The Year of Reading Proust discussion
This topic is about
The Captive / The Fugitive
The Fugitive, vol. 6
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Through Sunday, 10 Nov.: The Fugitive
Book Portrait wrote: "..Fionnuala you need to read Céleste's book. It was vividly written and made me imagine so clearly Proust's life in his last few years... "There is a lot of reading piling up already for the year 2014, a lot of weight laid on its young shoulders. What's more, 2014 will begin with an ending, the ending of our reading of La Recherche. The euphoric feeling will be a little like Cocteau's 'bracelet-montre des soldats morts', it will continue to tick but for how long...
However, no matter how short my particular Proust afterlife turns out to be, Celeste's book will be a priority.
Eugene wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: Has anyone noticed or perhaps already commented on the Octave character whom the Narrator remembers as being a risk taker back in the Balbec days...I wonder if Proust had the unveiling of Octave's artistic penchants in mind for a future volume..."
Ah, I bet one could page through the notebooks and see how Octave changes. If only I read French....
The Narrator vacillates in almost all matters (due to his misinformation) except in his selfishness which is constant. Rather than share the joy and happiness of the person he loves most, Mamma, who has been paid a visit by a person who visits no one, the Princess de Parme, who had rebuffed Mamma on her recent visit--at the Narrator's insistence--he excuses himself to write a letter to Andrée about what he must know of Albertine's departure from him. Andrée arrives a week later; he questions her, he speculates and he calls her a liar again, but she stays, and then he vacillates depending on what he believes of what she has told him.That's the Narrator, over and over--so far--and I wonder, as I have wondered from the first volume, is not this Proust too, not that he is the Narrator, but he must have experienced what he wrote about and also the how of his experience, the selfishness.
I enjoy the story and some of the characters in it; I will hold my judgement on it and them until the story is finished.
Eugene wrote: "The Narrator vacillates in almost all matters (due to his misinformation) except in his selfishness which is constant. Rather than share the joy and happiness of the person he loves most, Mamma, w..."...and then he vacillates depending on what he believes of what she has told him."
I keep checking to see if the Columbia University video from the Proust Conference, "Proust ReRead," is uploaded.
They mentioned they may not be able to have both days available; however, I do hope they have one of the presentations in English....as it addresses how Proust "vacillates" over his stock funds. Should he sell? Yes, but maybe.....
Eugene wrote: "The curious thing for me is that Gilberte is not ashamed of Odette as Swann's 'love' for the immoral O was one reason, the other was his position on Dreyfus, that he was ostracized by society. So not only must one see Gilberte, as the Narrator does, being a snob but an anti-Semite too. "Isn't it strange how Odette has all but disappeared after her starring role in Swann's Love? She has receded in the background. We got glimpses of the rise of her own salon but don't know why she left the Verdurin's; we know she remarried, that her health is ailing but the Narrator only informs us of Odette's going-ons as they concern Gilberte, who certainly never mentions her.
The Narrator is not kind with Gilberte, all but comparing her to a banker's danseuse and concluding that many girls are only interested in their father's fortune (Proust is rarely kind with women it seems to me!):
Les illusions de l'amour paternel ne sont peut-être pas moindres que celles de l'autre; bien des filles ne considèrent leur père que comme le vieillard qui leur laissera sa fortune. p254
I wouldn't be surprised if we learned that Gilberte is anti-semite to conform with the Guermantes' views and gain entry into their world...
