The Year of Reading Proust discussion

This thread is for the discussion that will take place through Sunday, 2 June of The Guermantes Way, to page 450 (end of page, to the paragraph beginning: “Luckily, we were soon rid of Françoise’s daughter...”)

Mme Verdurin was right, most of the people at Mme de Villeparisis' salon are "bores" but the characters I really enjoy reading are Norpois, Charlus and the older Narrator for their command of language, specifically how Proust writes them expressing themselves. Here is an example of Charlus' wit:

You remember the story of the man who believed that he had the Princess of China shut up in a bottle. It was a form of insanity. He was cured of it. But as soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies which we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious. ML p. 394

Dramatic Irony is defined by Webster as irony derived from the audience's understanding of a speech or a situation not grasped by the characters in a dramatic piece.

Early on in Mme de Villeparisis' salon, a scene that spans 3 weekly readings, we are told that young Narrator's love for Mme de Guermantes will end by an omniscient Narrator.

Why does Proust tell us that, wouldn't the salon scene read similarly if we didn't know the young Narrator's future. Yes and no; my feeling is that the irony permits Proust to more freely criticize the attendees of the salon, and by "criticize" I mean to portray them as the "bores" they are, leaving Proust freer to not judge them in the text, to view them with Marcus' "humble eye" and let the reader make the judgement if she so deems. And it absolves the young Narrator, in the reader's eyes, from looking too foolish in his attractions to the society of the Guermantes; he looks young and will learn, we think. Besides, the irony keeps us reading eagerly, looking for the signposts, the causes of his future diminished infatuations with her and her way.

The hat thing is an example of the frivolity of society, presented as somewhat serious, really it's ironically silly, simply another brick in the wall.

What a compliment--the one artists strive for--to produce work that is world changing. Proust through the older Narrator speaks about changing tastes: about he now sees Bergotte's "limpidity as a deficiency" after struggling with reading sentences by new writers.

He says of their work,

...their painting or...their prose is not always pleasant. When it is at an end the practitioner says to us: "Now look!" And, lo and behold, the world around us (which was not created once and for all, but is created afresh as often as an original artist is born) appears to us entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear. ML p. 445

Well, I was amused to see that it was indeed Odette the Dame en rose from the Combray section.

It is fascinating how everything starts connecting. Reading this work is like weaving.

The hat thing, Charlus's "interesting" behavior when selecting a handsome to take home... (in more ways than one), and Odette revealed as Kalliope mentioned.

Having read "Monsieur Proust" and beginning on the Carter bio, I keep seeing Robert de Montesquieu as Charlus.

Martin wrote: "The hat thing, Charlus's "interesting" behavior when selecting a handsome to take home... (in more ways than one), and Odette revealed as Kalliope mentioned.

Having read "Monsieur Proust" and begi..."

I enjoyed the Carter bio a great deal... I will probably read it again. This is like the chicken&egg thing...

And here is Robert de Montesquiou by Giovanni Boldini:





And a Countess, la Comtesse de Rasty, by the same painter:

Marcel proust wrote: My friend's father (Bloch senior) had found Mme Sazerat charming and was particularly gratified by that lady's anti-semitism which he regarded as a proof of the sincerity of her faith and the soundness of her Dreyfusard opinions, and which also enhanced the value of the call which she had authorized him to pay her. ML p. 392

Isn't the section on the grandmothers illness a masterpiece within a masterpiece? The section on the grandmother's illness is for me one of the most affecting of ISOLT. I lost my mother this year and thought I would be crying, but instead only kept thinking--how true! How true! Proust's unflinching eye with its rejection of sentimentality and the refusal to ascribe some larger meaning to her suffering amazes me as an artistic achievement and as a personal triumph knowing how affected he was by his mother's death. Like Alice B. Toklas I get that shiver of recognition that she felt on meeting geniuses, for her only Stein and Picasso, for me a few more experiences like this.

Norpois again: am I the only person here old enough to remember ex-pres. Nixon? Norpois reminds me so much of him...he can talk for pages about a hot topic like the Dreyfus case (to Bloch) and you (and also poor Bloch) can never figure out which side he's on!

