In the second section of Swann's Way we arrive in Combray, described for us as "no more than a church epitomizing 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 mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and there, in an outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town in a primitive painting." (p.65)
The church dominates Proust's memory of Combray, and 11 pages of Combray II (pp.80-91) are dedicated to its detailed description. The first five pages to the church itself, the next six to just the steeple. The careful attention given to the church makes it a self-contained example of themes found elsewhere in the work.
Time/history/past
The church seems to belong to all eras, and a lot of time setting words are used to describe it: "primitve," "age-long repetition," "mediaeval style," "silver antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries," and "Merovingian darkness," and reference is made to people and legends from the past, like the King Charles VI cards, Esther, Saint Eloi, and Sigebert. An historical figure or aspect is assigned to every part of the church.
"all this made of the church for me something entirely different from the rest of the town: an edifice occupying, so to speak, a four-dimensional space—the name of the fourth being Time—extending through the centuries its ancient nave, which, bay after bay, chapel, seemed to stretch across and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive epoch from which it emerged triumphant..." (p.83)
In "Romancing the Cathedral", Elizabeth Nicole Emery explains this as the narrator's or, as she calls him, the hero's appreciation for the church only through its connection to history and people from history. This reminds me of his grandmother's attraction to antiques over contemporary, useful items. And in fact, his grandmother turns out to be a fan of the church and its steeple in ways that the other characters are not (p.87)
Class
As I noted before, the church seems to be a unifier of class as well as time. It is visited for ages by peasant-women, houses the "noble dust of the Abbots of Combray," and the narrator and his family are middle class, (pp.80-81).
Art in life
The church personified. I remember that later in Swann's Way people are often given the qualities of art, but here the art, or architecture, is being given many human qualities:
• The dust of the long dead noble Abbots is related to the flooring (p.80)
• Proust tells us that at moments the church is "more human somehow" (p.81)
• One window "had taken on the shimmering of a peacock's tail, then quivered and rippled in a flaming and fantastic shower that streamed from the groin of the dark and stony vault down the moist walls, as though it were along the bed of some grotto glowing with sinuous stalactites..." (pp.81-82).
• It is equated to "coquettish" "grown-up sisters" and a "peevish and ill-dressed younger brother" (p.83)
• It is "...raising up into the sky above the square a tower which had looked down upon Saint Louis, and seemed to see him still; and thrusting down with its crypt..." and "guiding us with groping finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault" (pp.83-84)
• "The church! Homely and familiar, cheek by jowl in the Rue Saint-Hilaire...a simple citizen of Combray.." (p.85)
• The tower windows are placed symmetrically "with that right and original proportion in their spacing which gives beauty and dignity not only to human faces..." (p.86)
• It is "like a solid body" while "the apse, crouched muscularly..."
Habit
Church is, of course, a regular habit for those who take part. Its sessions help define Leonie's days, and the narrator's, really much of the town's. Its visibility creates additional habits as well, such as looking for the steeple when traversing the town, or upon arriving.
"The old porch....was worn out of shape and deeply furrowed at the sides...just as if the gentle friction of the cloaks of peasant-women coming into church, and of their fingers dipping into the holy water, had managed by age-long repetition to acquire a destructive force..." (p.80)
Habit has previously been portrayed as a destructive force in its breaking, such as the disruption in the narrator's habitual night-time rituals bringing him grief.
Interesting links
Someone's pictures of the church at Illiers-Combray.
More Info
Ashlar (p.83) is stonework prepared for masonry.
Lethe (p.91) was one of the rivers of Hades.
Showing posts with label In Search of Lost Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In Search of Lost Time. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Swann's Way, beginning Combray II, pp. 65-83
A description of Combray, using terms such as medieval and primitive (p.65) creates a direct connection to the distant past. (A bit on Illiers-Combray on this site and also on Wikipedia.)
A re-mentioning of the magic lantern (p.65) and Golo and Geneviéve de Brabant (p.66)
We meet Léonie, the narrator's great aunt (his grandfather's cousin) who, when he was a child, gave him the madeleine cakes that later trigger his memories of her home. She is an invalid (self-proclaimed?) "perpetually in a vague state of grief, physical debility, illness, obsession and piety." (p.66) She never leaves her room, she claims to never sleep. She is associated with death or illness, and with God or church—She loves the taste of the "dead lime leaves or faded blossom" (in her tissane), and by her bed is"a table which served at once as dispensary and high altar, on which, beneath a statue of the Virgin and a bottle of Vchiy-Célestins, might be found her prayer-books and her medical prescriptions..." (p.70)
Memories, descriptions, again very linked to a sense of smell (pp.66-68, and previously noted in the stairway in Combray I).
More on Françoise, and her service to the family (first to Léonie, then the narrator's), and her own family, and the narrator's mother is kind to her, asking her about her children and grandchildren (I remember she also asked Swann about his daughter during the dinner). (pp.71-72)
The church at Combray: ancient, visited for ages by peasant-women, housing the "noble dust of the Abbots of Combray" that are "themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter", and the windows all "so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries" (pp.80-81).
