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In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)

This volume is the second part of a seven-volume novel that is considered a masterpiece of modern literature. It follows the protagonist's journey through the French countryside, reflecting on his past and the nature of his relationships with others. more

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Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was a French novelist renowned for his magnum opus, 'In Search of Lost Time'. This novel is considered a classic of 20th-century literature, known for its intricate psychological portrayals and profound exploration of memory. more

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“When a belief vanishes, there survives it -- more and more vigorously so as to cloak the absence of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new things -- a fetishistic attachment to the old things which it did once animate, as if it was in them and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause -- the death of the gods.”

IfsRealityBeliefLostCausesDivineAbsenceAttachmentSparksNew ThingsCloaksBelief In GodOld ThingsIncredulity
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“We say that we often see animals in our dreams, but we forget that almost always we are ourselves animals therein, deprived of that reasoning power which projects upon things the light of certainty; on the contrary we bring to bear on the spectacle of life only a dubious vision, extinguished anew every moment by oblivion, the former reality fading before that which follows it as one projection of a magic lantern fades before the next as we change the slide.”

MomentsDreamRealityLightNextForgetAnimalVisionMagicBearsProjectsContraryCertaintyFormerReasoningFadesOur DreamsOblivionDeprivedProjectionSlidesFadingDubiousLanterns
Book:Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove
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“The fact of the matter is that, since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary, elliptical and almost irresistible communication of one's defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and outlandishly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty.”

ShouldMayPersonsMatterFactsFeelingsGivenAnimalEmotionHeardInspireStrangeCommunicationMurderVicesDeterminedCriminalsGuiltyToneDefectsAlarmsIrresistibleRefrainObsceneInvoluntaryConfessing
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way
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“The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply.”

MenMindFirstsReasonUnderstandingHe ManGeniusCapableIncreaseExtraordinaryReason Why
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. Partaking of the universal community of minds, it infiltrates, grafts itself on to, the mind of him who it refutes, among other contiguous ideas, with the aid of which, counter-attacking, he complements and corrects it; so that the final verdict is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion.”

MenMindIdeasCommunityPowerfulPartyHe ManUniversalFinalsCommunicateAidsDiscussionAttackingComplementVerdict
Book:Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove
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