The Year of Reading Proust discussion
This topic is about
Within a Budding Grove
Within a Budding Grove, vol. 2
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Through Sunday, 24 Mar.: Within a Budding Grove
as succinctly as possible, to note what jumped out at me from this week's reading:First, the Narrator equates the time duration of his obsession with Gilberte to 45 minutes on a May time sundial (12.15 to I o'clock), then he leaves 22 minutes afterwards - admittedly 2 years later - for Balbec on the 1.22 train.
Secondly, the wonderful, deep musings on emotional time, yielding the striking (for me at least) insight that it is only "our then self" who can decide whether a later happiness, received after we've fallen out of love, is "altogether the same" as that happiness the lack of which made us so unhappy %-)
Then, how hilarious N continues to be - "...I should like to be presenting myself to [the manager] in more impressive company than that of my grandmother, who would be certain to ask for a reduction of his terms..."
And, the startling observation, during the lift journey, "...the horror of my own nonentity."
Also, the emotional connection to Wagner. When i first started listening to his music, few years back, i felt he was a melodic tease - he didn't consummate his arias as did Verdi or Puccini (my first love) - but he did reach recognisable resolution at the end; something similar is going on for me in reading Proust and I heard a Wagnerian ending (Tristan + Isolde?) in the final paragraphs of the Mme Swann at Home section.
Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout of it this week. Puppy love? Did you not all reckon that in this part where the narrator goes onandonandonandonandon about whether or not he can remove himself from G, rekindle her love, yakka yakka yakka, he and G are around 14? And he's spending 10,000 francs from his Chinese vase on prostitutes at a time (according to my notes) when the manager of the Grand Hotel at Balbec is making around five hundred per month?
Now this makes me sound like some Victorian lady, affronted by the immorality of it, no, it's not that, it's just that it is so, phhhhhh trivial and I'm missing the soaring language of Swann's Way, and there are just so many words, pages and pages and pages of them. And I've kind of lost to what purpose? I'm no longer sure why the lovesick outpourings of a privileged white boy should still claim so much of my attention. (Heresy, I know). Somebody reassure me, please.
I'm beginning more and more to subscribe to John Carey's view in The Intellectuals And The Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligensia, 1880-1939 that literary modernism was an elitist plot to ward off the great unwashed, to hunker down behind the walls of a 'high culture' that only the elite could understand.
(Caveat:Karen's recovering from a stinking cold with vomiting, so please take that into consideration)
Yes Marcus, difficult to find...tomorrow I'll try the Search function of my browser on The Bible of Amiens in the Guttenberg HTML collection of Ruskin, maybe Stones of Venice too. So busy here @UnSqGreenmarket I still haven't made the Met yet.
Eugene wrote: "Yes Marcus, difficult to find...tomorrow I'll try the Search function of my browser on The Bible of Amiens in the Guttenberg HTML collection of Ruskin, maybe Stones of Venice too. So busy here @U..."
don' t quite get Eugene - are you searching for 'illness' references in those sources?
Marcus wrote: "Eugene wrote: "Yes Marcus, difficult to find...e Guttenberg HTML collection of Ruskin, maybe Stones of Venice too. ..."
Marcus, I think Eugene is referring to my post.. and to the words tourist or traveler in Ruskin.
Karen wrote: "Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout of it this we..."Karen, since the narrator is so frequently ill himself, your sick leave is excused. But you were missed!
I got over my own bout of anti-narrator 'flu although i was pretty miffed about Tante Leonie's furniture but I'm pleased to say I have fallen once again under the spell of the writing. Admittedly, seeing Balbec on the horizon was a great incentive. I'm hoping the beauty of Combray will somehow be resurrected.....
@K@M
I want to know the word Ruskin uses.
Kalliope wrote: "Marcus wrote: "Eugene wrote: "Yes Marcus, difficult to find...e Guttenberg HTML collection of Ruskin, maybe Stones of Venice too. ..."
Marcus, I think Eugene is referring to my post.. and to the..."
ok, that makes much more sense, Kalliope thanks
Fionnuala wrote: "your sick leave is excused"Thank goodness for that! ;-))
I'm only ten pages away from the trip to Balbec, so maybe I shall battle on, but I don't know how much more of this excessive self-obsession I can take right now - oh groan, and here comes a dream as well...... Sorry, I'm going to skip two pages and get on to why he stops going to see Madame Swann. Terrible admission to make, I know - will I be shot at dawn do you think?
