Jonathan’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2013)

Jonathan’s comments from the Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 group.

I've just glanced through these comments but I notice you're already planning a re-read Dave. When will that be? Surely not straight away?

Congratulations on finishing ISOLT Dave. I hope you celebrated with a whiskey, as planned.

Thanks for all your comments here as they're always fascinating. As we creep along to the finishing line we look forward to having you with us.

I see we were spared Mme Saint-Euverte's party which was supposed to be the day after the Princess's party; though he hints at visits to 'other fairies and their dwellings'.

In this section the narrator states that his 'relatively frivolous existence' made people believe that he was fond of society, though he hints that it is not so. This is similar to his denial when Bergotte claimed that the narrator was an 'intellectual'. Is he really neither or is he just a contrary bugger?

Dave wrote: "25% into Sodom and Gomorrah I had a major "ah, ha" moment. The Guermantes have brought the narrator home from the Princesses party and notes the time is a quarter to twelve. The end of a long day t..."

Good points Dave. And so the narrator now manipulates Albertine to come and kiss him good night instead of his mother. The weird thing is that he notices this himself, this 'terrible need of a person' and the similarity with this need of Albertine now and his mother in the past.

The telephone call is illuminating because it shows just how much the narrator tries to manipulate Albertine to do what he wants and is exasperated when it looks like she won't do his bidding. He just can't understand her having a will of her own. Then we get this menacing passage:

In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled mass of details of fact and falsehood, I should never unravel the truth: and that it would always be so, unless I were to shut her up in prison (but prisoners escape) until the end.

But what is Albertine doing that's so underhand? She's just with friends, but, importantly I suppose, she's not doing as he wishes.

BTW I like the little exchanges between the narrator and Françoise. I get the feeling that she sees through him to a certain extent and is less willing to go along with him.

Thanks Marcelita. I'll have to check the video clips later.

Do you know why Proust removed this section from the finished book? We suspect it gives away too much too soon, but he does hint towards the relationship between Charlus & Princess G in the following sentence about the letter.

Wow! The end of ISOLT.

When are you planning on starting the Carter bio? We've made tentative plans to start it after we've finished ISOLT.

Dave wrote: "On reflection Jonathan, and after I wrote out my comments, I believe it reveals too much information in several respects. You and Renato will have to see how it affects your reading of S & G. But m..."

Thanks for the advice Dave. I've added a note to say that there are possible spoilers then people can make up their own minds. I think it belongs in this week's read as that is where the original material appeared.

Personally I'm not particularly worried about finding out future material as I've inadvertently discovered things along the way anyway and it hasn't spoiled things as far as I'm concerned. I don't seek it out but it doesn't worry me. But others may not want to read it at this point so the choice is theirs. Thanks.

Renato wrote: "LOL that was a great passage. I'm sorry to see it was left off - maybe it was because Proust had other plans to the Princesse instead of leaving her withdrawn of the society for years? Time will te..."

Dave has added a few comments on the S&G discussion which may help.

No I didn't type it out :-) I ended up getting images and then using an online OCR (image to text) and then tidied it up and converted to html - it didn't take too long...not as long as typing it all anyway.

I've got to dash - the World Cup final has started...

Dave wrote: "Great job Jonathan! Interesting, funny, and important. I am assuming there is no hard evidence as to why Proust left this out. Having read all of S & G I have some possible reasons to suggest. I wi..."

Unfortunately, I have no idea why it was left out Dave. I wonder if Marcelita knows? I can only think that it reveals too much of the relationship between Charlus & the Princess - this might be why in the sentence that replaced it Proust mentions a 'queen' rather than a 'princess'...possibly.

'Charlus', or 'lambkins' to his real friends.

Dave wrote: "Please do Jonathan, that story is alluded to in an important section in the last volume. "

Ok, check out the thread in the Supplementary Reading folder. Enjoy! :-)

N.B. THIS MATERIAL POTENTIALLY CONTAINS SPOILERS so if you're worried about things like that it may be best to avoid it. It is material that was in the manuscript but not in the published edition. The choice is yours.

