The Year of Reading Proust discussion

This thread is for the discussion that will take place through Sunday, 9 June of The Guermantes Way, to page 540 (to the paragraph beginning: “It was Robert de Saint-Loup...”)

This evening I will be listening to Maurizio Pollini playing, amongst other things, Debussy's Book 2 of the Preludes. One of my favourites is the Brouillards. I was listening to it last night.

And this morning, starting Chapter 2 of the second volume of Guermantes, I read Proust's wonderful description of "... le monde nouveau dans lequel le brouillard de ce matin m'avait plongé..".

Here it is with some Monet's images or played by Pollini himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD6Ugv...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTJPYm...

"... comme le corps d'Ève tenait à peine par les pieds à la hanche d'Adam, au corps duquel elle est presque perpendiculaire, dans ces bras reliefs romains de la cathédrale de Balbec qui figurent d'une façon si noble et paisible presque encore comme une frise antique, la création de la femme"

From the Modena Cathedral, c. 1110. Another Eve perpendicular to Adam.

And a bit later on..

"...Dieu y est partout suivi, comme par deux ministres, de deux petits anges dans lesquels on reconnaît--telles ces créatures ailés et tourbillonnantes de l'été que l'hiver a surprises et épargnées -- des Amours d'Herculanum encore en vie en plein XIIIè..."

In this section I am detecting a new tone, a certain cynicism in the Narrator's voice.

Kalliope wrote: "In this section I am detecting a new tone, a certain cynicism in the Narrator's voice."

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section."

Reem, are you on schedule?.. I know several people are a bit behind. Fionnuala is away this week. I will fall behind early July, though.

I finished this week's reading and am on to the next concerning friendship which interests me more than the Narrator's successes & failures with women.

This evening I'll focus on sentences that are meaningful to me in both French & English; we'll call my translations MKE & W ;-)

Jaye wrote: "I'm in this section but anticipate not finishing on time. @Kalliope, the cynicism is interesting. Having come through the drawn-out conclusion of his grandmother's life I wonder if the narrator has..."

Yes, Jaye. I was also thinking the same. In a way this is the first real crisis in his life. We had the death of Tante Léonie, but he was a lot younger and especially, not so close to the aunt.

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section."

Reem, are you on schedule?.. I know several people are a bit behind...."

I haven't started this week's section because I'm trying to catch up on BB. Still, it is only Tuesday, so at this point I'm optimistic I'll get both readings done. :) Switching between authors requires adjustment each time.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section."

Reem, are you on schedule?.. I know several people ..."

yes, true... Shifting is weird, but Proust has to come in small doses... Funny because they are almost contemporaries, but their writing is completely different.

I've started, and gone to the second large section of the book. Pleased to see Rachel when from the Lord sent packing (sort of), which explains that odd note from Robert in the middle of the grandmother episode. That had been bothering me.

Marcel Proust wrote: Between the soft grey tint of a morning landscape and the taste of a cup of chocolate I incorporated all the originality of the physical, intellectual and moral life which I had taken with me to Doncières about a year earlier and which, blazoned with the oblong form of a bare hillside—always present even when it was invisible—formed in me a series of pleasures entirely distinct from all others, incommunicable to my friends in the sense that the impressions, richly interwoven with one another, which orchestrated them were a great deal more characteristic of them to my unconscious mind than any facts that I might have related.

With the soft gray of the morning and a cup of chocolate, Proust lets us see lovely colors to the point of taste, and that too, and very simply done.

From a morning in Paris he takes us back to Doncières in a parenthetical and the hillside we saw from a window in an another parenthetical within that, and further within that parenthetical of a "hillside" still another about being present when invisible. All adding increasing specificity and complexity to the past we shared with the Narrator. Parentheticals within parentheticals like chinese boxes.

And suspense; we will have to wait for further sentences to see how these "pleasures" were "...distinct from all others, incommunicable to my friends...more characteristic of them to my unconscious mind..."

Richard wrote: "I've started, and gone to the second large section of the book. Pleased to see Rachel when from the Lord sent packing (sort of), which explains that odd note from Robert in the middle of the grandm..."