Karen wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "your sick leave is excused"Thank goodness for that! ;-))
I'm only ten pages away from the trip to Balbec, so maybe I shall battle on, but I don't know how much more of this exc..."
No, don't skip the dream.. the dreams are revealing...
Fionnuala wrote: "Karen wrote: "Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout..."I am loving the Balbec section. Some amazing descriptions.. more in the tone of Combray so far...
Karen wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "your sick leave is excused"Thank goodness for that! ;-))
I'm only ten pages away from the trip to Balbec, so maybe I shall battle on, but I don't know how much more of this exc..."
I do really sympathize with both your illness and your antipathy to the narrator!
Be strong and soldier on!
Kalliope wrote: "No, don't skip the dream.. the dreams are revealing..."
I'll come back to it, I promise. It's just that I've hardly been out the house myself since Tuesday, and being inside the narrator's head can get awffy claustrophobic. My heart opened up like a flower at dawn when he described walking in the dark street to the Swanns': that magical scene of the carriages waiting outside, and one of them setting off as if by some mysterious force, the rubberised wheels setting the clopping of the horses' hooves into such relief....
I just need to get out from inside his head occasionally.
Karen wrote: "Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout of it this we..."Oh good, someone else feels like ranting about this ridiculous adolescent too. Yes, that whole Paris episode seemed to bring out the least admirable aspects of his behavior in my opinion too.
Do feel better.
My old Montcrieff (pre-Enright) translation has this passage regarding the place names between Balbec-en-terre and Balbec-Plage:So it was that nothing could have reminded me less than these dreary names, made up of sand, of space too airy and empty and of salt, out of which the termination ‘ville’ always escaped, as the ‘fly’ seems to spring out from the end of the word ‘butterfly’
which struck me because I knew that the French word "papillon" had nothing to do with flies in it. So next I looked up the original text:
De même, rien moins que ces tristes noms faits de sable, d'espace trop aéré et vide, et de sel, au-dessus desquels le mot ville s'échappait comme vole dans pigeon-vole
So now I was on a quest to find out what "pigeon-vole" could be. The French wikipedia calls it a children's game where the players are supposed to indicate whether the caller is naming a thing that flies or not, on penalty of being eliminated from the game. Elsewhere I have found it compared to the English-speaking children's game of Simon Says.
Tracking down some of these references between two languages is not unlike a children's game of its own.
Karen wrote: "Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout of it this we..."Karen, I am grabbing onto your comment like a lifeboat on the Titanic!!!! Et Tu Brute ????
I am a bit behind in the reading but have just got to where Marcel meets Bergotte the writer at Madame Swann's. Before that, I suddenly found myself asking:
Is this kid, Marcel, in love with Gilberte or with her Mother?? ( And I find it hard to take this 'love' seriously.)He is utterly infatuated, besotted - even with the furniture, the thick carpets etc etc etc and EVERYTHING associated with Odette.
Out walking :"I kept eyeing her with an admiring gaze to which she coquettishly responded with a lingering smile."
That's Mum!!!
Shouldn't he be holding Gilberte's hand???
He wants to run into gentlemen admirers of Madame Swann so that they will envy or recognise his now superior position.
He comments to her on what she wears, her perfumes and on and on.
Is Gilberte aware she's been jilted by a precocious 15 year old Casanova??
The family seems to consult him before every outing.Are they this desperate for friends??
The WHOLE set-up is really weird...WEIRD!!!
Is this something specific to this type of Class
Society? The whole display of who is "out" and who is "in" is all pretty cutthroat, nasty ...and finally merely petty. Du Maupassant had some very biting things to say about French Society. Proust just drools and constantly salivates in this section. He had a reputation for being an absolute flatterer.
I've enjoyed the meandering way the whole "story" goes along with incredibly insightful sidelines which is really what is happening to the plot, it too gets sidelined.You just enjoy ALL of it.And bits that would be made MUCH of, eg. Swann proposing to Odette, are not even mentioned. I LOVE THAT.
ALL this may have been discussed???
But I get the feeling Karen's is a voice crying in the wilderness.
Once you see this Weirdness you really SEE it!!!
