The Year of Reading Proust discussion
This topic is about
Time Regained
Time Regained, vol. 7
>
Through Sunday, 15 Dec.: Time Regained
Phillida wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "A great part of this weeks section could stand on its own. It could be Proust's Treatise on Aesthetics.Yes, Kalliope. And one principle of his aesthetics that attract me is embe..."
Yes Phillida, Manny and somebody else are interested in investigating the trends of philosophy which have provided a base to Proust's writing. Husserl and his phenomenology has been suggested as well..
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "..this observation of La Bruyere: "Men often want to love where they cannot hope to succeed; they seek their own undoing without being able to compass it, and if I may put it thus, they are forced against their will to remain free." Whether or not this is the meaning that the aphorism had for the man who wrote it( to give it this meaning, which would make it finer, he should have said " to be loved" instead of " to love"), there is no doubt that, with this meaning, the sensitive lover of literature reanimates it and swells it with meaning until is ready to burst, he cannot repeat it to himself without overflowing with joy, so true and beautiful does he find it -- but in spite of all this he has added to it nothing, it remains merely an observation of La Bruyere." (MKE 297)"Rereading this was interesting, Reem and for other reasons than the one about the 'to be loved' phrase.
It seems that Proust is saying - and this is funny/alarming for those of us who are underlining his words frantically, and adding reams of comments about them - that the lettré sensible, the 'sensitive lover of literature' who, instead of seeking to express his own heartache in his own words, rereads constantly la belle pensée d'un maître, La Bruyère's fine observation, and endows it with his own memories of love, in the end he can't add anything new to the subject, because it will always be simply La Bruyère's observation.
P 295 GF
On the love subject, I have found the following section very interesting, because he is thinking of how his talking of love will make readers think of their own loves..., and he calls this the posthumous infidelity...Il était triste pour moi de penser que mon amour auquel j'avais tant tenu, serrait dans mon livre, si dégagé d'un être que des lecteurs divers l'appliqueraient exactement à ce qu'ils avaient éprouvé pour d'autres femmes. Mais devais je me scandaliser de cette infidélité posthume et que tel ou tel pût donner comme objet à mes sentiments de femmes inconnues, quand cette infidélité, cette division de l'amour entre plusieurs êtres, avait commencé de mon vivant et avant même que je l'écrivisse. p. 305.
Phillida wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "Phillida wrote: "...I'm fascinated by the conception and acting-out of an idea of love that is purely egocentric, that requires jealousy and misery, that does not require..."...those observation don't contradict yours about his need to be loved.."
Thinking about the bumblebee, the seed, the science of nature and homosexuality...and the deep sorrow Proust himself must have felt. It is the core need all seek..."to be loved."
And now he seems to be thinking along more Platonic concepts...Manny should have a look at this quote..
Les idées sont des succédanés des chagrins, au moment où ceux-ci se changent en idées ils perdent une partie de leur action nocive sur notre coeur, et même au premier instant, la transformation elle-même dégage subitement de la joie. Succédanés dans l'ordre du temps seulement, d'ailleurs, car il semble que l'élément premier ce soit l'Idée, et le chagrin seulement le mode selon lequel certains Idées entrent d'abord chez nous. Mais il y a plusieurs familles dans le groupe des Idées, certaines sont tout de suite des joies. pp. 309-310.
Thank you Kalliope! This is indeed extremely interesting.I am trying to think if the word 'mode' is being used in a Kantian sense here, but I am still hopeless unfamiliar with Kant's system...
Kalliope wrote: "On the love subject, I have found the following section very interesting, because he is thinking of how his talking of love will make readers think of their own loves..., and he calls this the posthumous infidelity....."Yes, another passage I need to go back to..
Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "On the love subject, I have found the following section very interesting, because he is thinking of how his talking of love will make readers think of their own loves..., and he c..."This section is full of mini sections one needs to go back to...
It is a treatise...
And then he associates his concept of how love functions to the understanding of Ideas...Ces substitutions (succésion des amours) ajoutent à l'oeuvre quelque chose de désintéressé, de plus général, qui est aussi une leçon austère que ce n'est pas aux êtres que nous devons nous attacher, que ce ne sont pas les êtres qui existent réellement et sont par conséquent susceptibles d'expression, mais les idées.p. 311-312.
And then he mentions that one has to hurry up and not "perdre le temps" ...
We get the opposition of art (writing) as truth (vérité) and life as lies (mensonge)
You are right. I must reread this immediately after Kant, so that I can compare easily.
