The Year of Reading Proust discussion
This topic is about
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah, vol. 4
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Through Sunday, 4 Aug.: Sodom and Gomorrah
Fionnuala wrote: "·Karen· wrote: "...Oh, OK; now I see how you're interpreting it differently to me: "le goût qu'il avait", I took to mean that he'd already developed this taste and had already installed one of thes..."Yes, we are talking about a boy... this passage is related to the one in the previous page..
... M. Nissim Bernard n'avait jamais manqué de venir occuper sa place au déjeuner (comme l'eût tai à l'orchestre quelqu'un qui entretient une figurante, une figurante celle-là d'un genre fortement caractérisé, et qui attend encore son Degas)
in the questioned passage the dans le goût qu'il avait d'entretenir comme un rat d'opéra d'une autre sorte à laquelle il manque encore un Degas.
ie: the person that Nissim Bernard wants to "entretenir" is of a different kind from those mentioned earlier that are still waiting to be depicted by Degas (Degas painted girls, while Bernard's are different from those - boys).
Fionnuala wrote: "I would imagine that all of the descriptions of the sisters' conversation are fairly accurate. I'm in awe of the way he can conjure up the geography, the very geoplogy of their home place in every..."I have reread the passage of Céleste and her sister... and yes, the quote about their never writing a book would certainly have surprised Proust....
This is for me one of the most funny passages... there is so much tenderness in the way Proust is ridiculing himself through her... I mentioned it before but in my audio version, the reader has a really hard time trying not to laugh.
So sorry about this delayed reaction, but between two posts, life took over.The way I understood the sentence was that NB was not aware of the role that the beach, the view and habits played in the attraction he felt toward the boys at the hotel. I agree that the sentence is quite confusing.
I don't think it is the case for this particular sentence but, given the fact that Proust had to rush to correct his manuscripts, I would not be surprised if sometimes there were some constructions which leave us baffled and over which we rack our brains, when in essence, it is simply an error which he did not have time to correct.
Gauthier-Vignal notes that Proust had a great appreciation of music but was not a musician himself. Apparently, he made some errors in describing, for instance, the Vinteuil piece. Can we really exclude the possibility of a clumsy sentence or a grammatical error?
Jocelyne wrote: "So sorry about this delayed reaction, but between two posts, life took over.The way I understood the sentence was that NB was not aware of the role that the beach, the view and habits played in t..."
I fully agree with you. Proust did not have time for a proper editing.
Kalliope wrote: "Yes, we are talking about a boy."Alright, if everyone is so sure that we are talking about a boy (and obviously M.N-B likes boys), what is that weird dangling clause at the end "qui étaient encore des filles"?????? And whose servants??
And Eugene, sorry, but no. In 'ce qu'il pouvait entrer d'amour' that il cannot possibly refer to M. Nissim Bernard, he's not entering anything, it makes no sense at all reading it that way.
Anyway, I'm comforted to see that this sentence really is ambiguous and it's not just me being obtuse. Let it go.
Karen wrote: In 'ce qu'il pouvait entrer d'amour' that il cannot possibly refer to M. Nissim Bernard, he's not entering anything, it makes no sense at all reading it that way.Yes, the sentence is certainly d'une autre sorte.
·Karen· wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Yes, we are talking about a boy."Alright, if everyone is so sure that we are talking about a boy (and obviously M.N-B likes boys), what is that weird dangling clause at the end "..."
Neither are you obtuse nor are the clouds of dust in your house rendering the sentence confusing. It is indeed ambiguous.
Karen wrote: ...what is that weird dangling clause at the end "qui étaient encore des filles"?????? And whose servants??Dear Karen, I've been thinking, let me read the last part of the sentence again, the part that confuses you. It is not as ambiguous as all that.
...comme un rat d'opéra d'une autre sorte, à laquelle il manque encore un Degas, l'un de ses servants qui étaient encore des filles.
We have a simile, of which M. Proust is so fond and some of them are quite long too: like a ballet student of a different kind (a boy, a waiter), who still lacks a Degas (~M. NB), one of his (M. NB) servants (waiters) was still one of the girls (among students of ballet=among other waiters) as he slides, rare for him, into direct metaphor.
