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Summary Time

By Ekamjatts,
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Ekamjatts 7

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                   !*Summary Time*!

       Every SUNDAY I will post a summary of a story to entertain you              all and to make your brain fresh with a lot of entertainment !

                    Note* Every summary is made by me and I have tried to make it easy to understand and read.....

                                                          !!!ENJOY!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Story NO.1 'Keeping it from Harold'

                                                                         'Keepin it from Harold'

                                          This is a story which is written by 'P.g. Wodehouse'. It is an very interesting story.

                                          After reading the Whole novel I decided to make a summary of it and enjoy it with you all...
                                         I have divided the story in three parts so that it can become easy to understand as well as to read ....

1

"Ma!" Mrs. Bramble looked up, beaming with a kind of amiable fat-headedness.
A domestic creature, wrapped up in Bill, her husband, and Harold, her son. At the
present moment only the latter was with her. He sat on the other side of the table,
his lips gravely pursed and his eyes a trifle cloudy behind their spectacles. Before
him on the red tablecloth lay an open book. His powerful brain was plainly busy.
Yes, dearie?"
"Will you hear me?"
Mrs. Bramble took the book.
"Yes, mother will hear you, precious."
A slight frown, marred the smoothness of Harold Bramble's brow. It jarred upon
him, this habit of his mother's of referring to herself in the third person, as if she
were addressing a baby, instead of a young man of ten who had taken the spelling
and dictation prize last term on his head.
He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the
chandelier.
"Be good, sweet maid," he began, with the toneless rapidity affected by youths of
his age when reciting poetry…..
"You do study so hard, dearie, you'll give yourself a headache. Why don't you take
a nice walk by the river for half an hour, and come back nice and fresh?"
The spectacled child considered the
point for a moment gravely. Then,
nodding, he arranged his books in
readiness for his return and went out.
The front door closed with a decorous
softness.
It was a constant source of amazement
to Mrs. Bramble that she should have
brought such a prodigy as Harold into
the world. Harold was so different from
ordinary children, so devoted to his books, such a model of behaviour, so
altogether admirable. The only drawback was that his very 'perfection' had made
necessary a series of evasions and even deliberate falsehoods on the part of
herself and her husband, highly distasteful to both. They were lovers of truth, but
they had realized that there are times when truth must be sacrificed. At any cost,
the facts concerning Mr. Bramble's profession must be kept from Harold.
While he was a baby it had not mattered so much. But when he began to move
about and take notice, Mrs. Bramble said to Mr. Bramble, "Bill, we must keep it
from Harold." A little later, when the child had begun to show signs of being about
to become a model of goodness and intelligence, and had already taken two
prizes at the Sunday-school, the senior curate of the parish, meeting Mr. Bramble
one morning, said nervously-for, after all, it was a delicate subject to broach, "ErBramble,
I think, on the whole, it would be as well to-er-keep it from Harold."
And only the other day, Mrs. Bramble's brother, Major Percy Stokes, dropping in
for a cup of tea, had said, "I hope you are keeping it from Harold. It is the least you
can do", and had gone on to make one or two remarks about men of wrath which,
considering that his cheek-bones were glistening with Mr. Bramble's buttered
toast, were in poor taste. But Percy was like that. Enemies said that he liked the
sound of his own voice
Certainly he was very persuasive. Mr. Bramble had fallen in with the suggestion
without demur. In private life he was the mildest and most obliging of men, and
always yielded to everybody. The very naming of Harold had caused a sacrifice on
his part.
When it was certain that he was about to become a father, he had expressed a
desire that the child should be named John, if a boy, after Mr John L. Sullivan, or,
if a girl, Marie, after Miss Marie Lloyd. But Mrs Bramble saying that Harold was
such a sweet name, he had withdrawn his suggestions with the utmost goodhumour.
Nobody could help liking this excellent man; which made it all the greater pity that
his walk in life was of such a nature that it simply had to be kept from Harold.
He was a professional boxer. That was the trouble.
Before the coming of Harold, he had been proud of being a professional boxer. His
ability to paste his fellow-man in the eye while apparently meditating an attack on
his stomach, and vice versa, had filled him with that genial glow of self-satisfaction
which comes to philanthropists and other benefactors of the species. It had
seemed to him a thing on which to congratulate himself that of all London's
teeming millions there was not a man, weighing eight stone four, whom he could
not overcome in a twenty-round contest. He was delighted to be the possessor of
a left hook which had won the approval of the newspapers.
And then Harold had come into his life, and changed him into a furtive practiser of
shady deeds. Before, he had gone about the world with a match-box full of pressnotices,
which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances. Now,
he quailed at the sight of his name in print, so thoroughly had he become imbued
with the necessity of keeping it from Harold.
With an ordinary boy it would have mattered less. But Harold was different.
Secretly proud of him as they were, both Bill and his wife were a little afraid of their
wonderful child. The fact was, as Bill himself put it, Harold was showing a bit too
much class for them. He had formed a corner in brains, as far as the Bramble
family was concerned. They had come to regard him as being of a superior order.
Yet Harold, defying the laws of heredity, had run to intellect as his father had run to muscle. He had learned to read and write with amazing quickness. He sang in the
choir.



