The Year of Reading Proust discussion

This thread is for the discussion that will take place through Sunday, 15 Dec. of Time Regained, to page 354 (to the paragraph beginning: “And now I have begun to understand...”)

Proust and the Narrator are unequivocally equal here in what is said: they are identical; what the Narrator finds, Proust had found already and he talks of making art in the voice of the Narrator.

...impressions...the task was to interpret the given sensations as signs of so many laws and ideas, by trying to think—that is to say, to draw forth from the shadow—what I had merely felt, by trying to convert it into its spiritual equivalent. And this method, which seemed to me the sole method, what was it but the creation of a work of art? ML p. 273

Impressions, you see that word over and over here... In this ~20 page passage, you could easily think, as Proust the creator does, as a critic and interchange art with value and see it as Proust does as applying it to social personalities, vulgarity, being well or ill bred, etc. and even to, in today's world, political correctness or the 'right' way to use social media and many, as Proust says, "inferior" ideas that are accepted as 'truth' both today and yesteryear.

As we encounter George Sand's François Le Champi again in this volume, we see yet another element from the Combray days, which at the time could have seemed incidental, taking on now a new significant.

I started therefore reading this tale yesterday. I downloaded an edition with a "note liminaire" by Proust.

The edition also has an "avant-propos" and a "prologue" by Sand. I wonder whether Proust read those.

I shall come back to this. I have read about a third of the tale and hope fo finish it by the end of the week.

From Sand's Avant-Propos:

.. quelques jours avant la causerie dont cette préface est le résumé, je passais par le chemin aux Napes. Le mot nape, qui dans le langage figuré du pays désigne la belle plante appelée nénuphar, nymphéa, décrit fort bien ces larges feuilles qui s'étendent sur l'eau comme des nappes sur une table..


The waterlilies and "le chemin"... impossible not to think of the path to the Guermantes...

There is so much in these early pages of this week's reading, they are the most intense yet, I think.
Proust traces with ever more careful and precise thought how the Narrator arrives at his momentous decision, not only to write, but how to write what he has discovered he needs to write: that interior book, the hieroglyphs of which he has to first interpret in order to turn them into writing. So he has to first read and translate himself, which he has been doing in stages, before writing himself horizontally onto the page...

Fionnuala wrote: "
Proust traces with ever more careful and precise thought how the Narrator arrives at his momen..."

I loved the way the section begins, with the "trompe l'oeil" image...

I'm trailing by 20 pages but wanted to post this here:

How can allegory be understood as a literary device of regaining the past?

Allegory as imaginary past: transcendence and acting subject in Proust's Recherche

The article postulates allegory as a vehicle for « transcendental subjectivity » in Proust’s Recherche. Similar to Baudelaire’s genre spirituel this figure indicates an aesthetic threshold from which the lower outside sphere is transformed into a transcendental inner reality, an imaginary pattern of the individual past. The focus of the present study is to define the nature of this threshold contextualizing it within philosophical conceptions of the subject.

http://trans.revues.org/285

By dipping a piece of cake in tea and tasting it, the individual undergoes a vision of inner gardens and alleys which grow out of the cup of tea like japanese paperflowers. In this setting, exteriority has lost its privileged position and only releases the impulse for the imaginative creation of a completely internal world which is that of the own past transfigured, unfolded in a curious ontological material. The exterior object operates as a generative symbol of this “new-old” remembered world. In this sense, the imaginative transformation seems to afford a restitution of personal past, which is re-born and transfigured.

The whole of Combray emerges from the cup of tea, unfolded, paper-born, and here we find the second connection concerning the ontological integrity of text : The past is exclusively regained on paper, that is to say in or as scripture.

In La Prisonnière, Albertine lives in 'Marcel ''s house in Paris, respecting his desire to know all about her life. But his attempt to fix her enigmatic self and to ban it in an inner world fails: Does not his beloved lose all her charm and beauty and decay in this artificial atmosphere of a prison, a victim of the allegorical-imaginative assimilation of her master?35 And the closed sphere of the Guermantes, once a place of privilege and the historical ideal of nobility for young ' Marcel ', turns into a plane region which the protagonist is able to invade without further efforts, as he is accepted as one of the best friends of the family36.

Kalliope wrote: "I loved the way the section begins, with the "trompe l'oeil" image..."

Yes, there is a kind of phantasmagorical atmosphere of illusion in the first page or two as he describes how real places are taken over in his consciousness by other more beautiful places and then how the original places have to engage in a struggle with their usurpers to reestablish their own reality or permanence.