Not there yet, though glad you picked up on that note, strange tone for a friend to take...and glad you appeared here too Richard as I've been meaning to ask you if you remember when (which reading week) you were involved in a detailed discussion about the Guermantes family tree - I have decided I want to shake off my mental lethargy and have another go at getting my head around it and re-reading that discussion would help I'm sure....thanks, Marcus

Marcus wrote: "Richard wrote: "I've started, and gone to the second large section of the book. Pleased to see Rachel when from the Lord sent packing (sort of), which explains that odd note from Robert in the midd..."

Marcus,

I am not sure if this is the one you refer to, but on the 5th of May Thread there was a discussion of the Guermantes family tree. It is discussed from message # 52 onwards.

There is also the following link but it has spoilers, so most of us are trying to solve the tree in the discussions.

http://www.whoswhoinproust.com/Pages/...

Kalliope wrote: "In this section I am detecting a new tone, a certain cynicism in the Narrator's voice."

Me too, even in the "intimate" scene, the text seems to have this gray shroud over it.

Eugene, thanks for the quote. Those scenes where light is described like water, where we taste the colors, etc., etc., are always my favorite.

I enjoyed the little passage where the monk peeks at the Narrator through his closed hands.

I am finding this week's reading, as well as last, to be much more expressive and vivid than the earlier portions of this volume. His depiction of the final moments of life is so masterful and touching. The discussion of the various levels of consciousness during sleep and awakening is fascinating as well. And then there are the wonderfully descriptive passages about landscape, of the simple fog that lifted, "The grey light, falling like a fine rain, wove without ceasing a transparent web through which the Sunday strollers appeared in a silvery sheen." I felt this was lacking earlier. Does anyone else agree? And what does this say about our Narrator? I am a first time reader so I have not looked ahead for spoilers. Am I correct to perceive this as a critical transition period in our Narrator's life, especially with the death of his grandmother?

Amelia wrote: "I am finding this week's reading, as well as last, to be much more expressive and vivid than the earlier portions of this volume. His depiction of the final moments of life is so masterful and tou..."

Maybe our Narrator retreats into himself when he is between girls to obsess over. The Duchesse just hasn't been doing it for him, I'm thinking.

Uh-oh

On this occasion, holding over Albertine and myself the lighted lamp whose searching beams missed none of the still visible depressions which the girl’s body had hollowed in the counterpane, Françoise made one think of a picture of ‘Justice throwing light upon Crime.’ Albertine’s face did not suffer by this illumination. It revealed on her cheeks the same sunny burnish that had charmed me at Balbec. This face of Albertine, the general effect of Which sometimes was, out of doors, a sort of milky pallor, now shewed, according as the lamp shone on them, surfaces so dazzlingly, so uniformly coloured, so firm, so glowing that one might have compared them to the sustained flesh tints of certain flowers. Taken aback meanwhile by the unexpected entry of Françoise, I exclaimed:
“What? The lamp already? I say, the light is strong!”

[image error]
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon - Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime

Marcel Proust wrote: It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in play not with a woman of the outside world but with a doll inside our brain—the only woman moreover that we have always at our disposal, the only one we shall ever possess—whom the arbitrary power of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the Balbec of my dreams had been from the real Balbec; an artificial creation which by degrees, and to our own hurt, we shall force the real woman to resemble. ML p. 506

Looking at my bookshelf confirms what I already know, there are more works of nonfiction than fiction. Why I like reading Proust is that he mixes the genres. The quote in message 14 is fiction and the quote in message 22 is nonfiction, as Brian Rogers says in his Proust's Narrative Technique Proust writes as a novelist and as a moralist; and in my experience, on occasion he blends these two basic modes of writing.

One difference that I see is that in nonfiction Proust, as a moralist, must complete his thought; he must state a fact for us to either agree or disagree with. He must make a point in the sentence or the thought that encompasses the sentence; whereas in fiction he can run on for many pages, he may interrupt himself, delay in what he tells us, he can postpone our understanding (or even give no answer, or answer a question later that the reader has already forgotten or even answer a question that was not asked); he can toy with suspense, incompletion and contradiction. Where does grandfather come from in the scene of grandmother dyeing as the reader thought he died before her? His appearance is part of the fictive fact but this fact has a longer moment (it may be book length) than a fact stated in nonfiction; its ambiguity is carried forward--we keep reading even in the unknown--by the power of the story looking for the answer; and if not supplied by the author, we will address it and speculate to have it make sense for us, or in the rare reader be satisfied with the non closure and smile.