I had to google this: The Embarkation for Cythera ("L'Embarquement pour Cythère") is a painting by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. It is also known as "Voyage to Cythera" and "Pilgrimage on the Isle of Cythera". Watteau submitted this work to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as his reception piece in 1717. The painting is now in the Louvre in Paris. A second variant version of the composition, Pilgrimage to Cythera, painted by Watteau sometime between 1718 and 1721,[citation needed] is in the Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin.[image error]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L%2...
The Embarkation for Cythera (Louvre version): Many commentators note that it depicts a departure from the island of Cythera, the birthplace of Venus, thus symbolizing the brevity of love.
Pilgrimage to Cythera is an embellished repetition of his painting of 1717, and exemplifies the frivolity and sensuousness of Rococo painting. (1721, Berlin)With the same speed the amorous suggestions which they have instilled into us are dissipated, and sometimes, when the loving nocturnal visitant has vanished from our sight and reappeared in her familiar shape of an ugly woman, there vanishes with her something more precious, a whole ravishing landscape of feelings of tenderness, of voluptuous pleasure, of vaguely blurred regrets, a whole embarkation for the Cythera of passion, of which we should like to note, for our waking state, the subtle and deliciously lifelike gradations of tone, but which fades away like a discoloured canvas that can no longer be restored. (MKE 323)
And yet another extraordinary passage:En réalité, chaque lecteur est quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-même. L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au lecteur afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que sans ce livre, il n'eût peut être pas vu en soi-même. La reconnaissance en soi même, par le lecteur, de ce que dit le livre, est la preuve de la vérité de celui-ci et vice versa, au moins dans une certaine mesure, la différence entre les deux textes pouvant être souvent imputé non à l'auteur mais au lecteur.
Well, I suppose that is why we are all here, reading this...
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I had to google this: The Embarkation for Cythera ("L'Embarquement pour Cythère") is a painting by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. It is also known as "Voyage to Cythera" and "Pilgrimage o..."Thank you for posting this Reem... Yes, these are Watteau's most famous paintings... Cythera means Watteau's world really.
Manny wrote: "You are right. I must reread this immediately after Kant, so that I can compare easily."If I were to do the opposite (read Kant immediately after Proust), I think I would be lost... Kant can't be improvised...
I must admit that Kant is very hard work, and not nearly as enjoyable as Proust. Though maybe that is because I am reading him in translation, which I never like much.
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I had to google this: The Embarkation for Cythera ("L'Embarquement pour Cythère") is a painting by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. It is also known as "Voyage to Cythera" and "Pilgrimage o...""L'Embarquement pour Cythère" was one of Proust's four favorite paintings in the Louvre.
In his essay on Watteau, Proust was able to empathize with Watteau's inability to find an "ideal" love, due to his poor health.
For more on Watteau and Proust...read this fabulous free article (just register):
"The Watteau and Chardin of Marcel Proust"
by Helen O. Borowitz
The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art
Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 18-35
Published by: Cleveland Museum of Art
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159754
Or...on the web (limited):
"The Impact of Art on French Literature: From de Scudéry to Proust"
By Helen Osterman Borowitz
Start: Page 166:
http://books.google.com/books?id=72ua...
Watteau's illness:
http://books.google.com/books?id=72ua...
'Portraits de peintres et de musiciens'
From "Les plaisirs et les jours" July 1894
ANTOINE WATTEAU
Twilight makes up the trees and the faces,
With his blue cloak, under his uncertain mask;
Kiss of dust around the tired mouths...
Far becomes close, and the very near, distant.
The masquerade, other melancholic distance,
Was love’s false gesture, sadder and charming.
Whim poet - or prudent lover,
The lover needing to be knowingly adorned
Here, boat, smells, silences and music.
http://www.yorktaylors.free-online.co...
Marcelita wrote: "."L'Embarquement pour Cythère" was one of Proust's four favorite paintings in the Louvre. .."Remember the funny reference to Watteau as a bateau à vapeur, a steamboat, a comment made perhaps by Elstir in A l'Ombre...
Kalliope wrote: "And yet another extraordinary passage:En réalité, chaque lecteur est quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-même. L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au ..."
Oh yes, this passage is crystal clear and confirms my own view.
Kalliope wrote: "And now he seems to be thinking along more Platonic concepts...Manny should have a look at this quote..