If he used this expression, which applied less accurately to the life of M. de Charlus, who did not "go out for a meal at noon," than to that of omnibus employees and others, this was doubtless not from lack of intelligence but from contempt for local colour. In the tradition of the old masters, he treated the character of M. de Charlus as a Veronese or a Racine those of the husband at the marriage feast in Cana or Orestes, whom they depict as though this legendary Jew and this legendary Greek had belonged, the one to the luxury-loving patriciate of Venice, the other to the court of Louis XIV. M. de Charlus was content to overlook the inaccuracy, and replied: "No, it would be simpler if you would arrange it with Jupien. I'll speak to him about it. Good-night, it's been delightful," he added, unable to relinquish either his worldly courtesy or his aristocratic hauteur. Perhaps he was even more formally polite at such moments than he was in society; for when one steps outside one's habitual sphere, shyness renders one incapable of invention, and it is the memory of one's habits that one calls upon for practically everything; hence it is upon the actions whereby one hoped to emancipate oneself from one's habits that the latter are most forcibly brought to bear, almost in the manner of those toxic states which intensify when the toxin is withdrawn.

Jupien got out with the conductor.

"Well then, what did I tell you?"

"Ah, I wouldn't mind a few evenings like that! I quite like hearing someone chaffing away like that, steady like, a chap who doesn't get worked up. He isn't a priest?"

"No, not at all."

"He looks like a photographer I went to one time to get my picture taken. It's not him?"

"No, not him either."

"Come off it," said the conductor, who thought that Jupien was trying to deceive him and feared, since M. de Charlus had remained rather vague about future assignations, that he might "stand him up," "come off it, you can't tell me it isn't the photographer. I recognised him all right. He lives at 3, Rue de l'Echelle, and he's got a little black dog called Love, I think—so you see I know."

"You're talking rubbish," said Jupien. "I don't say there isn't a photographer who has a little black dog, but I do say he's not the man I introduced you to."

"All right, all right, you can say what you like, but I'm sticking to my own opinion."

"You can stick to it as long as you like for all I care. I'll call round tomorrow about the rendezvous."

Jupien returned to the cab, but the Baron, restive, had already got out of it.

"He's nice, most agreeable and well-mannered. But what's his hair like? He isn't bald, I hope? I didn't dare ask him to take his cap off. I was as nervous as a kitten."

"What a big baby you are!"

"Anyway we can discuss it, but the next time I should prefer to see him performing his professional functions. For instance I could take the corner seat beside him in his tram. And if it was possible by doubling the price, I should even like to see him do some rather cruel things—for example, pretend not to see the old ladies signalling to the tram and then having to go home on foot."

"You vicious thing! But that, dearie, would not be very easy, because there's also the driver, you see. He wants to be well thought of at work."

As I emerged from the cul-de-sac, I remembered the evening at the Princesse de Guermantes's (the evening which I interrupted in the middle of describing it with this anticipatory digression, but to which I shall return) when M. de Charlus denied being in love with the Comtesse Molé, and I thought to myself that if we could read the thoughts of the people we know we would often be astonished to find that the biggest space in them was occupied by something quite other than what we suspected. I walked round to M. de Charlus's house. He had not yet returned. I left the letter. It was learned next day that the Princesse de Guermantes had poisoned herself by mistaking one medicine for another, an accident after which she was for several months at death's door and withdrew from society for several years. It sometimes happened to me also after that evening, on taking a bus, to pay my fare to the conductor whom Jupien had "introduced" to M. de Charlus in the cab. He was a big man, with an ugly, pimpled face and a short-sightedness that made him now wear what Francoise called "specicles." I could never look at him without thinking of the perturbation followed by amazement which the Princesse de Guermantes would have shown if I had had her with me and had said to her: "Wait a minute, I'm going to show you the person for whose sake M. de Charlus resisted your three appeals on the evening you poisoned yourself, the person responsible for all your misfortunes. You'll see him in a moment, he isn't far from here." Doubtless the Princess's heart would have beaten wildly in anticipation. And her curiosity would perhaps have been mixed with a secret admiration for a person who had been so attractive as to make M. de Charlus, as a rule so kind to her, deaf to her entreaties. How often, in her grief mingled with hatred and, in spite of everything, a certain fellow-feeling, must she not have attributed the most noble features to that person, whether she believed it to be a man or a woman! And then, on seeing this creature, ugly, pimpled, vulgar, with red-rimmed, myopic eyes, what a shock! Doubtless the cause of our sorrows, embodied in a human form beloved of another, is sometimes comprehensible to us; the Trojan elders, seeing Helen pass by, said to one another:

One single glance from her eclipses all our griefs.