Amelia wrote: "I am finding this week's reading, as well as last, to be much more expressive and vivid than the earlier portions of this volume. His depiction of the final moments of life is so masterful and tou..."

Yes, several comments above have pointed out a change in the narrator..

Kalliope wrote: ...several comments above have pointed out a change in the narrator.

I don't see a change in the Narrator, and he is no more "cynical" than usual, I see a change is his circumstance: this is the first time that a protagonist in ISOLT (early Swann/Odette, the Narrator/Gilberte, Mme de Guermantes) has not been in love with a woman with whom he has had a carnal or platonic relationship, Albertine. The exception would be women in brothels and willing servant or working girls.

Then is the change within the reader? We project our thoughts on how we would react in the situation of the dying Grandmother, and in so doing judge the Narrator's actions and feelings, thereby coming to the conclusion that he is more cynical.

The change that is apparent in the Narrator(s) is that the younger Narrator ages--he becomes more mature--the distance in years (time) from the points of view of the older Narrator (his speaking is not determined in the text as to when he comments, reflects, etc. hence the plurality) shortens. It becomes stylistically more difficult for the reader to distinguish between the two distinct voices as the years close in on one another leading to my question proposed earlier, in the final volume, Time Regained are there two Narrators or one.

Martin wrote: We project our thoughts on how we would react in the situation of the dying Grandmother, and in so doing judge the Narrator's actions and feelings, thereby coming to the conclusion that he is more cynical.

Cynical is defined by Dictionary.com:

1. distrusting or disparaging the motives of others; like or characteristic of a cynic.
2. showing contempt for accepted standards of honesty or morality by one's actions, especially by actions that exploit the scruples of others.
3. bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic.

I don't find the Narrator being cynical at all, based on the above definitions, I find him, as stated before in a message here, "unsentimental".

If you want to see a change in the Narrator you can, and I do (in the death scene but not with Albertine), but not a turn to cynicism.

He reports on the horror on her death cooly. Proust as the Narrator becomes what the Narrator likes about the writing of Bergotte as stated in the Dr du Boulbon in Combray section of Swann's Way, "...in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness, a tone that was almost harsh." Bergotte is not sentimental, nor is the Narrator as he was on the phone with his grandmother from Balbec.

---

Another thing that Proust does to lighten the difficulty of the reportage of the grandmother--whom we all loved--being in extremus he brings in the gentlemanly, self interested, bowing but unaware Duc, and he brings in Saint Loup to get rid of the Duc to get back to dyeing and that sub-scene is a hilarity contrasted with the tragedy of what is going on.

Kalliope wrote: "Marcus wrote: "Richard wrote: "I've started, and gone to the second large section of the book. Pleased to see Rachel when from the Lord sent packing (sort of), which explains that odd note from Rob..."

just seen this, thanks Richard, though won't be able to investigate fully till this weekend.

Eugene, I'm bit lost (!)...I got a jolt when i realised that the grandfather was, er, the grandmother's husband but put it down to my not paying attention - he'd suddenly appeared it seemed to me. But you're saying I'm not dim (you know what I mean) he did make a sudden unannounced appearance at his wife's deathbed??

Also, he's called Beethoven, is that right? Is it just co-incodence that the Fifth Symphony gets mentioned a few pages later at beginning of Chapter Two?

Marcus wrote: Eugene, I'm bit lost...

But you're funny.

I'm dim on the grandfather since Combray when the great aunt called "Bathilde, come in and stop your husband drinking brandy," as grandmother walked outside in the healthy rain.

Who was a friend of Swann's father and who walks on the Méséglise Way with the Narrator and his father--the father of the Narrator's mother or his father. It's not specified.

Who appears at the deathbed of grandmother? It seems too inviting to confusion that Proust would call him "grandfather" if he wasn't her husband. But it's not specified.