Two things about this: A return to the concept of transmigration(?), and a mention of class. Françoise was also noted as a peasant earlier, but the narrator and his family are middle class, and the Abbots are referred to as noble. Church as the great unifier? Time as the unifier of class?
Guermantes: since the name heads a whole volume of Proust's work, it might be worth noting its arrival on the scene, from inside the church at Combray, as part of the stained glass depiction of "the coronation of Esther (tradition had it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the features of one of hte kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of Guermantes whose lover he had been)" (p.82)
Side note: Interesting History on cards
Proust describes one of the church windows as "composed of a hundred little rectangular panes, of blue principally, like an enormous pack of cards of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI" (p.81).
From tradegames.org.uk "The earliest references to cards in Europe are mostly in France (the records of King Charles VI show that he bought 3 packs in 1392). These original cards featured four suits (Cups, Swords, Coins and Batons) of 14 cards each - there was an additional card in each suit - the "Cavalier" or "Mounted Valet", the lowest of the four court cards."
Some believed the cards of Charles VI to have been among the first decks of tarot cards, but more recent belief is that they were simply playing cards, tarot cards having been invented about 100 years later.
Passages of note
"...the pleasure of finding that these were sprigs of real lime-trees, like those I had seen, when coming from the train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered indeed, precisely because they were not imitations but themselves, and because they had aged. And as each new character is merely a metamorphosis from something earlier, in these little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time;" (p.69, with respect to the lime-blossom for making Léonie's tissane).
Vocabulary
antimacassar (p.67, noun) small covering on the backs and arms of upholstered furniture to prevent wear.
priedieu (p.67, noun) a desk used for kneeling in prayer.
A re-mentioning of the magic lantern (p.65) and Golo and Geneviéve de Brabant (p.66)
We meet Léonie, the narrator's great aunt (his grandfather's cousin) who, when he was a child, gave him the madeleine cakes that later trigger his memories of her home. She is an invalid (self-proclaimed?) "perpetually in a vague state of grief, physical debility, illness, obsession and piety." (p.66) She never leaves her room, she claims to never sleep. She is associated with death or illness, and with God or church—She loves the taste of the "dead lime leaves or faded blossom" (in her tissane), and by her bed is"a table which served at once as dispensary and high altar, on which, beneath a statue of the Virgin and a bottle of Vchiy-Célestins, might be found her prayer-books and her medical prescriptions..." (p.70)
Memories, descriptions, again very linked to a sense of smell (pp.66-68, and previously noted in the stairway in Combray I).
More on Françoise, and her service to the family (first to Léonie, then the narrator's), and her own family, and the narrator's mother is kind to her, asking her about her children and grandchildren (I remember she also asked Swann about his daughter during the dinner). (pp.71-72)
The church at Combray: ancient, visited for ages by peasant-women, housing the "noble dust of the Abbots of Combray" that are "themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter", and the windows all "so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries" (pp.80-81).
Two things about this: A return to the concept of transmigration(?), and a mention of class. Françoise was also noted as a peasant earlier, but the narrator and his family are middle class, and the Abbots are referred to as noble. Church as the great unifier? Time as the unifier of class?
Guermantes: since the name heads a whole volume of Proust's work, it might be worth noting its arrival on the scene, from inside the church at Combray, as part of the stained glass depiction of "the coronation of Esther (tradition had it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the features of one of hte kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of Guermantes whose lover he had been)" (p.82)
Side note: Interesting History on cards
Proust describes one of the church windows as "composed of a hundred little rectangular panes, of blue principally, like an enormous pack of cards of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI" (p.81).
From tradegames.org.uk "The earliest references to cards in Europe are mostly in France (the records of King Charles VI show that he bought 3 packs in 1392). These original cards featured four suits (Cups, Swords, Coins and Batons) of 14 cards each - there was an additional card in each suit - the "Cavalier" or "Mounted Valet", the lowest of the four court cards."
Some believed the cards of Charles VI to have been among the first decks of tarot cards, but more recent belief is that they were simply playing cards, tarot cards having been invented about 100 years later.
Passages of note
"...the pleasure of finding that these were sprigs of real lime-trees, like those I had seen, when coming from the train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered indeed, precisely because they were not imitations but themselves, and because they had aged. And as each new character is merely a metamorphosis from something earlier, in these little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time;" (p.69, with respect to the lime-blossom for making Léonie's tissane).
Vocabulary
antimacassar (p.67, noun) small covering on the backs and arms of upholstered furniture to prevent wear.
priedieu (p.67, noun) a desk used for kneeling in prayer.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Swann's Way, Combray I, pp. 53-65 (end chapter, Combray I)
Up to the this point we've floated through time and space, the focus narrowing as we went and finally landing on the evening in Combray when the narrator was sent to bed without the kiss, waited for his mother, and suffered a loss of innocence when she gave in to his nervous tendencies.