Once again I wonder if Proust didn't after all have a téléphonage with Sigmund. :) We know Proust read everything, several newspapers a day and I cannot imagine he hadn't heard of the latest developments in psychiatry, particularly with his keen interest in human psychology:
For instance when he elaborates on the "chimie morale" in families and says:
... nous ne nous faisons pas de toutes pièces nous-même... p 247
or when the Narrator wakes up from a dream where Bergotte admired his article in Le Figaro and says:
Presque tous nos rêves répondent ainsi aux questions que nous nous posons par des affirmations complexes, des mises en scène à plusieurs personnages, mais qui n'ont pas de lendemain. p 253
The passage on "l'oeuvre de la mort et de l'oubli" (the work of death and ... oblivion?) furthers last week's developments on "la psychologie dans le temps":... s'il reste que c'est le temps qui amène progressivement l'oubli, l'oubli n'est pas sans altérer profondément la notion du temps. Il y a des erreurs optiques dans le temps comme il y en a dans l'espace. p255-256
Thinking of time in terms of geometry allows the Narrator to experience the subjectivity, the elasticity (my word) of time:
La persistance en moi d'une velléité ancienne de travailler, de réparer le temps perdu, de changer de vie, ou plutôt de commencer de vivre, me donnait l'illusion que j'étais toujours aussi jeune; pourtant le souvenir de tous les événements qui s'étaient succédé dans ma vie (et aussi de ceux qui s'étaient succédé dans mon coeur, car, lorsqu'on a beaucoup changé, on est induit à supposer qu'on a plus longtemps vécu), au cours de ces derniers mois de l'existence d'Albertine, me les avait fait paraître beaucoup plus longs qu'une année, et maintenant cet oubli de tant de choses, me séparant, par des espaces vides, d'événements tout récents qu'ils me faisaient paraître anciens, puisque j'avais eu ce qu'on appelle «le temps» de les oublier, par son interpolation fragmentée, irrégulière, au milieu de ma mémoire--comme une brume épaisse sur l'océan, qui supprime les points de repère des choses--détraquait, disloquait mon sentiment des distances dans le temps, là rétrécies, ici distendues, et me faisait me croire tantôt beaucoup plus loin, tantôt beaucoup plus près des choses que je ne l'étais en réalité. Et comme dans les nouveaux espaces, encore non parcourus, qui s'étendaient devant moi, il n'y aurait pas plus de traces de mon amour pour Albertine qu'il n'y en avait eu, dans les temps perdus que je venais de traverser, de mon amour pour ma grand'mère, ma vie m'apparut--offrant une succession de périodes dans lesquelles, après un certain intervalle, rien de ce qui soutenait la précédente ne subsistait plus dans celle qui la suivait--comme quelque chose de si dépourvu du support d'un moi individuel identique et permanent, quelque chose de si inutile dans l'avenir et de si long dans le passé... p 256
Healed by time, the Narrator can shed his old self and return to the land of the livings...
Il est possible que, de même, nos cauchemars, la nuit, soient effroyables. Mais au réveil nous sommes une autre personne qui ne se soucie guère que celle à qui elle succède ait eu à fuir en dormant devant des assassins. p257
The work of death and oblivion is internalised:
Ce n'est pas parce que les autres sont morts que notre affection pour eux s'affaiblit, c'est parce que nous mourons nous-mêmes. p 258
Martin wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Accompanying the Narrator to Venice and will be less in these posts for a while."I have just finished this week's reading and must say I'm jealous of you!"
Yes, Martin. I have been lucky that this trip came up when it did and that it did so with such good timing.
Book Portrait wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "2008? Shame on you Book Portrait! You had me worried that Kalliope's trip was ruined because of these floods!"*hangs head* Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you Reem.
..."
No, this is the one I saw.
Peggy Guggenheim: un fantasme d'éternité
The cover using color and b&w really draws attention to the (lovely) gown.
Fionnuala wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: "..Fionnuala you need to read Céleste's book. It was vividly written and made me imagine so clearly Proust's life in his last few years... "There is a lot of reading piling u..."
Yes, I will start soon making the priority list of the secondary reading, but I think I want to start with more literary accounts, rather than biographical. I think my first will be this one:
Proust And The Victorians: The Lamp Of Memory
Because although some of us read some Ruskin before we embarked on Proust, now I think the texts we chose were not the best ones...
