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

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

Cheryl wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Since some of you have snuck in and already gotten started, I'm going to join you because I'm still giddy from reading Proust in this new section and just have to shar..."

I'm reading the Penguin Lydia Davis.
Let's see, starting with page 128 "Near the church, we met Legrandin... a face of ice."
Page 129: "It was like any attitude... often leave us with some doubts."
Page 130: "Monsieur, do you know the lady, ... the ladies of Guermantes....he could only attempt to mitigate it."

Enjoy the trip!

Since some of you have snuck in and already gotten started, I'm going to join you because I'm still giddy from reading Proust in this new section and just have to share my feelings with you.

@Cheryl, even though I am as yet still kindle-resistant, this is the section where I would have most needed a kindle to highlight passages because starting at page 128 -131(where I've stopped to take a break because I want to go back and read these pages again), I want to write down almost everything! Proust just gets better and better. I don't want to write down the passages I loved because I don't want to ruin it for the others, but my goodness each sentence is like a musical composition, that builds up in tempo, culminating in such bliss that you just want to applaud BRAVO! These pages are so pleasing to read, I feel such elated joy that makes me want to break out in song at the end of each sentence. I won't say more, but if you're like me, you'll love it!!!!Fabulous! Fabulous!

Proustitute wrote: "ReemK, you can join in with me reading it in both English and French. There's also some French readers here who are just posting on that thread."

Thank you P, but I'm afraid the last book I was able to read in French was Le Petit Prince and If I remember correctly even that was a struggle.

@Marcelita, thanks for the audio, I'll forward it to a friend who has a long commute. I'm a very visual, book in hand type of reader with my notebook on the side. Reading Proust has been troublesome in that I like to write down passages or wordings that appeal to me, but Prousts are always too long!

@Markku, how nice for us to have someone from Finland reading with us! I believe that the best way to read Proust is the way you would do it on your own, and all the discussions and threads here can be the icing on top to make your reading more pleasurable. Just enjoy the novel!

Proustitute wrote: "Marcelita, there is indeed an inimitable "voice" in the original French, one that sadly can't be conveyed in any translation."

It's true that we are at a real disadvantage in only reading the translations and not the original French.
I have to say however that as I was reading the following passage, I could so clearly hear Neville Jason's voice from the you tube video. I haven't heard any other audio except for this video, and I could hear " the same melodic flow" in the English translation.

"In fact the cures visits did not give my aunt as much pleasure as Francoise supposed, and the air of jubilation with which Francoise thought she must illuminate her face each time she had to announce him did not entirely correspond to the invalid's feelings" (105)

I could just hear the same flow in the words with the exact amount of pause between them, or I've entered a hallucinatory stage while reading Proust and I'm reading with that sound track in my head. Actually come to think of it, I think that is exactly what is happening to me! I'm reading like Neville Jason!hmmm

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Karen writes: "But first you have some excellent vice-presidents in Aloha and Kal. And my apologies to anyone else who's a moderator and I haven't mentioned, but you t..."

Thanks Kalliope! I thought this little backyard bird would make a perfect little tweety bird to tweet with when I joined Twitter six months ago, and went well with my quote, "The red- breast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." John Keats
I second what Cheryl said. I'm also grateful to have something to look forward to for an entire year.

Now, this may be a little far fetched but I'm going to throw it out there. Did anyone reading

" But now I found something shocking in this attitude of Swann's towards things. It appeared that he dared not have an opinion and was at his ease only when he could with meticulous accuracy offer some precise piece of information."(100)

think like I did that Charles Swann may exist in this story as the Narrator's alter ego or even polar opposite?

Karen writes: "But first you have some excellent vice-presidents in Aloha and Kal. And my apologies to anyone else who's a moderator and I haven't mentioned, but you too, you too.

And second, you (all the mods) have done what is probably much more important than contributing to the discussion yourselves (and that's not to denigrate those contributions). You have made everyone feel welcome with a warm word, and taken the time to reassure them that their comments are valuable, taken up questions and queries, in short, taken us all seriously. "

That is certainly true. We're lucky to have our moderators(Proust ambassadors) as well as very supportive members who always have encouraging and appreciative sentiments and assurances. It's as if no comment is shared in vain. This group is a class act. Feeling enlightened and exalted in your presence! :)

Totally off topic, but I just had to share this with you because I think it will tickle your funny bone.

http://ridiculouslyinteresting.com/20...

Cheryl wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "This reminded me of the Arabic storyteller or Hakawati. I found a youtube video of Abu Shady who is the last of his kind, telling a part of his nightly stories in the ..."

I couldn't ask for a more perfect response! Thank you for sharing your story with us. You must commit to being an active member of this group because it is a joy to read your comments.

I have a feeling that 2013: the year for reading Proust on Goodreads will serve as a place of refuge for us all. Cheers to all!