2

And now, at the age of ten, a pupil at a local private school where they wore mortar
boards and generally comported themselves like young dons, he had already
won a prize for spelling and dictation. You simply couldn't take a boy like that aside
and tell him that the father whom he believed to be a commercial traveller was
affectionately known to a large section of the inhabitants of London, as "Young
Porky." There were no two ways about it. You had to keep it from him.
So, Harold grew in stature and intelligence, without a suspicion of the real identity
of the square-jawed man with the irregularly-shaped nose who came and went
mysteriously in their semi-detached, red-brick home. He was a self-centred child,
and, accepting the commercial traveller fiction, dismissed the subject from his
mind and busied himself with things of more moment. And time slipped by.
Mrs. Bramble, left alone, resumed work on the sock which she was darning. For
the first time since Harold had reached years of intelligence she was easy in her
mind about the future. A week from tonight would see the end of all her anxieties.
On that day Bill would fight his last fight, the twenty-round contest with that
American Murphy at the National Sporting Club for which he was now training at
the White Hart down the road. He had promised that it should be the last. He was
getting on. He was thirty-one, and he said himself that he would have to be
chucking the game before it chucked him. His idea was to retire from active work
and try for a job as instructor at one of these big schools or colleges. He had a
splendid record for respectability and sobriety and all the other qualities which
headmasters demanded in those who taught their young gentlemen to box and
several of his friends who had obtained similar posts described the job in question
as extremely soft. So that it seemed to Mrs. Bramble that all might now be
considered well. She smiled happily to herself as she darned her sock.
She was interrupted in her meditations by a knock at the front door. She put down
her sock and listened.
Martha, the general, pattered along the passage, and then there came the sound
of voices speaking in an undertone. Footsteps made themselves heard in the
passage. The door opened. The head and shoulders of Major Percy Stokes
insinuated themselves into the room.
The Major cocked a mild blue eye at her.
"Harold anywhere about?"
"He's gone out for a nice walk. Whatever brings you here, Percy, so late? "
Percy made no answer. He withdrew his head.
He then reappeared, this time in his entirety, and remained holding the door open.
More footsteps in the passage, and through the doorway in a sideways fashion
suggestive of a diffident crab, came a short, sturdy, red-headed man with a broken
nose and a propitiatory smile, at the sight of whom Mrs. Bramble, dropping her
sock, rose as if propelled by powerful machinery, and exclaimed, "Bill!"
Mr. Bramble - for it was he - scratched his head, grinned feebly, and looked for
assistance to the Major.
"The scales have fallen from his eyes."
"What scales?" demanded Mrs. Bramble, a literal-minded woman. "And what are
you doing here, Bill, when you ought to be at the White Hart, training?"
"That's just what I'm telling you," said Percy. "I been wrestling with Bill, and I been
vouchsafed the victory."
"You!" said Mrs. Bramble, with uncomplimentary astonishment, letting her gaze
wander over her brother's weedy form.
"Jerry Fisher's a hard nut," said Mr. Bramble, apologetically. "He don't like people
coming round talking to a man he's training, unless he introduces them or they're
newspaper gents."
"After that I kept away. But I wrote the letters and I sent the tracts. Bill, which of the
tracts was it that snatched you from the primrose path?"
"It wasn't so much the letters, Perce. It was what you wrote about Harold. You see,
Jane---"
"Perhaps you'll kindly allow me to get a word in edgeways, you two," said Mrs.
Bramble, her temper for once becoming ruffled. "You can stop talking for half an
instant, Percy, if you know how, while Bill tells me what he's doing here when he
ought to be at the White Hart with Mr. Fisher, doing his bit of training."
Mr. Bramble met her eye and blinked awkwardly.
" Percy's just been telling you, Jane. He wrote---"
"I haven't made head or tail of a word that Percy's said, and I don't expect to. All I want is a plain answer to a plain question. What are you doing here, Bill, instead of
being at the White Hart? "
"I've come home, Jane."
"Glory!" exclaimed the Major.
"Percy, if you don't keep quiet, I'll forget I'm your sister and let you have one. What
do you mean, Bill, you've come home? Isn't there going to be the fight next week,
after all?"