Les idées sont des succédanés des chagrins, au moment où ceux-ci se changent en idées ils perdent une partie de leur action nocive sur notre coeur, et même au premier instant, la transformation elle-même dégage subitement de la joie. Succédanés dans l'ordre du temps seulement, d'ailleurs, car il semble que l'élément premier ce soit l'Idée, et le chagrin seulement le mode selon lequel certains Idées entrent d'abord chez nous. Mais il y a plusieurs familles dans le groupe des Idées, certaines sont tout de suite des joies. pp. 309-310."
Kant does indeed talk about "modes" as ways of connecting ideas and experience, e.g. this passage at the end of the Refutation of Idealism:
The principles of modality, therefore, predicate nothing of a concept except the action of the faculty of knowledge by which it is produced. (...) We may therefore with the same right postulate the principles of modality, because they never expand the concept of things in general, but only indicate the manner in which the concept was connected with our faculty of knowledge.But I am not sure that Kant would like the idea of chagrin as a mode, if that is indeed what is intended.
Manny wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "And now he seems to be thinking along more Platonic concepts...Manny should have a look at this quote..
Les idées sont des succédanés des chagrins, au moment où ceux-ci se chang..."
Manny, the "modes" is used again a bit later on... Long sentence... There is a section on the importance of dreams (to which I want to come back later)... and says:
The "ils" below refer to "les rêves"
...qu'ils étaient un des modes pour retrouver le Temps perdu.>p. 316.
Fionnuala wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "."L'Embarquement pour Cythère" was one of Proust's four favorite paintings in the Louvre. .."Remember the funny reference to Watteau as a bateau à vapeur, a steamboat, a commen..."
I had forgotten.. thank you FioFio "pour l'avoir retrouvé". It was Helleu who had been referred to, no?
Phillida wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "And yet another extraordinary passage:En réalité, chaque lecteur est quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-même. L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique..."
Phillida,
We first discussed the appearance in Proust of this characteristic element of postmodernism in the Albertine disparue volume. (message 42 on the 3rd Nov thread).
It has occurred later a few times again and we have been commenting on it (#106 , 17th Nov). We also talked about Alain Robbe-Grillet, the exponent of Le Nouveau Roman who in his La jalousie seems to have picked up several of Proust’s aspects or themes with subjectivity (author or reader?) being one of them.
Fionnuala wrote: "Oh yes, this passage is crystal clear and confirms my own view.
..."
LOL,
I could not disagree with your view then, or may be yes.
More for Manny...the section on the "objectivation des sentiments"..
Je m'étais rendu compte que seule la perception grossière et erronée place tout dans l'objet, quand tout est dans l'esprit.> p. 316.
This concept is then elaborated with examples both from the being in love state and from attitudes in war times.
The theme is picked up a couple of pages later, in 319 in the Garnier-Flammarion. The two quotes are so similar that one of them could have disappeared had Proust had more time for editing.
Il n'est pas une heure de ma vie qui n'eût servi à m'apprendre que seule la perception grossière et erronée place tout dans l'objet quand tout est au contraire dans l'esprit.
The Narrator talking about the effects of the passage of time, and the blurring of memories, makes a parallel between having forgotten what exactly happened in the past to the people he has around him, to the forgetting also the details of a plot and what happens to the characters in a novel.His "real" people are our characters in the novel, and that process of forgetting is beginning for me...!!!
And yet another baffling passage and revelation about the role Albertine had played for him in his life and in his art... il était bien certain en effet que ces pages que j'écrirais Albertine surtout l'Albertine d'alors ne les eût pas comprises. Mais c'est justement pour cela... parce qu'elle était si indifférente de moi, qu'elle m'avait fécondé par le chagrin, et même d'abord par le simple effort pour imaginer ce qui diffère de soi. Ces pages, si elle avait été capable de les comprendre, par cela même elle ne les eût pas inspirées. pp. 319-320.
This quote ends this weeks section, although my Audio (Pléiade) and the G-F do not coincide in the ordering of some paragraphs.
Kalliope wrote: "LOL, I could not disagree with your view then, or may be yes.Smiling here too, Kalliope.
After all, L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au lecteur afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que sans ce livre, il n'eût peut être pas vu en soi-même. La reconnaissance en soi même, par le lecteur, de ce que dit le livre, est la preuve de la vérité de celui-ci et vice versa, au moins dans une certaine mesure, la différence entre les deux textes pouvant être souvent imputé non à l'auteur mais au lecteur, so my interpretaton is my own alone and yours is only yours..