I place my TRUST in the Narrator's comment when he first gets his Big Toe inside the front door at Chez Swann, just after he has been rhapsodising about Gilberte's plaits brushing his cheek...never dreamed he'd get THAT close. I QUOTE with a few omissions the final sentence in the paragraph :
"...To acquire one of these,I stooped...to servilities
which did not procure for me what I wanted, but tied me for life to a number of extremely tiresome people."
So I suddenly realise that Marcel will have some future epiphany about Odette and the Whole Horrible Bunch..and hopefully himself. I can think of other words besides "tiresome" but as usual I think Proust has NAILED it! N'est-ce pas???
P.S. Enjoyng the wonderful exchanges !!!
Patricia wrote: "Some pencil notes I made on my copy of the Budding Girls:Norpois is such a manipulator:saying women are always ill when their husbands say they were asked to visit the Swanns.
Could Bergotte be..."
I enjoyed your list of notes, Patricia...very stimulating.
AND you elicited Richard's wonderful explanation about the calling card and the various meanings of interfered with corners!!!
Brilliant, Richard!!!
I am reading a 1929 translation by C.K.Scott Moncrieff
who hadn't quite caught up with our current Political Correctness and so HIS rendering of the Awful Madame Blatin's racism really hits one between the eyes.
I QUOTE:"...she went up to one of these black fellows with 'Good morning,nigger!'..."..."Anyhow this this classification seems to have displeased the black.
'Me nigger,'he shouted(quite furious,don't you know),to Mme.Blatin,'me nigger;you,old cow?'"
I"ve heard your classic "Huckleberry Finn " has been banned in some libraries because it uses terms valid for the time it was written, but I imagine Scott Moncrieff could be using a whole volley of 'incorrect' terms here. As well as "nigger", there is "black", and "black fellow". Is "negro" now outlawed as well ? I've always found that such a noble description.
What is currently acceptable ?
In Australia the terms Aboriginal (adjective) and Aborigine and Aboriginal (nouns) have a long usage for our Australian dark people.
"The blacks" has a long acceptable usage but not now.
"Nigger" I think was always a term of abuse.
As is "Old Cow !"
To call someone in Australia an "Old Camel" would just seem...strange and ineffectual.
I wonder what Proust wrote in French??
"Vieux Cochon." or "Vieille Vache."
Anyone out there tell us what Proust, the Horse's Mouth, gave us???
Wayne, In the original, it really is 'chameau', no more and no less."Moi négro, dit-il avec colère à Madame Blatin, mais toi, chameau!"
Insult enough I'd say:
THAT is SOME camel!!!!!THAT makes SOME insult!!!!
Touche,Karen.
Just love it!!!!!
...and really interesting to get the original from the Horse!!!
Oh my goodness. I'm reconciled to the work once more: I've been let out into the sunshine of May, and am left breathless by the elevation of Madame Swann to a kind of high priestess followed by acolytes by dint of her 'toilette'. It makes me ashamed to be lolling here in my sweat pants and cosy zip-up: I should be promenading round the park in the most elegant costume that my wardrobe can offer.
Wayne wrote: "...and really interesting to get the original from the Horse!!!"I'm assuming here that by 'horse' you mean Proust, and not me. Cos if it were me you wouldn't capitalize it eh?
This is magnificent: this elevation of Madame's clothes to something comparable with a cathedral, a work of art, an act of creation that renders her a goddess. The detail again, are we back at Proust's aesthetic? Art lies in the attention, the consecration of every single tiny detail, whether it is sculpture in a place that no-one sees or embroidery on a sleeve that is never shown......
Karen wrote: "This is magnificent: this elevation of Madame's clothes to something comparable with a cathedral, a work of art, an act of creation that renders her a goddess. The detail again, are we back at Prou..."Good you got to this section.. there are earlier posts about the clothing, and the current exhibit at the Met is so very timely...!!!
Kalliope wrote: " and the current exhibit at the Met is so very timely...!!! "Did I understand right? Are you in NY right now?
Karen wrote: "Kalliope wrote: " and the current exhibit at the Met is so very timely...!!! "Did I understand right? Are you in NY right now?"
I wish! Were the exhibit to take place later I would go.
But I cannot take time off now. But there are many Newyorkers in this group and there is the website and I may order the catalogue.
Karen wrote: "This is magnificent: this elevation of Madame's clothes to something comparable with a cathedral, a work of art, an act of creation that renders her a goddess. The detail again, are we back at Prou..."So glad you've come through the claustrophobic passages and are now out in the air again, Karen.
