Combray, section II (Discussion thread 2)

[Traveller]

Hi guys, those of you who want to forge on, can do so here, starting with the text that reads:
Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it from the railway when we arrived there in the week before Easter, was no more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about its long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as a shepherdess gathers her sheep, the woolly grey backs of its huddled houses, which the remains of its medieval ramparts enclosed, here and there, in an outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town in a primitive painting.

....and which ends with:
And from that moment on, I would not have to take another step, the ground would walk for me through that garden where for so long now my actions had ceased to be accompanied by any deliberate attention: Habit had taken me in its arms, and it carried me all the way to my bed like a little child.

EDIT : and not this section as stated erroneously previously:

M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have constructed a whole system of landscape ethics and a celestial geography of Lower Normandy sooner than admit to us that his own sister was living within a mile or two of Balbec, sooner than find himself obliged to offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never have inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain—as from his knowledge of my grandmother’s character, he really ought to have been—that we would never have dreamed of making use of it.

which is roughly a similar amount of pages that we read to get through section 1.
Since the second section is so long, I thought it would be a good idea to break it up a bit.

[Stephen]

It's remarkable how the narrator/Proust describes "the dreary streets of Combray," and yet what efforts he makes to describe Combray in all its beauty! By dreary he must mean familiar, and so all this accumulation of historical detail that he needs to find. I assume this is the result of his new madeleine-infused discovery, where by practice he sets up all the affects placed in his mind like the Japanese paper flowers that expand in a bowl ("which until then are without character or form"). Not to sound like a dumb American ("Oh those Europeans, they're so historical!") but it's amazing how many historical echoes that ring over the centuries that can be found even in a small, quaint town like Combray. The Celtic myth in Combray. He will unlock traces of the dead entombed in the gardens, the apse, the steeple, to set them free. So that when he says, which surprised me, "How I loved our church, and how clearly I can see it still!" he appreciates what the church has taught him, if not exactly how the church's mission intended to. He'll also say of that same church how its whole appearance reminded him of a prison for so lacking in beauty. A way those statements aren't contradictory is if he believes he's the one building the church of Combray.

Proust sounds very much like a man of his time whenever he speaks of universal truths that can only be found within. Of the madeleine experience, he put his great religious conversion this way, "It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself." In that, and elsewhere, he sounds very much like Emerson, and all those who would have emptied out all the contents of the Bible for what he himself might find on his own. Of Emerson's Self Reliance essay, or when Emerson says, "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Proust (amazingly) had read Emerson.

I am confused - it is easy to overlook - that the narrator's family doesn't actually live in Combray. They come out to it from Paris.

I am pleased to read Proust say, "...did the face of a woman whom I took to be an actress, leave me in a state of troubled excitement, impotently and painfully trying to form a picture of her private life." Worth the struggle and the effort, I say, erotic dreams and all. Not the celebrity. Not the art alone, as if the person doesn't exist. But the real woman.

The narrator's friend Bloch stifling sobs and wiping tears for the thought the grandmother might be ill. The grandmother, horrified, tells Proust/the narrator, “How can he possibly be sincere. Why, he doesn’t know me. Unless he’s mad, of course.” Proust needs to make it clear they don't disapprove of Bloch because he's a Jew. "Unless he's mad, of course," could mean any number of things, all reflecting back on the narrator sobbing about his mother. To me, Bloch's speech patterns sound highly affected. The narrator isn't gay - (sorry, a little spoiler alert here) he will just happen to take great interest in homosexual lives - but Proust, of course, was gay. Makes me wonder if the family's distaste about boys sobbing doesn't have to do with fears over theirs and Bloch's sexuality? That may be reading into things too much, but that factor did cross my mind.

Traveller, when you said, "Now I feel inspired to read a biography" I know what you mean! I ran out to the library and picked up a copy of Proust's letters, the one with the intro by Adam Gopnik, one of Jan's favorites. I couldn't resist.

[Jan]

Stephen wrote: "...Proust sounds very much like a man of his time whenev...."

Stephen, I'm going to insert something here that occurred to me after reading the 1st part, since you speak of "his times." I don't believe it could be an original thought (in fact, I could have missed it among earlier comments) and that is, at this point at least, the enterprise as a whole could look like a self-analysis -- seeing that In Search of Lost Time comes along after Freud has been publishing and psychoanalysis is rising. I'm not necessarily implying causality but just the notion, which we may now take for granted, that the way to make connections and find truth is via exploration of the past. Nowadays that would not necessarily be the assumption, yet it still exists as a cultural meme. Surely in the voluminous writing about Proust that's come up. And if so another thought might follow. But I'll await response to that much 1st.

P.S. Google has surmised I'm interested in Proust so now getting various articles. One by A.N. Wilson but it's more about Moncrieff than Proust, one on why AI can't yet translate Proust; haven't checked that one out yet.

[Stephen]

Jan, yes, "self-analysis," outstanding, I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but that is exactly what he's doing, isn't he? Freud's method had much to do with critiquing middle class and bourgeois morality and Overture is nothing if not that.

While reading, I have been thinking of dream analysis and Proust's method. The novel is all very dream-like. Let's say we want to do Proust's method ourselves. Let's say one morning I have a dream about a horse and my first grade teacher Mrs. Granger. Why those two in conjunction? Well, maybe because Mrs. Granger was a harsh disciplinarian, and, education-wise, we needed to learn a way to ride the horse without getting thrown off (if we wanted to be symbolic about it). But wait. We're supposed to ask what these images remind one of, so when I do that, I think that our school had an old horse trail behind the field where we used to go out and play during recess. And that it would be best if we didn't wander off too far while playing, otherwise we might provoke the wrath of Mrs. Granger (she wasn't called "Danger" Granger by us kids for nothing). So, from those two associations, I could go off in any other number of directions, and draw conclusions, parallels, insights along the way. Doesn't that feel like what Proust is doing?

I'm sure the biographies address the link between Proust and Freud, it's just that nothing about this jumps out at me right now. I recall reading how his prose style developed by studying John Ruskin and Thoreau, but Freud? I don't know. Psychoanalysis and Marxism didn't fully take root in literary culture until the 1930s, and Proust was done by 1922 (I think). But when you look at a writer who definitely was influenced directly by Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, he was writing at the same time as Proust. So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Proust had somehow absorbed Freud's ideas secondhand, if not directly. Historically, the time was certainly ripe for that kind of critique.

But excellent, I'm so glad you raised "self-analysis." We should definitely think about that and come back to it from time to time; certainly toward the end once we get to the point of assessing Proust's work overall. I'd even say that that may be one of the most important formal questions we'll have to consider.

[Traveller]

Nice thoughts and comments, guys. I'm starting to see what people mean by how highly referential Proust is. I'm starting to think we're going to have to let go of the idea of a close reading of the text, and only the text, Stephen. :p

In fact, reading Proust is teaching me a lot! I'm looking up most of the things he refers to, which are sort of incidental to the "action" and perhaps will also intrude on a discussion of the text, so I was thinking that I'd maybe make little glossaries of the things that I have looked up, and hide them under a spoiler tag, so that fellow readers can click on the spoiler tag should they wish to read these notes. It might save you from looking it up yourself, if you're a curious person.
For example:

(view spoiler)[Re the Lime Flower (Linden flower) infusion that aunt Françoise drinks: Lime Flowers are classed as a nervine and have a long history of use as a folk remedy for improving mental function, moods and sleep. One of the active ingredients in Linden is an essential oil called farnesol, a sedative which helps relax the cardiovascular system, which in turn helps to curb stress. The sedative effects of Lime Flowers make them useful in treating nervous palpitations and insomnia.
It has other properties, but I’m guessing she’s taking it for the above.

I didn’t know what the elevation was, so I looked it up:
In Eastern and Western Christian liturgical practice, the elevation is a ritual raising of the consecrated elements of bread and wine during the celebration of the Eucharist. The term is applied especially to that by which, in the Roman Rite of Mass, the Host and the Chalice are each shown to the people immediately after each is consecrated.

Regarding the statues of porphyry that he mentions, this is what porphyry looks like :

And Ashlar is masonry made of large square-cut stones, used as a facing on walls of brick or stone rubble.
(hide spoiler)]

[Traveller]

Sigh, and then I read the following about Proust:

"Marcel Proust strongly believed that a writer should be judged exclusively on the evidence of his written work and not upon the facts of his life.