La phrase l'un de ses servants qui étaient encore des filles est en apposition à d'une autre sorte.
Apposition: A construction in which a noun or noun phrase is placed with another as an explanatory equivalent, both having the same syntactic relation to the other elements in the sentence...
From http://www.thefreedictionary.com/appo...
·Karen· wrote: "I have got a little faster, yes, although, like you, I'm not sure if that's me or him.What do you understand by courrières? (Céleste and Marie Gineste) - I didn't find this word at all in my Petit Robert..."
In his biography of Proust, Bill Carter describes the sisters as "staying in the servants' quarters, performing the service as messengers."
OK, thanks everyone for your help, and thanks Eugene, yes, I can see that now. It's a bit like one of those optical illusion figures, sometimes you see the beautiful young girl, sometimes the old hag.
·Karen· wrote: "" I'm comforted to see that this sentence really is ambiguous and it's not just me being obtuse. Let it go. ..."Karen, you made me laugh with this sentence...!!!
You of all people... With your impeccable German, a language with six modal verbs, and which relishes in the acrobatic use of subordinate clauses... the only language I know which will dare to include a full clause between a noun and its article....
As with the detail of whether it is the cousin or the sister who is having the relationship with the actress, this sentence needed editing. We all have different interpretations but we cannot be sure of what Proust intended because he left it unedited as Jocelyn said.
On another topic, and although not directly related to this section, it is still related to the landscape in this part of the coast of Normandy and its art.In the Boudin Museum in Honfleur (which Marcelita also visited), underneath one of the paintings by Boudin… one of this kind:
There stood a quote from a French writer (I am trying to find it in English):
A la fin tous ces nuages aux formes fantastiques et lumineuses, ces ténèbres chaotiques, ces immensités vertes et roses, suspendues et ajoutées les unes aux autres, ces fournaises béantes, ces firmaments de satin noir ou violet, fripé, roulé ou déchiré, ces horizons en deuil ou ruisselants de métal fondu, toutes ces profondeurs, toutes ces splendeurs, me montèrent au cerveau comme une boisson capiteuse ou comme l’éloquence de …. Chose assez curieuse, il ne m’arriva pas une seule fois, devant ces magies liquides ou aériennes, de me plaindre de ……
Anyone’s guess who this writer is ? (Fionnuala is not allowed to answer).
Kalliope wrote: "On another topic, and although not directly related to this section, it is still related to the landscape in this part of the coast of Normandy and its art.In the Boudin Museum in Honfleur (which..."
Baudelaire.
Ok, I cheated. I was hoping to dazzle you with my fake brilliance a little longer before coming clean, but I can't live with myself any longer. I can feel my poor mother spinning in her urn so wildly that her ashes risk blowing the top off. I could never tell a lie. I have enough trouble sleeping with a clean conscience!
I think Proust's Sapphic 'misnomer' (sister/cousin) was intentional, like the discreet Swann 'calling from the rooftops' when, scant pages later, we find Bloch's cousin playing footsie with a married woman. The hotel is hot.
Kalliope wrote: "On another topic, and although not directly related to this section, it is still related to the landscape in this part of the coast of Normandy and its art.In the Boudin Museum in Honfleur (which..."
There were several passages in this week's reading that reminded me of Eugène Boudin's paintings, Kalliope, but this one in particular:
nous prîmes un sentier où des vaches en liberté, aussi effrayé que nos chavaux, nous barrèrent dix minutes le passage, et nous enageâmes dans la route de la corniche
I'm sure I've seen a Boudin painting of a group of animals blocking the corner of a road high over the sea.
Further on, I was very struck by how the narrator describes how the sound of the waves can travel all the way up to the top of the cliff but that as soon as you move away from the edge, even by as little as two meters, you can no longer hear their sound. When I recount that feat of nature, it sounds pretty banal, but when he tells it, it becomes something beautiful:
Et en effet si on reculait seulement de deux mètres en arrière de l'octroi, on ne distinguait plus ce bruit de vagues auquel deux cent mètres de falaise n'avaient pas enlevé sa délicate, minutieuse et douce précision
And, of course, this feat of nature reminds him of his grandmother, my favourite character in La Recherche.
