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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The fourth part of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, May 9, 2000
Four years ago, I decided that I would begin reading Proust'sIn Search of Lost Time; however, the idea of reading straight throughall seven parts of the novel was somewhat daunting and I decided toread one part per year. Of course this plan had its drawbacks. How would I keep all Proust's characters straight? How could I recall after a year's passage all the details that the author so painstakingly included in his work? After finishing the fourth part, I am amazed to discover that not only were characters, which were introduced to me three years ago, recalled with ease, but the narrator's intense musings were as equally accessible. Proust's ability to paint indelible images and ideas onto the memory of his readers is probably his greatest talent. The fourth part of the novel follows the narrator as he returns to Balbec for the second time and is introduced into the world of homosexual activity (which Proust refers to as "inversion") and the affected salons of provencial France. In this volume, The Baron Charlus assumes a major role in the novel and Marcel realizes that his jealousy of his lover, Albertine, is reflective of the jealousy of Swann for Odette (it might sound like a soap opera, but it is definitely not). Whether Sodom and Gomorrah is better or worse than the earlier parts of the novel is not important as a recommendation or criticism; it makes up an integral part of the whole and cannot exist without the other parts. Proust is not easy reading and demands the undivided attention of the reader; as I am becoming aware, the effort put into reading the novel is eminently rewarding. So pour yourself a little Pernod and begin an undertaking that you will never forget.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Obscure Deities," or the Dark Side of Love, December 27, 2003
In the previous volume of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, Marcel was poised at the pinnacle of social success as he readied himself to attend the Princesse de Guermantes' party. Those alabaster gates that from a distance appeared to be the entry to paradise actually opened only onto a continuing pageant of human folly. Early in the book, a chance peek out the window shows the elegant Baron de Charlus to be a pervert as he romances the servile Jupien. Even his beloved Duchesse de Guermantes "allowed the azure light of her eyes to float in front of her, but vaguely, so as to avoid the people with whom she did not wish to enter into relations, whose presence she discerned from time to time like a menacing reef in the distance." Marcel retreats from the social whirl and returns to Balbec, the scene of WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE. There he takes up again with Albertine and, after hobnobbing with the Guermantes, now joins Mme Verdurin's "little band" of opinionated second-raters. This was the same salon at which Swann had met Odette in SWANN'S WAY. You may recall that Swann discovered that Odette was multiply unfaithful to him, yet married her anyway. In SODOM AND GOMORRAH, it is Marcel who is drawn ever closer to Albertine. As the book draws to a close, he discovers from a chance remark that Albertine claims close friendship with two lesbians one of whose trysts Marcel had witnessed years before in Combray. Just as Swann had agonized just before deciding to wed Odette, Marcel sees the death of his hopes and of any chance for joy in his young life. "As by an electric current that gives us a shock, I have been shaken by my loves. I have lived them. I have felt them: never have I succeeded in seeing or thinking them. Indeed I am inclined to believe that in these relationships ..., beneath the outward appearance of the woman, it is to these invisible forces with which she is incidentally accompanied that we address ourselves as to obscure deities." During this, my second reading of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, I continue to marvel at Proust's mastery. The scene of a social gathering that occupies two hundred pages, and takes me two or three days to read, seems to pass by in the blinking of an eye.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a splendid translation and my favorite volume thus far, June 11, 2005
I am writing here of the "Penguin Proust" translation by John Sturrock. (Much of what appears on this page is misleading, with the editorial matter referring to an audiobook and many reader reviews to an earlier translation. Even first-sentence quote is not from Sturrock's translation!)
Of the four Penguin Proust volumes I've read so far, this is my favorite--a wonderfully funny study of society (if not of sex). Proust specializes in transformations. We'll be introduced to a character and led to believe that we know everything of importance about him, only to have him turn up in a later volume as entirely different. In this volume, the remote and terrible Baron de Charlus is tranformed a pathetic tubby, besotted by the pianist Morel (himself a bit of a transformation, since he first appeared in the novel as the son of a valet).
Marcel (the narrator) meanwhile finds himself more deeply involved with Albertine, herself probably a stand-in for a male secretary of Proust's, Alfred Agostinelli. To complicate matters, I see elements of this relationship not only in the Marcel-Albertine affair, but also in the Charlus-Morel romance. It's as if Proust divided his experience into two parts, giving the romantic elements to Marcel and the comic part to Charlus.
The two romances come together at the seaside salon of the awful Madame Verdurin, who is inexorably rising in the world. In one of Proust's hundred-page setpieces, the aristocratic baron has his first clash with the social-climbing Verdurins. I found myself cheering for Charlus, whom I'd earlier learned to dislike, because he is so genuine and she is such a fraud. And I know in my heart (and through my earlier readings of this great novel) that things are not going to turn out well for Charlus. Against all logic, Proust in one of his hundred-page dissections of French society is able to keep me on tenterhooks.
The less said about Albertine, the better. I am not one of those who find her/him a convincing character. So it is with a bit of apprehension that I now turn to volume five of the Proust Penguin, containing the two books of the "Albertine cycle."
But back to Sodom (as it were): this is a wonderful translation of a riveting story. If you stick with "In Search of Lost Time" thus far, you will know that you are in the middle of one of the great experiences of your life.
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