The Year of Reading Proust discussion

This thread is for the discussion that will take place through Sunday, 13 Oct. of The Captive, finish.

I think this week we shall have another wonderful read.

Already at the beginning a complex section on the Narrator, on the divergence between his words and his feelings, as well as his role as Narrator and what he can offer us, his readers, on the above split.

Mes paroles ne réflétaient donc nullement mes sentiments. Si le lecteur n'en a que l'impression assez faible, c'est qu'étant narrateur je lui expose mes sentiments en même temps que lui répète mes paroles. Mais si je lui cachais les premiers et s'il connaissait seulement les secondes, mes actes, si peu en rapport avec elles, lui donneraient si souvent l'impression d'étranges revirements qu'il me croirait à peu près fou. Procédé qui ne serait pas du reste beaucoup plus faux que celui que j'ai adopté car les images qui me faisaient agir, si opposées à celles qui se peignaient dans mes paroles, étaient à ce moment-là fort obscures, je ne connaissais qu'imparfaitement la nature suivant laquelle j'agissais:... pp. 455-456.

Interesting that again he uses visual language for the phenomena that activate both his acts (images) and his words (peindre).

And the above passage leads us onto another more philosophical and which will leave a notion up in the air unexplained. I think this is the second time he drops the idea that he the Narrator (and Creator) has not had complete access to the truth.

...aujourd'hui j'en connais clairement la vérité subjective. Quant à la vérité objective, c'est-à-dire si les intuitions de cette nature saisissaient plus exactement que mon raisonnement les intentions véritables d'Albertine, si j'ai eu raison de me fier à cette nature ou si au contraire elle n'a pas altéré les intentions d'Alberine au lieu de les démêler, c'est ce qu'il m'est difficile de dire.

LOL.. and now the Narrator himself admits he is one of two. Both Albertine and himself are the Prisoners or captives... And Bruegel's painting is conjured up again...



Quand j'étais rentré, ç'avait été avec le sentiment d'être un prisonnier, nullement de retrouver une prisonnière. p. 456.

The Bruegel works very well once again, Kalliope.
While Proust's words sometimes paint perfect images, images can sometimes capture his words perfectly.

On page 464, he says:
Et en amour il est plus facile de renoncer à un sentiment que de perdre un habitude
and we almost believe him.

Si je cessais de souffrir par Mlle Vinteuil quand je souffrais par Léa, les deux bourreaux de ma journée, c'est soit par l'infirmité de mon esprit à se représenter à la fois trop de scènes, soit par l'interférence de mes émotions nerveuses dont m'a jalousie n'était que l'echo. p 465 GF

If I'm distracted by the Narrator's jealousy of Mlle Vinteuil while he is actually being jealous of Léa, it is either because my intellect is worn out trying to imagine the twists and turns of his emotions or because my nerves are playing up on me.

Fionnuala wrote: "Si je cessais de souffrir par Mlle Vinteuil quand je souffrais par Léa, les deux bourreaux de ma journée, c'est soit par l'infirmité de mon esprit à se représenter à la fois trop de scènes, soit pa..."

You are becoming the third captive... We will have to rescue you...!!!

Yes, Proust has become my habitude, and a lot harder to shake of than any lover!

Fionnuala wrote: "Yes, Proust has become my habitude, and a lot harder to shake of than any lover!"

We shall call Mme Verdurin pour vous brouiller.

I would love to meet Mme Verdurin, Kall.


Just found this, page 469:
"Elle s'était endormie aussitôt couchée; ses draps roulés comme un suaire autour de son corps avaient pris, avec leurs beaux plis, une rigidité de pierre...."
His images are often church related - this reminds me of a statue in a cathedral. The passage continues later:
"Ainsi je restais, dans la pelisse que je n'avais pas encore retirée de chez les Verdurins, devant ce corps tordu, cette figure allégorique de quoi? De ma mort? De mon œuvre?"
My notes say the last word in that sentence was thought by some to be 'amour' and by others to be 'oeuvre'. If it is indeed 'oeuvre', I begin to see more clearly what Eugene was saying in last week's section about Albertine being less a real person and more the representation of the Narrator's writer's block. That he would have to become free of his obsession for her in order to be able to write.

