Time Regained

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  SNOBBERY. Legrandin’s tirades against snobbery—“the unforgivable sin”: I 92; his own snobbery: 177–82 (cf. V 8, 906–7). Princes “know themselves to be princes, and are not snobs”: II 128. Bloch taxes M with snobbery: 437, 442 (cf. IV 686–87). Snobbish distinctions among the lower classes more surprising because more obscure: 579. Offensive snobbishness of the Prince de Foix and his friends: III 551–52. “Evangelical snobbery” of the Princesse de Parme: 585. Bréauté’s hatred of snobs derives from his own snobbishness: 691 (cf. 618). Craven snobbishness of Mme de Saint-Euverte: IV 137–38. Artistic snobbery (Mme de Cambremer-Legrandin) and its effect on reputations: 288–94 (cf. 480–81). “Congenital and morbid” snobbery (of Mme de Cambremer) which renders its victim immune to other vices: 438. “Snobbery is a grave disease, but it is localised and so does not utterly corrupt the soul”: V 8. Gilberte’s snobbery, which has “something of Swann’s intelligent curiosity”: 790–94. Element of sincerity in snobbery: 795. The snobbery of the gutter: VI 368. How snobbery changes in form: 393–95.

  SOLITUDE. M’s exhilaration in the solitude of autumn walks: I 217–20. M can be truly happy only when alone: II 430–31. Reasons for Elstir’s life of solitude; the practice of solitude engenders a love for it: 556–57. “An artist, if he is to be absolutely true to the life of the spirit, must be alone”: 605. The “solitary work of artistic creation”: 664. “Each of us is indeed alone”: III 432. Ideas are like goddesses who appear only to the solitary mortal: 545. “Exhilarating virtues of solitude”: V 22–23. M’s fears that marriage will deprive him of “the joys of solitude”: 25–26. “The fortifying thrill of solitude”: 265. Impression of solitude in Venice: 884. Solitude can be preserved in the midst of social life: VI 369; but M proposes to return to a solitary life to write his book: 435–37.

  SPEECH. See Language.

  STOCK EXCHANGE. M’s stocks and shares; Norpois’s advice on his portfolio: II 33–34 (cf. V 866–67). Peculiar credulity of the Stock Exchange—sensational war-time rumours: VI 370.

  SUN. Afternoon sun behind closed shutters at Combray: I 113–14. Rays of the setting sun in Aunt Léonie’s room: 187. Sunlight on a balcony: 563 (cf. III 418); on the snow in the Champs Elysées: 567; in M’s classroom: 575. Sunlight in the train to Balbec: II 312; sunrise from the train: 316–17. Morning sun on the roof of the Grand Hotel annex: 337; on the sea: 342; in M’s and his grandmother’s rooms: 342–43, 386, 729–30. Balbec sunsets: 522–26. Exaltation of sunlight at Doncières: III 101–2. Desolating sunrise on M’s last day at Balbec, symbolising “the bloody sacrifice I was about to have to make of all joy, every morning until the end of my life”: IV 720–23. Play of sunlight on bathroom windows: V 3–4. Sunset and painful memories: 646–47. The evening sun in Venice: 881.

  TEARS. M’s childhood tears; sobs that still echo in the silence of evening; “a manumission of tears”: I 49–52. “Quite half the human race in tears”: III 509. Lowering of temperatures caused by a certain kind of tears: 539. Effect of tears on Françoise: IV 239–40 (cf. V 648–49). Upper-class people pretend not to notice tears whereas simple people are distressed by them: 480. Our own (suppressed) tears in other people’s eyes are infuriating: V 136. “People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked”: 417–18.

  TELEPHONE. Mme Cottard’s wonder at the novelty of the telephone: II 250. M considers it improper that the telephone should play pander between Saint-Loup and his mistress: III 160–61. M’s abortive conversation with his grandmother; magic of the telephone; the “Vigilant Virgins;” “convulsions of the vociferous stump”: 173–80. “Purposeless smiles” of people on the telephone: 786 (cf. V 124). Françoise’s resistance to the telephone: IV 176–78 (cf. V 126, 200–1). M’s call from Albertine; the “top-like whirr” of the telephone: 177–78. Familiarity of a “supernatural instrument before whose miracles we used to stand amazed”: V 31- 32. M invokes the “implacable deities” (telephone call to Andrée); genre scene for a modern painter: “At the Telephone”: 124. “A flying squadron of sounds” (M’s conversation with the telephonist speaking for Françoise): 200–1. Mme Verdurin’s war-time telephoning: VI 371.

