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 love the comparison of the restaurant with an aquarium when lit up at night (p259 Penguin, est. p357 ML): the oiks and even the middle-classes with their noses pressed up against the windows gawping in at their 'betters'. The narrator even questions whether this will last, or whether those outside will break in! Socialism!?

Is Proust the 'fancier of human ichthyology' mentioned?

So now we get a whole new set of characters; the main one at this stage is Mme Villeparisis, but we are also introduced to a few other visiting provincials and their wives as well as the waiter, Aimé (I hope he appears more often as his story would be interesting I feel).

But I'm intrigued by the Frenchman who claims that he's a king of an island in the South Seas. Is he based on anyone in particular? We're only getting glimpses of him and his mistress at the moment so he's coming across as a bit of an eccentric. Of course, the others don't approve of him: 'Well, I never! The things you hear...The people one meets nowadays!'

Proust loves showing us characters in certain situations or from a limited viewpoint and then enlarging on them - this very often changes our whole perception of that person. This, I feel, is a very natural description of how we come to learn about people; we see a single aspect of a person and then find out more about them; so we get layer upon layer upon layer until we have a three-dimensional portrait of them; though it's never complete.

A great example is the narrator's grandmother, who has, until now, come across as a rather fierce woman who loves sending the narrator out in all weathers. We now get a more tender portrait of her in her relationship with the narrator. She still believes in long walks, fresh air etc., but she also sympathises with the narrator's ailments and genuinely loves him.

Mind you the relationship between the narrator and his grandmother, as with the relationship with his mother, seems more akin to that of a five year old rather than a sixteen year old but that's another thing.

Now the narrator is at Balbec he can get down to what he does best: describing and analysing a whole load of new (and old) characters and describing his ailments and phobias.

It kicks off with the furniture in this new, unknown hotel room conspiring against him:

it was crammed with things which did not know me, noting my existence only to the extent of letting me know they resented me for disturbing theirs.

He says it's the perfect place to be assassinated in or as a tourist attraction - but not to go to sleep. Ha! Ha! I really like this form of self-deprecating humour. I wonder if Proust was just as bad as this or whether he really is exaggerating his own foibles. When I finish ISOLT I intend to read a biography to find out just how much the narrator's life coincides with Proust's.

But not 'powerful lungs' presumably...

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Aside from the question of the translator, this week’s reading makes me think I’m reading too much into the details, as if I were looking for clues in a mystery...."

I think you're doing the right thing. This is my first time reading Proust so I'm going along as well, wondering about this and that as I proceed. What I like so far about Proust is that he teases a bit and then slowly reveals bits of information.

I'm not sure at what point you're up to at the moment so I'll try not to add any spoilers here...but as you asked...

1. Proust does drop the odd bombshell now and then and then move on. At other times he labours the point over some apparently insignificant detail. But yes, Swann has a new love. We don't see much of Swann in this section; he just pops up every now and then. I don't think he elaborates on Swann's new love in Part One.

2. I get the feeling that the narrator is obsessed with Odette; with her glamour and allure. And with Gilberte he appears, to me, to enjoy a kind of masochistic pleasure in feeling rejected. I just don't think he particularly loves her really, rather he is in love with 'being in love'. Read on...but you may disagree.

3. I'd forgotten about this bit. Bloch appears again in the following week's section which seems totally out of time with the rest of the narrative. He keeps appearing every now and then but remains shadowy at this stage.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "It's possible that what I'm reading was translated by Moncrieff. I purchased the entire seven volume book for only $3.99 through Barnes & Noble, but nowhere on that site or on the original Lulu.co..."

Doesn't it have a credit at the beginning of the book? I guess it must be the original Moncrieff though as it must be the oldest.

I've decided to switch to the Penguin translations as they seem more readable - I'll probably change my mind again though!

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "I'm reading the Lulu.com version, and found it interesting that 'bad breath' was translated entirely different. I have no idea why or how the two translations could be confused. "

Could yours be the original Moncrieff translation? Maybe bad breath was, at the time, an affliction that dare not speak its name.:-)

I've just found the original French from Project Gutenberg which is:

Il avait, ce qui peut suffire à constituer un ensemble rare et délicat, une barbe blonde et soyeuse, de jolis traits, une voix nasale, l'haleine forte et un oeil de verre.

Where 'l'haleine forte' is the relevant part. Google translates it as 'bad breath' when left in the context of the whole sentence. The Penguin translation also has 'bad breath' but curiously translates 'une voix nasale' as 'an adenoidal pronunciation' which seems a bit over the top. Surely 'nasal voice' would do?

Oh well, the perils of reading a translated work!

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "I sometimes find that it is an exercise in staying awake. The long 'Proustian' sentences tend to make my eyes cross and my head nod and the book fall out of my hands and the next thing I know it's..."