Historygirl wrote: "Isn't the section on the grandmothers illness a masterpiece within a masterpiece? The section on the grandmother's illness is for me one of the most affecting of ISOLT. I lost my mother this year a..."

Historygirl, I was saddened to read that your mother is no longer next to you. When my mother left, I immediately reached for Proust. He was the only one who understood. Godspeed this first year...

Historygirl wrote: ...Proust's unflinching eye with its rejection of sentimentality...

Bergotte keeps coming up in the grandmother's illness scenes. The young Narrator in the Combray section likes Bergotte's style for how he doesn't adopt "sentimentality", for lack of his exact wording, and neither does the young Narrator, "I helped my grandmother into Professor E--'s lift..." nor the older Narrator, "We see ourselves dying..." become sentimental.

Here you would have to agree with Jean Milly in La phrase de Proust that Proust's style is Bergotte's.

As we are finding our way deeper into the novel, couplings begin to appear. I jotted down a few...but there are sure to be more.

Charlus and his aunt, Mme de Villeparisis, with Françoise and Aunt Leonie's arguments about trust and money.

Swann's reversals on giving Odette money to entertain the Verdurins at Beyeruth, with Saint-Loup's gift of the necklace to Rachel.

Charlus describing the son (Bloch-David) smiting the father (Goliath) or thrashing his mother, with Mlle Vinteuil's lover spitting on her father's photograph.

Professor E------ and the button hole for his decorations, with the Duc de Guermantes and the red shoes....both in the face death.

Françoise leaving the dying grandmother to follow her code of manners, with the electrician, with the Duchesse leaving Swann, after learning he was dying, to attend a dinner party.

Turn of the century medicine seems to be what we would call quackery, i.e. that practiced by Drs Cottard, du Boulbon. I suspect that the physicians of today, Big Pharma and the FDA will be so considered 100 years from now.

Proust, being of failing health, certainly had seen many doctors and can well speak from a patient's point of view.

For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years' time. So that to believe in medicine would be the height of folly, if not to believe in it were not a greater folly still, for from this mass of errors a few truths have in the long run emerged. ML p. 405

My Kindle edition says 10 other people highlighted this passage.

The great ones...the great ones. Tolstoy, in "The Death of Ivan Ilych" describes a man's death from liver cancer in the 1890s, when internal medicine was largely a closed door to physicians. And: in this week's section, Proust says: "To ease her pain my grandmother was given morphine. Unfortunately, if this relieved her in other ways, it increased the quantity of albumen. The blows which we aimed at the wicked ogre who had taken up his abode in my grandmother were always wide of the mark, and it was she, her poor interposed body that had to bear them." A perfect, chilling description of chemotherapy, over 25 years before it was discovered.

Proust, years before his death, would tell people that his end was near according to the Carter biography. Being a person of poor health he thought often and well about death.

We see ourselves dying, in these cases, not at the actual moment of death but months, sometimes years before, when death has hideously come to dwell in us. ML p. 430

And on being alone,

"Your grandmother is doomed," said the Professor ...I had shut the door behind me, and a footman was ushering us into the hall, when my grandmother and I heard a great shout of rage. The maid had forgotten to cut and hem the buttonhole for the decorations. This would take another ten minutes. The Professor continued to storm while I stood on the landing gazing at my grandmother who was doomed. Each of us is indeed alone. We set off homewards. ML p. 432

An exhibition of Fantin-Latour is mentioned, in relation to Mme de Villeparisis flowers.

These would be in Odette's taste, for they are Chrysanthemums.



And here some Pivoines:



Some roses with lilies:



And now peonies:



And these Nasturtiums I have as a bookmark from an exhibition on this artist at the Thyssen a couple of years ago.



Link to the Museum's site on the exhibit. There are two chapters/rooms on Flowers.

http://www.museothyssen.org/microsite...

On another note, I have found the whole section on the thermometer fascinating. The imagery used is so very Proust...

"la salamandre d'argent", "la sorcière", "la petite sybille", "la petite prophétesse", "verge étincelante", "une Parque vendue"....

It is also interesting how very critical Proust, through his Narrator, is of medical practices, given that his father and brother were both eminent Doctors.