The French critic Sainte-Beuve had inspired a school of critics in the nineteenth century, l’homme et l’oeuvre, who devoted as much study to a writer’s life and letters as to his actual writing in order to form an understanding of his work.
Indeed, À la recherche du temps perdu evolved out of the essay Against Saint-Beuve, which specifically criticized this mixture of the writer’s art with his life.

In his essay, Proust is very specific: “Saint-Beuve’s work adds nothing to our understanding of a writer. The famous technique of not separating the author from his work which made him the leading critic of the nineteenth century ignores what should be obvious to anyone upon reflection, that a book is produced by a different person than the one whom we see in his daily life with his strengths and his weaknesses as a man.”

Proust argued that the “different person” who had created the work could only be understood by studying the text of his writing, not the incidents of his life.

Well, I suppose that is something we can keep in mind, while at the same time, I wouldn't have known that in the first place had I not read up about Proust the writer. It's a bit of a Catch-22 situation, or to put it more bluntly, it leaves us nicely between a rock and a hard place.

I'm wondering if, perhaps, at the point that he wrote it, he was feeling afraid that people would some day find out that he's gay and judge him for it. He went to great pains to hide it, and society was terribly judgmental about it at the time. Oscar Wilde's incarceration, and the monstrous way that Alan Turing was treated, are cases in point.

[Fionnuala]

Good to see your keen interest in discovering the meanings of all the references, Traveller—and investigating some of Proust's own background. I have to say that I share his opinion that we should read the book not the life.
As for the book, I'm lingering on the descriptions of the atmosphere of Tante Léonie's rooms and admiring the narrator's heightened sense of colour as he describes the stained glass windows of the church. I could read these passages over and over—though I'm also enjoying the humour in the exchanges between Tante Léonie and Françoise, and the way those exchanges increase our knowledge of both characters.

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: "I have to say that I share his opinion that we should read the book not the life."

I think I still basically agree with what you say there and with what I initially said on the matter, Fionnuala, but also keeping in mind that the novel is obviously written for Proust's educated contemporaries, so I am rather keenly feeling my own lack in both those regards. I'm reading his work many decades later, in a different language, and I come from a different language and culture and find myself rather frustratingly uneducated as to many of things that the text refers to.

So in that sense, I'm finding that I do need to educate myself a little about what he refers to, since some of it would be lost on me if I did not. However, agreed, I shall endeavor to keep these little explorations as close to illuminating the text only, as possible.

Fionnuala wrote: "As for the book, I'm lingering on the descriptions of the atmosphere of Tante Léonie's rooms and admiring the narrator's heightened sense of colour as he describes the stained glass windows of the church."
Oh yes, those are beautiful indeed! In fact, I read the passages describing the atmosphere in his aunt's rooms a few times over and copied it from various translations to compare, and different parts are lovely in different translations. This bit:

The air was saturated with the finest flower of a silence so nourishing, so succulent, that I could move through it only with a sort of greed, especially on those first still cold mornings of Easter week when I tasted it more keenly because I had only just arrived in Combray: before I went in to say good morning to my aunt, they made me wait for a moment, in the first room where the sun, still wintry, had come to warm itself before the fire, already lit between the two bricks and coating the whole room with an odor of soot, having the same effect as one of those great rustic open hearths, or one of those mantels in country houses, beneath which one sits hoping that outdoors there will be an onset of rain, snow, even some diluvian catastrophe so as to add to the comfort of reclusion the poetry of hibernation; I would take a few steps from the prayer stool to the armchairs of stamped velvet always covered with a crocheted antimacassar; and as the fire baked like a dough the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was all curdled and which had already been kneaded and made to “rise” by the damp and sunny coolness of the morning, it flaked them, gilded them, puckered them, puffed them, transforming them into an invisible, palpable country pastry, an immense “turnover” in which, having barely tasted the crisper, more delicate, more highly regarded but also drier aromas of the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the floral wallpaper, I would always come back with an unavowed covetousness to ensnare myself in the central, sticky, stale, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered coverlet.

I was thinking that "grumeleux" might also have worked well as "lumpy" where the Davis has it as curdled and the Enright as clotted.

I can see why Proust's work is seen as poetic in it's descriptions.

Regarding his description of Françoise’s worth as a servant, like a horse-owner describing the utility of his steed, I was eye-rolling a bit. I allowed for 2 possibilities: 1) he was very much a man of a bygone era, 2) and/or he was subtly mocking middle-to upper class attitudes of the time towards their servants.

I can't figure out how much of his descriptions of 'Mama' is heart-felt and how much of it is ironic, he paints her in such saintly terms. For example, in this section, I was thinking :
"Wow, isn’t Mama a heroine, because she realized that Françoise was an actual human being. Want to see true compassion for the common people? Go read Victor Hugo." And Hugo came a few generations before Proust.

So surely some of what Proust is writing is subtly ironic.

[Fionnuala]

I'm thrilled you're reveling in those passages too, Traveller. Proust's descriptive writing is what I love most in his books.

Traveller wrote: "...I can't figure out how much of his descriptions of 'Mama' is heart-felt and how much of it is ironic"

The narrator was a man of his time, I think, and that time was one of masters and servants (in England and the US too)—in spite of the French Revolution of 1789, and the proclamations of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Françoise belonged in the servant class, and as the narrator tells us in the first section, there was little movement between the classes.

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: "The narrator was a man of his time, I think, and that time was one of masters and servants (in England and the US too)—in spite of the French Revolution of 1789, and the proclamations of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Françoise belonged in the servant class..."

Well, yes, indeed, but my point was in the context that Proust was preceded by authors such as Victor Hugo, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Sand (whom we have already seen mention of in 'Combray'), and Honoré de Balzac, and he must surely have read famous works such as Émile Zola's Germinal which has a coalminer as a hero - how much lower can you go? A few of the authors I mentioned also featured prostitutes, for example, in a sympathetic light.

Indeed, many of the authors I mentioned above, were social activists who wrote novels dealing with the working classes, or 'servant' classes before Proust was even born, or when he was still a young boy, and were framing them as human beings, as opposed to being possessions who only exist for the pleasure of the upper classes.

[Fionnuala]

I understand your point about the greater awareness shown by those authors in their writings, Traveller.

[Stephen]

Traveller, there's no reason for you to defend yourself about the art vs. life question, you're just doing what any intelligent critic does by weighing her evidence, especially when it comes to an autobiographical writer like Proust. He wasn't a god living outside history. Like any of us, he was conditioned by his times, and that's reflected in his work. You're asking great questions about both, so I say keep at what you're doing.

I mean, really, that's pretty rich for Proust to say what he did, that the writer ought to be off limits while he himself took private citizens - people who never asked to be portrayed for the amusement of others - and would mischaracterize them for his own benefit. There's no such thing as this "different person" Proust cites who wrote the book. It was Proust the fiction writer aiming for objectivity. That's all that means. It's still Proust, and as a human being - what a surprise - folly overcame him.

That the life "adds nothing" to understanding the work is nonsense. Fiction writers are not encyclopedists, and the gaps they leave out by assumption need to be filled. The Sainte-Beuve he maligned is actually a wonderful writer. His portraits of leading French figures over a two hundred year span, particularly his focus on remarkable women, provide an outstanding literary history of France from the 1600s to the 1800s. Sainte-Beuve is at his best showing how character and personality influence the style, whether it be literature, philosophy, or fashion, the things the French have traditionally excelled at. Why would anyone want to miss out on that, especially if they are interested in French culture, over some foolish theory about the purity of literature?

[Traveller]

Hmm, I think it might be useful to build a bridge here. I will add my personal opinion here, which it must be noted is only an opinion so I'm not touting it as the only truth.

I personally think that Proust had an inner sense of insecurity about a good few things. It would also explain his fictional alter-ego's emotional insecurity and his clinging to Mama. If Mama rejected him, he would be all alone in the world with some slight feelings of self-contempt, and perhaps it is these feelings that torture him in the darkness of night.

So when he says "don't judge a book by it's writer," I think what he means to say is: "Please judge my book by it's own merits, as a work of art, and do not look at me, as a flawed human being, as being synonymous with this work of art." On that aspect, I have Proust's back 100% completely.

We are indeed surmising as to what the writer meant, where there are parts that are ambiguous, but it's not as if we knew old Marcel from where we met him in the gay brothel and now jeer at his work, for how could such a degenerate moral reprobate, a gay Jew, write anything of worth?

No, we are not doing that. I for one, am looking at what is written, honestly, and I'm trying to be as fair as possible. In addition, I'm trying not to be led too much by the translator's voice, which is why I often look at the original French version with my greatly lacking, broken, wonky French, because what counts most for me is authenticity.

