Simon’s Comments (group member since Dec 27, 2014)

Simon’s comments from the One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 group.

Thanks for the notice! I finished with the group in 2015 and that was a truly memorable experience. I'll consider joining for a re-read in 2017, as my memories of reading Proust wither into warm, proustian reveries.

Heh, sure, that's a pretty unique perspective you have! Lurking is fine anyways, and actually you could make a thread about just the first page of ISOLT or something.

Lovewise i think he means that we fall in love with an image of a person we have constructed ourselves, which can't fully correspond to the real person, because we don't know much about them yet, so in a way it doesn't matter what that person is really like. And maybe it's similar for friendship.

There's definitely some two-sidedness to his views on friendship and love, for one he devalues them philosophically, but he also lives them fully, because he can't help wanting and needing them.

Heh, it's nice to see such a strong reaction to the story, i think you're topping all of our group there.
Unfortunately i'm not sure what you're talking about that was so surprising in the second volume. Maybe something about Albertine?

I think it's fine to put spoilers here with the warning you've given. In doubt, use the spoiler tags, so one has to click to see the text, like <"spoiler"> spoiler text here <"/spoiler"> without the quotation marks.

I just got Paintings in Proust for Christmas, which shows all the paintings Proust references, looks wonderful :) with that companion, i'm feeling more and more like rereading Proust all over. The introduction is very thoughtful, starting with a quote from ISOLT itself that shows how when Proust references a painting we don't know, we lack that aha-moment of understanding how he uses the reference:
(view spoiler)[
'I assure you,' went on Mme de Guermantes... 'that with the palm-leaves and the golden crown on one side, it was most moving, it was precisely the same composition as Gustave Moreau's Death and the Young Man. (Your Highness must know that masterpiece, of course.)'
The Princesse de Parme, who did not know so much as the painter's name, nodded her head vehemently and smiled ardently, in order to manifest her admiration for this picture. But the intensity of her mimicry could not fill the place of that light which is absent from our eyes so long as we do not understand what people are talking to us about.'
(hide spoiler)]

Here's that painting:
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collecti...

I guess the simple alternative is googling the painting. Though sometimes Proust writes about fictional paintings, and there this companion helpfully gives a hint what similar real paintings Proust might have had in mind.

I'm not quite sure what to think yet. Actually i found stumbling on "The End" a bit perplexing, the end is not immediately that grand, not that it needs to be. Though it is a beautiful metapher that you stand on your growing past which accompanies you.
It's interesting that the novel concludes with hardly any action, no final conclusion of any story threads, rather with introspection, fittingly i suppose, mirroring life, which rarely has these culminating end points either as in other novels.

It's tempting to reread after this, and not sure about a 2016 yearlong read, but i hope i'll do it soon.

wow. thank you so much for all that info, Marcelita, once more! I'll definitely take a look at all of this, as i'm also quite a fan of film, when i finish the read.

But it does seem that Proust doesn't translate well to film. You can't really portray extensive thoughts or inner monologue in film. Even if you narrate through all of it, you only have two hours or so.

There are quite a few film adaptations out there, unfortunately most of them seem only to be average.
The best rated film at least on imdb.com is Time Regained (1999), and i can't wait to finally watch it soon after finishing the last volume.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189142/?...

Then there's Swann in Love (1984), but it doesn't seem to be that good.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088315/?...

The last adaptation i know is À la recherche du temps perdu (2011), a french TV mini-series, which seems to be ok, but hard to get.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667060/?...
I might give that one a try soon too.

I hadn't noticed that this last volume is only around 370 pages, until after i noticed how fast it flies by compared to the others. A unique Ebook-without-page-numbers experience i guess.

I loved Proust's essay on art and specifically literature that starts in this section and continues through week 4's part.
This looks like his central outlook on art over life, and why the narrator needs to write this book, or why Proust made it pretty much his only life's content to write ISOLT in his final years.

"Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature."

"Thanks to art, instead of seeing only a single world, our own, we see it multiplied, and have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists"

"The work of art was the only means of finding Lost Time again"

"...and I consoled myself, like a shop-keeper whose book-keeping has become muddled, by confusing the value of having them there with the price my desire had once put on them" (~80.06%).

"That girl with the very deep-set eyes and the drawling voice, is she here? And if she really does repose here, then do we any longer know in what part, or how to find her underneath the flowers" (~59.82%)

Thanks for the reminder on Proust's Library, seems like a great companion for the reread with its few 141 pages. I hope i'll have Paintings in Proust then, too.

Great, just look for the discussions threads of vol. 2 and make a comment if you like, i'm sure some of us will love to discuss! We'll try our best not to reveal spoilers to you, too.

I don't think it's _only_ a group for rereading. It's intended to host yearly reads open to all readers. I don't see the disadvantage here.

For what reason? You can put the discussions away into a "past discussions" or "2015" subforum.

Heh, that's nice to know, i thought i might be the only Penguin ebook hipster ;)
strange, now Amazon has all the Penguin volumes for Kindle. I could swear volume 3 and 5 weren't available some months ago.
Where did you get your ebooks if i may ask?

Sorry, your names are too close... so you read the Penguin editions twice now? Or Moncrieff? I mostly read Penguin and found it great, especially for the annotations, but MKE reads very well too.

Sounds good to me, turning this group into "All things Proust"! We just need a catchy name that also shows the annual reading. "All Things Proust" is a great start. Maybe something like "All Things Proust - 2016 Read"? Or maybe it's enough to have it in (the first few words of) the description?

Sounds like a great idea. The decentralization of links and other resources in many groups pertaining to particular years definitely is a problem.
Hosting the yearly reads also sounds good. The only problem is recruiting readers for that. Groups like this one have the advantage that the group name immediately shows the current yearlong reading goal. But when the group becomes popular enough, people should find out about it.

"And he who, out of opposition to the Courvoisiers, had made such bold overtures towards art, had not the least idea that what would have made somebody like Bergotte most interested in him was his kinship with the whole of the old Faubourg, and his capacity to describe to him the almost provincial life led by his femal cousins, from the rue de la Chaise to the place du Palais-Bourbon and the rue Garancière" (~19.94%).

End of The Fugitive:

"'All that is so long ago,' she said, 'I've never thought of anyone but Robert since the day we were engaged. And, you know, those childish pranks are still not what I regret the most'"