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Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp
During the Second World War, as a prisoner of war in a Soviet camp, and with nothing but memory to go on, the Polish artist and soldier Józef Czapski brought Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to life for an audience of prison inmates. In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality, depth, and beauty. Eric Karpeles has translated this brilliant and altogether unparalleled feat of the critical imagination into English for the first time, and in a thoughtful introduction he brings out how, in reckoning with Proust’s great meditation on memory, Czapski helped his fellow officers to remember that there was a world apart from the world of the camp. Proust had staked the art of the novelist against the losses of a lifetime and the imminence of death. Recalling that triumphant wager, unfolding, like Sheherazade, the intricacies of Proust’s world night after night, Czapski showed to men at the end of their tether that the past remained present and there was a future in which to hope.
Includes an 8-page color insert of Czapski’s lecture notes.
Includes an 8-page color insert of Czapski’s lecture notes.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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2336 people want to read
About the author
Józef Czapski
27 books39 followersJózef Marian Franciszek Czapski (ang Joseph Czapski) (April 3, 1896 – January 12, 1993) was a Polish artist, author, and critic, as well as an officer of the Polish Army. As a painter, he is notable for his membership in the Kapist movement, which was heavily influenced by Cézanne. Following the Polish Defensive War, he was made a prisoner of war by the Soviets and was among the very few officers to survive the Katyn massacre of 1940. Following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he was an official envoy of the Polish government searching for the missing Polish officers in Russia. After World War II, he remained in exile in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, where he was among the founders of Kultura monthly, one of the most influential Polish cultural journals of the 20th century.
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May 15, 2025
My Mom, like me and Dad, experienced real trauma in her life. And when you experience that, your stunned brain compensates by taking your headspace to a new and safer place. For Mom, it was a new forever home - and real roots and two more blessings of motherhood - and for me, it was a spot in the Autism spectrum.
And we both forgot.
It happened when I was two and a half years old. My parents had been driving from California, where Dad worked, to our town in Eastern Canada for a job interview (he got the job). Dad was tired, I was probably screaming as toddlers do, and Mom had possibly leaned back to care for me in my carseat.
When that eighteen-wheeler broadsided us on his way to the exit ramp - outside of Detroit - Mom went through the windshield. My carseat toppled over me, protecting me. Dad tried to drive skilfully to safety.
And all three of us immediately blanked the screams and skids and nightmarish crash from our memories. Along with a lot of our personal identities - me being the prime example of that, because I had no past to speak of.
I became ontologically insecure.
Thankfully my new brother David's health - Mom had been pregnant with him at the time - was preserved, though he was understandably colicky at first, when he came into the world in early 1953.
But Mom re-read La Recherche du Temps Perdu three or four times later on, to regain her past. Dad researched his family history. And I reminisced on Goodreads.
Our Own Lost Time...
Josef Czapski tells us that the real centre of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is not things themselves, but memories of them which he once - alas - had forgotten he had.
It all starts when the grownup Marcel Proust eats a common bit of pastry soaked in hot tea...
Eureka - he ate that very thing many, many years ago... and, voilà, the past memories come flooding back.
Stress and burnout do that in reverse. The downward pressure of it shuts out all the memories we cherish of ourselves in our early environment.
In a very real sense, you could make an argument for saying I had forgotten who I was - for, you know, our memories MAKE UP our identity in the world! Without our own memories, we become an indecipherable cipher to ourselves, and lose our place in the world.
That, as I say, happened to me.
And the same thing happened to Josef Czapski.
As it happened to the rest of his inmates, too, for a place like Auschwitz or Buchenwald destroys your soul: because it kills your identity-filled memories under the incessant fear of death.
So, in order to deliver his friends from their identity-less empty existence, he told them about Proust - and gave them new hope.
Wow.
Well, and how did he do this, in a nightmarish prison from which books were banned?
Simple.
He used the Proustian method of Linking vignettes from the book which he remembered, slowly and patiently, to the contemporaneous ones he’d FORGOTTEN.
And bit by bit he could piece together his own memories of the book, and arrange them thematically in lecture format!
Success.
And... his efforts to give New Hope to the Hopeless were similarly successful.
He had turned Un Saison en Enfer in the Communist Gulag into a Glimpse of Hope -
In the return of these prisoners’ memories, and thence personal identities.
As this amazing little book will tell you.
For we ALL, with persistence, can dig ourselves out from oblivion -
And from out of this deep pit of Modern Alienation -
And even, like us, from a cataclysmic car wreck.
And we both forgot.
It happened when I was two and a half years old. My parents had been driving from California, where Dad worked, to our town in Eastern Canada for a job interview (he got the job). Dad was tired, I was probably screaming as toddlers do, and Mom had possibly leaned back to care for me in my carseat.
When that eighteen-wheeler broadsided us on his way to the exit ramp - outside of Detroit - Mom went through the windshield. My carseat toppled over me, protecting me. Dad tried to drive skilfully to safety.
And all three of us immediately blanked the screams and skids and nightmarish crash from our memories. Along with a lot of our personal identities - me being the prime example of that, because I had no past to speak of.
I became ontologically insecure.
Thankfully my new brother David's health - Mom had been pregnant with him at the time - was preserved, though he was understandably colicky at first, when he came into the world in early 1953.
But Mom re-read La Recherche du Temps Perdu three or four times later on, to regain her past. Dad researched his family history. And I reminisced on Goodreads.
Our Own Lost Time...
Josef Czapski tells us that the real centre of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is not things themselves, but memories of them which he once - alas - had forgotten he had.
It all starts when the grownup Marcel Proust eats a common bit of pastry soaked in hot tea...
Eureka - he ate that very thing many, many years ago... and, voilà, the past memories come flooding back.
Stress and burnout do that in reverse. The downward pressure of it shuts out all the memories we cherish of ourselves in our early environment.
In a very real sense, you could make an argument for saying I had forgotten who I was - for, you know, our memories MAKE UP our identity in the world! Without our own memories, we become an indecipherable cipher to ourselves, and lose our place in the world.
That, as I say, happened to me.
And the same thing happened to Josef Czapski.
As it happened to the rest of his inmates, too, for a place like Auschwitz or Buchenwald destroys your soul: because it kills your identity-filled memories under the incessant fear of death.
So, in order to deliver his friends from their identity-less empty existence, he told them about Proust - and gave them new hope.
Wow.
Well, and how did he do this, in a nightmarish prison from which books were banned?
Simple.
He used the Proustian method of Linking vignettes from the book which he remembered, slowly and patiently, to the contemporaneous ones he’d FORGOTTEN.
And bit by bit he could piece together his own memories of the book, and arrange them thematically in lecture format!
Success.
And... his efforts to give New Hope to the Hopeless were similarly successful.
He had turned Un Saison en Enfer in the Communist Gulag into a Glimpse of Hope -
In the return of these prisoners’ memories, and thence personal identities.
As this amazing little book will tell you.
For we ALL, with persistence, can dig ourselves out from oblivion -
And from out of this deep pit of Modern Alienation -
And even, like us, from a cataclysmic car wreck.
December 21, 2020
DELLA NECESSITÀ DELL’ARTE
Józef Czapski nacque a Praga il 3 aprile del1896 e morì a Parigi il 12 gennaio del 1993.
C’è un ufficiale polacco, un aristocratico pittore e scrittore, che nel 1941 è prigioniero dei russi in un gulag dalle parti del confine con la Finlandia: non è la Siberia, ma anche qui i lavori forzati sono all’aperto, e all’aperto la temperatura arriva a meno quaranta proprio come nella Kolyma.
Un uomo magro e alto due metri, che ama la pittura, la letteratura, l’arte in genere – un uomo intelligente e colto il cui nome è associato a quello sinistro di Katyn (fu uno dei pochi ufficiali a scampare all’esecuzione di massa nella quale i russi massacrarono circa 22.000 ufficiali, soldati, poliziotti, civili polacchi, che poi interrarono in fosse comuni).
Un altro autoritratto di Józef Czapski, che fu scrittore, critico, pittore, e ufficiale dell’esercito polacco.
Nel refettorio di un convento, dove il freddo non arriva a meno quaranta gradi, ma è comunque più che pungente, Joseph Czapski intrattiene i suoi compagni ufficiali con una conferenza su Proust.
In realtà, le conferenze erano un intero ciclo e abbracciavano argomenti quali la storia del libro, la storia dell’Inghilterra, la storia delle migrazioni dei popoli, l’America del Sud, l’architettura… Czapski ne tenne alcune sulla pittura e questa, semplicemente meravigliosa, su Proust e la Recherche.
Un’altra opera dello stesso Czapski. La sua pittura ha in Cezanne l’influenza più forte.
Erano conferenze che probabilmente duravano almeno un paio d’ore, a giudicare dal numero di pagine: due ore seduti fermi al freddo della sala mensa del convento.
Forse queste iniezioni di cultura non sfamavano i presenti, ma credo si possa dire che se non altro li scaldavano.
E poi c’è la conferenza, esposta a memoria senza l’ausilio di testi ricerche e verifiche, perché erano prigionieri di un lager sovietico.
La memoria di Czapski a me pare più che eccellente, proprio prodigiosa: conosce la materia, conosce Proust, l’ha letto riletto meditato, si è nutrito della Recherche.
In seguito al trattato Sikorski–Mayski tra Polonia e Unione Sovietica firmato a Londra il 30 luglio 1941, Czapski fu inviato in URSS alla ricerca degli ufficiali polacchi scomparsi.
A me che ho un culto per l’opera di Marcel Proust, sembra che Czapski l’abbia letta meglio di me: sa farmela rivivere, palpitare, mi svela particolari che non ricordavo o mi erano sfuggiti, dettagli e sfumature fondamentali.
È evidente l’ammirazione e l’amore per lo scrittore francese.
Joseph Czapski riesce a trasmettere tutto questo, in quel luogo, in quella situazione, a quel pubblico.
A Parigi Czapski fece parte della diaspora polacca e fu tra i fondatori di Kultura, la più importante rivista dell’emigrazione polacca della seconda metà del Novecento.
A me sembra semplicemente meraviglioso.
E, forse, irripetibile.
E anche questa è un’opera dipinta sempre da Czapski.
Józef Czapski nacque a Praga il 3 aprile del1896 e morì a Parigi il 12 gennaio del 1993.
C’è un ufficiale polacco, un aristocratico pittore e scrittore, che nel 1941 è prigioniero dei russi in un gulag dalle parti del confine con la Finlandia: non è la Siberia, ma anche qui i lavori forzati sono all’aperto, e all’aperto la temperatura arriva a meno quaranta proprio come nella Kolyma.
Un uomo magro e alto due metri, che ama la pittura, la letteratura, l’arte in genere – un uomo intelligente e colto il cui nome è associato a quello sinistro di Katyn (fu uno dei pochi ufficiali a scampare all’esecuzione di massa nella quale i russi massacrarono circa 22.000 ufficiali, soldati, poliziotti, civili polacchi, che poi interrarono in fosse comuni).
Un altro autoritratto di Józef Czapski, che fu scrittore, critico, pittore, e ufficiale dell’esercito polacco.
Nel refettorio di un convento, dove il freddo non arriva a meno quaranta gradi, ma è comunque più che pungente, Joseph Czapski intrattiene i suoi compagni ufficiali con una conferenza su Proust.
In realtà, le conferenze erano un intero ciclo e abbracciavano argomenti quali la storia del libro, la storia dell’Inghilterra, la storia delle migrazioni dei popoli, l’America del Sud, l’architettura… Czapski ne tenne alcune sulla pittura e questa, semplicemente meravigliosa, su Proust e la Recherche.
Un’altra opera dello stesso Czapski. La sua pittura ha in Cezanne l’influenza più forte.
Erano conferenze che probabilmente duravano almeno un paio d’ore, a giudicare dal numero di pagine: due ore seduti fermi al freddo della sala mensa del convento.
Forse queste iniezioni di cultura non sfamavano i presenti, ma credo si possa dire che se non altro li scaldavano.