By building up my background knowledge a bit, what I am trying to do, is to make the scenes and the characters come more alive by filling out my knowledge, my feel of where they come from. And where I judge the work, I am judging the work honestly, in its good and in its bad, for, like Stephen mentions, no writer is a god.

Proust is neither a god nor is he a devil. He is an extremely talented mortal, and his many skills and his talent shines through his work, and it is his work I look at; in parts shining and beautiful, in parts whimsical and charming, in parts profound and thought-provoking, in parts poetic and soaring, in parts arch and mocking, in parts a bit affected and erudite, here and there a bit of muddiness, even a bit of ugliness, and he does have a tendency to ramble, but overall a fascinating, shimmering piece of art that reflects a slice of humanity and of the mysterious, multi-faceted world we live in.

[Stephen]

That's it, Traveller, that's pretty much how I see it, too. You would think it would go without saying that we should refrain from judging people/writers based on things like accidents of birth, where they came from, their religion or skin color, etc. but unfortunately that's a very popular, fashionable way of reading now. I think we should definitely look at these things, but not as forms of *judgment* - that's the obvious, need not be stated difference.

The larger, rhetorical question is what does Proust mean by "art"? What is he asking us to look at in order to evaluate him as a writer? Large questions, so I'll leave them as rhetorical ones, but one thing's for sure, as a highly referential writer, he's asking us to look beyond what he has written.

For example, in the Combray section. He refers to the French writer that preceded him, Saint-Simon, and his drawing up of the old court. It's a brief paragraph (for Proust), but in it, he states an ideal form of depicting something like court society. Well, for me, that's hard to see, because I've never read Saint-Simon, and Proust's short description and advocacy for the writer doesn't give me enough. It makes me want to read Saint-Simon to see what Proust is talking about. And, like I stated in an earlier thread, that's exactly what the writer Daniel Mendelsohn did last year. He'd do that for many reasons, I assume, to read Saint-Simon on his own, but as well, to compare Proust to him so that we could come up with a little more of an informed response to evaluating Proust's art other than on the "I like reading Proust/I don't like reading Proust, and here's my reason why" spectrum. There's nothing wrong with reading for the "I like/I don't like" response, but some of us like to go further, to go a little "psycho" if you will, when it comes to reading literature ;)

[Traveller]

Stephen and Fionnuala both mentioned a theme of religion, and there is definitely a strong streak of Roman Catholicism woven throughout the text. If you don’t mind, I’m going to highlight some of them because of the sheer beauty of some, and because of the thematic connections.

When Fionnuala mentioned a beautiful passage about colors in the church, I was picturing these passages:

“One of them, a tall compartment, was divided into a hundred or so small rectangular panes in which blue predominated, like a great deck of cards resembling those meant to entertain King Charles VI; but either because a beam of sunlight was shining, or because my gaze, as it moved, carried across the glass, snuffed and lit again by turns, a precious moving conflagration, the next moment it had assumed the changing luster of a peacock’s train, then trembled and undulated in a flaming chimerical rain that dripped from the top of the dark rocky vault, along the damp walls, as if this were the nave of some grotto iridescent with sinuous stalactites into which I was following my parents, … a moment later the little lozenge-shaped panes had assumed the deep transparency, the infrangible (unbreakable) hardness of sapphires which had been juxtaposed on some immense breastplate, but behind which one felt, more beloved than all these riches, a momentary smile of the sun;”

"Il y en avait un qui était un haut compartiment divisé en une centaine de petits vitraux rectangulaires où dominait le bleu, comme un grand jeu de cartes pareil à ceux qui devaient distraire le roi Charles VI ; mais soit qu’un rayon eût brillé, soit que mon regard en bougeant eût promené à travers la verrière tour à tour éteinte et rallumée un mouvant et précieux incendie, l’instant d’après elle avait pris l’éclat changeant d’une traîne de paon, puis elle tremblait et ondulait en une pluie flamboyante et fantastique qui dégouttait du haut de la voûte sombre et rocheuse, le long des parois humides, comme si c’était dans la nef de quelque grotte irisée de sinueux stalactites que je suivais mes parents, qui portaient leur paroissien ; un instant après les petits vitraux en losange avaient pris la transparence profonde, l’infrangible dureté de saphirs qui eussent été juxtaposés sur quelque immense pectoral, mais derrière lesquels on sentait, plus aimé que toutes ces richesses, un sourire momentané de soleil."

That’s so magical!

Further to the theme of Catholicism, Proust actually, in a metaphorical way, describes how the entire town of Combray is dominated by religion when he describes how the church building itself dominates, starting at the beginning of the second section of Combray already and spread throughout the rest of it.
At some point he describes how some different part of the church always tends to be visible from various different parts of the town.

This following passage especially was significant to me of how dominant the actual building was, visually and psychologically (and note his amazing use of metaphor, as usual):

“… the apse, muscularly gathered and raised to a greater height by the perspective, seemed to spring with the effort the steeple was making to hurl its spire into the heart of the sky: it was always to the steeple that we had to return, always the steeple that dominated everything, summing up the houses with an unexpected pinnacle, raised before me like the finger of God, whose body might be hidden in the crowd of humans, though I would not confuse it with them because of that.

"(...ou que, des bords de la Vivonne), l’abside musculeusement ramassée et remontée par la perspective semblât jaillir de l’effort que le clocher faisait pour lancer sa flèche au cœur du ciel ; c’était toujours à lui qu’il fallait revenir, toujours lui qui dominait tout, sommant les maisons d’un pinacle inattendu, levé devant moi comme le doigt de Dieu dont le corps eût été caché dans la foule des humains sans que je le confondisse pour cela avec elle.

In an earlier section, these passages re the exterior caught my eye, where Proust is not only describing a part of his grandmother’s personality and character, but creates an indelible image in the mind’s eye:

“From the windows of its tower, placed two by two one above the other, with the exact and original proportion in their spacing that gives beauty and dignity not just to human faces, it loosed, dropped at regular intervals, volleys of crows which, for a moment, circled about shrieking, as if the old stones that allowed them to hop and flutter about without appearing to see them had suddenly become uninhabitable and emitted some principle of infinite agitation, struck them and driven them out. Then, after having streaked in every direction the violet velvet of the evening air, they would return suddenly calm to be reabsorbed into the tower, which was no longer baneful but once again benign, a few of them sitting here and there, apparently motionless, but perhaps snapping up some insect, on the tip of a turret, like a seagull as still as a fisherman on the crest of a wave. “

"Des fenêtres de sa tour, placées deux par deux les unes au-dessus des autres, avec cette juste et originale proportion dans les distances qui ne donne pas de la beauté et de la dignité qu’aux visages humains, il lâchait, laissait tomber à intervalles réguliers des volées de corbeaux qui, pendant un moment, tournoyaient en criant, comme si les vieilles pierres qui les laissaient s’ébattre sans paraître les voir, devenues tout d’un coup inhabitables et dégageant un principe d’agitation infinie, les avait frappés et repoussés. Puis, après avoir rayé en tous sens le velours violet de l’air du soir, brusquement calmés ils revenaient s’absorber dans la tour, de néfaste redevenue propice, quelques-uns posés çà et là, ne semblant pas bouger, mais happant peut-être quelque insecte, sur la pointe d’un clocheton, comme une mouette arrêtée avec l’immobilité d’un pêcheur à la crête d’une vague.

Especially: “ the violet velvet of the evening air” just caught my imagination with the unexpected added richness of the language and imagery in the English translation (using violet instead of purple for the English gives it an added air of richness in the alliteration), and comparing the side of the church with a human face is so imaginative!

And moving away from the church a bit, is it only me who sees in Aunt Leone’s needy attitude towards Eulalie, an echo of the narrator’s earlier attitude while eagerly yet with trepidation awaiting the advent of his mother, while waiting to kiss her good night?

(Waiting for Eulalie) the prospect of which kept her on those days in a state that was at first pleasant, but quite soon painful like an excessive hunger, if Eulalie was even a little late. Overly prolonged, this ecstasy of waiting for Eulalie became a torment, my aunt looked constantly at the time, yawned, felt faint. The sound of Eulalie’s chime, if it came at the very end of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would almost make her ill.

[Stephen]

Traveller, if you could post the French of any of these magical passages, I'd appreciate it. But only if they're at hand.