It's worth having a quick look at the end of the Nom de Pays: Le Nom section again just to see how the end of Autour de Mme Swann mirrors it -Odette out walking and time passing, fashions changing.
Richard wrote: ""So it was that nothing could have reminded me less than these dreary names, made up of sand, of space too airy and empty and of salt, out of which the termination ‘ville’ always escaped, as the ‘fly’ seems to spring out from the end of the word ‘butterfly.""What a curious way to translate the 'pigeon vole' idea, Richard, which is almost untranslatable. The butterfly image is interesting...
Karen wrote: "Wayne, In the original, it really is 'chameau', no more and no less."Moi négro, dit-il avec colère à Madame Blatin, mais toi, chameau!"
"
This is a chameau with a "boule de neige" on top..!!, another symphony in white but a bit cacophonous.
Re Mme Blatin and Huck Finn; there are modern editions now, that refer to Jim as "Slave Jim." This makes it possible for us to teach it in high school, it being--my opinion--The Great American Novel. Think of it...Jim's account of discovering his little daughter is deaf (when he has spanked her for "not listening to him." Then when Huck says at one point (paraphrased): we laid on that raft at night, watching the stars, and we talked about whether they was made, or just happened. Talk about universality; the debate rages to this day.
Karen wrote: "Wayne wrote: "...and really interesting to get the original from the Horse!!!"I'm assuming here that by 'horse' you mean Proust, and not me. Cos if it were me you wouldn't capitalize it eh?"
No, I was referring to your quotation en francais which was from Proust himself. Never fear, Karen!!!
Kalliope wrote: "...and the word "traveller" suits "voyageur" better than "tourist"."Yes it does; besides "traveller" is a word Ruskin uses over 150 times, by my count, in The Bible of Amiens and Stones of Venice; ML translates "voyageur" as "tourist" which Ruskin uses only once in a note:
"—Eh bien, qu'est-ce que dirait l'église de Balbec si elle savait que c'est avec cet air malheureux qu'on s'apprête à aller la voir? Est-ce cela le voyageur ravi dont parle Ruskin? "
Eugene wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "...and the word "traveller" suits "voyageur" better than "tourist"."Yes it does; besides "traveller" is a word Ruskin uses over 150 times, by my count, in The Bible of Amiens and..."
Wow, thank you Eugene for looking this up....!!!.. I suppose it is not surprising because Rukin's travels involved long stays in which he did a lot of studying.
And as I say, the figure of the "voyageur" seems to occupy a special place in the Narrator's mind. He is someone who longs to see more of the world, in particular the art around the world, but who feels intimidated by strange surroundings..
Next week I will post the other example I found in which Proust holds back the identity of something so as to disclose it a bit later on, and the connection is made by repeating a term or name.
But thank you for the research in Ruskin's texts...!!!!
@MarcusConcerning the illness simile where Proust compares one thing with 'an invalid, a convalescent, a neurasthenic, etc. frequently: I suspect it's the young narrator, rather than the older one, who uses the trope. I will mark future uses by the narrators then offer a speculation on why.
Richard wrote: "My old Montcrieff (pre-Enright) translation has this passage regarding the place names between Balbec-en-terre and Balbec-Plage:So it was that nothing could have reminded me less than these dreary..."
Richard,
Thank you for the Pigeon-vole explanation...
I found the lyrics for this game...
Amoureux d'une cousine
Qui pouvait avoir vingt ans,
Je vivais, on le devine,
Haletant.
{Ah ! Le temps, le printemps, inquiétant, excitant}
On se couchait'sur la plage.
C'était pas encor l'été.
On avait l'air d'être sage.
En vérité, on l'était.
Quel état que l'été met en moi, quel émoi,
Et quel mois de Mai.
Pigeon vole,
Le ciel vole,
Chapeau vole
Et vole aussi mon cœur,
Plein de bonheur.
Cheveu vole.
Herbe vole,
Dindon vole
Et vole mon regard
Vers tes yeux noirs.
Ah ! Quel vent du Nord !
Qu'il fait bon dehors,
Qu'il fait beau et doux
Près de vous.
Rentrons vite,
Ma petite
Car j'ai peur à l'horizon
De voir s'envoler la maison
And one can also download the ringtone for the cell:
http://artists.letssingit.com/charles...