Fionnuala wrote: "After all,L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre a..."
Exactly. Postmodernist ways of looking at things are very democratic.
"Chaque personne qui nous a fait souffrir peut etre ratachee par nous a une divite......Tout l'art de vivre, c'est de ne nous servir des personnes qui nous font souffrir que comme d'un degre permettant d'acceder a leur forme divine et de peupler ainsi joyeusement notre vie de divinites."
That is such a beautiful conceit; shall copy into my commonplace book.
If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I was reading MP speaking to me. If it were, then this last vol would be the preface (if you get what I mean).Eugene - I've really valued your consistent commentaries on the changeable narrator voices over the year as it has helped me appreciate the novel more....and what I (mis)understand from following you on this particular issue is that the Narrator is becoming/has now become the author??
I feel I haven't summarised your line on this well at all but I nevertheless wanted to say that I've been on a journey the other way....at the beginning I couldn't really accept the Narrator was NOT MP but, ironically thanks in part to your observations and my own reading, I can't - more precisely don't want - to accept the Narrator we hear now, whose voice, objectively speaking, is probably closest to MP's, is the author. That would now, for me, destroy the magic the author has created - a bit like a magician showing you how a trick was done, after he'd delivered the trick.
The other thought I wanted to share was that in writing about aesthetics, his writing felt like experiencing carvings in a church - I 'saw' dark-wooded circles - so that the aesthetical pleasure was in the writing about aesthetics; this links to the re-ification of love observation: love moves from cipher to cipher, as, it appears does writing that achieves aesthetical perfection, which could be writing about Francoise's speaking habits as much as in writing about the verious serious business of aestheics; and that therefore means this week's writing is no better than any other....though it feels that way, I would argue, because of the strong pull to be listening to Proust rather than the Narrator.
Marcus wrote: "If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I was reading MP s..."I think Marcus that for the most part, we have all been reading ISOLT as Proust's memoir even though we clearly are not meant to be doing so, but because so much material is drawn on actuality in his life, so auto-biographical that it is hard not to do so. Yes, Time Regained does read like the preface to the novel, but how much nicer to see the book arranged like this, that he goes from being the young child to the older man reflecting on the meaning of life. Proust is one of those very rare people who has an amazing amount of self-knowledge, and when we read of the narrator, we read of a self that has been studied so deeply, that it arises from being an inner self, to being the subject of this book. It isn't of Proust as people know him, but Proust as he knows himself, and we readers recognize ourselves in him, having ourselves done similar soul searching.
I think Proust mostly speaks to people who have looked very hard into their own mirrors.
And once one understands that suffering is the best thing that one can hope to encounter in life, one thinks without terror, and almost as of a deliverance, of death. ML p. 319One of my questions since Swann in Love and mainly later with Albertine was how does jealousy relate to art in Proust. Jealousy is an aspect of "suffering" and it helps when he has encountered it to deliver him from "terror of death" or so the Narrator says.
Proust was not in good health and this may be a 'truth' which was more apparent to him when he courageously realized from time to time that he was mortal. Carter mentions that he forecasted his immanent death in the last 10 years of his life on many occasions.
So what has death to do with art here? The thought of the Narrator while his being kept in the Guermantes library is a 'confused' collection of topics that mixes broadly--being specific to art here--his aesthetics or what he considers beautiful and what his subjects of beauty or non-beauty are.
Jealousy or suffering has nothing to do with his concept of the beautiful but has much to do with his subjects and here I mean social personalities: Swann, Charlus, Saint-Loup, etc. in their 3rd person loves/jealousies and Albertine, the Narrator's 1st person paramour but really his para-art.
Books are always written in the past tense, even when they purport to tell us what is happening using the present tense. I suspect that in order for Proust to write, to make art out of jealousy, jealousy must have died in him along with those who inspired it, either in real life or in his fiction. He can view people, either the real or the fictive dead, objectively knowing what happened to them and to his protagonist in their interactions; and with that he can make art. Can anyone escape Time?
As I've said, this is a simple novel written in a complex way. Was Proust or the Narrator free of the "terror of death"? I doubt that, but you may have other opinions.
Marcus wrote: "If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I was reading MP s..."I like the idea - which I think Kalliope mentioned earlier too - of this last book in the role of a preface - although it would be a fairly enigmatic one for the first time reader. But it works very well as a postface too.
