The Year of Reading Proust discussion
The Fugitive, vol. 6
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Through Sunday, 17 Nov.: The Fugitive
Either in the Lounge or in last week's thread it was mentioned that the Venice visit was written earlier on.The preface to the GF has an excellent list of the Cahiers, with their dates and their contents.
The beginning section, comparing the city to Combray, was already in the Cahier 3 (1908-1909). That Cahier also has a section describing memories of an earlier visit to Venice in which he brought sorrow to his mother for pretending that he did not want to leave.
The visit to Padua and the Giotto frescoes are in the Cahier 50 (1911), as well as the fight with the mother, the O Sole Mio, the letters read in the train and the holidays in Tansonville with Gilberte.
Cahier 56 has the synthesis of his earlier workings on Venice and the theme of forgetting.
Cahiers XII-XV (composed of collated pieces of paper) is the closest to the final version of Albertine disparue.
The very complex formation of this volume may be explains what I have found a very accelerated pace in the plot aspects, mostly the "what happened to whom", presented after the Venice section and before the "rapprochement" to Gilberte and the key to our understanding of the meaning of "les deux côtés".
In the section where the Narrator discusses Carpaccio he also mentions the Ballet by Richard Strauss Josephslegende or Légende de JosephThe libretto was by Hofmanstahl, and Kessler. The settings by Sert, the costumes by Bakst, and the choreography by Fokine. The premiere was on May 1914 in Paris.
.. dans cette éblouissante Légende de joseph de Sert, Strauss et Kessler p.310.
And a fragment of the ballet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JZuVw...
And for those interested, a good book on Kessler..
The Red Count: The Life and Times of Harry Kessler
I don't think that I could ever listen to O Sole Mio again without thinking of the Narrator's despair and sadness, and seeing the magic of Venice crumbling and vanishing. What powerful lines.
Kalliope wrote: "Martin wrote: "Someone mentioned the titles that Proust had carefully chosen, and as I finis..."
Yes, Martin, I agree with you on the themes of escape whether from others or oneself are certainl..."
That's true, but I thought that "The Fugitive" was out at the time, since it was the title of an already popular book?
Still, I could be reading too much into it, too. Since this one is the hardest really to fit into the slot, and was changed so much, I'd agree that we really can't be sure.
Martin wrote: "That's true, but I thought that "The Fugitive" was out at the time, since it was the title of an already popular book?..."
Yes, Tagore got the Nobel Prize in 1913 with The Fugitive.
Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "And I think we should be pleased with ourselves in this group for having paid attention to the leitmotiv of Fortuny in the previous volume.He is bro..."
Good find Kalliope. Yes, I too was surprised to find that he was a Wagnerian and worked on the lighting. The painting is a knock out!
I'll check your links tomorrow.
You know how in our day, now, we have people with blogs, tumblrs, twitter pages, facebook pages, instagrams and what not with everyone creating a curated identity. Proust did the same thing in his day, collecting and giving us all that was trending, the pop culture of his day. He was recording it all.
ISOLT= a curated identity
My Proust, that which endears him to me, a vision of what has gone on before, that makes me miss it, or miss something like it that I knew in my own life, my own family. The leisurely gait, a humble pretension, with which he writes, transcends me. I know what he's speaking of even when I've not known the specifics that he mentions. He becomes familiar here.Thus there proceeded in our dining-room, in the lamplight that is so congenial to them, one of those long chats in which the wisdom not of nations but of families, taking hold of some event, a death, a betrothal, an inheritance, a bankruptcy, and slipping it under the magnifying glass of memory, brings it into high relief, detaches, thrusts back, and places in perspective at different points in space and time things which to those who have not lived through it seem to be juxtaposed on a single plane, the names of the deceased, successive addresses, the origins of a fortune and its vicissitudes, transfers of property. It is the wisdom inspired by the Muse whom it is best to ignore for as long as possible if we wish to retain some freshness of impressions, some creative power, but who even those who have ignored her meet in the evening of their lives in the nave of an old country church, at a point when suddenly they feel less susceptible to the eternal beauty expressed in the carvings on the altar than to the thought of the vicissitudes of fortune which those carvings have undergone, passing into a famous private collection or a chapel, from there to a museum, then returning at length to the church, or to the feeling that as they walk around it they may be treading upon a flagstone almost endowed with thought, which is made of the ashes of Arnauld or Pascal, or simply to deciphering (forming perhaps a mental picture of a fresh-faced country girl) on the brass plate of the wooden priedieu the names of the daughters of the squire or the notable—the Muse who has gathered up everything that the more exalted Muses of philosophy and art have rejected, everything that is not founded upon truth, everything that is merely contingent, but that reveals other laws as well: the Muse of History. ML P. 918-919
It's Wednesday, I'm in my truck again, I listened to the last chapter of the volume that I'd read last night. The Modern Library translation stops at a point but the Moncrieff translation, that is recorded by Neville Jason, goes on into ~10 pages of Time Regained before it ends--listening, I didn't recall it, I was transfixed--the audio/Moncrieff ending is much better than the ML translation which abruptly stops.Plus you get to know at last the identity of the garçon walking with Gilberte on the Champs-Élysées that the Narrator saw from his carriage after selling Aunt Leonie's bowl to be able to buy Gilberte a 'lifetime of flowers'.