E poi c’è la conferenza, esposta a memoria senza l’ausilio di testi ricerche e verifiche, perché erano prigionieri di un lager sovietico.
La memoria di Czapski a me pare più che eccellente, proprio prodigiosa: conosce la materia, conosce Proust, l’ha letto riletto meditato, si è nutrito della Recherche.
In seguito al trattato Sikorski–Mayski tra Polonia e Unione Sovietica firmato a Londra il 30 luglio 1941, Czapski fu inviato in URSS alla ricerca degli ufficiali polacchi scomparsi.
A me che ho un culto per l’opera di Marcel Proust, sembra che Czapski l’abbia letta meglio di me: sa farmela rivivere, palpitare, mi svela particolari che non ricordavo o mi erano sfuggiti, dettagli e sfumature fondamentali.
È evidente l’ammirazione e l’amore per lo scrittore francese.
Joseph Czapski riesce a trasmettere tutto questo, in quel luogo, in quella situazione, a quel pubblico.
A Parigi Czapski fece parte della diaspora polacca e fu tra i fondatori di Kultura, la più importante rivista dell’emigrazione polacca della seconda metà del Novecento.
A me sembra semplicemente meraviglioso.
E, forse, irripetibile.
E anche questa è un’opera dipinta sempre da Czapski.
November 14, 2018
The most extraordinary thing about the pages of this book is not so much what they contain but that they exist at all.
Joseph Czapski (1896-1993), born in Prague but in a family of the Polish nobility, was lucky to escape the massacre in Katyn in 1940, in which it is estimated that 22,000 people were executed by the Soviets. He then became a prisoner in the concentration camp of Griazowietz in Russia for eighteen months. This camp had originally been a pilgrimage site and a convent.
Before Czapski fell into the mouth of hell he had been a painter and a writer... and a Francophile.
This book has the lectures on Proust that he gave to his prison companions while at Griazowietz. In the Preface written in 1944, he explains the genesis and the setting for these lectures. In the prison he had no libraries, no reference material. He had to write everything from his head. A few of the prisoners decided to organize lectures on various subjects – military, historical, literary--, so as to fight their own anxiety. Some of these lectures were deemed counter-revolutionary by the prison guards, and the authors were made to disappear. The lectures, however, were not interrupted.
For a Proustian in the twenty-first century may be a great part of the lectures is less interesting for what they say on Proust. Czapski provides little that we would not know. But they are, however, extraordinary to read because he was lecturing on Proust about twenty years after the author’s death, and any Proustian knows that Proust was not given his due in his own country really until the 60s-70s. His knowledge of Proust’s life, and of the complex history of the publication history, is astounding given not only that no material was available to him at the time of writing but also how little he would have encountered before.
His sources must have been just a handful.
There was the book edited by Proust's publishing house in 1928, (Hommage a Marcel Proust), with essays by Mauriac, Gide, Cocteau, Fargue, as well as the article written by Mauriac in 1922 on Proust's death Sur la Tombe. We should, however, remember that Mauriac’s first book on Proust was not published till 1947 (Proust's Way).
And the second major source would be his acquaintance with the Polish Misia Godebska-Sert (I have her bio on my shelves –Misia). She had been a friend of Proust and she helped Czapski and his painter friends to organize an exhibition of their group Kapiste in Paris in 1923. It was this exhibition that offered the Polish painter the opportunity to spend several years in the French capital. But these were hard times and he lived in dire conditions. He contracted typhus and it was during his convalescence that he read the entire La recherche.
The lectures were then prepared by a man to be given to other men as they were all facing death. For this he prepared a series of mind-maps, several of which have survived and are included in full colour in this edition.
His lectures are delightful because of the lucidity and sensitivity of his analysis and because they exude so very naturally his love for Prous’t writing. He also quotes several times (from memory, very much à la Proust) and this edition has provided at the foot of the page the original quote by Proust. They are amazingly faithful.
Czapski's
Et toute la nuit, dans toutes les vitrines illuminées des librairies de Paris, ses livres ouverts trois à trois veillaient comme des anges avec des ailes déployées le corps de l'écrivain défunt.
Proust's:
On l'enterra, mais toute la nuit funèbre, aux vitrines éclairées, ses livres, disposés trois par trois, veillaient come des anges aux ailes éployées et semblaient, pour celui qui n'était plus, le symbole de sa résurrection..
But apart from all the above, what is also fascinating is the way Czapski’s emphasizes Proust’s refusal to indoctrinate or judge by putting this feature in the context of Polish literature. He addresses the controversy surrounding Joseph Conrad (Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski), accused by many of his fellow Polish writers of betrayal to the nation, and his defence by Stefan Żeromski, who contrariwise, had chosen to stay “national”. The magnanimous Zeromski lauds Conrad because he had been able to realize what he, Zeromski, had had to sacrifice: freedom from the responsibility to one’s nation.
Czapski was addressing this to a group of soldiers who had risked, and were still risking, their lives in the service of their nation.
And to help this audience combat their own anxiety, Czapski then underlines a few concepts from Proust’s work. They all begin with the notion of Vanity: of Pride, of Youth and Beauty, of Celebrity, of Love. Vanitas et Veritas.
The closing pages close on the closing pages for everyone: Death. By addressing Proust’s description of the death of one of his characters and by finding the parallels to Proust’s death, Czapski zeroes into the Proustian theme of the only possible eternity, that of one’s work, of one’s deeds. Thinking of his audience.
Czapski was fortunate for he was eventually liberated and led a long life. After settling back in France after the war, he died at the age of 97 and is now buried at Mesnil-le-Roi.
We have his paintings and his lectures to remember him.
January 13, 2020
Involuntary Memories
What other more essential function can literature have than to let us know that there are experiences other than those immediately our own? Literature may also evoke emotions or help us to formulate our own interpretations of the world, but only after it has enticed us into perceiving the world from a different point of view. In a time of routine, that is to say expected daily life, the knowledge that there are other worlds than the one we contingently inhabit can be consoling, inspiring, or merely distracting. But for those who find themselves in extremis physically, mentally, or spiritually, and who have prepared themselves sufficiently, literature can be a matter of survival.
Jósef Czapski was such a person in such a situation. Interned as a Polish Army officer by the Soviet Army during WW II, Czapski and his other Polish comrades faced not just extreme physical hardship but also the likelihood of sudden and unexplained death at the hands of their captors. Literally the only resource available to Czapski was his own intellect and his ability to share it with the intellects of his fellow prisoners. If either he or they had not developed their taste and understanding of the written word, they very well could have succumbed to their circumstances.
For both Czapski and his fellow-prisoners, the social glue which helped them stay united and mutually supportive was not shared personal memories, of which there are necessarily few among any random collection of people, nor shared commitments, to their Polish nationality for example, which once expressed can only become tediously repetitive or simply hollow. Unexpectedly, what arose in Czapski’s mind were entire sections of books he had read, especially parts of Proust’s immense fictional memoir. Czapski finds himself re-enacting in the prison-camp the kind of stream of remembrance, not of his own life but of his experience of Proust’s writing including the allusions, ideas, and suggestions it provoked in him.
From these thoughts he lectured to groups of other prisoners after days of hard labour in overwhelmingly difficult conditions. In the lectures Proust became a “template for survival” among the prisoners, a growing reminder that the world of their gulag was not the entire world. They provided, literally, a spiritual escape and therefore a hope of physical freedom. These lectures were written down from memory after the war and published by Czapski with the explicit purpose of commemorating those men, their courageous suffering and the debt they owed to literature for enabling them to endure what they did.
Because he had no access to a library, nor indeed to any reference material at all, Czapski had to rely entirely on his memory. So what he talked and wrote about Proust was not in any way an academic exercise. Rather, his lectures are reports about what he had learned, about how and why he came to appreciate Proust. Literary history, biography, poetry, art, criticism, and philosophy run into and across one another continuously. He shows, in other words, how Proust slowly influenced his aesthetic judgment, and therefore how Czapski came to perceive not just Proust, but also the world and himself.
The result, therefore, is an aesthetic biography which probably could never have been written in circumstances other than total deprivation by a man who had unknowingly prepared for just that task throughout his education. As Czapski notes in his lectures. “Proust repeatedly insists that only involuntary memory is significant in art.” All Czapski and his fellow-prisoners had were these involuntary memories. What they were able to do with them is remarkable.
Oh, and yes, it is a rather good introduction for reading Proust.
Postscript: I am indebted to Nick Grammos on GR in Australia (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2...) for directing me toward this extraordinary work. Thanks Nick.
What other more essential function can literature have than to let us know that there are experiences other than those immediately our own? Literature may also evoke emotions or help us to formulate our own interpretations of the world, but only after it has enticed us into perceiving the world from a different point of view. In a time of routine, that is to say expected daily life, the knowledge that there are other worlds than the one we contingently inhabit can be consoling, inspiring, or merely distracting. But for those who find themselves in extremis physically, mentally, or spiritually, and who have prepared themselves sufficiently, literature can be a matter of survival.
Jósef Czapski was such a person in such a situation. Interned as a Polish Army officer by the Soviet Army during WW II, Czapski and his other Polish comrades faced not just extreme physical hardship but also the likelihood of sudden and unexplained death at the hands of their captors. Literally the only resource available to Czapski was his own intellect and his ability to share it with the intellects of his fellow prisoners. If either he or they had not developed their taste and understanding of the written word, they very well could have succumbed to their circumstances.
For both Czapski and his fellow-prisoners, the social glue which helped them stay united and mutually supportive was not shared personal memories, of which there are necessarily few among any random collection of people, nor shared commitments, to their Polish nationality for example, which once expressed can only become tediously repetitive or simply hollow. Unexpectedly, what arose in Czapski’s mind were entire sections of books he had read, especially parts of Proust’s immense fictional memoir. Czapski finds himself re-enacting in the prison-camp the kind of stream of remembrance, not of his own life but of his experience of Proust’s writing including the allusions, ideas, and suggestions it provoked in him.
From these thoughts he lectured to groups of other prisoners after days of hard labour in overwhelmingly difficult conditions. In the lectures Proust became a “template for survival” among the prisoners, a growing reminder that the world of their gulag was not the entire world. They provided, literally, a spiritual escape and therefore a hope of physical freedom. These lectures were written down from memory after the war and published by Czapski with the explicit purpose of commemorating those men, their courageous suffering and the debt they owed to literature for enabling them to endure what they did.
Because he had no access to a library, nor indeed to any reference material at all, Czapski had to rely entirely on his memory. So what he talked and wrote about Proust was not in any way an academic exercise. Rather, his lectures are reports about what he had learned, about how and why he came to appreciate Proust. Literary history, biography, poetry, art, criticism, and philosophy run into and across one another continuously. He shows, in other words, how Proust slowly influenced his aesthetic judgment, and therefore how Czapski came to perceive not just Proust, but also the world and himself.
The result, therefore, is an aesthetic biography which probably could never have been written in circumstances other than total deprivation by a man who had unknowingly prepared for just that task throughout his education. As Czapski notes in his lectures. “Proust repeatedly insists that only involuntary memory is significant in art.” All Czapski and his fellow-prisoners had were these involuntary memories. What they were able to do with them is remarkable.
Oh, and yes, it is a rather good introduction for reading Proust.
Postscript: I am indebted to Nick Grammos on GR in Australia (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2...) for directing me toward this extraordinary work. Thanks Nick.
Read
September 5, 2017
Despite his name figuring prominently in the the title of the book, Proust is not the primary subject of this account of a combat against degradation; he is simply the vehicle for this unique story of bravery and stoicism in the face of death.
When the German army entered Polish territory on the 1st of September 1939, Joseph Czapski, aged 43, a former officer in the Polish army, rejoined his regiment and was sent to fight on the Russian front. By the 27th of the month he was a Soviet prisoner of war along with fifteen thousand other Polish officers and soldiers. They were kept in various prison camps in the USSR between October 1939 and 1941.
