This installment, sadly, is one I read mediante forte bursts of precious free time
I continue onesto find the romantic entanglements of these characters onesto be per high-school level of ridiculous
Con those exhausted but relieved hours at home, per those stolen wedges of at-rete di emittenti bookwormery, in whatever few minutes were spent sopra quiet solitude, I clung esatto Proust with the desperation of verso booklover mediante the throes of both work-related burnout and the dreaded reader’s slump. And while a frantic heart may not be the best way to approach words that are ideally enjoyed at per leisurely stroll, I do believe the Narrator’s burgeoning sense of humor and need puro slowly cocktail per his surroundings kept me grounded during chaotic times. While S&G may not have been my favorite installment, it is the one that affected me the deepest.
Among the revolving door of communautaire obligations and self-indulgent observations that seem onesto occupy the majority of Fictional Marcel’s abundant free time, I found myself most invested per his delayed reaction puro his grandmother’s death. Having never known the magnitude of verso transgenerational love like that which Narrator shared with his maternal grandmother, I felt his palpable grief just as keenly as the slow-arriving but per niente less heartrending clarity of permanent absence that hit him upon revisiting a place that once played such an important role sopra demonstrating the fondness and compassion that can exist between verso grandmother and her grandson. As the Narrator contemplates how different Balbec is without his beloved grandmother, as he muses on how much his own once-young mother has taken on the visage of her own mother now that the elder woman’s death has left per role unfulfilled, as he retraces rooms that once were filled with his grandmother’s presence, the concrete reality of past time being truly lost time came thundering down against a mostly familiar landscape that derives most of its changes from the players inhabiting it. It is odd that the grief is intense but short-lived, yes, but I couldn’t help but write it off as the Narrator’s decision puro forge ahead with his life rather than mawkishly wallow durante grief — such are the intermittences of the heart, no?
It is unfortunate because Proust is best savored like good wine rather than chugged like cheap beer, and I fear I spent more time drunk on his beautiful words than intoxicated by his narrative insight
It seems like so few of the relationships presented thus far in ISOLT — Swann and Odette; the Narrator and Gilberte (and also Albertine); Saint-Brasserie and Rachel — are healthy, mutually affectionate ones, but it could also be that I have little patience for romances, even fictional ones, that are built on per foundation of obsession and possession rather than respect and genuine fondness. And, really, the affair between Morel and Charlus isn’t anything laudable, I know, but I can’t help but find it one of the most believable examples of heady lust per terms of its execution and its players’ emotionally fueled behaviors. There is little else but pure attraction drawing Charlus helplessly toward Morel, who can’t help but take advantage of (or be manipulated by, depending on your vantage point) the older gentleman’s affections and gifts. Still, the greed with which Charlus tries puro keep Morel puro himself while all but undressing him sopra public, the satisfaction he derives just from coaxing the younger musician Somalian donne into his presence is…. d’accordo, a bit much, yes, but also keenly evocative of an irrationally all-consuming, unrealistically intense first crush and the reluctant empathy of understanding such memories drag along in their wake.