The GF edition gives the two other versions of the episode of Mme de Villeparisis and Norpois. These appeared in Le Temps on the 15th of December 1919 titled "Mme de Villeparisis à Venise" and the second was published in a luxurious edition, with illustrations by Maime Dethomas, and called "A Venice".I shall come back to this, but both seem much more engaged with the politics discussed by Norpois and the Prince Foggi, than the version in the novel.
Interesting discussions on "identity", of the self and of others through representation.On the latter, others exist for us through the idea we make of them.
.. et que les êtres n'existent pour nouw que par l'idée que nous avons d'eux... p. 304
and of the Self
..l'homme que j'étais, le jeune homme blond n'existe plus, je suis un autre. Or n'est-ce pas un changemente aussi profond, une mort aussi totale du moi qu'on était, la substitution aussi complète de ce moi nouveau que de voir un visage ridé surmonté d'une perruque blanche qui a remplacé l'ancien? p. 305.
and later...
.. J'aurais été incapable de ressuciter Albertine parce que je l'étais de me ressuciter moi même, de ressuciter mon moi d'alors. p. 306
and more..
..mais par des changements trop imperceptibles pour me permettre de me rendre compte du fait même du changement avait presque tout entièrement renouvelé en moi, de sorte que ma pensée était déjà habituée à son nouveau maître - mon nouveau moi. p. 306.
Thanks Kalliope and Reem for all the beautiful treasures you shared with us! It illuminates this week's section. I found the video on Giotto's Arena Chapel particularly instructional.I'd like to add a few pictures taken from the books by Eric Karpeles and Eleonora Marangoni.
Quant à ma ruine relative, j'en étais d'autant plus ennuyé que mes curiosités vénitiennes s'étaient concentrées depuis peu sur une jeune marchande de verrerie, à la carnation de fleur qui fournissait aux yeux ravis toute une gamme de tons orangés et me donnait un tel désir de la revoir chaque jour que, sentant que nous quitterions bientôt Venise, ma mère et moi, j'étais résolu à tâcher de lui faire à Paris une situation quelconque qui me permît de ne pas me séparer d'elle. La beauté de ses dix-sept ans était si noble, si radieuse, que c'était un vrai Titien à acquérir avant de s'en aller. p304
Portrait of Isabella d'Este, Titian, 1536
I cannot find the text online (Eugene quotes parts and it's page 310 in the GF edition):The Burial of Saint-Ursula by Carpaccio:
Le Patriarche di Grado by Carpaccio:
http://www.jacqueslanciault.com/2011/...
A Fortuny coat:
http://egotecadelantipatico.blogspot.... (en español)
The Storm at Sunset by Whistler:
On M. de Norpois' diplomatic chef-d'oeuvre:Proust's satirical bite is in full force:
Le prince Foggi crut au premier instant que ces questions de politique n'intéressaient pas M. de Norpois, car celui-ci, qui jusque-là s'était exprimé avec tant de véhémence, s'était mis soudain à garder un silence presque angélique qui semblait ne pouvoir s'épanouir, si la voix revenait, qu'en un chant innocent et mélodieux de Mendelssohn ou de César Franck. p298
"Angelic" M. de Norpois is not. But I wonder what type of chant by Mendelssohn or Franck Proust had in mind. I know there are music connoisseurs in our group... :)
The theme of music continues throughout the scene with the same delightful satirical effect:
À ces mots les écailles du prince Foggi tombèrent; il entendit un murmure céleste. Puis aussitôt M. de Norpois se mit à parler de choses et autres, ne craignit pas de faire quelque bruit, comme, lorsque la dernière note d'un sublime aria de Bach est terminée, on ne craint plus de parler à haute voix, d'aller chercher ses vêtements au vestiaire. p299
...