Kalliope wrote: " Wow, thank you Eugene for looking this up...And as I say, the figure of the "voyageur" seems to occupy a special place in the Narrator's mind. He is someone who longs to see more of the world, in particular the art around the world, but who feels intimidated by strange surroundings."Let me correct myself on Comment 135: ML translates "voyageur" as "traveller" not as "tourist".
Command F finds 6 matches for "voyageur" in A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs--deuxième partie, Gutenberg.
Wayne wrote: "Karen wrote: "Grrrrrrrrr. I feel like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I really don't know why I'm reading this right now. Fionnuala, you had Gilbertitis last week, but I have a MASSIVE bout...""Is this kid, Marcel, in love with Gilberte or with her Mother?"
(Warning...don't fall into the bio-trap. Still, this is interesting.)
Echoes of Proust's own life: Jacques/Gilberte and Geneviève/Odette.
From Edward Rothstein's review of The Morgan exhibit.
" Jacques became an object of the young Proust’s unrequited love, ... Proust became close with Jacques’s mother, Geneviève.
In 1908 she gave him the four elegant notebooks on display here, in which he began thinking about his enterprise. “Should it be a novel,” he writes in one, “a philosophical essay, am I a novelist?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/boo...
Images of the four notebooks-scroll down.
http://proustien.over-blog.com/pages/...
Yesterday I went to the Met to see Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity a 2nd time & it was as mobbed as the first time I went two Saturdays ago. The life size portraits by Monet of women in their finery stand out, paintings before his impressioned experiments of hay stacks, etc., his water lilies & my favorites, his paintings at Giverny when he was almost blind. I'd never seen his spell binding portraits before, as I'd seen the Manets, the Degas, the Renoirs, the Caillebottes, etc. on display.I kept looking for Odette as many of these paintings were done in Paris in the late 19th Century and of women in fine dress. Coming upon a finely tailored handsome woman,"That could be her..." I said to myself
The James Tissot painting of Charles Haas in a group portrait is memorable because the expression on Haas' face is so unlike how one thinks of Swann's countenance as portrayed by Proust.
And when one sees A Ball,1878 by Jean Béraud one knows what the gathering at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's must have been like where Swann hears Vinteuil's sonata. I could hear the music.
What these paintings, what their perceptible imagery, tell me is how unusual Proust's writing is; he minimizes sensory perception, his writing lacks, (I would assume that this is as he chooses as he can write lyric and make pictures in our minds as well as anyone else can) perceptible mental images that the reader can see, hear, smell, taste & touch but Proust maximizes the rhetorical and syntactical structures of thought; he deeply pictures the inner workings of Swann and the Narrator like no author had done before him.
Marcel Proust wrote: "This crowd gave me just about as much pleasure as a photograph of it in one of the 'illustrateds' might give a patient who was turning its pages in the surgeon's waiting room." ML p. 330The second illness simile since I've been counting--beginning at ML p. 299.
Eugene wrote: "Marcel Proust wrote: "This crowd gave me just about as much pleasure as a photograph of it in one of the 'illustrateds' might give a patient who was turning its pages in the surgeon's waiting room...."Eugene,
There were several also in Du côté de chez Swann as well.
It is, sadly, a pretty recurrent association for him.
Eugene wrote: "Yesterday I went to the Met to see Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity a 2nd time & it was as mobbed as the first time I went two Saturdays ago. The life size portraits by Monet of women in their f..."Charles Haas...Tissot has him standing apart from the group and on another level. With my ISOLT monocle on, I see "Swann" as a member, but not truly accepted-an outsider.
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collecti...
And their hats...treated with care and carelessness. In the Tissot, one hat is on the marble floor, near an extinguished cigar!
In the Béraud, the men hold their hats or collapse them and place on a chair. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
For later (The Guermantes Way)...no peeking...unless you are re-reading.
http://www.whoswhoinproust.com/Pages/...
Marcelita, thank you so much for all those links. Wonderful. The Béraud is amazing.Thank you too, Eugene, for your impressions of the exhibition at the Met. Knowing that it was mobbed takes away some of the bitterness of those of us who would so love to go but are too far away. I looked around it at the Met's website: Renoir's La Loge is the image that accompanied me when I left home - I think the poster fell apart at some stage.