Proust calls this "voluntary memory" (on p.59), an attempt to use the mind to recall the past, an attempt that he says will be incomplete and leaves the past as a "residue", as "dead".
Next he tackles "involuntary memory", which he equates to the beliefs of the Celts that "the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object" from which we can set them free by recognizing and naming them. I could find no evidence of Celtic belief matching this to the letter, but I did read a bit about their beliefs regarding animation/reincarnation/transmigration and there's enough similarity to go with.
So after this, his illustration of reclaiming lost time, of being transported, by recognition of the past via a petite madeleine cake, only the memory of the past is in himself, not in the cake. The cake only triggers the memory. And where before he remembered nothing but the staircase, he now remembers everything about Combray.
End chapter, Combray I (Overture, in the older translation)
Vocabulary:
vicissitude (noun, p.60), change or variation in the course of something
tisane (noun, p.63), aromatic or herb-flavored tea
Proust calls this "voluntary memory" (on p.59), an attempt to use the mind to recall the past, an attempt that he says will be incomplete and leaves the past as a "residue", as "dead".
Next he tackles "involuntary memory", which he equates to the beliefs of the Celts that "the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object" from which we can set them free by recognizing and naming them. I could find no evidence of Celtic belief matching this to the letter, but I did read a bit about their beliefs regarding animation/reincarnation/transmigration and there's enough similarity to go with.
So after this, his illustration of reclaiming lost time, of being transported, by recognition of the past via a petite madeleine cake, only the memory of the past is in himself, not in the cake. The cake only triggers the memory. And where before he remembered nothing but the staircase, he now remembers everything about Combray.
End chapter, Combray I (Overture, in the older translation)
Vocabulary:
vicissitude (noun, p.60), change or variation in the course of something
tisane (noun, p.63), aromatic or herb-flavored tea
Friday, July 8, 2011
On George Sand, and incenst
"I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to fetch a parcel of books of which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which they were wrapped, any more than their short, wide format but which, even at this first glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already the paintbox of New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year before. The books were La Mare au Diable, Francois le Champi, La Petite Fadette and Les Maitres Sonneurs." (pp.52)
"La Mare au Diable", "Francois le Champi", "La Petite Fadette" and "Les Maitres Sonneurs" are all works of George Sand.
George Sand was the pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) lived and wrote during the 1848 revolution that ultimately brought about the third republic. She started life in a pretty standard way for time period, married and had two children, then left her husband in 1831. From there she diverged from the customary; She wore mens clothing, she openly smoked tobacco, and she lived an independent life prolific in writing and love affairs. She was a contemporary and lover of Chopin and Musset, among others, and a close friend of Flaubert. I have not read any of her works, but understand from their synopses that she wrote often about romantic affairs and used her novels to paint a picture of French customs and class and gender discrepancies while paving the way for stronger female literary characters. Again, since I haven't read them this is speculation based on summaries I've read here and there.
Two Sand factoids interest me most with regard to Proust. First, that some of her works may have challenged traditional gender roles, the word lesbianism having been thrown around some. We'll see that in "Search" as well. Second, that she wrote strong female characters into her novels, including one, in "The Country Waif", that ends up having a love affair with, and marrying, her adopted son. The word incest comes to mind, and so does Proust's very strong attachment to his own mother. That The Country Waif is the exact novel his mother reads to him on the night she spends with him in his room should not be skipped over. Beginning on pg.16, in his book "Proust, Beckett, and Narration", James H. Reid discusses the narrator's mother and her reading on that night.
Stage 4, incest and silence... from "Proust and the Sense of Time", by Julia Kristeva
p. 16 of "Proust, Becket, and Narration", by James H. Reid,
George Sand on Wikipedia
George Sand on AMSAW
"La Mare au Diable", "Francois le Champi", "La Petite Fadette" and "Les Maitres Sonneurs" are all works of George Sand.
George Sand was the pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) lived and wrote during the 1848 revolution that ultimately brought about the third republic. She started life in a pretty standard way for time period, married and had two children, then left her husband in 1831. From there she diverged from the customary; She wore mens clothing, she openly smoked tobacco, and she lived an independent life prolific in writing and love affairs. She was a contemporary and lover of Chopin and Musset, among others, and a close friend of Flaubert. I have not read any of her works, but understand from their synopses that she wrote often about romantic affairs and used her novels to paint a picture of French customs and class and gender discrepancies while paving the way for stronger female literary characters. Again, since I haven't read them this is speculation based on summaries I've read here and there.
Two Sand factoids interest me most with regard to Proust. First, that some of her works may have challenged traditional gender roles, the word lesbianism having been thrown around some. We'll see that in "Search" as well. Second, that she wrote strong female characters into her novels, including one, in "The Country Waif", that ends up having a love affair with, and marrying, her adopted son. The word incest comes to mind, and so does Proust's very strong attachment to his own mother. That The Country Waif is the exact novel his mother reads to him on the night she spends with him in his room should not be skipped over. Beginning on pg.16, in his book "Proust, Beckett, and Narration", James H. Reid discusses the narrator's mother and her reading on that night.