Book Portrait wrote: "Eugene wrote: "The curious thing for me is that Gilberte is not ashamed of Odette as Swann's 'love' for the immoral O was one reason, the other was his position on Dreyfus, that he was ostracized b..."No, the Gilberte he presents now is not a very attractive personality, although he does comment that more changes could be in storage for us...
In the section in which he compares Gilberte to a human ostrich, he indicates that that may have been a past phase.
Gilberte appartenait ou du moins appartint pendant ces années-là, à la variété la plus répandue de autruches humaines, celles qui cachent leur tête dans l'espoir non pas de n'être pas vues, ce qu'elles croient peu vraisemblable, mais de ne pas voir qu'on les voit... p. 248.
At the beginning of the Guermantes volume we all thought that he was referring to the Garnier Opéra... Now he mentions it was at the Opéra-Comique where the scene of the Narrator observing the Guermantes box and all the aquatic imagery took place.Vous ne voulez-pas venir avec nous, demain, à l'Opéra-Comique?, me dit la duchesse et je pensais que c'était sans doute dans cette même baignoire où je l'avais vu pour la première fois et qui m'avait semblé alors inaccessible comme le royaume sous-marin des Néréides...p. 251.
Book Portrait wrote: "Once again I wonder if Proust didn't after all have a téléphonage with Sigmund. :) We know Proust read everything, several newspapers a day and I cannot imagine he hadn't heard of the latest deve..."
The importance of dreams and their sometimes revelatory effect has been constant through the novel. But I see a different understanding of this state in Proust from that of Freud's.
Book Portrait wrote: "The passage on "l'oeuvre de la mort et de l'oubli" (the work of death and ... oblivion?) furthers last week's developments on "la psychologie dans le temps":... s'il reste que c'est le temps qui ..."
Yes, we posted last week how the theme of "l'habitude" had given way to "l'oubli", and this is a fascinating passage because he is now, for the first time, elaborating further the key concept, which became the title for the whole work, of "le temps perdu".
La persistance en moi d'une velléité ancienne, de travailler, de réparer le temps perdu, de changer de vie, ou plutôt de commencer à vivre ... pp255-256.
And later on..
..qu'il n'y avait eu, dans les temps perdus que je venais de traverser..... p. 256.
Kalliope wrote: "...No, the Gilberte he presents now is not a very attractive personality, although he does comment that more changes could be in storage for us......"Gilberte, for me is an example of a character whom Proust models to suit the needs of the narrative at a particular moment. She struck me as being a very insubstantial support for the entire first half of À l'ombre and one of the reasons why that section was, for me, by far the most difficult of all to get through. Now she has been resurrected to serve a different purpose but she is equally incomplete as a character. One of the the reasons has to do with time, I think..
Book Portait quoted this wonderful line in message 58:
Il y a des erreurs optiques dans le temps comme il y en a dans l'espace
When I read that, I remembered our preoccupation during the early volumes with Proust's accordion-like approach to time, sometimes it almost stands still, at other times years may have elapsed. Gilberte now seems considerably younger than the Narrator but they were of a similar age when they played together in the Champs Elysées.
These optical illusions, as it were, with regard to time are also present but in a different way in Proust's treatment of Octave/Cocteau.
Eugene wondered in comment 51 if Proust had the unveiling of Octave's artistic talents already in mind in volume two or if he is one of those 'convenient' characters who can be called on to serve a new purpose. I think that, unlike with Gilberte, the Narrator's recognition of Octave's talent is not to do with the needs of the plot but because Proust himself had come to recognise Cocteau's gifts only long after he had used him as a model of the insouciant young sportsman whom he admired for his different way of life but could not then hope to get to know or share any common interests.
And another fascinating passage at the beginning of this weeks section is that of the multiple selves, or the "plusieurs moi".Time, with "l'oubli" brings a renovation of the self, so that the succession of these different consciousness and experimenting different feelings, in effect constitute a multiplicity of the Moi.
