tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52596822011-07-06T11:43:27.163-04:00The Daily ProustA day-by-day, spoonful by spoonful, chronological reading of Marcel Proust's <i>A la recherche du temps perdu</i>, a.k.a. <i>In Search of Lost Time,</i> a.k.a. <i>Remembrance of Things Past</i> -- towering monument of French literature, and the greatest novel ever written. Certainly the greatest 3,000 page novel anyway.RWnoreply@blogger.comBlogger471100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-946457182003-05-20T14:51:00.000-04:002003-05-20T14:51:16.070-04:00Proust Moment, May 20, 2003 The Steeple of Saint-Hillaire The church dominates Combray; this man-made structure poking it’s head above God’s creation is the first thing you see, long before you get there. Here’s that Ruskinian touch I alluded to earlier. Ruskin liked making the point that the central idea of art is to praise what’s real; an artist fails when he strives for absolute RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-945660982003-05-19T01:23:00.000-04:002003-05-19T02:16:48.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 19, 2003 Line of Demarcation The church faces the Rue Saint Hillaire and is bordered by the homes of M. Rapin and Mme. Loiseau, yet it is distinct and seperate, existing in its own holy space. Even as the overgrown fuchsias from Mme. Loiseau's window-sill touch the church wall, they aren't really touching it, in Marcel's mind, because the church is untouchable; material yet RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-945612412003-05-18T23:12:00.000-04:002003-05-19T02:17:45.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 18, 2003 The Apse of Combray What's an apse? Here's our friend Henry Adams: "a semicircular space at the end of an axis of a church, intended to house an altar, and along the walls of which chapels may be arranged." Here are three pictures of the one at Chartres, to give you an idea: 1, 2, 3. However, the apse of Combray looks nothing like the apse of Chartres. The apse of RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-945215512003-05-17T23:25:00.000-04:002003-05-19T01:19:57.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 17, 2003 Four Dimensions of Space, and a Sentence to Match Like the porch, the holy water stoup, and the memorial stones, the colors of the church's two tapestries, depicting a somewhat local version of the coronation of Esther -- she looks like a guermantes -- show signs of age, of colors running, giving the picture a new dimension, just as light at different times of the RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-944818452003-05-16T22:55:00.000-04:002003-05-18T23:11:03.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 16, 2003 Painter of Light No, we are not discussing the egregious hack. We are discussing the way light pours through stained glass in the church at Combray, altering the picture over the course of a day. Before we go into it, though, pardon me if I pause to reflect on the great English art critic John Ruskin and the great American historian Henry Adams, who keep coming to RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-944280022003-05-15T23:31:00.000-04:002003-05-18T23:10:30.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 15, 2003 The Entrance Like nothing else in this provincial backwater, the church at Combray offers a transformative experience, and Proust is typically careful to fix his eye on every particular and absorb its spiritual and sensual weight. The first thing he notices is the effect of time on the building; it is worn by use And is slowly returning to the earth: "How I loved itRWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-943670502003-05-14T23:19:00.000-04:002003-05-15T08:41:41.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 14, 2003 News of the World Francoise is Aunt Leonie's connection to the world of Combray. The bedridden aunt observes the goings-on of the town from her window, then waits for Francoise to come up and attend to her so she can talk to her about whatever she has seen; if she gets impatient, she just rings incessantly. Francoise is the perfect companion, more than happy to RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-943054922003-05-13T23:15:00.000-04:002003-05-13T23:19:57.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 13, 2003 Gentle Francoise We got a glance of Francoise in "Overture," when Marcel entrusted her with his written plea to Mamma. We get a better picture here of this loyal family servant, whose attitude toward her role in life is a good deal like that of Stevens the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. She intuitively accepts the social food chain, and is more RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-942439262003-05-12T23:51:00.000-04:002003-05-13T05:45:49.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 12, 2003 Sleep of the Living From the rich smell of Aunt Leonie's rooms we are now doused with its distinctive sound, and the taste of her tea -- which is not Lipton's. The sound is Aunt Leonie's muttering refrain of "I must not forget that I never sleep a wink. Aunt Leonie spends her dotage much as the adult Marcel in the early pages of the "Overture" spent his nights: RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-941808172003-05-11T23:18:00.000-04:002003-05-11T23:18:10.066-04:00Proust Moment, May 11, 2003 That Obscure Aroma of Memory ...all the rooms, they smell like diesel And you take on the dreams Of the ones who've slept there. Okay, so this quote from a Tom Waits song is not the first thing that springs to your mind when reading the passage below, but it did occur to me. Homes, man-made or not, whether of vertebrates or amoeba, leave behind a residue both RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-941318892003-05-10T23:37:00.000-04:002003-05-10T23:37:35.013-04:00Proust Moment, May 10, 2003 Imagining Combray It looks like a nice little town nestled in the loving bosom of the church in the town square, when in fact it's a depressing place to live. It looks like a town in a painting, and in a way that is what it is -- a painting in his mind that seems as far away as the world of Genevieve and Golo. "Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-940869012003-05-09T23:01:00.000-04:002003-05-10T01:19:32.