Czapski spent most of his internment in a camp at Griazowietz, some five hundred kilometres north east of Moscow. Of the fifteen thousand originally captured, the four hundred or so prisoners at Griazowietz were the only survivors. The rest disappeared without trace; many thousands of them are now known to have been executed in the forests of Katyn near Smolensk.
That is simply the background information; the main text of this book is an account of the seminars Czapski conducted from memory for his fellow prisoners during any free time remaining after hours spent working under harsh and degrading conditions. He and his fellow soldiers sought to combat their physical and mental collapse by sharing their knowledge with each other. They had originally planned to deal with political and military history but the authorities quickly removed anyone who spoke of those subjects. That only left literature, painting and music, and so, with the help of the arts, Czapski and his comrades tried to maintain their dignity as thinking, feeling human beings.
Czapski had spent some years in Paris and had read the many volumes of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu several times over. In the confines of the camp, and with nothing but an old copybook and some pencils, he set about recreating the text and examining its themes using diagrams and sketches as well as many quotes he had learned by heart. He situates Proust’s work in its time and talks of his principal influences as well as the works which Proust influenced in his turn. The feat of memory involved is truly impressive.
Czapski covers a lot of themes in this 60 page essay but perhaps the most moving aspect for me is his firm acknowledgement that Proust, who never mentions God in his thousands of printed pages, shows himself nevertheless to be the most tolerant of individuals, seeking simply to understand the passions which drive us all, the base and so-called degenerate as well as the more noble and pure of mankind’s obsessions. That this idea could be seen and understood by a man being held prisoner in dreadful conditions by an enemy force is proof of what Proust himself believed in most fervently: the redeeming power of art.
January 17, 2021
Remarkable for WHAT it is - more than the content, which is also quite good. Czapski, a Polish prisoner in Soviet military camp during WW2, was part of a group of officers who put together lecutres on subjects of their expertise. They had no source materials. And yet, from memory, he puts together an accomplished, detailed, uncannily accurate lecture on Proust - recalling scenes of the most minute importance, in detail. This is, in itself, Proustian, making the work fascinating. The lecture itself is informed and sharp, and would serve as a wonderful INTRODUCTION to In Search of Lost Time (my favorite book) if you haven't read it.
Imagine hearing this lecture in an impossible circumstance! Time travel.
Imagine hearing this lecture in an impossible circumstance! Time travel.
July 28, 2023
پروست، مردی برای تمام فصول :
یک دستهبندی دربارهی کتابها دارم که به آنها میگویم «خواندنی». کتابهای جالب و دلنشین و قابل تأمل و همچنین سهل و ممتنع که لذت خواندن را در شما زنده میکنند. این عبارتِ «خواندنی»، معمولا نصیب داستانهای کوتاه خوب، جستارها و یا مقالات کوتاه میشوند. رمانهای طویل و یا کتابهای نظری سنگین، ذهن خستگیناپذیر و استقامت بالایی میطلبند که آدم حین خواندنشان ممکن است استفاده زیادی از مغز و استدلال داشته باشد، اما خواندنشان همیشه هم لذتبخش نیست و در طول مسیر گاهی ممکن است ادامه دادنشان، کاری از روی مسئولیت و تعهد باشد، همانطور که زندگی هم به اینگونه است.
همیشه کتابهای جدی و سخت، برایم نقش کار طولانی مدت را دارند و این «خواندنیها»، نقش تعطیلات. زمانی که نیاز به استراحت دارم، باید کمی به ذهن استراحت بدهم و روغنکاریاش بکنم تا برای یک پروژه دیگر آماده شود، میروم سراغ این کتابها.
کتاب چاپسکی هم واقعا کتابی خواندنی بود. البته نباید آن را با یک کتاب سطحی و کممحتوا اشتباه گرفت.
این کتاب حاصل دورانی است که چاپسکی و چندصد افسر لهستانی در اردوگاه کار اجباری، صبح تا عصر در دمای زیر ۴۵ درجه، به بیگاری مشغولاند. هزاران هزار افسر لهستانی دیگر اعدام و در گورهای دستهجمعی زیر انبوهی از لجن دفن شدهاند و اینان نیز در حضور مرگ به سر میبرند. عصرها پس از فراغت روزانه از کار اجباری و در دمای سرد استخوانسوز دور هم جمع میشوند تا با صحبت درباره علایقشان آن جو مرگمحور را تاب بیاورند. تا زیر فشار جسمی و روانی خود را نبازند. تا نشکنند.
پروست برای ادامه بقا به پروست و حافظهاش متوسل میشود. نتیجهی آن اثری ماندگار است. نه بخاطر اینکه شاهد تحلیلهای بسیار موشکافانه از پروست هستیم. نه. حتی گاهی هم نقلهای اشتباه از کتاب پروست میکند ولی جذابیت این کار هم به همین است. دست به دامان پروست شدن و فکر کردن به او و صحبت از او برای ادامه دادن و جنگیدن علیه زوال، نکتهای است که این کتاب را خواندنی کرده.
یک دستهبندی دربارهی کتابها دارم که به آنها میگویم «خواندنی». کتابهای جالب و دلنشین و قابل تأمل و همچنین سهل و ممتنع که لذت خواندن را در شما زنده میکنند. این عبارتِ «خواندنی»، معمولا نصیب داستانهای کوتاه خوب، جستارها و یا مقالات کوتاه میشوند. رمانهای طویل و یا کتابهای نظری سنگین، ذهن خستگیناپذیر و استقامت بالایی میطلبند که آدم حین خواندنشان ممکن است استفاده زیادی از مغز و استدلال داشته باشد، اما خواندنشان همیشه هم لذتبخش نیست و در طول مسیر گاهی ممکن است ادامه دادنشان، کاری از روی مسئولیت و تعهد باشد، همانطور که زندگی هم به اینگونه است.
همیشه کتابهای جدی و سخت، برایم نقش کار طولانی مدت را دارند و این «خواندنیها»، نقش تعطیلات. زمانی که نیاز به استراحت دارم، باید کمی به ذهن استراحت بدهم و روغنکاریاش بکنم تا برای یک پروژه دیگر آماده شود، میروم سراغ این کتابها.
کتاب چاپسکی هم واقعا کتابی خواندنی بود. البته نباید آن را با یک کتاب سطحی و کممحتوا اشتباه گرفت.
این کتاب حاصل دورانی است که چاپسکی و چندصد افسر لهستانی در اردوگاه کار اجباری، صبح تا عصر در دمای زیر ۴۵ درجه، به بیگاری مشغولاند. هزاران هزار افسر لهستانی دیگر اعدام و در گورهای دستهجمعی زیر انبوهی از لجن دفن شدهاند و اینان نیز در حضور مرگ به سر میبرند. عصرها پس از فراغت روزانه از کار اجباری و در دمای سرد استخوانسوز دور هم جمع میشوند تا با صحبت درباره علایقشان آن جو مرگمحور را تاب بیاورند. تا زیر فشار جسمی و روانی خود را نبازند. تا نشکنند.
پروست برای ادامه بقا به پروست و حافظهاش متوسل میشود. نتیجهی آن اثری ماندگار است. نه بخاطر اینکه شاهد تحلیلهای بسیار موشکافانه از پروست هستیم. نه. حتی گاهی هم نقلهای اشتباه از کتاب پروست میکند ولی جذابیت این کار هم به همین است. دست به دامان پروست شدن و فکر کردن به او و صحبت از او برای ادامه دادن و جنگیدن علیه زوال، نکتهای است که این کتاب را خواندنی کرده.
October 12, 2024
A recreation of a short series of lectures by Polish artist and author Józef Czapski, originally delivered over the course of a freezing winter in 1940/41. Czapski’s reflections on Proust were part of a programme of talks devised by Polish officers held in a Soviet labour camp – in early WW2 when Soviet forces were still aligned with Germany’s. Czapski and his fellow inmates were among the few hundred Polish officers left alive, out of the 22,000 captured – most were slaughtered during the now-infamous Katyn massacre. At the end of a gruelling day, in appalling conditions, these sessions were a reminder of the outside, of an identity other than prisoner - although Czapski’s discussions go beyond nostalgia or escapism.
Czapski first encountered Proust’s In Search of Lost Time in 1920s Paris. A struggling painter, Czapski also loved to read but when he first sampled Proust he wasn’t impressed. Czapski was fascinated by writers like Cocteau, Proust’s approach seemed weirdly out of step with a Paris caught up in movements like Cubism and modernism. Czapski found Proust’s novel frustratingly low on plot, and detested his ornate, mannered style. A year later Czapski tried again, he was ill with plenty of time to fill. Suddenly Proust’s work made sense, and Czapski thought it was marvellous. It’s that enthusiasm, that love, for Proust that really comes across here.
Ironically, Czapski’s thoughts on Proust were entirely based on memory - no handy copies of Proust floating about the prison camp. But this situation added to the immediacy of Czapski’s conception of Proust, I thought Czapski’s approach was an arresting mix of fresh, insightful and deeply-felt. That’s not to say there aren’t factual or grounded elements, Czapski raises a number of important issues – about translation; about Proust and his cultural context; about the relationship between Proust’s own life and his fiction. In addition to Czapski’s text, this edition contains versions of the illustrations he produced to accompany it. There’s also a detailed introduction framing these talks, providing an overview of Czapski, his life, his background, the history surrounding his incarceration.
Czapski first encountered Proust’s In Search of Lost Time in 1920s Paris. A struggling painter, Czapski also loved to read but when he first sampled Proust he wasn’t impressed. Czapski was fascinated by writers like Cocteau, Proust’s approach seemed weirdly out of step with a Paris caught up in movements like Cubism and modernism. Czapski found Proust’s novel frustratingly low on plot, and detested his ornate, mannered style. A year later Czapski tried again, he was ill with plenty of time to fill. Suddenly Proust’s work made sense, and Czapski thought it was marvellous. It’s that enthusiasm, that love, for Proust that really comes across here.
Ironically, Czapski’s thoughts on Proust were entirely based on memory - no handy copies of Proust floating about the prison camp. But this situation added to the immediacy of Czapski’s conception of Proust, I thought Czapski’s approach was an arresting mix of fresh, insightful and deeply-felt. That’s not to say there aren’t factual or grounded elements, Czapski raises a number of important issues – about translation; about Proust and his cultural context; about the relationship between Proust’s own life and his fiction. In addition to Czapski’s text, this edition contains versions of the illustrations he produced to accompany it. There’s also a detailed introduction framing these talks, providing an overview of Czapski, his life, his background, the history surrounding his incarceration.
May 6, 2023
L’opera immensa di Marcel Proust, una cattedrale gotica nel mondo della letteratura, accompagna Jozef Czapski, pittore, scrittore, saggista e critico d’arte, ogni giorno, grazie anche alla “memoria involontaria” di cui lo stesso Proust parla. Senza libri, senza opere di critica letteraria, senza nulla, chiusi in un campo di prigionia russo, i compagni lo ascoltano parlare del romanzo mondo, di quell’opera edita pochi anni prima che ha conquistato l’animo di Czapski. Nel gulag, nel terribile inverno russo, i pensieri di Proust danno la forza di non sprofondare nell’abisso, di conquistare l’immortalità del pensiero attraverso la difficoltosa strada dell’arte. La lettura di questo breve saggio, interessantissimo, riesce a far intuire oggi quanto lo spirito vitale della letteratura e dell’arte abbia potuto alimentare la resistenza nel gulag alla violenza e alla morte.
January 2, 2021
Avrebbe mai potuto, Proust, immaginare un omaggio più bello?
Pensate ad un Ufficiale polacco, non uno specialista dell'opera proustiana, bensì semplicemente un suo appassionato lettore che nell'inverno del 1949 si trova a Grjazovec, prigioniero in un gulag sovietico e tiene ogni sera ai compagni di prigionia, raccolti in una gelida baracca e stremati da giornate di lavori forzati a meno 40 gradi sotto zero, delle meravigliose lezioni sulla Ricerca del tempo perduto di Marcel Proust.