Fionnuala wrote: "Albertine being less a real person and more the representation of the Narrator's writer's block. That he would have to become free of his obsession for her in order to be able to write.

..."

What is also disconcerting about Albertine, is that she belongs to the second cycle of creation. She was not in the "first" Recherche.

Kalliope wrote: "What is also disconcerting about Albertine, is that she belongs to the second cycle of creation. She was not in the "first" Recherche."

And that adds to the argument of her being less a character and more a symbol.

Fionnuala wrote: "

And that adds to the argument of her being ..."

Yes, for me the whole Albertine and jealousy episode is like a descent to Hell from which he has to emerge.

From Word Of The Day:

The prototypical picaro normally finds himself in a cruelly unyielding world where he must simultaneously serve the needs of several masters. So numerous are these competing demands that, in order to survive, he invariably becomes a master of deception, simulation and multiple disguise.
-- William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1848

There is a mention of Françoise going through the Narrator's papers on page 476, in particular an account he wrote about Swann's obsession with Odette, (so the Narrator has already been writing at this point, we think with surprise), and in my edition there is a note explaining that this is a startling insertion of Proust's own writing into the Narrator's narrative.
I know we discussed this at length in the first volume. Was or wasn't the Narrator the author of the Amour de Swann chapter since he was scarcely born when those events happened, and I thought we had concluded that he was the author, having had Swann's story recounted to him at some later time by Swann himself, or Charlus, and perhaps with some details provided by his parents who knew Swann at that time and also from conversations overheard from beneath his room in Combray when he was 'couché de bonne heure'. So I don't see this present mention of an account of Swann's obsession with Odette among the Narrator's papers as all that startling, apart from the fact that it implies that he has already been writing a considerable amount and how that relates to the notion of Albertine keeping him from his creative life.
If I'm going on about this at length it is because of a really 'startling' experience I had further down the same page: the Narrator is still talking about Françoise and in the same breath, he mentions Mme Verdurin.
What struck me was that somehow, I've kept two narratives going in my head since the beginning, the domestic one with his parents and Françoise, which the Guermantes who lived down the road in Combray or across the courtyard in Paris and all of their entourage, including Charlus, Morel etc., float in and out off, and the other narrative, the Swann and Odette one (even though Swann also lived down the road in Combray), to which somehow I've always allocated the Verdurins even though they had become separated from the Swann and Odette narrative long before. Seeing the name Verdurin in the same sentence as the name Françoise underlined for me that somehow Françoise is less a fiction for me than they are. So in a sense, there are two Narrators for me, the one in the family circle and the one who is an almost silent observer in the Verdurin salon. And Albertine, where is she in all this? Little more than a ghost because the family circle never meet her, except for Françoise, and in the Verdurin world, she's simply a fiction, the Narrator's so-called 'cousin'.

Fionnuala wrote: " So in a sense, there are two Narrators for me, the one in the family circle and the one who is an almost silent observer in the Verdurin salon...."

Very interesting last paragraph. I will have to think about it..

In addition, I am beginning to think also of the hypothetical Narrator, the one who keeps thinking of going, but never does, to Venice.. And in this week there is a sentence on the person who prepares the luggage for a trip but never leaves... In previous posts I had mentioned the figure of the "voyageur" with which he seemed fascinated.


But going back to your observation, Fio, yes, it seems the real Narrator is the boy of the family and the rest is a Proustarama...

Kalliope wrote: "..In addition, I am beginning to think also of the hypothetical Narrator, the one who keeps thinking, but never goes, to Venice.. And in this week there is a sentence on the person who prepares the luggage for a trip but never leaves... In previous posts I had mentioned the figure of the "voyageur" with which he seemed fascinated. ."

So our Narrator, like Thackeray's picaro mentioned above, is also drawn towards multiple disguise.

And Proustarama is as good a name as any for these overlapping narratives.

Hope you at least really get to Venice! Are the bags packed yet?

Albertine at the pianola seems to the Narrator:

.. devenue d'une élégance qui me la faisait sentir plus à moi, parce qeu c'était de moi qu'elle lui venait, posait ses souliers en toile d'or. Ses doigts jadis familiers du guidon se posaient maintenant sur les touches comme ceux d'une sainte Cécile..

