Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion
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message 51:
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Dave
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rated it 5 stars
Nov 13, 2014 09:36AM
Thank you Marcelita, I knew you would help us sort through it. For me it is a testament to Proust's genius that he worked on this novel so many years yet remained so stylistically consistent and kept track of such a mass of details. Yes, things got misplaced or turned around at the end, but the dedication and good faith of so many to bring it together after his death is very heartwarming.
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Dave wrote: "I think the sanitarium is a beacon of hope for the reader - if you've slogged your way this far through this strange book, check in here before you fall off the end of the book and are lost forever in Proustian obsession!"Again...the dimples appear.
Actually, "this strange book" may have kept me from such a place. ;)
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And thankfully without a smartphone! As much as he liked to talk to friends he may have spent 7 years texting his friends.
It would be interesting to me to know which pages of the Fugitive Proust had planned to cut out.
MMR. wrote: "It would be interesting to me to know which pages of the Fugitive Proust had planned to cut out."This French article may be of interest, as it discusses the differences between the two texts.
http://jacbayle.perso.neuf.fr/livres/...
From Google Translate:
https://translate.google.com/translat...
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MMR. wrote: "It would be interesting to me to know which pages of the Fugitive Proust had planned to cut out."Guess where I was this evening? At the French Consulate, listening to Antoine Compagnon discuss the discovered 1986 manuscript...referred in these circles as the "short" version.
http://albertine.com/events/on-proust...
(Not sure his long this will be "up.")
Apparently, according to AC, Robert Proust kept the "shorter" version hidden from everyone, even the publisher, because it would change the continuity of the last volume, Time Regained, and everyone had a vested interest in persuading the public that Proust had "finished" the novel.
Proust had cut everything from the beginning, when he found out that Albertine had gone...to the start of the Venice passages. (He cut all those visceral grieving passages, the same ones I turned to when my mother died.)
AC noted that the last three volumes do not have the same "status" as the previous four, because Proust's hadn't completed his final editing/re-writing process.
AC wondered....why would Proust choose a major change in direction, just two weeks before his death?
Were the grief passages too personal, to intimate, so he suppressed them?
Or was he going to re-write the last volume and find another place for these passages?
I can't write more, as SPOILERS! lurk within the arguments, but would be glad to discuss the changes pertaining to Albertine in January.
Some may think it strange...that the very day I responded to MMR's question, was the same day I heard AC's answer!
If these "coincidences" didn't happen regularity, I would definitely heed Dave's advice...and take myself to the sanitarium.
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Yes, please let's not forget to this all about this some weeks from now. We're so close to the end... or the beginning...
Yes Marcelita, you are obviously in tune. But it doesn't really strike me as weird. Seems right and natural. Hope you took good notes!
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Yes, I noticed in my reading of this last volume differences between my Vintage (MKE) version and the Penguin version. I've decided to keep to the Penguin edition for this one as it seems more complete - I'll probably now try to avoid making comparisons between the two. Sometimes too much info in footnotes etc. can actually be distracting; it's useful when you want to go back and investigate though. Your Portuguese editions seem to be comprehensive Renato.
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No, it's not Albertine Dave. :-) Curiously it's Cottard in both the Penguin translation and the Vintage (MKE) edition.
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Dave, see message 33 in the 11/08 thread for info I gleaned from the Penguin intro - see here.
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I especially liked this humorous quote though:
I admire Saint-Loup's asking to be sent to the positions where there was greatest danger infinitely more than M. de Charlus's avoiding wearing brightly coloured cravats.Ha! Ha!
Harumpf, I still don't agree that Cottard goes there. Guess I'll have to arm wrestle the translators.Has anyone identified where in the story Cottard dies and where he comes back to life? Last time I saw him he was writing a prescription for croissants for Madame Verdurin for relief of headaches so she could dodge wartime rationing.
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A general is like a writer who wants to write a play, or a book, but whom the book itself, with the unexpected options that it reveals at one point, the impasse it presents at another, causes to deviate extensively from his preconceived plan.Presumably Proust is commenting on his own book.
I took that to be a thinly veiled allusion to Proust own writing experience. I loved the other quote you mentioned about Saint Loup and Charlus as well.
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Has anyone identified where in the story Cottard dies and where he comes back to life? Last ti..."
I agree that Brichot seems more appropriate.
I can't remember exactly when Cottard's death was first mentioned but I believe it was at one of the gatherings at the Verdurins' - I'll have to check. But I think this passage was one of those disputed/additional passages anyway so I guess that Proust was in the process of deciding where best to 'kill off' Cottard.
Attending a Verdurin Wednesday would surely kill me!
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Yes, the hostess everyone loves to hate. And she has a long memory too. She didn't forget The Queen of Naples duplicity in protecting Charlus - spies, all spies! What was her version of their plot - and invasion of Balbec by Germans, Italians and Japanese?
Abigail's Party looks interesting.
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It is! It seems they simply added everything from all editions and made notes explaining the differences between them all.
Ah, so the definitive English Edition would be the one translated from the Portugese - Renato, YOU are our translator of choice!
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Jonathan, I also like Mme. Verdurin very much. She's one of those characters that you think about and suddenly they're alive in your living room - like you've just conjured her up or rubbed a genie's bottle (although in this case you'd be granting her wishes or else!) - bossing you around!
