Psycho Proustians discussion
SWANN'S WAY 2021
>
Third part of Combray. (Discussion Thread 3)
Just a quick post to baptise this thread:The narrator goes on about the countryside and the country people but above all about Aunt Leoné. What a strange fantasy he ascribes to her; about the house burning down while she escapes and the rest of the family burns… and then things turn really creepy with the weird mind-games that Aunt Leoné plays with people. It's almost as if the narrator is becoming more perceptive as the narration wears on, about people and the little games they play.
Stephen had earlier mentioned the killing of the chicken: For me this was probably the moment when the narrator lost his innocence. For the first time he realizes how complex human beings are; that they are not all good or all bad, and that those we might deem “good” can actually have a pretty ugly side to them as well.
One feels a bit shocked at Francoise’s actual callousness, and the bit where she cries when she reads the medical symptoms, as opposed to how callous and downright nasty she is with the actual flesh and blood person, seemed to contradict everything we said in the previous thread about how reading teaches one empathy. Oh well, perhaps we are to assume that Francoise never reads novels.
The following bit reminded me of the Celtic idea that spirits can imbue life to inert objects:
“…but what delighted me were the asparagus, steeped in ultramarine and pink, whose tips, delicately painted with little strokes of mauve and azure, shade off imperceptibly down to their feet—still soiled though they are from the dirt of their garden bed—with an iridescence that is not of this earth. It seemed to me that these celestial hues revealed the delicious creatures who had merrily metamorphosed themselves into vegetables and who, through the disguise of their firm, edible flesh, disclosed in these early tints of dawn, in these beginnings of rainbows, in this extinction of blue evenings, the precious essence that I recognized again when, all night long following a dinner at which I had eaten them, they played, in farces as crude and poetic as a fairy play by Shakespeare, at changing my chamber pot into a jar of perfume.
We are scarcely over the narrator’s loss of innocence with Francoise’s killing of the chicken, when we see he had learned very well how to read the subtlest cues in body language (the part where Legrandin bows is very funny) as well as the deeper intricacies of the human soul when he describes Legrandin’s difficulties with the Geurmantes.
Carrying over my thoughts from the previous thread to here...I know the feeling, that now that we've entered the world of the writer, particularly a writer like Proust who had access to the salons, and from it, actresses, painters, musicians, dandies, fops and the like, the desire becomes strong to read about them all, whether well-known or obscure. That's part of the great pleasure for me for reading my favorite poet, Stéphane Mallarmé. His time overlapped with Proust's; he was read by Proust, who was stingy, in my opinion, in acknowledging Mallarmé's influence. He charged Mallarmé for being obscure - it would make for a good argument someday to compare Mallarmé's (supposed) obscurity to Proust's, how shall we put it gently, his length? his qualification mania at the sentence level? If you wished, you could read the entirety of Mallarmé's poetry in a night. Proust, you need two months. And they cover much of the same territory: ladies with fans, actresses, symbols that bloom out of the countryside, the cosmic found in the every day, Wagner, Whistler, Baudelaire.
With Mallarmé at the center of the social circle, we can read about any number of figures, for their art or their letters. One book I HIGHLY recommend to understand the ferment of all that creativity - among those who attended Mallarmé's Tuesday salons, Wilde! - is the diaries of Julie Manet, the beautiful daughter of Berthe Morisot, immortalized by her mother's paintings. You get a Combray like setting, but rather than portraits of outcasts and the frowned upon, as we've been receiving so far in Swann's Way, Manet gives us insights into all the artistic geniuses of her time, starting with the brilliance of her mother. Maybe the most remarkable thing about these diaries is how little she spends on herself. The second remarkable thing, or maybe not so remarkable considering who Manet's mother was, was recognizing how much these talents vied for her good favor. I know I would've wanted it, too.
But back to Proust, the name Geneviève Straus is unfamiliar to me (I love the name Geneviève, by the way - it's what Mallarmé named his daughter). I'd like to know more about that style Proust praised her for, too. As well, I'd like to know more about some of the other talents in his circle: Comtesse Noailles, Marie Nordlinger, to name a few. Though the big influence on Proust was not of his time: Madame de Sévigné. Apparently, he was entranced by her letters. I tried to read them one time but found them too domestic and dull. Probably just read them at the wrong time, because almost everyone attests to the magnanimous, feminine intelligence that wrote them.
VERY helpful factual information about secondary school age students.
In a word, I find that the narrator is much more generous to his younger self than the boy is, apparently, to his neighbors!
Wait, did I mention the killing of the chicken? I don't think I did. Or are you imagining me, Traveller, as the killer of chickens around here instead lol? At any rate, this scene stood out to me too, but for personal reasons. When I stayed with a lovely family in Vietnam off the Mekong, we were treated to a delicious chicken curry. It was on an island full of bougainvillea, apple orchards, and darkness at night for lacking electricity. The chicken was "prepared" out back for our feast. I definitely felt the different parts of the world all at once, on that day. I am surprised to read about it here in Proust. I'm not sure his purpose, other than what you suggested, Traveller, to show us darker motives through Francoise. But when you read a historian like Hobsbawm on the last two world wars, it's easy to forget that the vast majority of the world was still living in agricultural communities, and right up until 1945.
I suspect that Proust spent a lot of time on Francoise and the aunts in order to show the superstitious side to religious belief. Similar to when he described the inside of the church as ugly, and yet how he loved it when he restored it to its proper place!
On the chicken - I have my own memories of having a live chicken either in a summer house or in the apartment in the centre of Madrid, which would later be killed in the house for us to eat. So, nothing new there for me. That personal adds to memories also from trips or from where I lived in Asia, where we were very much in contact with life in the country.. I was therefore not shocked when I read this section. It also brought back memories...Which also makes me think that it would not have been so traumatic for a young Proust as it seems to us now.