Where was her husband and why didn't he write to grandmother when she was in Balbec with the Narrator and that is not specified either.

As far as I remember there are no deaths in the family--even mentioned--except Aunt Leonie and Uncle Augustus. Other familial relation anomalies have been mentioned here; Antoine Campagnon calls them "the family with no baggage."

The Narrator's family is an hallucination (not that they exist but how do they exist) and I wouldn't be surprised if the deathbed appearance of the grandfather (he is so rational) is an hallucination too. Look at who's there when he appears: the pompous Duc, the angry Saint Loup, the cruel Francoise, the grieving mother and the bloody "beasty" leeches et al: this is a circus of death on a trampoline.

Yes, and why not "Beethoven", Marcus?

Deaths in the family: Oh yes, I've forgotten Aunt Leonie's Octave, "As my poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and he is taking his revenge."

Bathilde's husband is...Amédée (Amadeus).

For more about the grandmother and Mozart...see "Around Proust" by Richard E. Goodkin.
He points out how that name "corresponds" to Aunt Leonie's "Octave." (Page 106)
http://books.google.com/books?id=yu_Z...

The grandfather speaking to a cousin (a nephew of the narrator's great-aunt, who was the mother of Aunt Léonie) about the telegram from the grandmother's sisters..."stark mad"..."Beethoven."

And now, remembering how Aunt Léonie and Françoise thought the grandmother was "a little 'touched.'"

"'That doesn't surprise me at all,' said my aunt, lifting her eyes to the heavens. 'I've always said that her way of thinking is different from everyone else's....'
'Mme. Amédée is always as different as she can be from everyone else,' said Françoise gently, refraining until she should be alone with the other servants from saying that she believed my grandmother was a little 'touched.'" MP (SW)

@Martin

Reading on about Mme de Stermaria and dining in the Bois, one might describe the Narrators thoughts as being "cynical" but to me they are more selfish in that he ignores her desires--he doesn't know them--and proceeds with his conquest fantasies inspired by "reading between the lines" of Saint Loup's letter from Morocco and by 'dragging' Albertine to the restaurant beforehand to select their menu he certainly disparages her current motives. But I don't see a change in him; he remains the same lovelorn and foolish young Narrator.

The cynicism in the Narrator is very subtle. There is no bitterness, but there is a greater "worldliness" and detachment and the earlier enthusiasm is a bit more dim. The death of the grandmother seems a turning point.

Here is a version of Schubert's Adieu, accompanied by a guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CczQC4...


"... Adieu, des voix étranges
T'appellent loin de moi, céleste soeur des Anges"

And again his beloved Racine with:

"De soins tumultueux un prince environné
Vers de nouveaux objets est sans cesse entraîné"

This is from his Esther, Act III, scene 3.

Racine's lines follow the reference to the actual Livre d'Esther.

More literary references in this week's extract:

To La chartreuse de Parme.

"... Je sentis, au contraire, que Mme de Guermantes avait le désir de me faire goûter à ce qu'elle avait de plus agréable quand elle me dit, mettant d'ailleurs devant mes yeux comme la beauté violâtre d'une arrivée chez la tante de Frabrice et le miracle d'une présentation au comte Mosca:"

Eugene wrote: "@Martin

Reading on about Mme de Stermaria and dining in the Bois, one might describe the Narrators thoughts as being "cynical" but to me they are more selfish in that he ignores her desires--he do..."

After finishing up this week's reading and thinking it over, I agree. I think, however, that I (and others possibly) have put my own lens over his narrative, so that I imagine that tone when it might not be there. I ask myself: Is that more Proustian genius, or my own shortcoming this first read through?

"... observatoire autour duquel les nuages s'accumulent contre le ciel bleu dans le style de Van der Meulen".

A couple of examples of these blue and cloudy skies.

Poor Albertine!!

"Besides, even materially, when she was no longer swaying in my imagination before a horizon of sea, but motionless in a room beside me, she seemed to me often a very poor specimen of a rose,so much so that I wanted to shut my eyes in order not to observe this or that blemish of its petals, and to imagine instead that I was inhaling the salt air on the beach." ( MKE 480)

Yes, and why not "Beethoven", Marcus?

not expressing surprise that someone should be called Beethoven but wondering whether this was the name of Narrator's maternal grandfather...seems maybe not...