"The fight's over," said the unsuppressed Major, joyfully, "and Bill's won, with me
seconding him."
"Percy!"
Mr. Bramble pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"I'm not going to fight, Jane," he said, in a small voice.
'' You're not going--!"
"He's seen the error of his ways," cried Percy, the resilient."That's what he's gone
and done. At the eleventh hour."
"Oh! I have waited for this joyful moment. I have watched for it. I---"
"You're not going to fight!"
Mr. Bramble, avoiding his wife's eye, shook his head.
"And how about the money?"
"What's money? " said the Major, scornfully.
"You ought to know," snapped Mrs. Bramble, turning on him. "You've borrowed
enough of it from me in your time."
The Major waved a hand in wounded silence. He considered the remark in poor
taste.
"How about the money?" repeated Mrs. Bramble. "Goodness knows I've never
liked your profession, Bill, but there is this to be said for it, that it's earned you good
money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any
duke ever had, I'm sure. And you know, you yourself said that the five hundred
pounds you were going to get if you beat this Murphy, and even if you lost it would
be a hundred and twenty, was going to be a blessing, because it would let us finish
him off proper and give him a better start in life than you or me ever had, and now
you let this Percy come over you with his foolish talk, and now I don't know what
will happen.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Even Percy seemed at a loss for words. Mrs.
Bramble sat down and began to sob. Mr. Bramble shuffled his feet.
62. "Talking of Harold," said Mr. Bramble at last, " that's , really what I'm driving at. It
was him only what I was thinking of when I hopped it from the White Hart. It would
be written up in all the papers, instead of only in the sporting ones. As likely as not
there would be a piece about it in the Mail, with a photograph of me. And you know
Harold reads his Mail regularly. And then, don't you see, the fat would be in the
fire. "That's what Percy pointed out to me, and I seen what he meant, so I hopped
it."
"At the eleventh hour," added the Major, rubbing in the point.
"You see, Jane---" Mr. Bramble was beginning, when there was a knock at the
door, and a little, ferret-faced man in a woollen sweater and cycling
knickerbockers entered, removing as he did so a somewhat battered bowler hat.
" Beg pardon, Mrs. Bramble," he said, " coming in like this. Found the front door
ajar, so came in, to ask if you'd happened to have seen-"
He broke off and stood staring wildly at the little group.
"I thought so!" he said, and shot through the air towards Percy.
"Jerry !" said Bill.
"Mr. Fisher!" said Mrs. Bramble,
"Be reasonable," said the Major, diving underneath the table and coming up the
other side like a performing seal.
"Let me get at him," begged the intruder, struggling to free himself from Bill's
restraining arms.
Mrs. Bramble rapped on the table.
"Kindly remember there's a lady present, Mr. Fisher."
The little man's face became a battlefield on which rage, misery, and a respect for
the decencies of social life struggled for mastery.
"It's hard," he said at length, in a choked voice. "I just wanted to break his neck for
him, but I suppose it's not to be. I know it's him that's at the bottom of it. And here I
find them together, so I know it's him. Well, if you say so, Mrs. B., I suppose I
mustn't put a hand on him. But it's hard. Bill, you come back along of me to the
White Hart. I'm surprised at you. Ashamed of you, I am. All the time you and me
have known each other, I've never known you do such a thing. You such a
pleasure to train as a rule. It all comes of getting with bad companions."
Mr. Bramble looked at his brother-in-law miserably.
"You tell him," he said.
"You tell him, Jane," said the Major.
"I won't," said Mrs. Bramble.
"Tell him what? " asked the puzzled trainer.
"Well?"
"It's only that I'm not going to fight on Monday."
"What!"
"Bill has seen a sudden bright light," said Percy, edging a few inches to the left, so
that the table was exactly between the trainer and himself. "At the eleventh hour,
he has turned from his wicked ways. You ought to be singing with joy, Mr. Fisher, if
you really loved Bill. This ought to be the happiest evening you've ever known. You
ought to be singing like a little child."
A strange, guttural noise escaped the trainer. It may have been a song, but it did
not sound like it.
"It's true, Jerry," said Bill, unhappily. "I have been thinking it over, and I'm not going
to fight on Monday."
"Glory!" said the Major, tactlessly.
Jerry Fisher's face was a study in violent emotions. His eyes seemed to protrude