Ces nouveaux moi qui devraient porter un autre nom que le précédent, leur venue impossible, à cause de l'indifference à ce que j'aimais...
and later...
Or il m'apportait au contraire avec l'oubli une suppression presque complète de la souffrance, une possibilité de bien-être, cet être si redouté ... et qui n'était autre qu'un de ces moi de rechange que la destinée tient en reserve pour nous... p. 257.
it continues..
Sans doute ce moi gardait encore quelque contact avec l'ancien...Mais c'est un personnage nouveau.....
and this changes of the selves are a kind of death..
Ce n'est pas parce que les autres sont morts que notre affection s'affaiblit, c'est parce que nous mourons nous-mêmes... p. 258.
Tout de même, si la piété qui fit revivre l'oeuvre inconnue de Vinteuil est sortie du milieu si trouble de Montjouvain, je ne fus pas moins frappé de penser que les chefs-d'oeuvre peut-être les plus extraordinaires de notre époque sont sortis non du concours général, d'une éducation modèle, académique, à la de Broglie, mais de la fréquentation des «pesages» et des grands bars. p269I wonder what "pesages" are...
ETA: I know. It's about horse racing when horses are weighed before the race...
Octave is a gambler. And a genius. Proust, forever Contre Sainte-Beuve, sees no contradiction between the dissolute life of an artist and their talent... He might even see a correlation. :)
Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "...No, the Gilberte he presents now is not a very attractive personality, although he does comment that more changes could be in storage for us......"Gilberte, for me is an examp..."
Yes, that relative change of age of Gilberte for me is another sign of how the Narrator became suddenly much older just after his second trip to Balbec... from a young marriageable man he became somewhat of an invalid.
I agree that Gilberte does have that malleable nature that suits either the plot or the idea that the Narrator wants to develop.
In this Gilberte, we see yet another aspect of the possible immortality that could be achieved after death... either brought about by celebrity, or by the love of the loved ones who in theory are supposed to remember their dead. Also another example of how things do not turn up the way one expects them.
Kalliope wrote:".In this Gilberte, we see yet another aspect of the possible immortality that could be achieved after death... either brought about by celebrity, or by the love of the loved ones who in theory are supposed to remember their dead. Also another example of how things do not turn up the way one expects them."Yes, I hadn't thought of it like that, life turning the tables on us, delivering things we didn't expect.
Book Prtrait, could the 'pesages' be boxing parlance? Is he saying that people like Cocteau who skipped school and led a dissolute life in his early years, nevertheless had his talent nurtured as well or better than those who went to the best schools?
Edit: I see you have edited your comment and I wasn't too far off in my guess!
Fionnuala wrote: "could the 'pesages' be boxing parlance? Is he saying that people like Cocteau who skipped school and led a dissolute life in his early years, nevertheless had his talent nurtured as well or better than those who went to the best schools? "Yep. That's what I figured too. :)
Also I agree with your & Kalliope's take on Gilberte as a malleable character that serves a purpose in a demonstration. Proust constantly weaves together essays and fiction and it's easy to see how he doesn't fit squarely in the "novelist" category.
Kalliope wrote: The cover using color and b&w really draws attention to the (lovely) gown. I agree that this is much more effective.
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”
― Ted Grant
Marcelita wrote: Ah, I bet one could page through the notebooks and see how Octave changes...I know there have been some stabs in that direction but because the notebooks are available I see a reading, and a common one, of the temporal construction of ISOLT dawning or at least certain portions of the novel.
The Proust thing uptown tomorrow begins at 2 PM, I'll be there at 1:45 or so...how should we meet?
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: The cover using color and b&w really draws attention to the (lovely) gown. I agree that this is much more effective.
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their cl..."
Excellent quote... the cover of the book is therefore so effective in bringing out the costume... they had several of the gowns in the Fortuny palazzo in Venice, and from close up (no glass cage) they are so much more beautiful than in photos because the pleats are very very small.