The GF edition includes a long paragraph here that was later removed but is very interesting. I'll try to share it in summary form for those of you who haven't access to it and who might like to know what it said:
Speaking of the more beautiful places mentioned above, the Narrator says that before, he would have said they were more beautiful in the way a woman one can't possess appears more beautiful than the woman one has already possessed. But now it is not that desire for the impossible that has propelled him towards the sea breezes of Balbec, tante Léonie's room or Saint Mark's, it is not they themselves that he loves but the elements of feeling (sensation) they share with the place he is in at the present. And it is not as a 'collector' of beautiful things that he loves them either because he doesn't rate his 'self' (moi) that highly, he even doubts this 'self' and concludes that the different 'self' he has become is no longer subject to the laws of time. "I had already had the impression of having gone beyond time and that lost time could be found, could be omnipresent at different moments when, without understanding the reason for my indescribable joy, I had savoured and identified the aroma of the madeleine I had imbibed (la madeleine imbibée).

Later he seems to be saying that revisiting a place cannot help him to reclaim the time he once spent there but that the only way to reclaim it is through an intense examination of the essence of the place which he holds within himself.
I would love to hear what others make of this section - it is quite difficult to understand but yet so interesting to us who have read every one of Proust's words from the beginning and who now have reached this 'methodology' section, as it were, and are trying to figure it out together with Proust's help.
It is like a reward, a present at the end of a long and difficult year but it is so difficult to unwrap...

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I'm trailing by 20 page.."

Sorry Reem, I hadn't refreshed the page so hadn't seen your excellent explanations.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I'm trailing by 20 pages but wanted to post this here:

Allegory as imaginary past: transcendence and acting subject in ..."

Thank you for this article, Reem. I have printed it but will read it once we are done with the novel.. Soon then.

@Reem - last week he imagined a younger self arriving at a Guermantes party in awe and anxiety risen, now it's take it or leave it

I think this theory of allegory really does make sense in understanding what Proust was trying to do. I will need to read, and reread this several times to fully comprehend the meaning behind transcending time. It would be great if you would all read it and decipher it a bit more....

@Fionnuala, not my explanations. I only copy and paste. Check out the link.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "It would be great if you would all read it and decipher it a bit more"

Sorry, Reem - like Kall, I'm trying to 'read and decipher' Proust himself through our own exchanges here as we each slowly read his words, section by section.
It's the process of understanding, the challenge of figuring him out that keeps me reading...as well as the quality of his writing.

Fionnuala wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "It would be great if you would all read it and decipher it a bit more"

Sorry, Reem - like Kall, I'm trying to 'read and decipher' Proust himself through our own excha..."

smiles @Fionnuala and Kalliope :) No short cuts with you two! Okay, when you get to the end, come back and revisit this and see if you come to the same conclusion.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "

Sorry, Reem - like Kall, I'm trying to 'read and decipher' Proust himself thr..."

It looks very good. I have printed it.

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

Sorry, Reem - like Kall, I'm trying to 'read and decipher' Proust himself thr..."

It looks very good. I have printed it."

The Google Gods are good to me Kalliope!

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "It looks very good. I have printed it."

The Google Gods are goo..."

You certainly find select sources...

Just read this line, page 279 GF:
Ce que nous n'avons pas eu à déchiffrer, à éclairer par notre effort personnel, ce qui était clair avant nous, n'est pas à nous.

Yessss!

And now having read about Eulalie's sad and spartan room, I have to post this -
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6fn...

The problem with this week's reading is that I would like to quote the whole thing...

That would be cheating.

Yes - I have been underlining non-stop too - I feel I am making the book my own, in every sense, but especially Proust's...

Among the many underlinings, this one:
Une œuvre où il y a des théories est comme un objet sur lequel on laisse la marque du prix p 281

A work which contains theory is like an art object with the price tag still on. More or less - I'd be interested to see how that translates..

When Proust mentions George Sand's François de Champi one must think of his preface to Sésame et les Lys (1906), a translation of the work of John Ruskin published later as On Reading, which begins:

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.

Yes it sounds familiar, in fact what we read in ISOLT is a light retread of his preface to Sésame et les Lys and this preface is considered by, among others, his friend the poet Anna de Noailles evidenced in a letter from her, breakthrough writing to his becoming a novelist, where in the preface, On Reading, Proust employs fiction and non-fiction as he does in this week's reading.

The fiction in Time Regained is at the Prince de Guermantes in the paving stones the, spoon sound, the texture of the napkin, etc. that zings Proust into comely non-fiction descriptions of writing and literature, that the protagonist now believes accessible, in the voice of the Narrator. Their thought is at times identical, Proust and the Narrator.