from their sockets like a snail's. He clutched the tablecloth.
"I'm sorry, Jerry," said Bill. " I know it's hard on you. But I've got to think of Harold.
This fight with Jimmy Murphy being what you might call a kind of national affair, in a
way of speaking, will be reported in the Mail as like as not, with a photograph of
me, and Harold reads his Mail regular. We've been keeping it from him all these
years that I'm in the profession, and we can't let him know now. He would die of
shame, Jerry."
Tears appeared in Jerry Fisher's eyes.
"Bill," he cried, " you're off your head. Think of the purse!"
"Ah!" said Mrs. Bramble.
"Think of all the swells that'll be coming to see you. Think of what the papers'll say.
Think of me."
94. "I know, Jerry, it's chronic. But Harold---"
"Think of all the trouble you've taken for the last weeks getting yourself into
condition."
"I know. But Har---"
"You can't not fight on Monday."
"But Harold, Jerry. He'd die of the disgrace of it. He ain't like you and me, Jerry.
He's a little gentleman. I got to think of Harold"
"What about me, pa?" said a youthful voice at the door; and Bill's honest blood
froze at the sound. His jaw fell, and he goggled dumbly.
There, his spectacles gleaming in the gaslight, his cheeks glowing with the
exertion of the nice walk, his eyebrows slightly elevated with surprise, stood
Harold himself.
"Halloa, pa! Halloa, Uncle Percy! Somebody's left the front door open. What were
you saying about thinking about me, pa? Ma, will you hear me, my piece of poetry
again? I think I've forgotten it."
The four adults surveyed the innocent child in silence.
On the faces of three of them consternation was written. In the eyes of the fourth,
Mr. Fisher, there glittered that nasty, steely expression of the man, who sees his
way to getting a bit of his own back, Mr. Fisher's was not an un-mixedly chivalrous
nature. He considered that he had been badly treated, and what he wanted most
at the moment was revenge. He had been fond and proud of Bill Bramble, but
those emotions belonged to the dead past. Just at present, he felt that he disliked
Bill rather more than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Major
Percy Stokes.
"So you're Harold, are you, Tommy? " he said, in a metallic voice." Then just you
listen here a minute."
"Jerry," cried Bill, advancing, "you keep your mouth shut, or I'll dot you one."
Mr. Fisher retreated and, grasping a chair, swung it above his head.
"You better! " he said, curtly.
'Mr. Fisher, do be a gentleman," entreated Mrs. Bramble.
"My dear sir." There was a crooning winningness in Percy's voice.
"My dear sir, do nothing hasty. Think before you speak. Don't go and be so silly as
to act like a mutton-head. I'd be ashamed to be so spiteful. Respect a father's
feelings."
"Tommy," said Mr. Fisher, ignoring them all, "you think your pa's a commercial. He
ain't. He's a fighting-man, doing his eight-stone-four ringside, and known to all the
heads as ' Young Porky.' "
Bill sank into a chair. He could see Harold's round eyes staring at him.
"I'd never have thought it of you, Jerry," he said, miserably. "If anyone had come to
me and told me that you could have acted so raw I'd have dotted him one."
"And if anyone had come to me and told me that I should live to see the day when
you broke training a week before a fight at the National, I'd given him one for
himself."
"Harold, my lad," said Percy, "you mustn't think none the worse of your pa for
having been a man of wrath. He hadn't seen the bright light then. It's all over now.
He's given it up for ever, and there's no call for you to feel ashamed."
Bill seized on the point.
"That's right, Harold," he said, reviving, "I've given it up. I was to have fought an
American named Murphy at the National next Monday, but I ain't going to now, not
if they come to me on their bended knees. Not if the King of England come to me
on his bended knees."
Harold drew a deep breath.
"Oh!" he cried, shrilly. "Oh, aren't you? Then what about my two bob? What about
my two bob, I've betted Dicky Saunders that Jimmy Murphy won't last ten
rounds?"
He looked round the room wrathfully.
"It's thick," he said in the crisp, gentlemanly, voice of which his parents were so
proud. "It's jolly thick. That's what it is. A chap takes the trouble to study form and
saves up his pocket-money to have a bet on a good thing, and then he goes and
gets let down like this. It may be funny to you, but I call it rotten. And another thing I
call rotten is you having kept it from me all this time that you were. 'Young Porky,'
pa. That's what I call so jolly rotten! There's a fellow at our school who goes about
swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Phil Scott's autograph




