60th book of 2022.

Six volumes of Proust's novel, the longest novel ever written, lead to this point. Sadly, Proust never edited a single volume after Vol. 4 because he finally died in 1922 in Paris. His brother oversaw the publication of the final three volumes. In Vol. 7 Proust finally begins to ruminate on why he decided to dedicate his already sickly life to such a long novel. He began in 1909: thirteen years of his life. In some ways, and Proust also confirms this in many other ways, this is a giant autobiography. It is the autobiography of a sickly man, of his failings in love, his sadness and his success. The entire thing spins from that first madeleine taste, that goodnight kiss. It begins to circle back to those early moments and the word Combray, reappearing again and again, as Marcel (narrator) casts his mind back. I thought it would be predictable if I gave the final volume 5-stars, and presumed I would inevitably be blown over by it, if not simply because I finished the whole thing. The final volume is good, the best passages are when Proust turns his attention to Lost Time and his reasons for writing, the reasons why anyone writes, the meaning of the very process of writing. I was going to share some quotes but I wondered if it was worth spoiling a single line of this volume when it could take someone so long to get to it. So maybe I won't.

Paris is presently hot. The last few months I have been reading a lot of Proust so I could finish it here in the city. As it turns out, on the days where I wasn't falling asleep before I got into the apartment on my feet, I managed to read some good chunks. On the final morning, before walking to the Metro to take us to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, I read almost to the end. I slid the novel into my bag with just two pages unread. I decided I would squat/sit in front of Proust's very tomb in the Cemetery and read the final two pages of his novel there, before the man himself. The Metro line 2 took us overground towards Père Lachaise Cemetery. We walked the cemetery's quiet cobbled paths. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning and the sun was just starting to pinpoint its way between the leaves of the trees. It was as if we were walking through a forest and not a cemetery. We saw Colette's tomb, Jim Morrison's, Oscar Wilde's, Gertrude Stein's, Chopin's, Honoré de Balzac's. At last we came to Proust's. It was not directly facing a main path. I had to step towards it. There were flowers thrown onto it and a small note written in Spanish. I used my phone to translate it (perhaps very poorly), 'Thanks for recovering lost time to several bugs from multiple latitudes.' His tomb was simple. I finished the book there on my haunches and put it back into my bag. Afterwards, we walked south down Boulevard de Ménilmontant and fell into a café-restaurant. Our table had a typewriter in the middle of it. We all ate burgers and beer, the walls of Père Lachaise just outside the thrown-open doors. L. asked me if I felt changed, if Proust had changed my life as sometimes people often say he does. She asked me what I felt like. I replied as honestly as I could and answered, Relieved. I felt no great epiphany, no tears came to my eyes from the sheer beauty or majesty of the novel, I felt simply content; I also felt surreal, as if there was another volume, as if it would continue for the rest of my life, as if there would always be another volume, every time I thought I was nearly finished, so I became a sort of Sisyphus. And, drinking the last gulp of beer and stepping back onto Boulevard de Ménilmontant, I realised that perhaps that was my grand epiphany, that I would be reading Proust for the rest of my life, that he would remain unfinished, constant, endless, immortal.

Me, this morning (13/06/22), closing the final page of In Search of Lost Time before Proust's tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.



Other Proust related pictures from my time in the city.