Il était assurément ravi d'avoir entendu ce chef-d'oeuvre: «Et M. Giolitti, est-ce que personne n'a prononcé son nom?» Car M. de Norpois, chez qui l'âge avait éteint ou désordonné les qualités les plus belles, en revanche avait perfectionné en vieillissant les «airs de bravoure», comme certains musiciens âgés, en déclin pour tout le reste, acquièrent jusqu'au dernier jour, pour la musique de chambre, une virtuosité parfaite qu'ils ne possédaient pas jusque-là. p299
An aria by Bach?...
On Albertine's improbable telegram:Just after the Narrator shares his financial troubles with us (possibly another autobiographical element?), he receives a telegram that leads him to wonderful musings on the healing of his maladie d'amour (full of wonderful quotes I'll refrain from pasting here!) which he concludes with these striking thoughts about immortality:
Notre amour de la vie n'est qu'une vieille liaison dont nous ne savons pas nous débarrasser. Sa force est dans sa permanence. Mais la mort qui la rompt nous guérira du désir de l'immortalité. p 308
And of course Proust's own desire for immortality nourished his oeuvre and was thus fulfilled.
Book Portrait wrote: "I cannot fine text online (Eugene quotes parts and it's page 310 in the GF edition):http://www.jacqueslan..."
Thank BP. All these paintings are in the Karpeles book.
Oups, you said that.
There is actually a Thread for the Karpeles book, which someone at the very beginning of the group read volunteered to post the paintings, but then stopped.
I am actually going to give away my Karpeles because I bought the English edition, and buy it again in French.
Les Bains Deligny in Paris:It was a floating swimming pool on the Seine river in central Paris. It sank in 1993.
...je sentais que cet horizon si voisin, que j'aurais pu atteindre en une heure, c'était une courbure de la terre tout autre que celle des mers de France, une courbure lointaine qui se trouvait, par l'artifice du voyage, amarrée près de moi; si bien que ce bassin de l'arsenal, à la fois insignifiant et lointain, me remplissait de ce mélange de dégoût et d'effroi que j'avais éprouvé tout enfant la première fois que j'accompagnai ma mère aux bains Deligny;... p317
Around 1850
Around 1920
Much more recently as we can see from the swimsuits and the crowd :)
From http://parisisinvisible.blogspot.fr/2...
(good article in English about the history of les bains Deligny which sank in the Seine river in 1993...)
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piscine_...
Kalliope wrote: "Thank BP. All these paintings are in the Karpeles book.Oups, you said that..."
Lol. Yes they're from Karpeles. I haven't read all the threads but I really liked it when the paintings were posted in the threads. :D
The Fortuny coat is from Proust et la peinture italienne (the coat is in a private collection but I found a small pic online).
I got Marangoni's book yesterday and it's a little pricey at €18 for the format (paperback-y with a soft cover) but the illustrations are decent and the comments good (if too few! Apparently Eleonora Marangoni wrote her thesis on Proust & la peinture italienne and that's what I'd love to read!).
(FYI I don't know if you saw it but I posted a link to a webdoc on France Inter this morning in the francophone thread and there's a short sound of Marangoni talking about Proust & Italian paintings... I think she was interviewed during the "un été avec Proust" on France Inter... )
Book Portrait wrote: "Lol. Yes they're from Karpeles. I haven't read all the threads but I really liked it when the pain..."
Yes, I had a look a the Marangoni book, but I am beginning to feel that not all secondary books are interesting if one has read Proust with care (Fionnuala already stated this earlier on) and if one is already familiar with the theme discussed (in this case Italian painting for me). The Karpeles book is different because it it is a parallel companion to the novel.
I have accumulated a few of these books and my guess is that I will be disappointed with some. Let me know what you think of the Marangoni.