About Aunt Leonie's neediness and the echoes to earlier passages - no, I was thinking the same. Related, how Legrandin, Swann, others, the narrator seems to take a great interest in people who are dropping out (or seeming to drop out) from the society he's depicting. One of Murasaki's great interests in Tale of Genji, too...

[Traveller]

Stephen wrote: "Traveller, if you could post the French of any of these magical passages, I'd appreciate it. But only if they're at hand. "

Your wish is my command. I've edited them into my previous post just after the places where I posted the English versions.

[Traveller]

I do apologize to all of you, but I have found a much more natural place to end this thread, and that is the section that ends with :

And from that moment on, I would not have to take another step, the ground would walk for me through that garden where for so long now my actions had ceased to be accompanied by any deliberate attention: Habit had taken me in its arms, and it carried me all the way to my bed like a little child.

The next section, to be discussed in thread no. 3, would then start with :

"If Saturday, which began an hour earlier and deprived her of Françoise, passed more slowly than other days for my aunt, she nonetheless awaited its return with impatience from the beginning of the week, because it contained all the novelty and distraction that her weakened and finical body was still able to endure.

I will edit the first post in this threads to reflect this. The next thread can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Stephen]

Traveller wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Traveller, if you could post the French of any of these magical passages, I'd appreciate it. But only if they're at hand. "

Your wish is my command. I've edited them into my previo..."

Excellent, thank you!

[Traveller]

Many people will probably hate me for saying this, but I dislike how Proust RAMBLES. So far, for me, a lot of the writing has certainly been very much in the shape of a free flow of thoughts just like fluffy white clouds which skim over the blue sky in a breeze. Actually, they’re really not that orderly. It’s more like, you jump into a wormhole and pop out, moments later, in a completely different universe, on a completely different train of thought. The interjection of the story re his uncle and his young lady in pink in Paris, to suddenly jump back to Combray and the pregnant servant being an example of this.

Just after the part dealing with the kitchen-maid and the bunch of philosophical reveries that goes with it, Proust deals with how certain people (which he assumes to be all people) interact with fictional reading matter. This is interesting from a neuroscience POV. What Proust is doing with the characters he reads about, is related to a subconscious activity in neurotypical people’s brains called “mirroring”. In classical neuroscience, this has to do with mimicking body language, but seeing another person in pain or distress, also tends to evoke similar emotions in bystanders, and leads them to feel not only empathy, but often also leading to the feeling that we need to help.

The Canadian cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley calls fiction “the mind’s flight simulator”. Just as pilots can practise flying without leaving the ground, people who read fiction may improve their social skills each time they open a novel. In his research, he has found that as we begin to identify with the characters, we start to consider their goals and desires instead of our own. When they are in danger, our hearts start to race. We might even gasp. But we read with luxury of knowing that none of this is happening to us.

Wait, let me link you to an excellent article on the reader’s interaction with fiction. This article is a must for Proustians! https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/op...

Here is a more recent article (I quoted from it above) which, along with the article above, helps to explain a lot of why Proust’s early reading habits contributed to his extraordinary ability to evoke sensory experiences in his mind and in his fiction.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20...

[Stephen]

Traveller, I don't know if you've come across it yet, but someone has written a book called Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Subsequent to this book, which was a big success, the author, Jonah Lehrer, got into some trouble over plagiarism charges (including lifting from Jan's Adam Gopnick!); though that doesn't seem to have been a problem with the Proust book. You might want to first check out the Wiki page on Lehrer for Lehrer's aims (the need to fuse art and science thinking, for one) and the responses his book elicited. A Chris McManus, professor of psychology and medical education out of London began his review by saying, "Oh no he wasn't!" Those without science training, the Wiki page says, tended to welcome Lehrer's ideas.

About Proust's rambling, what confuses the matter is that he's not constructing his narrative in a linear fashion. In these first two huge chapters, it's more like he's developing an argument than constructing a plot, or story. The uncle Alphonse episode, where another person receives the snub from the narrator's family, precedes yet a few more examples of family snubs, all for people for whom the narrator holds a great interest and would like to know better. Considering that these episodes are sandwiched in between A LOT of impressionistic writing it is very difficult to see the narrative he's shaping, at first. But more to your gut reaction, yes, his style can sometimes get on my nerves, too, with a version of, "Yes, that's lovely, Marcel, but the point is?"

I'd say be patient: at some point you'll see how it all fits together, and then you'll be in a very good position to ask whether the style was a necessity or an indulgence. While you're putting all the pieces together, I'd say also bear in mind the point that Proust is doing a version of "self-analysis." It'll be fun later on to debate whether Proust could've made a greater impact using more traditional novelistic technique, or whether to do so would be to take the "Proust" out of reading Proust.

[Traveller]

Thanks Stephen, yes, I know for example that the lady in pink is (view spoiler)[Odette (hide spoiler)], and I get that his style is fragmented a la modernist/postmodernist, but there is no attempt at even slightly bridging huge leaps in place and time - he literally throws you kaboom! into the next train of thought which sometimes, for me, has the effect of being pushed from sitting in a nice warm sauna, all of a sudden into an icy cold sea, and I suddenly find myself gasping in confusion... and it's not quite like dreaming - while dreaming, there is usually a gradual transformation from one scene into the next. For Proust, his segue is sometimes purely a full stop. Period. No problem, though. Just as sudden shocks to the system are good for you (if it doesn't stop your heart), I guess sudden shocks to the consciousness can likewise only be a good thing for your, er... sense of orientation! XD

Anyway, I have yet more notes for this section, but I just wanted to throw into the arena the idea that Bergotte might have been modelled on the writer Anatole France. Apparently, the Narrator loved Bergotte's style as Marcel Proust loved the style of Anatole France.

[Stephen]

About Anatole France, I've read only one novel by him, but from it, he came across to me as more of an ideas man, not a stylist. While reading about Bergotte in Combray, the narrator speaks of him as primarily a stylist. His friend Bloch recommended Bergotte for his lyrical prose. The narrator goes on to describe Bergotte's use of archaic, or uncommon phrases; marvelous imagery that express a whole system of philosophy (as opposed to ideas and argumentation, I suppose); all in all, a musical outpouring. a melodic flow, where an "ideal passage" can be found in any one of his books. Bergotte's epigraphic style. Like with the little cakes, the narrator/Proust expresses the effect of all this as a means to help find some essence within himself he couldn't find on his own.

Sounds exciting lol. I wish I could say the same for Anatole France's Les dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Thirsty). I felt none of that, but I *was* very impressed with France's depiction of the Terror phase of the French Revolution, that is to say France's substance over style. Anyone interested in how ordinary people become murderers for the sake of "revolution" or "progress" ("justified violence" some call it) might want to check that one out.

One last thing on Bergotte. Notice how the narrator says of him, "From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and disappointed old man, who had lost some of his children and had never got over the loss." But wait, Marcel, I thought you said we're supposed to separate the life from the art? What are you doing telling us this, it "adds nothing" to his books, right? Hee, hee, I can't resist pointing out the hypocrisy. It's ALWAYS there to see for those who like to advance this position :)

[Traveller]

Stephen wrote: "About Anatole France, I've read only one novel by him, but from it, he came across to me as more of an ideas man, not a stylist. While reading about Bergotte in Combray, the narrator speaks of him ..."

Ok, but now you have me flummoxed. If not Anatole France, who would you say he is instead? I've seen suggestions that Bergotte is actually Proust himself, but that doesn't quite seem to hit it on the head for me either, because he talks of the "many books" published by Bergotte.

From how he waxes lyrical about Bergotte, one would almost think he is referencing at least a world-famous writer - who knows, he might not even be French. I mean, listen how he describes him:

"...that he expressed an entire philosophy, new to me, through marvelous images which seemed themselves to have awakened this harp song which then arose and to whose accompaniment they gave a sublime quality. One of these passages by Bergotte, the third or fourth that I had isolated from the rest, filled me with a joy that could not be compared to the joy I had discovered in the first one, a joy I felt I was experiencing in a deeper, vaster, more unified region of myself, from which all obstacles and partitions seemed to have been removed. What had happened was that, recognizing the same preference for rare expressions, the same musical effusion, the same idealist philosophy that had already, the other times, without my realizing it, been the source of my pleasure, I no longer had the impression I was in the presence of a particular passage from a certain book by Bergotte, tracing on the surface of my mind a purely linear figure, but rather of the “ideal passage” by Bergotte, common to all his books, to which all the analogous passages that merged with it had added a sort of thickness, a sort of volume, by which my mind seemed enlarged.
I was not quite Bergotte’s only admirer; he was also the favorite writer of a friend of my mother’s, a very well read woman, while Dr. du Boulbon would keep his patients waiting as he read Bergotte’s most recent book; and it was from his consulting room, and from a park near Combray, that some of the first seeds of that predilection for Bergotte took flight, a rare species then, now universally widespread, so that all through Europe, all through America, even in the smallest village, one can find its ideal and common flower.

