My Current Favorites [July 2023] In Search of Lost Time: Graphic Novel Adaptation & Pléiade Edition
I never thought I would one day be interested in Proust. Since French is not my native language, I couldn’t imagine starting this novel with its endless sentences, reputed to be difficult even for French teachers who haven’t dared to read it to the end.
And yet, during a walk in Amsterdam, we went into a cosmopolitan bookstore with a corner reserved exclusively for French-language books. There was an illustrated version by Stéphane Heuet. I took a photo of the cover to do more research at home.
A successful graphic novel adaptation
I discovered that this illustrator had started adapting the novel into a graphic novel: In Search of Lost Time since 1998, and he has brilliantly adapted the first volumes: Swann’s Way (Amazon link, Fnac linkand Within a Budding Grove (Amazon link). Both are thankfully available as e-books.
One scorching day, I was bored and so hot that I no longer had the energy to read my philosophy and esoteric books; my eyes lingered on the graphic novels in question. Even if the first pages didn’t convince me right away—the disjointed memories of Combray, the child’s insatiable need at bedtime, the narrator’s exasperating whims and sensitivity—it’s from‘Swann in Love that I know I’m done for: I recognize myself in Swann’s obsessive side (and later the narrator’s), a side that few authors have managed to dissect and analyze to this extent—the psychology of the characters.
The advantage of Stéphane Heuet’s graphic novel adaptations is the condensation : you realize thatIn Search of Lost Time is not just a collection of disorganized memories, there are real stories. Plus, the text really comes from Proust, and I was surprised to see that I understood quite a bit. So it’s an excellent introduction to the novel.
Stéphane Heuet has managed to break down for us, among all the characters in In Search of Lost Time, the important characters to remember, the key sentences, and the details that seemed insignificant but would gain importance 1000 pages later, making the actual reading of the novel easier later on. Moreover, based on extensive archival research, he has reconstructed for us, in images, France at the beginning of the 19th century: from Odette’s dresses to luxury hotels, not to mention Paris’s iconic landmarks.
Unfortunately, the graphic novel adaptation is not yet complete, and to find out what happens next, you have to read the novel.
My obsessive side drives me to do it, because when I start a project, I hate not finishing it. Reading the rest of the novel is harder because Mr. Heuet is no longer there to carefully select every beautiful sentence, but I was very happy to have been introduced to Proust’s “literary cathedral” by such a conscientious illustrator (he even redrew volume 1 because he found it less consistent with the rest of his graphic novels, in true Proustian fashion).
Also, I was strongly encouraged when, during a conversation with a friend, he said his wife had read the entire novel. That was the reminder I needed to tackle the great work.
Ebook, audiobook, Pléiade?
Which edition should you choose?
After comparing the different ebook editions ebook, I decided to go with this one, lightly annotated but well-crafted (Amazon link) while also getting a paper version from the Pléiade collection, free of any annotations and condensed into just 2 volumes (Amazon link, Fnac link), with a limited print run but still available in 2024. It states: “This print run will satisfy globe-trotters, without being reserved for them. The homebodies will place it near their armchair. The walkers will slip it into their pockets. Any bedside table can accommodate it.”. This is the version I take with me when traveling.
This edition is particularly beautiful because the page edges are gray and the ribbon is too. The coppery-red leather is gorgeous. It’s so classy! Compared to the Voltaire Pléiade edition: Tales & Novels that I’ve read, I feel paper is much less transparent.
Note: I learned years later that the two-volume composition of this edition matched the structure Proust intended: “the novelistic material is distributed across two volumes, with the break falling between the end of The Guermantes Way and the beginning of the Sodom and Gomorrah cycle.”
If weight isn’t an issue for you, the 4-volume Pléiade edition (Amazon link) or the 7-volume Folio edition (Amazon link) will appeal, as they contain even more annotations and analysis. I eventually bought the 4-volume Pléiade edition once I became sedentary again, because I’m curious about the sketches—I want to read the passage about the encounter with the Baroness de Putbus’s chambermaid in Venice, which was cut from the final novel.
The sketches don’t cover all of the Proust notebooks at the BnF, but it’s enough to give you a sense of the work behind the masterpiece, and above all, that practice makes perfect. Many passages, written for the first time, are bad. It’s through rewriting and reorganizing that the final masterpiece emerges. Below, I show you parts of the “novel,” “sketch,” and “annotations & variants.”
However, reading Proust when French isn’t your native language is quite challenging. To help me grasp these long sentences, I read on my e-reader while listening to the audioversion. The narrator’s intonation and pauses help enormously. I chose the series In Search of Lost Time, read by great actors. With an Audible subscription, I get one volume per month (Amazon link). I particularly love André Dussollier’s voice—it’s very engaging. He also does other characters’ voices very well. However, I don’t like Lambert Wilson’s voice. When Wilson reads, I prefer the Comédie-Française version available free on YouTube. To better understand the work, I also appreciate Mathilde Brézet’s sharp analysis in Le grand monde de Proust (Amazon link).
I find In Search of Lost Time hilarious. The priest’s long tirade where he shows off his “knowledge” of etymology, Legrandin’s off-topic replies, Françoise’s insensitivity, Odette’s ingratitude, M. de Charlus’s mishaps, Oriane’s red shoes… all of it is told in minute detail and analyzed with such finesse that few authors would have Proust’s patience to undertake the same work. In every character, you find a bit of yourself, or a friend, an acquaintance. You better understand their reactions through In Search of Lost Time, you become more compassionate because, ultimately, it’s such a human and universal behavior that a character was created specifically for it. There are many little details slipped into a phrase or a conversation, whose meaning you only grasp later (for example, when the lady in pink at Uncle Adolphe’s turns out to be Odette, the little Vinteuil phrase that explains why Swann was so interested in M. Vinteuil when he ran into him in the street despite his daughter’s reputation; the little milkmaid seen from the train who reappears 1,000 pages later, the handwritten G of Gilberte from volume 1 regains its importance in Albertine disparue…). These small details are buried among millions of words, and it’s a satisfying exercise to spot and appreciate them.
The beauty of the novel is the evolution of the characters we follow over the years. That said, have they really evolved? Or is it because we didn’t know them well enough? Because we’ve always shaped them in our minds? We imagined a personality for them. We love the image we created of them. Thus, behind seemingly ordinary characters hides immense talent, and, conversely, someone like Swann—respectable, educated, immensely rich, and popular—is ultimately a hollow shell. Every time the narrator meets someone (whom he admired in his imagination) for the first time, he’s disappointed but simply strips away everything he doesn’t like to fit the image he had of that person with the image before him. This idea is repeated over and over throughout the novel:
But even from the perspective of life’s most trivial things, we are not a material whole, identical for everyone which each person only needs to consult like a specification or a will ; our social personality is a creation of others’ thoughts. Even the simple act we call “ seeing a person we know ” is partly an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the being we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the total aspect we picture, these notions certainly play the largest part.
I now understand why so many people read Proust, and reread him.
To learn more about Proust’s creative method, you can read the book Marcel Proust : la fabrique de l’œuvre, which I’ve reviewed here.
