
Narrated by Neville Jason
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist. Born in Auteuil, France at the beginning of the Third Republic, he was raised by Adrien Proust, a successful epidemiologist, and Jeanne Clémence, an educated woman from a wealthy Jewish Alsatian family. At nine, Proust suffered his first asthma attack and was sent to the village of Illiers, where much of his work is based. He experienced poor health throughout his time as a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet and then as a member of the French army in Orléans. Living in Paris, Proust managed to make connections with prominent social and literary circles that would enrich his writing as well as help him find publication later in life. In 1896, with the help of acclaimed poet and novelist Anatole France, Proust published his debut book Les plaisirs et les jours, a collection of prose poems and novellas. As his health deteriorated, Proust confined himself to his bedroom at his parents’ apartment, where he slept during the day and worked all night on his magnum opus In Search of Lost Time, a seven-part novel published between 1913 and 1927. Beginning with Swann’s Way (1913) and ending with Time Regained (1927), In Search of Lost Time is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction in which Proust explores the nature of memory, the decline of the French aristocracy, and aspects of his personal identity, including his homosexuality. Considered a masterpiece of Modernist literature, Proust’s novel has inspired and mystified generations of readers, including Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, and Somerset Maugham.
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Reviews for Within a Budding Grove – Part 2
29 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Exquisite prose and life musings that are more true and real than everything else I've read. Reading Proust is a delicacy that's better enjoyed as a special occasion treat but I was so taken in with Proust's world that I couldn't put this down once I'd started. Stunning work that can be enjoyed in so many ways and endlessly quotable - it often reads like a poem.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tweede deel van 7. Mme Swann als icoon; een heerlijke vakantie in Balbec-plage, fantasie?n over meisjes op het strand, eerste ontmoeting met Albertine. Dit deel speelt zich bijna geheel in het hoofd van Marcel af. Soms sublieme passages, maar heel veel puberaal gezwam!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The translator of this volume was [[James Grieve]] and I thought this was an especially good translation. This book takes us through the narrator's infatuation with Gilberte, and the beginnings of his infatuation with Albertine. Definitely a book that takes patience, with dinner parties that last forever. The attention to detail is overwhelming, but yields some interesting character exploration; as in this description of Mme Swann's dress:"her outfit was more elegant than anyone else's, she wore it for herself but also for her friends, naturally, without show but also without complete indifference, not objecting if the light bows on her bodice and skirt drifted slightly in front of her, like pets whose presence she was aware of but whose caprices she indulged, leaving them to their own devices as long as they stayed close to her; and as though her purple parasol, often furled when she first emerged into the avenue, was a posy of Parma violets, it too at times received from her happy eyes a glance which, though directed not at her friends but at an inanimate object brimmed with so much gentle goodwill that it still seemed to be a smile."The description goes on for several pages, and contrasts with the description of her dress in the first volume, when it was made of discordant parts. So it's going to be interesting (assuming I make it through all 7 volumes) to see how Mme Swann's fashion progresses. I am feeling a bit ambivalent about the book, however, since the focus is on love, and the love object, and in Proust's world; this seems often to be more objectifying the woman involved. His passion for Albertine is not based on anything in particular about her, and is generally not flattering towards her. Of course, in real life, Albertine was based on a young man that Proust was interested in (I think his butler?) so perhaps it's not just women who are objectified? At any rate, it does not seem a health relationship.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Spoilers throughoutThe title A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs is translated various ways. Moncrief’s Within a Budding Grove sucks. Seriously, where are the girls and the play of light? I prefer Nabokov’s more natural In the Shade of the Blooming Young Girls. My doubts about whether I am reading what the author actually wrote normally steer me away from reading translations---but I make an exception for this vast, supremely intelligent novel.On the surface this part of the Recherche covers the beautiful, rich, stylish, asthmatic, and batty Narrator’s youthful loves: Gilberte and her mother in Paris; the faces and voices of Albertine and the rest of the little band in Balbec; and Charlus (although the Narrator naively did not comprehend what was going on). They all end badly, Gilberte gets tired of him, Albertine calls for help to thwart his advances and Charlus even administers a salutary douche.I think the Narrator’s love for Odette is the most profound of them all; it is her fragrance that intoxicates, her housecoats that