Josef Czapski fa rivivere un mondo che per un uomo in prigionia al freddo, affamato, separato dai suoi affetti, è così distante, quasi un miraggio nella sua memoria; descrive l'infanzia e i suoi piccoli drammi, l'amore filiale e materno, l'analisi psicologica dell'alta società parigina, della borghesia dei parvenu che si vanno affermando, i tormenti dell'amore e della gelosia, l'omosessualità maschile ma anche femminile descritti con grande sfrontatezza per l'epoca, la vocazione letteraria di uno scrittore, la musica, la pittura, la bellezza di un melo in fiore, il ricamo sulla facciata di una cattedrale gotica, in un caleidoscopio di personaggi indimenticabili.
Czapski non ha con sé i sette volumi dell'opera proustiana, le sue lezioni si basano solo sul ricordo del testo, come un antico aedo e, con sorprendente precisione, ne cita interi passaggi disponendo solo della memoria e dei suoi prodigi per arrivare a ritrovare quel tempo perduto dentro ognuno di noi che riaffiora finalmente nella sua vera realtà.
Quando l'arte rappresenta una forma di resistenza e arriva a salvare la vita.
Pensate ad un Ufficiale polacco, non uno specialista dell'opera proustiana, bensì semplicemente un suo appassionato lettore che nell'inverno del 1949 si trova a Grjazovec, prigioniero in un gulag sovietico e tiene ogni sera ai compagni di prigionia, raccolti in una gelida baracca e stremati da giornate di lavori forzati a meno 40 gradi sotto zero, delle meravigliose lezioni sulla Ricerca del tempo perduto di Marcel Proust.
Josef Czapski fa rivivere un mondo che per un uomo in prigionia al freddo, affamato, separato dai suoi affetti, è così distante, quasi un miraggio nella sua memoria; descrive l'infanzia e i suoi piccoli drammi, l'amore filiale e materno, l'analisi psicologica dell'alta società parigina, della borghesia dei parvenu che si vanno affermando, i tormenti dell'amore e della gelosia, l'omosessualità maschile ma anche femminile descritti con grande sfrontatezza per l'epoca, la vocazione letteraria di uno scrittore, la musica, la pittura, la bellezza di un melo in fiore, il ricamo sulla facciata di una cattedrale gotica, in un caleidoscopio di personaggi indimenticabili.
Czapski non ha con sé i sette volumi dell'opera proustiana, le sue lezioni si basano solo sul ricordo del testo, come un antico aedo e, con sorprendente precisione, ne cita interi passaggi disponendo solo della memoria e dei suoi prodigi per arrivare a ritrovare quel tempo perduto dentro ognuno di noi che riaffiora finalmente nella sua vera realtà.
Quando l'arte rappresenta una forma di resistenza e arriva a salvare la vita.
June 20, 2023
Proust attempts to overcome the problem of the discontinuity of perception with involuntary memory, with the intuition of creating a new form and a new vision that can furnish us with an impression of life’s continuity.
Simply a joy to read despite being undernourished in terms of explication. Yes, much of the thrill comes from backstory but the sheer joy the author feels in Proust is evident on every page. I am so glad I spent an evening with this. I proceed now with more of the Czapski dimension. The translator's asides about Semprun and Levi were remarkable, the one regarding Shalamov heartbreaking.
Simply a joy to read despite being undernourished in terms of explication. Yes, much of the thrill comes from backstory but the sheer joy the author feels in Proust is evident on every page. I am so glad I spent an evening with this. I proceed now with more of the Czapski dimension. The translator's asides about Semprun and Levi were remarkable, the one regarding Shalamov heartbreaking.
August 1, 2022
As many other reviewers have identified, the story behind this tiny book is more intriguing in some ways to the book itself. Eric Karpeles has written an introduction that must be read prior to the text itself, which sits otherwise without context in the back half of the book. Józef Czapski was one of many Polish prisoners in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, kept alive where others had been shot, though they did know why, whether it was God or Fate. To keep their spirits and their sense of self, the prisoners decided that before sleep every night, they would give each other lectures, each prisoner speaking in a field they knew most. Czapski (a painter first and foremost) began by giving lectures of his fellow prisoners about art, but soon shifted his focus onto Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Of course, no books were allowed in the camp, so Czapski went by his memory alone. He could (like Proust could apparently recite entire pages of Balzac), bring forth passages from Proust verbatim. In this way, more parallels between lecturer and subject were drawn; Czapski realised the importance of involuntary memory, which is one of the many themes that ties the whole of Proust’s novel together. But, as Karpeles says in his introduction, ‘Technically speaking the book in your hand was not written by Józef Czapski He never sat down to commit to paper the words that appear in this volume, but two separate handwritten dictations would eventually be converted into two sets of typewritten pages.’ He goes on to say,
His lectures themselves had a different focus than I imagined. The tone is easy. Czapski describes trying once to read Proust (beginning with Vol. 3 and realising it was near enough a 600-page dinner party) and swiftly dropped it before getting ill several months later and trying again (this time with Vol. 5) and falling in love. My experience with Proust was very much the same: I began Vol. 1 in Paris, gave up, and then several months later pulled it off my shelf and began reading again, and was in love. Czapski also gives anecdotes about Proust’s character (he befriended many of Proust’s old friends before the war, though never met the man himself, of course, he began reading him several years after he had died). His memory mostly serves him well, it is interesting to see which scenes and ideas come to him in his prison camp. Naturally he talks about the two great epiphanies in the novel, the tasting of the madeleine in the beginning of Vol. 1 and the epiphany that happens right at the end of Vol. 7 (which, amazingly, I discovered in this book, Proust apparently wrote the final volume before all the others). People call this a good introduction before committing to Proust; I disagree. If one intends to read the whole novel, I would avoid reading this beforehand, for Czapski does talk about later events, the big ideas at the end of the novel, and all the other things I read over 4,000 pages to discover myself. It is meant to be that way. Proust had grand ideas for his novel —
— and to spoil some of the larger moments of it through someone else’s thoughts would be a shame, I think.
Overall a tiny but multifaceted look at Proust himself, his illness, his writing process and the moments and themes of his giant novel. I’ve only recently finished his whole novel myself, so I can almost still feel it settling down somewhere in my brain or soul; I am yet to speak with any conviction about whether it changed my life, even whether it was worth months of continuous reading. I am, however, fascinated by the history of this small book and the man it was written about, a sickly man who devoted his entire life to the writing of such a long and complex book.
Of course, no books were allowed in the camp, so Czapski went by his memory alone. He could (like Proust could apparently recite entire pages of Balzac), bring forth passages from Proust verbatim. In this way, more parallels between lecturer and subject were drawn; Czapski realised the importance of involuntary memory, which is one of the many themes that ties the whole of Proust’s novel together. But, as Karpeles says in his introduction, ‘Technically speaking the book in your hand was not written by Józef Czapski He never sat down to commit to paper the words that appear in this volume, but two separate handwritten dictations would eventually be converted into two sets of typewritten pages.’ He goes on to say,
Czapski’s talks, and our knowledge of the circumstances under which they were given, have been handed down to us in this form. Further details remain difficult to verify. We know that Soviet censors monitored all public gatherings in every prison camp, disallowing the presentation of any potentially seditious (i.e. anti-communist) material. Any spoken text had to be submitted in written form for prior approval […] And we know from Czapski that this text was transcribed after the fact of his having given the lectures, not before. How was this procedural detail overcome? Over how many days or weeks did he give his lectures? How many did he give in all? “I dictated part of these lectures,” he wrote (my italics). How much more material was there in his original presentations? When were the handwritten transcriptions typed up, where, and by whom? A typewriter would not have been available to prisoners in the camp. How did these pages, in any form, manage to leave the USSR, and in whose possession? Questions pile up, one uncertainty proposing another.
His lectures themselves had a different focus than I imagined. The tone is easy. Czapski describes trying once to read Proust (beginning with Vol. 3 and realising it was near enough a 600-page dinner party) and swiftly dropped it before getting ill several months later and trying again (this time with Vol. 5) and falling in love. My experience with Proust was very much the same: I began Vol. 1 in Paris, gave up, and then several months later pulled it off my shelf and began reading again, and was in love. Czapski also gives anecdotes about Proust’s character (he befriended many of Proust’s old friends before the war, though never met the man himself, of course, he began reading him several years after he had died). His memory mostly serves him well, it is interesting to see which scenes and ideas come to him in his prison camp. Naturally he talks about the two great epiphanies in the novel, the tasting of the madeleine in the beginning of Vol. 1 and the epiphany that happens right at the end of Vol. 7 (which, amazingly, I discovered in this book, Proust apparently wrote the final volume before all the others). People call this a good introduction before committing to Proust; I disagree. If one intends to read the whole novel, I would avoid reading this beforehand, for Czapski does talk about later events, the big ideas at the end of the novel, and all the other things I read over 4,000 pages to discover myself. It is meant to be that way. Proust had grand ideas for his novel —
He had wanted the whole thing to appear in a single volume, without paragraphs, without margins, without sections or chapters. The prospect was seen as completely ridiculous by the most refined edtors in Paris, and as a result Proust was forced to break his book up into fifteen or sixteen sections, as each separately titled volume was broken down into two or three sections
— and to spoil some of the larger moments of it through someone else’s thoughts would be a shame, I think.
Overall a tiny but multifaceted look at Proust himself, his illness, his writing process and the moments and themes of his giant novel. I’ve only recently finished his whole novel myself, so I can almost still feel it settling down somewhere in my brain or soul; I am yet to speak with any conviction about whether it changed my life, even whether it was worth months of continuous reading. I am, however, fascinated by the history of this small book and the man it was written about, a sickly man who devoted his entire life to the writing of such a long and complex book.
March 22, 2022
"It is not intelligence but intuition that provides us with an accurate view of life."
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The author first encounters Proust in 1924, years before he would be interned in a Soviet prison camp.
I started by reading the description of a high-society party in one of his volumes (Le côté de Guermantes); the description dragged on for several hundred pages.....I was more used to books where something actually happens, where the action develops more nimbly and is told in a rather more up-to-date style. I didn’t have sufficient literary culture to deal with these volumes, so mannered and exuberant. What you encounter are characters, a ceaseless wave, as of life itself.
Proust’s lengthy sentences, with their endless asides, myriad, remote, and unexpected associations, their strange manner of treating entangled themes without any kind of hierarchy—the value of this style, with its extreme precision and richness, seemed beyond me.
But years later...
In speaking about Proust’s style, one must emphasize its quality of preciousness. The pages sparkle and shine with riches of metaphoric language, exotic and precious associations. These riches never become an end in themselves. They only serve to deepen, to render the masterful ideas in his sentences more palpably, with more freshness.
I can’t recall ever having gone back to Proust—and I’ve done that many times—without discovering some new emphasis, some new insight each time.
In the camps, "Proust was more valuable than sleep."
What the intellect offers us under the name of the past is not the past. The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach.
Proust's friends saw him as a fully realized writer, a mature man; the most perceptive of them already suspected his greatness and his genius.
Proust lived more and more by night. From time to time Proust could be found at the most exclusive salons, where he had once been a familiar figure. He always arrived just as a party was beginning to break up, but he would manage, more brilliantly than ever, to take everyone’s breath away with his animated talk, keeping everyone spellbound until dawn.
At the Hôtel de Guermantes, he observes the assembled group of friends from his earlier life, already deformed by age, growing older, bloated or withering away, and then sees young people there emerging among them, a new generation who seem to harbor so poignantly the same hopes his old or dead friends once held. All this he sees with new eyes, lucidly, detached, and from a distance; finally, he knows what he is meant to do with his life. It’s he, and he alone in this crowd, who will make them all come to life again, he knows it with a force of certainty that death has become a matter of indifference to him.