I had arrived then at the conclusion that in fashioning a work of art we are by no means free, that we do not choose how we shall make it but that it pre-exists us and therefore we are obliged, since it is both necessary and hidden, to do what we should have to do if it were a law of nature—to discover it. ML p. 277

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I loved the way the section begins, with the "trompe l'oeil" image..."

Yes, there is a kind of phantasmagorical atmosphere of illusion in the first page or two as he describes how..."

I have now come to this note.

The section to which this addition (paperolle) would have belonged is also interesting because it talks of the multiplicity of the self (le moi) raising even doubts of the existence or reality of this self.

.. dans les trois souvenirs que je venais d'avoir et où au lieu de me faire une idée plus flatteuse de mon moi j'avais au contraire presque douté de la réalité actuelle de ce moi. p. 271.

And later, when describing the struggle between the two "places" the current one and the one evoked by the memory, he is about to loose consciousness (literally) and eventually gets to the feeling of the gradual loss of consciousness during the process of falling asleep.

Multiplicity of selves and loss of subjectivity as consciousness is blurred.

Meanwhile I am in the middle of , trying to imagine the young Narrator listening to his mother reading the tale aloud to him..

Like magic.

It is now that he reveals clearly his view on friendship. This is a theme that he had treated, ambiguously before, but which now he diagnoses definitely.

..l'amitié qui est une simulation puisque pour quelques raisons morales qu'il le fasse, l'artiste qui renonce à une heure du travail pour une heure de causerie avec un ami sait qu'il sacrifie une réalité pour quelque chose qui n'existe pas (les amis n'étant des amis que dans cette douce folie que nous avons au cours de la vie, à laquelle nous nous prêtons, mais que du fond de l'intelligence nous savons l'erreur d'un fou qui croirait que les meubles vivent et causerait avec eux). p. 273

Fionnuala wrote: "Later he seems to be saying that revisiting a place cannot help him to reclaim the time he once spent there but that the only way to reclaim it is through an intense examination of the essence of t..."

This "methodology" section reminded me of the one in which he wrote that the Préface to a work was more interesting than the work itself. He mentioned this in reference to Balzac and to Michelet.

In a way, this is what we are getting now.

And the title, Temps perdu, is first mentioned, with capital letters, in page 275.

He develops the idea of disappointment.. I remember noticing the pattern through which the young Narrator went several times.... A desire followed by disappointment. The word "désappointé" occurred many times.

And that is because there is lack of proper correspondance between what the senses perceive and what resides in the mind.... ce que les yeux voient le monde du désir n'est vu que de l'esprit.p. 274. And one page later ..toujours déçu comme je l'avais été en présence des lieux et des êtres..

The names (noms) do not capture reality... And a footnote draws attention to the use of "noms" for places in Du côté de chez Swann, and Jeunes Filles and "noms" for people in Du côté de Guermantes.

We also now get the key to the Vinteuil sonata. Swann's error was to associate the "plaisir" he obtained from the music, to his feelings of love, when in reality, the beauty and the happiness it provided originated in its art, in the aesthetic experience or creation.

.. ce bonheur proposé par la petite phrase de la Sonate à Swann qui s'était trompé en l'assimilant au plaisir de l'amour et n'avais pas su le trouver dans la création artistique... p. 276.

Earlier we commented that the poles of light/darkness or sun/moon, could be traced and that it seemed as if the Narrator shunned the sun and the full light.

And now we come to this..

Car les vérités que l'intelligence saisit directement à claire-voie dans le monde de la pleine lumière ont quelque chose de moins profond..... il fallait tâcher d'interpreter les sensations comme le signe d'autant de lois et d'idées, en essayant de penser c'est-à-dire de faire sortir de la pénombre ce que j'avais senti, de le convertir en un équivalent spirituel. p. 277.

And he introduces an interesting element in his concept of artistic creation (and may be then not really a creation), and which has surprised me, and that is the element of chance (le hasard) when the "vérités" are revealed to him.

... ces vérités écrites....je n'étais pas libre de les choisir, qu'elles m'étaient données telles quelles p. 277.

And this is probably a Kantian idea --freedom and determinism--... Elsewhere in his work Proust wrote:

l'espèce de soulagement qu'on a dans Kant quand, après la démonstration la plus rigoureuse du déterminisme, on découvre qu'au-dessus du monde de la nécessité il y a celui de la liberté. Du côté de Guermantes..

If Manny reads this post he may want to comment on it... He is exploring Kant.

The above idea on freedom--or lack thereof-- and necessity, continues later on...

