Week ending 03/22: Within a Budding Grove, to page 332 / 12149

[Jonathan]

Wow, what a convoluted sentence to start this week's reading - it starts off simply and then slowly entangles the reader. As I've mentioned elsewhere I've been comparing the MKE version with the Penguin version at some points and again the Penguin version is a lot clearer. I'm still not sure whether to switch over to the Penguin version at this stage as my initial intention was to read the MKE version partly to keep a consistency in my reading.

So we continue on for a couple of pages with Mme Swann's salon which is entertaining. BTW I find I largely ignore the weekly schedule breaks when I'm reading as they rarely fall at a logical point.

So, has the narrator given up on Gilberte or not? I'm not really sure that he's certain on this. At times, I get the feeling that he's read far too many Romantic novels and wants to suffer poetically; other times I feel that he's just a spoilt brat who expects everyone else to play along. I think what he really wants is for himself to go through the suffering of a poet over a lost love and for Gilberte to understand the great melancholy that he's going through and for her to approach him and to start the reconciliation process - then he can have everything his own way. Still, it's entertaining watching him engineer his own suffering - I expect most readers are just thinking 'just arrange to meet her you damn fool!' :-)

Meanwhile, Gilbert seems oblivious to his suffering and probably just thinks he's not interested.

The narrator's intentions are revealed, I believe, when he's writing a letter to Gilberte (p220 Vintage UK, c. p260 ML) and he's looking forward to a future date when he can reveal to Gilberte that he really did love her even though he won't actually tell her now when he's got the chance to correct the misunderstanding. He's enjoying being the masochistic Romantic too much.

[Jonathan]

I actually enjoy a lot of the narrative on the fashions of this period; probably more so than the art references. I think this is partly because from our vantage point nineteenth century fashions appear as a homogeneous block, whereas there must have been a significant difference between the fashions of, say the 1870s to the 1880s and so on. Likewise, there must have been a difference between Paris fashion and London fashion.

I've been googling such terms as 'Watteau housecoat' to try to determine what some of these items are, but can anyone recommend a good one-stop website that shows a lot of these fashion items?

[Jonathan]

So, after ignoring Gilberte for ages and trying to convince himself that he no longer loves her the narrator decides that he will, after all, go to see her...lucky Gilberte. He sells even more of his parents' possessions and off he trots...when shock! horror! he sees her with someone else...cue several pages of the narrator agonising over his decision, once again, to never see her again. I actually wanted to throttle him! Am I alone in feeling like this towards him?

[Andree]

You might have found it yourself already but the following is not a bad site:
http://www.fashion-era.com/mid-late_v...

Pinterest also has an interesting variety of illustrations for costumes of that period.

[Jonathan]

Andree wrote: "You might have found it yourself already but the following is not a bad site:
http://www.fashion-era.com/mid-late_v......"

Thanks Andree, that looks useful. I did find some interesting pics by just randomly googling. I also found a couple of books that may be interesting: Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey & Paris Fashions of the 1890s: A Picture Sourcebook with 350 Designs, Including 24 in Full Color though I can't vouch for them.

I liked the quote of Mme Swann (p228 Vintage UK, c. p270 ML) where she says: "I don't play golf like so many of my friends. So I should have no excuse for going about in sweaters as they do." I was intrigued how a sweater would look with some of these fashions and I noticed that Marcelita included a link to this picture on the Proust 2013 reading group. It's dated as 1907 so a similar period.

[Andree]

Jonathan wrote: "Andree wrote: "You might have found it yourself already but the following is not a bad site:
http://www.fashion-era.com/mid-late_v...-..."

I guess the old cardigan hasn't changed much since 1907.
I also found a women's golf attire from 1899:
http://www.internationalposter.com/po...

However, without checking, I assume that since Proust was born in 1871, the narrator should be about 15 at the time of his acceptance into the Swann household and of his friendship with Gilberte, which would bring us to about 1886.
Here is another one:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/48033711...

[Jonathan]

Andree wrote: "However, without checking, I assume that since Proust was born in 1871, the narrator should be about 15 at the time of his acceptance into the Swann household and of his friendship with Gilberte, which would bring us to about 1886.
Here is another one:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/48033711..."