As to the question of the narrator, I've come to see it this way: there is the fictional Narrator (a character in the narrative, once or twice mentioned by name as Marcel) and there is the narrator of the fictional Narrator's narrrative, whom we tend to call Marcel Proust, and then, behind those two there is the author, Proust himself who may or may not be either or both.
Kate wrote: ""Tout l'art de vivre, c'est de ne nous servir des personnes qui nous font souffrir que comme d'un degre permettant d'acceder a leur forme divine et de peupler ainsi joyeusement notre vie de divinites." That is such a beautiful conceit; shall copy into my commonplace book."Sometimes when I see a quote removed from its context, I get a different perspective on it. Yours provided me with a moment of clarity about another author entirely - John Banville. Have you ever read any of his work?
Fionnuala wrote: "Marcus wrote: "If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I w..."Fionnuala - perfect! To have Proust 'behind' the Narrator's Narrator works very well for me, thank you. It sustains and maintains the feeling and image I've had since the discussion on mirrors (Narrator seeing himself in one and noticing his fluffy moustache when sitting with Andree) that in ISOLT we are in a hall of mirrors.
"...behind those two there is the author, Proust himself who may or may not be either or both." It's the may or may not that works for me. It allows for possibilities.
Kalliope wrote: "More for Manny...the section on the "objectivation des sentiments"..
Je m'étais rendu compte que seule la perception grossière et erronée place tout dans l'objet, quand tout est dans l'esprit.> ..."
This is an interesting contrast with Kant; it seems to me that Kant would say that both "objet" and "ésprit" were essential. But in other places, Proust also seems to be saying that, so maybe this is just a flight of poetic exaggeration.
Eugene wrote: "And once one understands that suffering is the best thing that one can hope to encounter in life, one thinks without terror, and almost as of a deliverance, of death. ML p. 319One of my questions..."
I am reading ISOLT mainly because it was the last novel on a reading list I was working through from Harold Bloom's 'How to Read and Why'. I mention that because in the Proust section he addresses the jealousy theme head on. Bloom writes: "the apotheosis of what could be called the jealous sublime is achieved in Marcel's retrospective quest for the lost time of Albertine's lesbian "betrayals" of her possessive lover." The, very pertinent to this week's reading I think, he says: "I sometimes feel that the best literary training my students at Yale or NYU can obtain is only an enhancement of their pragmatic training by sexual jealousy, the most aesthetic of all psychic maladies, as Iago knew,"
Now that last bit is quit a stretch. The Narrator claims he suffered (by choice, knowing Albertine didn't love him as he loved her - or did he??) to create. Bloom seems to be saying we, as readers, need to suffer to appreciate the creation. Well, I have suffered but do I deliberately need to choose more to fully appreciate or will my memory of past sufferings suffice. On that note, it seems to me, a serial monogamist, that the fear inherent in sexual jealousy is in the same range as the fear of going into battle - the former I have experienced, the latter I imagine - it's the fear of anihilation I think.
At the risk of causing embarrassment - it's been a privilege to share much of this experience with you, Eugene.
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Marcus wrote: "If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I w...""I think Proust mostly speaks to people who have looked very hard into their own mirrors." YES. And, nearing the end, I have a feeling of having scratched the surface of the mirror that is ISOLT.
Marcus wrote: "...It allows for possibilities."Oh, yes, Marcus, possibilities for the author - shouldn't an author have the right to make things as layered as he wants and some of those layers inaccessible to others if he so chooses?
And possibilities for the reader - shouldn't we be allowed to recreate/reassemble those layers any way we choose according to how it strikes us/responds to our thinking, at whatever point we are in our lives as we are reading it?
This passage which Kalliope quoted earlier this week says that exactly:
En réalité, chaque lecteur est quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-même. L'ouvrage de l'écrivain n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au lecteur afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que sans ce livre, il n'eût peut être pas vu en soi-même. La reconnaissance en soi même, par le lecteur, de ce que dit le livre, est la preuve de la vérité de celui-ci et vice versa, au moins dans une certaine mesure, la différence entre les deux textes pouvant être souvent imputé non à l'auteur mais au lecteur.
I can't find the page number right now but I'm sure you can get the gist of it...
Manny wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "More for Manny...Je m'étais rendu compte que seule la perception grossière et erronée place tout dans l'objet, quand tout est..."
Manny,
Before, throughout the work, the Narrator often mentions "l'idée" as something that has to precede experience. And many of these instance it is in an aesthetic context.