I have just come back from the Prado, and the painting of the Fortuny children is on loan across the street in an exhibition on Japonisme in the Rooms of a Foundation... Another visit to plan, and which in Proustian terms will bring me back to Odette's world.
Book Portrait wrote: "Tout de même, si la piété qui fit revivre l'oeuvre inconnue de Vinteuil est sortie du milieu si trouble de Montjouvain, je ne fus pas moins frappé de penser que les chefs-d'oeuvre peut-être les plu..."Thank you for the clarification on "pesages"..
Eugene: actually, Gilberte was not a Jew. Talmudic law says: if your mother is a Jew, you are a Jew. NOT your father. The Jewish-American writer Isaac Singer posits that this is the result of centuries of Cossack-rapes, etc. But scholars think that originally Jewish culture was a matriarchy. Think how this law applies to Proust!
And...there are hints of this prehistoric matriarchy in the Bible. Abraham had Ishmael (Hagar's son; he is regarded as the patriarch of the Arabs), Isaac, and: after Sarah's death, he married a Jewish woman named Keturah and had six sons by her. In his great old age, he gave those six boys much of his wealth, and sent them away. There is not another word about them. Isaac inherited God's covenant; now, looking at this with any amount of logic it would seem that the Covenant was with Sarah, as well as Abraham.
Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." But I love what Moncrieff uses: "I am in the soup." Does anyone (Kalliope, I'm looking at you) know the French phrase Proust used?
If last week we saw that Proust is introducing concepts which are elaborated further in post-modernism, when he underscored the role of the reader in creating a new reality, now we see him this week pointing at the trappings of language, another concept for the post-moderns...On voudrait que la réalité nous fut révélée par des signes nouveaux, non pas une phrase, une phrase pareille à celles qu'on s'était dites tant de fois. L'habitude de penser empêche parfois d'éprouver le réel, immunise contre lui, le fait paraître de la pensée encore. Il n'y pas une idée qui ne porte en elle sa réfutation possible, un mot le mot contraire. p. 265.
And thinking more about this I suddenly remembered Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie, which I read long ago, but in which the plot consists of the impossibility of a nameless narrator in working out whether his wife (?) is having an affair with someone else...
The title La jalousie refers both to Jealousy and to Blinds in a window, which make it difficult for the narrator to "see" what is really happening.... Don't It just seems that A R-G, with his Nouveau Roman, was aware of what Proust had written about three decades earlier.
And I found this... in which it says that Proust's reader participates in the making of the text, he is no longer a passive reader.
...Le lecteur de Proust participe à l’élaboration du texte. Il n’est plus passif. La lecture devient un travail de construction et de déconstruction. L’identité des personnages est éclatée.
@Eugene (again); what you say about the Narrator's selfishness (& possibly Proust's) calls to mind a phrase Colette throws out almost casually: "the true artist, the criminal." And that leads me on to a moment in The Girl with the Pearl Earring--I know it is in the film, and I think also in the book--where one of the many Vermeer children is ill, they are poor, and Mme Vermeer scrapes together some money and sends Grete to buy medicine. And Vermeer catches her as she leaves the house and gives her money no one knew he had, to buy art supplies. The true artist, I think, is a completely selfish person. Picasso would not let his last wife give his old clothes to their gardener...he thought that some of the artistic "magic" he possessed would remain in said clothes. So the gardener went in rags...
Kalliope wrote: "Yes, at Peggy's yesterday. Found more pink which I will post. Also had temporary exhibition on Impressionists and Post-Impressionists with relevance to Proust which I will post later on."Here is the Futurist version of Tiepolo's Pink to which I had referred in the earlier post.. By Giacommo Balla. The Spell is Broken, 1922-23... Contemporary of Proust and exhibited in P. Guggenheim's in Venice...
Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." But I love what Mon..."I am still reading this week's section... (catching up), but so far I have only found a note in the GF that mentions Cocteau, and it does so as a hint..... "fait penser à.."
