Time Retrieved: Le Temps Retrouve (Time Regained, Finding Time Again)

Time Retrieved TIME RETRIEVED (LTR) is the final volume of Proust's million-plus word masterpiece La Recherche du Temps Perdu (RECHERCHE, In Search of Lost Time). Yet if anyone wants to start with (and maybe finish, and maybe even begin) with one volume of Proust, arguably it should be LTR. Over the years, Proust was consistent in asserting that his long work constituted one large and consistent whole, which would become clear at the novel's end: because it was at that point the novel's narrator understood why he should become an author (because he really had something significant to say, after all); and at that point, the narrative returns one to the beginning of Swann's Way, the first volume of RESEARCH. As Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter has put it, “The whole book is, as it were, contained in the last volume.” As Proust himself put it, in LTR the many separate “leitmotifs” in his “concert” finally connect and become clear, and his novel “comes full circle.” As it encourages readers to discover and delver further into Proust, this new translation provides orienting information concerning Proust’s novel as a whole, including dates, money values, historical incidents, and translation nuances. In order to enhance the readers' appreciation and understanding, this volume also includes critical sections from other RECHERCHE volumes which lead to the climax of LTR and to its denouement into Swann's Way. An opening introduction provides the reader with context for this critical Proustian work.