Swann’s Way

The transmutation of sensation into sentiment, the ebb tide of memory, waves of emotion such as desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria–this is the material of this enormous and yet singularly light and translucid work. –Vladmir Nabokov In the overture to Swann’s Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most  memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The  recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account  of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins. The final volume of a new, definitive text of A la recherche du temps perdu was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new French editions.