Through Sunday, 24 Mar.: Within a Budding Grove

[Kalliope]

Associating Odette with Hypatie, the woman highly educated from Antiquity: ... ".. voyait, comme Hypatie, sous la lente marche de ses pieds, rouler les mondes".

There is this poem by Leconte de Lisle...

http://agora.qc.ca/thematiques/mort/d...

And with a more modern take of this female historical figure:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/?...

[Kalliope]

".. ce voyageur artiste et blond qui m'aurait emmené sur la route.. au pied de la cathédrale de Saint-Lô.

[Fionnuala]

Such a curious construction/reconstruction- I looked for an engraving or other record of what it looked like before the bombing but couldn't find any...

Is "ce voyageur artiste et blond qui m'aurait emmené sur la route" the train itself?

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "Such a curious construction/reconstruction- I looked for an engraving or other record of what it looked like before the bombing but couldn't find any...

Is "ce voyageur artiste et blond qui m'aura..."

A couple of pages later the grand mother says to the sad looking Narrator: ".. Est-ce cela, le voyageur ravi dont parle Ruskin?".

so, it made me wonder that he is thinking of Ruskin.

[Kalliope]

And now the Grand Hôtel at Cabourg (Balbec)

[Kalliope]

And I think my favorite passage of this week's reading is the description of the Narrator's trip in the elevator in the Grand-Hôtel with his "artisan de mon voyage, compagnon de ma captivité"

Beautiful and funny paragraph.

[Elizabeth]

Well, we're on our way to Balbec and have just arrived. The passage when the Narrator overrides his grandmother's aversion to alcohol for anyone (remember what his great-aunt would cry to her?), and gets, well, fairly plastered in the club car. It is one of those multi-layered narratives Proust is so good at; the Narrator seems unaware of the pain he is causing his grandmother, while Proust the writer makes it terribly clear. When the Narrator says that his grandmother would "steal a glance at me, then withdraw it, then look back again, like a person trying to make himself perform some exercise that hurts him in order to get into the habit," I get the feeling it is Proust, not the Narrator, telling us this. And notice: on the second leg of the train trip, after he has left his grandmother to spend the night with friends, he doesn't drink a drop. Is he no better than his great-aunt?

[Fionnuala]

Kalliope wrote: "...A couple of pages later the grand mother says to the sad looking Narrator: ".. Est-ce cela, le voyageur ravi dont parle Ruskin?".
so, it made me wonder that he is thinking of Ruskin.
."
Yes, the 'voyageur artiste et blond' might be a reference to Ruskin - my notes for the mother's words about Ruskin say that in 'La bible d'Amiens', translated by Proust (with the help of his mother?), there was often mention made of a " 'voyageur' et du bonheur que lui procurent les oeuvres d'art qu'il rencontre en chemin."

The mother's efforts to cheer him up before she said goodbye were very moving but her tone is more like the wheedling attitude parents use with very small children. Another blip in chronology that I must accept...

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "...A couple of pages later the grand mother says to the sad looking Narrator: ".. Est-ce cela, le voyageur ravi dont parle Ruskin?".
so, it made me wonder that he is thinking of Ru..."

Yes, the Balbec section starts saying that two years have passed since he has forgotten Gilberte, but this Narrator seems to me considerably younger than the one visiting Mme Swann, and the one "playing" with Gilberte.

But in the same page we are reminded of the unreliability of chronology:

"(notre vie étant si peu chronologique, interférant tant d'anachronismes dans la suite des jours)"

[Elizabeth]

Kalliope, I don't think it's a blip. Throughout the entire work, both the Narrator's mother and grandmother speak to him as if he's four years old or so. Baby talk, the whole nine yards.

[Fionnuala]

Elizabeth wrote: "Kalliope, I don't think it's a blip. Throughout the entire work, both the Narrator's mother and grandmother speak to him as if he's four years old or so. Baby talk, the whole nine yards."

Elizabeth, it was I who called it a blip, but I know it is just another occasion when my impulse to understand the chronology of every moment, (a mistaken one), has been frustrated.

[Kalliope]

Elizabeth wrote: "Kalliope, I don't think it's a blip. Throughout the entire work, both the Narrator's mother and grandmother speak to him as if he's four years old or so. Baby talk, the whole nine yards."

I do not see him aged four, but somewhat older. He is reading Mme Sevigné's letters and is going on his own to the wagon-bar to ask for drinks with alcohol.

[Fionnuala]

Kalliope wrote: "...But in the same page we are reminded of the unreliability of chronology:
"(notre vie étant si peu chronologique, interférant tant d'anachronismes dans la suite des jours)""

This is such a complex idea. Is he saying that in our thoughts, we may not be moving forward in time or even being in the present, but in the past even while the present is happening and the future is being prepared...?

