Swans Way

The first volume in Marcel Proust’s novel “In Search of Lost Time”. The Narrator begins by noting, “For a long time, I went to bed early.” He comments on the way sleep seems to alter one’s surroundings, and the way Habit makes one indifferent to them. He remembers being in his room in the family’s country home in Combray, while downstairs his parents entertain their friend Charles Swann. This memory is the only one he has of Combray, until years later the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea inspires a nostalgic incident of involuntary memory. He remembers having a similar snack as a child with his invalid aunt Leonie, and it leads to more memories of Combray.

“In Search of Lost Time” made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel. The focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of experience. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.