The Fugitive

The story opens in a Paris apartment suddenly emptied by Albertine’s quiet departure. Panic drives the narrator to hire detectives, invent excuses, and write letters that reveal more desperation than love. Eventually, a blunt telegram reports her fatal riding accident, and grief transforms every memory into a wound and an anchor. Seeking distance, the narrator travels first to Touraine and then to Venice with his mother. Yet, each doorway, canal, or piece of brocade sparks a fresh recollection. This proves that absence magnifies the very presence he tried to lock away and that the memory of desire can outlast the flesh that once inspired it.

Proust allows the narrator to justify his earlier surveillance as tenderness, revealing the gentle tyranny that emerges when feelings serve as the sole moral compass. In doing so, the novel subtly challenges the relativistic mindset of high modernism, suggesting that a life defined solely by fleeting impressions may discover beauty yet lose its sense of direction when confronted with the need for moral clarity.

This critical reader’s edition presents a modern translation of the original manuscript, crafted for the contemporary reader with lucid language and streamlined sentences that illuminate Proust’s intricate French syntax and period‑specific allusions. Supplementary material enriches the text with autobiographical, historical, and linguistic context, including an afterword by the translator on Proust’s personal history, cultural impact, and intellectual legacy, an index of the philosophical concepts he weaves—highlighting his explorations of memory, time, and the influence of Henri Bergson—a comprehensive chronological list of his published writings, and a detailed timeline of his life, emphasizing the friendships and social circles that shaped his artistic vision.