Is Proust's work too long and difficult?
The accusation of length, I understand, is often made. But it was not so much the desire to amass words, but rather to meticulously explore the nuances of existence, to capture the subtle shifts in human perception and emotion. One might say that life itself is long, and its passages are not always clear or easily navigable. The impression, indeed, was so strong that the task of rendering these intricacies demanded a certain expansiveness, a patient unfolding of experience. To dismiss it as merely long is, perhaps, to overlook the profound depth of the exploration it seeks to undertake.
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