On Julie Manet - I was just in the Marmottan museum this last Friday, where they have very interesting material on Julie - I loved her watercolour version of Edouard Manet's portrait of her mother. What I did not know is that Berthe's niece Jeannie (Julie's cousin then) married Paul Valéry.
Kalliope wrote: "On Julie Manet - I was just in the Marmottan museum this last Friday, where they have very interesting material on Julie - I loved her watercolour version of Edouard Manet's portrait of her mother...."Stephen wrote: "Carrying over my thoughts from the previous thread to here...
I know the feeling, that now that we've entered the world of the writer, particularly a writer like Proust who had access to the salon..."
Stephen and Kalliope, nooooo! Now I want those diaarriees!!
Oh well, I have, in the meantime, acquired this, Collected Poems and Other Verse (the poetry of Mallarmé) all because of Stephen. But where to get the time to read it? I still want to sample A. France as well...
Yes, killing the house chicken for dinner is from another world and I am so glad I had the chance to see it myself when I watched granny in the village do the business so we could all eat. Her chickens were irrefutably the very best I had ever tasted. That was a long time ago. Just for fun here is Toulouse-Latrec on tenderising chicken from the book Art of Cuisine Yes he produced a book on cooking!
"In order to make chickens immediately edible, take them out of the hen-run, pursue them into open country, and when you have made them run, kill them with a gun loaded with very small shot. The meat of the chicken, gripped with fright, will become tender. This method ... seems infallible even for the oldest and toughest hens."
That's not how granny did it, she loved her hens to tenderness.
Stephen wrote: "Wait, did I mention the killing of the chicken? I don't think I did. Or are you imagining me, Traveller, as the killer of chickens around here instead lol? .."...if the shoe fits...
Kalliope wrote: "On the chicken - I have my own memories of having a live chicken either in a summer house or in the apartment in the centre of Madrid, which would later be killed in the house for us to eat..... Which also makes me think that it would not have been so traumatic for a young Proust as it seems to us now. "
Hm. I did get the impression, that it was the kind of mean way in which she did it, swearing at the poor thing, getting angry and sort of mishandling it, that really got him riled up, along, perhaps, with the shock of seeing something killed first-hand for the first time.
Note how he remarks soon after he mentions the chicken, how mean she is, how callous and cruel, etc. etc. I still remember my first encounter with death, and the cruelty that hides deep inside the human psyche, and mine was a really small thing, but I will never forget it - and that is really the loss of innocence. I still remember, mine came at around age three, after I had received my first little tricycle as an Xmas gift.
I was proudly riding around the back yard, and saw a little worm, crawling around, minding his own business. I felt a mean streak course through me, and kawam!, I rode over the poor little worm on purpose. Once done, and I saw the mangled little body, the realization came that I had done something that couldn't be undone, and I felt my first moments of shame and regret. I guess there's a first for everything. No matter how small it may seem, this was my first encounter with my own dark, destructive side.
...and now that I think of it, there's a sort of complicity in the killing of the chicken, isn't there? After all, it is for his consumption that Francoise is killing the chicken....
Nick wrote: "Yes, killing the house chicken for dinner is from another world and I am so glad I had the chance to see it myself when I watched granny in the village do the business so we could all eat. Her chic..."There is more than one way to kill a chicken.
:)
Kalliope wrote: "Nick wrote: "Yes, killing the house chicken for dinner is from another world and I am so glad I had the chance to see it myself when I watched granny in the village do the business so we could all ..."There's definitely an art to it!
(a) I'm glad Nick mentioned Proust's humor in the earlier thread. I would like to hear more from Nick or anyone else the instances that speak to Proust's wit, or his sense of humor. (b) As so often with reading Proust, it seems a fool's errand to interpret key moments isolated from the rest. He sets something down, then addresses it more in depth so many pages later. Never definitively though, so that his meanings are forever eluding you. One of my big questions reading him was how much of this was done by design? It could be that he would just pick up a familiar character trait (for instance) later on, and inspired, would rework it depending on the new factors. He probably wasn't a systematic, cohesive thinker, but it would seem that way because he's constantly returning to already touched upon motifs and ideas.
(c) I suspect the chicken thing wasn't just about highlighting long-standing provincial habits. It's a prelude to his ideas on cruelty, little is memorable for him in love without it. Little Gilberte regards him with contempt, mirroring the elders. He wishes he had given her something unforgettable to go by, too, and not just something lovely like the hawthorn flowers from out of his many amorous reveries.
And then a little bit more up ahead he actually makes it explicit about his interest in sadism. A bomb goes off in one's head for everything we've been reading up until now.
I hope I'm posting these in the right thread; I have a bunch of loose comments in my notes, I might as well post them now:And this certainly does not mean that M. Legrandin was not sincere when he ranted against snobs. He could not be aware, at least from his own knowledge, that he was one, since we are familiar only with the passions of others, and what we come to know about our own, we have been able to learn only from them. ….that he continued to call the sin without forgiveness, snobbishness.
I wonder if the narrator’s family, by pretending to be so noble and pure, and above silly things like paying attention to social standing and finding snobbery vile – I wonder if this is their way to alleviate the pain of not being in the highest social circles- their way of rationalising their bourgeoisie status and pretending that they don’t care a whit about such base superficialities.
