The first volume of the most famous French novel of the twentieth century was published more than a hundred years ago - in November 1913. The novel was called “Towards Swann,” and its author Marcel Proust did not yet suspect that his brainchild would grow into the cycle “In Search of Lost Time,” on which the writer would work until the last hours of his life. The Guermantes Side is the third volume of Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel. If the first book, “Towards Swann,” tells about the childhood of the protagonist and what happened before his birth, the second, “Under the Shadow of Maidens Crowned with Flowers,” is his adolescence, the collapse of his first love and the birth of a new one, then “ The Guermantes side" is youth. The narrator, captivated by the poetry of names from an early age, finally comprehends the difference between a person’s name and that person himself, the name of a city and that city itself. He penetrates into a mysterious circle that has been beckoning him for a long time, in other words, he enters the society of the family aristocracy, and as if by magic he gains the gift of double vision, the gift of seeing ordinary people, not devoid of merit, but devoid of mystery and sometimes such funny people - and not to lose contact with the mysterious, beautiful ancient and life-giving poetry hidden in their names. The reader will appreciate the brilliant translation of Elena Baevskaya, which refutes the sadly established opinion that Proust is a venerable, intelligent, but boring author.