ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s Comments (group member since Dec 26, 2012)

ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s comments from the The Year of Reading Proust group.

"In my awareness of the approach of death, I resembled a dying soldier, and like him too, before I died, I had something to write. But my task was longer than his, my words had to reach more than a single person. My task was long. By day, the most I could hope for was to try to sleep. If I worked it would be only at night. But I should need many nights, a hundred perhaps, or even a thousand. And I should live in the anxiety of not knowing whether the master of my destiny might not prove less indulgent than the Sultan Shahriyar, whether in the morning, when I broke off my story, he would consent to a further reprieve and permit me to resume my narrative the following evening."(MKE 524)


It seems to me that Proust would want us to read the Arabian Nights, 1001 Nights, and that perhaps Marcel knew that they were originally only 101 Nights...
" but I should need a hundred perhaps, or even a thousand."

Manuscript of Mi'a layla wa layla -101 Nights
http://www.e-corpus.org/notices/10529...

Narrate Or Die
Why Scheherazade keeps on talking.
By A.S. BYATT

Marcel Proust saw himself as Scheherazade, in relation to both sex and death. At the end of the almost endless novel, "Remembrance of Things Past," he writes a triumphant meditation on the presence of death, which has in fact driven him to create his great and comprehensive book, the book of his life. At one point he even personifies this presence of death as "le sultan Sheriar," who might or might not put a dawn end to his nocturnal writing. Malcolm Bowie, in "Proust Among the Stars," comments that "the big book of death-defying stories" with which Proust's novel compares itself is not Boccaccio's "Decameron," in which death appears as a "horrifying initial trigger to tale-telling," but the "Nights," where stories are life. "Narrate or die," for Proust's narrator as for Scheherazade, is the imperative. "By mere sentences placed end on end, one's sentence is commuted for a while, and the end is postponed."

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/m...

Good night and good luck. Happy New Year to you all!

I know that I will have to revisit all the threads at some point next year to carefully reread and fully absorb your careful observations over the year. I know many a week was rushed, and I could barely get through a quick power browse. As such, I will be able to keep you all active in my memory of this most wonderful year. You will be missed. Cheers.

Jocelyne wrote: "I might as well post here the goofy video I posted instead of a review. "How Proust can improve your life"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxDy9X..."

Jocelyneeeeeeeeeeeee, that was absolutely incredible!!! So entertaining, so funny, and I'm impressed at your serious yoga poses! I loved it!!!! Thunderous applause! Brava!

Dear dear dear Kalliope, what a perfect way to end the year!Brilliant selections! We are going to miss all your visuals and everything that we have learned through YOU! I feel as if you have put on Proust's overrcoat, and we have been hanging on to your coattails for an entire year. It has been an incredible ride! Merci! Merci! Merci!






You are the best!

Brain function 'boosted for days after reading a novel'

Now imagine after that "fin"- what must be happening to your brains after reading ISOLT!!!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sci...

Actually funny note: when I had to go for a brain MRI last month, I kept thinking of ISOLT during the procedure in hopes that my brain would look nice and healthy!!! ;)

To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream....

"For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed."Swann's Way

Ce Ce wrote: "A gift of discovery to each of you for a most remarkable year "In Search of Lost Time"...

Peter Milton's etching & engraving, In Search of Lost Time...

http://www.petermilton.com/documents/......"

Thank you Ce Ce, and congrats on being a reader of Proust that has read all 7 volumes! Bittersweet, I know. What do we do with our Proust Habit and the addiction we've developed?

Getting the Proust habit: I used to be sceptical of the prolix proto-modernist's reputation for addictiveness. Now I'm gagging for my next fix.

In the space of those 600 pages, however, Proust brilliantly subverts Marcel's snobbishness - which pervaded the previous volume - by artfully switching the novel's perspective from that of Marcel as narrator (older, wiser, alive to the swarming absurdities of the Faubourg Saint-Germain scene) and Marcel as protagonist (a young man suspicious at the difference between his preconceptions and his actual experiences of the social elite, but unwilling to recognise its banalities). Proust wrote about this in a 1914 letter to Jacques Rivière: "I did not want to abstractly analyse this evolution of a thought, but rather recreate it, make the reader live it. I am therefore forced to paint errors, without feeling obliged to indicate that I think they are errors. Too bad if the reader believes that I think they are true."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: 1So, he wrote his own version of the Thousand-and-One-Nights.