Haha! That second one is great. They almost look like Japanese warriors!

I can't remember where I read it now, or the precise reasoning behind it, but I think the consensus is that the narrator is about ten years younger than Proust.

[Andree]

Jonathan wrote: "Andree wrote: "However, without checking, I assume that since Proust was born in 1871, the narrator should be about 15 at the time of his acceptance into the Swann household and of his friendship w..."

That is very possible, which would bring us into the 1890's.
Here is another one which you might like:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
The man standing in the doorway is Charles Haas, the very model for Swann. Isn't it exactly the way one imagines Swann at the time of his courtship of Odette?

[Jonathan]

Andree wrote: "Here is another one which you might like:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
The man standing in the doorway is Charles Haas, the very model for Swann. Isn't it exactly the way one imagines Swann at the time of his courtship of Odette? "

Very dapper! The problem is that I'd seen that picture and this photograph before I started reading ISOLT so I already had that image of Swann before I started reading. I'm not sure if that's good or bad...

[Andree]

Actually, I had seen pictures of Charles Haas before but I just discovered the Tissot painting at the "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity" exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago last summer. I immediately recognized Charles Haas/Swann.

[Marcelita]

Jonathan wrote: "I actually enjoy a lot of the narrative on the fashions of this period; probably more so than the art references.
I've been googling such terms as 'Watteau housecoat'..."

I think the "billowing silk" is key....

This was posted on GoodReads 2013: The Year of Reading Proust
The Group Lounge --Nov 06, 2013 09:45AM
Message by ReemK10 (Paper Pills):



Detail of 'The Cousins' by Watteau

"Nowadays it was rarely in Japanese kimonos that Odette received her intimates, but rather in the bright and billowing silk of a Watteau housecoat whose flowering foam she would make as though to rub gently over her bosom, and in which she basked, lolled disported herself with such an air of well-being, of cool freshness, taking such deep breaths, that she seemed to look on these garments not as something decorative, a mere setting for herself, but as necessary, in the same ways as her 'tub' or her daily 'constitutional,' to satisfy the requirements of her physiognomy and the niceties of hygiene." MP

[Jonathan]

I've only just started Part Two today even though it was in last week's schedule.

So, now the narrator embarks on his trip to Balbec. It's two years later and the narrator is possibly sixteen (?) now and he still hasn't got over Gilberte. Oh dear!

The first thing that confused me was why he sometimes capitalises the word 'Habit' and sometimes he doesn't. Does 'Habit' refer to a specific habit or collection of habits? See this quote from p255 (Vintage UK) or c. p302 ML:

In Paris I had grown more and more indifferent to Gilberte, thanks to Habit. The change of habit, that is to say the temporary cessation of Habit, completed Habit's work when I set out for Balbec.

[Jonathan]

Marcelita wrote: "I think the "billowing silk" is key...."

Thanks for the picture Marcelita. It certainly helps with visualising these things.

[Jonathan]

Does anyone else find it odd that the narrator gets into a panic about the thought of travelling when he must have travelled to Combray when he was younger? Maybe the effects of this constant pampering since then has made him even more afraid of the outside world - or am I being too harsh?

When I'm reading these passages I find I'm kinda siding with his grandmother. I imagine her scowling and grumbling as the conversation between the 'not so little' narrator and his mother, on departure, resembles that between a mother and a little child. I keep imagining the narrator in a 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' outfit. :-)

[Jonathan]

There are some fun little scenes in this short section. Things like Françoise's dress-sense, the episode with the narrator's medicinal brandy before the trip, the sunrise from the train, the beautiful milk-girl dispensing drinks, his disappointment (yet again!) with the church at Balbec, their arrival at the Grand Hotel and the amusing little episode with the lift.

I prefer Proust when he concentrates more on the external world. Compare the beginning of Part Two with the end of Part One, which was getting very claustrophobic.

[Sunny]

I'm only a few sentences into the reading for week ending 03/22, but I came across a line that really resonated with me. I just need to share:

"The soldier is convinced that a certain interval of time, capable of being indefinitely prolonged, will be allowed him before the bullet finds him, the thief before he is taken, men in general before they have to die."

I wanted to add to this list 'the teenager before he stops being invincible'.