Such gems are why I continue to read La Recherche.
I'm reading Proust connu et inconnu, written by a friend of Proust's, Gautier-Vignal, about the years when he was writing La Recherche, and which fortunately doesn't comment much on the narrative. I've just come to a passage where Gautier-Vignal describes telling Proust of a conversation he had with an elderly lady of the Rothchild family who had been a pupil of Chopin's (who died in 1849) in Paris when she herself was very young. I thought immediately of the Marquise de Cambremer.Gautier-Vignal stresses that although Proust drew on his own memories for La Recherche, he also drew on his imagination, and that thanks to the conversations he had with others (especially in the later years when he wasn't active in the world), where he always questioned them closely on everything they'd seen and done, he was constantly finding new material with which to create his characters and his fiction.
Jocelyne wrote: "Ok, I cheated. I was hoping to dazzle you with my fake brilliance a little longer before coming clean, but I can't live with myself any longer. I can feel my poor mother spinning in her urn so wil..."I was going to wait to see if there were other suggestions..
Anyway, this is from the Salon 1859, under the chapter On Landscape. I have not been able to find it online in English. The more popular chapter On Photography is the only one I could find.
We were struck by the similarities in the descriptive and lyrical style.
Fionnuala wrote: "I'm reading Proust connu et inconnu, written by a friend of Proust's, Gautier-Vignal, about the years when he was writing La Recherche, and which fortunately doesn't comment much on the narrative. ..."Very much so... The descriptions on music in this section are very much based on G-V's ideas (so war and post-war), rather than Hahn's. In a post on the 28th of July I had also indicated that G-V knew personally Chopin's pupil.
It is hard for us to realize, particularly when it comes to the quotes from past literary pieces, that Proust was mostly quoting from memory. His writing environment was a great deal more precarious than, for example, Thomas Mann's.
And with the description of Princesse's Sherbatoff's Baignoire (I will never forget this term for the ground floor theatre boxes), I can post this.I did not have the picture yet when we first discussed the term when it was used at the beginning of Du côté de Guermantes.... the whole aquatic description of the Princesse de Guermantes's Baignoire.
Baignoires at the Garnier.
Fionnuala wrote: "nous prîmes un sentier où des vaches en liberté, aussi effrayé que nos chavaux, nous barrèrent dix minutes le passage, et nous enageâmes dans la route de la corniche..."Very true...
Another surprising thing in this week's section is how Odette, once a widow, reacts when the Verdurins are mentioned and she first pretends that she does not know them... je ne les connais pas, ou plutôt je les connais sans les connaître,ce sont des gens que j'ai vus autrefois chez des amis, il y a longtemps.
If we have had quite a bit of Molière lately, we now get Marivaux and the "théâtre galant".. and the choice of rococo language.... dit Cottard avec un sourire où il crut devoir mettre de la paillardise et du marivaudage.... Mais le titre de marquise éveillait en lui des images prestigieuses et galantes... elle est frivole, mais elle a l'instinct des jolies choses.."
Images such as these come to mind...
@ Fionnuala. When reading GV about Chopin, I was also thinking about the Marquise de Cambremer. And then this week, we had passage about Céleste Albaret. I can't help wondering if these were in the original drafts or if they were later paste-ons. I just love the paintings of cows as well as the description in the text. Few pictures evoke nostalgic stirrings like a couple of cows in a meadow, though I should feel ambivalent about them. More about this in the lounge.
@Kalliope. The Baudelaire quote is so gorgeous. Actually, I thought it was from Proust.
I love the Garnier picture. This week I was listening to a podcast (Au coeur de l'histoire) precisely on the history of the Palais Garnier and Franck Ferrand, who continues to send me subliminal messages through those podcasts and who, incidentally is a Proust fan, said that the Palais Garnier is mentioned in two volumes of La Recherche.
Jocelyne wrote: "Ever since I switched to my French Kindle version, I have lost all concept of where I am in the text. I thought I was ahead since...Brichot's long discourse on etymology..."Looking on the map for the towns that the "twister" stopped to pick up passengers, I was having some difficulty locating Harambouville.
