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'll probably be a bit behind as well with Time Regained.

I've made a mental note to re-read chapters 2-4 as soon as possible. There was so much in them that I must have missed loads.

...or 'I feel the present calling me' :-)

You may have something there Marcelita. My old excuse for drinking was to say that it was the only thing that stopped me thinking and allowed me to feel. Now I may just say that 'I'm immersing myself in the present.'

Dave wrote: "Did they give any explanation of the difference Jonathan? Wish I had the Penguin edition for TR, the notes are sure to be interesting."

No, there's no mention in the Penguin book as to why this was done.

Curiously the Penguin edition of The Prisoner and the Fugitive ends with what is the first 9 pages of the MKE edition of Time Regained. This was a bit confusing when I was finishing up with The Fugitive as I thought the Penguin edition had some extra material.

But after the mix-up over the telegram is explained and right at the end of the 'Venice' section we get these quotes:

We guess as we read, we create; everything starts from an initial error; those that follow (and this applies not only to the reading of letters and telegrams, not only to all reading), extraordinary as they may appear to a person who has not begun at the same place, are all quite natural.

And the following quote follows straight on but I thought I'd separate them here:

A large part of what we believe to be true (and this applies even to our final conclusions) with an obstinacy equalled only by our good faith, springs from an original mistake in our premises.

Be warned fair reader! I wonder what our original mistakes were?

Dave wrote: ""Albertine was dead." I am not convinced that is true. I lost track of how many times that phrase, or one close to it, was repeated. Verbal irony? Now I did wonder if it was ironic in a psychologi..."

Albertine is dead! That is until he gets a telegram from her! I thought this bit was a bit far-fetched really. Are we really supposed to believe that mix-ups between translations will produce such a telegram? It seemed a bit pointless.

Dave wrote: "Proust seems to have no use for the social conventions of death (or marriage). Funerals are not discussed or attended (except a second hand account that grandmother's funeral was lightly attended)...."

Of course going to the funeral and seeing Albertine's corpse would have helped clarified whether she was really dead. Also, surely there must have been funeral details in newspapers for example. This just highlights, I believe, that the narrator masochistically enjoys the ambiguity and suffering.

Of course the first few pages of the 'Sojourn in Venice' section appears in this week's reading as well. This had me rushing to the 'Paintings in Proust' book (library copy) that has been little used for this volume up 'til now.

I liked the description of Mme de Villeparisis:

Despite the sad and tired air that the weight of passing years bestows, and despite a sort of red, leprous eczema covering her face, I had no difficulty in recognizing beneath her bonnet [...] the Marquise de Villeparisis.

Dave wrote: "My children may have that illusion but I'm spending my "fortune" as fast as I can. But I do want to leave my children something - my maxed out credit card bills!"

Is that because you're spending all your money on Proust books?

All these characters started coming out of the woodwork in this section. It was a surprise to learn of Albertine's potential marriage to Octave and then Andrée's actual marriage to him.

I was quite pleased with myself that when the narrator was describing Octave I wondered whether he was describing Jean Cocteau. Now I don't know that much about him but I knew he was heavily involved in the theatre and film and a novelist (Les Enfants Terrible being the only one I've read). The Penguin notes confirmed this. Though in a way the Octave character also has elements of Proust in him.

Renato wrote: "About Gilberte and her father (since by now he's been forgotten...)

"I recalled how, to this girl, Swann used to say at times as he hugged her and kissed her: "It is a comfort, my darling, to h..."

Yes I agree Renato. Swann, and even Odette are almost forgotten; Gilberte is the rising star with the money and now an aristocratic name. We may wonder though whether Swann and Odette showed any more consideration for the memory of their parents.

I liked the quote from this section:

The illusions of paternal love are perhaps no less poignant than those of the other kind: many daughters regard their fathers merely as the old men who leave their fortunes to them.

Or maybe Aimé is embellishing it or completely making it up...I'm just not sure!

I hope you're enjoying it Sunny? The second half of the book contains loads of revelations - so brace yourself!

By the end of ISOLT I'm expecting all the characters to be homosexual. :-)

In fact I did wonder when reading this whether ISOLT was in fact a sort of sexually inverted (sic) world to that twhich Proust felt he was living in, i.e. Proust was a homosexual living in a largely heterosexual world whereas the narrator appears to be just about the last remaining heterosexual in a homosexual world.

I also finished last night and didn't have time to post anything. I'm at work at the moment but should post some comments later. We can continue the discussion at the weekend I guess.

Just a general point: I ended up really liking The Fugitive. Although there's a lot of the narrator's cyclic thoughts it really speeds up from the end of ch1. I got the feeling that ch2-4 were written at an earlier period than the rest of the book.

Dave wrote: "As it is, he wallows in self misery and paranoia depending on acknowledged unreliable characters to bring him info. He doesn't really want to know...."

I agree that he doesn't really want to know. For me, one of the significant scenes was in The Captive when Albertine is asleep and he goes to rifle through the pockets in her kimono to look at the letters he suspects she has there - but he can't, so he pulls back. He doesn't want to know what she's up to. Maybe he'd be upset that there's nothing going on.

Even more sinister, is Albertine's dealings with Morel and the innocent girls, which seems less believable than her relationship with Andrée. Could that lend support to the idea that Andrée is just making it up?

When Marcel is trying to decide whether Andrée was telling the truth he says

...if what Andrée said was true, and at first I did not doubt it, the real Albertine that I now discovered...was not very different from the orgiastic girl that I had sensed when she had loomed up, walking along the promenade at Balbec...

The other source of Albertine's indiscretions was Aimé, but I suppose he's suspect as well, as he may have just made up what he felt Marcel wanted to hear....yes, I'm starting to have doubts about Albertine's tendencies more and more...It's just difficult to know who to believe...:-)

Dave wrote: "Andre meets him three times after Albertine's death. First time she flatly denies his accusations, second time she goes off on some tangent and doesn't answer the accusation (I believe, I have not found that page), this third time (here) she admits it graphicly...."

I think the second time is briefly mentioned as the 'semi-carnal relationship' six months after the first meeting. It gets blurred with the third time I think, but he follows the second visit directly with the sentence (emphasis mine) 'We were in my room for another reason again...' (which is the third visit) then he breaks off to comment on his mother's visit from Princess of Parma and then returns to the third visit from Andrée, when Charlus also visits.