Hmm, regarding our previous discussions re Bergotte and A. France - here he names Anatole France by name: “ The most ancient geological skeleton of our soil, truly Ar-mor, the Sea, the land’s end, the accursed region which Anatole France—an enchanter whom our little friend here ought to read—has painted so well…
Stephen made mention of Proust’s humor. Well, I found this part rather funny:
Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was looking directly at my father, was unable to avert his eyes, and so fastened them with steadily increasing intensity—smiling mournfully the while—upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness and frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the face, until he seemed to have penetrated my father’s skull as if it had become transparent, and to be seeing at that moment, far beyond and behind it, a brightly coloured cloud which provided him with a mental alibi and would enable him to establish that at the moment when he was asked whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking of something else and so had not heard the question. As a rule such tactics make the questioner proceed to ask, “Why, what are you thinking about?” But my father, inquisitive, irritated and cruel, repeated: “Have you friends, then, in the neighbourhood, since you know Balbec so well?”
In a final and desperate effort, Legrandin’s smiling gaze struggled to the extreme limits of tenderness, vagueness, candour and abstraction; but, feeling no doubt that there was nothing left for it now but to answer, he said to us: “I have friends wherever there are clusters of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come together with touching perseverance to offer a common supplication to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them.”
“That is not quite what I meant,” interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as merciless as the sky.
The French version: (view spoiler)
Very famous remarks :
For in the environs of Combray there were two “ways” which one could go for a walk, in such opposite directions that in fact we left our house by different doors when we wanted to go one way or the other: the Méséglise-la-Vineuse way, which we also called the way by Swann’s because we passed in front of M. Swann’s estate when we went in that direction, and the Guermantes way.
…. during the whole of my adolescence, if for me Méséglise was something as inaccessible as the horizon, concealed from view, however far we went, by the folds of a landscape that already no longer resembled the landscape of Combray, Guermantes, on the other hand, appeared to me only as the terminus, more ideal than real, of its own “way,” a sort of abstract geographical expression like the line of the equator, like the pole, like the Orient. So, “to set off toward Guermantes” in order to go to Méséglise, or the opposite, would have seemed to me an expression as devoid of meaning as to set off toward the east in order to go west.
Of course, two of the volumes of the novel are named after these two “ways” which one learns at the end, are actually connected somewhere.
Interesting how he likens the hawthorn fields to a church.:
I found it all humming with the smell of the hawthorns. The hedge formed a series of chapels that disappeared under the litter of their flowers, heaped into wayside altars; below them, the sun was laying down a grid of brightness on the ground as if it had just passed through a stained-glass window; their perfume spread as unctuous, as delimited in its form as if I were standing before the altar of the Virgin, and the flowers, themselves adorned also, each held out with a distracted air its sparkling bunch of stamens, delicate radiating ribs in the flamboyant style like those which, in the church, perforated the balustrade of the rood screen or the mullions of the window and blossomed out into the white flesh of a strawberry flower.
All my thoughts are loose, Traveller, it takes a great mind like Proust's to assemble them all for us in a common experience of being human.On that note, I just read the first Madeleine moment again. I think what I enjoy reading this book is the depth of the questioning of what it is to have human experiences.
heir way of rationalising their bourgeoisie status and pretending that they don’t care a whit about such base superficialities.
I guess to be bourgeoisie is to constantly be in an anxious state not to fall from it, and then knowing you are unlikely ever to go higher.
Good to catch up on all your various thoughts about this section now that I've reached it. About the family's bourgeois status, one member who feels no anxiety on that score has to be Tante Léonie, and I admired very much how the narrator captured her sense of being inviolable (in every sense) in the episode where she imagines the rest of the family perishing in a fire at her house in Combray. He gives her the thought that it will all be ok as long as it's not one of her really bad days, and that she manages to lead the funeral cortege as the inhabitants of Combray will expect of her—and in any case she can go and live at one of the several farms she owns in the district. And that episode has the added value of being very funny. Another thing about Tante Léonie that strikes me is how well the narrator describes her little manias whether the intolerance to any kind of noise outside or the long cherished notion that she is a complete invalid and never sleeps a wink or the certainty that she will not digest what she's just taken even if it is a digestive aid! It's not only very funny but kind of prescient. I say that because some years ago I read Proust's final housekeeper's account of the conditions under which he wrote the last five of the seven volumes. Celeste Albaret's Monsieur Proust is very respectful of his private life, as in who might have visited or stayed in his apartment in those years, but reveals lots of information concerning the conditions under which he wrote and the various ways he edited his manuscripts—she was his secretary as well as his housekeeper in the final years. What's interesting here is that it seems he wrote in bed, propped up with pillows, often during the night because he couldn't sleep. He would try to catch up on sleep during the day, just like Tante Léonie, but of course noises outside bothered him, hence the famous cork-lined bedroom. He ate very little as very little agreed with his digestion. So what I'm saying is that he had described Tante Léonie's idiosyncratic way of life in great detail before he himself began to not leave his room nor even his bed...
Another description which could be of a painting: mais mon ravissement était devant les asperges, trempées d'outremer et de rose et dont l'épi, finement pignoché de mauve et d'azur, se dégrade insensiblement jusqu'au pied,—encore souillé pourtant du sol de leur plant,—par des irisations qui ne sont pas de la terre. Il me semblait que ces nuances célestes trahissaient les délicieuses créatures qui s'étaient amusées à se métamorphoser en légumes et qui, à travers le déguisement de leur chair comestible et ferme, laissaient apercevoir en ces couleurs naissantes d'aurore, en ces ébauches d'arc-en-ciel, en cette extinction de soirs bleus, cette essence précieuse que je reconnaissais encore quand, toute la nuit qui suivait un dîner où j'en avais mangé, elles jouaient, dans leurs farces poétiques et grossières comme une féerie de Shakespeare, à changer mon pot de chambre en un vase de parfum.
A description that is sensual—la chaire ferme,
poetic—cette extinction de soir bleu,
and funny—changer mon pot de chambre en un vase de parfum.
Impossible not to think of Manet's 'Asperges', painted in 1880 for the art collector Charles Ephrussi—who may have been one of the models for Charles Swann.
