Simon’s Comments (group member since Dec 27, 2014)

Simon’s comments from the One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 group.

i like this point, which sent me on quite a tangent here:

"so that, when you know how to read military history, that which for an average reader is a confusing report, for you makes for a coherence as rational as a painting for an art lover." (translated from german, couldn't find the english counterpart.)
german quote:
(view spoiler)[
"dass also, wenn du die Militärgeschichte zu lesen verstehst, das, was für den durchschnittlichen Leser ein verworrener Bericht ist, für dich einen ebenso rationalen Zusammenhang ergibt wie ein Gemälde für den Kunstfreund"

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 3: Der Weg nach Guermantes: Reclam Bibliothek (German Edition) (Kindle Locations 3405-3412). Reclam Verlag. Kindle Edition.
(hide spoiler)]

This point was illustrated over this rather long section, where Saint-Loup and the others from the military camp explained military history and what was so great about the great generals and their strategies to Marcel.

To me, this shows a great and inexhaustible source of beauty and interest in the world, logical and creative interconnections as well as performances in systems such as military history, literature or music. However dreary your topic, as soon as you learn about coherent systems, you can make beautiful connections or see the exhilariting greatness of a performance in context to what was before.
The sad thing is that for others, these connections are sometimes hard to see without knowledge of these systems, like a detail in a painting that correlates to another painting that a non-art afficionade like me probably wouldn't get, or an elegant mathematical transformation, or a japanese traditional theater performance.
And one of the most amazing performances i can think of, which you may dismiss even assuming you learned more about the system, is one in competitive electronic sport, a so-called beat-em up, the legendary (among gamers) Daigo Parry.
To support my point, i invite you to watch this without reading my explanation below first:
(volume warning!)
https://youtu.be/Lq1ey4-ewyQ?t=5s


Let me explain:
In this competitive game (Street Fighter III: Third Strike), you try to reduce your opponent's lifebar to zero while keeping up your own (top of the screen) by hitting him with various move combinations and predicting and blocking or dodging your opponent's, a dynamic system.
At 21 seconds, Daigo playing Ken has only a mere slip of lifebar left. Any hit to him would be fatal. He cannot even block a single hit, which would still do minor damage, and dodging is out of the question because of the close proximity.
However there is a parry mechanic in this game, which allows you to completely nullify an attack's damage, if you press the forward button (instead of backward for blocking) at the exact moment an attack hits, which is very hard to execute.
Now Daigo's opponent starts a special attack that does multiple hits in quick succession. Again, any hit would be fatal, his position is practically unwinnable. Then in a way noone ever saw before, Daigo parries each and every attack of his opponent, even jumps to parry the last attack in mid-air, to instantly strike back with his own combinatorial attack for the win. You can see in the audience reaction how mindblowing this performance was, and the intensity of it goes way beyond the usual electronic sports crowd reaction. Even with the video recording we fortunately have, this is a moment of legends in esports, and likely incomprehensible to people unfamiliar with competitive video games on first sight.

That was also news to me, never mentioned in How Proust can change your life!

Ah, and i love the psychological, sociological and artistic ideas, trying to soak up life experience, and am less interested in thinking about how the narrative works. Still, as i said, it's interesting to talk about it, and i've learned a lot about the narrative from you that i didn't think about, like the discrepancy between the interiority of the novel and the scarcity of Marcel's own dialogue.

BP, i got the age gap from the link you posted yourself! A characterization of the Duchesse de Guermantes.
https://books.google.fr/books?id=WID3...

of course Marcel also came close to falling in love with Odette, too, at least found this adoration for her, who is also far from his age.

Oh, yes, i made a mistake in thinking the Princess de Guermantes, not the Duchess, was the Madame that Marcel worshipped and tried to meet on her every stroll. Thanks for clearing that up, BP!
Now i wonder why Marcel worships, almost falls in love with the duchess, who must be far older than him (exactly (view spoiler)[30 (hide spoiler)] years actually), instead of close to his age like the Princess presumably. Or maybe not, i actually thought the duchess was the mother of the princess, not her cousin. Ahh, this family really is confusing. Then again, worshipping older women is probably not uncommon especially for artistic persons.

Something right at the beginning of this week's part:
We almost never hear what Marcel answers to the people talking to him, right? We've discussed this before, in some week's thread. We hear what they say, but not Marcel's reply. This is fascinating, as we often see later how sympathetic people find Marcel, he must be a good talker, but we can only induce from the people's reactions what Marcel might have said.
There's a very striking example of this here, when Marcel visits Saint-Loup on the military grounds. Saint-Loup talks a lot, but there is not a line written from Marcel. Here Saint-Loup includes Marcel's negative response ("Nein?" = "No?"):

Und die Arbeit? Haben Sie sich drangemacht? Nein? Na, Sie sind ja gut! Ich glaube, wenn ich Ihre Begabung hätte, dann würde ich von früh bis spät schreiben.