But the opposite is perhaps more common, because (just as, conversely, admirable and beautiful wives are always being abandoned by their husbands) it often happens that people who are ugly in the eyes of almost everyone excite inexplicable passions; for what Leonardo said of painting can equally well be said of love, that it is cosa mentale, something in the mind. Moreover one cannot even say that the reaction of the Trojan elders is more or less common than the other (stupefaction on seeing the person who has caused our sorrows): for one has only to let a little time go by and the case of the Trojan elders almost always merges with the other; in other words there is only one case. Had the Trojan elders never seen Helen, and had she been fated to grow old and ugly, if one had said to them one day: "You're about to see the famous Helen," it is probable that, confronted with a dumpy, red-faced, misshapen old woman, they would have been no less stupefied than the Princesse de Guermantes would have been at the sight of the bus conductor.

In place of this sentence the manuscript has a long passage which was not included in the original edition and which Proust here declares his explicit intention to return to later in the novel though he did not have time to do so:

People in society noticed the Princess's febrility, and her fear, though she was still very far from ageing, lest the state of nervous agitation in which she now lived might prevent her from keeping her young appearance. Indeed one evening, at a dinner party to which M. de Charlus was also invited and at which, for that reason, she arrived looking radiant but somehow strange, I realised that this strangeness arose from the fact that, thinking to improve her complexion and to look younger—and probably for the first time in her life—she was heavily made up. She exaggerated even further the eccentricity of dress which had always been a slight weakness of hers. She had only to hear M. de Charlus speak of a portrait to have its sitter's elaborate finery copied and to wear it herself. One day when, thus bedecked with an immense hat copied from a Gainsborough portrait (it would be better to think of a painter whose hats were really extraordinary), she was harping on the theme, which had now become a familiar one with her, of how sad it must be to grow old, and quoted in this connexion Mme Récamier's remark to the effect that she would know she was no longer beautiful when the little chimney-sweeps no longer turned to look at her in the street. "Don't worry, my dear little Marie," replied the Duchesse de Guermantes in a caressing voice, so that the affectionate gentleness of her tone should prevent her cousin from taking offence at the irony of the words, "you've only to go on wearing hats like the one you have on and you can be sure that they'll always turn round."

This love of hers for M. de Charlus which was beginning to be bruited abroad, combined with what was gradually becoming known about the latter's way of life, was almost as much of a help to the anti-Dreyfusards as the Princess's Germanic origin. When some wavering spirit pointed out in favour of Dreyfus's innocence the fact that a nationalist and anti-semitic Christian like the Prince de Guermantes had been converted to a belief in it, people would reply: "But didn't he marry a German?" "Yes, but . . ." "And isn't that German woman rather highly strung? Isn't she infatuated with a man who has bizarre tastes?" And in spite of the fact that the Prince's Dreyfusism had not been prompted by his wife and had no connexion with the Baron's sexual proclivities, the philosophical anti-Dreyfusard would conclude: "There, you see! The Prince de Guermantes may be Dreyfusist in the best of good faith; but foreign influence may have been brought to bear on him by occult means. That's the most dangerous way. But let me give you a piece of advice. Whenever you come across a Dreyfusard, just scratch a bit. Not far underneath you'll find the ghetto, foreign blood, inversion or Wagneromania." And cravenly the subject would be dropped, for it had to be admitted that the Princess was a passionate Wagnerian.