In searching, I stumbled upon this book of 16th century names, which mentions places in Proust.
In French and for those those interested in etymology.
"Mixtures of Philology and Literary History"
Edmond Huguet, Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris, President of the League of Modern French texts.
Author: Edmond Huguet
Publisher: [Paris, Boivin & cie] 1940.
http://books.google.com/books?id=DQwo...
Fionnuala wrote: "Such gems are why I continue to read La Recherche. ..."
I was going to post here that although I did not have a photo of the gulf, I had one of the sunset, when reading on in next week's section I encountered the sunset... Moved my post there...
Kalliope wrote: "Another surprising thing in this week's section is how Odette, once a widow, reacts when the Verdurins are mentioned and she first pretends that she does not know them... je ne les connais pas, o..."
Later on we read that the Verdurins were so influential that they managed to interfere in the private lives of their coterie, and caused the "brouille" between Odette and Swann...
No wonder then if Odette disowns them ..
Marcelita wrote: "Looking on the map for the towns that the "twister" stopped to pick up passengers, I was having some difficulty locating Harambouville. In searching, I stumbled upon this book of 16th century names, which mentions places in Proust. In French and for those those interested in etymology."
I read all of the available pages of this essay by J Vendreyes, Marcelita.
He talks about a Victor Brochard, professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne who may have been the model for Brichot, at least in part. He goes on to comment on the etymological section of Sodome et Gomorrhe. According to Vendreyes, this section is overlong and extremely wearying for the reader. He claims it is also in bad taste but that Marcel Proust wasn't renowned for his good taste or his moderation.(!)
He mentions a study that was done in 1939 by M André Ferré on the place-names in Proust. Apparently many of the place-names mentioned in La Recherche really do exist although not always where Proust locates them. Vendreyes points out that the etymological account given by Brichot is frequently false. He seems to think that this reflects a lack of knowledge on Proust's part. I was surprised at that as I understood that in this section, which I didn't find long or wearisome at all, Proust was satirising pompous people like Brichot who sometimes spout a lot of nonsense.
Vendreyes does recognise this further on in the essay, remarking that Proust sought to highlight human failings more and more as the work progressed.
That's funny, 'cos I had just assumed that the whole etymological rigmarole (which I did find wearying, yes) was a joke, satirising pompous know-it-alls who spout academic blah blah that no-one would dare to question, simply because they sound so competent. I had an instinctive feeling that at least some of those etymologies were extremely questionable, but to be honest I couldn't be bothered to check them. Put it down to the heat.
In my audio edition, this section is quite funny.. it is acted out... and the reader overplays the surprise element... it becomes a game...
Fionnuala wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "Looking on the map for the towns that the "twister" stopped to pick up passengers, I was having some difficulty locating Harambouville. In searching, I stumbled upon this book of..."I read all of the available pages of this essay by J Vendreyes, Marcelita...."
Dear Fionnula, I was hoping that a French-guru would be able to tell us something more about etymology. Now, you have given us ety-lenses, to see Proust in a different 'light."
With each passing week, the gestalt of '2013: The Year of Reading Proust' is becoming even more...immeasurable. Thank you for stopping...and taking the time to read and explain these essays.
http://www.phosforus.com/?p=252
I took all of Brichot's etymological explanations au pied de la lettre, and now I learn that Proust was occasionally wrong! I was wondering about Honfleur but according to Wikepedia it does in fact come for the Old Norse floo for estuary. I thought Honfleur, Cote Fleurie... were all in the same family!I once heard the etymology of "sabotage". In the old days, members of town meetings expressed their discontent by hitting their tables with their sabots (wooden clogs) creating such a ruckus that the meeting had to be interrupted. You would think that the origin would be obvious but it had never occurred to me.
Marcelita wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "Looking on the map for the towns that the "twister" stopped to pick up passengers, I was having some difficulty locating Harambouville. In searching, I stumbled ..."The Phosphorus link is 'brilliant', Marcelita!