Book Portrait wrote: The Fortuny coat is from Proust et la peinture italienne (the coat is in a private collection but I found a small pic online).I recognized the Fortuny coat you posted that was in the link I posted earlier where it says:
"Some accounts have Fortuny designing the costumes for Welles’ 1952 movie, “Othello.” Others say Welles had the costumes made of Fortuny fabric; doublets have been mentioned, and “three coats.” One tale has Welles bursting in on Fortuny shortly before the designer died in 1949 and modeling some kind of fur-lined item.
Welles himself recalled learning, while preparing to shoot in a small Moroccan city, that his Italian costume–maker was bankrupt. He immediately shifted one scene to a Turkish bath to justify filming male actors naked from the waist up, and hired local tailors to make costumes based on pictures of Renaissance paintings.
In the end, Welles claimed to have had an army clad in armor made of sardine tins, but what of the main characters? Did any of them get to wear Fortuny? Some grainy old black-and-white stills from this black-and-white movie show Welles in a costume that looks as though it conceivably could include this fur-trimmed multi-color coat, left."
http://jdavidsen.wordpress.com/tag/fo...
Davidsen says the coat is at the Museo del Traje, Madrid. Kalliope shall have to go investigate.
Reem that link is amazing! Yes that the same Fortuny coat and it's gorgeous. :)
Kalliope, I don't think you'd get much out of Marangoni's book on Italian paintings. You're too much of a specialist already. :)
Book Portrait wrote: "Les Bains Deligny in Paris:...je sentais que cet horizon si voisin, que j'aurais pu atteindre en une heure, ..."
Thanks for these... Seeing the images one is not surprised that the Narrator child would have been horrified to be in a place like that.
Book Portrait wrote: "On M. de Norpois' diplomatic chef-d'oeuvre:..."
I always get the impression that Music intrigued the Narrator (Proust), while Painting fascinated him because it gave him perception tools. While Literature was obviously his natural medium, and therefore he discussed it less consciously. He just took it for granted and could quote generously and easily.
He mentions the eagle in the context of the Carpaccio's in San Giorgio dei Schiavoni. I have been unable to locate the eagle. In the text the Narrator associates it with one of the Apostles. The panels in this Scuola are based on Apocryphal stories rather than the Bible.The book mentioned in a post above Proust and Venice, can be google for this (search eagle and Carpaccio) and Collier says that as the Eagle is the animal associated with St. John, this would follow on the Redemption themes and the resuscitation of the memories of Albertine.
One of my photos... Could not use flash.
And a wonderful "historical-fiction painting"
By the American Joseph Lindon Smith.
Jocelyne wrote: "I don't think that I could ever listen to O Sole Mio again without thinking of the Narrator's despair and sadness, and seeing the magic of Venice crumbling and vanishing. What powerful lines."Jocelyne, the same for me.. That song has changed forever (even if it is part of my Venice souvenir).
Thinking again about this Elegiac reception of the O Sole mio, and how the whole section on Venice began (at the end of last week’s read), it just seems that the Narrator shuns the sun.
When they arrive in Venice there is a strong sun (for many people Venice is associated with fog). He even has an image of the world being like a large sundial (le monde n’est qu’un vaste cadran solaire). It is also very sunny when he visits the Giotto chapel in Padua and it is thanks to that light that he underlines the blueness of the chapel.
There are many more instances in this whole section in which the sun is mentioned and at the beginning he seems to take it in stride (gets up at 10 am, which it seems really surprised the mother). He seems, however, to enjoy it more when it is “outside” while he is “inside” and just receives the signs of the sunny day.
Here is a lovely quote that expresses this idea.
..il faisait si bon goûter le soleil, tout proche dans l’obscurité conservée par les volets clos, ici ........ la même fraîcheur et le même sentiment de la splendeur du dehors étaient donnés grâce au velum qui se mouvait devant les fenêtres perpetuellement ouvertes, et par lesquelles dans un incessant courant d’air l’ombre tiède et le soleil verdâtre filaient comme sur une surface flottante et évoquaient le voisinage mobile, l’illumination, la miroitante instabilité du flot. P. 309.
But eventually the sun seems to irritate him.. He needs his curtains to protect him... And the popular Ode to the Sun becomes the Chant to his Solitude as the sun goes down behind Saint-Georges-le-Majeur and becomes the “crépuscule”--the word he associates with Albertine (Agostinelli).