The grand-mother is administered another "fébrifuge du même ordre que l'aspirine, non encore employée alors".

Although the components had been synthesized mid 19th century it was not until Bayer AG began to produce it in 1897 and which only two years later was already distributed globally.

And the scene with Charlus and the Narrator is so ominous... the deal he proposes to the young man, even if it is so clouded in mystery, just reminded me of Mephistopheles...

".. le premier sacrifice qu'il faut me faire -- j'en exigerai autant que je vous ferais de dons --"

and

".. je n'ai plus qu'une passion, chercher à racheter les fautes de ma vie en faisant profiter de ce que je sais une âme encore vierge et capable d'être enflammée par la vertu"

Kalliope wrote: And the scene with Charlus and the Narrator is so ominous... the deal he proposes to the young man, even if it is so clouded in mystery, just reminded me of Mephistopheles...

It's a come on, a continuation of him in the Narrator's bedroom in Balbec, an older man to a guileless boy.

Eugene wrote: "Kalliope wrote: And the scene with Charlus and the Narrator is so ominous... the deal he proposes to the young man, even if it is so clouded in mystery, just reminded me of Mephistopheles...

It's ..."

That I get, but Charlus has a very special way of offering and presenting it, and he has also something special in mind. And this is what interests me.

As Proust writes, between the salon and his arrival home, on the walk with Charlus, the Narrator is made to be so much younger and innocent.

My edition of Le Côté de Guermantes I is divided into two volumes and the editors make the break just after the grandmother's attaque in the public toilets of the Champs Elysées which is a little disorientating. I can't imagine why they didn't cut after Charlus goes off in the fiacre and before her illness is focused on.

You have all made wonderful comments this week, some of which I've meant to make myself.
I'm particularly impressed with the way Proust writes about death, the way he personifies it, and illness, and even makes a case for our bodies being separate from ourselves, that we are in a perpetual struggle with our own bodies.
He is really so brave about death. The phrase Each of us is indeed alone sums it up the reality of facing death very well. No matter how close the family were to the grandmother, she alone is dying and must do so alone.
Like Kalliope, I'm curious about Charlus' plans for the Narrator. The language he uses is almost farcical which makes the plans themselves sound ridiculous but this being Proust we know that whatever ensues, it will be interesting.
Françoise's reaction to the grandmother's deteriorated state was also interesting, or rather the Narrator's comments on her reaction, on her keen interest in the drama of it all. We all must know people who react like that when things take a turn for the worse.

Fionnuala wrote: "My edition of Le Côté de Guermantes II is divided into two volumes and the editors make the break just after the grandmother's attaque in the public toilets of the Champs Elysées which is a little ..."

Yes, mine is also divided into two.. And the second part has the subtitles which tell you what will happen. I agree it is a strange break and just after Charlus would have been less disconcerting.

I also underlined the sentence "chaque personne est bien seule"...

In this week's section it also struck me how the Dreyfus affair is breaking up society that the Narrator sees so divided horizontally with the Haut Monde that so fascinates him, all the way down to the maîtres d'hôtel of the Guermantes and the Narrator's family.

The Dreyfus bands are becoming the more modern and ideological "Ligue de la Patrie Française" and the "Ligue des Droits de l'homme", which will be dividing French society no longer in a horizontal but in a vertical manner.

I found interesting that it was the Guermantes's maître who was Dreyfusard while that of the family was anti-Dreyfusard. Almost the opposite to their employers.

Kalliope wrote: "...how the Dreyfus affair is breaking up society that the Narrator sees so divided horizontally with the Haut Monde that so fascinates him, all the way down to the maîtres d'hôtel of the Guermantes and the Narrator's family. The Dreyfus bands are becoming the more modern and ideological "Ligue de la Patrie Française" and the "Ligue des Droits de l'homme", which will be.dividing French society no longer in a horizontal but in a vertical manner..."

That is such a good way of describing the changes which were taking place in French society, Kalliope and it is fascinating that Proust manages to capture exactly how the Dreyfuss affair underpinned those changes.

@Kaliope

As Proust states the Guermantes butler was anti-Dreyfusard & the family butler was Dreyfusard but they were arguing the opposite positions to win the dispute based on their suppositions of the outcome of a possible retrial.