Ha! Ha! I have that problem generally though. I usually give up at that point. I find I have to read Proust at the weekend and preferably in the morning; ISOLT doesn't come across as an 'evening read' to me.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "I took a month break between SW and WaBG, and now I seem to have forgotten a character. I remember Swann and Odette (of course) and I remember Professor Cottard. But, I had to google Mme. Verduri..."

I'm also quite bad at remembering characters and plots but a quick prompt usually brings it back again.

Some editions have a synopsis at the back of the books which I've found useful in recapping what I've read previously. I've also found them useful in determining points to stop or pause my reading.

There is a Sparknotes summary available for Swann's Way.

There are some fun little scenes in this short section. Things like Françoise's dress-sense, the episode with the narrator's medicinal brandy before the trip, the sunrise from the train, the beautiful milk-girl dispensing drinks, his disappointment (yet again!) with the church at Balbec, their arrival at the Grand Hotel and the amusing little episode with the lift.

I prefer Proust when he concentrates more on the external world. Compare the beginning of Part Two with the end of Part One, which was getting very claustrophobic.

Does anyone else find it odd that the narrator gets into a panic about the thought of travelling when he must have travelled to Combray when he was younger? Maybe the effects of this constant pampering since then has made him even more afraid of the outside world - or am I being too harsh?

When I'm reading these passages I find I'm kinda siding with his grandmother. I imagine her scowling and grumbling as the conversation between the 'not so little' narrator and his mother, on departure, resembles that between a mother and a little child. I keep imagining the narrator in a 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' outfit. :-)

Marcelita wrote: "I think the "billowing silk" is key...."

Thanks for the picture Marcelita. It certainly helps with visualising these things.

I've only just started Part Two today even though it was in last week's schedule.

So, now the narrator embarks on his trip to Balbec. It's two years later and the narrator is possibly sixteen (?) now and he still hasn't got over Gilberte. Oh dear!

The first thing that confused me was why he sometimes capitalises the word 'Habit' and sometimes he doesn't. Does 'Habit' refer to a specific habit or collection of habits? See this quote from p255 (Vintage UK) or c. p302 ML:

In Paris I had grown more and more indifferent to Gilberte, thanks to Habit. The change of habit, that is to say the temporary cessation of Habit, completed Habit's work when I set out for Balbec.

Andree wrote: "Here is another one which you might like:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
The man standing in the doorway is Charles Haas, the very model for Swann. Isn't it exactly the way one imagines Swann at the time of his courtship of Odette? "

Very dapper! The problem is that I'd seen that picture and this photograph before I started reading ISOLT so I already had that image of Swann before I started reading. I'm not sure if that's good or bad...

Andree wrote: "However, without checking, I assume that since Proust was born in 1871, the narrator should be about 15 at the time of his acceptance into the Swann household and of his friendship with Gilberte, which would bring us to about 1886.
Here is another one:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/48033711..."

Haha! That second one is great. They almost look like Japanese warriors!

I can't remember where I read it now, or the precise reasoning behind it, but I think the consensus is that the narrator is about ten years younger than Proust.

Andree wrote: "You might have found it yourself already but the following is not a bad site:
http://www.fashion-era.com/mid-late_v......"

Thanks Andree, that looks useful. I did find some interesting pics by just randomly googling. I also found a couple of books that may be interesting: Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey & Paris Fashions of the 1890s: A Picture Sourcebook with 350 Designs, Including 24 in Full Color though I can't vouch for them.

I liked the quote of Mme Swann (p228 Vintage UK, c. p270 ML) where she says: "I don't play golf like so many of my friends. So I should have no excuse for going about in sweaters as they do." I was intrigued how a sweater would look with some of these fashions and I noticed that Marcelita included a link to this picture on the Proust 2013 reading group. It's dated as 1907 so a similar period.

So, after ignoring Gilberte for ages and trying to convince himself that he no longer loves her the narrator decides that he will, after all, go to see her...lucky Gilberte. He sells even more of his parents' possessions and off he trots...when shock! horror! he sees her with someone else...cue several pages of the narrator agonising over his decision, once again, to never see her again. I actually wanted to throttle him! Am I alone in feeling like this towards him?

Luciene wrote: "I discovered that my edition had whole sentences missing and that the language was also different, kind of "simplified". I was reading in French,and don't know if there are the same problems in English. There probably are. "

Well in English the main issue will probably be with the translation. Am I correct in thinking that the differences between the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright revisions were in part due to differences or improvements in the original French versions? Maybe the kindle version is based on an earlier French version and therefore has sentences missing. I believe that the most recent version is the Pleiades version. Can anyone confirm this?

I actually enjoy a lot of the narrative on the fashions of this period; probably more so than the art references. I think this is partly because from our vantage point nineteenth century fashions appear as a homogeneous block, whereas there must have been a significant difference between the fashions of, say the 1870s to the 1880s and so on. Likewise, there must have been a difference between Paris fashion and London fashion.

I've been googling such terms as 'Watteau housecoat' to try to determine what some of these items are, but can anyone recommend a good one-stop website that shows a lot of these fashion items?