Alain de Botton Presents an ASMR Reading of Proust’s Swann’s Way

Mar­cel Proust wrote Remem­brance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps per­du) over many years. The first vol­ume, Swan­n’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann), came out in 1913, and the last vol­ume, Time Regained (Le Temps retrou­vé), was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1927. A mon­u­men­tal explo­ration of mem­o­ry, time, and human expe­ri­ence, the sev­en-vol­ume nov­el con­sists of 1,267,069 words. That dou­bles those in Tol­stoy’s War and Peace, mak­ing it one of the longest nov­els ever writ­ten.

Above, you can hear Alain de Bot­ton (author of How Proust Can Change Your Life) read the open­ing lines of Swan­n’s Way, with the goal of … well… putting you to sleep. His YouTube chan­nel writes: Proust’s nov­el “is very beau­ti­ful — and in a way a lit­tle bor­ing too. This is for all those among us who suf­fer from insom­nia — to send you into the best kind of sleep.” Make sure you add this 26-minute record­ing to your sleep/ASMR playlist. For de Bot­ton’s intro­duc­tion to the lit­er­ary phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cel Proust, watch this video here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

An Intro­duc­tion to the Lit­er­ary Phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cel Proust, Pre­sent­ed in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Mar­cel Proust Fills Out a Ques­tion­naire in 1890: The Man­u­script of the ‘Proust Ques­tion­naire’

The First Known Footage of Mar­cel Proust Dis­cov­ered: Watch It Online

The Cork-Lined Bed­room & Writ­ing Room of Mar­cel Proust, the Orig­i­nal Mas­ter of Social Dis­tanc­ing

6,000 Let­ters by Mar­cel Proust to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online


by | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Leave a Reply

Quantcast