Whenever the Princess was expecting a visit from me, since she knew that I often saw M. de Charlus, she would evidently prepare in advance a certain number of questions which she then put to me adroitly enough for me not to detect what lay behind them and which must have been aimed at verifying whether such and such an assertion, such and such an excuse by M. de Charlus in connexion with a certain address or a certain evening, were true or not. Sometimes, throughout my entire visit, she would not ask me a single question, however insignificant it might have appeared, and would try to draw my attention to this. Then, having said good-bye to me, she would suddenly, on the doorstep, ask me five or six as though without premeditation. So it went on, until one evening she sent for me. I found her in a state of extraordinary agitation, scarcely able to hold back her tears. She asked if she could entrust me with a letter for M. de Charlus and begged me to deliver it to him at all costs. I hurried round to his house, where I found him in front of the mirror wiping a few specks of powder from his face. He perused the letter—the most desperate appeal, I later learned—and asked me to reply that it was physically impossible that evening, that he was ill. While he was talking to me, he plucked from a vase one after another a number of roses each of a different hue, tried them in his buttonhole, and looked in the mirror to see how they matched his complexion, without being able to decide on any of them. His valet came in to announce that the barber had arrived, and the Baron held out his hand to say good-bye to me. "But he's forgotten his curling tongs," said the valet. The Baron flew into a terrible rage; only the unsightly flush which threatened to ruin his complexion persuaded him to calm down a little, though he remained plunged in an even more bitter despair than before because not only would his hair be less wavy than it might have been but his face would be redder and his nose shiny with sweat. "He can go and get them," suggested the valet. "But I haven't the time," wailed the Baron in an ululation calculated to produce as terrifying an effect as the most violent rage while generating less heat in him who emitted it. "I haven't the time," he moaned. "I must leave in half an hour or I shall miss everything." "Would Monsieur le Baron like him to come in, then?" "I don't know, I can't do without a touch of the curling tongs. Tell him he's a brute, a scoundrel. Tell him . . ."

At this point I left and hurried back to the Princess. Her breast heaving with emotion, she scribbled another message and asked me to go round to him again: "I'm taking advantage of your friendship, but if you only knew why . . ." I returned to M. de Charlus. Just before reaching his house, I saw him join Jupien beside a parked cab. The headlights of a passing car lit up for a moment the peaked cap and the face of a bus conductor. Then I could see him no longer, for the cab had been halted in a dark corner near the entrance to a completely unlit cul-de-sac. I turned into this cul-de-sac so that M. de Charlus should not see me.

"Give me a second before I get in," M. de Charlus said to Jupien. "My moustache isn't ruffled?"

"No, you look superb."

"You're kidding me."

"Don't use such expressions, they don't suit you. They're all right for the fellow you're going to see."

"Ah, so he's a bit loutish! I'm not averse to that. But tell me, what sort of man is he, not too skinny?"

I realised from all this that if M. de Charlus was failing to go to the help of a glorious princess who was wild with grief, it was not for the sake of a rendezvous with someone he loved, or even desired, but of an arranged introduction to someone he had never met before.

"No, he isn't skinny; in fact he's rather plump and fleshy. Don't worry, he's just your type, you'll see, you'll be very pleased with him, my little lambkin," Jupien added, employing a form of address which seemed as personally inappropriate, as ritual, as when the Russians call a passer-by "little father."

He got into the cab with M. de Charlus, and I might have heard no more had not the Baron, in his agitation, omitted to shut the window and moreover begun, without realising, in order to appear at his ease, to speak in the shrill, reverberating tone of voice which he assumed when he was putting on a social performance.

"I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, and I really must apologise for keeping you waiting in this nasty cab," he said, in order to fill the vacuum in his anxious mind with words, and oblivious of the fact that the nasty cab must on the contrary seem perfectly nice to a bus conductor. "I hope you will give me the pleasure of spending an evening, a comfortable evening with me. Are you never free except in the evenings?"

"Only on Sundays."

"Ah! you're free on Sunday afternoons? Excellent. That makes everything much simpler. Do you like music? Do you ever go to concerts?"

"Yes, I often goes."

"Ah! very good indeed. You see how nicely we're getting on already? I really am delighted to know you. We might go to a Colonne concert. I often have the use of my cousin de Guermantes's box, or my cousin Philippe de Coburg's" (he did not dare say the King of Bulgaria for fear of seeming to be "showing off," but although the bus conductor had no idea what the Baron was talking about and had never heard of the Coburgs, this princely name seemed already too showy to M. de Charlus, who in order not to give the impression of over-rating what he was offering, modestly proceeded to disparage it). "Yes, my cousin Philippe de Coburg—you don't know him?" and at once, as a rich man might say to a third-class traveller: "One's so much more comfortable than in first-class," he went on: "All the more reason for envying you, really, because he's a bit of a fool, poor fellow. Or rather, it's not so much that he's a fool, but he's irritating—all the Coburgs are. But in any case I envy you: that open-air life must be so agreeable, seeing so many different people, and in a charming spot, surrounded by trees—for I believe my friend Jupien told me that the terminus of your line was at La Muette. I've often wanted to live out there. There's nowhere more beautiful in the whole of Paris. So it's agreed, then: we'll go to a Colonne concert. We can have the box closed. Not that I shouldn't be extremely flattered to be seen with you, but we'd be more peaceful …Society is so boring, isn't it? Of course I don't mean my cousin Guermantes who is charming and so beautiful."

