There is frisson that’s embraced when regarding the graphic novelist’s version of Proust’s labyrinthine classic that’s sumptuous and elegant, a feat of digestible beauty.
When Stephane Heuet, a French comic artist began publishing his graphic adaptation of Marcel Proust, it caused an outcry in France but despite the purists’ distaste it had marginal effect on the book’s success. Heuet continued with his project, now five volumes in. Even to those not acquainted with Proust’s works, Heuet’s ruthless compression of the comic strip, sheds light on the narrator’s resurrected memories that are sumptuous, elegant and beautifully paced, totally absorbing.
This volume is a work of art in its own right. SWANN’S WAY is divided like the original text, into three parts. The first is an evocation of Combray, the village where the narrator, an aspiring writer, grew up. The second tells the story of the aristocratic Charles Swann and Odette, the woman with whom he is tormented by. The third deals with the narrator ‘s idealised boyhood love for Swann’s daughter, Gilbert. Heuet owes a debt to the great artist, Herge for his brilliant artistry with emotional concision in his strips, a pleasing counterpoint to Proust’s winding, abstract prose.Perhaps not all the beauty is shared but the narrative ultimately gives this remarkable book its intense flavour, the illustrations allowing readers to conjure their own images, and to concentrate on the text, even though paired neatly to fit into the strip. THE SEARCH OF LOST TIME is a masterpiece of French literature evoking countless small moments that are by turns delightful, humiliating and erotic.
Proust invites us to participate in his reflections where in the first volume of the search, where childhood memories and the first moments of adolescence frame the story of the loves of a wealthy collector and in the manner of Scheherazade, of Arabian Nights, the novelist unveils a marvellous and complex story that takes us from the enchanting garden in a French village to the dark alleys of Paris, through the lights of the Opera and aristocratic salons. We follow his narrator-hero, Marcel who seeks to quench his thirst for wonderment and participate in his ever-renewed quest for the meaning of life.
The graphic novel adaptation respects the original work as the original text has been faithfully condensed, preserving its essence. The artwork is stunning and the carefully chosen colours enhance the experience. Proust’s long and beloved sentences have been shortened to facilitate comprehension while fitting within the panels of the graphic novel. There is much sensitivity in the text, in the analysis of Mr Swann’s torments that conveying these emotions through illustration could have seemed impossible without the immense talent of Stephane Heuet.
Everything seems so real that I feel the urge to travel following Proust to these imaginary places.. I highly commend this book with its sweeping digressions into the past with its reflections of memory connected to taste, smell, feel and touch. Proust’s oceanic novel, IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME looms over 20th century literature as one of the greatest, yet most endlessly challenging literary experience which influenced writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Its a monumental achievement making reading it a rite if passage for lovers of literature.
As the translator, Arthur Goldhammer, writes in his introduction, “The reader new to Proust must attend closely, even in the compressed rendering, to the novel’s circling rather and abrupt cross-cuts between different places and times. But this necessary attentiveness is abetted and facilitated by the compactness of the graphic format “.