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 9, 2003 It All Comes Back This is, of course, the key Proust Moment, as Marcel sits down to dine on the most important snack in literary history: a little cake known as a madeleine, dipped in tea, the combined taste of which triggers an extraordinary and mysterious sensation. He finally figures out why: he used to enjoy this very treat with his Aunt Leonie on Sunday RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-940276932003-05-08T22:35:00.000-04:002003-05-08T22:35:53.863-04:00Proust Moment, May 8, 2003 Remission of Time And so ends this long night, with Marcel's mother by his side, along with the realization that this mother and child reunion can't last forever. With separation will come the renewal of the agony of being away, and the knowledge that "remission of time will bring me no access of power." For the child Marcel, the scene is destined to replay itself, RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-939883742003-05-08T09:25:00.000-04:002003-05-08T09:25:27.810-04:00This has nothing to do with Proust -- just my way of saying Whoo-hoo! (Scroll down, see first category.)RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-939604792003-05-07T21:03:00.000-04:002003-05-07T21:03:54.690-04:00Proust Moment, May 7, 2003 The Sincere Taste of Mamma From what I gather, there are two distinct philosophies among people who produce audiobooks. The common one is that the book should be read with great expression, adopting different voices for the characters and so forth -- you know, make it "come alive." The other is to read clearly and distinctly but with an overall minimum of drama, not RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-938516662003-05-06T05:02:00.000-04:002003-05-06T05:02:17.780-04:00Proust Moment, May 6, 2003 The Excellent Taste of Grandmother Marcel had only wanted a goodnight kiss; now, his spineless Mamma is beside his bed, reading to him from the books his grandmother had purchased for Marcel's approaching birthday. Well, let's not judge Mamma as harshly, say, as a cranky advice columnist might; it's easy in reflection to forgive loved ones for having forgiven us a RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-938351852003-05-05T21:21:00.000-04:002003-05-05T21:22:04.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 5, 2003 Puberty of Sorrow As is sometimes the case in childhood, especially pampered ones, unforgiveable sins prove much ado about nothing. Marcel is sure that his refusal to go to bed without a kiss from Mamma will get him herded off to boarding school. Instead, both parents not only concede to Marcel's whims, but reward him, by deciding that his "nerves" require special RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-937775282003-05-04T23:05:00.000-04:002003-05-04T23:09:59.000-04:00Moonlight Addendum Andrew Clarke from proust@yahoogroups has graciously allowed me to use some recently posted comments on the moonlight passage, in which he takes a crack at his own translation. After I mentioned that I was using the1934 Scott-Moncrieff edition published by Modern Library, Andrew gave me a word of advice: Put that ol' translation in the Nostalgia section of your library and RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-937351872003-05-04T01:01:00.000-04:002003-05-04T22:29:52.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 4, 2003 The Party's Over; So, In Its Way, Is Life Marcel, listening from the upstairs window after Swann has made his exit, recalls the family's after-dinner chat. The coffee-and-pistachio ice, according to Mamma, was not a very big hit, the great-aunt thinks Swann has grown a good deal older, and indulges in some gossip about "that wretched wife of his, who 'lives' with a RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-937242832003-05-03T19:50:00.000-04:002003-05-03T19:50:15.640-04:00Proust Moment, May 3, 2003 No Turning Back Marcel awaits Mamma knowing that he has taken a considerable turn, that in his desire for a kiss he has perhaps pushed things entirely too far. “... I knew that what I had just done was in the same category as certain other sins for which I had been severely chastised, though infinitely more serious than they. When I went out to meet my mother as RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-937147252003-05-03T15:04:00.000-04:002003-05-03T15:19:13.000-04:00 Vladimir and Nicole Go Boating I am happy to report that the moonlit passage has been addressed at some fascinating length by Nicole Hanset of Belgium and the late Professor Vladimir Nabokov of Cornell. The letter from one and the lecture from the other both yielded trouvailles, as I think they say in France. Lucky finds. For reasons of coherence I'll start with Nicole, as she shares my map RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-936838742003-05-02T22:11:00.000-04:002003-05-03T14:06:35.