I'm in the city; I'm on a Gr mobile app: can't copy, can't edit...& it's hot already. Going later to the Whitney to see Edward Hopper drawings who oddly reminds me of Proust

I feel so inadequate this week as all I can say is me too, yes, I do so agree. You're all fantastic.
I'm still here, and keeping up with you. I'm v. preoccupied with re-reading The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public and Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain for my next Dickens class right now. And that's a class that I'm teaching. (Cue maniacal laughter)

Proust is again playing with chronology. It is mentioned that aspirin was not in usage yet, which it was by the turn of the century, and then there is the inclusion of Clemenceau as Minister (not yet Prime Minister I think) which together with the Japo-Russian war puts us a few years later, around 1905-6.

This extract is very Proustian:

".. c'est ainsi que les égoïstes ont toujours le dernier mot; ayant posé d'abord que leur résolution est inébranlable, plus le sentiment auquel on fait appel en eux pour qu'ils trouvent condamnables, non pas eux qui y résistent, mais ceux qui les mettent dans la nécessite d'y résister, de sorte que leur propre dureté peut aller jusqu'à la plus extrême cruauté sans que cela fasse à leurs yeux qu'aggraver d'autant la culpabilité de l'être assez indélicat pour souffrir, pour avoir raison, et leur causer ainsi lâchement la douleur d'agir contre leur propre pitié."

·Karen· wrote: "I feel so inadequate this week as all I can say is me too, yes, I do so agree. You're all fantastic.
I'm still here, and keeping up with you. I'm v. preoccupied with re-reading The English Common ..."

Karen, you should conduct a Dickens group...!!

No, Kal I think I've OD'd on the man. Enough. Enough.

·Karen· wrote: "No, Kal I think I've OD'd on the man. Enough. Enough."

I was dreading this response....!!!

Kalliope wrote: "·Karen· wrote: "No, Kal I think I've OD'd on the man. Enough. Enough."

I was dreading this response....!!!"

I think we an safely say that we will never OD on Proust? D'accord?

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "·Karen· wrote: "No, Kal I think I've OD'd on the man. Enough. Enough."

I was dreading this response....!!!"

I think we an safely say that we will never OD on Proust? D'accord?"

Absolutely...like particular drugs-or hot peppers-we crave continual and increasingly potent ingestions.
And...where some raise their dopamine levels with Yoga Nidra meditation, we use Proust.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11...

Kalliope wrote: "On another note, I have found the whole section on the thermometer fascinating. The imagery used is so very Proust...

"la salamandre d'argent", "la sorcière", "la petite sybille", "la petite prop..."

Oh, so did I. Remembering a previous discussion on anthropomorphism, I found this passage particularly unsettling. "...her final word, a warning and a threat."

Fionnuala wrote:

I think we an safely say that we will never OD on Proust? D'accord?"

After this first read I have several secondary reading books waiting. And I know I will want to read this a second time...

Marcelita wrote: "And...where some raise their dopamine levels with Yoga Nidra meditation, we use Proust.

..."

Yes, reading Proust requires a particular state of mind, but it also induces one very special. You are very right in this Marcelita...!!!

Kalliope wrote: "... and then there is the inclusion of Clemenceau as Minister...."

On Clemenceau, apart from his important and intermittent role in French politics, he was a journalist for a while. He was the owner and editor of L'Aurora, which was the periodical that published Zola's "J'accuse".

I just looked at the relevant part of Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time and was reminded of the new writer who has come to replace Bergotte in the narrator's enthusiasm: my notes suggest that it may be Giraudoux who is referred to.

It's so similar to my own experience of reading Proust:

Only I felt that it was not the sentence that was badly constructed but I myself that lacked the strength and agility necessary to reach the end. I would start afresh, fighting tooth and nail to reach the point from which I could see the new relationships between things. And each time, after I had got about half-way through the sentence, I would fall back again, as later on, in the Army, in my attempts at the horizontal bar.

Sunday morning gymnastics - a little gentle stretching and warm-up jog with Manon Lescaut and then on to the horizontal bars of Proust.