Stage 4, incest and silence... from "Proust and the Sense of Time", by Julia Kristeva
p. 16 of "Proust, Becket, and Narration", by James H. Reid,
George Sand on Wikipedia
George Sand on AMSAW
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Swann's Way, Combray I, pp.35-58
At a dinner party our young narrator is sent to bed without being able to say goodnight to his mother. Swann is the dinner guest, and we meet Francoise, a house maid, who is described as uncompromising and ancient and devoted to the family.
A connection made between narrator and Swann: "As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as he ;" (p.39) Foreshadowing/social triangulation
Our narrator has a nervous nature. This is played out in his waiting anxiously for his mother to come to bed so he can ambush her, on the stairway outside his door, into kissing him goodnight, even at the risk of angering both her and his father. Here, as he waits in the hall, memory is linked with sense of smell, and again with the inflexibility of place—the staircase as a horrible location because it signified the separation from his mother.
When he meets his mother his father arrives soon after, but gives him no punishment. In general the narrator believed his father to be hasty or unfair, which left him somewhat afraid of his father, or uncertain ("Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this crowning mercy, my father's behaviour towards me still retained that arbitrary and unwarranted quality which was so characteristic of him..." [p.49-50]), but he does not doubt that his father loves him.
He is reunited with his mother, who spends the night reading (George Sand novels) to him in his room, but his victory at this moment is actually a loss of innocence, which he writes "brought me of a sudden to a sort of puberty of sorrow, a manumission of tears. I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first abdication on her part from the ideal she had formed for me..." (p.51)
In regard to the books we learn more about the grandmother, who is strongly connected to the past, to the old, to the un-useful.
She "could never permit herself to buy anything from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, above all the profit which fine things afford us by teaching us to seek our pleasures elsewhere than n the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth." (p.53) And when forced to buy something "useful" "would choose antiques, as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own." (p.53)
She prefers the antique to something more conventional and useful. Even in books she has chosen for him George Sand novels which he accuses of being "regular lumber-rooms full of expressions that have fallen out of use and become quaint and picturesque..", and she prefers ancient depictions of place as well, avoiding photographs in favor of prints (or photographs of prints) or artists' renderings.
Art in life
"...[I] would so prepare my thoughts as to be able, thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would grant me to the sensation of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's absence." (p.35)
Art imitating life is not always accurate, as images of paintings of locations (Venice) do not always portray them accurately.
Time and memory
Perception is a part of reality. Is it immovable? Movement through the class system, for instance, breaks the concept of immobility in reality, but perception of class is maintained, as when we meet Francoise:
"refinements of etiquette which nothing in Francoise's background or in her career as a servant in a village household could have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble and little understood, as is in those manufacturing towns where old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of Theophilus or The Quatre Fils Aymon." (p.37-38)
Francoise may in reality have changed class status, but yet she holds onto her original status as immoveable. This way she is a blend of past and present.
The Miracle of Theophilus and the Quatre Fils Aymon are both French textual works from the middle ages, another blending of time periods like the references to Golo and Genevieve de Brabant.
And in reference to Swann, immobility of perception:
"said my great-aunt, 'what a change I find in Swann. He is quite antiquated!' She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him." (p.45)
Compare this to the immobility of perception of a person's character or physical appearance mentioned on p.23 (always the same for one, never the same for any two people), and of physical space on p.5: "perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them."
And the difference between the physical state of something, and its state in our memory is revisited often, like here in the staircase as he stands with his mother before his father arrives:
"Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long ago demolished...It is a long time, too, since my father has been able to tell mamma to 'Go along with the child.' Never again will such moments be possible for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to control in my father's presence, and which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. In reality their echo has never ceased;" (p.49)
Love as pain
Our narrator loves his mother so much that he suffers for the emotion. We spend the latter part of this section mired in his anguish over a missed goodnight kiss, and then suffer with him a loss of innocence even after he receives it. Love is pain and suffering, because even when achieved it cannot atone for the struggle, or it cannot live up to the desire.
Then Swann is "much less unhappy of late" because "he no longer loves that [his wife]." (p.45)
And the role of the social triangle:
"Alas! Swann had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are powerless to influence a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again alone." (p.41)
Vocabulary, etc.:
viaticum (p.36, noun) 1. Communion as given to a dying person, 2. provisions for travel
desuetude (p.53, noun) 1. The state of being no longer used or practiced
Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from the 15th century, but I was unable to find an image of the print or painting mentioned (of Abraham and Sarah, p.49)
A connection made between narrator and Swann: "As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as he ;" (p.39) Foreshadowing/social triangulation
Our narrator has a nervous nature. This is played out in his waiting anxiously for his mother to come to bed so he can ambush her, on the stairway outside his door, into kissing him goodnight, even at the risk of angering both her and his father. Here, as he waits in the hall, memory is linked with sense of smell, and again with the inflexibility of place—the staircase as a horrible location because it signified the separation from his mother.