The sun as the promise of happiness (une promesse de joie), which for him never arrives...
Thanks for the beautiful Karpeles paintings, BP. THe photos of the Deligny baths are amazing.Kall, I also found the discussions of the different moi most interesting and I like Reem's applying the concept of curated identity to Proust.
Jocelyne wrote: "Kall, I also found the discussions of the different moi most interesting and I like Reem's applying th..."
Do you have the Karpeles book, Jocelyne?.
And yes, the curated identity is a very interesting concept.. I saw it in the handheld and did not comment... Thank you for reminding me. I have to read it again.
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ".."The curated identity... I had not heard of this term before... fascinating..
He also develops in a remarkable way the old theme of Eros and Thanatos (and he does so very differently from Thomas Mann).He starts by stating that he no longer thinks of Albertine because he has stopped seeing her.. which takes him to think about his being separated from himself on his death.
...je ne tiens plus à elle maintenant parce que pendant un certain temps j'ai cessé de la voir. Mon désir de ne pas être séparé de moi-même par la mort, de ressusciter après la mort, ce désir-là n'était pas comme le désir de ne jamais être séparé d'Albertine, il durait toujours.
but as he has stopped loving her because he has stopped seeing her (cessant de la voir, j'avais cessé de l'aimer), but he has not stopped loving himself because he continues to live with himself..(je n'avais cessé de m'aimer parce que mes liens quotidiens avec moi-même n'avaient pas été rompus).
And this leads him to state that dying will also liberate one from the desire of immortality.
Notre amour de la vie n'est qu'une vieille liaison dont nous ne savons pas nous débarrasser. Sa force est dans sa permanence. Mais la mort, qui la rompt, nous guérira du désir de l'immortalité.p. 308.
And yet, today, 100 years later.. He or his thinking, is still alive. We do not know whether he knows it.
I like that Kalliope - the fact that we don't know if he knows he hasn't 'died' yet, though it does beg the question, who doesn't know? On the face of it you are referring to MP though it's the Narrator who says it. I am happy to go with the latter....makes it more magical and mysterious.
I hope Proust doesn't totally rehabilitate "our old friend" Legrandin...He had taken up tennis at the age of fifty-five. In proportion as M. de Charlus had thickened and slowed down, Legrandin had become slimmer and brisker, the contrary effect of an identical cause. ML p. 904
...because I loved what grandmother said of him, 'that he talks too much like a book'.
But speaking of the same cause and a different effect, a little later Proust writes of the Narrator, Saint Loup and the lift-boy,
At least so I believed; I could not be absolutely certain, for we never see more than one aspect of things, and had it not been that the thought distressed me, I should have found a certain beauty in the fact that, whereas for me sending the lift-boy to Saint-Loup had been the most convenient way of conveying a letter to him and receiving his answer, for him it had meant making the acquaintance of a person who had taken his fancy. For everything is at least dual. On to the most insignificant action that we perform, another man will graft a series of entirely different actions. ML p. 927
I was disappointed with the Narrators sojourn in Venice in one way and not in another way that will spoil the ending of the book for you if I mention my suppositions--and of course, if I am right--so let me speak only of the former.I was ready to hear the Narrator discourse on the beauty of 'his promised' Venice as he did on hearing Vinteuil's septet instead he remembers Albertine, chases poor Venetian women, scares off Austrian tourists with his homophobic questioning, receives a telegram from the dead woman, and finally has an hallucinogenic tantrum to O Solo Mio because Mamma wants to leave Venice before Mme Putbus's maid arrives.
Now perhaps a reason for my dissatisfaction was that Proust realized that he could say nothing better of Venice than that "man of genius", Ruskin, had said and didn't--I don't know--not having read The Stones of Venice or many other of his works, but is this why Proust includes in the Narrator's sojourn in Venice that long comic scene in the dining room with Villeparisis, Norpois, Foggi and Sazerat?
By the way, I enjoyed that dining room scene, I like Proust's masters of language: Norpois, Charlus and Françoise because, among other things, they define wit for the author. I also like Giotto and consider him significant, as significant as I consider Proust for similar reasons.
...Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature..."
...Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as...initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life..."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto
But M Proust, you can see things from many angles; when the Narrator spoke of Giotto's angels in the Arena Chapel I thought of houseflies, and then Proust mentions airmen...but this is a beauty too, a writer's beauty, an unconventional and a great one that carries you off on your imagination, as if it had wings like Giotto's angels.
I can't find where BP posted her photo of Proust in Venice, but I just came across it in this article:On the eve of publication Proust set out his artistic credo in Le Temps: “Je ne publie qu’un volume, Du côté de chez Swann, d’un roman qui aura pour titre général A la recherche du temps perdu. J’aurais voulu publier le tout ensemble; mais on n’édite plus d’ouvrages en plusieurs volumes. Je suis comme quelqu’un qui a une tapisserie trop grande pour les appartements actuels et qui a été obligé de la couper” (“ . . . I would have liked to have published the whole thing together, but works are no longer published several volumes at a time. I am like somebody who has a wall hanging too big for the intended rooms and who has been obliged to cut it up”). He points out that his novel “is dominated by the distinction between involuntary and voluntary memory” and goes on to stress that the “Je”, i.e. the Narrator, of the novel is not him, before concluding “The pleasure that an artist gives us, is to introduce us to another universe” – "Le plaisir que nous donne un artiste, c'est de nous faire connaître un univers de plus". He must have known these words could be fully applied to his own forthcoming work.
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stoth...
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I can't find where BP posted her photo of Proust in Venice, but I just came across it in this article:On the eve of publication Proust set out his artistic credo in Le Temps: “Je ne publie qu’un ..."
Yes, that interview in Le Temps was posted, in audio, by Fionnuala in comment # 45 on the 27th October thread. I then transcribed it into a text, alas only in French, in comment #50. I should try and translate it.
Thank you for the TLS blog, Reem...
BP's photo was in #135 in the 10th November Thread. It is a fabulous picture.
Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I can't find where BP posted her photo of Proust in Venice, but I just came across it in this article:On the eve of publication Proust set out his artistic credo in ..."
My goodness you have everything organized so well! I was like where is that photo now? lol More power to you Kalliope! It is indeed a fabulous photo because Proust seems to have been caught off guard.
Regarding the curated identity term, I posted this quote in my tumblr:
"As we see our face, figure, and dress in the [looking] glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another’s mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it. … A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person, the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification."Charles Horton Cooley’s “The Looking Glass Self,” written in 1902
... and it had me thinking of Proust and his magic lantern as a parallel to the looking glass. Proust was the ultimate curator of his identity as he had so much to work with.
And him seeing himself in the mirror in the meeting in Paris with Andree , Reem. That That's end still haunts me - think there's something about ghosts only being visible in the mirror
Marcus wrote: "And him seeing himself in the mirror in the meeting in Paris with Andree , Reem. That That's end still haunts me - think there's something about ghosts only being visible in the mirror"Yes Marcus, remember also the very first pages of Swann's Way where he writes:
while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable.
Oh and I just found this: ....to transform their personality into a sort of mirror....“But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, Part 2
Toward the end of the book, when the Narrator talks about his indifference to Gilberte and how he can't identify with the person who grieved over her, he says, "Car il y a dans le monde ou tout s'use, ou tout perit, une chose qui tombe en ruines, qui se detruit encore plus completement, en laissant encore moins de vestiges que la beauté: c'est le Chagrin.The idea that grief fades more than beauty itself strikes me as odd, unless the Narrator refers only to the grief caused by a sentimental disappointment. Don't we know people who literally die of grief? I was also struck when viewing an interview of holocaust survivors how fresh and raw their grief was as if they had lived through the tragedy only two weeks prior to the interview. Grief may go to a quieter place but sometimes I believe that it never dies, and the 'moi' who lived through the pain may subsume all the other 'moi'. I was wondering what your take was on this.
Kall, I don't have the Karpeles book yet.
Jocelyne, could it be that his grief for his grandmother, for example, has disappeared and he regrets this, that he sees grief as something which, like beauty, inevitably fades. Is it that, unlike most of us, he treasures his grief and wants it to last?
...Jupien, who, the better informed reader knows, was Odette's first cousin. ML p. 915
Marcus wrote: "I like that Kalliope - the fact that we don't know if he knows he hasn't 'died' yet, though it does beg the question, who doesn't know? On the face of it you are referring to MP though it's the Nar..."Yes, you are right, Marcus. The volumes he wrote last seem to me more autobiographical. My sense is that it was during the editing and polishing phases that he blurred further the autobiographical aspects and fictionalized his text further.
