In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI_ Time Regained - Marcel Proust [232]
A GUIDE TO PROUST
Foreword
This is intended as a guide through the 4,300-page labyrinth of In Search of Lost Time not only for readers who are embarking on Proust’s masterpiece for the first time but for those too who, already under way, find themselves daunted or bewildered by the profusion of characters, themes and allusions. It also aims to provide those who have completed the journey with the means of refreshing their memories, tracking down a character or an incident, tracing a recurrent theme or favourite passage, or identifying a literary or historical reference. Perhaps, too, the book may serve as a sort of Proustian anthology or bedside companion.
The task of compiling the Guide would have been infinitely more laborious without the pioneering work of P. A. Spalding, whose Reader’s Handbook to Proust (that is, to the twelve-volume translation of the novel then current) was published by Chatto & Windus in 1952 and reissued, in a revised edition edited by R. H. Cortie, by George Prior in 1975. I must also acknowledge a debt to the editors of the Pléiade edition (1954) of A la recherche du temps perdu, whose very detailed index was an indispensable aid, especially in identifying historical personages and literary allusions.
The Guide consists of four separate indexes: of Proust’s characters; of real or historical persons; of places; and of themes. Since the places index is comparatively short, it includes both the real and the fictional, the latter being indentified by the symbol (f). The present edition of the translation contains a synopsis at the end of each volume, and so I have not included one here. Page references are to the six volumes, as indicated by Roman bold numerals.
I have referred to the narrator throughout by the initial M, for Marcel. Proust is careful, almost from the beginning to the end of the novel, to avoid giving the narrator a name. But twice he allows his guard to slip: first, teasingly, early in The Captive, when Albertine on awakening murmurs “My darling———” and the blank is then filled in with the name Marcel, “if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book” (Vol. V, p. 91), and the second time, later in the same volume, when Albertine addresses him unequivocally as “My darling dear Marcel” in her note from the Trocadéro (p. 202).
Index of Characters
ACTRESS (from the Odéon). Forms an exclusive group at Balbec with her rich young lover and two aristocratic friends: II 352–55. Invites M to dinner: 726. Her lover an invert, according to Charlus: V 411 (cf. VI 1)
ACTRESS-SINGER (novice), “tortured” by Rachel: III 229–30.
ACTRESS (ex-) with whom Bloch’s sister causes a scandal in the Casino at Balbec: IV 326–27, 337–38. (Not to be confused with Lea.)
ADOLPHE, Uncle. His sanctum at Combray and his study in Paris: I 99. M visits him and meets the “lady in pink,” thereby precipitating a breach with the family: 104–10. Swann visits him to talk about Odette, who provokes a quarrel between them: 444. The pavilion in the Champs-Elysées recalls his room at Combray: II 91. After his death, his photographs of actresses and courtesans brought to M by Charles Morel, son of his former valet: III 357–61. His generosity: IV 418. Morel’s devotion to his memory; his house in the Boulevard Malesherbes: 620–22.
AGRIGENTE, Prince d’ (“Grigri”). Visits the Swanns: II 130, 239–40, 246. At the Guermantes dinner-party; introduced to M, on whom he makes a bad impression: III 592–93. Unable to disguise his ignorance of Flaubert: 671. Drinks M’s fruit-juice: 703. Discusses genealogy with the Duc de Guermantes: 735–36. Related to the Duke of Modena: 743. Invited to the Saint-Euverte garden-party: IV 96–97. In