When he meets his mother his father arrives soon after, but gives him no punishment. In general the narrator believed his father to be hasty or unfair, which left him somewhat afraid of his father, or uncertain ("Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this crowning mercy, my father's behaviour towards me still retained that arbitrary and unwarranted quality which was so characteristic of him..." [p.49-50]), but he does not doubt that his father loves him.
He is reunited with his mother, who spends the night reading (George Sand novels) to him in his room, but his victory at this moment is actually a loss of innocence, which he writes "brought me of a sudden to a sort of puberty of sorrow, a manumission of tears. I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first abdication on her part from the ideal she had formed for me..." (p.51)
In regard to the books we learn more about the grandmother, who is strongly connected to the past, to the old, to the un-useful.
She "could never permit herself to buy anything from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, above all the profit which fine things afford us by teaching us to seek our pleasures elsewhere than n the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth." (p.53) And when forced to buy something "useful" "would choose antiques, as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own." (p.53)
She prefers the antique to something more conventional and useful. Even in books she has chosen for him George Sand novels which he accuses of being "regular lumber-rooms full of expressions that have fallen out of use and become quaint and picturesque..", and she prefers ancient depictions of place as well, avoiding photographs in favor of prints (or photographs of prints) or artists' renderings.
Art in life
"...[I] would so prepare my thoughts as to be able, thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would grant me to the sensation of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's absence." (p.35)
Art imitating life is not always accurate, as images of paintings of locations (Venice) do not always portray them accurately.
Time and memory
Perception is a part of reality. Is it immovable? Movement through the class system, for instance, breaks the concept of immobility in reality, but perception of class is maintained, as when we meet Francoise:
"refinements of etiquette which nothing in Francoise's background or in her career as a servant in a village household could have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble and little understood, as is in those manufacturing towns where old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of Theophilus or The Quatre Fils Aymon." (p.37-38)
Francoise may in reality have changed class status, but yet she holds onto her original status as immoveable. This way she is a blend of past and present.
The Miracle of Theophilus and the Quatre Fils Aymon are both French textual works from the middle ages, another blending of time periods like the references to Golo and Genevieve de Brabant.
And in reference to Swann, immobility of perception:
"said my great-aunt, 'what a change I find in Swann. He is quite antiquated!' She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him." (p.45)
Compare this to the immobility of perception of a person's character or physical appearance mentioned on p.23 (always the same for one, never the same for any two people), and of physical space on p.5: "perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them."
And the difference between the physical state of something, and its state in our memory is revisited often, like here in the staircase as he stands with his mother before his father arrives:
"Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long ago demolished...It is a long time, too, since my father has been able to tell mamma to 'Go along with the child.' Never again will such moments be possible for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to control in my father's presence, and which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. In reality their echo has never ceased;" (p.49)
Love as pain
Our narrator loves his mother so much that he suffers for the emotion. We spend the latter part of this section mired in his anguish over a missed goodnight kiss, and then suffer with him a loss of innocence even after he receives it. Love is pain and suffering, because even when achieved it cannot atone for the struggle, or it cannot live up to the desire.
Then Swann is "much less unhappy of late" because "he no longer loves that [his wife]." (p.45)
And the role of the social triangle:
"Alas! Swann had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are powerless to influence a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again alone." (p.41)
Vocabulary, etc.:
viaticum (p.36, noun) 1. Communion as given to a dying person, 2. provisions for travel
desuetude (p.53, noun) 1. The state of being no longer used or practiced
Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from the 15th century, but I was unable to find an image of the print or painting mentioned (of Abraham and Sarah, p.49)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Swann's Way, Combray I, pp.15-35
Ah, holiday weekend, you sucked away the extra time I usually get when I'm not the only adult in the house. Thankfully beach time, fireworks, and good beer were worth it. But I'd wanted to read 100 pages over the weekend and I only squeezed in 10 before the work week returned.
Class issues
We meet the eponymous Swann. The narrator and his family appear to belong to the middle class, and while Swann used to belong to this set as well, he appears to have risen a half class or more in popularity. We are told that this elevation of his position escapes the family's knowledge because "middle class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied..." (p.19) and we are also given distinct examples of how this was untrue in a reality where class was more fluid. Swann is the obvious example, but then the narrator's great aunt provides a second: she is described as being "the only member of our family who could be described as a trifle 'common,'" (p.21). And later, the grandmother is said to feel that "distinction was a thing wholly independent of social position," that a tailor was "the best and most distinguished man she had ever seen" while "a nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house [was] 'so common!'" (p.25)
A comment about titles: "[my great-aunt] had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer of our acquaintance because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom, we are told, queens have sometimes shown their favours." (p.26-27)
Some philosophy
Swann's place in society sets up a narration on class but also on the nature of self and perception. The narrator reflects on our being seen as different to each person of our acquaintance, that "even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people." (p.23)
And referring not only to this philosophy, but the concept of memory and fluid time, the existence not of a Swann who was different, but of a different Swann, and also a reference to art as life: "this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my youth, and who in fact is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a picture gallery in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the similar tonality—this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon." (p.24)
A bit of humor
As the dinner party gets underway, the party that will separate the narrator from his mother earlier than he would like and will deny him that goodnight kiss in his bed, we are introduced to the grandmother's sisters, who are perfect caricatures of old biddies from earlier novels. Their attempts to thank Swann for a gift of wine and to mention his having been written up in a recent newspaper article suffer from such "a wealth of ingenious circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to whom it was addressed" (pp.29). And their meaning may be subtle, but their method is not, so we are treated to a scene of satirical humor, while Swann is left "in some bewilderment." (p.33)
About Swann
Swann is purported to have been fashioned at least in part after Charles Ephrussi, a Jewish art historian and collector
I admit to being disappointed that he wears his hair in the Bressant style (p.17), better known today as a mullet. But I also wonder if this isn't part of his characterization (by which I mean as a patron of nineteenth century pop-culture—theater, art, politics—not as a hillbilly).