Fionnuala wrote: "Another description which could be of a painting: mais mon ravissement était devant les asperges, trempées d'outremer et de rose et dont l'épi, finement pignoché de mauve et d'azur, se dégrade ins..."
Ha yes, I think I quoted those passages in English in one of my posts. Well, he does seem to have a point with the smell of the asparagus, the smell does, er... eliminate itself when the eater relieves themselves of er... fluid waste, had you ever noticed?
Oh, and thanks for the image, Fionnuala! I love how you always visually illustrate everything so beautifully. The image you seek seems to always be at your fingertips!
Traveller wrote: "I wonder if the narrator’s family, by pretending to be so noble and pure, and above silly things like paying attention to social standing and finding snobbery vile – I wonder if this is their way to alleviate the pain of not being in the highest social circles- their way of rationalising their bourgeoisie status and pretending that they don’t care a whit about such base superficialities."I am still struck by the fact that, barely emphasized by the narrator, almost everyone we are reading about in the vicinity of Combray didn't actually live there (other than maybe the invalid aunt?); they are all visitors from Paris. About these bourgeois, it's probably not all that different from what's going on nowadays at places like the Hamptons, or Martha's Vineyard during the summer months. So that when the narrator, dreaming along the way, meets Gilberte with her red hair and freckles for the first time, no one blushes; instead, he is greeted with contempt ("but with a fixity and a half-hidden smile which I could only interpret, from the notions I had been vouchsafed of good breeding, as a mark of infinite contempt"). The children, it turns out, are no different from the parents. It could be that the nervous, highly sensitive narrator misinterpreted the girl's smile. Still, the look of contempt fits the world he's depicting. It wouldn't be surprising if pre-adolescent girls in this milieu aren't already acting out as finely tuned little bourgeois themselves.
Shortly after this, the narrator is seen yearning to find a peasant girl. No doubt as part of his psychological habit of escapism. Considering the oppressiveness of bourgeois values he's depicting, who can blame him?
Still, his lust for cruelty after this is surprising (it seems out of character for the narrator we've been reading so far):
"...the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which Gilberte’s mother had spoken to her without her answering back, by exhibiting her to me as being obliged to obey someone else, as not being superior to the whole world, calmed my anguish somewhat, revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated heart sought to rise to Gilberte’s level or to bring her down to its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. I thought her so beautiful that I should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, “I think you’re hideous, grotesque; how I loathe you!” But I walked away, carrying with me, then and for ever afterwards, as the first illustration of a type of happiness rendered inaccessible to a little boy of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair and a freckled skin, who held a spade in her hand and smiled as she directed towards me a long, sly, expressionless stare..."
The scene with Gilberte is meant to presage his voyeurism of the lesbian affair. And from it, his thoughts on sadism and cruelty. These comments come within the context of his nature walks where he expresses boundless joy, and yet, at the same time, his belief that we can never get to the bottom - the truth - about whatever it is we're observing.
From the biographies, I know that Proust was a reader of Thoreau. I say this because the connection thrills me on its own, but also because I happen to be reading snatches of this novel in Thoreau's Concord. Whereas Proust relied on his memory to discover the truth of what he was observing, constantly turning impressions over in his mind to see them from every angle, Thoreau actually reached out to them, cracking open the nuts and berries he plucked, rolling the flesh around his hands for the texture, communicating with the animals, observing growth in the fields as they progressed through the seasons, etc. A different approach, isn't it, to Proust's narrator building a church out of the hawthorn fields. I suppose we could break the comparison down to that between an artist and a scientist. Thoreau rarely complained about the elusive nature of truth; he knew that he could eventually find it. Rather, it was *other* people's inability that frustrated him - their lack of curiosity, living their lives of quiet desperation, reading crappy newspapers, and the like. Proust's "Nature" is really no more than his personal feelings about it, his impressions. Is it mainly for this reason that he felt like truth, especially truth in love, was forever elusive to us? Something I'm going to be keeping an eye on.
Phew, Stephen, you packed a lot into that post, will reply to it soon, but in the meantime I want to focus a bit on the visual imagery in step with some of the other posts:Fio, I see paintings everywhere in this work, for example here:
And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose blossom was pink, and lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in holiday attire—for one of those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion, because they are not assigned by some arbitrary caprice, as secular holidays are, to days which are not specially ordained for them, which have nothing about them that is essentially festal—but it was attired even more richly than the rest, for the flowers which clung to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to leave no part of the tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about the crook of a rococo shepherdess, were every one of them “in colour,” and consequently of a superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of Combray”
Français:
(view spoiler)
I don’t have a painting but I found a nice image of pink hawthorns.
And fitting to Stephen's remarks on religiosity, he seems to see everything through the prism of Catholicism, even the hawthorns:
"the shrub was all ready for Mary’s month, and seemed to form a part of it already, shining there, smiling in its fresh pink outfit, catholic and delicious."
...Especially in this section, I have been, in my mind's eye, seeing a lot of Monet:
Stephen, you are right, the situation in which the narrator meets Gilberte is rather intriguing, isn't it? I suppose the exact "feel" of it also depends on how you translate it. I'll post first the Kilmartin/Enright:she went on staring out of the corner of her eye in my direction, without any particular expression, without appearing to see me, but with a fixity and a half-hidden smile which I could only interpret, from the notions I had been vouchsafed of good breeding, as a mark of infinite contempt; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, a deliberate insult.
then the Davis: (which is more of a literal translation)
she allowed her glances to stream out at full length in my direction, without any particular expression, without appearing to see me, but with a concentration and a secret smile that I could only interpret, according to the notions of good breeding instilled in me, as a sign of insulting contempt; and at the same time her hand sketched an indecent gesture for which, when it was directed in public at a person one did not know, the little dictionary of manners I carried inside me supplied only one meaning, that of intentional insolence."
and then the French:
elle laissa ses regards filer de toute leur longueur dans ma direction, sans expression particulière, sans avoir l’air de me voir, mais avec une fixité et un sourire dissimulé, que je ne pouvais interpréter d’après les notions que l’on m’avait données sur la bonne éducation que comme une preuve d’outrageant mépris ; et sa main esquissait en même temps un geste indécent, auquel quand il était adressé en public à une personne qu’on ne connaissait pas, le petit dictionnaire de civilité que je portais en moi ne donnait qu’un seul sens, celui d’une intention insolente."