On the dream that a trip to Venice, and the Fortuny designs, mean..., and Tiepolo's pink...

Et les manches étaient doublées d'un rose cerise qui est si particulièrement vénitien qu'on l'appelle rose Tiepolo.

And there is this book by Roberto Calasso, who I think will be participating in a literary conference soon...Tiepolo Pink...

And the arabic manuscripts with birds...

Fionnuala wrote: "Yes, Proust has become my habitude, and a lot harder to shake of than any lover!"

These are such great illustrations!

Very funny, Fio. I think we are all a little captive!

Kalliope wrote: "And there is this book by Roberto Calasso, who I think will be participating in a literary conference soon...Tiepolo Pink.."

Yes, I'm just hoping there will be translation...

@Jocelyne, what will we do when it's over, that's what's bothering me now?
Start again like Marcelita?
Alain de Botton was right, Proust CAN change your life.
But we discovered that through out own experience, we didn't need some third party to explain it to us as he tries to do in his book, 'How Proust can change your life', which could be subtitled 'It's easy: just read him'.
I was in a book shop the other day and looked through the new Dictionnaire Amoureux de Proust by the Enthoven father and son team. There was a chapter entitled something like, and I'm paraphrasing very loosely, The ten ways in which Swann and the Narraator resemble each other. I groaned when I saw that and put the book back on the shelf immediately.
When we have made our way through the entire seven volumes, I don't think we will need any such secondary texts to clarify things for us; I think we have done that work in our own reading and by batting ideas around here in the discussion pages.

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "And there is this book by Roberto Calasso, who I think will be participating in a literary conference soon...Tiepolo Pink.."

Yes, I'm just hoping there will be translation...

@Jo..."


Fio, you are completely right. I think that at least a few of the secondary books I have hoarded will become boring reads after we have finished with la recherche. But there are some other primary texts that I am looking forward to.

Ah the music that we hear in the different voices that sing this tale. Here the Narrator--his reflective self comments on his younger active self--explains the duplicity required by being in love.

If the reader has no more than a faint impression of these, that is because, as narrator, I expose my feelings to him at the same time as I repeat my words. But if I concealed the former and he were acquainted only with the latter, my actions, so little in keeping with them, would so often give him the impression of strange reversals that he would think me more or less mad. ML p. 467

On p. 461 we have 1st person direct conversation with Albertine that becomes a more mature reflection (a different voice) about his younger feelings of love and his feigned actions or his 1st person words that we read until we come to p. 471 where again direct 1st person conversation ensues between Albertine and his younger self. We have a change of key.

The varied stories are simple: the Narrator/Albertine, Charlus/Morel, Swann/Odette; the complexity, for which Proust is heralded no matter the type of narration, is in the drawing of characters, for example:

Besides, for a long time past, my constant anxieties, my fear of telling Albertine that I loved her, all this corresponded to another hypothesis which explained far more things and had also this to be said for it, that if one adopted the first hypothesis the second became more probable, for by allowing myself to give way to effusions of tenderness for Albertine, I obtained from her nothing but irritation (to which moreover she assigned a different cause). ML p. 466

And the complexity, how the character is drawn, is syntactical within the sentence and between them, to the paragraph, to the passage and to the volume even. Wagner is mentioned more in these pages than any other composer and there is a reason for that, not for his leitmotifs and not for any specific musical greatness for which he is celebrated, but for his decision to call, and perform four of his works in sequence, The Ring. That is what I read when I read ISOLT--The Ring--and I not only hear the music of the words but I also hear the music between them, between the passages, between the words and actions of the characters who continue and I hear their voices sing even when they're silent. Proust calls his beginning Overture, we wait for his Götterdämmerung.

The scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic Ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung. More on Der Ring des Nibelungen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring...

I have loved the description of both the Fortuny blue dress and its evocations of Venice..

I had mentioned earlier that the prologue in my edidtion discusses the importance of Fortuny in the structure of the book and sees it as a "clef de voûte".. My sense is that it will be in the next volume where we see this idea further extended.

I think I shall be reading part of that volume in Venice itself, of all places...!!