What my mother’s friend and, it seems, Dr. du Boulbon liked above all in Bergotte’s books, as I did, was that same melodic flow, those old-fashioned expressions, a few others which were very simple and familiar, but which enjoyed, to judge from the places in which he focused attention on them, a particular preference on his part; lastly, in the sad passages, a certain brusqueness, a tone that was almost harsh. And no doubt he himself must have felt that these were his greatest charms. For in the books that followed, if he had found out some great truth, or the name of a famous cathedral, he would interrupt his narrative and, in an invocation, an apostrophe, a long prayer, he would give vent to those exhalations which in his early works remained interior to his prose, revealed only by the undulations of its surface, even sweeter, perhaps, more harmonious, when they were thus veiled and one could not have pointed out precisely where their murmur rose, where it died.


EDIT: Hmm, on the other hand, Proust -does- seem to interrupt himself a lot. But if he himself is Bergotte, then he'd have to be a very egotistical person indeed, to praise himself to high heaven like that...

[Traveller]

Ok, I'm starting to form a suspicion in my head that Proust IS Bergotte but only in the sense that Bergotte represents the ideal that Proust himself strives for. It's almost as if he knows Bergotte's thoughts too intimately. What makes me believe this, is an excerpt that I read from "The Captive" which deals with the death of Bergotte:

The circumstances of his death were as follows. A fairly mild attack of uraemia had led to his being ordered to rest. But, an art critic having written somewhere that in Vermeer's View of Delft (lent by the Gallery at The Hague for an exhibition of Dutch painting), a picture which he adored and imagined that he knew by heart, a little patch of yellow wall (which he could not remember) was so well painted that it was, if one looked at it by itself, like some priceless specimen of Chinese art, of a beauty that was sufficient in itself, Bergotte ate a few potatoes, left the house, and went to the exhibition. At the first few steps he had to climb, he was overcome by an attack of dizziness. He walked past several pictures and was struck by the aridity and pointlessness of such an artificial kind of art, which was greatly inferior to the sunshine of a windswept Venetian palazzo, or of an ordinary house by the sea.

At last he came to the Vermeer which he remembered as more striking, more different from anything else he knew, but in which, thanks to the critic's article, he noticed for the first time some small figures in blue, that the sand was pink, and, finally, the precious substance of the tiny patch of yellow wall. His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious patch of wall. "That's how I ought to have written," he said. "My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall."

Meanwhile he was not unconscious of the gravity of his condition. In a celestial pair of scales there appeared to him, weighing down one of the pans, his own life, while the other contained the little patch of wall so beautifully painted in yellow. He felt that he had rashly sacrificed the former for the latter. "All the same," he said to himself, "I shouldn't like to be the headline news of this exhibition for the evening papers."

He repeated to himself: "Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall." Meanwhile he sank down on to a circular settee whereupon he suddenly ceased to think that his life was in jeopardy and, reverting to his natural optimism, told himself: "It's nothing, merely a touch of indigestion from those potatoes, which were undercooked."

A fresh attack struck him down; he rolled from the settee to the floor, as visitors and attendants came hurrying to his assistance. He was dead. Dead for ever? Who can say? Certainly, experiments in spiritualism offer us no more proof than the dogmas of religion that the soul survives death. All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for an atheist artist [or scientist, RdW] to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by the artist destined to be for ever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer.

All these obligations, which have no sanction in our present life, seem to belong to a different world, a world based on kindness, scrupulousness, self-sacrifice, a world entirely different from this one and which we leave in order to be born on this earth, before perhaps returning there to live once again beneath the sway of those unknown laws which we obeyed because we bore their precepts in our hearts, not knowing whose hand had traced them there - those laws to which every profound work of the intellect brings us nearer and which are invisible only - if then! - to fools. So that the idea that Bergotte was not dead for ever is by no means improbable.

They buried him, but all through that night of mourning, in the lighted shop-windows, his books, arranged three by three, kept vigil like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more, the symbol of his resurrection. "

[Stephen]

The biographical intro to the Proust I'm reading states the following:

"Artistically and intellectually, his influences included the aesthetic criticism of John Ruskin, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, the music of Wagner, and the fiction of Anatole France (on whom he modeled his character Bergotte)."

That Bergotte was based on France doesn't mean, of course, that he was. As usual, I'm sure Bergotte was a composite of individuals, dictated, mainly, by the needs of the novelist. I summarized the characteristics from the excerpt you included above because, aesthetically, I didn't feel that was the France I had read (from having read only one book, and that book, I hear, might have been an anomaly. France took some flack from the literary establishment that was still highly sympathetic to the French Revolution. What his other novels are like, I don't know). I suspect you are more on the mark with your second post, the one that suggests Proust was describing a writerly ideal, one he eventually adopted himself. All those aspects sound very much like Proust's (the melodic flow, philosophy from imagery over things like structure, formal qualities etc etc.) It wouldn't be the first time in history where a writer reads another writer strictly for what he can lift, steal, adapt, use for himself. I'm being only partly facetious here. Writer advocacy is about as honest as imperialism when it comes to favoring the natives :)

About Proust's style, I came across the following in a letter he wrote to Robert Dreyfus, July 4, 1905. Suddenly the decaf and scone I was enjoying at the downtown café yesterday tasted even better. Obviously Proust had to have a high level of self-awareness. But about his prose style? I never imagined it:

"You are very nice about "La Lecture." It was the article I wanted to send you. Then when it appeared, it disgusted me so much that I no longer dared. I thought that you who know how to say so much in half a line would be exasperated by sentences that run to a hundred. Ah, how I should love to be able to write like Madame Straus! But I must perforce weave these long silken threads as I spin them, and if I shortened my sentences, the result would be little fragments, not whole sentences. So I continue like a silkworm, and live in the same temperature, too, or rather like an earthworm ("in love with a star," that is to say, in contemplation of the unattainable perfection of Madame Straus's conciseness)."

[Traveller]

Sigh, sigh sigh. Now I'm feeling a compulsion to read Proust's "On Reading" (Sur la lecture ) which I luckily have, as well as: Genevieve Straus: Trilogie D'une Egerie (Collection "Biographies") which I wish I had, and Geneviève Straus: Biographie Et Correspondance Avec Ludovic Halévy, 1855 1908, which I don't have either, but I've just copied and pasted the latter into a Word document from an online copy. :P

Sadly I can't find anything written by Geneviève Straus in order to sample her style. Is there anything available?

EDIT: The Halévy book mentions that Madame never wrote any books, just very admirable letters. So I guess one would have to read those then.

EDIT 2: From Combray: "...that he expressed an entire philosophy, new to me, through marvelous images which seemed themselves to have awakened this harp song which then arose and to whose accompaniment they gave a sublime quality."

The style being described there, does sound a lot like Proust's style, doesn't it? Further on, he also talks about conveying the beauty of things via an "image" conveyed through the use of language, and he also mentions Bergotte's use of metaphor - Proust's work is rife with images and metaphors.

[Traveller]

Btw, regarding the narrator's age: Somewhere in Combray, he says:

"Above all else I loved (Bergotte's) philosophy, I had pledged myself to it for life. It made me impatient to reach the age when I would enter secondary school and enroll in the class called Philosophy."

I looked up at what age boys start secondary school in France, and apparently it's at age 11.
So the narrator had already fallen in love with Bergotte's philosophy at an extremely tender age already, before he started attending secondary school at age 11.

Also, this article https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/t-... mentions: "I then rode the Paris subway to the Saint-Lazare station, a short walk to the Lycée Condorcet, the secondary school that Proust attended from 1882, when he was 11, until 1889 "

Elsewhere it is mentioned that Proust did his final year of school in 1988 where he among other subjects, studied philosophy.

Ok, but we do need to keep in mind that the narrator and the author are not the same person. :) But the author made the narrator say that the narrator (an imaginary person) was in love with Bergotte's philosophy before he went to secondary school already.

[Traveller]

I didn't find much more to say about this section except for notes about the works of art and literature that the narrator refers to:

Proust’s belief that everybody would run away from war if they had the chance, is interesting, and of course, erroneous.