101 Nights."

Yes, but for him it was 1001 Nights."

True. I think now you will start going through immediate severe withdrawal from Proust's sentences, but keep in mind that those readers who complete all 7 volumes, never stop reading Proust but will enter the loop that will have us perpetually reading Proust over our lifetime.

Kalliope wrote: 1So, he wrote his own version of the Thousand-and-One-Nights.

101 Nights.

Kalliope wrote: Perfect photo...

I agree. Nice to see your painting in the background.

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "



This is to say thank you to all of you for being part of my life for an entire year and for making 2013- the year of reading Proust a magical one for me. I've lear..."
Thank you Kalliope.

And thank you to Proustitute who invited me to join this group when by stroke of luck I replied to his tweet to another person and suggested that we read Proust as a new year's resolution for 2013. Thank you for creating a new group for us to read together in 2014. Merci.


Souvenirs de Marcel Proust.

This is to say thank you to all of you for being part of my life for an entire year and for making 2013- the year of reading Proust a magical one for me. I've learned so much from all of you, and have relished getting to know you one post at a time. I wish everyone a very happy new year!

I've been saving this to celebrate Kalliope's birthday which has not yet come up. Kalli, hun, I know you don't have a sweet tooth, so this le petit dejeuner is to thank you for moderating our group all year, and for putting so much time and effort into researching the music, art,literature and history in the novel that has enriched our reading in an immeasurable way. You made it a visual read! Venice will always remind me of you!



To Marcelita, for always being ready to share your valuable links.



For the gentlemen who have probably had it with me posting flowers all year:



Thank you Kalliope!

I will miss you all!
much love,
Reem

Phillida wrote: "I finished Time Regained in the midst of a devastating ice storm, to the sound of splitting trees and falling limbs. Everything outside is still encased in a half-inch sheath of ice. It's 7 degre..."

Oh dear Phillida, this sounds like Snowmageddon. Stay warm, and stay indoors. Light some candles. I'm glad that you have a generator! We'll see you in the DC and D read! Happy Holidays!

Jocelyne wrote: "While reading the second part of this last volume, I could not help thinking of "La complainte de Rutebeuf"

Que sont mes amis devenus
Que j'avais de si près tenus
Et tant aimés
Ils ont été trop cl..."

Thanks for sharing this Jocelyne.Interesting.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I have to say I have been haunted by Raoul Ruiz's film Le Temps retrouvé or Time Regained.

I want to watch it again. I did not realize, while I was watching it, how much it was i..."

Absolute eye-candy! Patrice Chereau is magnificent as the narrator! Where did they film this?

Christmas 2013 in Bethlehem (Beit Laham, Aramaic for House of Laham,
the Canaanitic God of Sustenance)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saQoSr...

Eugene wrote: "..."To think that I've wasted years of my life, that I've longed to die, that I've experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn't appeal to me, who wasn't even my type!" ML Vol. 1 p. 543

Swa..."




Diagraming sentences will always remind me of Eugene and TYORP:

Quotation of the Day: "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagraming sentences." Gertrude Stein, "Poetry and Grammar"

Eugene wrote: "Fin"

Bravo Eugene! Do check out the link posted in the group lounge that has the Raoul Ruiz movie- Time Regained.

Kalliope wrote: "I have to say I have been haunted by Raoul Ruiz's film Le Temps retrouvé or Time Regained.

I want to watch it again. I did not realize, while I was watching it, how much it was impressing me. It..."

I found it on you tube:
The trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGpcZJ...
The movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKtD_j...

Found this portion with English subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fyGX...
and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNogSY...

Needless to say there are spoilers if you haven't completed À la recherche du temps perdu.