And a reference noone here might know: This is exactly how many video games work, especially action-adventures like the Zelda series, where the character you play never speaks a word, you only ever see what the other characters say to you.

Our reading ends:
"Since this call had come on the very day I had been wanting to telephone my grandmother, I had never for a moment doubted that it was she who was asking for me. it was pure coincidence that both the post-office and the hotel had been jointly mistaken" (~21.81%).

I only found this week's target mark after i had read past it as i am reading a german translation, but thankfully it's a rather significant sentence.

Marcel's family moving was quite a surprise to me. I read a sentence beginning "In the House, which we just moved into..." and said to myself "wait, they moved? is this the first time this is mentioned?". It seems like a refreshing change. Come to think of it, Marcel travels and changes his lodging quite often.
Then Francoise was mentioned as having become old, and i thought to myself, boy does time move quickly, even in ISOLT!

I found it striking how again Marcel finds a fascination simply in the image of a person, in Madame (Princess? Duchess! thanks BP) Guermantes, her looks, how he imagines she must be. He imagines a colorful, mystical, grand personality in someone he barely knows. He fell for this a-priori romantic idealization at least with Swann and Odette before, perhaps Berma and Bergotte too. And i'm sure i'm missing other examples.
There's a sentence that illustrates that well, something like "My dreaminess created a nymbus for everything pertaining to that person".

I guess you are fortunate that I won't bombard you with quotes for this volume, because i only have the german edition ;)

Our reading ends:
"It causes us pain that she is unaware of them, and we try to console ourselves with the thought that precisely because they are never visible she has perhaps added to her present opinion of us this possibility of undisclosed advantages" (~10.23%).

For volume 3 I'm switching from Penguin to the most recent german translation by Bernd-Jürgen Fischer, which is the first german translation using the newer 1988 french edition and the first original german translation since 1955.
I switched from the Penguin/Prendergast translations only because volume 3 and i think 5 are not available for Kindle. And not only because i travel a lot, i don't want to miss the advantages of a digital version, being aware of its disadvantages too. Well, i'm also curious to experience a Proust translation in a different language, my native tongue. I tried reading the beginning in french too, but after a few pages i gave up, then saw how much i missed when i started the german translation.
I like the first few dozen pages though, it feels similar to the Penguin translations, modern, keeping a lot of French expressions that are hard to translate, like "the Duc de ...".
I'm disappointed that there's not a translator's preface of much importance, only a very small translator's note in the appendix. It's as if the translator didn't have anything to say about translating over a million words of Proust. Well, maybe there's one big preface in volume one. But i enjoyed the Penguin translator's prefaces immensely with their in-depth translation musings.

Some good in-depth points again, Jacob, thanks! Makes you think quite analytically, interpretatively as you do. Personally I read Proust for the ideas and the flavor of the story, but i like going into interpretation with you from time to time.
I actually finished this volume way before the deadline and started with volume 3 immediately, but i didn't have the opportunity to collect and post my notes on this yet.

Wow, you put that excellently, Jacob! That could, with a different perspective, easily have been one of Proust's ponderings.
I didn't notice this theme that much while reading, but now it seems quite important, useful. I've only vaguely thought about this before, how we don't have access to those first impressions that habit now conceals, but it's a good idea to try to recreate them.

I was just about to create this thread, haha. We'll end volume 2 next week, quite the milestone! Looking forward to this very much.

Ah, vanity makes a whole lot of more sense there to me, though it's sexist. Thanks!

I liked this part so much, so many great passages, such cheeky interactions of our little womanizer-narrator!

But boy, is Albertine talky! I really wonder why Marcel is so attracted to her. It seems like she isn't the cleverest or more cultivated, either. At one point she talked for about a page about how other people dress, ending with "Mme Elstir for instance, there’s a woman who dresses well.’ (p. 462)

With this volume coming towards an end, I was starting to think that I like the first one much more, because it had many more great ideas, eloquently put. Seeing what I gathered to share here now though puts a question mark to that. Still, intuitively I feel like I liked the first volume more for these reasons. Maybe also because instead of painting there was a lot of musing on music, and i feel much more at home with that.

