À la Recherche du temps perdu, book 6/7

"Mademoiselle Albertine est partie !" It is with these terrible words that the sixth and penultimate volume of Marcel Proust's masterful À la Recherche du temps perdu begins. In Albertine disparue, the narrator evokes the disappearance and death of his lover in a terrible accident, already announced in a premonitory way in a previous volume. But it is less the absence of his prisoner that is the subject of the book than the painful persistence of her memory in the mind of the narrator. The pain of mourning and the pain of loss, which only time can close the wounds; not to forget but to live with. Life goes on in spite of everything, notably with the longed-for discovery of Venice and the return of many characters who have been erased until now by the narrator's obsession with Albertine. After so many ordeals and an inner journey through the twists and turns of memory and mourning, the narrator is ready for the ultimate revelation and the foundation of his literary work: after lost time, time is regained.

We read this book in the summer of 2022.