"Outrageant” is almost more “appaling” “ outrageous “ or “scandalous” scorn or contempt, than simply insulting contempt.
But yes, certainly the overall idea is similar.
A side-note:
Apparently the Baron Charlus mentioned, is (view spoiler) whom we will meet more intimately later on. I have a few questions about him, but let’s keep those for much later. :P
Then on the rather strange part that Stephen also commented on, the sort of animosity creeping in and mixing with his passion, the two English translations say :
Enright:
….by exhibiting her to me as being obliged to obey someone else, as not being superior to the whole world, calmed my anguish somewhat, revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated heart sought to rise to Gilberte’s level or to bring her down to its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me.
Davis:
…by presenting her to me as someone obliged to obey another person, as not being superior to everything in the world, calmed my suffering a little, restored some of my hope, and diminished my love. But very soon that love welled up in me again like a reaction by which my humiliated heart was trying to put itself on the same level as Gilberte or bring her down to its own. I loved her, I was sorry I had not had the time or the inspiration to insult her, hurt her, and force her to remember me.
The French version says:
…en me la montrant comme forcée d’obéir à quelqu’un, comme n’étant pas supérieure à tout, calma un peu ma souffrance, me rendit quelque espoir et diminua mon amour. Mais bien vite cet amour s’éleva de nouveau en moi comme une réaction par quoi mon cœur humilié voulait se mettre de niveau avec Gilberte ou l’abaisser jusqu’à lui. Je l’aimais, je regrettais de ne pas avoir eu le temps et l’inspiration de l’offenser, de lui faire mal, et de la forcer à se souvenir de moi.
One can wonder how a young boy who has only glimpsed a little girl once can “love” her.
Ok, so where the English translations use the word “love” (as a noun) Proust uses the words “mon amour” for “my love”. As in English, (and the French-speaking members can please help me out here), but “love” is just as difficult a concept to express in French as it is in English. "Amour" would stem from the verb “aimer” which can mean to like or to love, but amour is often used in the sense of a “love-affair”. I would say that Proust perhaps used it here in the sense of “infatuation”, but the more experienced French speakers around here can perhaps shed more light on this.
He is a bit of a weird kid, isn’t he, like for example how Swann’s name, just the name being said, becomes of such massive import for him, that he feels he needs to slyly entice people to say the name out loud.
Traveller wrote: "...Well, he does seem to have a point with the smell of the asparagus, the smell does, er... eliminate itself when the eater relieves themselves of er... fluid waste, had you ever noticed?Oh, and thanks for the image..."
And it's amazing how quickly asparagus reaches the bladder—you've no sooner eaten them than your pee is perfumed:-)
As for the images, I love searching for them, in fact I just searched for one to go with the fine description of the moon:
Parfois dans le ciel de l'après-midi passait la lune blanche comme une nuée, furtive, sans éclat, comme une actrice dont ce n'est pas l'heure de jouer et qui, de la salle, en toilette de ville, regarde un moment ses camarades, s'effaçant, ne voulant pas qu'on fasse attention à elle. J'aimais à retrouver son image dans des tableaux et dans des livres, mais ces œuvres d'art étaient bien différentes—du moins pendant les premières années, avant que Bloch eût accoutumé mes yeux et ma pensée à des harmonies plus subtiles—de celles où la lune me paraîtrait belle aujourd'hui et où je ne l'eusse pas reconnue alors. C'était, par exemple, quelque roman de Saintine, un paysage de Gleyre où elle découpe nettement sur le ciel une faucille d'argent, de ces œuvres naïvement incomplètes comme étaient mes propres impressions et que les sœurs de ma grand'mère s'indignaient de me voir aimer.
Le Soir, Charles Gleyre, 1843
Traveller wrote: "…He is a bit of a weird kid, isn’t he, like for example how Swann’s name, just the name being said, becomes of such massive import for him, that he feels he needs to slyly entice people to say the name out loud."Names are more than words for him, I think, Traveller. Remember how the name Guermantes, when it was first mentioned, was associated with a colour. Now he's speaking of the name Gilberte being like a talisman, and the name Swann seems equally fascinating for him. Place names too carry huge resonance—you'll see more of that later
Traveller wrote: "...Especially in this section, I have been, in my mind's eye, seeing a lot of Monet.."
It's as if Monet was in Tansonville :-)
Stephen wrote: "From the biographies, I know that Proust was a reader of Thoreau........Thoreau actually reached out to them, cracking open the nuts and berries he plucked, {...} observing growth in the fields as they progressed through the seasons, etc. A different approach, isn't it, to Proust's narrator building a church out of the hawthorn fields. I suppose we could break the comparison down to that between an artist and a scientist. Thoreau rarely complained about the elusive nature of truth; he knew that he could eventually find it. Rather, it was *other* people's inability that frustrated him - their lack of curiosity, {...}. Proust's "Nature" is really no more than his personal feelings about it, his impressions. Is it mainly for this reason that he felt like truth, especially truth in love, was forever elusive to us? "Very interesting observations, and perhaps one of the reasons why we both see in Proust an impressionist with a pen. You are right, and now that I think about it, I haven't really noticed Proust putting himself in anybody else's shoes either, despite all of his observations on people. In other words, so far his outlook seems a bit solipsistic, but I've not read enough to really judge. I suppose that might change as soon as I get to Swann in Love.