delight, her chrysanthemums that have special significance. She is observed down to the lining of her jacket. The mauve vision of Odette in her slow procession through the Bois is for me the most enchanting part of the novel. Accompanied by her entourage who are awed by her beauty and wealth, saluted by Princes, she is more aristocratic than the aristocrats and singularly sums up the belle epoque. And Odette is important to Proust, for, despite her mediocre intelligence, she has invented “a physiognomy of her own”---that is, she has invented herself. Proust is a subtle and penetrating psychologist and has superhuman powers of analogy. He has created images that impress themselves on my mind: the sea reflected in Balbec hotel's bookcases, the green dining room, Berma with her arm extended, the hawthorne, and of course the mauve image of Odette. As if it were an Elstir painting, Proust’s novel has the feel of a mirage in a tinted haze; just so, the bit about the letters with Gilberte is recalled by me now as perhaps letters that the Narrator dreamed he wrote to Gilberte, or maybe wrote them and didnt send them, or maybe sent them and imagined her reply, or maybe he did receive an actual response. I cant tell. Very nice effect.The other thing that keeps me coming back to Proust is the brilliant observations that appear on virtually every page. To give but two instances: he dumps on Norpois “...to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind”; and reflects on Bergotte’s genius, “...the men who produce works of genius are not those that live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those that have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in the reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.” There is simply a lot to chew on.I wont talk of Proust’s larger themes (Time, Art, Memory, Self-Deception, Life’s Irony, etc.) but I do want to recommend some criticism that I found enlightening: Pippin’s essay Becoming who one is (and failing) and Landy’s excellent Philosophy as Fiction.There are a couple things that continue to puzzle me: what is the actual relationship between Bloch and Odette? is Bergotte a homosexual? Perhaps the reader might leave me a message to help me out.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the wonders of Proust, I begin to realize now, is his ability to reproduce the powers of insight and reflection of which his books are made of in the minds of his readers, so that their lives are transformed by his touch.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While I enjoyed Marcel Proust's "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower," which is the second book in his series "In Search of Lost Time," it definitely wasn't as astounding as the first book.In this volume, our narrator focuses on his first loves -- cutting things off with Gilberte and moving on to his infatuation with Albertine. Most of the novel takes place in the seaside resort of Balbec. As in the first novel, there are plenty of gorgeous passages to savor. But Proust's general wordiness bothered me more this time around. Something about the voice didn't quite fit with the recollections as well as it did in the first volume. Still, there are plenty of snatches of brilliance along the way. This volume convinced me I need to stretch out my reading to one book every three months or so... (I had originally hoped to read all seven volumes this year.) It took nearly a month to read this one and it made me look forward to reading something a little less challenging!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Though a heavy series to get through, it is worth the effort. The new translation is wonderful. Much easier to read and, I suspect, more true to the original French.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amidst the meanderingly precise descriptions of faces, personalities, and internal states of near-delirium, the charming but endlessly frustrating characters, the incessant dithering, the sub-clauses atop of sub-clauses all the way down, the startling unexpected observations, and the sheer weight of sentence upon sentence, I always return to one further fact: Proust can be damn funny. His comic set-pieces, such as M. de Charlus’ strange behaviour at Balbec, or M. de Norpois’ equivocal reasoning, are worth the price of admission. Of course there is far more here than I have gathered in one reading. Wonderful – I’ll read it again, and again, and its value, for me, shall increase with time.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very little action in this book- mostly descriptions of thoughts, emotions and types of people. The author doesn't idealize "his" characters behavior- he does some imperfect things and makes no excuses. Reminds me of Tom Jones because the ending is obvious hundreds of pages before it actually happens.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tweede deel van 7. Mme Swann als icoon; een heerlijke vakantie in Balbec-plage, fantasieën over meisjes op het strand, eerste ontmoeting met Albertine. Dit deel speelt zich bijna geheel in het hoofd van Marcel af. Soms sublieme passages, maar heel veel puberaal gezwam!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Honestly, I liked this more than the first book, Swann's Way. However, life intervened when I was almost done & it was a struggle to finish the final 5% of the book. Proust's style of writing is lush but it doesn't appeal to me and his long, convoluted sentences make this a poor book to read when frequent interruptions occur (as was the case for me towards the end).