May be I have not reached the appropriate section.
Kalliope: "from a young marriageable man he became somewhat of an invalid." Actually, his poor health has been a recurrent theme of the novel. Remember when his "choking fits" (aka asthma attacks) become terrible, and Cottard advises purges (enemas) and a milk diet...his parents ignore this advice, and the boy Proust becomes more and more ill. The writer Proust then interjects a rather complex medical passage that says his symptoms could have been from several very different diseases, requiring very different treatments. Finally, desperate, his parents (who have been giving him rather a lot of alcohol to ease his breathing) begin to follow Cottard's advice. And: "he returned my breath, my sleep, my health, and my life." Having realized, the Narrator goes on to say that Cottard had seen that his main problem was intoxication. "And so we saw that this idiot was a clinical genius."
Elizabeth wrote: "Kalliope: "from a young marriageable man he became somewhat of an invalid." Actually, his poor health has been a recurrent theme of the novel. Remember when his "choking fits" (aka asthma attacks..."Yes, I agree, his health issues were always there, but until the return from second Balbec, to me he seemed still young. A delicate youth... In fact his first Balbec trip was motivated by his health, and the alcohol use actually made me smile. But not until the Prisonnière did I feel him as an invalid and that there had been a jump in his age... But everything (not just the alcohol...!!) is so fluid in Proust's work...
Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." But I love what Mon..."After my comment #81, I arrived at the proper "Cocteau" section, (I follow the breaks of my audio version)...
the French:
...il avait toujours été un cancre et s'était même fait envoyer du lycée...
I am not sure if this corresponds to what you are looking for.
To me this Octave-Cocteau section, in which the Narrator expresses how this "good-for-nothing" character turned out to be a genius, makes me think of the impression that Proust himself had given to his friends and acquaintances... Proust did not cause such a strong initial bad impression as Cocteau, but certainly no one expected him (and certainly not Gide) capable of producing anything too extraordinary.
And the Narrator puts himself in a lower rank as he compares himself to this Octave...
Qui sait si vu de dehors tel homme de talent, ou même un homme sans talent mais aimant les choses de l'esprit, moi par exemple, n'eût pas fait, à qui l'eût rencontré à Rivebelle, à l'hôtel Balbec, sur la digue de Balbec, l'effet du plus parfait et prétentieux imbécile? p. 269.
Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." But I love what Mon..."Elizabeth, the Narrator calls Octave le fiancé, "je suis dans les choux"
Literally, to be in the cabbages but perhaps from the verb échouer meaning to fail. Cocteau was thrown out of lycée.
Fionnuala wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." B..."Thank you Fionnuala, I was not sure to which part was Elizabeth referring.
Reading Mark Lilla's review in the November 21st issue of NYRB of works on Hannah Arendt,"In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi's final book on his experiences at Auschwitz, he makes a wise remark about the difficulty of rendering judgment on history:
Without a profound simplification the world around us would
be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions...We are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema."
Even though we're reading fiction, we're reading history. Proust makes that "profound simplification" and reduces the lives he tells us of to a "schema". And there is a moral (his moral) to his story, to this schema; not that I agree with it, all the time, I however admire his courage to advance the non fictions of his thought as duly exemplified by his fictional creations--as ugly as they may be or as comedic or as beautiful sometimes--those of character and situation, to form a vision of his truth.
Reading his visions help the reader form his or her own speculations on their life or on their ever-changing truths which will gladly be different from those vulgarities, to use a Proustian word, or former truths that we have depended upon, those truths that we will have learned something from about being in the world, truths that have got us to the latest, but not the last, step. As always new truths age; what we believed before will no longer be believed in the future. Thats what Proust is saying to me now
Fionnuala wrote: Eugene wondered in comment 51 if Proust had the unveiling of Octave's artistic talents already in mind in volume two or if he is one of those 'convenient' characters who can be called on to serve a new purpose.His convenience, even though I didn't state it, is that Octave was, according to the Narrator, in love with Albertine in Balbec, recently proposed marriage to Albertine, that proposal was the reason that Mme Bontemps insisted she leave him, plus Octave becomes a nephew of the Verdurins and for Octave's love of Albertine Mme Verdurin invites Albertine to the rehearsal, to meet him and not Mlle Vinteuil.