Proust insisted that life is continuous and but our perception of it discontinuous. It follows that our intelligence is incapable of forming an adequate idea of life. It is not intelligence, but intuition that provides us with an adequate idea of life. (Intuition in humans corresponds to instinct in animals.) Proust attempts to overcome the problem of the discontinuity of perception with involuntary memory, with the intuition of creating a new form and a new vision that can furnish us with an impression of life’s continuity.
After the war, in the final years of his life, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre secured a box at the Opéra for a large charity event with the idea of allowing Proust to observe once again the society from which the vigor of his great work was drawn. Proust arrived late, seated himself in a corner of the box, turned his back to the stage and never stopped talking. The next day the duchess remarked to him that it had hardly been worth the bother of taking a box to help him venture out if he had had no intention of paying attention to what was going on. With a sly smile, Proust proceeded to recount, with meticulous precision, everything that had occurred in the theater and on the stage, piling up a wealth of details that no one else had noticed, and then added: “Don’t worry, when it comes to my work, I’m busy as a bee."
In his last years, Proust’s health worsened more and more. As his work began to appear, volume after volume, his readers were dazzled. Death came and took him as he deserved to be taken, hard at work.
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The author first encounters Proust in 1924, years before he would be interned in a Soviet prison camp.
I started by reading the description of a high-society party in one of his volumes (Le côté de Guermantes); the description dragged on for several hundred pages.....I was more used to books where something actually happens, where the action develops more nimbly and is told in a rather more up-to-date style. I didn’t have sufficient literary culture to deal with these volumes, so mannered and exuberant. What you encounter are characters, a ceaseless wave, as of life itself.
Proust’s lengthy sentences, with their endless asides, myriad, remote, and unexpected associations, their strange manner of treating entangled themes without any kind of hierarchy—the value of this style, with its extreme precision and richness, seemed beyond me.
But years later...
In speaking about Proust’s style, one must emphasize its quality of preciousness. The pages sparkle and shine with riches of metaphoric language, exotic and precious associations. These riches never become an end in themselves. They only serve to deepen, to render the masterful ideas in his sentences more palpably, with more freshness.
I can’t recall ever having gone back to Proust—and I’ve done that many times—without discovering some new emphasis, some new insight each time.
In the camps, "Proust was more valuable than sleep."
What the intellect offers us under the name of the past is not the past. The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach.
Proust's friends saw him as a fully realized writer, a mature man; the most perceptive of them already suspected his greatness and his genius.
Proust lived more and more by night. From time to time Proust could be found at the most exclusive salons, where he had once been a familiar figure. He always arrived just as a party was beginning to break up, but he would manage, more brilliantly than ever, to take everyone’s breath away with his animated talk, keeping everyone spellbound until dawn.
At the Hôtel de Guermantes, he observes the assembled group of friends from his earlier life, already deformed by age, growing older, bloated or withering away, and then sees young people there emerging among them, a new generation who seem to harbor so poignantly the same hopes his old or dead friends once held. All this he sees with new eyes, lucidly, detached, and from a distance; finally, he knows what he is meant to do with his life. It’s he, and he alone in this crowd, who will make them all come to life again, he knows it with a force of certainty that death has become a matter of indifference to him.
Proust insisted that life is continuous and but our perception of it discontinuous. It follows that our intelligence is incapable of forming an adequate idea of life. It is not intelligence, but intuition that provides us with an adequate idea of life. (Intuition in humans corresponds to instinct in animals.) Proust attempts to overcome the problem of the discontinuity of perception with involuntary memory, with the intuition of creating a new form and a new vision that can furnish us with an impression of life’s continuity.
After the war, in the final years of his life, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre secured a box at the Opéra for a large charity event with the idea of allowing Proust to observe once again the society from which the vigor of his great work was drawn. Proust arrived late, seated himself in a corner of the box, turned his back to the stage and never stopped talking. The next day the duchess remarked to him that it had hardly been worth the bother of taking a box to help him venture out if he had had no intention of paying attention to what was going on. With a sly smile, Proust proceeded to recount, with meticulous precision, everything that had occurred in the theater and on the stage, piling up a wealth of details that no one else had noticed, and then added: “Don’t worry, when it comes to my work, I’m busy as a bee."
In his last years, Proust’s health worsened more and more. As his work began to appear, volume after volume, his readers were dazzled. Death came and took him as he deserved to be taken, hard at work.
January 27, 2021
Deportato nel 1939 nel gulag di Grjazovec, Czapski, ufficiale polacco, ma soprattutto fine intellettuale (pittore, scrittore, studioso), trova il modo di sopravvivere all’abiezione morale: a turno i prigionieri prepareranno delle lezioni sugli argomenti più disparati (a seconda delle loro competenze, diremmo oggi).
Nascono così queste conferenze su Proust, autore amatissimo, letto e riletto in francese, di cui J.C. conosce a memoria interi brani. E sono lezioni intense e bellissime. Restituiscono allo scrittore francese tutta la sua immensa dignità di artista, ne perlustrano le intenzioni, entrano in contatto con la sua profonda sensibilità.
In che cosa consiste l’arte di Proust? Nel perlustrare, indagare, rielaborare i fatti della propria vita: l’ambiente, le persone, le situazioni, le passioni e i sentimenti (le intermittenze del cuore), in modo che le sue pagine “diventano un resoconto non tanto degli eventi quanto dei pensieri suscitati dall’urto con gli eventi”.
A questa opera, che diventerà la Recherche, “immane intreccio di associazioni che avrebbero condotto ad altre associazioni, quanto mai inattese e distanti nel tempo […] groviglio di metafore” aperte verso infinite altre, Proust dedica l’ultima parte della sua vita con un impegno costante e una dedizione assoluta, allo scopo di realizzare la scrittura che sappia dare a un contenuto nuovo la sua perfetta forma.
Proust stesso lo dichiara nell’opera, tramite le parole dello scrittore Bergotte : “Qual è il senso di questo lavoro accanito su dettagli quasi impercettibili, da parte di un artista di cui non sappiamo quasi niente, qual è il senso di questo sforzo incessante teso verso un fine che probabilmente nessuno saprà mai intravedere, né comprendere, né cogliere fino in fondo? È come se vivessimo sotto il dominio di leggi di giustizia, di verità assoluta, di completa dedizione, concepite in un altro mondo, un mondo di armonia e di verità, i cui riflessi giungono fino a noi e ci guidano su questa terra”.
Riecheggiano in queste parole quelle di un altro grande cercatore di assoluto: Dostoevskij, che fa dire a padre Zosima nei Fratelli Karamazov: “le radici stesse dei nostri pensieri e dei nostri sentimenti non sono qui, ma in altri mondi”.
Ed è verso questi altri mondi che tendiamo, leggendo le opere dei grandi, è così che anche noi riusciamo a sopravvivere.
Nascono così queste conferenze su Proust, autore amatissimo, letto e riletto in francese, di cui J.C. conosce a memoria interi brani. E sono lezioni intense e bellissime. Restituiscono allo scrittore francese tutta la sua immensa dignità di artista, ne perlustrano le intenzioni, entrano in contatto con la sua profonda sensibilità.
In che cosa consiste l’arte di Proust? Nel perlustrare, indagare, rielaborare i fatti della propria vita: l’ambiente, le persone, le situazioni, le passioni e i sentimenti (le intermittenze del cuore), in modo che le sue pagine “diventano un resoconto non tanto degli eventi quanto dei pensieri suscitati dall’urto con gli eventi”.
A questa opera, che diventerà la Recherche, “immane intreccio di associazioni che avrebbero condotto ad altre associazioni, quanto mai inattese e distanti nel tempo […] groviglio di metafore” aperte verso infinite altre, Proust dedica l’ultima parte della sua vita con un impegno costante e una dedizione assoluta, allo scopo di realizzare la scrittura che sappia dare a un contenuto nuovo la sua perfetta forma.
Proust stesso lo dichiara nell’opera, tramite le parole dello scrittore Bergotte : “Qual è il senso di questo lavoro accanito su dettagli quasi impercettibili, da parte di un artista di cui non sappiamo quasi niente, qual è il senso di questo sforzo incessante teso verso un fine che probabilmente nessuno saprà mai intravedere, né comprendere, né cogliere fino in fondo? È come se vivessimo sotto il dominio di leggi di giustizia, di verità assoluta, di completa dedizione, concepite in un altro mondo, un mondo di armonia e di verità, i cui riflessi giungono fino a noi e ci guidano su questa terra”.
Riecheggiano in queste parole quelle di un altro grande cercatore di assoluto: Dostoevskij, che fa dire a padre Zosima nei Fratelli Karamazov: “le radici stesse dei nostri pensieri e dei nostri sentimenti non sono qui, ma in altri mondi”.
Ed è verso questi altri mondi che tendiamo, leggendo le opere dei grandi, è così che anche noi riusciamo a sopravvivere.
Read
November 13, 2022După cum spune și titlul, cartea conține o serie de mini-conferințe despre Proust și opera lui, ținute de către Czapski (pictor și scriitor polonez) într-un lagăr sovietic, în 194-1941. Pentru a-și omorî cumva timpul, dar și pentru a nu se tîmpi cu desăvîrșire, prizonierii polonezi din lagărul de concentrare de la Griazowietz încep să își țină unii altora conferințe pe diferite teme: artă, literatură, arhitectură etc., după interesul și priceperea fiecăruia. Czapski, un tip cult, educat și trăit atît în Rusia cît și în Franța, vorbitor de mai multe limbi străine, avînd atunci în jur de 40 de ani, era nu doar foarte versat în artă, dar și în opera proustiană, pe care o citise și răscitise, așa încît era capabil să recite pasaje întregi pe de rost. A ajuns la Paris cu cîțiva ani după moartea lui Proust, dar a ajuns să îi cunoască pe mulți dintre apropiații lui și apucase să citească mult din tot ce se scrisese despre Proust pînă atunci.
Ce impresionează la cărticica asta:
- evident, faptul că există. S-au păstrat din lagăr notițele și diagramele lui Czapski pe care le-a făcut înainte de a ține discursurile (notițele sînt în poloneză, dar conferințele au fost direct în franceză). Ulterior, doi dintre colegii de lagăr au transcris aceste discursuri, pe care Czapski le-a dictat din nou, după notițe.
- în zilele noastre, la 100 de ani de la moartea lui Proust, știm, pentru că s-a scris enorm despre el și munca lui, o mulțime de lucruri, interpretări și puneri în context. Însă în 1940, la nici 20 de ani de la moartea lui, faptul că Czapski reușește să sintetizeze atît de bine munca lui Proust, să îi ofere un foarte larg context cultural (atinge multe aspecte, de la literatură și filozofie, la pictură și muzică) e un lucru remarcabil. Bineînțeles, în lagăr nu a avut acces la nici o carte, așa că tot ce spune e din memorie, și își cere el însuși scuze pentru micile inexactități, care sînt oricum explicate de traducător.
Cartea e o mică bijuterie a rezistenței prin artă, un exemplu perfect al memoriei involuntare pe care Proust însuși a promovat-o intens.
Cred că poate funcționa perfect și ca introducere în opera lui (urăsc să folosesc cuvîntul ăsta cu reminiscențe triste de la orele de română, dar în contextul ăsta mi se pare că se potrivește perfect).
Ce impresionează la cărticica asta:
- evident, faptul că există. S-au păstrat din lagăr notițele și diagramele lui Czapski pe care le-a făcut înainte de a ține discursurile (notițele sînt în poloneză, dar conferințele au fost direct în franceză). Ulterior, doi dintre colegii de lagăr au transcris aceste discursuri, pe care Czapski le-a dictat din nou, după notițe.
- în zilele noastre, la 100 de ani de la moartea lui Proust, știm, pentru că s-a scris enorm despre el și munca lui, o mulțime de lucruri, interpretări și puneri în context. Însă în 1940, la nici 20 de ani de la moartea lui, faptul că Czapski reușește să sintetizeze atît de bine munca lui Proust, să îi ofere un foarte larg context cultural (atinge multe aspecte, de la literatură și filozofie, la pictură și muzică) e un lucru remarcabil. Bineînțeles, în lagăr nu a avut acces la nici o carte, așa că tot ce spune e din memorie, și își cere el însuși scuze pentru micile inexactități, care sînt oricum explicate de traducător.
