Day 3: Longeur vs. Langour

It is an established fact that "In Search of Lost Time" (hereafter referred to as ISOLT) is one of the longest novels in the history of literature, if not the longest. Weighing in at over 3000 pages, long does not adequately describe its length. Even Proust's brother, Robert, had a dim view of it, saying, "The sad thing is that people have to be very ill or have a broken leg in order to have the oportunity to read In Search of Lost Time." Indeed!! I should think that most readers of ISOLT are or have been neither ill, nor posessed of a broken limb, but I can see how that might how that might come in handy, having spent a half an hour slogging through the first page.... thinking that by the time 365 days of this have passed, I will be renaming my blog "In Search of Lost Marbles." (OK, so in trying to read Proust with a mere year of French from 30 years ago I have only myself to blame; but still, his brother has a point.)

And, besides its length as a whole, it is also known for having the longest sentence in the history of literature, which Alain de Botton says in his How Proust Can Change Your LIfe , "... would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times."  The first publisher to consider Proust's manuscript, Alfred Humblot of the highly esteemed Ollendorf, said this: "I cannot understand why a gentleman should employ thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in his bed before going to sleep." Needless to say, this note was accompanied by the returned manuscript.

Jacques Madeleine of Fasquelle publishing said that after reading the seven hundred and twelve pages of the manuscript, and "innumerable griefs at being drowned in unfathomable developments and irritating impatience at never being able to rise to the surface – one doesn't have a single, but not a single clue of what this is about. What is the point of all this? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading? Impossible to know anything about it! Impossible to say anything about it!" One can imagine the the French shrug of the shoulders, the downturned mouth and wild gesticulations that must have accompanied this grim assessment. 

With such uninviting, even distressing assessments before us, how are we to begin to approach such a work? I am attracted to the comparison to a Gothic cathedral - a vast, immensely complicated structure, yet when viewed bit by bit, taking our time, we come to appreciate and savor the intricate designs and interweavings of which it is made, and in such a way come to appreciate it as a whole even more.


Some people, however, have managed to find humor and entertainment therein, inspiring games of sentence diagramming to challenge the brightest of linguists; on the humorous side, Monty Python (of course!) was inspired to create the "All-England Summarize Proust Competition," in which the contestants vie to give a summary of all seven volumes in fifteen seconds or less. Swimsuit competition first, of course, followed by evening dress. 

'Nuf said!


Now go and pick up that first volume!!


Bon chance!
Michel