Mention is made of the famous poet and dramatist Racine’s play Phedre. Also of something Bergotte had written about Racine.

Also of dramatist, poet, and novelist Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay. “La Nuit d’Octobre”: October (1837), is a poem by Alfred de Musset (1810-57), one of the series entitled Les Nuits (Nights).

‘Bhagavat’ and ‘Le Lévrier de Magnus’ ” are both poems by Leconte de Lisle. “Bhagavat” is from the collection Poèmes antiques (1852), and “Le Lévrier de Magnus” from Poèmes tragiques: Leconte de Lisle was involved in the French Revolution of 1848 which ended with the overthrow of the Orleans King Louis-Philppe of France, but took no further part in politics after the Second Republic was declared. As a writer he is most famous for his three collections of poetry: Poèmes antiques (1852), Poèmes barbares (1862), Poèmes tragiques (1884). He is also known for his translations of Ancient Greek tragedians and poets, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Horace. Leconte de Lisle played a leading role in the Parnassian poetic movement (1866) and shared many of the values of other poets of this generation, bridging the Romantic and Symbolist periods.

A lot of classical Greek references are thrown about.

The grandfather’s semi-anti-semitism is extremely uncomfortable, and the way that he expresses it, is pretty creepy.

Bloch seems to be one of that type of sarcastic, blasé teenagers who likes to prove how nonchalant and sophisticated he is.

The “daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë” would of course be the famous Ariadne.

Proust’s narrator makes quite a few remarks about (writing) style and also about substance.

Social rank and social norms muddy the water again.

The narrator absolutely hero-worships Bergotte as if he were a god.

And then filler filler filler filler mostly about the countryside and the country people but above all about Aunt Léonie, and it just carries on into the next section in that vein. Here and there a pretty description.

[Traveller]

Just a reminder that the next thread can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Jan]

Procedural question: I haven't yet come across the endpoint for the 2nd discussion section; think Traveller initially said this would be about the same number of pages as in the Overture, so maybe I'm about to hit it. That being the case, and the next part said to be the end of Combray, then it, the 3rd part, will be much, much longer. Is that correct?

I hate to be focused on quantity, but might be ... falling .... behind .....

[Traveller]

Hi Jan, you might have passed it, because the wording of my translation probably differs from the Moncrieff. I quoted from the Davis translation, and thought that maybe the Moncrieff might be similar enough to be recognized.
Let me try and find a demarcation point in the events themselves.

If you have read the part where Aunt Léonie gives Eulalie a few coins, and then Francoise acts all jealous, you are nearing the transition. Then it's the bit about them having lunch earlier on Saturdays, and they go to visit Mr. Vinteuil who composes music but doesn't play it for them, and who has a boy-ish daughter with freckles. He likes to throw a shawl over her shoulders, even though she doesn't seem to need it.

Then they go for a long walk and the mother isn't sure of the way, but the father had brought them right back to the little gate of their own garden, and in the Enright/Moncrieff, it reads:

"And then, as though it had slipped, with his latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point out to us, when it stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own garden, which had come hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue du Saint-Esprit, to await us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings over paths unknown. My mother would murmur admiringly "You really are wonderful!" And from that instant I had not to take another step; the ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long, my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to my bed, and laid me down there like a little child.."

That last bit had a demarcation in my copy between it and the next paragraph, which reads:

"Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her of the services of Françoise, passed more slowly than other days for my aunt, yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was still able to endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel., "

The second quoted passage is where we start off the new thread.

In the new thread there's a lot of politics going on between the Aunt and Francoise, and the narrator thinks Francoise is cruel after he sees her killing their supper. Then an intrigue involving Legrandin and the Geurmantes family ensues.

Jan, if you're looking at pages alone, keep in mind that 'Swann in Love" still lies ahead, and I'd say the whole Swann in Love is about the same length as the whole Combray. Let me have a look...

[Traveller]

Hmm, Swann in Love starts at about 43% into the book. so, you are correct, the third thread dealing with Combray, is about twice as long as the first two threads together.

If you like, Jan, I can chop thread 3 in two. Yes, let me do that, then. It's not always easy to find a good transition, but let's give it a go!

[Fionnuala]

I'm moving very slowly through this section because I find myself lingering over certain sentences, reading and rereading, and thinking about how the narrator's meditations, especially on the subject of reading—how transporting it can be—reflect some of my own. The description of the hours of the afternoon spent reading in the garden being counted down by the church bells is so vivid that I can imagine myself there, having the same experience of losing myself in a book, so that I miss a complete hour:
Et à chaque heure il me semblait que c'était quelques instants seulement auparavant que la précédente avait sonné; la plus récente venait s'inscrire tout près de l'autre dans le ciel et je ne pouvais croire que soixante minutes eussent tenu dans ce petit arc bleu qui était compris entre leurs deux marques d'or. Quelquefois même cette heure prématurée sonnait deux coups de plus que la dernière; il y en avait donc une que je n'avais pas entendue, quelque chose qui avait eu lieu n'avait pas eu lieu pour moi; l'intérêt de la lecture, magique comme un profond sommeil, avait donné le change à mes oreilles hallucinées et effacé la cloche d'or sur la surface azurée du silence.
And I'm admiring how seamlessly the narrator shifts from one meditation to another, and how chronological time seems to matter less and less as he moves between his lived moments. What matters is the experience he has in each of them and that is what I'm savouring.

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "I'm moving very slowly through this section because I find myself lingering over certain sentences, reading and rereading, and thinking about how the narrator's meditations, especially on the subje..."

Unfortunately I cannot join the reading right now but I am enjoying the posts... Hopefully by November I will visit Proust again, and my plan is to do as you are doing now, Fionnuala. Read it very slowly, to savour those long meandering sentences which feel so much at home in French.

[Jan]

Traveller wrote: "Hmm, Swann in Love starts at about 43% into the book. so, you are correct, the third thread dealing with Combray, is about twice as long as the first two threads together.

If you like, Jan, I can..."

Yes, thank you, Traveller. I ask because I have other reading obligations as well. 😜

[Jan]

I found the first 30 or so pages of this section to be a slog, but finally caught fire. Took a while for that to occur this time, for me. Glad for the sources both here and online that urged keeping the faith. From Gopnik on the subject of his meanderings in his letters (prior to his masterwork):

... effortlessly parenthetical, sliding into digression and back to the main point with the skill of a rally driver dipping in and out of traffic at a hundred miles an hour.

As to his being gay, I am in doubt that would have been conceived of as a lifestyle, as it has come to be. I'm not even sure he'd have been thought of as a gay Jew as would be common in more recent times. Here's another Gopnik quote that I think may capture the attitude of the times on his Jewishness, as well as being a fun read:

When the first volume of “In Search of Lost Time” appeared, a year before the Great War, the shock of its excellence was captured in a delicious exchange with André Gide, the magus of the Parisian literary scene. Apologizing for having passed on “Swann’s Way” for his Nouvelle Revue Française, Gide offered an explanation almost more insulting than the original rejection: “For me you were still the man who frequented the houses of Mmes X. and Z., the man who wrote for the Figaro. I thought of you, shall I confess it, as ‘du côté de chez Verdurin’; a snob, a man of the world, and a dilettante—the worst possible thing for our review.” Proust, who had money, had offered to help subsidize the publication, which, Gide fumbles to explain, only made it seem a dubious effort at buying a reputation. (That year, Gide confided in his journal his doubts that any Jewish writer could truly master the “virtues” of the French tradition [my italics].)

Proust responded with the most beautiful fuck-you letter in literary history, suavely pretending that Gide’s belatedly flattering letter made up for all the previous insults: “Had there been no rejection, no repeated rejections by the N.R.F., I should never have had your letter. . . . The joy of receiving your letter infinitely surpasses any I should have had at being published by the N.R.F. . . . How I should like to be able to give someone I loved as much pleasure as you have given me.” Gide, no fool, made a firm offer to publish the rest of the novel, which the Nouvelle Revue did, right through to its completion.

See why I like Gopnik?

Now, what about his father's inexplicably rude behavior toward the "invariably" Jewish friends he would bring home? Being that his mother was Jewish, I mean. (and would have likely been considered so even if she attended church or had converted.) Or is this a point at which the fictional narrator diverges from Proust's biographical facts?

I did notice that in the case of Bloch, the father was not without provocation, in that Bloch was giving him inappropriate gifts (had homosexual attraction toward him?) and was also being a wise-ass.