3

Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it
to me. That's what makes me so jolly sick. How long do you suppose they'd go on
calling me, 'Goggles' if they knew that you were my father? They'd chuck it
tomorrow, and look up to me like anything, I do call it rotten. And chucking it up like
this is the limit. What do you want to do it for? It's the silliest idea, I've ever heard.
Why, if you beat Jimmy Murphy they'll have to give you the next chance with Sid
Sampson for the Lonsdale belt. Jimmy beat Ted Richards, and Ted beat the
Ginger Nut, and the Ginger Nut only lost on a foul to Sid Sampson, and you beat
Ted Richards, so they couldn't help letting you have next go at Sid."
Mr. Fisher beamed approval.
"If I've told your pa that once, I've told him twenty times," he said. "You certainly
know a thing or two, Tommy."
"Well, I've made a study of it since I was a kid, so I jolly well ought to. All the fellows
at our place are frightfully keen on it. One chap's got a snapshot of Jimmy Wilde. At
least, he says it's Jimmy Wilde, but I believe it's just some ordinary fellow. Anyhow,
it's jolly blurred, so it might be anyone. Pa, can't you give me a picture of yourself
boxing? I could swank like anything. And you don't know how sick a chap gets of
having chaps call him, 'Goggles.' "
"Bill," said Mr. Fisher, "you and me had better be getting back to the White Hart."
Bill rose and followed him without a word.
Harold broke the silence which followed their departure. The animated expression
which had been on his face as he discussed the relative merits of Sid Sampson
and the Ginger Nut had given place to the abstracted gravity of the student.
"Ma!"
Mrs. Bramble started convulsively.
"Yes, dearie?"
"Will you hear me? "
Mrs. Bramble took the book.
''Yes, mother will hear you, precious," she said, mechanically.
Harold fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever'-clever. 'Do noble things..' "

 

 

 

No.2. 'In search of the Lost Time by Marcel proust'

 

                                                                      ' In search of the Lost Time'

                Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu,                                        Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In

                             it,Proust introduces the themes that run through the entire

                             work. The narrator recalls his childhood, aided by the famous

                             madeleine; and describes M. Swann's passion for Odette. The

                             work is incomparable.Edmund Wilson said "[Proust] has supplied

                             for the first time in literature an equivalent in the full

                             scale for the new theory of  modern physics."'

                             * It is an very Interesting story so, Enjoy it  :) 

1.