Just as shy scholars who are afraid of being accused of pedantry abbreviate an erudite allusion and only succeed in appearing more long-winded by becoming totally obscure, so the Baron, in seeking to belittle the splendour of the names he cited, made his discourse completely unintelligible to the bus conductor. The latter, failing to understand its terms, tried to interpret it according to its tone, and as the tone was that of someone who is apologising, he was beginning to fear that he might not receive the sum that Jupien had led him to expect.

"When you go to concerts on Sunday, do you go to the Colonne ones too?"

"Pardon?"

"What concert-hall do you go to on Sundays?" the Baron repeated, slightly irritated.

"Sometimes to Concordia, sometimes to the Apéritif Concert, or to the Concert Mayol. But I prefer to stretch me legs a bit. It ain't much fun having to stay sitting down all day long."

"I don't like Mayol. He has an effeminate manner that I find horribly unpleasant. On the whole I detest all men of that type."

Since Mayol was popular, the conductor understood what the Baron said, but was even more puzzled as to why he had wanted to see him, since it could not be for something he hated.

"We might go to a museum together," the Baron went on. "Have you ever been to a museum?"

"I only know the Louvre and the Waxworks Museum."

I returned to the Princess, bringing back her letter. In her disappointment, she burst out at me angrily, but apologised at once.

"You're going to hate me," she said. "I hardly dare ask you to go back a third time."

I stopped the cab a little before the cul-de-sac, and turned into it. The carriage was still there. M. de Charlus was saying to Jupien: "Well, the most sensible thing is for you to get out first with him, and see him on his way, and then rejoin me here . . . All right, then, I hope to see you again. How shall we arrange it?"

"Well, you could send me a message when you go out for a meal at noon," said the conductor.

Er...so, I'm re-reading this week's section in the MKE (Vintage) version and I've reached the point where the narrator mentions the 'interesting story with the queen, the barber and the bus conductor' and there's a note directing me to the Addenda (the Penguin version just had a note saying that it wasn't included in the finished text) where the story, which was in Proust's manuscript, is included - it's about 8 pages long. I'll have to find an easy way of posting it.

Dave wrote: "How is the Penguin Edition annoying with multiple characters Jonathan?..."

I've posted some messages on the Translations page. In summary, the Penguin translations seem to follow Proust's punctuation regarding dialogue closely, but it's a total mess as far as I'm concerned. It looks like Montcrieff tidied it up and made sense of it which makes it more readable. But the Penguin kindle version for S&G not only had all this dialogue confusion but it had typos as well. Also, some of the sentences were just gibberish. The Penguin translations for vol.2&3 were pretty good but I've made a final decision: from hereon I'm reading the MKE version...sorted!

Dave wrote: "I've heard about that but never watched it. I love Monty Python and bet it will be even funnier having read Proust's novel."

None of the contestants get past the first volume so there are no spoilers :-) The link takes you to YouTube.

Dave wrote: "They humored me and my "everything you need to know about ISOLT in 5 minutes" presentation."

Was that like the Monty Python Summarise Proust Competition.?

I certainly feel that I gain a better understanding when re-reading. I don't always do it of course but I decided to switch back from the Penguin translation to the MKE version as the Penguin version was starting to annoy me; it was especially annoying during the party episodes where there were multiple characters.

Reading Proust with this group and with this schedule has encouraged me to slow down my reading. I find it counter-intuitive that reading a long book has slowed down my reading rather than speeding it up, but there we are...

I decided to re-read this week's section before continuing as I think I rushed the reading last week. Does anyone else do this? I find that the relatively relaxed schedule gives me the ability to do this if I wish.

re: Surgis bros. All I could think of was that for Charlus it was the novelty factor though I'm unsure why he would have been less interested if they had different mothers or fathers.

Everyone should read some de Sade at some point in their life. I read Juliette and did consider at one point in setting up a de Sade group but not sure if I want to immerse myself in his work to that extent. He's a fascinating person nonetheless.