Swann in Love - Softcover

Marcel-proust

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039472769X ISBN 13: 9780394727691

Publisher: Random House, 1900

Synopsis

A book within a book, Swann in Love is a novella contained in the first volume, Swann's Way, of Marcel Proust's magnum opus In Search of Lost Time; providing the portraiture of a stormy love affair between demi-monde seductress Odette de Crécy and high-society gentleman Charles Swann, the work proceeds to analyze the love and jealousy with which the latter personage has become consumed. The result is the expression of a singular and profound philosophy on love, set down with eloquence and with humour. A popular entry point into Proust's great work, Swann in Love can indeed be read in isolation from the rest of La Recherche.

Swann's Way: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1B8EFB

Of all love's modes of production, of all the agents of dissemination of this sacred disease, this great gust of anxiety that has occasion to sweep over us is surely one of the most effective. The being whose company we are savouring in this moment, the die is cast, it is she whom we love. She need not even have, before this time, pleased us any more than, or even as much as, another. What is compulsory is that our taste for her become exclusive. And this condition is realized when, to the pursuit of some pleasure her company affords us, in this moment where we are denied it, an anxious need abruptly interposes itself, which has for its object this same being, an absurd need which, due to the laws that govern this world, is impossible to satisfy and difficult to alleviate, the illogical, painful need to possess her.

About this title

Review

Can you imagine Mrs R laughing so hard that she dislocates her jaw? Swann takes a long time to rearrange Odette's corsage of orchids. Thereafter they do not call it making love, they "do orchids". If you're nervous of Proust, this is a good standalone extract to start with. --Sue Arnold, Classic Sounds

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1900
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039472769X
• ISBN 13: 9780394727691
• Binding: Paperback