Swann's Way
First published 1913 · French · 465 pages
- Novels
- Essays and criticism
- Philosophy
The first volume of In Search of Lost Time opens with a narrator lying awake, recalling the bedrooms of his youth and the village of Combray, where his family spent holidays. A taste of tea and cake unlocks a flood of childhood memories, of his mother's goodnight kiss, of walks along two country paths, and of the neighbour Charles Swann. The book then turns back to Swann's own story, his consuming and painful love for Odette, a woman unlike those he would normally admire. It is a novel about memory, jealousy and the way imagination shapes desire, and it set the pattern for the whole work.
Quotes
Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy them.
For a long time I used to go to bed early.
No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.