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Within a Budding Grove

Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 2

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Within a Budding Grove

By: Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff - translator
Narrated by: Neville Jason
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About this listen

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th century literature. Neville Jason’s widely praised abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, upon numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.

Within a Budding Grove is the second of seven volumes. The young narrator, experiencing his youthful sexuality, falls under the spell of a group of adolescent girls, succumbs to the charms of the enchanting Gilberte, and visits a brothel where he meets Rachel. His impressions of life are also stimulated by the painter, Elstir, and his encounter with another girl, Albertine.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2012 Naxos AudioBooks World Literature
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Neville Jason must have read through it all a few times before recording this as he channels the closest match to what must be what some call the “ring of truth” in his reading of Marcel’s voice - albeit in English, and just as in the way in which the text describes the relationship of the names of things to the objects to which they refer, the very sentence-structures fall like drops of water which, circling out from themselves, trace the widening arcs of their own ripples as they describe the impressions and repercussions made by the softest footprints, such as the memory within a memory in the frozen moment of the fairy forest, in front of the talking Hawthorn bush, in the company of fairies and with a profound quietness, that is laid out like a blanket woven in a spell of language, then to a vortex of feelings that sublimate, pack up and then unpack the ocean, the cathedrals, grandmother and servants, in the moment of a kiss. It is the ultimate expression of art for art’s sake, as though the world has no greater possibility of meaning than to have life breathed into every moment with flowers and art and faces. There is no political message or sociological. It is how beautiful the material world can be when the eye of god slows down time and shines a bright light on a small area.

To see a world in a grain of sand

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