Thank you, Eugene, for the reference to this exhibit. I was able to view these pieces on "The Arts Blogger". They do add to my appreciation of the readings. When I looked at Beraud's "A Ball, 1878" I immediately agreed with you as to how masterfully Proust touched our senses when describing the scene at Mme. de Sainte-Euverte's. And we also see how Proust's elaborate details as to dress form a commentary of society. But beyond that, I have always been such a fan of Impressionism, the distinctive tones, textures and rhythms. Maybe this is why I am enjoying reading Proust so much. And I might add, the insight that you and the other members of the group provide is truly invaluable. Thank you again!
Eugene and Marcelita,I have succumbed and ordered the NY catalog!.. it may take some time to get here.
I wonder now that this is not a good time to visit the Musée d'Orsay since so many of its works are now on Loan.
Apart from the Met exhibit there is the one on Manet at the Royal in London (got the catalog too since Manet is one of my favorites -- and it has the Portrait of the not-family-Proust) and in Madrid there are three exhibits (or two and a half) on Impressionists works.
The Madrid ones are all available to visit virtually. One is on Impressionism and open air painting -- at the Thyssen Bornemisza museum, and the other two at the Palace of the Mapfre Foundation. Of these two is composed of only works from the Musée d'Orsay (and two of Monet's Rheims cathedral façades, used as cover to Proust in the last edition of Gallimard pb, are there). The other is thematic -- Gypsies and Bohemia-- and also presents a considerable sample of the Avant-Garde produced in France at the turn of the century.
I have put these links in earlier posts, but it is very easy to miss things:
http://www.museothyssen.org/microsite...
http://www.exposicionesmapfrearte.com...
http://www.exposicionesmapfrearte.com...
Kalliope wrote: "Eugene and Marcelita,I have succumbed and ordered the NY catalog!.. it may take some time to get here.
I wonder now that this is not a good time to visit the Musée d'Orsay since so many of its w..."
It's better to re-post; we don't want to miss a-n-y-thing.
I looked more carefully, this time, at Room 4: Trees and Plants II.
http://www.museothyssen.org/microsite...
and remembered this short video discussion on one of Monet's "Poplars" as seen in Room 4: Trees and Plants II. I was shocked to discover what happened to these beautiful poplars!
http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/m...
I've enjoyed all the great posts here so far. Just finished the reading for 3/24 while on vacation and unplugged....
Paul Bowles when asked by the customs in Morocco,"Tourist?" answered that he was a "traveller".
Marcelita wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Eugene and Marcelita,I have succumbed and ordered the NY catalog!.. it may take some time to get here.
I wonder now that this is not a good time to visit the Musée d'Orsay since..."
Room 7 is on the Sea.
Thank you for the Poplars site...
On my Kindle version of A l'ombre des jeunes filles... they have used for the cover a painting by Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), which I cannot find in the web. There is this other one which I think suits better the novel, although there is no direct connection with Proust apart from being contemporaries.
Thank you for the links in message 147. They are perfect to enjoy with a glass of wine - or two! And the painting above is stunning!
The Year of Reading Proust
Books mentioned in this topic
The Intellectuals and The Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880 - 1939 (other topics)Seeing Through Clothes (other topics)
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..."
Eugene, you are very right, it is the Mother who is talking to the Narrator in this incident.
On whether the original English term was tourist or traveler in Ruskin's writing it is hard to know because we do not know which text the Narrator has in mind, having read several of his.
But as this is a translation from the French and the Narrator uses "voyageur", term which he repeats as earlier on he had referred to the "voyageur artiste et blond" that would accompany him on the visit to the Cathedral of St-Lô, my opinion is that the translator should also repeat the term, because it is this repetition that makes us think that the blond traveler is probably Ruskin. May be Montcrieff has used tourist for the first instance. In that case the connection could also be made with the word tourist.
Incidentally, in next week’s reading, Proust does this again. He mentions something without quite giving its identity--he just insinuates it--, and then he discloses it a bit later on. I will point to this on its appropriate thread.
But my preference for the word traveler is because I have noticed that the Narrator uses the term “voyageur” regularly. He seems to be a dreamed-of figure, as if he would like to set off on voyages if he had more energy. And in those other contexts the term “tourist” would not go as well as traveler.
But with translations there is always a debate.
You are lucky to be able to go to the Met exhibit again…