Phenomenology also seems to be in his mind.
Kris recommended this book The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty, which I may try and fit in my reading soon.
Fionnuala wrote: "Marcus wrote: "If this book is a novel, then the Narrator's thoughts on art, suffering, truth, aesthetics etc are not MP speaking. I found it more mysterious when reading this week to NOT think I w..."I agree. Those three levels, and the author himself comes in, is what most of the French scholars acknowledge. Certainly the notes of the GF edition with its several editors (under the direction of Jean Milly) use this concept. And then I see the protagonist shifting in age backwards and forwards any way... So, as the text often says, "il y plusieurs moi" - there is multiplicity or fragmentation of the Narrator in capital letters. The three with the variations of each one of them.
Kalliope wrote: "Before, throughout the work, the Narrator often mentions "l'idée" as something that has to precede experience."Well, how can you get more Kantian than that? When I have returned from my voyage on the stormy ocean of metaphysics (the boat is leaving in about 30 pages), I will immediately go over to Le temps retrouvé and start searching myself.
I am more and more surprised that there isn't already a large literature on connections between Proust and Kant. Even if it isn't true, you'd think many people would speculate about it!
Kalliope wrote: "Those three levels, and the author himself comes in, is what most of the French scholars acknowledge. Certainly the notes of the GF edition with its several editors (under the direction of Jean Milly) use this concept.."I haven't read any of the introductions in the GF edition yet, Kall - and I must say I hadn't picked up on this concept of the three levels in the notes - which never offer opinion just fact about when this or that event happened, or who this or that person was, or that Proust added such and such a section at a later date.
But I am pleased that I've hit on an idea that the academics agree on.
Manny wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Before, throughout the work, the Narrator often mentions "l'idée" as something that has to precede experience."Well, how can you get more Kantian than that? When I have returned ..."
I still want to know what (at least) Kristeva and Barthes have said about Proust, but I barred myself from secondary reading (except for memoirs or bios) until I have finished the novel.
Anyway, I am very interested in your investigation. I don't think though that it can ever be said that "it is not true" that there are connections between K and P... as you pointed out Gautier-Vignal mentioned it and Kant is mentioned several times.
Last April, Harvard condensed their conference to just Saturday, due to the terrible bombing. Richard Moran was a presenter on Kant and Proust.Harvard's Interdisciplinary Conference: Proust and the Arts, April 2013
http://www.proust-arts.com/presenters...
"RICHARD MORAN is Brian D. Young Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author of Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge (2001) and has published papers on metaphor, imagination, emotional engagement with art, and aesthetics and the philosophy of literature. His article, 'Kant, Proust, and the Appeal of Beauty,' appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Critical Inquiry, and he teaches a course at Harvard entitled 'Philosophy and Literature: Proust.'"
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/han...
My experience is that an ingenious critic can assert or deny anything, but you would need to be very ingenious indeed to deny some connection here. Maybe people have written about it, and it just isn't showing up on Google for some reason...
Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Those three levels, and the author himself comes in, is what most of the French scholars acknowledge. Certainly the notes of the GF edition with its several editors (under the dire..."No, I have not read the intro either.. just the notes - and as you say, since they tend to just give data, it has just been a few cases when they have mentioned the "protagoniste, le narrateur et Proust".
And I am not surprised you have hit the right nail... That is what I meant in my post, that you got what the a few of the French scholars have agreed on.
Marcelita wrote: "Last April, Harvard condensed their conference to just Saturday, due to the terrible bombing. Richard Moran was a presenter on Kant and Proust.Harvard's Interdisciplinary Conference: Proust and t..."
Thank you Marcelita! Just accessed this and will check it out over lunch...
The Year of Reading Proust
Books mentioned in this topic
Le rire (other topics)The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty (other topics)
Flaubert's Parrot (other topics)
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (other topics)
François le Champi (other topics)
More...
My puzzlement concerns one of the key elements in the Recherche, and presumably present from the beginning, the notion of art created through suffering. Had he already suffered or did he just know that he was destined to suffer and transform that suffering into art? And furthermore, was the way he chose to live out his final years, i.e., writing from his bed and hardly ever going out, him fulfilling the planned narrative curve of the book or the planned book obliging him to live in this way.
Please don't answer all at once...
Shameless plug, but I did make a tumblr page on the theme of suffering/art as mentioned by Proust.
http://aportraitofawomanreading.tumbl...