Yes Octave shows, what Cocteau shows, that a dissolute person can become heralded for his talent, in time.
Kalliope wrote: "The importance of dreams and their sometimes revelatory effect has been constant through the novel. But I see a different understanding of this state in Proust from that of Freud's. "I sense a difference too, not least because Freud aimed to cure and Proust to describe, but I may not have paid enough attention to the details while reading the novel. How would you describe the difference?
I'm sure many have looked at the Proust-Freud link and I wonder what their conclusions have been... Even Tadié just came out with a new book Le lac inconnu - Entre Freud et Proust...
Kalliope wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I..."I have now reached the page where this is mentioned... I could not figure it out yet.
Book Portrait wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "The importance of dreams and their sometimes revelatory effect has been constant through the novel. But I see a different understanding of this state in Proust from that of Freud's..."I read Freud years ago, but in general terms, and it is as you say, one was seeing dreams as revelatory of deeper psychological issues and therefore saw a therapeutic role. For Proust, so far the dreams are linked in more general terms to the shifts in consciousness brought by the passage of time. They offer to the subject different viewpoint on his/her experiences.
Yet another topic that invites me to want to read the novel again...!!
Eugene wrote: "The Narrator vacillates in almost all matters (due to his misinformation) except in his selfishness which is constant. Rather than share the joy and happiness of the person he loves most, Mamma, w..."I'm not sure it's selfishness as much as a sharp inwards focus to understand and describe the workings of his internal self, the emotions, the thoughts, each reversal, each step... That, I feel, is at the heart of Proust's work.
He's showing us "la psychologie en movement", the way we are made of multiple selves shaped by our experiences, our memories, our emotions, our doubts (ie our individuality because if others were exactly the same there wouldn't be that torture of (mis)understandings)...
I find the Narrator very candid and honest about how he presents himself. I seem to remember the older Narrator sometimes commenting on how he has changed since. It gives me the sense that Proust knew exactly how he was/we are and wasn't afraid to show the ugly side too.
Book Portrait wrote: ".I'm sure many have looked at the Proust-Freud link and I wonder what their conclusions have been... Even Tadié just came out with a new book Le lac inconnu - Entre Freud et Proust... .."
Thank you for this. I will check it out..
Many new works still coming out.. I have just found this on Cocteau and Proust.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyyK9v...
and the book
Proust contre Cocteau
Kalliope wrote: "... a note in the GF that mentions Cocteau, and it does so as a hint..... "fait penser à...""I found mentions of other real life people who could have inspired Octave: Marcel Plantevignes, Horace Finaly, Henry Bernstein and someone called Joncières. But Cocteau seems to be the one most frequently named. Obviously like we all his characters Proust combined aspects or just anecdotes from different people and seasoned that with his own imagination... :)
http://books.google.fr/books?id=cBA1P...
http://holio.wordpress.com/2011/12/16...
Fionnuala wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Re "Jean Cocteau." (And I was so delighted to find out this factoid; it so ties in with what I know of Cocteau's life). My translation gives him the nickname "I'm a wash-out." B..."Here is a page confirming what Fionnuala wrote.. and the example the give is...Proust's..
« Etre dans les choux »
Echouer, perdre.
Être dans une mauvaise situation.
Être dans l'embarras.
Ceux qui connaissent tout du miracle de la vie savent que ce sont les bébés mâles qui sont dans les choux, tandis que les bébés femelles sont dans les roses.
Alors pourquoi envoie-t-on sur les roses quelqu'un qui nous a mis dans les choux ?
