“In Search of Lost Time” is considered the largest literary work ever written, consisting of 3,031 pages and more than 1,250,000 words, arranged in seven volumes. “In Search of Lost Time” by author Marcel Proust was published between 1913 and 1927, and is considered by many to be the masterpiece of French literature of the 20th century.
It is considered one of the masterpieces of French literature, having been translated into more than forty languages, adapted to film and theater on numerous occasions.
Its author narrates in first person, the life of Marcel (the protagonist), from his childhood to maturity, in search of happiness, through characters and scenarios typical of his time, recounting his experiences, representing these as the succession of situations that an incurable disease, life, forced him to suffer.
The use of the first person allows the narrator to share his thoughts and feelings with the reader in an intimate and personal way. It also allows the reader to experience the novel from Marcel’s perspective, helping them better understand his quest for happiness.
The narrator uses rich, evocative language to describe his experiences. He also uses innovative narrative techniques, such as involuntary memory, to explore the novel’s themes. Through precise and descriptive language he manages to generate vivid images in the reader’s mind, the use of metaphorical and symbolic language allows him to address the themes of his novel, using involuntary memory as an innovative narrative technique, a resource characterized by the emergence of memories of the past in an involuntary, unexpected way, and triggered by the similarity with the present.
In Search of Lost Time in a complex and ambitious novel with an extensive plot, in which its characters evolve, exploring themes such as love, time and memory.
Reading this novel can be understood as an analysis of the psychology, desires and passions of the human being. Composed of seven parts, in which the author begins the journey through his life remembering his childhood in a small town in the English countryside, and his first loves as a youth, his move to Paris to study at university, the discovery of homosexuality. , the constant search for love, and finally the writing of his own work.
From the mind of a young man who dreams of becoming a great writer, Proust describes the upper class of Parisian society, reflecting on war, illness and love, through the journey through the life of his young man. protagonist.
The author makes a journey full of questions that threaten his own existence, in which he finds himself immersed in the search for answers, exposing during the book’s journey a subjective world highly infected by the author’s vision.
Born in 1871 in Paris, in 1907 he began writing what would become his great novel “Swan’s Way”, from which point he concentrated on writing a novel with innovative content and style, but of gigantic proportions.
Born into a wealthy family in late 19th century Paris, he received a privileged education at the University of Paris. He began his foray into writing by writing poems and essays, publishing his first work in 1896.
In Search of Lost Time, he shows the philosophical influence produced by Henri Bergson’s theory of involuntary memory among other writers such as Henry James, Balzac or Flaubert. Proust’s work is testimony to his artistic sensitivity and his ability to absorb the influences of other writers and thinkers. Proust died at the age of 51 from pneumonia.