[Stephen]

Awesome Jan, excellent points all around. I especially got a good chuckle at how you referred to Bloch as a "wise-ass" in the eyes of the parents.

Your comments made me reflect hard on the text. The narrator's mother was never actually referred to as Jewish, was she (so far)? That may be just our assumption based on the biographical data. I was wondering about this question as the narrator described her heading into mass. I was thinking of it in terms of assimilation rituals, but also that the narrator, highly jealous for his mother's attention, was trying to see the church through her eyes, at least in terms of the devotion she wasn't giving to him.

We've mentioned the diaries of Virginia Woolf in these threads. She herself was married to a Jewish man, but that didn't stop her from expressing the prejudice of her class. Like when she described such and such a person in her diaries as a "fat Jewess", or when she described the brilliant Isaiah Berlin as looking like a Portuguese Jew (who for his part described Woolf as "certainly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen" from his Personal Impressions collection, even knowing the prejudice of that class and forgiving them for it). So, assuming the narrator's mother is Jewish - and I'm wondering now whether that was ever established - the type of prejudice we're hearing among the narrator's relatives wouldn't be so unusual.

I am very glad you included that quote from Gopnik. I've been thinking about it ever since you referred us to it. As I've been reading through Proust's letters, it's plain to see the efforts he made to insinuate himself into the literary class. They all knew who he was when his novel started being published. And for that reason, were quick to judgment, like Gide was. Nowadays, writers are required to put themselves out there first, to advertise themselves, regardless of the actual quality of their writing. Many are the ones who receive favors for their popularity with the literary community, even though more objective readers may view their writing for crap. It sounds like the reverse happened to Proust, he put himself out there first, only to earn a reputation for being a dilettante. If that was his reputation among the literary class, and they decided to give his novel a read only to run into a slog, as you put it - a perfectly reasonable reaction - you can almost see why Gide had the reaction he had.

Some things never change, though. Gide was gay too, of course, so there might be some qualities to the intramural squabbling that might be outside the ken of some of us. Like when Daniel Mendelsohn (gay, admirer of Proust) went on the attack against Edmund White (gay, admirer of Proust), with a vehemence that was hard to understand for outsiders. Same for when Mendelsohn went on the attack against Alan Hollinghurst (gay, admirer of Proust) that read to me more like a police report than a book review for the way Hollinghurst handled Jewish lives in his novels. What's that line again by Woody Allen (Jewish and definitely not gay) about intellectuals proving that a person can be absolutely brilliant and yet have no idea what's going on?

[Jan]

Stephen wrote: "Awesome Jan, excellent points all around. I especially got a good chuckle at how you referred to Bloch as a "wise-ass" in the eyes of the parents.

Your comments made me reflect hard on the text. ..."

Haha, Stephen -- we can wish Woody Allen had been a little bit less of whatever he is, for which I've never really forgiven him.

I did not know that about all the other writers you mention; I'm just not conversant with them. But still -- was being gay actually a "lifestyle" then like it is now? Or more of a behavioral aberration associated with being an artsy intellectual and member of the literary class? And, of course, as Traveller mentioned, considered a moral (even criminal) failing).

Yes, I agree that the anti-Jewish prejudices were out and about in the culture; have read that was the case even among the Dreyfusards, even though they stood up against the unfairness. It was simply how "everyone" thought. But still a surprise to me to have been that overtly and crudely rude to a guest in the home.

I was asking about the narrator's mother, so thanks. Maybe similar to the way Adam Gopnik talked about lesbianism rather than male gayness -- while not necessarily "acceptable," was available as something in the culture (as a turn-on to men?), and therefore Proust could use it as a vehicle for what he couldn't talk about.

[Traveller]

Jan wrote: But still -- was being gay actually a "lifestyle" then like it is now? Or more of a behavioral aberration associated with being an artsy intellectual and member of the literary class? And, of course, as Traveller mentioned, considered a moral (even criminal) failing)."

Jan, just a quick comment re the gay lifestyle back then. I'm a bit short on time today. Of course gay men had relationships but completely undercover, and Proust himself did have gay relationships but publicly he went to great lengths to hide it. He had a close shave when a gay "nightclub" that he attended was raided by the police and he narrowly escaped being arrested.

I think everybody kinda knew with some people, while others were deeply ensconced in the closet. I mean if someone as prominent as Oscar Wilde could be jailed for homosexuality (Wilde was married and had children - so think of the effect his incarceration must have had on them) - that just shows how deep the public hatred ran. In Wilde's case, legal repercussions were pushed by Wilde's boyfriend's father, but it was still very harsh for a prominent person to be actually jailed, as compared to today's standards of acceptance.

In Proust's case, I think some people knew and some suspected. But, like in many places still today, it was so frowned upon especially in religious circles (and remember Jewish culture is also traditionally pretty anti-gay), that anybody brought up in a religious family must have felt the sting of belonging to a group of people that was regarded as immoral and as partaking in activities that were regarded as taboo, both morally and legally.

So when I talked about Proust being a gay Jew, I was mainly referring to this 'feeling' that Proust must have had, the knowledge that who he truly was was not something that was widely acceptable, that must have hurt and the bad feelings about being gay, in addition to his Jewishness, (remember Jewishness is deemed to be conferred via the matrilineal line), must have contributed to his strong need for acceptance that we see echoed in the narrator.

[Jan]

Traveller wrote: "Hi Jan, you might have passed it, because the wording of my translation probably differs from the Moncrieff. I quoted from the Davis translation, and thought that maybe the Moncrieff might be simil..."

Just passed it, though no demarcation in my edition.

Although would seem in advance that context will help, once it's read, you can't miss it. ;)

Similar length is a rough measure; in my edition, Overture was 33 pages & Sec 2 is 51. That's what had me fearing I'd wandered into uncharted territory. The 3rd section would only be 53 pages, even if you don't subdivide it. So not a problem after all.

From now on will just try to keep calm and read on.

[Stephen]

Jan, and others interested in Proust's Jewishness in relation to the work, almost as if the gods answered our prayers, the Jewish magazine Tablet just dropped an outstanding article addressing the question for us:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/ar...

Before you click on it, I should give you a few heads up, one related to the other. The article assumes that you've read the entire novel already, and therefore certain plot points are discussed. If you wish to be surprised for what's up ahead, I'd save the article for later. Second, there are a few interpretations here I wouldn't have made. And maybe you wouldn't have either. That's why it might be best to come to your own conclusions regarding the novel first before you dive into it. Tough call, though, because the article is a good mix of important factual information regarding how Proust turned life into art, and interpretation, which we're all free to make on our own.

Jan, there's especially good detail about our buddy Bloch.

When you raise the question about "lifestyle" you're implying something important. If not "lifestyle", certainly "identity" limits the way we view Proust and his options for writing the book. Every scholar and critic and novelist seems to need to box him into the lifestyle/identity of their choice, but as an artist he was after a much greater vision, which, I suspect, you've already figured out.

For instance, with the Tablet article, the author discusses the "de-Judaization" Proust did to his novel. It goes into the strategies Proust used to efface his very own Jewishness. If so, that might explain why we're both unsure of whether the maman we've read in the novel so far is actually Jewish like Proust's mother was (I for one had just assumed it). In earlier manuscripts, Proust had used actual people's names, including his own name for the narrator, including his own mother's, so these leaps we've made aren't a greedy mixing of life and fiction - Proust had done the same.

But the author of the Tablet article may be pushing too hard on his own identity interests. After all, he quotes Proust from one of his letters describing himself as Catholic. It could be that Proust wasn't trying extra hard to appeal to Catholic France while denying his own Jewishness. The simple explanation might just be that he identified that way. I find it curious that the literary community is as determined to deemphasize his Catholic side, almost to the exclusion of unearthing his submerged Jewish side. I would guess that the man cradled both equally, but for the purposes of the novel it had to slant one way over the other.

I've emphasized Proust's Jewishness for this response. Your question was about his homosexuality. The Tablet article suggests he used similar strategies for both.

At any rate, hugely complex questions. But I think you're off to a good start reading the novel for the complexity aspect over the easy ones "lifestyle" solutions afford.

[Traveller]

Stephen wrote: "Jan, and others interested in Proust's Jewishness in relation to the work, almost as if the gods answered our prayers, the Jewish magazine Tablet just dropped an outstanding article addressing the ..."