[Kalliope]

Yes, that is more or less how I interpret it. The sentenced is in brakets, interrupting his train of thought.

[Elizabeth]

No, of course he's not four--as if he's four; I put him at about sixteen or seventeen. Remember, Norpois described Gilberte as "a young person of about fourteen," and we know she and Marcel are the same age. He says that two years have passed...
Parenthetically, reading Proust got me into reading Mme. de Sevigné, who is magnificent...
And this for all the French speakers in our bunch: try googling Henri the cat. 3 hilarious short videos of a cat who speaks French with a beautiful accent (albeit slightly ungrammatically), and suffers from existential ennui. Nothing to do with Proust; but funny.

[Richard]

Elizabeth wrote: "Well, we're on our way to Balbec and have just arrived. The passage when the Narrator overrides his grandmother's aversion to alcohol for anyone (remember what his great-aunt would cry to her?), an..."

Thank you for that note - it went completely over my head the first time I read those paragraphs somehow.

[Patricia]

Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote "I said also: "I shall probably never see you again," and said it while continuing to avoid showing a coldness which she might think feigned, and the words, as I wrote them, ..."
You were sweet,you are sweet

[Patricia]

Jonathan wrote: "This question doesn't relate to this section I'm aware, but if I ask it in a more general thread, I may face spoilers from later in the novel: At the point we are at, has it been revealed in any wa..."

i have almost finished the whole volII and still he hasn´t said a word about his jewishness(sp)

[Patricia]

Fionnuala wrote: "I have just finished Autour de Mme Swann and I'm struck by how it mirrors the end of the Nom de Pays section: Odette out walking, spreading the perfume of her violets, the heady atmosphere of her s..."

she´s a Master

[Patricia]

Kalliope wrote: "On Odette's clothes, my sense is that Poiret's designs are of somewhat more modern design, and that the posts the Marcelita put in last week's thread on Redfern and Rauthnitz (mentioned in the book..."

Would you like know how I sell in my bazaar where there is only chinaware ? I say ,"Tu mesa te define", (you are defined by your tableware"(sort of my trans.)and this sentence I have registered as our logo :)

[Patricia]

Marcelita wrote: "J.A. wrote: "Jaye wrote: Lots of people look down on fashion but in its historical context it can say so much about a period or a person.

This is especially true for women during the fin de siec..."

WONDERFUL SHOW! thank you I don´t feel so cut out from civilization anymore since i started in this forum!

[Patricia]

Fionnuala wrote: "Jocelyne wrote: "Now I feel like reading Le Lys too. The comments on fashion by the author or the narrator could apply to today's fashion or lack thereof too. I wonder what he would say about what ..."

great idea.let´s debate.

[Patricia]

BTW GLORIA STEINMAN STILL ALIVE AND KICKING SE BOSTON GLOBE

[Patricia]

Marcelita wrote: "I always thought of Odette as an artist, within the Parisian world of the demimonde ...a 'performance artist' if you will.

Poiret was definitely theatrical in designing for both extremes in societ..."

What is a *great horizontal*? the Poiret dress with the wide horizontal lines or a metaphor for women who belive in free enterprise?

[Kalliope]

Patricia wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "I always thought of Odette as an artist, within the Parisian world of the demimonde ...a 'performance artist' if you will.

Poiret was definitely theatrical in designing for both ..."

Grande horizontale meant high class prostitute.

[Elizabeth]

Fashion debate: several years ago I had to wait for over six hours in our local airport. A thunderstorm had settled over the area and would not leave, and no planes could land. Finally, about one am, six or seven or eight landed all at once. I sat there, waiting for my foster daughter, as hundreds and hundreds of people came up the concourse. I began to look for people who were pleasingly dressed. Not "dressed up" or anything; I was just looking for: pleasing colors, good fit, etc. Out of all those hundreds I saw: two. I mean, it was one am, my standards were not high, but...really.

[Patricia]

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "...But in the same page we are reminded of the unreliability of chronology:
"(notre vie étant si peu chronologique, interférant tant d'anachronismes dans la suite des jours)""

Thi..."

see Bergson´s concept of duree and in this liknk place Proust where you read Joyce and you have it

http://books.google.com.ar/books?id=m...

[Patricia]

Kalliope wrote: "Patricia wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "I always thought of Odette as an artist, within the Parisian world of the demimonde ...a 'performance artist' if you will.

Poiret was definitely theatrical in de..." great1 I´m translating that into spanish and using it from now on,i know several.

[Marcelita]

Elizabeth wrote: "Fashion debate: several years ago I had to wait for over six hours in our local airport. A thunderstorm had settled over the area and would not leave, and no planes could land. Finally, about one..."