But the description and the importance given, emphasized further the second time it is mentioned, of the couple of birds from Arabic (Muslim?) art, signifying Death and Resurrection, in relation to the Fortuny costume,has made me think again of the Gothic cathedrals.

These were structured after The Book, with the Christian tale of the Death and Resurrection represented in the tympanum and lintel of the portals, and then along the capitals and friezes along the nave.. all the way to the altar and chapels in the ambulatory.

Apart from Ruskin, Proust traveled with Émile Mâle's The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century under his arm. This book expounds the Gothic cathedral following a thematic arrangement.

I have been trying to look for the birds imagery in Muslim art but have found nothing (apart from the samples of images posted above). Of course, there is the Phoenix. Myth of Greek and Aegyptian origin absorbed also by Christian iconography, but Proust is writing about a couple of birds, so it is not the Phoenix he is writing about.

Kalliope wrote: "I have loved the description of both the Fortuny blue dress and its evocations of Venice..

I think I shall be reading part of that volume in Venice itself, of all places...!!"

Loved this post...on Arabic/Muslim art, Mâle and the return to Gothic, the Greek myth, but the best part was imagining, as I read about the birds, not Proust's two birds, but the ones surrounding you in Venice!


1895-1910
Photograph of photo from unidentified source.
Detroit Publishing Co
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D...

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "And there is this book by Roberto Calasso, who I think will be participating in a literary conference soon...Tiepolo Pink.."

Yes, I'm just hoping there will be translation...

@Jo..."

I agree with you, Fionnuala. I have not looked at the Dictionnaire amoureux but I also feel that a lot of these analytical texts take away the beauty of the subjective reading experience. It is a bit like being taken to the kitchen of a restaurant before being served a delicious, esthetically appealing meal, or taken backstage to see the artists removing their makeup and costumes after a magical performance.

Kalliope wrote: "I have loved the description of both the Fortuny blue dress and its evocations of Venice..

I had mentioned earlier that the prologue in my edidtion discusses the importance of Fortuny in the stru..."

What perfect timing for your trip to Venice, Kalliope!

"But old French silver--having been melted down twice, at the time of the Treaty of Utrecht...and again in 1789--is now extremely rare." MP p 496

"I knew that Albertine had read the description of the marvels that Roettiers had made for Mme du Barry." MP p 496

Old French Silver by Roettiers

Dish with cover and liner by Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers; 1775–76
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/...
Note the listing of hallmarks


"Modern" Silver by Odiot

French Silver Tray engraved, "Odiot, Orfèvre du Roi, à Paris.'"

"According to the engraved dedications on the back, the tray was firstly a wedding present by the community of Biebrich to Princess Therese of Nassau for her wedding to Duke Peter of Oldenburg on April, 23rd 1837."

Detail of the center crest

http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/hi...

Collecting your own? French Silver hallmarks
http://www.silvercollection.it/french...

As a quote, the Narrator saying to Françoise, "...I shall ring for you presently." ranks with "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."as Rhett Butler says to Scarlet O'Hara in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind.

What a relief!

Ostensibly, this is the younger Narrator discoursing on art to Albertine at the pianola talking of Vinteuil, Vermeer, Dostoyevsky and others. As improbable as it may seem, the Narrator is speaking Proust's thoughts (Proust doesn't condescend and write in character here) but this is in keeping with the work as Proust has intentionally left us a ponderable novel.

Among the many lovely and enriching thoughts that Proust leaves us in this passage on art and creation is this one--to say it commonly--artists are 'one trick ponies' with many variations of that trick. "...as, in Vermeer, there's the creation of a certain soul, of a certain color of fabrics and places, so in Dostoyevsky..."

And we wonder, how much is he reflecting about the trials and rewards of jealousy in ISOLT--Proust is an artist too--did he see himself an equal to Vermeer, Dostoyevsky? Who really cares?

You told me you had seen some of Vermeer's pictures:
you must have realized that they're fragments of an identical world,
that it's always, however great the genius with which they
have been recreated, the same table, the same carpet, the
same woman, the same novel and unique beauty, an
enigma at that period in which nothing resembles or explains it,
if one doesn't try to relate it all through subject matter but to isolate the distinctive impression produced by the color. Well, this novel beauty remains identical in Dostoyevsky's works.