Fionnuala wrote: "Names are more than words for him, I think, Traveller. Remember how the name Guermantes, when it was first mentioned, was associated with a colour. Now he's speaking of the name Gilberte being like a talisman..."Wow, excellent point that I had not, in fact, noticed. Thanks for pointing that out, Fionnuala!
EDIT: Oh, and nice catch on the "moon" image in your previous post. :)
I've been away a few days in a trip with a bit of Proustian resonance since I was in the French Pyrenees, along the way of the Compostela Pilgrimage. The famous Proustian madeleine has the shape of a Saint Jacques 'coquille'..
Fionnuala wrote: "Another description which could be of a painting: mais mon ravissement était devant les asperges, trempées d'outremer et de rose et dont l'épi, finement pignoché de mauve et d'azur, se dégrade ins..."
The Ephrussi asparagus painting has a sequel. As Ephrussi sent a check of a somewhat higher amount that was due (FF1000 instead of FF800), Manet sent his patron the following - to settle the account properly...
Kalliope wrote: "The Ephrussi asparagus painting has a sequel. As Ephrussi sent a check of a somewhat higher amount that was due (FF1000 instead of FF800), Manet sent his patron the following - to settle the account properly...."That's hilarious! :D
Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "...Especially in this section, I have been, in my mind's eye, seeing a lot of Monet..
"
It's as if Monet was in Tansonville :-)"
I think it's the depictions of moonlight and sunset and flowers and the amazing colours in general that makes me think of Monet. No doubt the Parisian parts will remind more of Manet. ;)
Kalliope wrote: "
The famous Proustian madeleine has the shape of a Saint Jacques 'coquille'.."
That looks yummy.
...and together we'll make this group into an illustrated version of a Proust discussion. We can share the royalties, but we'd probably have to get some permissions regarding the images first. :P
Kalliope wrote: "I've been away a few days in a trip with a bit of Proustian resonance since I was in the French Pyrenees, along the way of the Compostela Pilgrimage. The famous Proustian madeleine has the shape of a Saint Jacques 'coquille'....."
And a good reminder that Proust transformed the name of the church in Illiers-Combray from Saint Jacques to Saint Hilaire but retained the symbol of the scallop shell—the 'coquille Saint-Jacques'—associated with Saint Jacques de Compostela by using it in the form of the madeleine.
Kalliope wrote: "The Ephrussi asparagus painting has a sequel. As Ephrussi sent a check of a somewhat higher amount that was due (FF1000 instead of FF800), Manet sent his patron the following - to settle the account properly..."Such a good story, Kalliope. Loose change transformed into a single 'asperge'...and now I'm reminded of the other meaning of 'asperge' in French—sprinkling holy water in church. That use must come from the effect of asparagus on our kidneys surely…
Traveller wrote: "One can wonder how a young boy who has only glimpsed a little girl once can “love” her..."I feel that the 'love' (which is bordering on obsession) was present long before he glimpsed Gilberte through the hawthorn hedge. She was very present in his imagination ever since he'd first heard about this daughter of Swann's, this girl who had the privilege of being taken to galleries and cathedrals by Bergotte whom he was also obsessed about after all. But a big part of his obsession in both cases seems to be the desire to be seen by the other, or maybe to see himself in the other's eyes.
Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "One can wonder how a young boy who has only glimpsed a little girl once can “love” her..."I feel that the 'love' (which is bordering on obsession) was present long before he gli..."
You're right, he did think of her a lot and was envious of the fact that she had access to Bergotte. So perhaps 'love' isn't really the right word after all, and 'obsession' (which he himself will of course see as love) is perhaps a better description. It's almost as if she could be a door that has the ability to open to all that he desires.
Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "The Ephrussi asparagus painting has a sequel. As Ephrussi sent a check of a somewhat higher amount that was due (FF1000 instead of FF800), Manet sent his patron the following - to ..."Can't resist...
I am one of those genetically capable of smelling this.
https://www.news-medical.net/health/G...
I wonder now which characters in Proust could too. Manet? Ephrussi? Lost to history.
Traveller wrote: "we'll make this group into an illustrated version of a Proust discussion. We can share the royalties, but we'd probably have to get some permissions regarding the images first. ..."The earlier volumes are highly painterly.. later on they are significantly less so - less descriptive, more analytical and introspective.
I am not sure this book has been referenced already.
Le Musée imaginaire de Marcel Proust : tous les tableaux de A la recherche du temps perdu
The title of the French edition alludes to Le musée imaginaire, not kept in the English edition.
Traveller wrote: "...It's almost as if she could be a door that has the ability to open to all that he desires."I think that's a great insight, T!
And perhaps it's because the door refused to open that the narrator is so frustrated and tortured by conflicting emotions. I feel Proust's choice of the plant aubépine (hawthorn) as a frame for Gilberte is very interesting. Both the word and the plant have two facets. The word begins with 'aube' (pronounced obe), the beautiful name for the dawn, which carries all sorts of poetic and visual resonances. The second part, épine, (é as in pay, pine pronounced peen) meaning thorn, is a contrast in vowel sounds, in consonant sounds, and in meaning. But even though it conjures things that are thorny and painful, the sound itself is smooth and trips off the tongue beautifully, especially the way the 'p' sound follows the 'b' sound in 'aube'. I can imagine Proust lingering over the word as he wrote and taking pleasure working it into his long sentences.
Stephen mentioned Proust's long sentences earlier and it's true Proust favours them greatly but it's also true that they work better in French than in English—French just lends itself better to Proust's type of constructions, which is natural of course.