He frequents the Jockey Club and the Faubourge Saint-Germain, and hangs out with folks like the Comte de Paris and the Prince of Wales, so he is popular with the elite French society, the haute bourgeoisie and the upper class or nobility, such as it is.
He lives on the Quai d'Orléans, and I found a great article about that here which describes this as the "perfect place for Swann, connoisseur, collector, writer marqué who once imagined he would publish a study of Vermeer." (p.19)
He has made a disadvantageous marriage, at least in the minds of the narrator's family, possibly on the grounds of pregnancy, and he has a daughter.
Vocabulary:
Ferruginous (p.16, adj) 1. Containing iron oxides or rust. 2. Reddish brown; rust-colored.
Other passages/quotes worth noting:
p.20 "when challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for some picture, he would remain almost disobligingly silent, and would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been painted." (a character trait to which I think we return later)
Class issues
We meet the eponymous Swann. The narrator and his family appear to belong to the middle class, and while Swann used to belong to this set as well, he appears to have risen a half class or more in popularity. We are told that this elevation of his position escapes the family's knowledge because "middle class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied..." (p.19) and we are also given distinct examples of how this was untrue in a reality where class was more fluid. Swann is the obvious example, but then the narrator's great aunt provides a second: she is described as being "the only member of our family who could be described as a trifle 'common,'" (p.21). And later, the grandmother is said to feel that "distinction was a thing wholly independent of social position," that a tailor was "the best and most distinguished man she had ever seen" while "a nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house [was] 'so common!'" (p.25)
A comment about titles: "[my great-aunt] had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer of our acquaintance because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom, we are told, queens have sometimes shown their favours." (p.26-27)
Some philosophy
Swann's place in society sets up a narration on class but also on the nature of self and perception. The narrator reflects on our being seen as different to each person of our acquaintance, that "even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people." (p.23)
And referring not only to this philosophy, but the concept of memory and fluid time, the existence not of a Swann who was different, but of a different Swann, and also a reference to art as life: "this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my youth, and who in fact is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a picture gallery in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the similar tonality—this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon." (p.24)
A bit of humor
As the dinner party gets underway, the party that will separate the narrator from his mother earlier than he would like and will deny him that goodnight kiss in his bed, we are introduced to the grandmother's sisters, who are perfect caricatures of old biddies from earlier novels. Their attempts to thank Swann for a gift of wine and to mention his having been written up in a recent newspaper article suffer from such "a wealth of ingenious circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to whom it was addressed" (pp.29). And their meaning may be subtle, but their method is not, so we are treated to a scene of satirical humor, while Swann is left "in some bewilderment." (p.33)
About Swann
Swann is purported to have been fashioned at least in part after Charles Ephrussi, a Jewish art historian and collector
I admit to being disappointed that he wears his hair in the Bressant style (p.17), better known today as a mullet. But I also wonder if this isn't part of his characterization (by which I mean as a patron of nineteenth century pop-culture—theater, art, politics—not as a hillbilly).
He frequents the Jockey Club and the Faubourge Saint-Germain, and hangs out with folks like the Comte de Paris and the Prince of Wales, so he is popular with the elite French society, the haute bourgeoisie and the upper class or nobility, such as it is.
He lives on the Quai d'Orléans, and I found a great article about that here which describes this as the "perfect place for Swann, connoisseur, collector, writer marqué who once imagined he would publish a study of Vermeer." (p.19)
He has made a disadvantageous marriage, at least in the minds of the narrator's family, possibly on the grounds of pregnancy, and he has a daughter.
Vocabulary:
Ferruginous (p.16, adj) 1. Containing iron oxides or rust. 2. Reddish brown; rust-colored.
Other passages/quotes worth noting:
p.20 "when challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for some picture, he would remain almost disobligingly silent, and would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been painted." (a character trait to which I think we return later)
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Swann's Way, Combray I, pp. 1-15
An hour with the book and my computer and that's all the farther I got before it was time to make dinner.
Overview:
The state of memory, space and time fluidity. Where is the narrator, and when? Is he young? Old? An invalid? Is he remembering his fear of his uncle or is he remembering the instance of that fear? Or are these things the same? (Ahhh...waking up and thinking you are somewhere else. But he describes it so much more eloquently.)