...

Besides, if I've said to you that from one novel
to another it's the same scene, it's in the compass of a
single novel that the same scenes, the same characters
reappear if the novel is at all long. ML p. 508-509

So, I found the birds.... In the introduction Jean Milly mentions a letter that Proust sent to Maria de Madrazo. She was Reynaldo Hahn's sister, and related to Fortuny through her marriage. Fortuny's second surname (in Spain we have two surnames because women do not take on the husband's name when they marry, and the children carry both names) is Madrazo.

Proust wrote in his letter to Maria:

si jamais Fortuny dans ses robes de chambre a pris pour motifs de ces oiseaux accouplés, buvant par exemple dans un vase, qui sont si fréquents à Sant-Marc, dans les chapiteaux byzantins .

I have studied those birds... and he was thinking of Byzantine and not Arabic (muslim) as he wrote in the novel. That is why it was difficult to find something more fitting amongst the muslim illumination. When I read the word Byzantine something lit in my visual memory, because as I say I had seen those drinking birds before.



And I think we now know where the emphasis on the blue of the dress comes from...

And now I understand why he was giving the symbolic meaning of Death and Resurrection to those "arabic" birds, a Christian symbol that I associated with the iconographic program of Medieval cathedrals.

There are other very beautiful images, but I think he had the ones above in mind... And some of you will recognize them because they are often in books and Proust had not travelled to Istanbul.


From Lebanon, so these below are Muslim.

The introduction also mentions another letter addressed directly to Maria de Madrazo, letter which was accompanied by a book with reproductions by Carpaccio. He requests from her if she can ask Fortuny (to whom Proust refers as his "leitmotiv") some details about which figures from Carpaccio's paintings has he used for the inspiration of the dresses.

de quels Carpaccio... et dans ces Carpaccio de quelle robe exactement et dans quelle mesure.

and he required also..

la description la plus plate de son manteau, comme ce serait dans un catalogue disant étoffe, couleurs, dessin...

Marcelita wrote: ""

"I knew that Albertine had read the description of..."

These are lovely illustrations, Marcelita, and not easy to find.

Kalliope wrote: "So, I found the birds.... In the introduction Jean Milly mentions a letter that Proust sent to Maria de Madrazo. She was Reynaldo Hahn's sister, and related to Fortuny through her marriage. Fort..."

This is impressive, Kalliope, not only for the images themselves but for the search you've made to find them, online, in books and in your own memory.
We are all benefitting from your knowledge.

Eugene wrote: "Among the many lovely and enriching thoughts that Proust leaves us in this passage on art and creation is this one--to say it commonly--artists are 'one trick ponies' with many variations of that trick. "...as, in Vermeer, there's the creation of a certain soul, of a certain color of fabrics and places, so in Dostoyevsky...""

This is something I've thought about in relation to certain writers I admire, that they were always writing the same story but continually polishing and honing it down until the final work looked hardly like the first at all. The sculptor, Brancusi did that too, working around a very few themes but polishing and polishing until he reached the sparest representation of the original idea.
Perhaps Proust tried to do the opposite, and without any honing down, of course, but rather choosing to write about all of his themes within one work, building on them little by little until he had piled on every possible shade of meaning he could find in them, until they became more Gaudi than Brancusi.

A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. -R.K. Narayan, writer (1906-2001)

R. K. Narayan gives a reason for, among other things, suicide, God, social media and love.

Does not the Narrator captivate Albertine and himself to share their "profound unmitigated loneliness" as love?

Kalliope wrote: "So, I found the birds...."

So grateful for your tenacity in discovering the difference between the Byzantine birds and the Arabic (Muslim) birds. Each mosaic is so colorful and intricate.

Kalliope, you deserve The Coix de Combray for being no less a searcher for the truth...the original inspiration...than Proust himself!

Kalliope wrote: "So, I found the birds.... In the introduction Jean Milly mentions a letter that Proust sent to Maria de Madrazo. She was Reynaldo Hahn's sister, and related to Fortuny through her marriage.."

Until the Fortuny exhibit earlier this year, I was ignorant of the influence of Fortuny's family on his art. Thank you for mentioning the letter.