I think it's great that you are looking at so many of the passages in their original version, T—you may be reading fluently in French by the time you finish:-)
Nick wrote: "..I am one of those genetically capable of smelling this. "Me too:-)
More on the Manet and asparagus...There is this painting by Adriaen Coorte from 1703, which Manet could have seen, at least in engraving.
I remember how taken aback I was when I first encountered it in the Rijks.
During the middle of the 19thC there was in France a 'new' interest in Dutch painting from the Golden Age. This interest was spearheaded by Théophile Thoré-Burger (although he was not the first French critic to pay attention to it), and he wrote in the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", a specialised publication with Charles Blanc as its editor and in which Charles Ephrussi was a director for a few years.
Great find, Kaliope. And relevant info about the Gazette when we remember that Swann wrote articles for an art journal.
Fionnuala wrote: "I feel Proust's choice of the plant aubépine (hawthorn) as a frame for Gilberte is very interesting. Both the word and the plant have two facets. )"I love how you can picture Proust playing around with these aspects of language that is sadly not available to English readers. No matter, you are at least bringing that aspect into play for us few on the group. :)
Fionnuala wrote: "perhaps it's because the door refused to open that the narrator is so frustrated and tortured by conflicting emotions..."
That would indeed be helpful to in part at least, explain the animosity he shows. I think part of it might also be that she humiliated him, and he seeks to reciprocate.
Kalliope wrote: "The earlier volumes are highly painterly.. later on they are significantly less so...."
Indeed, Kalliope, there are so many painterly images stacked into this part of the novel that one would almost have to quote all of the text for all to be included, so I am going to indulge in quoting only one more before we move on to the next thread, this time memorable to me because of the movement described and the emotional aspect involved:
-----------------------
I knew that Mlle. Swann often went to Laon to spend a few days, and even though it was several miles away, since the distance was compensated for by the absence of any obstacle, when, on hot afternoons, I saw a single gust of wind, coming from the farthest horizon, first bend the most distant wheat, then roll like a wave through all that vast expanse and come to lie down murmuring and warm among the sainfoin and clover at my feet, this plain which was shared by us both seemed to bring us together, join us, and I would imagine that this breath of wind had passed close beside her, that what it whispered to me was some message from her though I could not understand it, and I would kiss it as it went by.
-------------------------
Je savais que Mlle Swann allait souvent à Laon passer quelques jours et, bien que ce fût à plusieurs lieues, la distance se trouvant compensée par l’absence de tout obstacle, quand, par les chauds après-midi, je voyais un même souffle, venu de l’extrême horizon, abaisser les blés les plus éloignés, se propager comme un flot sur toute l’immense étendue et venir se coucher, murmurant et tiède, parmi les sainfoins et les trèfles, à mes pieds, cette plaine qui nous était commune à tous deux semblait nous rapprocher, nous unir, je pensais que ce souffle avait passé auprès d’elle, que c’était quelque message d’elle qu’il me chuchotait sans que je pusse le comprendre, et je l’embrassais au passage.
------------------------
I think I have perhaps found part of the explanation as to why such mature works of art and literature were presented to the narrator at such a young age by his family. Just after Fionnula’s “moon” quote, he says:
“…from those in which the moon would seem beautiful to me today and in which I would not have recognized it then. It might be, for example, some novel by Saintine, some landscape by Gleyre in which it stands out distinctly against the sky in the form of a silver sickle, one of those works which were naively incomplete, like my own impressions, and which it angered my grandmother’s sisters to see me enjoy. They thought that one ought to present to children, and that children showed good taste in enjoying right from the start, those works of art which, once one has reached maturity, one will admire forever after. The fact is that they probably regarded aesthetic merits as material objects which an open eye could not help perceiving, without one’s needing to ripen equivalents of them slowly in one’s own heart. “
Ok, and the last few comments before this section ends:
This is really a very judgmental society, isn’t it? I suppose no wonder that so many well-known French writers criticized it.
On aunt Léonie’s death:
“to settle my aunt Léonie’s estate, because she had at last died, proving correct both those who had claimed that her enfeebling regimen would end by killing her,”
Well, I have been quietly thinking all along, that she’s basically killing herself. It’s well-known among medical professionals that one of the worst things that can happen to an old person is for them to lose their mobility, which is one of the reasons why there’s such a strong drive to keep the inhabitants of old-age homes mobile and give them as much exercise as possible. Aunt Léonie basically forced a lack of mobility onto herself, in addition to a high level of neuroticism, or negative thinking.
Looks like I was wrong about the narrator being solipsistic – here he reveals an interesting display of objective self-awareness (uttered with a nice dollop of irony):
“I would shrug my shoulders and say to myself: “It’s really very good of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who makes such blunders,” adopting, to deliver judgment on Françoise, the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to emulate when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life. “
Perhaps I had judged Mr. Proust a bit too soon, previously. :)
Thread 4 can be found here:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Kalliope wrote: "More on the Manet and asparagus...There is this painting by Adriaen Coorte from 1703, which Manet could have seen, at least in engraving.
I remember how taken aback I was when I first encounte..."
I can see now how Manet 'spear'headed interest in asparagus representation in 19thC France.
Sorry, Kalliope, you made the pun too easy...
Traveller, before we move on to the next thread, I re-read your post at message 20. First of all, greatly appreciated that you set out the translations next to the original for this case. For me, this scene says a lot about the entire novel up until the "Swann in Love" chapter. If the translation is misleading on this one word "contempt," it could really knock us off course for interpretation. For a second there I tried to imagine what my reading of the novel would be like if "contempt" had in fact been misleading. Huge stakes there in that one word![comme une preuve d’outrageant mépris]
Pleased (relieved?) to see that "contempt" is a translation from mépris, the same word Godard used for his film adaptation of the Alberto Moravia novel.