Our narrator (our Proust) is searching for his memories, and the narration seems confused and wild, but it's actually following a very careful order. He begins by reaching wildly and time and space are confused, then he slowly settles on more distinct places, times, and people, and we see him go from vague memories to more specific stories (and finally he tastes the madeleine cakes, which trigger the next set of memories, and so on, but I'm not there yet on this second read).
From within this twilight state he mentions place names and people, possibly in foreshadowing or a roadmap: locations such as Combray and Tansonville, Balbec (Is it a hilarity or a commercial ploy that someone named their anti-aging cream Combray?), and people like Swann.
My own, possibly silly, thoughts:
His grandmother reminds me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that great French philosopher who embraced nature and believed children should be allowed to run around in downpours and go barefooted in winter.
Some things to pay attention to?
Travel or the train station (pp 2, 10)
the mother/son relationship (pp 6, 15)
the magic lantern (pp 9-10)
Genevieve de Brabant and Golo (pp 10-12)
The social triangle
The magic lantern was a new one on me, and so was the story of Genevieve de Brabant and Golo. I don't know if we'll see a return of the lantern later in the book, but I found it interesting as a tool melding the distant past (Merovingian) to the present. And Genevieve is the wife and mother, falsely accused by Golo of infidelity with him against her husband, who is to be put to death but escapes and is aided by a roe deer in caring for her son. Later she is cleared and re-accepted by her husband. There is an obvious link here to the mother/son relationship, and possibly also to that between mother and father/husband and wife, and our first example of the social triangle.
Then there is his grandmother whose sister keeps tempting his grandfather with liqueurs he shouldn't have, thus creating unrest between the husband and wife (p.13-14), another social triangle.
And the narrator's familial relationship, the son insinuating himself between the mother and father, and sometimes additional guests taking a place as well (pp.15+), more social triangles.
Passages/quotes worth noting:
p.1-2 "I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, showed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveler would be hurrying towards the nearby station; and the path he is taking will be engraved in his memory by the excitement induced by strange surroundings, by unaccustomed activities, by the conversation he has had and the farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp that will still echo in his ears amid the silence of the night, and by the happy prospect of being home again."
p.8 "Habit! That skilful but slow-moving arrranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable."
p.12 "...while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb [my father], looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind."
p.15 "Sometimes when, after kissing me, [my mother] opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her 'Kiss me just once more,' but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to give me this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd..."
Overview:
The state of memory, space and time fluidity. Where is the narrator, and when? Is he young? Old? An invalid? Is he remembering his fear of his uncle or is he remembering the instance of that fear? Or are these things the same? (Ahhh...waking up and thinking you are somewhere else. But he describes it so much more eloquently.)
Our narrator (our Proust) is searching for his memories, and the narration seems confused and wild, but it's actually following a very careful order. He begins by reaching wildly and time and space are confused, then he slowly settles on more distinct places, times, and people, and we see him go from vague memories to more specific stories (and finally he tastes the madeleine cakes, which trigger the next set of memories, and so on, but I'm not there yet on this second read).
From within this twilight state he mentions place names and people, possibly in foreshadowing or a roadmap: locations such as Combray and Tansonville, Balbec (Is it a hilarity or a commercial ploy that someone named their anti-aging cream Combray?), and people like Swann.
My own, possibly silly, thoughts:
His grandmother reminds me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that great French philosopher who embraced nature and believed children should be allowed to run around in downpours and go barefooted in winter.
Some things to pay attention to?
Travel or the train station (pp 2, 10)
the mother/son relationship (pp 6, 15)
the magic lantern (pp 9-10)
Genevieve de Brabant and Golo (pp 10-12)
The social triangle
The magic lantern was a new one on me, and so was the story of Genevieve de Brabant and Golo. I don't know if we'll see a return of the lantern later in the book, but I found it interesting as a tool melding the distant past (Merovingian) to the present. And Genevieve is the wife and mother, falsely accused by Golo of infidelity with him against her husband, who is to be put to death but escapes and is aided by a roe deer in caring for her son. Later she is cleared and re-accepted by her husband. There is an obvious link here to the mother/son relationship, and possibly also to that between mother and father/husband and wife, and our first example of the social triangle.
Then there is his grandmother whose sister keeps tempting his grandfather with liqueurs he shouldn't have, thus creating unrest between the husband and wife (p.13-14), another social triangle.
And the narrator's familial relationship, the son insinuating himself between the mother and father, and sometimes additional guests taking a place as well (pp.15+), more social triangles.
Passages/quotes worth noting:
p.1-2 "I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, showed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveler would be hurrying towards the nearby station; and the path he is taking will be engraved in his memory by the excitement induced by strange surroundings, by unaccustomed activities, by the conversation he has had and the farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp that will still echo in his ears amid the silence of the night, and by the happy prospect of being home again."
p.8 "Habit! That skilful but slow-moving arrranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable."
p.12 "...while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb [my father], looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind."
p.15 "Sometimes when, after kissing me, [my mother] opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her 'Kiss me just once more,' but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to give me this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd..."