This is a reason why I enjoy reading Proust. The sentence is referential to the passage in which we find it, to the sentences before and after it to understand its context, but beyond that Proust references the Narrator's time first considering Saint-Loup at the hotel, what Elstir said in vol. 2 about "the little band", Mme de Villeparisis and her tone speaking of Saint-Loup before he'd met him, while the reflective Narrator thinks of Albertine and her encounter with Saint-Loup at Doncieres. We really travel in time with Proust's prose.Such a change of perspective in looking at other people, more striking already in friendship than in merely social relations, is all the more striking still in love, where desire so enlarges the scale, so magnifies the proportions of the slightest signs of coldness, that it had required far less than Saint-Loup had shown at first sight for me to believe myself disdained at first by Albertine, to imagine her friends as fabulously inhuman creatures, and to ascribe Elstir's judgment, when he said to me of the little band with exactly the same sentiment as Mme de Villeparisis speaking of Saint-Loup: "They're good girls," simply to the indulgence people have for beauty and a certain elegance. ML p. 357
Proust describes the manners and intentions of his characters, not so much deeply as in detail--yes you could think of them as deep if you wish--but for me the manners described become wide; the intentions have a span to their detail. And all from parenthetical qualifications which he builds in his rhetorical music by going 'up the scale' in changes from "social relations" to "friendship" to "love" then again up from "enlarges" to "magnifies" from which he descends abruptly to "coldness" then to levely pick up a semantic point:
that it had required far less than Saint-Loup had shown at first sight for me to believe myself disdained at first by Albertine
And so on, which you can read for yourselves, but before I go let me point out a lovely antithesis: "fabulously inhuman creatures" = "They're good girls," and tell you that I agreed with Proust; it had promoted in me an "indulgence...for beauty and a certain elegance" about the sentence, such music.
After the Narrator gushes to Princess Stroganoff about the view from the carriage on the way,I know that she admitted subsequently to Cottard that she found me remarkably enthusiastic; he replied that I was too emotional, that I needed sedatives and ought to take up knitting. ML p. 403
:-)
Marcelita wrote: "..."Marcelita, I loved the link on "light" in Phosphorus.. I agree with Jocelyne.. all this illumination..
Eugene wrote: "This is a reason why I enjoy reading Proust. The sentence is referential to the passage in which we find it, to the sentences before and after it to understand its context, but beyond that Proust r..."I see "chiaroscuro" in Proust, like Eugene hears the music of "antithesis."
"One can never know..." as we continually shift perspectives' from Dreyfus to society to jealousy.
If I ever reread ISOLT I'll have to keep an eye out for connections made between lobsters and queer men.Here's M. Verdurin speaking rather brusquely about the late pianist Dechambre:
Je dirai plus, dans l’intérêt même de sa réputation il est mort au bon moment, à point, comme les demoiselles de Caen, grillées selon les recettes incomparables de Pampille, vont l’être, j’espère
I will go farther, in the interest of his own reputation he has died at the right moment, he is done to a turn, as the demoiselles de Caen, grilled according to the incomparable recipe of Pampilles, are going to be, I hope
I found an article by Herman Rapaport of Wake Forest University which refers to these "demoiselles" along with a number of other lobster references: A lover's lobster: somatic projection in Proust. He makes this extraordinary association between the various lobsters and homosexuals:
Such references are especially notable in the context of the luncheon at Swanns, because in context they suggest that the sexual orientation of lobsters in Proust are never singular and that, in fact, the natural or folk association between lobsters and girls has something to do with the more surreptitious or closeted association between crustaceans and queer men.
Richard wrote: "Je dirai plu..."Interesting article, Richard.
For me the most significant thought that I could extract served as a reminder that I plan to eat seafood in about ten days when I set off for a weekend in the coast....
Perhaps in this 'bon mot' of M Verdurin's about rock lobsters, Proust simply saw the opportunity to underline Verdurin's boorishness while at the same time paying tribute to the wife of a friend, Mme Léon Daudet, who, according to my edition wrote a culinary column in a newspaper under the pseudoynm Pampille.
Fionnuala wrote: "Perhaps in this 'bon mot' of M Verdurin's about rock lobsters, Proust simply saw the opportunity to underline Verdurin's boorishness while at the same time paying tribute to the wife of a friend, M..."Applause...!!
You deserve a grilled homard by the seaside.
Sometimes it IS all about the food!