Cheryl wrote: "Somewhere there was mention of reading as collaborative - solitary reading as recent - I think perhaps stemming from oral traditions that are much older in the human race than written word...and the relatively recent ability of the masses to read."

This reminded me of the Arabic storyteller or Hakawati. I found a youtube video of Abu Shady who is the last of his kind, telling a part of his nightly stories in the vein of the 1001 Nights at the famous An-Nawfara Cafe in the Old City of Damascus, Syria. I thought you might be curious to see the video. An audio book if you will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw-wqi...

Proustitute wrote: "Aloha wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "I think the appeal of the reading in the garden section is that for readers like us, we tend to appreciate literature that is not of "doing" but is of " ..."

:)

Aloha wrote: "Reem, the quote on reading brings to mind the wonderful section on miniature in The Poetics of Space, which I highly recommend to put you in the mood for Proust.

"...with regard to these literary ..."

I'll look forward to this part in my reading.
I think the appeal of the reading in the garden section is that for readers like us, we tend to appreciate literature that is not of "doing" but is of " being".

And so this is why we read literature as if our lives depended on it:

"And once the novelist has put us in that state, in which, as in all purely internal states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, in which his book will disturb us at might a dream but a dream more lucid than those we have while sleeping and whose memory will last longer, then see how he provokes in us within one hour all possible happinesses and all possible unhappinesses just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which never be revealed to us because of the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them (thus our heart changes, in life, and it is the worst pain, but we know it is only through reading, through our imagination: in reality it changes, as certain natural phenomena occur, slowly enough so that, if we are able to observe successively each of its different states, in return we are spared the actual sensation of change)."

( makes opera-like ahhhhhh sound)

Nick wrote: "@ReemK10 - thank you for sharing the Solomon Shereshevsky article. Intriguing stuff."

My pleasure Nick. :)

Aloha wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Aloha wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "- total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a h..."

Yes Proustcratinator, ideation is too, although I wouldn't consider you a hoarder as you share your knowledge. I believe ideation and input rank quite high in every single member of this group.

@Cheryl thanks for providing the link to the full article.

Aloha wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "- total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence. The opposite is m..."

Love the Proustcratinator in you Aloha which has everything to do with another strength I've discovered in you- Strengthsfinder 2.0 input: "People who are especially talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more." Google it.

Kalliope wrote:
"I recommend it. It is a nice book to hold."

Sweet.

Toto wrote: "New to the group, but reading and following closely from Canada.

Previous posts about Proust and memory made me remember (!) an article in the Scientific American a while ago, which argued that re..."

I just read about the same article you mentioned that is I think quite interesting to take note of while reading Proust.

In today's encore selection -- total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence. The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book or lecture --because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding and for emotional health:

"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.

"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.

"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need -- and often struggle -- to forget. 'Human memory is pretty good,' says cognitive neuroscientist Benjamin J. Levy of Stanford University. 'The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind -- but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind.'

"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.

"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory -- and forgetting -- can shape your personality."

Author: Ingrid Wickelgren
Title: "Trying to Forget"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: January/February 2012
Pages: 33-38

Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote: "Eugene asked earlier on what words stood out to me: here's one particular phrase-

... characterized certain pretty, pious and unfeeling bourgeois ladies I saw at Mass, some of whom..."

Thanks for the background info Eugene. Honestly, I just liked the way it sounded regardless of the context behind it. I'd love to borrow the phrase one day to describe some people I don't particularly care for.

"Injustice is the only clearly identifiable male figure among the allegories: he wears a distinct facial hair, and sits in a masculine posture. His eyes are covered — the man is blind — a feature that becomes characteristic of all Giotto’s vices to one degree or another: Despair appears dead altogether (her eyes are closed or downcast); Anger directs her head straight up, with her eyes also closed; Idolatry seems to have been born completely blind; Inconstancy and Foolishness look away; and, finally, Envy’s vision is blocked by the symbolical snake.
Giotto understood that the eyes and the gaze can be expressive psychological tools: his virtues look straight ahead, conveying honesty and truth, while the vices usually “avoid” eye contact, implying falsehood and deceit. By presenting them — their anthropomorphic carriers — as literally lacking vision, Giotto renders the eyes an allegorical agent as well, one suggesting the spiritual blindness of his fallacious protagonists."

Great stuff!

Jeremy wrote: "I may have neglected to mention that my 2 years of high school french barely (if at all) qualifies me to read Good Night Moon never mind Proust! But it is still always mesmerizing to see it in anot..."

That's funny Jeremy.

(At the door of the house, who will come knocking?
An open door, we enter
A closed door, a den
The world pulse beats beyond my door.) Pierre Albert Birot

(When the peaks of our sky come together
My house will have a roof.)

we read a house, we read a room

Just got a copy of The Poetics of Space, and it looks like a book that will resonate with me. Thanks Aloha for pointing me in this direction.