I also start to think Proust is getting overly repetitive on some of his pet ideas. There are at least three more passages on the idea that getting what you want can weaken that desire, which was already elaborated in the first volume:
(view spoiler)[

But the main reason for the shrinking of the pleasure to which I had been so looking forward was the knowledge that nothing could now prevent me from enjoying
(p. 435)

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Similarly here, including some foreshadowing of the narrator's future relationship, which i actually noticed i forgot when going over this again just now:
(view spoiler)[

within a matter of seconds, my belief that I was going to meet Albertine, then the annihilation of that belief, had made her almost insignificant to me, then infinitely precious; and some years later, the belief that she was faithful to me, followed by disbelief, would have analogous results.
(p. 435)

And here:

My mind saw this pleasure, now that it was assured, as being worth not very much.
(p. 448)

(hide spoiler)]

I really liked this passage on the necessity of experience and making mistakes to gain wisdom of life:
(view spoiler)[

there are young men, sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose tutors, since their earliest high-school years, have taught them every nobility of soul and excellent precept of morality. The lives of such men may contain nothing they would wish to abolish; they may be happy to endorse every word they have ever uttered. But they are the poor in spirit, the effete descendants of doctrinarians, whose only wisdoms are negative and sterile.
Wisdom cannot be inherited – one must discover it for oneself, but only after following a course which no one can follow in your stead; no one can spare you that experience, for wisdom is only a point of view on things. The lives of men you admire, attitudes you think are noble, haven’t been laid down by their fathers or their tutors – they were preceded by very different beginnings , and were influenced by whatever surrounded them, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. Each of them is the outcome of a struggle, each of them is a victory.
(p. 442)

(hide spoiler)]

Here is another repetition, this time of the idea that a person changes faster than you can understand them:
(view spoiler)[

while our vision of others is being adjusted, they, who are not made of mere brute matter, are also changing; we think we have managed to see them more clearly, but they shift; and when we believe we have them fully in focus, it is merely our older images of them which we have clarified, but which are themselves already out of date.
(p. 452)

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Here's something I don't understand, maybe someone can help? What is meant with 'feminine pleasure' and why would Albertine care more for this?
(view spoiler)[

would have given a lot to understand what it was that made this little sunshade different from other sunshades; and for different reasons, related to feminine pleasure in appearance, Albertine would have given even more.
(p. 477)

(hide spoiler)]


I have quite a few more brilliant passages I love, including an extremely sensual description of the visual and imaginative attractions girls offer for Marcel, but for now I'll spare you even more quotes. ;)

There's so much of the narrator's interest in and desire for girls in this part! I love to what extent Proust drives this, the youthful bliss of longing for girls. How often does he spot a girl or even a group of girls and can't stop thinking about them?

I was at one of those times of youth when the idle heart, unoccupied by love for a particular person, lies in wait for Beauty, seeking it everywhere,
(p. 368).

The transience of brief strangers who enter our life and force us out of the normality in which all the women we are used to will eventually reveal their blemishes, puts us into a state of readiness to pursue them, in which nothing inhibits the imagination.
(p. 376)

This also reminds me of Chekhov's short stories, especially Ionitch, The Lady with the Little Dog and The Black Monk, for whom this also seems a common theme.

And another aphorism I like, from the overall interesting evening where the slightly drunk narrator again looks out for girls:

drunkenness brings about, for the space of a few hours, subjective idealism, pure phenomenalism; all things become mere appearances
(p. 396)
[a few lines before]
The enterprise of getting to know them now seemed easy, but a matter of indifference, since nothing but my present sensation, because of the extraordinary power of it, the euphoria afforded by its slightest variations and even by the mere continuity of it, had any importance;

This statement about the bias a name gives, the prejudiced way we imagine that which it represents from what we associate with it, made me reconsider my aversion against titles of stories that are names, like Anna Karenina or Ionitch. Maybe those unique titles prevent bias.

The names of things always express a view of the mind, which is foreign to our genuine impressions of them, and which forces us to eliminate from them whatever does not correspond to that view.
(p. 415)

(highlighted 11 times on Kindle)

Now slightly before the end of this week's part it seems like a longer episode with Elstir the painter starts. I'm interested and looking forward to that, even though i'm not the biggest lover of paintings and my technical knowledge there is limited. He seems to be an interesting character too, though.

It would probably have been easier to start at the beginning of the year, but you can still post in the threads of where you currently are in reading, and me and others will be happy to discuss! Good luck on your Proust adventure, it's sometimes demanding, but worth it (=

Our reading ends at:
“Perhaps the unconscious well-being drawn from the summer’s day helped to swell, like a tributary, the joy I had taken in seeing Harbour at Carquethuit (~79.2%).

Good point, Miki, but the narrator is talking about specific periods of time, sometimes chronological sequences. For instance, when he is at Balbec with his grandmother in this part, or the first time he meets Mme Swann or Gilberte, it's a fact that he is a certain age, and often for a longer part of a book. Still, you have a point, he may jump chronologically in his reminiscences from time to time.

I don't know Teresa, i don't see how. Why would the term 'intellectuel' being coined in the Dreyfus affair around 1898 have anything to do with the narrator not being interested in intellectual pleasures? Because of the negative connotation? I don't think so, and the narrator went further than that, he said he'd prefer a simple life in nature to all intellectual pleasures, putting nature over reading and discussion, which doesn't seem to fit with what he does all the time.