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.

Oh, BTW & for the record my favourite quote from the whole of ISOLT (so far) is:

"Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it isn't you who want me to be unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you've never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would set off for the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.

I just love the idea of a sensitive child crying over having to leave some hawthorns! And the promise of the child to never forget them...brilliant! I can't imagine any child these days doing that.

I don't know Renato, with your reading powers the Bible shouldn't be a problem and it is definitely worth reading. I read it as literature. Here's a hint: you can skip bits; after all God wasn't as good a writer as Proust.

Good point Dave. In this section I'd started confusing the narrator of the text with Proust himself.

Renato wrote: "I didn't stress much about it though, I just took it as literary criticism - and one I didn't agree with. "

Good point, Renato. I suppose because Proust's idea that a memory of something or an intellectualisation of a feeling or action is somehow better than the original thing is particularly odd to me. I find the memory of something just a pale imitation of the direct experience.

BTW Did you take this quote as a dig at Joyce?:

Some even wanted the novel to be a sort of cinematographic stream of things. This was an absurd idea.

Renato wrote: "Yes, I agree with you, Jonathan. In this we can see how passionate Proust was about art and especially literature. But for sure it's not the only way.

I do like how he states that this art is insi..."

I'll really need to re-read this as I'm trying to find bits that I read or 'thought' I read but can't find them - and I only read it a few hours ago. But what I found annoying was that he seemed to be saying that it is 'only' artists and 'only through art' that people can truly be alive - I disagree. I'll try to find the relevant parts :-)

I disagree with Proust's wholesale rejection of realism however. There was so much that I disagreed with but the main thing that annoyed me was the fact that he's doing what other literary figures, critics and/or philosophers do, and have done repeatedly, and that is to try to make what they prefer into a rule that everyone else must or should follow.

For example after denouncing realism as a 'miserable list of lines and surfaces' he says that it 'cuts all communication between our present self and the past' and that it 'is this that any art worthy of the name must express' - but why? I can see that it is what Proust wants to express, and that this is one of the positive things about his work, but why must it be necessary for every piece of art?

Well, I finished this week's reading. Proust has glided from talking about involuntary memories to art and literature whilst he's waiting in the library.

I like this quote:

Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed light on it.

And he follows it with another one that is just as brilliant (emphasis mine):

It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon.

I added the emphasis because this confused me a little at first because I thought there are surely many ways other than art 'where we can escape from ourselves', e.g. religion, science, physical exercise, or any other demanding task. But both 'escaping from ourselves' and seeing from another's perspective? I don't really know whether art is the only way as I would have thought talking and empathising with others may achieve the same effect, but I'd agree that art (literature) does at least achieve that result, after all, that's one of the things that I like about it.

I wouldn't recommend reading B&T unless you've got a lot of time to spend on it. I did find a book by Stephen Mulhall (9780415100939) very useful though.

Good point MMR. I think Heidegger was influenced partly by Eastern philosophy.

Renato wrote: "This week's section has more amazing moments of involuntary memories and our narrator is finally understanding how he can find time again. I wish I had time today to re-read everything, but I can't..."

I started this week's reading from the start of the party section and before long he's riffing on involuntary memories, Lost Time etc. Which is brilliant. Likewise I feel that I should be re-reading everything but I'll soldier on and re-read later.

I agree that there's a lot of quoteable material here. Here's my favourite so far:

Yet a single sound, a single scent, already heard or breathed long ago, may once again, both in the present and the past, be real without being present, ideal without being abstract, as soon as the permanent and habitually hidden essence of things is liberated, and our true self, which may sometimes have seemed to be long dead, but never was entirely, is re-awoken and re-animated when it receives the heavenly food that is brought to it.

This section reminded me a bit of my attempts to read Heidegger's 'Being and Time' many years ago. I felt that Heidegger was saying something simple but profound in a complicated way that was difficult to grasp (so I gave up). Proust also seems concerned with the 'essence' of things and places, 'outside time'.

Congratulations on finishing Renato. I'll be there soon as I've found some time - I'm going to start from the party on and just read on through.

Ha! ha! I'll have to try that approach Marcelita. Maybe call him a French James Bond as well!

Congratulations on finishing ISOLT, Sunny. I'll be there in a few weeks time. :-)

Dave wrote: "Good word Jonathan, Proustosphere. Sunny finished the book so the champagne is flowing in the Final Week folder. I'll look, but I bet I can't find that Zola series published over here!"

If you're interested in Zola, Dave, you may like to look here, which is a bit of an intro I wrote for a blog that I've contributed to. It can be summarised by: read whichever novels take your fancy; the order doesn't matter too much; read modern translations where possible as Victorian ones were censored.

Ha! Ha! What a great thread! I agree with Sunny that the most common reaction is 'Who?'

I remember years ago when I'd be innocently reading Dostoyevsky or Kafka and people would think I was tackling some impossible task, or just being pretentious - I always thought both authors were very readable and were not difficult.

Now, Proust is a bit more difficult, but as we've hopefully proved, not impossible. I think that some people are put off reading difficult books because they're afraid they won't 'get it'. But then who will fully 'get it' when they read Proust, or Dostoyevsky, or Jane Austen, or Harry Potter....?

Anyway, to get back on track; I have had a couple of positive responses; a work colleague seems very interested in my progress and an old friend of mine has been supportive. But mostly it's just ?!!?!?

I've been off work this week and was out and about today and couldn't access these threads on my phone app so I could see there was a lot buzzing around on the Proustosphere but couldn't join in.

Anyway, I keep racking my brain trying to think when I first heard of Proust but can't think of any defining moment. I read a lot of books by Henry Miller in my early twenties and I first learned of a lot of writers from his writings but I don't recall him mentioning Proust much. I can remember seeing the shelves of my library with this row of yellow hardback copies of 'Remembrance of Things Past' together with the three-volume Penguin editions that looked very intimidating at 1,000+ pages each. But I never seriously considered reading ISOLT until last year; I'd finished Zola's twenty-novel cycle of Rougon-Macquart novels and wasn't really considering another big reading project when I 'sort-of' read Ulysses and then came across the 2013 group around August time and was a bit annoyed that I'd missed it. I was then seriously considering reading ISOLT when I saw that Alia had started this group - I must have spotted it just as it was created as I was one of the first to join; I was eager to get started and did contemplate setting off on my own, but I thought my reading would benefit from being in a group, which it has, so thanks for everyone that's been along for the ride.

Renato wrote: "Look at what I got today from a friend that came from the US as an early birthday gift:

Have I been talking too much about Proust perhaps?"

Very nice! You dropped enough hints then?

I'm quite interested in the 'nuts & bolts' of how he wrote ISOLT and how it evolved over the period that he was writing it. That's why I'm looking forward to reading the Carter bio next year. I'm not so interested in pure literary criticism or work that's too interpretive.

Are you aware of the two 'Proust's Additions' books by Alison Winton?

I think one of them is available from my library's county store so I may check it out. They may be a bit too technical though.

Dave wrote: "Oh, and I see the sanatorium as a useful narrative device to get out of covering the war years in too much detail."

I agree. It does feel like he's trying to skip over the war period; in which case why not end it before the war?

Dave wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "Dave wrote: "My Brothel comment is message 4. The previous three messages do not contain spoilers but message five does contain spoilers. "

Interesting comments Dave. I'm still no..."

Well, it's a decision he had to make and I can't say whether it was right or wrong. I think if I were in his position I would have ended the novel before the war but then I don't know if that would have upset some of his subsequent chronology.