As a side note, the comparison of the two English versions tells me all the more that I don't care for Davis's Proust. Setting aside accuracy, how do the translations read as English?
Her "she allowed her glances to stream out at full length in my direction" would have confused me and slowed me down. It's unnecessarily abstract and imprecise. When I think of "full length" I think of lengths of dresses or movies or hair. Or maybe to see someone from head to toe. Do glances ever "stream out" from anyone? Not really. "I was sitting at the bar when this woman's glances were just streaming out at me!" No one in America has ever said that. We receive "repeated" glances or stares but not "streams" of ones.
Next, "insulting contempt". When is contempt ever not insulting? Seems redundant, isn't it? By your inclusion of English approximations for "outrageant" I'm impressed by the inspired choice of "infinite" contempt. "Outrageous" or "scandalous" would have been a more literal translation than Davis's "insulting," which I don't really know what that is :)
Anyway, thanks for inspiring this little exercise. I've learned a lot from it. To the next thread...
Stephen wrote: "Her "she allowed her glances to stream out at full length in my direction" would have confused me and slowed me down. It's unnecessarily abstract and imprecise. When I think of "full length" I think of lengths of dresses or movies or hair..."Well, translation is such a tricky thing, because the idioms of different languages tend to be so different. Davis apparently made the decision to translate Proust "cold" and to not first read the Moncrieff so that she could go in completely neutral. I do find it a bit surprising that she is an experienced translator, since her translation is very direct and literal, almost as if French were her first language and not English.
She renders that first sentence almost precisely as it is in French : " elle laissa ses regards filer de toute leur longueur dans ma direction," which can be directly translated as : " she let her gazes run their full length in my direction".
Granted, the "she allowed her glances to stream out at full length in my direction" is almost more clumsy than my direct translation. Don't know where she got "stream out", that just sounds silly, and 'filer' implies some speed: spin, or run or fly by, whiz by or throw.
Prousts "full length" is truly problematic. The French "de toute" is all of it or completely, and 'longeur' is length. So, basically, "the full length of her gaze."
Regarder is the verb for "is looking" or "is watching", so, "le regarde" is a noun meaning 'a look' or, 'a gaze', or 'a stare'.
I suppose I would have translated that sentence as so: "She continued to throw the full length of her gaze in my direction", which admittedly does sound a bit strange, but that's what Proust said!
I feel that the Moncrieff/Enright presentation of: "she went on staring out of the corner of her eye in my direction", sounds much more natural, but it's not quite what Proust said, especially not the "corner of her eye" bit, and for me, it is important to experience Proust at first hand, (and bearing in mind that Proust is French, not English, so I don't mind the English being tortured a bit) which is why I'm going through the laborious task of working out of three books at once. :(
Nick wrote: ".Sorry, Kalliope, you made the pun too easy.....":)
Traveller wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Her "she allowed her glances to stream out at full length in my direction" would have confused me and slowed me down. It's unnecessarily abstract and imprecise. When I think of "ful..."You are very patient, Traveller.
Fionnuala wrote: "French just lends itself better to Proust's type of constructions, which is natural of course. .."Absolutely. Long sentences do not come as naturally in English as in French.
I am learning Italian now and my teacher keeps telling me off for writing my sentences too short. She wants me to use more of the "connettivi", which also call for more complex structures with the verbs. She says to me: Don't write in an English way.
!!!
Kalliope wrote: "She says to me: Don't write in an English way.!!! .."
Hee, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're originally Spanish, am I correct?
Kalliope wrote: "You are very patient, Traveller. ..."Pedantic, yes, when the need arises. Luckily these pedantic fiddlings can easily be skipped over. ;)
Traveller wrote: "Pedantic, yes, when the need arises. Luckily these pedantic fiddlings can easily be skipped over. ;)"
It seems to me you could be reading it directly in French as you can detect the various subtleties. You may be slow at first, but I am sure your speed would pick up quickly.
Kalliope wrote: "It seems to me you could be reading it directly in French as you can detect the various subtleties. You may be slow at first, but I am sure your speed would pick up quickly. ..."You mean, I'm looking up so many words and nuances already, that I may as well stick to the French, and look things up that I'm not sure of, from there? I've not had the self-confidence to, but I think I'll start to strive for that. Thanks for the encouragement, Kalliope! :)
Traveller wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "It seems to me you could be reading it directly in French as you can detect the various subtleties. You may be slow at first, but I am sure your speed would pick up quickly. ..."..."
Believe me, that's exactly the way to learn a language... Similar to the way children learn to walk... just keep going, no matter if you fall, or don't understand everything, just roll on.
You could, after a passage, reread a chunk you've first read in French, in English. Use the translation as the safety net. But keep tackling the French on its own...
Psycho Proustians
Books mentioned in this topic
Le musée imaginaire (other topics)Le Musée imaginaire de Marcel Proust : tous les tableaux de A la recherche du temps perdu (other topics)
Monsieur Proust (other topics)
Collected Poems and Other Verse (other topics)
"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.
...and ends about 33% into the book, with:
And seeing on the water and on the face of the wall a pale smile answering the smile of the sky, I cried out to myself in my enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: “Damn, damn, damn, damn.” But at the same time I felt I was in duty bound not to stop at these opaque words, but to try to see more clearly into my rapture.
French: Et voyant sur l’eau et à la face du mur un pâle sourire répondre au sourire du ciel, je m’écriai dans mon enthousiasme en brandissant mon parapluie refermé : « Zut, zut, zut, zut. » Mais en même temps je sentis que mon devoir eût été de ne pas m’en tenir à ces mots opaques et de tâcher de voir plus clair dans mon ravissement.