I take deep satisfaction in conjuring up Mme. V (although my favorite conjuring device is the Ouija Board) because if she appears I know that, at least for today, I am not a bore!
Jonathan wrote: "Dave wrote: "Harumpf, I still don't agree that Cottard goes there. Guess I'll have to arm wrestle the translators.Has anyone identified where in the story Cottard dies and where he comes back to ..."
In M/K/E, your favorite, Mme. Verdurin, reveals the news with her usual "wit."
Meanwhile I was struck, as was everybody who approached Mme Verdurin that evening, by a far from pleasant odour of rhino-gomenol.
[...]
"I don’t mind weeping, not in the least; only I get the most appalling sniffles afterwards. It stuffs up my mucous membrane, and forty-eight hours later I look like an old drunk. I have to inhale for days on end to get my vocal cords functioning? However, one of Cottard’s pupils …”
“Oh, by the way, I never offered you my condolences: he was carried off very quickly, poor fellow!”
“Ah, yes, there we are, he died, as everyone has to. He’d killed enough people for it to be his turn to have a bit of his own medicine."
MP *13 ( page 321 in The Captive.)
M/K/E's *Footnote13: Cottard will nevertheless reappear—indeed at this same soiree (see p. 371).
(How he finally dies is described on page 116, in Time Regained.)
Thanks a bunch Marcelita. Now I have to get some Rhino-Gomenol to complement my Vetiver and Orris-Root in my Proustian oils and ointments kit.
Dave wrote: "I would add though that for me the most emotional loss of the entire book was not of a character but of a place - Combray, whose destruction is narrated in Gilberte's second letter."Ohhh, very true. Similar reaction here. Perhaps intentional?
Except ... the grandmother's death. That affected me as well.
Well I've read Dwayne that Proust "moved" Combray geographically East so it would be behind enemy lines and could geographically "fit" the storyline. He wrote the last half of TR early on and during WWI had to make adjustments to fit the war in. That seems to fit your idea.
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Renato wrote: "Dwayne! You're already on the last volume! :D"Yes -- I have only about 175 pages of my edition til the end, so I should be done pretty soon. I did a lot of reading over the American Thanksgiving holiday.
Already reflecting on how I am not the same person I was a year ago when we all began reading. Would I experience Swann's Way differently now, even if I didn't know so much of the story that stretches around it? :) And that is the "exercise" aspect of reading this book! Sigh!
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You are amazingly correct Dwayne, you have changed! You would definitely experience Swann's Way now Dwayne, BECAUSE you know the rest of the story. I heartily recommend that a couple of days after you finish you go back and read the first 40 pages (through the Madeline). If you don't have time for that, read the first 10 pages.
Dave wrote (message 18):"I would add though that for me the most emotional loss of the entire book was not of a character but of a place - Combray, whose destruction is narrated in Gilberte's second letter."
I must admit that my eyebrows raised slightly when I read Gilberte's letter describing the devastation of Combray and surrounds, because Illiers/Combray is some distance west of Paris and much further west than the actual "western front". However, Dave's later explanation (message 83 above) puts it in perspective:
"Well I've read Dwayne that Proust "moved" Combray geographically East so it would be behind enemy lines and could geographically "fit" the storyline. He wrote the last half of TR early on and during WWI had to make adjustments to fit the war in."
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I found the following comment of the narrator about the book very interesting and highly significant:"In this book in which there is not a single incident which is not fictitious, not a single character who is a real person in disguise, in which everything has been invented by me in accordance with the requirements of my theme, I owe it to the credit of my country to say that only the millionaire cousins of Francoise who came out of retirement to help their niece when she was left without support, only they are real people who exist."
Did others also find this comment interesting? And can we take the narrator's disclaimer seriously, or is he deliberately leading us down the garden path in trying to make us believe that we are reading a work of pure fiction, notwithstanding all the indications to the contrary, pointing to historical accuracy (at least in certain respects)??
Sorry, I just noticed that my message 90 above actual belongs in the next week's discussion and is addressed therein. (That's what happens when one is so far behind the group as I am - not at 95%.)
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"In this book in which there is not a single incident which is not fictitious, not a single cha..."
It's actually a bit of a surprise when the narrator (or Proust?) suddenly starts talking to us, the reader, directly...isn't it?
In the library scene at the Guermantes party, later on in the novel, the narrator covers this area again. In summary (and this isn't a spoiler) he says that a writer's characters consist of traits from several real people as well as invention and that this 'is one reason why studies where people try to work out who an author is talking about are pointless.' - it can still be fun trying though!!
To Ben -- doing this on mobile and it responded to the wrong comment! : ) What Jonathan said ... And also a good exploration of this exists in the book "Proust in Love." Just finished it tonight and would recommend it to you!
Ben wrote: "I found the following comment of the narrator about the book very interesting and highly significant:"In this book in which there is not a single incident which is not fictitious, not a single cha..."
Ben~Proust would combine qualities of several persons into one character...a personality here, the body type there, facial features from a third, and maybe even a little of himself (the hat scene in the Baron's bedroom).
He would use the "other" qualities to dissuade friends from thinking he was writing about them. Several never believed him and severed the friendship.
There are several "real" people in the novel. Here is a related post:
https://www.goodreads.com/comment/sho...