Main characters

Marcel: The narrator and protagonist. As a child, he suffers from sleep problems but looks forward to the good-night kiss of his mother. He is very attached to her and his maternal grandmother. Marcel aspires to become a writer and is an avid reader. He is also a keen observer of the people and events around him. But, like most people, he has trouble recalling the details of these events in his adult years. Occasionally, external stimuli help him to remember his past vividly so that he can make it central part of the novel he plans to write.
Mother of the Marcel (Mamma): Marcel's mother forms a close bond with him and one evening even stays up with him all night when  cannot sleep.
Father of Marcel: Marcel's father generally opposes coddling his son but urges his wife to go to him one night when he realizes the  boy is clearly upset because of his sleeping problems.
Bathilde Amédée: Narrator's maternal grandmother. She is a loving, caring, morally upright woman who buys books for Marcel.
Monsieur Amédée: Grandfather of the narrator and husband of Bathilde.
Aunt Léonie: Marcel's great-aunt, a widow. Marcel and his family stay at her home when they visit Combray. Upon her death, she leaves her money and furniture to Marcel, who gives the furniture to ladies in a brothel.
Charles Swann: Wealthy stockbroker and a friend of Marcel's family. He has friends in the highest social circles in Paris.
Odette de Crécy: Promiscuous woman whom Swann marries.
Gilberte: Daughter of Swann and Odette de Crécy. Marcel falls in love with her.
Robert de Saint-Loup: Officer in the French army and good friend of Marcel. He is kind and cultured. He uses his reputation as a charmer of women to hide his homosexuality.
Albertine Simonet: Beautiful young woman with whom Marcel falls in love after Gilberte marries Robert de Saint-Loup. Marcel suspects her of having lesbian encounters and jealously keeps watch over her. His suspicions are well founded.
Léa: Lesbian actress with whom Albertine is intimate.
Françoise: Cook for Aunt Léonie. After the latter dies, she becomes the cook in the Paris home of Marcel and his family.
Bloch: Jewish friend of Marcel. He recommends that Marcel stop reading the works of Alfred de Musset and instead begin reading the works of Bergotte. In so doing, Block says, Marcel will experience "the ambrosial joys of Olympus."
Bergotte: Marcel's favorite writer. Bergotte is a fictional personage. However, Proust based him on writers and thinkers whose works he read.
Oriane de Guermantes: Duchess (Duchesse) at the pinnacle of Paris society. She comes from a noble family that goes further back than even families of royals that she knows. Marcel eventually gains acceptance in her circle of friends.
Basin de Guermantes: Duke (Duc) and husband of the Duchesse de Guermantes. He is a womanizer.
Charlus (Palamède de Guermantes): Pompous friend of Marcel and Swann and younger brother of Basin de Guermantes. Baron de Charlus is a homosexual who is obsessed with finding young men.
Morel: Talented violinist who benefits from the patronage of Charlus and Robert de Saint-Loup. Morel is self-centered and mean-  spirited.
Jupien: A tailor and homosexual friend of Charlus. Jupien acts as a procurer for Charlus and arranges for him to meet with Morel.
Comte de Crécy: First husband of Odette.
Sidonie Verdurin: Obnoxious social climber who attempts to rule her circle of friends with an iron hand.
Gustave Verdurin: Husband of Sidonie Verdurin.
Comte de Forcheville: Acquaintance of the Verdurins. He becomes intimate with Odette while she is seeing Swann. After Swann's  death, he marries her.
Monsieur Vinteuil: Extremely polite and self-effacing widower. He is a musician and composer who lives near Combray. Vinteuil dotes on his daughter but dies of a broken heart after she engages in a lesbian relationship.
Mademoiselle Vinteuil: Daughter of Vinteuil. She engages in a lesbian relationship with a friend she invites to her house.
            Lesbian Friend of Mademoiselle Vinteuil
Adolphe: Marcel's uncle. He is a womanizer and, even in his old age, keeps company with courtesans.
Berma: Well-known actress.
Elstir: Painter who lives in Balbec and becomes acquainted with the narrator.
Norpois: Diplomat and friend of Marcel's family.
Legrandin: Parisian with a country house at Combray.
Dr. Cottard: Oafish member of the Verdurin circle.
Brichot: Boring professor in the Verdurin circle.
Rachel: A mistress of Robert de Saint-Loup.
Andrée: Friend of Albertine.

 

 

2.