Cartea e o mică bijuterie a rezistenței prin artă, un exemplu perfect al memoriei involuntare pe care Proust însuși a promovat-o intens.
Cred că poate funcționa perfect și ca introducere în opera lui (urăsc să folosesc cuvîntul ăsta cu reminiscențe triste de la orele de română, dar în contextul ăsta mi se pare că se potrivește perfect).
August 8, 2025
3.5 ⭐️
زمانی که چاپسکی توسط سربازان شوروی در گریازاوتس اسیر شده بود، بعد از ساعتها کار اجباری، اسرا سعی میکردند برای حفظ روحیه و پرتی حواس راجع به موضوعات مختلف صحبت کنند و از اونجایی که چاپسکی بسیار به مجموعه پروست علاقه داشته، تصمیم میگیره که راجع به این مجموعه صحبت کنه.
سالها بعد از آزادی، این صحبتها در قالب این جستار چاپ میشه.
از اونجایی که چاپسکی در اون صومعهی مخروبهای که زندانی بودند به هیچ کتابی دسترسی نداشته و تمام گفتههاش رو از اعماق حافظهش بیرون میکشیده، بعضی از گفتههاش دقیق نیست و ارجاعات اشتباه داره ولی توی مقدمه و پاورقیها صحیحشون ذکر شده.
اولا که قطعا باید قبلش مجموعه رو خونده باشین تا متوجه موضوع و ارجاعات بشین.
دوما که انتظار یه نقد و بررسی دقیق رو نداشته باشین چون همونطور که گفتم، حتی ارجاعات ممکنه دقیق نباشن ولی به واسطه آشنایی چاپسکی با دوستان پروست و مطالعاتی که داشته، نکات جالبی راجع به کرکترها، اتفاقات، ماجراهای پروست حین نوشتن و... میگه که برای من خوندنی بود.
چیزی که خیلی جالبه اینه که چقدر یه مجموعه و نویسنده میتونه روی مخاطبش تأثیر بذاره که حتی در اسارت هم بهش پناه میبره و با کاوش در حافظهش سعی میکنه بخشهایی از این اثر بزرگ رو به یاد بیاره تا بتونه همچنان ادامه بده و دوام بیاره.
آخر کتاب هم تصویرهای مرتبط با کتاب مثل دستنوشتههای پروست، تابلوی چشمانداز دلفت (آخرین تابلویی که برگوت تماشا میکنه) و عکس چاپسکی آورده شده و نامنامهی کاملی آورده شده.
با اینکه کوتاه بود ولی خوندنش خالی از لطف نبود. انگار با دوستم راجع به کتابی که مشترک خوندیم، حرف زدیم و بهم حس فن گرلی هم میداد =)))))
زمانی که چاپسکی توسط سربازان شوروی در گریازاوتس اسیر شده بود، بعد از ساعتها کار اجباری، اسرا سعی میکردند برای حفظ روحیه و پرتی حواس راجع به موضوعات مختلف صحبت کنند و از اونجایی که چاپسکی بسیار به مجموعه پروست علاقه داشته، تصمیم میگیره که راجع به این مجموعه صحبت کنه.
سالها بعد از آزادی، این صحبتها در قالب این جستار چاپ میشه.
از اونجایی که چاپسکی در اون صومعهی مخروبهای که زندانی بودند به هیچ کتابی دسترسی نداشته و تمام گفتههاش رو از اعماق حافظهش بیرون میکشیده، بعضی از گفتههاش دقیق نیست و ارجاعات اشتباه داره ولی توی مقدمه و پاورقیها صحیحشون ذکر شده.
اولا که قطعا باید قبلش مجموعه رو خونده باشین تا متوجه موضوع و ارجاعات بشین.
دوما که انتظار یه نقد و بررسی دقیق رو نداشته باشین چون همونطور که گفتم، حتی ارجاعات ممکنه دقیق نباشن ولی به واسطه آشنایی چاپسکی با دوستان پروست و مطالعاتی که داشته، نکات جالبی راجع به کرکترها، اتفاقات، ماجراهای پروست حین نوشتن و... میگه که برای من خوندنی بود.
چیزی که خیلی جالبه اینه که چقدر یه مجموعه و نویسنده میتونه روی مخاطبش تأثیر بذاره که حتی در اسارت هم بهش پناه میبره و با کاوش در حافظهش سعی میکنه بخشهایی از این اثر بزرگ رو به یاد بیاره تا بتونه همچنان ادامه بده و دوام بیاره.
آخر کتاب هم تصویرهای مرتبط با کتاب مثل دستنوشتههای پروست، تابلوی چشمانداز دلفت (آخرین تابلویی که برگوت تماشا میکنه) و عکس چاپسکی آورده شده و نامنامهی کاملی آورده شده.
با اینکه کوتاه بود ولی خوندنش خالی از لطف نبود. انگار با دوستم راجع به کتابی که مشترک خوندیم، حرف زدیم و بهم حس فن گرلی هم میداد =)))))
September 17, 2019
Memory as survival, memory to forget the hostile environment. A fascinating book, as compelling in it own mental way to any survival story. You think as your read it 'the author is barely surviving in a frozen work camp and he's thinking about a book of high end French life in the belle epoch'. Those men coming together for their solace in the world of ideas is very uplifting. Few books do this. Yet you have to imagine the entire scene. Its the bits left out that make it so fascinating.
I came to this book by a circuitous path. I had first heard about the murders of the Polish officers by the soviets and their burial in the Katyn forest through a friend whose father served in the German army. Every soldier knew the story of the Katyn forest apparently. Then, I read Field Grey by Philip Kerr, not realising it was set in the historical moment of its discovery. Then I read Proust, or most of Proust. Then I read an article about Czapski that mentioned this book, because once something is in your head it is very hard to get it out. As Swann discovers when he falls in love with Odette.
I came to this book by a circuitous path. I had first heard about the murders of the Polish officers by the soviets and their burial in the Katyn forest through a friend whose father served in the German army. Every soldier knew the story of the Katyn forest apparently. Then, I read Field Grey by Philip Kerr, not realising it was set in the historical moment of its discovery. Then I read Proust, or most of Proust. Then I read an article about Czapski that mentioned this book, because once something is in your head it is very hard to get it out. As Swann discovers when he falls in love with Odette.
December 2, 2022
از دو جهت کتاب برای من که بارها خواندم و روزها پیش دستم بود اهمیت علیحده داشت:اول اینکه ادبیات در ایران و در زبان فارسی خیلی که هنر کنیم باب ملاعبه است به قول مرحوم الهی و شاید جرأت خیره شدن به آثار داستانی را نداریم و دستگیرمان نیز نمیشوند اگر از معدودی مواجهههای بیمجامله با حافظ و شاهنامه بگذریم که کار مثلاً مسکوب است یا الهی یا سراغ متون مشروطه را و بعضی متفکران را از بعضی فصول معدود کارهای جواد طباطبایی میتوان گرفت. در این کتاب کوچک کمورق افسری لهستانی که از بد روزگار به جنگ و حبس افتاده می کوشد برای زندهماندن و زندهنگهداشتن دیگران خطو ربطهای رمان پروست را به یاد بیاورد که خود در اثر سه مکاشفهی پیدرپی از پیادهرو تا اتاق انتظار و بعد کتابخانه راویاش به بازیابی روزگار گذشته میشتابد و موفق میشود یا نه اینقدر هست که خیالش زندانیانی را از سرمای صحاری شوروری نجات دهد.
اهمیت دوم کتاب برای من این بود که از این قبیل چیزها شاید در سنت این صد ساله داشته باشیم. فرض بگیرید نامههای طالبوف به دوستانش در سالهای تلخی و نومیدی. هنر این است و فرهنگ این است که در فرانسه و در انگلیسی به دست ویراستار و مترجمی شاهکار این صفحات قلیل با پانویس و مقدمه و یادداشتها و تصاویر و نقشه و کتابپردازی و نسخهپردازی درست تبدیل میشود به سنگ بنایی برای خواندن و یاد گرفتن و در یاد ماندن.
در خیالم از بهترین چیزهاییست که در باب پروست خواندهام و دست مریزاد به مترجمش
اهمیت دوم کتاب برای من این بود که از این قبیل چیزها شاید در سنت این صد ساله داشته باشیم. فرض بگیرید نامههای طالبوف به دوستانش در سالهای تلخی و نومیدی. هنر این است و فرهنگ این است که در فرانسه و در انگلیسی به دست ویراستار و مترجمی شاهکار این صفحات قلیل با پانویس و مقدمه و یادداشتها و تصاویر و نقشه و کتابپردازی و نسخهپردازی درست تبدیل میشود به سنگ بنایی برای خواندن و یاد گرفتن و در یاد ماندن.
در خیالم از بهترین چیزهاییست که در باب پروست خواندهام و دست مریزاد به مترجمش
August 31, 2017
8 marzo
Conosco una persona che, in un periodo difficile della sua vita, imparò a memoria la Medea di Euripide (una delle sue tragedie preferite) per poter recitare a se stessa i versi nei momenti in cui la sofferenza sembrava sopraffarla. E so che queste sue private rappresentazioni le hanno regalato momenti di reale libertà dal dolore, e imprevedibili lampi di gioia. E poiché questa persona è una donna, oggi le dedico il mio piccolo commento a questo libro che è, oltre una piacevole e raffinata lettura proustiana, anche e soprattutto una testimonianza di come l’arte forse non salva la vita, ma la rende più sopportabile.
Conosco una persona che, in un periodo difficile della sua vita, imparò a memoria la Medea di Euripide (una delle sue tragedie preferite) per poter recitare a se stessa i versi nei momenti in cui la sofferenza sembrava sopraffarla. E so che queste sue private rappresentazioni le hanno regalato momenti di reale libertà dal dolore, e imprevedibili lampi di gioia. E poiché questa persona è una donna, oggi le dedico il mio piccolo commento a questo libro che è, oltre una piacevole e raffinata lettura proustiana, anche e soprattutto una testimonianza di come l’arte forse non salva la vita, ma la rende più sopportabile.
December 31, 2015
Proust contro la decadenza.
Eppure a me la "quinta scenica" è mancata, anche se purtroppo si tratta, si trattava, di gelida realtà, quella del realmente gelido refettorio del convento sconsacrato di Griazowietz, in Siberia, dove Czapski, tenuto prigioniero, si incontrava con gli altri detenuti polacchi.
Le lezioni su Proust che Czapski teneva agli altri ufficiali polacchi (lui e poche altre centinaia di ufficiali polacchi furono fra gli scampati al massacro di Katyn a fronte degli undicimila uccisi in massa da parte dell'Armata Rossa), prigionieri come lui nel gulag sovietico di Griazowietz fra il 1940 e il 1941, ufficiali insieme ai quali aveva deciso, per combattere l'abbrutimento morale e psicologico ai quali erano sottoposti, di intrattenersi parlando di arte e letteratura, sono per l'appunto "lezioni" trascritte da uno dei suoi compagni di prigionia, ma sono "solo" quello: bellissime, intense, culturalmente elevate, un approfondimento per chi ha letto e amato la Recherche, e uno stimolo per chi (come me, che ho letto solo i primi volumi) la Recherche l'ha soltanto sfiorata. Ma non c'è traccia (e a me sarebbe piaciuto trovarla) del campo di prigionia di Griazowietz, né contaminazione alcuna con la la realtà che gli stessi ufficiali stavano vivendo contemporaneamente a quelle lezioni, e quindi è bene sgombrare subito il campo da attese diverse da quello che queste ottantacinque pagine raccontano, per evitare delusioni e false aspettative: qui si parla di Proust, e della Recherche, non di Griazowietz, di Katyn, o dell'Armata Rossa: e non è poco, anzi.