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 2, 2003 A Tough Nut to Crack One falls into a variety of rhythms reading Proust. There are periods -- many of them -- of sheer exhilaration, as he drills deep into the moment, absorbing all the psychological, metaphysical and aesthetic data at hand. (Did you know Peter Falk once said his compadre John Cassavetes had the "antennae of Proust"? That's not the kind of thing you RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-936324042003-05-01T23:15:00.000-04:002003-05-01T23:17:35.000-04:00Proust Moment, May 1, 2003 Francoise as Backstage Bouncer Crude title? Well, if Marcel is going to take this drama to extremes, there's no reason I shouldn't. He's now a little boy who can't crash to rear gate to see his ma, fancying himself this time less like Swann than some spoiled girl: "My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safeguard my self-respect (which depended upon her RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-935726902003-04-30T23:26:00.000-04:002003-04-30T23:26:15.200-04:00Proust Moment, April 30, 2003 Letter of Transit Major literary characters tend to remember their good-hearted and unpretentious servants quite fondly, if they are lucky enough to have them: Hamlet and Yorick, David Copperfield and Peggoty, even Scarlett and Mammy. So, too, the case of Marcel, the hypersensitive, lonely little aesthete and Francoise the cook. On a personal level, Francoise is RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-934532712003-04-29T04:06:00.000-04:002003-04-29T04:09:09.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 29, 2003 Order of Francoise Condemnerd to his bedroom, Marcel seizes on the idea of sending a letter to Mamma, begging her to come upstairs "for an important reason which I could not put in writing." Unfortunately, the letter would have to be couried by Francoise, his aunt's cook, for whom such an act would violate her own code of conduct, which she pursues with Mosaic RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-933779142003-04-28T00:02:00.000-04:002003-04-28T00:02:09.903-04:00Proust Moment, April 28, 2003 Art of the Kiss With the intricate imagination of an artist, Marcel plans exactly how he will kiss his mother, only to have his plans scuttled by the grandfather: "I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table I should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time, and that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-933774132003-04-27T23:52:00.000-04:002003-04-27T23:52:23.366-04:00Proust Moment, April 27, 2003 The Temporary and the Immortal Marcel's two great-aunts vie for Swann's attention with a lot of dull prattle; he, naturally, would rather talk with the grandfather about a travel book by the Duc de Saint-Simon -- reportedly one of Proust's own inspirations -- covering his mission to Spain. Swann reports that the book is not one of the author's best, but better RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-933222742003-04-26T22:11:00.000-04:002003-04-26T22:11:27.700-04:00Proust Moment, April 26, 2003 A Kiss Denied We begin the "Overture" with Marcel's desire for a kiss, and by way of that desire, Proust presents his narrative world with minimalist psychological and physical accuracy. But as an adult recalling childhood, his mother's kiss is the idee fixe. Just as we are getting into the storty about Swann, his disastrous marriage, and his daughter Gilberte, RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-932554952003-04-25T14:58:00.000-04:002003-04-25T15:00:50.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 25, 2003 Envy Marcel’s grandfather takes a liking to Swann and his adventures in high society, but that priggish great-aunt will have none of it: Swann is out of his element, and she cannot forgive him for it: “…for anyone who chose his associates outside the caste in which he had been born and bred, outside his 'proper station,' was condemned to utter degradation in RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-931603362003-04-24T01:23:00.000-04:002003-04-25T14:57:42.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 24, 2003 The Company One Keeps Marcel's grandmother visits the home of Mme. de Villeparisis, and learns that she knows Swann. Marcel's grandmother can barely bring herself to visit a woman of a higher social station; "because of our caste theory, she had not cared to keep up any degree of intimacy in spite of several common interests." She is suitably impressed not only RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-931269422003-04-23T14:29:00.000-04:002003-04-23T14:31:53.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 23, 2003 Two Swanns, Early and Late Quick on the heels of Nabokov’s commentary, we find Proust’s own frank confession of style. As Marcel’s aunt talks down to Swann, Marcel reveals a secret about our man: not only is he the toast of a society outside of their realm, but he is also seeing a fashionable young woman. This isn’t, as noted, how the family regards Swann: they RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-930877752003-04-22T23:08:00.000-04:002003-04-22T23:09:17.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 22, 2003 The Caste System Marcel revisits his memories of Swann, hovering over them like a ghost, the unseen omniscient presence, as he often seems to have been in childhood: paying more attention to everyone, and everything, than they do to him. Here is Swann, whom the family tries to avoid: "... one could tell him only by his voice, for it was difficult to make out his RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-929750552003-04-21T06:04:00.000-04:002003-04-21T06:04:50.013-04:00Proust Moment, April 21, 2003 Swann: A Glimpse We receive our first notice of Charles Swann, one of Proust’s great characters, and to my mind one of the saddest in fiction. His story, including his disastrous marriage to Odette de Crecy, will be played out in all their tender tragedy in the pages to follow. What we notice here is that this refined and rather likable, pitiable gentleman is RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-929195112003-04-20T01:06:00.000-04:002003-04-20T01:12:10.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 20, 2003 Prelude to a Kiss Does it put too crude a point on things to suggest there’s something rather Freudian, certainly something Oedipal, about Marcel’s relationship with his mother? Yes, Nabokov would blanch at the idea, but look at how Proust renders the following scene in terms of foreplay and consummation; he yearns for completion, even as he knows that it will endRWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-928733592003-04-19T00:40:00.000-04:002003-04-19T00:59:27.