Monday, June 27, 2011
A little background work
Marcel Proust lived in France from 1871-1922. The work is semi-autobiographical, with a degree of self awareness (pg. 291, "So Swann reasonsed with himself, for the young man whom he had failed, at first, to identify, was himself also; like certain novelists, he had distributed his own personality between two characters, him who was the 'first person' in the dream, and another...").
Proust is writing about France during the French Third Republic after the fall of the second empire and Napoleon III. It was a time of political uncertainty but artistic growth. Though the landed nobility was abolished during the French Revolution, use of French titles returned with Napoleon III, and Proust uses these titles often in "Swann's Way", where he has a lot to say about the class situation of the time.
Interesting stuff: The Infamous Proust Questionnaire
It's all about the mom.
Proust is writing about France during the French Third Republic after the fall of the second empire and Napoleon III. It was a time of political uncertainty but artistic growth. Though the landed nobility was abolished during the French Revolution, use of French titles returned with Napoleon III, and Proust uses these titles often in "Swann's Way", where he has a lot to say about the class situation of the time.
Interesting stuff: The Infamous Proust Questionnaire
It's all about the mom.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
First things first
I actually started reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and finished the first volume, "Swann's Way", this weekend, but I'm going back to the beginning to try again. Why? Because when I started on this project I didn't really know what to expect. I knew I was entering the modernist era, I'd heard that it was among the first of those works to evade the constraints of linear time, and I'd read the Wikipedia article on Marcel Proust, but like taking Lamaze classes to prepare for childbirth, it wasn't until I got into the first throes of labor that I realized how little those preparations actually did for me. I was dull through the start, and I'm sure I missed a lot. It took me until about half way through "Swann's Way" to start appreciating the work, then I found myself falling in love with it and unless I go back I won't know for sure whether it was the book or myself that was slow to warm up. Plus I've come to the conclusion, after this first taste, that Lost Time is worth absorbing, not just reading. That's where the notes and the research come in.
The version I started reading is titled Remembrance of Things Past (a translation I understand Proust detested) and was published in 1934 by Random House, translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff (see note below). In this version the seven volumes have been condensed into just two. The copy I am reading actually belongs to the library, which will keep me reading at a steady pace since they will want it back (according to the obsolete borrowing card in the back it has been on their shelves since at least 1955, and I think that's pretty cool). In my own library I have a beautiful twelve volume set, the 1939 uniform edition published by Chatto & Windus in England, a gift from my husband and son that I can't quite bring myself to pour over or leaf through. Thankfully the library's copy was available (and has been sitting on the shelf waiting for attention for over a year, so I don't expect a lot of competition).
I believe this worth mentioning because this is a big work; it will take me a long to read and will generate a lot of posts and I will likely note page numbers often, making the version relevant.
I'm going to jot notes as I go. They will be anything from definitions of words to my own comments on the writing style or story, sometimes they'll be summaries, and now I can even link to comments found elsewhere on the web, something I couldn't do in my handwritten notes.
Proust will be a journey. I am aiming to finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year so that I can count it toward my reading goal. Time to get started.
**(7/10/11) The version I've switched to reading as of now, although I'm likely to compare the two from time to time, has the translated title In Search of Lost Time and is the 2003 Modern Library Paperback Edition, translated by Moncrieff and Terence Kilmart and revised by D. J. Enright. In this version the work is in six volumes. The page numbers I list will be from this version.
The version I started reading is titled Remembrance of Things Past (a translation I understand Proust detested) and was published in 1934 by Random House, translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff (see note below). In this version the seven volumes have been condensed into just two. The copy I am reading actually belongs to the library, which will keep me reading at a steady pace since they will want it back (according to the obsolete borrowing card in the back it has been on their shelves since at least 1955, and I think that's pretty cool). In my own library I have a beautiful twelve volume set, the 1939 uniform edition published by Chatto & Windus in England, a gift from my husband and son that I can't quite bring myself to pour over or leaf through. Thankfully the library's copy was available (and has been sitting on the shelf waiting for attention for over a year, so I don't expect a lot of competition).
I believe this worth mentioning because this is a big work; it will take me a long to read and will generate a lot of posts and I will likely note page numbers often, making the version relevant.
I'm going to jot notes as I go. They will be anything from definitions of words to my own comments on the writing style or story, sometimes they'll be summaries, and now I can even link to comments found elsewhere on the web, something I couldn't do in my handwritten notes.
Proust will be a journey. I am aiming to finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year so that I can count it toward my reading goal. Time to get started.
**(7/10/11) The version I've switched to reading as of now, although I'm likely to compare the two from time to time, has the translated title In Search of Lost Time and is the 2003 Modern Library Paperback Edition, translated by Moncrieff and Terence Kilmart and revised by D. J. Enright. In this version the work is in six volumes. The page numbers I list will be from this version.
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