È stupefacente, in ogni caso, pensare che tutto quello che Czapski scrive - in realtà è la trascrizione dei discorsi orali fatti da Czapski, quindi l'attenzione deve essere spostata necessariamente sul fatto che Czapski ricorda a memoria tutto ciò che racconta, e in quest'ottica vanno inseriti anche i possibili errori - non è frutto di una lezione prima pensata e poi scritta sulla base dei propri appunti o delle proprie conoscenze confutate mediante la consultazione dell'opera di Proust, ma solo della memoria dell'autore - i ricordi della memoria involontaria - memoria, oltretutto, sollecitata in condizioni di disagio fisico e psichico.
Czapski, letterato, poeta e pittore, si serve della Bellezza per sopravvivere, fino al punto di riuscire a trascendere la realtà, grazie al suo insegnamento, e diventare "indifferente alla morte" e a trovare un'àncora di salvezza alla quale restare aggrappato alla vita.
Se per i lettori della Recherche, questo esile librino, è solo una conferma e un modo per rivivere l'incanto provato durante la lettura dell'opera di Proust, per me, che ho letto queste pagine «come un troglodita abbacinato e attonito», è il rinnovato stimolo a riprenderne la lettura quanto prima, il mio proposito letterario per il 2016.
«La gioia di poter partecipare ad un'impresa intellettuale in grado di dimostrarci che eravamo ancora in grado di pensare e reagire a realtà dello spirito che non avevano niente in comune con la nostra condizione di allora trasfigurava ai nostri occhi quelle ore passate nel grande refettorio dell'ex convento, questa strana scuola clandestina dove rivivevamo un mondo che ci sembrava perduto per sempre. È incomprensibile perché proprio noi, quattrocento ufficiali e soldati, ci siamo salvati su quindicimila compagni scomparsi senza lasciare tracce, da qualche parte sotto il circolo polare artico ai confini della Siberia. Su questo lugubre sfondo, quelle ore trascorse a ricordare Proust e Delacroix mi sembrano le più felici»
«Non c'è niente di più facile che citare in maniera precisa, basta controllare nei libri. Ma è infinitamente più difficile assimilare una citazione a tal punto da farla propria e trasformarla dentro di sé.» - [Vasilij Rozanov]
[Adelphi l'ha appena ripubblicato con il titolo Proust a Grjazovec.]
Eppure a me la "quinta scenica" è mancata, anche se purtroppo si tratta, si trattava, di gelida realtà, quella del realmente gelido refettorio del convento sconsacrato di Griazowietz, in Siberia, dove Czapski, tenuto prigioniero, si incontrava con gli altri detenuti polacchi.
Le lezioni su Proust che Czapski teneva agli altri ufficiali polacchi (lui e poche altre centinaia di ufficiali polacchi furono fra gli scampati al massacro di Katyn a fronte degli undicimila uccisi in massa da parte dell'Armata Rossa), prigionieri come lui nel gulag sovietico di Griazowietz fra il 1940 e il 1941, ufficiali insieme ai quali aveva deciso, per combattere l'abbrutimento morale e psicologico ai quali erano sottoposti, di intrattenersi parlando di arte e letteratura, sono per l'appunto "lezioni" trascritte da uno dei suoi compagni di prigionia, ma sono "solo" quello: bellissime, intense, culturalmente elevate, un approfondimento per chi ha letto e amato la Recherche, e uno stimolo per chi (come me, che ho letto solo i primi volumi) la Recherche l'ha soltanto sfiorata. Ma non c'è traccia (e a me sarebbe piaciuto trovarla) del campo di prigionia di Griazowietz, né contaminazione alcuna con la la realtà che gli stessi ufficiali stavano vivendo contemporaneamente a quelle lezioni, e quindi è bene sgombrare subito il campo da attese diverse da quello che queste ottantacinque pagine raccontano, per evitare delusioni e false aspettative: qui si parla di Proust, e della Recherche, non di Griazowietz, di Katyn, o dell'Armata Rossa: e non è poco, anzi.
È stupefacente, in ogni caso, pensare che tutto quello che Czapski scrive - in realtà è la trascrizione dei discorsi orali fatti da Czapski, quindi l'attenzione deve essere spostata necessariamente sul fatto che Czapski ricorda a memoria tutto ciò che racconta, e in quest'ottica vanno inseriti anche i possibili errori - non è frutto di una lezione prima pensata e poi scritta sulla base dei propri appunti o delle proprie conoscenze confutate mediante la consultazione dell'opera di Proust, ma solo della memoria dell'autore - i ricordi della memoria involontaria - memoria, oltretutto, sollecitata in condizioni di disagio fisico e psichico.
Czapski, letterato, poeta e pittore, si serve della Bellezza per sopravvivere, fino al punto di riuscire a trascendere la realtà, grazie al suo insegnamento, e diventare "indifferente alla morte" e a trovare un'àncora di salvezza alla quale restare aggrappato alla vita.
Se per i lettori della Recherche, questo esile librino, è solo una conferma e un modo per rivivere l'incanto provato durante la lettura dell'opera di Proust, per me, che ho letto queste pagine «come un troglodita abbacinato e attonito», è il rinnovato stimolo a riprenderne la lettura quanto prima, il mio proposito letterario per il 2016.
«La gioia di poter partecipare ad un'impresa intellettuale in grado di dimostrarci che eravamo ancora in grado di pensare e reagire a realtà dello spirito che non avevano niente in comune con la nostra condizione di allora trasfigurava ai nostri occhi quelle ore passate nel grande refettorio dell'ex convento, questa strana scuola clandestina dove rivivevamo un mondo che ci sembrava perduto per sempre. È incomprensibile perché proprio noi, quattrocento ufficiali e soldati, ci siamo salvati su quindicimila compagni scomparsi senza lasciare tracce, da qualche parte sotto il circolo polare artico ai confini della Siberia. Su questo lugubre sfondo, quelle ore trascorse a ricordare Proust e Delacroix mi sembrano le più felici»
«Non c'è niente di più facile che citare in maniera precisa, basta controllare nei libri. Ma è infinitamente più difficile assimilare una citazione a tal punto da farla propria e trasformarla dentro di sé.» - [Vasilij Rozanov]
[Adelphi l'ha appena ripubblicato con il titolo Proust a Grjazovec.]
January 18, 2020
Iako sam naslov „Predavanje o Prustu u sovjetskom logoru” zvuči kao neka fora sa spiska „nepostojećih kurseva”, ona su se istinski održala u sovjetskom logoru Grajzovecu na početku Drugog svetskog rata. Predavač je bio logoraš Jozef Čapski, jedan od 395 poljskih oficira koji su, igrom slučaja, preživeli Katinjski masakr, kada su Sovjeti ubili više od 20 000 oficira i drugih pripadnika poljske vojske. U predgovoru se ističe da se četrdeset zarobljenika samorganizovalo da svako veče drže predavanja iz različitih oblasti. Jozef Čapski, po profesiji slikar i po poreklu plemić, održao je 6 kraćih predavanja o Prustovom sedmotomnom romanu o maminom sinu, cipelama vojvotkinje Germant i beskrajnim salonskim poselima, tu u sovjetskom logoru, na temperaturi od -45, ispod Lenjinovog porterta, u trenutku kada je domovina predavača i slušaoca bila razdeljena između Staljina i Hitlera.
Sagledan u kontekstu, ovaj esej jeste važno svedočanstvo o ljudskom dostojanstvu u nečovečnim uslovima. Takođe, veliki je primer šta znači kultura nakon apokalipse. Pošto Čapskom nisu bile dostupne knjige, niti literatura, sve detalje je vadio iz sopstvenog sećanja, te je ovo predavanje podrazumevalo da se priča kroz sećanje o romanu koji tematizuje sećanje. I baš kao što je Marsel u „Traganju...” zaboravljao i „grešio” u sopstvenom sećanju, tako je i Čapski grešio (ali ne mnogo) u sopstvenim sećanjima na Prustovo delo.
Da li esej vredi van konteksta tj. da li vredi samo kao tekst o Prustovom delu? Mislim da vredi. Doduše, onaj ko očekuje da će ovde naći epohalno i sistematsko predavanje o Prustu, neće ga naći – ovaj tekst je ipak pisan u vojnom zatvoru. Sa druge strane, esej ima dosta zanimljivih tumačenja, analiza, poređenja sa drugim piscima, niz tračeva o Prustu i vrlo interesatnih podataka o recepciji Prusta u Poljskoj, uključujući i priču o prvom poljskom prevodu „Traganja...” Tadeuša Zelenskog, što opet, ako sagledamo u kontekstu, dobija mračnu notu, jer Čapski, dok je držao predavanje, nije mogao da zna da su Zelenskom nacisti već prosvirali metkom mozak.
Sagledan u kontekstu, ovaj esej jeste važno svedočanstvo o ljudskom dostojanstvu u nečovečnim uslovima. Takođe, veliki je primer šta znači kultura nakon apokalipse. Pošto Čapskom nisu bile dostupne knjige, niti literatura, sve detalje je vadio iz sopstvenog sećanja, te je ovo predavanje podrazumevalo da se priča kroz sećanje o romanu koji tematizuje sećanje. I baš kao što je Marsel u „Traganju...” zaboravljao i „grešio” u sopstvenom sećanju, tako je i Čapski grešio (ali ne mnogo) u sopstvenim sećanjima na Prustovo delo.
Da li esej vredi van konteksta tj. da li vredi samo kao tekst o Prustovom delu? Mislim da vredi. Doduše, onaj ko očekuje da će ovde naći epohalno i sistematsko predavanje o Prustu, neće ga naći – ovaj tekst je ipak pisan u vojnom zatvoru. Sa druge strane, esej ima dosta zanimljivih tumačenja, analiza, poređenja sa drugim piscima, niz tračeva o Prustu i vrlo interesatnih podataka o recepciji Prusta u Poljskoj, uključujući i priču o prvom poljskom prevodu „Traganja...” Tadeuša Zelenskog, što opet, ako sagledamo u kontekstu, dobija mračnu notu, jer Čapski, dok je držao predavanje, nije mogao da zna da su Zelenskom nacisti već prosvirali metkom mozak.
April 26, 2024
این روزها خودم - کم و بیش - درگیر خواندن پروست هستم و در کنارش کنجکاو شدم که این کتاب را بخوانم.
کتاب ، کتاب دلچسب و شیرینی بود از این جهت که چاپسکی نه به مثابه یک منتقد خبره ادبی بلکه مثل یک خواننده ی شیفته ی پروست از پروست حرف می زند.
به نوعی میتوان گفت « جست و جو » بازتاب زندگی پروست در قالب رمان و بازسازی آن به عنوان یک اثر هنری است.
اتفاقا به نظر من چاپسکی دست روی این مسئله می گذارد و برداشت خود از رمان و لحظات مهمش را با جزئیات زندگی خود پروست همراه می کند و همین کتاب را دلچسب می کند.
پیشنهادم این است که ترجیحا قبل خواندن این کتاب یکی دو جلد از « جست و جو » را خوانده باشید تا این کتاب و توصیفاتش برایتان روشن تر باشد و بهتر بتوانید با چاپسکی همذات پنداری کنید.
کتاب ، کتاب دلچسب و شیرینی بود از این جهت که چاپسکی نه به مثابه یک منتقد خبره ادبی بلکه مثل یک خواننده ی شیفته ی پروست از پروست حرف می زند.
به نوعی میتوان گفت « جست و جو » بازتاب زندگی پروست در قالب رمان و بازسازی آن به عنوان یک اثر هنری است.
اتفاقا به نظر من چاپسکی دست روی این مسئله می گذارد و برداشت خود از رمان و لحظات مهمش را با جزئیات زندگی خود پروست همراه می کند و همین کتاب را دلچسب می کند.
