The Guermantes Way In Search of Lost Time #3

The Guermantes Way presents a troubling portrait of levity in the face of great loss. Proust began work on the version we know today of the third volume in his series after the outbreak of fighting in 1914, when Paris had all but shut down and the future of Europe looked grim. Over the course of the narrative, Marcel's beloved grandmother dies, and Charles Swann, a central figure for him since childhood, reveals himself to be close to death. Moreover, our closer look in this volume into the old aristocracy-which will lose disproportionate numbers in the war to come, mutterings of which hostilities Proust has shifted back to this earlier date-shows it to be a spectacular but obsolete world that is already drifting to an end. The reaction of the living to these frightening realities is to surround themselves with frivolities and distractions. The band plays on, even after the lights have gone out.