Proust’s Swann’s Way [Part One: Combray]

Hi Everyone!

This week I am going to be reflecting on part one –Combray– of Marcel Proust’s novel Swann’s Way. I have to be honest, I found this text very difficult to follow and almost impossible to understand. I was put off reading it multiple times because I found it so frustrating that I wasn’t able to keep track of what was going on. Eventually, I gave up on trying to understand what I was reading and instead I just read it. This was when I started to enjoy it.

While reading Combray, I remembered a discussion we had during our lecture on Thursday. We talked about what it meant to read. Whether the act of reading was simply following (reading) words on a page or does it require an added step of analysis where in order to have read something one must understand what they were reading. For me personally, I always believed it was the latter. I determined whether or not I read something based on if I understood. In the case I did not understand what was going on –if I were unable to explain to someone or write about what I read– I would question my ability to read (sounds weird, I know). I feel like this has a lot to do with the school system and how we are taught but that’s a conversation for another time. When I started thinking more about what it means to read, I realized that reading and understanding are two very different things. What I initially believed to be reading was actually understanding. And if I am following the words on the page, I am reading, end of story. This perspective not only brings me comfort but also makes reading a far more enjoyable experience. Since I was always beating myself up when I wouldn’t understand the plotline or notice every minute detail of the story, I was never truly able to enjoy reading. I instead enjoyed being able to understand something –sort of like chasing the feeling you get when you have been working on a puzzle/riddle for a while and you finally crack it. Although very much an amazing feeling, it is a different sense of enjoyment.

Like I said earlier, it was when I finally gave up on understanding Proust’s Swann’s Way that I actually began to enjoy it. The lengthy, very confusing yet beautifully written sentences were so full of imagery, effortlessly painting a picture in my mind. The rhythm of jumping back a forth between dream and reality as well as between different memories was difficult to follow in terms of plot but made for a surprisingly entertaining and captivating read. Especially during the first few pages of Combray, a small part of me felt like I was on a rollercoaster or watching an extremely intense game of tennis. For example, in the part where it jumped from being “nearly midnight” to “it’s already morning” in just a sentence before going right back to “it is midnight”. Moreover, I found the use of many commas to create a thought-like flow to his writing. Every thought was accompanied by smaller sub-thoughts creating those long and difficult-to-follow sentences. I feel like this was one of the reasoning why trying to understand everything made reading Combray unenjoyable at the beginning. When I got rid of my need to understand, and instead allowed the thoughts to flow and the words to guide me, I was able to enjoy it a lot more. I personally love how Proust’s writing style parallels how we think. Similar to how our thoughts come and go and are oftentimes not full or complete, Proust’s writing also jumps from idea to idea, place to place and memory to memory, therefore truly taking you on a journey through his mind –and in a way through our own minds as well.

And lastly, for the question of this post: What was one thing that you learnt/was made more evident while you read Proust’s Swann’s Way? For me, it would be that understanding isn’t everything and that sometimes it is just as enjoyable to follow a story without knowing exactly what is going on.

: )