·Karen· wrote: "I just looked at the relevant part of Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time and was reminded of the new writer who has come to replace Bergotte in the narrator's enthusi..."

Karen, thank you for sharing the comment on Giraudoux. My edition has no footnotes.

Historygirl, I absolutely agree that the grandmother's demise scenes reach masterpiece within masterspiece status - it is I think the creation of art from suffering, so beautifully realised, I was again agog!

The details of the OCD suffering medics just add to the art - one checks into a sanitorium for his summer hols (if I read it right) another doesn't want the narrator to touch the/his lift buttons.

Kalliope: re ODing on Proust, and Fionnualla's "d'accord." I say: "Swee Dack!" (Quebecois for "Je suis d'accord."
Also: loved your flower photos; I just planted nasturtiums in my stone vases on the front steps. And I used to live in a little house in Bellingham, Wa., that had a peony bush beside the front step. Every spring the peony shoots would uncurl out of the soil so fast, that each one wore a little cap of dirt.

I went to the Whitney yesterday in New York and saw Edward Hopper (1883-1968) drawings but I was surprised to find his Nighthawks (1942), a most iconic painting--even known to people who know little of art. I surreptitiously took a very Hopperish photo of it with my iPhone and posted it on my eclectic sheep blog which I guess should be now called an eclectic Proust blog.

http://www.catskill-merino.com/

Hopper portrays people alone, even when they are with others, and I suppose that's why he reminds me of Proust. The Narrator looks at his "doomed" grandmother on the landing while they both hear the Professor rage about his buttonhole behind a closed door.

There were charcoal sketches of people rendered differently from how they appear in the finished color painting of Nighthawks. And some were closer in their renderings to their final appearance. I prefer drawing to painting for the latitude it gives my imagination. I liken drawing to prose in that it gives the suggestion rather than the exact delineation of color, of form or of events even, etc. When Proust writes "yellow" that color is specific to him and it is specific to me and to Kalliope, to Fionnuala but for each of us it is a different color based upon our past experiences of yellow or our imaginations.

Writing in prose is the giving of suggestion; it is to stimulate the imagination; Proust in his prose makes images for the reader to grasp and each will grasp them differently because Each of us is indeed alone.

Eugene wrote: "I went to the Whitney yesterday in New York and saw Edward Hopper (1883-1968) drawings but I was surprised to find his Nighthawks (1942), a most iconic painting--even known to people who know littl..."

"Proust writes "yellow" that color is specific to him..."

In one of my Proust reading groups, a member mentioned the use of "yellow." The idea being that "yellow" or "gold" reminded Proust of the slanted light coming through the windows in Vermeer's paintings.

Yes...a very "Hopperish" image on your eclectic blog, which is the antithesis of the adorable 'painted' lambs in your "High Grass" entry.

Eugene wrote: ". I prefer drawing to painting for the latitude it gives my imagination. I liken drawing to prose in that it gives the suggestion rather than the exact delineation of color, of form or of events even, etc. ."

Eclectic sheep are a wonderful paradox, Eugene!

I also prefer drawing to painting and I like your parallel between drawing and prose. But sometimes a writer manages to infuse his prose with colour: when Proust evokes the Guermantes name, I now see colour first and then afterwards the people concerned. That is a special talent.

Elizabeth wrote: "Kalliope: re ODing on Proust, and Fionnualla's "d'accord." I say: "Swee Dack!" (Quebecois for "Je suis d'accord."
Also: loved your flower photos; I just planted nasturtiums in my stone vases ..."

Elizabethe, you are lucky to have Fantin-Latour on your front steps...!!

Historygirl wrote: "Isn't the section on the grandmothers illness a masterpiece within a masterpiece? The section on the grandmother's illness is for me one of the most affecting of ISOLT. I lost my mother this year a..."

I'm sorry to hear about your loss but was pleased that you were able to find some comfort reading Proust. ((Hugs))

I loved the section about the neurotics.

"Everything we think of as great has come from the neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and great works of art. The world will never realise how much it owes to them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on us. We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in insomnia, tears, spasmodic laughter, urticaria, asthma, epilepsy, a terror of death which is worse than any of these....." (MKE 414)

So true!

Also loved "the mania for testing their weight!" lol