I belong to the group of those (in an earlier post the thesis and book of the Proustian who defends this view was mentioned) who think that the slippage of the name Marcel would have been corrected and he would have left the Narrator unnamed.
Fionnuala wrote: "I have moved on from the Venice section and there is a lot I want to discuss but I will be patient and just comment for the moment on the way all the loose threads in the fabric of the Recherche ar..."Together with his picking up the loose threads he also uses key words or leitmotivs to conjure up earlier parts of the novel. And that is why paying attention to his flowers, to his colors, to his paintings and clothes etc... is important when reading Proust.
His writing was deliberate.
Here is the Narrator's mother reminding him about his talking of flowers:
.. Enfin toi, qui as tant parlé à Saint-Loup des épines roses, des lilas et des iris de Tansonville, il te comprendra mieux. C'est lui qui les possédera. p. 339.
On the nickname of "Bobette" for Morel, the GF edition reminds us that Morel was in earlier drafts Bobby Santois.Another sample of the unpolished aspect of this volume is that Jupien's niece is sometimes referred to as his daughter.
On names and on the surprises revealed to us in this volume about Saint-Loup.... It is interesting that the Narrator has no brother, but that the person who was his closest friend, and who stops being so during the novel, to great sorrow for the Narrator, is called "Robert", like Docteur Robert Proust...!!
Kalliope I remember that discussion about the sudden appearance of a flood of 'Marcels' and that with time he would have hidden them. For me that's part of the significance of the the scene where we see the Narrator's image but in a mirror - that's the device of an illusionist ...we still haven't seen the Narrator
...so we can't know for certain whether he is or isn"t Msrcel Proust and that is much more beguiling. This isn't autobiography because the person who wrote it called it a novel not his memoirs. There have been quite a lot of tv and films lately where famous people play themselves...which I love...Steve Coogsn in The Trip eg (very UK centric that ref)..And even if you saysay that the narrator is Marcel Proust playing himself, he is still doing just that 'playing' and not taking part in an historical reproduction. The allure is the question - who is the Narator - buy I for one don't need to know it definitely is MP. I guess we're being teased to some extent.
Kalliope wrote: "On the nickname of "Bobette" for Morel, the GF edition reminds us that Morel was in earlier drafts Bobby Santois...."Santois/Sans toi? Santeuil...
And about the name Robert, when the Narrator's mother mentions it, I also thought of Proust's real brother and was momentarily confused.
And was there a clue earlier in the text about Jupien and Odette being related? If there was, I've not been paying as much attention as i thought.
As to the little Narrator/Marcel waltz we had early in the last volume, I still think it was deliberate and a sort of insider clin d'oeuil between the author and the author as Narrator. And while I admire the way Proust has created this intricate fiction, I don't think he would mind us seeing a great amount of biographical elements within it. After all, he placed them there himself.
is Proust's device - autobiog as novel or vice versa - post-modernism?
Maybe asking Proust if he is the Narrator is equivalent to asking the Beatles the meaning of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds? I am just seeing the significance of the curated identity thread - Proust as the subject of the Carter biog and Proust as the Narrator of a novel, which he also happened to have written, apparently, all curated by Proust the reader of Proust, ie the Proust within, my own inner Proust. There'sno escape - I really am a captive. Always with one eye on the finishing line I now realise when. I get there I will in some form begin again
The Year of Reading Proust
Books mentioned in this topic
The Aspern Papers (other topics)Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (other topics)
Jealousy (other topics)
Fortuny, Proust y los Ballets Rusos (other topics)
La vida es sueño (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Guillermo De Osma (other topics)Eric Karpeles (other topics)
Eleonora Marangoni (other topics)
Guillermo De Osma (other topics)
He is brought up again, now very closel..."
Reem, you made me find this...
I have to admit that I was very surprised by the painting you posted so I have been investigating and found this blog which has photos of the inside of the Palazzo Fortuny (we were not allowed to take pictures).
He was another Wagnerian (and since I am also reading Thomas Mann lately, he joins the club...)
http://blog.slow-venice.com/mariano-f...
Photo from the blog.