Marcus wrote:...Beethoven, but wondering whether this was the name of Narrator's maternal grandfather...seems maybe not...

Marcelita writes: Bathilde's husband is...Amédée (Amadeus) in message 33.

I guess he was named after Mozart.

Martin wrote: I agree. I think, however, that I (and others possibly) have put my own lens over his narrative, so that I imagine that tone when it might not be there.

Proust loved his mother dearly and she died in 1905 some eight years before the illness and death of grandmother was written. Proust entered a sanatorium after his mother's death, that difficult was her death for him. Grandmother was as dear to us, the readers, as she was dear to the Narrator as portrayed by Proust. She is the best character in the novel so far in the sense of being a good person; she was caring, intelligent, cultured, forgiving, etc. for many readers and for myself too.

This is why her illness and death were so hard to read, and if they were that, they were even harder to write, I suspect. Proust wanted detail when he was told a story, or so I've read and where did he get the detail for grandmother's demise? One would think, from the most difficult event that he had experienced in his life, his mother's death.

To save his soul from the anguish he experienced at his mother's death Proust becomes unsentimental in his writing about grandmother, and even more than that, he becomes clinical in his description of sickness and death of a loved one. Yes, there is a change of tone here, a coolness is maintained; it is as much to protect the reader from despair as to protect the writer.

"Et la porte du palier ne se refermait d'elle-même très lentement, sur les courants d'air de l'escalier, qu'en exécutant les hachures de phrases voluptueuses et gémissantes qui se superposent au choeur des Pèlerins, vers la fin de l'ouverture de Tannhäuser. J'eus du reste, comme je venais de remettre ma serviette en place, l'occasion d'avoir une nouvelle audition de cet éblouissant morceau symphonique..."

Which writer would have dared to compare or associate Tannhäuser with a draught?.. and do so successfully?

Here is the choir:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StIGjw...

In this week's section Albertine asks the Narrator about a duel in which he has been involved and makes a comment on his witnesses "Ce sont des témoins de choix"..

We have seen nothing of this unlikely duel.

@Kalliope

An "unlikely" duel?

Carter said that Proust himself fought more than one.

New York, New York, I'm going to the Guggenheim today to see New Harmony: Abstraction between the Wars 1919 to 1939 which reminds me of a T. S. Eliot line in French, "entre les deux guerres", so prescient about mankind Eliot was in the 30's and now, maybe he stole it from Proust.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/ex...

The Narrator continues to show a degree of immaturity, when soon after saying that he does not really feel like spending the evening with Mme de Stermaria,-- since he'd rather spend the last free evening before his parents return, on his own (j'aurais préféré, comme celle-ci était ma derrière avant le detour de mes parents, qu'elle restât libre...")--, he then receives her letter canceling the dinner.

This makes him start crying...(.. m'y cachant la fête, avalant leur poussière et mes larmes... je me mis à sangloter).

"...the island in the Bois had seemed to me to be specially designed for pleasure..."

History: http://chalet-des-iles.com/fr-historique

Marcelita wrote: "Bathilde's husband is...Amédée (Amadeus).

For more about the grandmother and Mozart...see "Around Proust" by Richard E. Goodkin.
He points out how that name "corresponds" to Aunt Leonie's "Octave..."

Thanks Marcelita for that reference (Goodkin). I partly wonder how deliberate these kind of links were for MP. My sense is they certainly were'nt laboured.

So who then is Beethoven (the one on p 468 ML)? As in: "You've heard about the telegram her sisters sent us?" my grandfather asked the cousin. "Yes, Beethoven, I've been told...". At the risk of seeming very dense, is this then the narrator's father's father?

Kalliope wrote: "The Narrator continues to show a degree of immaturity, when soon after saying that he does not really feel like spending the evening with Mme de Stermaria,-- since he'd rather spend the last free e..."

I feel for him, despite his immaturity, and get a sense of his being trapped.