《REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST(VOLUME 2)》: There are at least two Prousts. One is made of sugar and spice (or Madeleine cakes). The other is all puppy dogs' tails. The first is Proust by reputation: Proust as he can come to seem through the steamy haze of languid cups of tea, and nostalgic reminiscence. The second gives us a royal road to thought experiments of an extreme and thrilling kind, excavating the ego for its less than salubrious secrets, exacting and rigorous, a scientist of the self. It is the second Proust, half-hidden behind the tittering gloved hand of the first, who pays all the dividends.

《REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST(VOLUME 2)》: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age.

Scott Moncrieff's delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieff's translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Proust's style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation.

CITIES OF THE PLAIN

PART I

PART II Chapter One

 Chapter Two

 Chapter Three

 Chapter Four

THE CAPTIVE

 ONE Life with Albertine

 Two The Verdurins quarrel with M. de Charlus

THREE Flight of Albertine

THE SWEET CHEAT GONE

 ONE Grief and oblivion

 Two Mademoiselle de Forcheville

THREE Venice

 FOUR A fresh fight upon Robert de Saint-Loup

TIME REGAINED

 ONE Tansonville

 Two M. de Charlus during the war, his opinions, his pleasure

THREE An afternoon party at the house of the Princesse de Guermantes

Synopsis to Volume Two