Et puis comment peut-on assimiler cet excellent légume à un échec ou une situation embarrassante ?
Eh bien la réponse est très simple et va me permettre de la faire courte, pour une fois : c'est tout simplement à cause de la paronymie entre "les choux" et "é-chou-er" qui est le tout premier sens de cette expression semblant dater de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle.
« Vous venez du golf, Octave ? lui demanda-t-elle. Ça a-t-il bien marché ? Étiez-vous en forme ? Oh ! ça me dégoûte, je suis dans les choux, répondit-il. »
Marcel Proust - À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
http://www.expressio.fr/expressions/e...
I'm in a rush but I just wanted to share this blog post about Gilles Deleuze's Proust and Signs: The Complete Text and how "wasting one's time" is not time wasted at all when like Proust one is able to observe and understand the workings of the world and gain the necessary maturity to produce something significant.http://blog-trendy.letudiant.fr/brill...
I particularly liked that bit:
Passer son temps en mondanités, c’est du « temps perdu » pour sûr, « mais c’est un résultat essentiel de l’apprentissage de nous révéler à la fin qu’il y a des vérités de ce temps qu’on perd ».
Marcelita & Eugene, have fun at the Proust conference! :)
Kalliope wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: ".I'm sure many have looked at the Proust-Freud link and I wonder what their conclusions have been... Even Tadié just came out with a new book Le lac inconnu - Entre Freud et P..."Yes! I think now I really want to read Claude Arnaud's Proust contre Cocteau. Here's the author's page about his book with a ton of linky stuff:
http://www.claude-arnaud.com/fr/archi...
Ah! Apparently a young French author took Octave and wrote a novel...http://www.parutions.com/pages/1-1-42...
I have to go now and I don't want to! I want to read Proust. lol. I'm going to Versailles and the sun is up. I shouldn't complain. :)
Book Portrait wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: ".I'm sure many have looked at the Proust-Freud link and I wonder what their conclusions have been... Even Tadié just came out with a new book Le lac inconnu -..."Claude Arnaud's bio on Cocteau is supposed to be the best, for those interested, but Elizabeth may have read another one.
Jean Cocteau
Eugene wrote: "Marcelita wrote: Ah, I bet one could page through the notebooks and see how Octave changes...The Proust thing uptown tomorrow begins at 2 PM, I'll be there at 1:45 or so...how should we meet?"
By the desk...first floor.
I am thinking about going to the Nomadic Reading in Soho, from 10-1pm. So, I should be there by 1:45.
Last evening's kick-off was amazing, at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, overlooking the Manhattan skyline! Antonin Baudry reading "Swann's Way."
The Year of Reading Proust
Books mentioned in this topic
The Companion Guide to Venice (other topics)Proust and Venice (other topics)
Fortuny, Proust y los Ballets Rusos (other topics)
The Stones of Venice (other topics)
Proust contre Cocteau (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Guillermo De Osma (other topics)Gilles Deleuze (other topics)
Paul Morand (other topics)
At the time of writing, when the Narrator meets Octave at Balbec in Volume 2, I wonder if Proust had the unveiling of Octave's artistic penchants in mind for a future volume. This novel is so 'convenient', much more so than other realist works of fiction, characters appear on the street as if by magic, they change to fit the story, etc. much is like the 'plot' of an afternoon soap opera (un feuillerton) on TV. Octave's changes seem almost like an add-on as most of them are hearsay reported by an unreliable Narrator: here we don't see him, his work and are only told of him, and Proust wasn't feeling well at the writing, yet...
In any case, in those days at Balbec, the reasons which made me anxious to know him, and which made Albertine and her friends anxious that I should not know him, were equally extraneous to his merit, and could only have illustrated the eternal misunderstanding between an "intellectual" (represented in this instance by myself) and society (represented by the little band) with regard to a social personality (the young golfer). I had no inkling of his talent... ML p. 820