  THEATRE. M’s platonic love for the theatre as a child; his classification of actors: I 100–2. Swann advises him to go and see Berma in Phèdre: 135; he does so at last: II 11–29; expectations before seeing Berma; preconceptions about the art of acting: 14–20; first impressions on entering a theatre: 23–24; disappointment with Berma: 25–29; retrospective reappraisal, influenced by (1) Norpois’s opinion: 36–39; (2) an enthusiastic newspaper review: 71–72; (3) Bergotte’s views: 183–86; (4) Swann’s views: 193. Waning of M’s enthusiasm for the art of acting: III 39, 50–53. Second experience of Berma; a gala night at the Opéra: 40–69. M recognises and appreciates Berma’s dramatic genius, and realises why he had failed to do so before; reflexions on the art of acting; interpretative genius transcends mediocre material: 53–61. Rachel on theatre: 220–22. Reflexions on actors: 228–29. A case of theatrical bitchiness: 229–30. Backstage at the theatre: 231–41. The language of the theatrical profession: VI 372. Unpleasant aspects of theatrical life (Berma and Rachel): 479–80.

  TIME. Distortion of time during sleep: I 4–10 (cf. II 545–48; IV 516–18; V 153–55). Time the fourth dimension of Combray church: 83. Imaginary Time of the armchair traveller: 558. M’s realisation that he is not situated somewhere outside Time but subject to its laws: II 74. Time is elastic, the passions we feel expand it, those we inspire contract it: 257. Life is careless of chronology, “interpolating so many anachronisms into the sequence of our days”: 299. Time accurately measured by the body during sleep: 546–47. For M, far from Mme de Guermantes, the arithmetical divisions of time assume “a dolorous and poetic aspect”: III 156. Lengthening of time in solitude: 478, or while waiting for a rendezvous: 524–25. Reappearance of Albertine “like an enchantress offering me a mirror that reflected time”: 479. Phenomena of memory make Time appear to consist of a series of different parallel lines: IV 212. We take account of minutes, the Romans scarcely of hours: 303. “We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time”: 381–82. Sleep has its own time different from waking time—or perhaps is outside time: 516–20 (cf. V 153–55). Albertine “a mighty goddess of Time”: V 520. “As there is a geometry in space, so there is a psychology in time”: 751 (cf. VI 373). Time brings forgetfulness, which in turn alters our notion of time; “there are optical errors in time as there are in space”: 802–3. Man an “ageless creature” who floats between the walls of time “as in a pool the surface-level of which is constantly changing”: 830. Recapturing Lost Time; extra-temporal sensations; “a fragment of time in the pure state;” “a minute freed from the order of time” re-creates “the man freed from the order of time”: VI 374; a work of art “the sole means of redis-covering Lost Time”: 304 (cf. 350–55); dreams, in spite of “the extraordinary effects which they achieve with Time,” cannot enable us to rediscover it: 323. Guests at the Guermantes reception “puppets which exteriorised Time;” M. d’Argencourt a revelation of Time made visible; “the distorting perspective of Time”: 341–44; re-creative power of Time; “Time, the artist”: 360–61, 367–68; variations in the tempo of Time: 371–73; “balancing mechanism of Time”: 378–79; “the chemistry of Time … at work upon society”: 389–411, 446–47. The young Mme de Saint-Euverte a symbol of Time’s continuity: 495. Time, “colourless and inapprehensible,” materialised in Mlle de Saint-Loup: 506. Time a spur to M: 506–12; fundamental importance of Time in his book; he will describe men as “occupying so considerable a place … prolonged past measure … in Time”: 526–32.

  TRAINS. See Railways.

  TREES. Trees in the Bois de Boulogne (Allée des Acacias): I 592–93; autumn in the Bois: 598–602 (cf. III 533). The three trees of Hudimesnil: II 404–8 (cf. VI 375). Trees on the roads round Balbec seem to M to be silently warning him to get down to work: IV 559–60. Row of sunlit trees by a railway line: VI 37
6.

  (See Apple-trees; Flowers; Hawthorns.)

  TRUTH. The search for truth the “vague but permanent” object of the young M’s thoughts: I 116. “The truth which one puts into one’s words is not irresistibly self-evident”: II 257. Fortuitous stumblings on the truth give some support to the theory of presentiment: 600–1. “Truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent”: III 79–80. Elusiveness of truth in politics: 326. Truth in the context of diplomacy: 351–52. Under the stress of exceptional emotion, people do sometimes say what they think: 693. Truth a current which flows from what people say rather than the actual thing they say: IV 677. The truth comes to us, unexpectedly, from without: 701. Truth, even if logically necessary, not always foreseeable as a whole: V 1–2. “The truth is so variable for each of us …”: 15. A single small fact may be enough to reveal the truth about a whole category of analogous facts: 693. “How difficult it is to know the truth in this world”: 839. “Truth and life are very difficult to fathom”: 843. Truths which the intellect apprehends directly less profound and necessary than those received through intuition: VI 377. Truth for the writer: 289–90. Truth unknown to three people out of four: 492.

