He remembers the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War, and his relationship with a girl called Albertine. Marcel reflects upon a number of events that have taken place in his life. It was published in seven parts between 19. Reason will, by a resolute contest, prevail over imagination, and the power may be obtained of transferring the attention as judgment shall direct.In Search of Lost Time ( French: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, is a novel by the French writer Marcel Proust. Yet as memory may be assisted by method, and the decays of knowledge repaired by stated times of recollection, so the power of forgetting is capable of improvement. Little can be done well to which the whole mind is not applied the business of every day calls for the day to which it is assigned and he will have no leisure to regret yesterday’s vexations who resolves not to have a new subject of regret tomorrow.īut to forget or to remember at pleasure are equally beyond the power of man. It would add much to human happiness if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive if that pain which never can end in pleasure could be driven totally away, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present. © The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Paul F. Most of the mortifications that we have suffered arose from the concurrence of local and temporary circumstances which can never meet again and most of our disappointments have succeeded those expectations which life allows not to be formed a second time.Ĭhandra, the Moon God, folio from an Indian dream book, c. But a very small part of the moments spent in meditation on the past produce any reasonable caution or salutary sorrow. Regret is indeed useful and virtuous, and not only allowable but necessary, when it tends to the amendment of life, or to admonition of error which we may be again in danger of committing. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted today may be regretted again tomorrow. Remembrance of Things Past Volumes 1-3 Box Set Paperback Augby Marcel Proust (Author) 82 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle 0.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover 16.00 5 Used from 4.29 1 Collectible from 18.00 Paperback 88.00 11 Used from 29.39 2 Collectible from 48. The business of life is to go forward: he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way but he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. All useless misery is certainly folly, and he that feels evils before they come may be deservedly censured yet surely to dread the future is more reasonable than to lament the past. Philosophy has accumulated precept upon precept to warn us against the anticipation of future calamities. It is impossible to consider without some regret how much might have been learned, or how much might have been invented, by a rational and vigorous application of time, uselessly or painfully passed in the revocation of events which have left neither good nor evil behind them, in grief for misfortunes either repaired or irreparable, in resentment of injuries known only to ourselves, of which death has put the authors beyond our power. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate. We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful and it may be doubted whether we should be more benefited by the art of memory or the art of forgetfulness.įorgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. There is another art of which all have felt the want, though Themistocles only confessed it. For those readers whose access to Prousts novel rested on Scott. To assist this weakness of our nature, many methods have been proposed, all of which may be justly suspected of being ineffectual for no art of memory, however its effects have been boasted or admired, has been ever adopted into general use, nor have those who possessed it appeared to excel others in readiness of recollection or multiplicity of attainments. Remembrance of Things Past: Volume 10, The Captive - Part Two by Marcel Proust. SCOTT MONCRIEFFS REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST. Men complain of nothing more frequently than of deficient memory and, indeed, everyone finds that many of the ideas which he desired to retain have slipped irretrievably away that the acquisitions of the mind are sometimes equally fugitive with the gifts of fortune and that a short intermission of attention more certainly lessens knowledge than impairs an estate.
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