Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion
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Within a Budding Grove
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Week ending 03/15: Within a Budding Grove, to page 248 / 11126
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I loved this whole section of Mme Swann's salon and the meeting with Bergotte as it seems to contain so much; the narrator is interacting with the Swann's, meeting his idol, discussing art and literature, getting confused with the etiquette, discovering new food (caviar) etc. By the time he leaves with Bergotte he's confident enough to tell him that he doesn't appreciate the intellectual life but prefers 'pure idleness' and only material desires interest him:
"No, Monsieur, the pleasures of the mind count for very little with me; it is not them that I seek after; indeed I don't even know that I have ever tasted them."I think where Vol.2 is better than Vol.1 is that the characters are really starting to interact with each other. We get Bergotte's views on Norpois & Dr. Cottard, we get the narrator's parent's views on the Swanns, Dr. Cottard, Bergotte and so on. It has more of a dynamic view even though most of it takes place in drawing rooms.
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An example of what is, IMO, a crap analogy, from page 148 (Vintage UK), c. page 175 in ML, is:
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 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 in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.In what way do the light and motor analogies help either the sentence before or after - n.b. I think it's supposed to clarify the following sentence but I'm not totally sure. Surely it's better if the lamp & motor sentences were just removed. Does anyone disagree?
I know that Proust carried out revision after revision even to the point of changing the proofs that came back from the printers so maybe this was an example of a late addition that seemed like a good idea at the time.
BTW whenever I come across really convoluted sentences such as the ones above I've been comparing them to the Penguin Grieve translation and every time the Grieve translation is more readable.
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Then we get Mme Swann's winter garden. I get the feeling that Proust really enjoys these - it's all chatter and gossip and observations on flowers, dresses and etiquette. The reader almost forgets that the narrator is still there as the women gossip, until Mme Swann turns to him and says something like 'isn't that so?' I can just imagine Proust at such a salon just soaking it all up.
Jonathan wrote: "The section where Bloch takes the narrator to the brothel just comes out of the blue. It's a bit out of place with the rest of the narrative but does it help us put an age to the narrator? Possibly..."Yes. This not only came out of the blue, but it also disappeared from the story just as quickly. About the time I started to realize it was a whorehouse, he had moved on to his falling out with Gilberte. I wonder if the brothel will come back into the story later?
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It does get mentioned again, though only in passing. I'm only at 5Apr schedule so there's still time for more revelations. Meanwhile Bloch keeps popping up now and then. I get the feeling that he's going to be quite significant....but this is just a hunch.
The brothel bit is strange because at one point he's going on and on about his love for Gilberte then he's hanging out in a brothel and then he's getting all maudlin again over being separated from his mother. I wasn't too sure if the brothel part was a memory of a later period than the period of the main narrative...it's possible I guess.
Jonathan wrote: "I wasn't too sure if the brothel part was a memory of a later period than the period of the main narrative...it's possible I guess. "Wow. I hadn't even considered that, but you're right. He could be mixing up memories from different time periods in his narrative. Curiouser and curiouser.
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Everything seemed to imply to me that it was a later date, except that the section starts with the sentence: 'It was about this time that Bloch disturbed my conception of the world...' which forces it back into the period with Gilberte. But then could the narrator be getting the chronology a bit screwed up?
Jonathan wrote: "The reader almost forgets that the narrator is still there as the women gossip..."Can you clarify for me, Jonathan, how old the narrator is supposed to be during this time? I thought he was a teenager, but it seems odd that Mme Swann would be inviting a teenage boy to hang out with the ladies. Odder still (to me) that the guests wouldn't think it strange and comment about it. Or, is that typical of the period?
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The short answer is that I don't really know. But he must be about fifteen as he's discussing novels with authors, sending love letters to Gilberte. But the hanging out in brothels would imply to me that he's a bit older, sixteen or seventeen maybe. It's just that at times, especially when with his mother and grandmother he acts like a five year old.
It's interesting that in Part Two it is stated that it's two years after the events in Part One but his mother is still treating him like a five year old and he's still crying because his grandmother doesn't say goodnight to him.
LOL! I haven't gotten as far as Part Two, yet, but I AM at the part where he's see-sawing about whether to visit with Gilberte. It's some of the most beautiful writing I've been privileged to read... Too many quotes to capture! Even if I can't help but picture that sappy character in Bedazzled...
Jonathan wrote: "Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Can you clarify for me, Jonathan, how old the narrator is supposed to be during this time? "The short answer is that I don't really know. But he must be about fifteen ..."
Dr. Mark Calkin's' essential Proust website, Temps Perdu, has a link to the Chronology of the Novel.
SPOILERS:
http://www.tempsperdu.com/chrono.html
Personally, I'm finding Vol.2 a lot easier to read than Vol.1, possibly because we're now familiar with some of the characters and there seems to be less jumping about in time and place - I quite liked the jumping about in Vol 1, it's just nice to be finding out more about the characters.
The narrator certainly seems difficult to please doesn't he? More disappointments in this section (for the narrator, not the reader); Bergotte doesn't quite live up to his books, he's getting bored with Gilberte and embarrassed by his parents. I guess he's just growing up!
He still seems to be besotted by Odette though. Both Swann and Gilberte have virtually disappeared in this section, with Swann literally just poking his head through the curtains at one stage.