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 19, 2003 Bathilde, His Grandmother, Who Loves Marcel and Dislikes Symmetry and Irony Dreams and memories intermix throughout the "Overture": dreaming, waking, and the way this kind of drownsiness -- "'tween a sleep and wake," as the bastard Edmund puts it in King Lear -- can blur reality, imagination and memory. Marcel's memories come and go, but when they come they rush RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-928545002003-04-18T16:07:00.000-04:002003-04-18T16:08:52.000-04:00Addendum: Steve from languagehat.com informs me that the work referenced below is the "1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, probably the best ever published (it had articles by the top authorities in the world, e.g. Einstein on physics)." Steve adds: "The problem, of course (besides the popups), is that it's scanned in and thus full of `typos'; in this case, I'm pretty sure `Gob' is RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-928495982003-04-18T14:19:00.000-04:002003-04-18T14:43:43.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 18, 2003 Genevieve, Golo and Marcel Marcel’s magic lantern yields the story of Genevieve de Brabant and Golo, which a web-search informs me is a tale of some antiquity, as well as being the source of an opera by Schumann and a score by Satie. (Another Proustian connection of sorts: Erik Satie is one of the four major players – Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Appolinaire and RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-927577612003-04-17T00:04:00.000-04:002003-04-17T00:04:26.263-04:00Proust Moment, April 17, 2003 The Magic Lantern "At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-927061592003-04-16T05:43:00.000-04:002003-04-16T05:43:18.403-04:00Proust Moment, April 16, 2003 Awake? I am now Marcel is now disappointingly conscious, with all of material reality back in its fixed and frozen place. It is his mind that is mobile -- racing with thoughts of the past: "... memory was now set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-926360602003-04-15T03:09:00.000-04:002003-04-15T03:11:44.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 15, 2003 Persistence of Vision "Cinema is truth 24 frames a second," said Jean-Luc Godard; Marcel, as is often the case, tries to slow the film down and look at the shifting images in every every frame. His mind is unspooling a short student film that reminds him of the cocoon of warmth he builds for himself in the winter, the summer breeze of moonlit evenings, and the RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-925712252003-04-14T04:20:00.000-04:002003-04-14T04:20:15.360-04:00Proust Moment, April 14, 2003 Day for Night Marcel's hypnagogic memories and associations continue apace: he is in the past, in the Combray home of Mme Saint-Loup, and he has overslept in the nap he takes before his evening walk. But no, he isn't in Combray, but Tansonville, and Mme. Saint-Loup is older, as is he. "It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville now with Mme. de RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-925142752003-04-13T00:02:00.000-04:002003-04-13T00:02:53.840-04:00Proust Moment, April 13, 2003 A Body Remembers As he wakes from sleep, Marcel's body parts become conscious of the parts of his surroundings. And yet, "even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they had looked like, had collected sufficient impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my body, would recall from each room in succession what RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-924701822003-04-12T01:05:00.000-04:002003-04-12T01:05:02.780-04:00Proust Moment, April 12, 2003 The House of Memory The waking Marcel, struggling to get his bearings against the lingering disorientation of sleep, is absorbing everything "moving round me through the darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as toRWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-924156002003-04-11T04:09:00.000-04:002003-04-11T04:09:04.186-04:00Proust Moment, April 11, 2003 Immobility "Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them." --"Overture," Swann's WayRWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-923573542003-04-10T09:15:00.000-04:002003-04-10T09:15:30.000-04:00Proust Moment, April 10, 2003 Being and Sleepiness Sleep brings with it a sense of illogic and timelessness, and when we awake our first order of business is to get our bearings straight. Marcel, laying in bed, yearns for a sense of disorder, of freedom from the rational world. "...for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-922837852003-04-09T07:34:00.000-04:002003-04-09T07:34:37.186-04:00Proust Moment, April 9, 2003 Maiden voyage Marcel hears a train, judges its distance; he thinks of the traveler on the train, who is on unfamiliar turf, who is thinking of the events of the evening past and is looking forward to going home. Marcel strikes a match to check his watch: nearly midnight. His thoughts of the man on the train now connect with an invalid in a strange hotel, who sees RWnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5259682.post-922182192003-04-08T09:02:00.000-04:002003-04-08T09:02:45.280-04:00Proust Moment, April 8, 2003 Dreams of Sleep Marcel remembers how he used to go to bed early. He would read a little, then put his book away and douse his candle, and would soon be asleep and dreaming ... of putting his book away, dousing the candle, and of what he had just been reading, and of becoming the character in the book. Then, "it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of RWnoreply@blogger.com0