Here is the "family tree" that greeted the visitors to the exhibit. Look for "Maria Hahn."

A favorite blog post, from that incredibly beautiful, and instructive, exhibition.
http://quintessenceblog.com/fortuny-y...

Marcelita wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "So, I found the birds...."

So grateful for your tenacity in discovering the difference between the Byzantine birds and the Arabic (Muslim) birds. Each mosaic is so colorful and in..."


Haha.. thank you Marcelita... most honoured..

Marcelita wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "So, I found the birds.... In the introduction Jean Milly mentions a letter that Proust sent to Maria de Madrazo. She was Reynaldo Hahn's sister, and related to Fortuny through he..."

Thank you for the link on the Fortuny. I am very tempted to get one of his books.

Yes, Maria Hahn would keep her name when marrying.. Alternatively she could have called herself Maria de Fortuny. The preposition "de" would mean it is the name of her husband but it would not be her legal name, which would remain as Hahn.

Phillida wrote: "Isn't it interesting that I can scan the comments and almost always tell, without seeing the name, who posted each one? Such individual voices."

Very perceptive of on your part, Phillida, but beware, now some of the mischievious ones among us may try to alter their voice to trip you up!

@Kalliope, I wholeheartedly join Fionnuala and Marcelita in their praise. Your tenacity and drive are laudable, truly. Great birds, too.

Jocelyne wrote: "
Very perceptive of on your part, ..."

Thank you Jocelyne, Marcelita and Fionnuala.. I have to say I was very excited this morning while I drunk my coffee and read the Introduction.

More comments on his own laziness and procrastination are coming up. Something which he seems to have dragged all his life and which is beginning to bother him seriously.

..était que ce défaut de volonté que ma grand-mère et ma mère avaient redouté pour moi, à Combray, et devant lequel l'une et l'autre, tant un malade a d'énergie pour imposer sa faiblesse, avaient successivement capitulé, ce défaut de volonté avait été en s'aggravant d'une façon de plus en plus rapide. p. 452.

Another pastel by De La Tour, different from the one Karpeles has included in his book...



Son nez, sa bouche, ses yeux formaient une harmonie parfaite, isolée du reste, elle avait l'air d'un pastel et de ne pas plus avoir entendu ce qu'on venait de dire que si on l'avait dit devant un portrait de La Tour.p. 457.

Here is the page. I am sure Marcelita will like to look at the rest...

http://bjws.blogspot.com.es/2012/12/s...

Another reference to his writing..

The Narrator begins to get lost with Albertine's lies.. he begins to lose hold of reality... When she mentions the trip she did with Léa when that same morning she had said that she did not know Léa..

It feels to him as if his novel, or idea of a novel, just crumbles down like a house of cards..

Je regardais une flambée brûler d'un seul coup un roman que j'avais mis des millions de minutes à écrire.... p. 458.

References to war, to the new kind of war, begin to creep in...

.. tout dépend de cette bataille. Mais ces batailles ressemblent moins à celles d'autrefois, qui duraient quelques heures, qu'à une bataille contemporaine qui n'est finie ni le lendemain, ni le surlendemain, ni la semaine suivante. On donne toutes ses forces parce qu'on croit toujours que ce sont les dernières dont on aura besoin. Et plus d'une année se passe sans amener la "décision".p. 461.

@Eugene
I believe what you're stating is indeed one of the major bases of Proust's theory of art - it's as though relationships between characters stays the same across cultures and media throughout the ages; that the representation of the relationship between brothers or father and son in Dostoievsky are as unchanging as the human relationships depicted in Vermeer between servant and master or husband and wife. This is why such works retain meaning for us today.

Great art depicts the essential unchanging truth of such relationships. What differs between artists is individual style and the material world of the artist's depiction. Proust discusses in great depth the individuality of different artist's style, in music, literature and art and I feel it is an element of which he is very conscious in his own work.

The material world around one changes continuously, and from an historic perspective as well as over the course of our on lives, serving as a measure of time passing. This sense of measuring time is always present in Proust, through his exploration of memory, history and art.

My interpretation of this concept is that though personal character "types" and human relationships remain constants across time and cultures, it is solely the material world about us, including our own aging bodies, that changes.