The Captive and the Fugitive

by Marcel Proust

In THE CAPTIVE, Marcel, in Balbec for the summer, is overwhelmed by a realization of the import of his grandmother's death. His jealous love for Albertine continues, along with suspicions that she is a lesbian. He becomes intimately involved with the Verdurins, the snobbish bourgeois family at whose home he meets artists and musicians, as well as the ever-present Baron de Charlus. In THE FUGITIVE, despite his family's disapproval, Marcel and Albertine live together in Paris. He becomes obsessed with her life, and spies on her shamelessly, finally testing her love by suggesting they separate. She stuns him by leaving and is subsequently killed in a fall from a horse. His doomed obsession with her continues until he again encounters Gilberte Swann and travels to Venice with his mother; his memory begins to work, bringing back people and events from his childhood. He also publishes an article in Le Figaro, and begins to see the real possibility of a writing career.

Editions of The Captive and the Fugitive

ISBN

9780679424772

Binding/Format

Hardcover

Publisher

Modern Library

Date

1993

Price

$11.73

Used - Good

Publisher Notes

In The Captive, Proust's narrator is living with Albertine in his mother's Paris apartment. He is chronically concerned about who she may or may not love. In The Fugitive, Albertine is irretrievably lost to him, and he retreats to Venice, where he receives a telegram from Gilberte, Swann's red-haired daughter. Rich with irony, the story inspires meditations on desire, homosexuality, music, and the art of introspection. The final volume of a new, definitive text of A la recherche du temps perdu was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new French editions.

Media Reviews

"In spite of his independent manner, Proust has managed to inspire his novel with the prudent technical virtues of suspense and unity. These signs of formal interest are what make 'Remembrance of Things Past' a novel, rather than mere rambling reminiscence....It is held together by a method analogous to that which unifies actual human experience, repetition of events, physical and mental. "

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