I read somewhere but can't remember where, that Proust substituted characters with different characters of people in his real life; for example, he would mix the habits of his aunts so as to make them less recognizable as the person he based a specific character on, and that since he had been close to both his mother and his grandmother, he mixed the characters of those two in the book. He might have made grandpa in the book anti-semitic so as to emphasize that the characters in the novel are not the same ones from his own life.

Just to give a bit of context to how it feels to be Jewish even in so-called "woke" places of the world: I have a Jewish friend who would have hidden his Jewish identity completely if he'd not been stymied by the surname. He hates his own Jewishness with a passion, and this apparently stems from being bullied as a schoolboy for being Jewish.

My friend's parents were quite observant, and while they enjoyed the yummy feasts that Jewish people have on their celebrations, he and his sisters always longed to celebrate Easter and Christmas along with their Christian friends.
So if one were to come from a traditional Jewish family, there were lots of reasons to feel "out" if your school friends are Christian.

However, I have also read that neither of Proust's parents were particularly religious. But it could be, that for Proust, being an observant Catholic, was to "fit in". So it's almost as if in his novel, he writes a slightly idealized form (well, what would have been ideal in his eyes) of some aspects of his family, by for example making them devout Catholics.

[Kalliope]

Traveller wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Jan, and others interested in Proust's Jewishness in relation to the work, almost as if the gods answered our prayers, the Jewish magazine Tablet just dropped an outstanding article..."

Thank you, Trav.

It is good to remember that Proust's addressees tended to be in the are where there was a concentration of wealthy Jewish families. The most obvious is Rue Monceau, where the Ephrussis, Camondo and Rotshchild lived, but it was in general the whole area around Park Monceau. These families were however fully integrated in their predominantly Catholic society, particularly during the 3rd Republic but also during the 2nd Empire, and there were also prominent Catholic families in the area, such as the Goüin. Another neighbour was Cernuschi, an Italian.

There is a letter from Proust to Moïse Camondo with the condolences for the death of the son, Nissim, during WW1.

[Traveller]

Kalliope wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Jan, and others interested in Proust's Jewishness in relation to the work, almost as if the gods answered our prayers, the Jewish magazine Tablet just dropped an o..."

Yes, to your point, I realize that often Jewish families are fully integrated, but you'd be surprised how slight anti-semitic attitudes can exist even in such communities, especially little jokes about how Jews are always wealthy, and/or counting their money, or are stingy, obsessed with money, and so forth. One would think these little jabs don't hurt, and yet, apparently, they hurt more than most people realize.

I have accompanied said friend to large family dinners where I was the only gentile in attendance, and not realizing that I wasn't Jewish, some family members have let loose about how repugnant these stereotypes are to them. ...and yet, ironically, this would come right after, for example, all the men would have clustered together, talking business. :P

Mentioning the latter is not a judgement on my part, and really, is it that bad to be money savvy? It is also true that true to the stereotype, many Jewish people do tend to look after their own, but I don't see that as a bad thing either. In my worldview, looking after your own is a natural extension of the survival instinct.

My point was rather that, since Proust was an extremely sensitive person, he would probably have picked up on subtle cues thrown out by some member or members of society such as he described the narrator's grandfather saying in relation to Bloch and his other friends, and these little subtle behaviours must have stung, knowing that such things are directed at people such as his mother's family.

[Stephen]

"However, I have also read that neither of Proust's parents were particularly religious. But it could be, that for Proust, being an observant Catholic, was to "fit in". So it's almost as if in his novel, he writes a slightly idealized form (well, what would have been ideal in his eyes) of some aspects of his family, by for example making them devout Catholics."

I am glad we've been raising these questions on the religious matter to A la recherche. As I mentioned before, the first time around for me I paid little attention to it, seeking instead Proust's poetry, philosophy, his impressionism, all out of deep love I had and still have toward the French painters of that time. Here was Manet, I hoped, with a pen. Whether the parents in the novel or in real life were particularly religious, whether or not the narrator or Proust was, one thing's for certain, the narrator has taken an unusually deep interest in the church and its culture. Let's assume his devotion was weak, or that he was even an atheist in disguise, it would seem odd that he would pay so much attention to Christian architecture, metaphysics, what people profess to believe and what they actually do. Unless to go on the attack against it, but I don't get the impression that's the narrator's ulterior motive.

My impression so far is that the exclusionary maneuvers of the family aren't examples of Catholic small-mindedness, of strict moral disapproval, and the like, but the clear markers of bourgeois status anxiety and desire. I am trying hard not to draw too heavy a conclusion about the religious matter, or the bourgeois one, knowing that in the later books Proust will be taking us deep into the bowels of bourgeois decadence. In fact, for this re-read of A la recherche, I am most looking forward to Books 2 & 3 for that very reason. Once we get past those, I think we'll be in a much better position to see what he was doing in Swann's Way.

Throughout this year I've been thinking of Christopher Dawson's essay written in 1935 on "Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind." I think what we're really reading here in the opening chapters is this split in the French mind between the Catholicism of the old world, and the bourgeois of the new, as seen brilliantly in Proust's portrait of his extended family. In using Dawson's essay as a framework for Swann's Way, I have to say, I'm more impressed with Proust than ever; his novel, intentional or not, is a very sophisticated take on this question.

Not to get off topic, but earlier this year I read Philip Roth's American Pastoral. He tried to do for the America of his time what Proust did for his France. There's simply no comparison in terms of artistry. Roth's handling of these questions - Judaism running up against the bourgeois mind - was incredibly clumsy.

[Fionnuala]

I've just reached the end of this section and I'm struck by something I didn't notice last time I read it: that the barking of dogs is another of those memory triggers the narrator is accumulating. In addition to that, the passage in which the dogs are mentioned resembles a piece of ekphrasis. I read it as if it were the description of a painting.
Nous revenions par le boulevard de la gare, où étaient les plus agréables villas de la commune. Dans chaque jardin le clair de lune, comme Hubert Robert, semait ses degrés rompus de marbre blanc, ses jets d'eau, ses grilles entr'ouvertes. Sa lumière avait détruit le bureau du télégraphe. Il n'en subsistait plus qu'une colonne à demi brisée, mais qui gardait la beauté d'une ruine immortelle. Je traînais la jambe, je tombais de sommeil, l'odeur des tilleuls qui embaumait m'apparaissait comme une récompense qu'on ne pouvait obtenir qu'au prix des plus grandes fatigues et qui n'en valait pas la peine. De grilles fort éloignées les unes des autres, des chiens réveillés par nos pas solitaires faisaient alterner des aboiements comme il m'arrive encore quelquefois d'en entendre le soir, et entre lesquels dut venir (quand sur son emplacement on créa le jardin public de Combray) se réfugier le boulevard de la gare, car, où que je me trouve, dès qu'ils commencent à retentir et à se répondre, je l'aperçois, avec ses tilleuls et son trottoir éclairé par la lune.

And here's a painting by Hubert Robert featuring some marble:

[Jan]

Traveller wrote: "...Jan, just a quick comment re the gay lifestyle back then. I'm a bit short on time today. Of course gay men had relationships but completely undercover, and Proust himself did have gay relationships but public..."

Of course they did, but it's kind of counterintuitive to refer to a closeted life as a "gay lifestyle." Wasn't it the behavior that was considered reprehensible, not a state of being or way of life (as we would think more recently)?

Traveller said, when I talked about Proust being a gay Jew, I was mainly referring to this 'feeling' that Proust must have had, the knowledge that who he truly was was not something that was widely acceptable, that must have hurt and the bad feelings about being gay, in addition to his Jewishness, (remember Jewishness is deemed to be conferred via the matrilineal line), must have contributed to his stron....

Don't know about feelings of being hurt; will keep my eyes open for that, though. As to Jewishness from the mother, just saw a story that a candidate's eligibility to run for president in the Republic of Congo is being rejected for having a Jewish father rather than "two Congolese parents." The father was a Sephardic Jew who escaped the Holocaust, settled there, and married a Congolese wife. Jewish law not required in coming up with the Congolese law.

[Jan]

Stephen wrote: ""...earlier this year I read Philip Roth's American Pastoral. He tried to do for the America of his time what Proust did for his France. There's simply no comparison in terms of artistry. Roth's handling of these questions - Judaism running up against the bourgeois mind - was incredibly clumsy"

I love American Pastoral. :(

[Jan]

Fionnuala wrote: "I've just reached the end of this section and I'm struck by something I didn't notice last time I read it: that the barking of dogs is another of those memory triggers the narrator is accumulating...."

Beautiful picture.
I'm going to go back & reread that. Thanks, Fionnuala.