Agree. I flew to Texas several weeks ago and saw...pajama bottoms!
When I returned home, I needed to spend an afternoon in Bergdorf's to recover.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Marcelita wrote:
"Agree. I flew to Texas several weeks ago and saw...pajama bottoms!
When I returned home, I needed to spend an afternoon in Bergdorf's to recover. "

LOL. That is just priceless!

[Eugene]

Marcel Proust wrote: "My journey to Balbec was like the first outing of a convalescent who needed only that to convince him that he was cured." ML p. 299

Again. Let me count the next 10 instances...

[Eugene]

Marcel Proust wrote: "It was enough to fill me with longing for
country scenes that, overhanging the loose snowdrifts of the muff in
which Mme. Swann kept her hands, the guelder-rose snow-balls (which
served very possibly in the mind of my hostess no other purpose than
to compose, on the advice of Bergotte, a 'Symphony in White' with her
furniture and her garments) reminded me that what the Good Friday
music in Parsifal symbolized was a natural miracle which one could see
performed every year, if one had the sense to look for it, and,
assisted by the acid and heady perfume of the other kinds of blossom,
which, although their names were unknown to me, had brought me so
often to a standstill to gaze at them on my walks round Combray, made
Mme. Swann's drawing-room as virginal, as candidly 'in bloom,' without
the least vestige of greenery, as overladen with genuine scents of
flowers as was the little lane by Tansonville." Moncrieff

This sentence takes the Narrator and the reader from a 19th century drawing room in Paris to a lane in Tansonvile with the scents of flowers--it is an, perhaps a minor, example of involuntary memory. It echos and continues what is now called a 'Symphony in White', the ermine, etc. and the guelder-rose snow-balls which have been previously likened to trees in Pre-Raphaelite painting and you think of Ruskin then Millais and Effie Gray--Good Friday is mentioned and the music of Wagner is directly alluded to. And "as virginal, as candidly 'in bloom'" leads to almost as many interpretations as there are readers of that fragment. I'm sure there is more.

This sentence does a lot of work.

[Kalliope]

Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote: "It was enough to fill me with longing for
country scenes that, overhanging the loose snowdrifts of the muff in
which Mme. Swann kept her hands, the guelder-rose snow-balls (wh..."

Yes, this is one of my favorite passages, as I pointed out in post #51, and the other one is the elevator scene.

Just a comment, the Symphony in White is in the original Frech in White Major (Symphonie en blanc majeur).

There is a poem by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) called Symphonie en blanc majeur.

Montcrieff by leaving out the "Major" in his translation, makes it hard to identify the literary reference.


http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclas...

[Jocelyne]

I too had underlined this beautiful passage. And merci, Kalliope, for drawing my attention to the beautiful Gautier poem.

[Jocelyne]

I enjoyed reading that several of you, too, wondered about the age of the narrator when he arrives in Balbec;emotinally he sounds 4, intellectually 300 years old.

[Jocelyne]

Elizabeth wrote: "No, of course he's not four--as if he's four; I put him at about sixteen or seventeen. Remember, Norpois described Gilberte as "a young person of about fourteen," and we know she and Marcel are th..."

Those videos are hilarious! But thank God, for the subtibles. The French is practically incomprehensible. Also, the logo at the beginning reminds me of the "Café chat noir", which had the same logo on the packaging.

[Kalliope]

Jocelyne wrote: "I enjoyed reading that several of you, too, wondered about the age of the narrator when he arrives in Balbec;emotinally he sounds 4, intellectually 300 years old."

Well, the Narrator talks of being an adult (I will look for this section later on), but is telling us of a period that took place two years after he gave up on Gilberte, so we can calculate something like 16-18 as Elizabeth indicated.

The impression I get is not 4, but something like 12-14, and this is not based on the relationship with mother and grandmother, but the way he reacts to the old employee in the train (likes his appearance and would like if he sat there with them for a while), or later on, when he refers to himself as "un pauvre garçon.... qui ne quittait la salle à manger... que pour aller s'asseoir sur le sable". It cannot be too young either because of what he is reading and his quite knowledgeable interest in Gothic architecture.

A very fluid conception of time...!!

[Fionnuala]

Eugene wrote: "...Proust uses the sickness simile frequently; I'd estimate that I've read variations of it 20 or 30 times in this volume and the last. I wonder if anybody has ideas about his usage of it.
"

Not about the sickness simile itself but the effects of sickness, Eugene.
In the Combray section, I was very struck by the hallucinatory nature of the descriptions, eg, the dreamlike quality of the play of light in the interior of the church or the liquid aspects of the stone of the graves or the anthropomorphic quality of the bell tower. Those passages made me wonder if as a child Proust didn't spend long periods of time suffering with high temperatures which would explain the delirious lavishness of detail his narrator is able to recall and the extremely heightened sensibility he shows towards both people and objects.