......The main character, Marcel, writes the story of his life and the world in which he lives. He begins his story as an adult looking back on his life.
.......When he was a child, he says, he found it difficult to fall asleep. At times, it was torture to lie there in bed. However, he welcomed the moment when his mother came in to kiss him good night.
.......Remembering his childhood and the rest of his past is important to Marcel, for he plans to complete a book that recaptures his memories and shows them to readers of the present.
.......Marcel can remember many episodes from his youth, including summer sojourns at Combray, southwest of Paris, with his great-aunt Léonie and his grandfather and grandmother, Bathilde Amédée. It was in his boyhood at Combray that he decided to become a writer. There, his young friend, Bloch, spoke of a writer named Bergotte. When Marcel began reading this writer, he was enthralled.
.......“I observed the rare, almost archaic phrases which he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow of harmony, a prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would animate and elevate his style. . . . ,” Marcel says.
.......At Combray, Marcel experienced much that he plans to write about: walks in the country, the beautiful scenery, the people. He continued to have trouble going to sleep, he recalls, even after someone “had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window.” But this gift did not relieve him of his bedtime problems.
.......The most frequent visitor he and his family received at Combray was Charles Swann, a wealthy stockbroker and art connoisseur who a neighbor with a pond and beautiful hawthorn trees. Swann was conversant on many subjects and had access to the drawing rooms of Paris society. His father had been a close friend of Marcel's grandfather, who in turn became a friend of Swann.
.......Among those who often came to dinner, besides Swann, were Bathilde's sister and Marcel's Aunt Celine. The conversation ranged over a wide number of topics—the abilities of a particular orator, the co-operative movement in Scandinavia, the Pensées of philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), and gossip. The members of the family enjoyed stories that Swann told, although they secretly looked down on him because of his middle-class background. In this regard, their attitude toward him would probably have changed if they were aware that he had gained entry to the highest circles of Paris society and even moved among nobles and royals.
.......During this time, Marcel's mother continued to soothe his fears when he went to bed. In fact, one evening when he was extremely anxious, she read to him from a novel by George Sand (1804-1876) and spent the night in his room.
.......The adult Marcel recalls that these and other remembrances of his childhood are never detailed enough for an aspiring writer. He concludes that it is “a labor in vain” to try to recapture the past.
.......“The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect," Marcel says. "And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.”
.......Fortunately for Marcel, that moment of chance arrived when he came home one cold winter day. To help warm him, his mother gave him hot tea. She also gave him a little cake called a petite madeleine. The taste of the madeleine had a profound effect on him, as his narration indicates:

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

 

 

3.

He concluded that a “visual memory” locked deep inside him—a memory associated with the taste of the madeleine—was attempting to surface and manifest itself. Several moments later, the memory emerged—a memory of Sunday mornings at Combray when his Aunt Léonie used to give him a morsel of a madeleine, dipped in lime-flower tea, before he went to mass at a nearby Roman Catholic church. The taste of the madeleine also unlocked many other earlier memories. He could now see his past in vivid detail. He could begin to remember things past; he could begin to recapture lost time.
.......Marcel recalls a time at Combray when he was older and was out walking with his family. Outside Swann's house, they encountered his wife, Odette, who was with her daughter, Gilberte, and a friend of Swann, Baron Charlus de Guermantes. Marcel was captivated by Gilberte. But in locking the memory of her in his mind, he mistakenly gave her blue eyes even though he clearly saw her black eyes.
.......Meanwhile, another neighbor, the pianist Vinteuil, became terribly disappointed in his daughter when another woman moved into his home as the lover of his daughter, whom he had always doted on. In a short while, he died of a broken heart. One day, while walking by their house, Marcel saw Mademoiselle Vinteuil's friend making advances toward her. Mademoiselle ran off, and “and then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls.”
.......When Mademoiselle Vinteuil saw her father's portrait on a table, she called her friend's attention to it. The latter proposed that they spit on it. Marcel observed that Mademoiselle Vinteuil's indifference to the suffering she caused her father was the same kind of indifference he saw in other people and that it was “the one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.”
.......The novel flashes back to a time long before Marcel first visited Combray to tell the story of Swann.
.......At the Paris residence of Monsieur and Madame Verdurin—ambitious social climbers—Swann cultivated a relationship with a woman named Odette de Crécy. He was unaware of her reputation as a courtesan. She made advances. At the time, however, he was keeping company with a seamstress and avoided becoming overly friendly with Odette. But she persisted and won his attentions. One of the little tricks she used was to have a musician play a sonata that he enjoyed.
.......At first, he did not regard her as particularly attractive. But later, after comparing her to the image of the daughter of Jethro in a Botticelli painting, he thought her exquisitely beautiful. They became lovers. Meanwhile, Odette's promiscuous nature led her into the arms of other men, including the Comte de Forcheville. Swann married Odette. Baron de Charlus learned of her infidelities and informed Swann of them in an unsigned letter. Swann realized he should never have married Odette, lamenting, "To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!"
.......Many years later, Marcel fell in love with Gilberte, the daughter of Swann and Odette. In time, though, she became bored with him and he abandoned his relationship with her. About two years later, he fell in love with Albertine Simonet, a young woman he met while sojourning with his grandmother at the Grand Hôtel de la Plage in Balbec, in northwestern France near the English Channel. He grew cool toward her, though, when she appeared to prefer only a platonic relationship with him.
.......At Balbec, Marcel became reacquainted with his old friend Bloch (the one who introduced him to Bergotte) and made a new friend, Robert de Saint-Loup, a charming, personable military officer. Meanwhile, Marcel continued to witness the follies and pretensions of social climbers.
.......As a young man, Marcel entered Parisian society under the aegis of one of the grande dame of the Parisian upper class, the wealthy Madame Guermantes, who lived in an elite section of Paris, Faubourg Saint-Germain. Before gaining entry to Madame's social circle, Marcel had idealized it as a refined and lofty niche in the haute monde. But after attending many dinners at her residence, he began to see that the high society of the Guermantes was just as vulgar and prosaic as life in the salons of bourgeois social climbers. During this time, his grandmother died.
.......In time, Marcel renewed his relationship with Albertine, who no longer held platonic relationships in high esteem. The Dreyfus Affair became a topic of conversation all over France, including the social affairs Marcel attended, and exposed the anti-Semitism running through much of society. From time to time, Marcel saw Swann at dinner parties. To the detriment of his reputation, Swann defended Dreyfus. And to the detriment of his health, he became ill with cancer. He had wanted to introduce his wife, Odette, and daughter, Gilberte, at the Guermantes' social gatherings but did not gain Madame's approval before he died.
.......Meanwhile, Marcel became obsessed with Albertine and began to suspect her of having lesbian relationships. Oddly, his desire for her became intense only when she strayed from him. At this time, he became a regular in the social circle of the Verdurins. So did Baron de Charlus, who had been active in the homosexual underworld with a tailor named Jupien. Jupien acted as a procurer of young men for Charlus. Charlus latched onto a violinist named Morel. Like Marcel's preoccupation with Albertine and her behavior, Charlus became obsessed with Morel.
.......As Marcel kept a close watch on Albertine, he considered marrying her and made her a virtual prisoner in his Paris residence when his mother was away caring for a sick relative. Although he gave Albertine gifts and pledged to marry her, she ran away one day and completely vanished. He later learned that she had died falling off a horse. A foreshadowing of her death occurred when Marcel and Albertine left Balbec for Paris.