پیشنهادم این است که ترجیحا قبل خواندن این کتاب یکی دو جلد از « جست و جو » را خوانده باشید تا این کتاب و توصیفاتش برایتان روشن تر باشد و بهتر بتوانید با چاپسکی همذات پنداری کنید.
December 4, 2022
Proof that literature can save your life. In the case of Józef Czapski and his fellow Polish prisoners of war, surviving a Russian prison camp was accomplished through a series of secretive lectures the prisoners would deliver to one another at night, after back-breaking labor. Some were experts in art and history and architecture. Czapski, an accomplished painter with a prodigious memory, was taken by Proust and delivered this series of lectures, which his fellow soldiers transcribed and pieced together after their two years of imprisonment.
From his moving introduction to this small, incredibly powerful volume:
From his moving introduction to this small, incredibly powerful volume:
“The joys of participating in an intellectual undertaking that gave us proof that we were still capable of thinking and reacting to matters of the mind—things then bearing no connection to our present reality—cast a rose-colored light on those hours spent in the former convent’s dining hall, that strangest of schoolrooms, where a world we had feared lost to us forever was revived.
“It was incomprehensible to us why we alone, four hundred officers and soldiers, were saved out of fifteen thousand comrades who disappeared without a trace somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, within the confines of Siberia. From those gloomy depths, the hours spent with memories of Proust, Delacroix, Degas seemed to me among the happiest of hours.”
Read
April 8, 2023Video review forthcoming along with Céleste Albaret's
Monsieur Proust
and Samuel Beckett's
Proust
.
January 5, 2023
برای جبران غارت جبران ناپذیر گذر عمر...
May 16, 2023
پروست علیه زوال پنجمین عنوان از مجموعه زندگینگارهها در نشر گمان است. کتاب در واقع متن پیاده شده سخنرانیهای یوزف چاپسکی، نقاش و نویسنده لهستانی، بین سالهای ۱۹۴۰ تا ۱۹۴۱ در دوران اسارت در گریازاوتس است.
چاپسکی در این سخنرانیها، تنها با اتکا به حافظهاش و برای گریز از فراموشی و رخوت روزهای اسارت، به نقاشی و ادبیات لهستان و فرانسه، به ویژه کتاب «در جستوجوی زمان از دست رفته» میپردازد.
او، خود و جمع اسرا را در شبهای سرد و سخت اردوگاه به سفری ذهنی در رمان پروست میبرد، آنها را با برداشتها و تجربه شخصیاش از مواجهه با جهان تودرتوی نویسنده آشنا میکند و روایتی ضمنی از «شیفتگی و ادبیات» میسازد.
ترجمه دقیق و روان مترجم، خانم شبنم نیکرفعت هم به جذابیت کتاب افزوده است.
چاپسکی در این سخنرانیها، تنها با اتکا به حافظهاش و برای گریز از فراموشی و رخوت روزهای اسارت، به نقاشی و ادبیات لهستان و فرانسه، به ویژه کتاب «در جستوجوی زمان از دست رفته» میپردازد.
او، خود و جمع اسرا را در شبهای سرد و سخت اردوگاه به سفری ذهنی در رمان پروست میبرد، آنها را با برداشتها و تجربه شخصیاش از مواجهه با جهان تودرتوی نویسنده آشنا میکند و روایتی ضمنی از «شیفتگی و ادبیات» میسازد.
ترجمه دقیق و روان مترجم، خانم شبنم نیکرفعت هم به جذابیت کتاب افزوده است.
November 6, 2022
بخشی از یادداشت منتشرشده در روزنامه اعتماد:
● تصور کنید که کریسمس سال ۱۹۴۰ به پایان رسیده و تهاجم شوروی به لهستان نیز صورت گرفته است. تعداد زیادی از مردم و مقامات نظامی لهستان در این گیرودار اسیر و کشته شدهاند که تعداد کشتهشدگان به مراتب بیشتر بوده است. در این میان جمعی از افسران لهستانی از مرگ گریخته و در شمال مسکو اسیر شدهاند. گزینه روی میز روسها برای این گروه، کار در اردوگاههای کار اجباری آن هم در سرمای منفی ۴۵ درجه است. در چنین شرایطی و در عین حال که هر یک از این افسران از زنده ماندن تا حد زیادی خوشحالند، فضای رخوتزده محل اسکانشان – یک صومعه ویران شده – و کار در سرمای استخوانسوز آن روزها، سبب شده که روند تدریجی زوال را با سرعت بیشتری طی کنند. در این میان، جمعی از این گروه ۴۰۰ نفره، تصمیم میگیرند برای فرار از فراموشی و رخوت، در ساعتهایی که از کار فراغت مییابند، در اتاقی جمع شوند و دربارهی موضوعاتی که با آن آشنا هستند صحبت کنند.
● یوزف چاپسکی نویسنده کتاب «پروست علیه زوال» یکی از افسران حاضر در جمع فوق است که به سبب بهرهمندیاش از ذوق هنری (نویسندگی و نقاشی) تحلیل و شرح رمان #در_جستجوی_زمان_از_دست_رفته اثر #مارسل_پروست را برای این گعدهها برمیگزیند. در حقیقت چاپسکی کاری انجام میدهد که خود نویسنده فرانسوی آن را به سوژه رمان طولانیاش تبدیل کرده بود: استفاده از کوچکترین نشانهها برای به یاد آوردن آنچه که مربوط به گذشته است. آنهایی که رمان را خواندهاند احتمالا صحنهای از آن را به خوبی در یاد دارند که در آن راوی کلوچه مادلن را در چای خیسانده تا بخورد و همین صحنه او را به صحنهای از دوران کودکیاش پرتاب میکند که در آن، هنگام صبح بخیر گفتن به عمهاش از همین کلوچهها جایزه میگرفت. این «تداعی» که به سفری در زمان شبیه است، اساس کار چاپسکی در تعریف کردن ماجراهای #پروست و کتابش نیز هست چرا که در اردوگاه گریازاوتس خبری از هیچیک از مجلدات رمان «در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته» نبوده و چاپسکی در ایراد سخنرانیهایش تنها به حافظه متکی بوده است.
● کمی بعد از ایراد هر سخنرانی، دو تن از حاضران میپذیرند که حرفهای چاپسکی را بازنویسی کنند و خود او نیز در این کار مشارکت میکند تا در نهایت کتاب حاضر متولد شود. کتاب در واقع متن پیاده شده سخنرانیهای چاپسکی در ۵ فصل است که باتوجه به وحدت موضوع در هر فصل میتوان حدس زد هر فصل، شامل یک سخنرانی چاپسکی است.
● تصور کنید که کریسمس سال ۱۹۴۰ به پایان رسیده و تهاجم شوروی به لهستان نیز صورت گرفته است. تعداد زیادی از مردم و مقامات نظامی لهستان در این گیرودار اسیر و کشته شدهاند که تعداد کشتهشدگان به مراتب بیشتر بوده است. در این میان جمعی از افسران لهستانی از مرگ گریخته و در شمال مسکو اسیر شدهاند. گزینه روی میز روسها برای این گروه، کار در اردوگاههای کار اجباری آن هم در سرمای منفی ۴۵ درجه است. در چنین شرایطی و در عین حال که هر یک از این افسران از زنده ماندن تا حد زیادی خوشحالند، فضای رخوتزده محل اسکانشان – یک صومعه ویران شده – و کار در سرمای استخوانسوز آن روزها، سبب شده که روند تدریجی زوال را با سرعت بیشتری طی کنند. در این میان، جمعی از این گروه ۴۰۰ نفره، تصمیم میگیرند برای فرار از فراموشی و رخوت، در ساعتهایی که از کار فراغت مییابند، در اتاقی جمع شوند و دربارهی موضوعاتی که با آن آشنا هستند صحبت کنند.
● یوزف چاپسکی نویسنده کتاب «پروست علیه زوال» یکی از افسران حاضر در جمع فوق است که به سبب بهرهمندیاش از ذوق هنری (نویسندگی و نقاشی) تحلیل و شرح رمان #در_جستجوی_زمان_از_دست_رفته اثر #مارسل_پروست را برای این گعدهها برمیگزیند. در حقیقت چاپسکی کاری انجام میدهد که خود نویسنده فرانسوی آن را به سوژه رمان طولانیاش تبدیل کرده بود: استفاده از کوچکترین نشانهها برای به یاد آوردن آنچه که مربوط به گذشته است. آنهایی که رمان را خواندهاند احتمالا صحنهای از آن را به خوبی در یاد دارند که در آن راوی کلوچه مادلن را در چای خیسانده تا بخورد و همین صحنه او را به صحنهای از دوران کودکیاش پرتاب میکند که در آن، هنگام صبح بخیر گفتن به عمهاش از همین کلوچهها جایزه میگرفت. این «تداعی» که به سفری در زمان شبیه است، اساس کار چاپسکی در تعریف کردن ماجراهای #پروست و کتابش نیز هست چرا که در اردوگاه گریازاوتس خبری از هیچیک از مجلدات رمان «در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته» نبوده و چاپسکی در ایراد سخنرانیهایش تنها به حافظه متکی بوده است.
● کمی بعد از ایراد هر سخنرانی، دو تن از حاضران میپذیرند که حرفهای چاپسکی را بازنویسی کنند و خود او نیز در این کار مشارکت میکند تا در نهایت کتاب حاضر متولد شود. کتاب در واقع متن پیاده شده سخنرانیهای چاپسکی در ۵ فصل است که باتوجه به وحدت موضوع در هر فصل میتوان حدس زد هر فصل، شامل یک سخنرانی چاپسکی است.
January 20, 2023
Polish artist and soldier Jozef Czapski brought Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu to life for an audience of prison inmates in a series of lectures.
Czapski gave these lectures entirely from memory.
He and the inmates were in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp.
They were the lucky ones as the Soviet authorities killed thousands of their fellow officers.
This is a remarkable book as it could almost be termed "A very, very short introduction" to a very, very long novel. The details are incredible as Czapski weaves elements from Proust's life into his lectures on the novel.
Proust's great meditation on memory allowed Czapski to remind his fellow officers that there was a world outside their prison camp and that there was a future in which to hope.
Czapski gave these lectures entirely from memory.
He and the inmates were in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp.
They were the lucky ones as the Soviet authorities killed thousands of their fellow officers.
This is a remarkable book as it could almost be termed "A very, very short introduction" to a very, very long novel. The details are incredible as Czapski weaves elements from Proust's life into his lectures on the novel.
Proust's great meditation on memory allowed Czapski to remind his fellow officers that there was a world outside their prison camp and that there was a future in which to hope.
May 29, 2024
کتاب خیلی کوتاهیه ولی دوست داشتنیه.
اگر دارین در جست و جوی زمان از دست رفته رو میخونید یا خوندید یا دنبال محرکی برای عشق بیشتر به پروست میگردید بخونیدش
اگر دارین در جست و جوی زمان از دست رفته رو میخونید یا خوندید یا دنبال محرکی برای عشق بیشتر به پروست میگردید بخونیدش
August 17, 2024
چاپسکی از روزهای اسارتش میگه. از روزهایی که خودش و بقیهٔ اسیرها هیچ امیدی به زندگی نداشتن ولی محفلی داشتن که هرکدوم دربارهٔ موضوعی که بهش علاقه داشتن، یا اطلاعاتی داشتن حرف میزدن. چاپسکی تصمیم میگیره از پروست و در جستوجوی زمان از دست رفته حرف بزنه. بخشهایی از رمان رو بهوضوح به خاطر داشته و با شور و هیجان برای بقیه تعریف میکرده و از علاقهاش به پروست و شباهتهایی که بین شخصیت پروست و آدمهای داستان پیدا کرده بوده حرف میزنه. این جستار پروست رو از نگاه چاپسکی تعریف میکنه و چیزی که جالبه اینه که توی اون شرایط چاپسکی چنین امیدوارانه از پروست و داستانش میگه و تعریف پروست از مرگ و عشق و حسرت رو وصل میکنه به زندگی خودشون در روزهای اسارت.
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