Kalliope, that Gautier poem is so apt to describe Odette, and the boules de neige:

Son sein, neige moulée en globe,

Contre les camélias blancs

And yes, we may as well face up to the fluidity of time in A la Recherche...

[Jocelyne]

Kalliope wrote: "Jocelyne wrote: "I enjoyed reading that several of you, too, wondered about the age of the narrator when he arrives in Balbec;emotinally he sounds 4, intellectually 300 years old."

Well, the Narra..."

I guessed he must be 14-16, because he was an adolescent when he had his crush on G. That lasted a year, and now it is two years later. But who knows?

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "Eugene wrote: "...Proust uses the sickness simile frequently; I'd estimate that I've read variations of it 20 or 30 times in this volume and the last. I wonder if anybody has ideas about his usage ..."

Yes, that whole passage can be read now differently taking into account the hidden reference to this poem and you are right that it fits Odette perfectly. Théophile Gautier was one of Proust's favorite writers during his youth.

[J.A.]

Jocelyne wrote: I enjoyed reading that several of you, too, wondered about the age of the narrator when he arrives in Balbec;emotinally he sounds 4, intellectually 300 years old.

Could say that about quite a few people... ;)

[Jocelyne]

Indeed, this was one of my most amazing discoveries when I worked as I therapist: to see extremely bright, accomplished people, emotionally stuck at the toddler's stage.

[J.A.]

We don't teach maturity very well. Look at the total mess the world is in right now. Bright people, lousy handling of emotions.

[Marcelita]

J.A. wrote: "We don't teach maturity very well. Look at the total mess the world is in right now. Bright people, lousy handling of emotions."

To oversimplify....I think John Lennon said it best, "All you need is love."

Hurt feelings/disrespect is reflected in fight (turned outward-anger/revenge/murder) or flight (turned inward-tears/depression/suicide).
I think that is why we see "immature" reactions in gifted, intellectual souls. I peel back conflicts and tend to find a lack (or perceived lack) of respect/love as the seed.

They also blur the actions of politicians and nations, which lead to tragic ends.

Now, thinking of the various salons in the novel and what motivates the guests.....

[Marcelita]

Whistler's three Symphony in White paintings:

Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862
http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?o...

Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl 1864
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/w...

Symphony in White, No. 3 1865-6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony...

[Eugene]

The Narrator's Mamma says: "Well, and what would Balbec church say if it knew that people pulled long faces like that when they were going to see it? Surely this is not the enraptured tourist Ruskin speaks of..." ML p. 308

This being his first mention, one would assume the Narrator and his fictional Mamma had read Ruskin or at least he'd talked to her of his readings. Earlier there was a passage about the Narrator speaking of a small Gothic carving on the inside of a cathedral's balustrade, hidden from view, like the seamstress's work inside the coat of Mme. Swann, which reminded me (involuntary memory again) that in real life Proust writes of finding an almost-hidden, small, graven image, celebrated by Ruskin at Amiens, after making a pilgrimage there to honor him.

[Kalliope]

Eugene wrote: "The Narrator's Mamma says: "Well, and what would Balbec church say if it knew that people pulled long faces like that when they were going to see it? Surely this is not the enraptured tourist Ruski..."

Eugene, Fionnuala and I, in comments #56 & 57, said that we think Ruskin is alluded to a few paragraphs before he is actually mentioned.. and the word "traveller" suits "voyageur" better than "tourist". The concept of the "voyageur" crops up several times in the imagination of the Narrator.

[Eugene]

@Kalliope

It's the Narrator's fictional mother not his grandmother. What words does Ruskin use in English?

I'm in the city away from my computer on my iPhone & won't be back until late; tomorrow for Ruskin but later today the Met, Tissot & "...Fashion..." which I didn't see last Saturday.

[Elizabeth]

J.A.: Robert Bly says, in The Sibling Society that Americans are instantly identifiable on any European street because of their look of extreme youth. Part of this is, of course, good health/nutrition/environment; but part, Bly insists, is Americans' refusal to grow up.

[Marcus]

Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote: "My journey to Balbec was like the first outing of a convalescent who needed only that to convince him that he was cured." ML p. 299

Again. Let me count the next 10 instances..."

have been a bit lazy in looking up words not fully understood but when I did today, I found evidence to support your observation, Eugene, to wit: "pestiferous" as in "...once we have decided to penetrate into the pestiferous cavern..." [p303 ML] means, according to my Penguin dictionary, 'carrying or propagating infection' - so you could say he sees his growth as a journey through an infected 'land' to the "mystery" (enlightenment, healing, understanding, aesthetic bliss?) beyond; a couple of pages earlier comes "But this pain and this recrudescence of my love for Gilberte" and "recrudescence" can mean another break out of disease.