 

 

4.

On the first day, at the moment of leaving Balbec, when she saw how wretched I was, and was distressed by the prospect of leaving me by myself, my mother had perhaps been glad when she heard that Albertine was travelling with us, and saw that, side by side with our own boxes (those boxes among which I had passed a night in tears in the Balbec hotel), there had been hoisted into the 'Twister' Albertine's boxes also, narrow and black, which had seemed to me to have the appearance of coffins, and as to which I knew not whether they were bringing to my house life or death. (The Captive)
.......Marcel eventually became interested again in Gilberte. She and her mother, Odette, by this time had been deemed acceptable in Faubourg Saint-Germain society. However, their father, Swann, was forgotten—the memory of him obliterated—by the salon crowd that knew him.
.......Marcel and his mother vacationed in Venice. While there, he received a letter informing him that Gilberte had married Robert Saint-Loup. Not long after the latter's marriage, Robert began practicing homosexuality. In fact, he had been a homosexual all along. His various encounters with women and his marriage to Gilberte were designed merely to disguise his homosexuality.
.......After the First World War broke out, and Robert died in battle. The decline and fall of the French aristocracy became complete when Madame Verdurin, whose husband had died, became the Princesse de Guermantes. Charlus, meanwhile, continued his old ways, roaming Paris for male companions.
.......Marcel attended a party at which he realized the shallowness of life in the salons and, because his health was declining, made a decision not to put off any longer the pursuit of a writing career and the production of a work of art that captured his remembrances of things past.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ekamjatts

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drazeruzumaki 5,021

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Posted

You get a TEN MARKER for your SA. Lucky you <_<

^_^ still i got 71/90 , english is easiest (10  no. for that question which i didnt learn ok?)

and i saw a guy fail in english for the first time :o

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Zenyth 6,494

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Posted

I got about 99. Out of 100. In practically all subjects last year. This time, pretty much 25 out of 25 in all of them.

LMAO what grade/school are you in?? I've never seen someone get almost full marks in English..you can't be perfect in English even though you become a great writer LOL..
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