As I was reading, the name Nissim struck me as being odd for a French novel. I know the name as Arabic ( meaning breeze) and also as Persian/Iranian(knew someone with that name). It also has a Hebrew origin that means miracles.As Nissim Bernard is related to Bloch, he is a French Jew, so the name I suppose is meant to stand out as an identifier.
"Bernard, Nissim : grand-oncle de Bloch et l'un des Juifs les plus caractéristiques de la Recherche ; reçoit le narrateur et Saint-Loup dans sa superbe villa ; malgré son prestige, son neveu le tourne en ridicule ; dans Sodome et Gomorrhe, a une liaison avec un jeune laquais du Grand Hôtel ; dans La Prisonnière, prête 5000 F à Morel par l'entremise de Bloch."
Googled some more and came across what looks like a very interesting pdf.
Closeted metaphors or reading identity in la recherche
http://escholarship.ucop.edu/uc/item/...
Unfortunately, I'm suffering another one of my headaches and just can't read it right now. I wanted to share it with you. Do check it out. I don't know if there are spoilers.
Cheers.
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "As I was reading, the name Nissim struck me as being odd for a French novel. I know the name as Arabic ( meaning breeze) and also as Persian/Iranian(knew someone with that name). It also has a Hebr..."Thank you Reem,
I have not yet looked through the link carefully (I generally find it very awkward reading through a window a book in pdf format... I do not last very long. I may try again later on.
But on the name Nissim, it also struck me because of the Camondo family. This wealthy and jewish clan were similar to the Ephrussi that we have already discussed in reference to Charles Swann.
On the Camondo there is this book Le Dernier Des Camondo
And also the Musée des Arts Décoratifs is in their old mansion...
http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/engli...
Which now makes me angry because I should have remembered to visit it last July... mmm... may be another trip....
Kalliope wrote: Which now makes me angry because I should have remembered to visit it last July... mmm... may be another trip....
Kalliope, now I remember, this is the house we discussed long ago, isn't it? There are some more photos here.
http://parisianfields.wordpress.com/2...
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: Which now makes me angry because I should have remembered to visit it last July... mmm... may be another trip....
Kalliope, now I remember, this is the house we discussed long ag..."
Yes, but there were two families, the Ephrussis and the Camondo... The first is the one that features in theThe Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss and the latter is the one whose house has now become the Museum for Decorative Arts. Different houses.
And one of the major members of the Camondo was Nissim de Camondo.
Phillida wrote: "Nissim is a not uncommon Hebrew given name, so I think you're right about its being a marker here."
It's funny about the etymology of names. My own name has Hebrew meaning.
Etymology 1[edit]
From Classical Hebrew רְאֵם (r'em).
Noun
reem
1.A large horned animal in ancient Hebrew literature, variously identified with the wild ox or aurochs (Bos primigenius), the Arabian oryx, or a mythical creature (compare unicorn).
Go figure. I do like the unicorn bit. ;)
Phillida wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "As I was reading, the name Nissim struck me as being odd for a French novel. I know the name as Arabic ( meaning breeze) and also as Persian/Iranian(knew someone with ..."Phillida, do you know Hebrew? I don't but my husband told me that nissim meant miracle.
@Reem. That's interesting! I like the unicorn image.
Phillida wrote: "Jocelyne wrote: "Phillida wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "As I was reading, the name Nissim struck me as being odd for a French novel. I know the name as Arabic ( meaning breeze) and also as ..."It's a lot more than I know!
The Year of Reading Proust
Books mentioned in this topic
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss (other topics)Le dernier des Camondo (other topics)
Proust connu et inconnu (other topics)
Sodome et Gomorrhe II (other topics)
Twice does it refer to M. NB: il pouvait and il avait; the il manque refers to un rat d'opéra d'une autre sorte.
The problem for me is the gender switch of l'un de ses servants qui étaient encore des filles. It makes me question, whose ses servants are they? Degas'?, M. NB's? Degas rendered dancing girls, M. NB loves a boy. But then d'une autre sorte takes on more meaning, doesn't it.
As far as I can see--but your French is better than mine--there are no impersonal constructions here. But ce qu'il pouvait could go either way, depending on how one translates it.