Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion
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Swann’s Way
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Week ending 02/01: Swann's Way, to page 379 / location 5310
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Aleks
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Jan 12, 2014 08:01AM
The narrative on pages 323 through 328 - and especially the quote at the bottom of 326 (Among all the modes by which love...) to the middle of 327 (agonising need to possess exclusively) - reminds me of what I felt for my wife when we first met.
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That's a great quote. I marked it off on my kindle as well.
Re-reading this passage, I learned something. In Carter's new, annotated "Swann's Way," he elaborated....on where Proust places the moon.
"Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those fine, cold nights of early spring, and saw the moon (66) shining its light between his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other figure, brightly and faintly roseate like the moon's, which had, one day, risen in his mind and since then had shed on the world that mysterious light in which he saw it bathed." MP (Carter p270)
Carter's annotation:
"66. Since childhood, Proust was fascinated by the moon and collected quotations about it by famous authors. In his novel, an Oriental crescent moon often shines above Paris in erotic scenes, either heterosexual or homosexual."
http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?is...
The following passage has caused me a headache for several days now. It's Moncrieff's translation, but the Moncrieff/Kilmartin version (p. 277) is almost the same."And 50, at an age when it would appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical order, without any foundation in desire."
Now, I can imagine many kinds of love and desire. Love without desire could for instance be what we call platonic love. Desire without love is easy to imagine.
Normally when we say 'physical love' we mean sexual love, right? And isn't sex all about desire? So what is physical love without desire? Can you think of a concrete example?
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In Carter's new, annotated "Swann's Way," he elaborated....on where Proust places the moon.
"Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those ..."
And how are you finding Carter's version Marcelita?
Tor wrote: "The following passage has caused me a headache for several days now. It's Moncrieff's translation, but the Moncrieff/Kilmartin version (p. 277) is almost the same."And 50, at an age when it would..."
This is Carter's translation:
"And so, at an age when it would appear—since one seeks in love above all a subjective pleasure—that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part, love may come into being, love of the most physical kind, without any foundation in desire." MP
Carter (p225)
http://books.google.com/books?id=IZX9...—
Going to see Edmund White at Columbia, but will think about this.
(http://maisonfrancaise.org/centennial...)
White's biography on Proust is one of my favorites.
Jonathan, your answer is good, but I asked the wrong question. What confuses me is that the word 'love' has this noble and exalted connotation in our (western/christian) culture, while 'physical' suggests almost the opposite: base, trivial, even sinful. Thus, when 'physical' is used to modify 'love', it's hard to say which way it goes. Is love tainted by the flesh, or is the physical act elevated and dignified by love? Of course, the passage alludes to M. Swann's love for Odette. There can be little doubt that Swann desires Odette. Yet, Proust seems to state that Swann loves her in a physical way, but without desire. Perhaps Proust means 'not a physical kind of desire', (i.e. Swann may desire Odette in other ways, but not physically). He loves her physically though. I'm still not sure that make sense.
By the way, I'm currently watching a TV interview (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408472/) made with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (whose books I have not read). It lasts about eight hours, so I'm taking my time. He refers to Proust now and then too. Deleuze and Félix Guattari apparently developed a new concept of desire. Where Freudian theory views desire as focused on a single object (e.g. genitals), Deleuze talks about a desire for aggregates (ensembles).
Applying (my ridiculously limited understanding of) the theory to Swann's desire for Odette, I see that Odette can make Swann a good cup of tea, she can play for him the fragment from Vinteuil's sonata (poorly, while never ceasing to kiss him!), she can arrange Chrysanthemums in a way that pleases him (“Swann was irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these flowers, which had then been 'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it had pleased him, on this occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby shot with rays of pink and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these ephemeral stars, which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of winter afternoons.”), she reminds him of Jethro’s daughter Zipporah from Sandro Boticelli’s Trial of Moses, etc.
The idea would be that many such things add up to a cloud of attractive particles, so to speak, into which Swann is pulled. In this interpretation maybe he doesn't need the simple sexual motive... or what?
Marcelita, I never heard of Edmund White, but read the Wikipedia article about him and he looks interesting. Will try to read his Proust biography sometime soon. Would be nice to have someone like him to ask!