  VICE. “Perhaps it is only in really vicious lives that the problem of morality can arise in all its disquieting strength;” vice can arise from hypersensitiveness as much as from the lack of it; vice in a writer not incompatible with morality in his books (Bergotte): II 180–81. “The variety of our defects is no less remarkable than the similarity of our virtues”: 438. The bad habit of denouncing our own defects in others: 441. “Every vice, like every profession, requires and develops a special knowledge which we are never loath to display”: 441. Sexual inversion “improperly” called a vice: IV 23–25. People with the same vice recognise each other instinctively: 52. Nothing so isolates us as an inner vice: V 275. There is no one we appreciate more than a person who places his virtues at the service of our vices: 283. Nothing is more limited than vice: VI 378. Internal and external signs of vice: 211. The greatest vice of all—lack of will-power: 212.

  (See Inversion; Sadism.)

  VIRTUE. “The impassive, unsympathetic, sublime face of true goodness”: I 113. Our virtues are not free and floating qualities but closely linked to the actions in conjunction with which we exercise them: II 2–3. “The frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us”: 437. It is not common sense, but kindness, that is “the commonest thing in the world”: 437. Other people more capable of kind acts than we suppose: V 439–40. “Kindness, a simple process of maturation”: VI 379.

  WAR. Françoise and the gardener at Combray discuss the possibility of war: I 121–23. Discussions at Doncières on the art of war; Saint-Loup’s theories: III 140–51 (cf. VI 380). Françoise’s reaction to the Russo-Japanese war: 450. Saint-Loup on the possibility of a Franco-German war; his predictions as to the cosmic nature of a future war: 565. M’s interest in the Boer War: IV 11. Preparations for war provoke war: V 487–89. The 1914–18 war: VI 381 passim; war-time Paris: 53–54; profound changes brought about by the war in inverse ratio to the quality of the minds it touched: 53–54; the misery of the soldier: 63–64; patriotism, courage and cowardice, heroism of the poilu; the ethos of the soldier (Saint-Loup): 69–80, 91–92; the butler “puts the wind up” Françoise; “a good blood-letting is useful now and again”: 84–85; relation of 1914–18 war to previous wars: 101–4; the war considered as a struggle between two human bodies: 118–19; “scum of universal fatuousness” which the war left in its wake: 236. Saint-Loup’s theories about war vindicated: 429–31. War “is something that is lived like a love or a hatred and could be told like the story of a novel”: 431.

  WEATHER. M’s father’s meteorological preoccupations: I 12, 127 (inherited by M: V 95–96). Sonorous atmosphere of hot weather: 114. Atmospheric variations provoke changes of key in M’s sensibility: 550. Importance of weather for M’s hopes of meeting Gilberte in the Champs-Elysées: 563. Cold weather at Doncières: III 124. Profound and unpredictable psychological effect of atmosphere: 187. “A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew”: 472. Evocation of a spring day: IV 243–45. Hot weather at Balbec and its effect on M’s love affairs: 320–21 (cf. 534). Changes in the weather fill M with joy since they herald changes in his own life: 509. M in bed reads the weather from the quality of street sounds: V 1. The “barometric mannikin”: 5–6. Moments of inspiration and elation due to the weather: 23. Various kinds of weather and their interest for the idle man: 100–3. A spring day in winter: 147. Fine spring weather reawakens M’s desire for women and travel: 544–45, 553–56. Atmospheric changes provoke other changes in the inner man, awaken forgotten selves: 663.

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  1993 Modern Library Edition

  Copyright © 1993 by Random House, Inc.

  Copyright © 1981 by Chatto & Windus and Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

  Modern Library is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  This edition was originally published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, London, in 1992.

  This translation is a revised edition of the 1981 translation of Time Regained by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, published in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus. Revisions by D. J. Enright.

  Time Regained first appeared in The Modern Library as The Past Recaptured in 1951.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Proust, Marcel, 1871–1922.

  [Temps retrouvé. English]

  Time regained/Marcel Proust; translated by Andreas Mayor and

  Terence Kilmartin; revised by D. J. Enright. A guide to Proust/compiled

  by Terence Kilmartin; revised by Joanna Kilmartin.

  p. cm.—(In search of lost time; 6)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-75538-4

  I. Mayor, Andreas. II. Kilmartin, Terence. III. Enright, D. J. (Dennis

  Joseph), 1920-. IV. Kilmartin, Terence. Guide to Proust. 1993.

  V. Title. VI. Series: Proust, Marcel, 1871–1922. À la recherche

  du temps perdu. English; v. 6.

  PQ2631.R63T413 1993

  843’.912—dc20 93-3628

  Modern Library website address:www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary

  v3.0

 

 

 
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