Edit: I didn't want to imply I'm not extremely pleased with the answers I get from you guys! Joining this reading group was a very good idea!
I think that theme recurs fairly often in the description of Swann's obsession for Odette. An obsession he doesn't quite understand himself as she is not her type, he doesn't find her particularly pretty, And yet, without feeling the initial desire that a beautiful woman would normally inspire in him, he still falls madly in love with her, probably because of her elusiveness and mystery, qualities that have always been irresistible to Proust himself.One thing I find interesting in Moncrieff's translation is his mentioning Swann's age as 50, which he probably might have been. The original French version however only mentions "at an age when it would appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure-".
Jonathan wrote: "And how are you finding Carter's version Marcelita?"As Andree just pointed out, Carter has corrected the 'errors' in Moncrieff's translation...some stylistically.
Because Carter's is the first English translation to be annotated, I am discovering layers and threads which had eluded me in previous translations.
Thus, I am blissfully spoiled!
Sadly, Carter's annotated "Within a Budding Grove" will not be published until next year, so I will return to the ML edition for the next volume.
Mod
The Verdurins are uneasy that Swann is not one of 'them', the 'faithful' and he is in fact a 'heretic' who won't openly denounce the 'bores'. I can identify with Swann in this position, who is actually unaware of the repositioning of the group against him, as I have found myself in such positions socially before. He's unwilling to join in in the denunciations of the 'bores' and is therefore considered dangerous by the Verdurins though he is really just politically naive. He's unaware that Mme Verdurin is a tyrant and that the others are sycophants that would attack him on a single word from her.
With the introduction of Forcheville are we witnessing Odette's affections switching? She also is willing to criticise Swann openly within the group.
Very perceptive intuition about Forcheville. Odette's affections, you will find, are not about sentiments.
"I've just been re-reading the second part of this section. I particularly liked the paragraph (p. 300 in Vintage ed., approx. p.356 in ML ed.) that starts 'And so, in the whole of the Verdurin circle...' and ends with ...they were powerless to extort from him.' "I agree with your comment. It shows Swann's character compared to the rather shallowness the Verdurin's exhibit. Even though Swann would prefer the "Verdurin nucleus" he is too different to be accepted by them. In this passage Proust gives us a glimpse into a complex social world. The Verdurins' lead a creative salon yet are rather dogmatic in their acceptance of members, even egotistical, it seems to me. While Swann is really faithful to the Salon (...,in his heart of hearts he infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all the little "nucleus" p.355) the Verdurins seem to view his disagreeable opinions as monumental.
I think that it becomes quite clear when one studies the tone and words with which Proust depicts the Verdurin and their little `"nucleus" that he mercilessly ridicules and satirizes them and has nothing but contempt for those rich bourgeois with cultural pretensions.Throughout La Recherche, Swann comes across as much above all of them.
Of course, he cannot be accepted by the Verdurin clan since he confronts them, without having to say a word, to their own mediocrity.
I'm still playing catch up with the group, and just finished the reading for week ending 02/01. I've read everyone's observations so far in this thread, and I feel completely inadequate to add anything. But, I do have a question: Is this section "Swann in Love" supposed to still be written by the same narrator? I ask because in Combray, it was all from the narrator's perspective, and was so detailed that I felt like I was experiencing his childhood. That makes sense to me. But, if he's writing about Swann - who was his grandfather's friend, at least a generation older than our narrator, and this love affair with Odette happened before the narrator was born or when he was an infant - well, how does the narrator KNOW all of this? Is he supposed to be omniscient?I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, I just feel a little confused about the relationship between the first part of the book and this second part of the book.
Mod
No, it's not a dumb question and yes, he does appear to be omniscient.
In the penultimate paragraph of Part One which starts with 'Thus would I often lie....' the narrator explains that the story was told to him by someone (by whom? Swann? Odette?) and admits that there is an extraordinary 'precision of detail'.
I wonder if this is explained in further volumes or if it is just one of those things that we just have to accept. :-)
*gasp!* I'd forgotten about that. You're right! He WAS unusually vague about that detail - unusual because he describes everything else in such tremendous detail. Thank you for that! :-)