Ainsi j'étais déjà arrivé à cette conclusion que nous ne sommes nullement libres devant l'oeuvre d'art, que nous ne la faisons pas à notre gré, parce que préexistant à nous, nous devons, à la fois parce qu'elle est nécessaire et cachée, et comme nous ferions pour une loi de la nature, la découvrir. p. 279.

Thank you Kalliope! This does indeed sound like it might point to a Kantian influence, but my Kant studies have not yet progressed far enough to be sure. I will revisit it when I have reached that section of the Critique.

It is possible that Nathan will understand better what is going on...

Manny wrote: "Thank you Kalliope! This does indeed sound like it might point to a Kantian influence, but my Kant studies have not yet progressed far enough to be sure. I will revisit it when I have reached that ..."

Found a bit more later on..in #34.

Kalliope wrote: "The above idea on freedom--or lack thereof-- and necessity, continues later on...

Ainsi j'étais déjà arrivé à cette conclusion que nous ne sommes nullement libres devant l'oeuvre d'art, que nous n..."

I think this is an outstanding idea... the artist is not a creator, but a discoverer.. and later on he also expounds on the image of the artist as translator... rendering something already in existence into a different and transformed reality. For a translation is a different thing from the original.

It does indeed sound just like a Kantian antinomy! Alas, I have yet to reach the antinomies, and I only know them by reputation. This will at any rate motivate me to make faster progress...

Manny wrote: "It does indeed sound just like a Kantian antinomy! Alas, I have yet to reach the antinomies, and I only know them by reputation. This will at any rate motivate me to make faster progress..."

Perfect... we will want to know more...

It occurs to me that the third volume in Kjærstad's trilogy is called The Discoverer - and it is indeed very much about the nature of art. Though I don't recall him referencing Proust.

Manny wrote: "It occurs to me that the third volume in Kjærstad's trilogy is called The Discoverer - and it is indeed very much about the nature of art. Though I don't recall him referencing Proust."

Thank you. I have marked them...

They are beautiful and unique books in the original, but I don't know what the translations are like...

Kalliope wrote: "I think this is an outstanding idea... the artist is not a creator, but a discoverer.. and later on he also expounds on the image of the artist as translator... rendering something already in existence into a different and transformed reality. For a translation is a different thing from the original..."

That is more and more how I understand his writing too. It is as if he is feeling around the surface or shape of his memories just as a blind person reads Braille and setting the resulting enlightenment against the sensations of the present moment, transformed inevitably by the enlightenment arising from the memories, and translating them both into art by combining them, using carefully chosen, and essential, metaphor.

After criticizing what he calls realist art, and with a very interesting simile between a realist novel and a "défilé cinématographique", he then examines the very emotional effect it has on him when he finds a copy of François le Champi in the Guermantes library.

He first uses the image of a music band playing a fanfare interrupting the wake for a father (and this image made me think of Mahler’s First, first movement, when two simultaneous melodies cross each other –one a fanfare) although eventually the son of the defunct realizes the fanfare is actually a homage from the regiment to his fahter.

But the emotional response of encountering the book from his childhood leads him into a realization of the multiplicity of the selves and multifaceted subjectivity...

Cet étranger c’était moi même, c’était l’enfant que j’étais alors, que le livre venai de susciter en moi, car de moi ne connaissant que cet enfant, c’est cet enfant que le livre avait appleé tout de suite, ne voulant être regardé que par ses yeux, aimé que par son coeur; et ne parlant qu’à lui.p. 283.

And he continues a couple of pages later..

.. si je reprends dans la bibliothèque, François le Champi, et qui le lit comme il le lut alors, avec la même impression du temps qu’il faisait dans le jardin, les mêmes rêves qu’il formait alors su le pays et sur la vie, la même angoisse du lendemain. Que je revoie une chose d’un autre temps, c’est un jeune homme qui se lèvera. p. 285

And if he has criticized the kind of representation achieved with writings that emulate cinematographic techniques, he retakes his critique of photography, which had been expressed earlier.

.. que les phrases mêmes des livres. Plus vif même car celles-ci gênent parfois comme ces photographies d'un être devant lesquelles on se le rappelle moins bien qu'en se contentant de penser à lui. p. 285.

And this comment made me think of Barthes' Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. And we should not forget that Barthes is a Proustian...!!

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I think this is an outstanding idea... the artist is not a creator, but a discoverer.. and later on he also expounds on the image of the artist as translator... rendering something..."

I agree, and it is this effort (together with the revelation that his finding the François le Champi has brought about) that he realizes that in order to awaken those forgotten memories he has to be able to bring forth in himself the former young self and relive or free them (dégager)... and then he remembers that the reading of Sand's novella took place on that determinant night in Combray which changed his life. For it was during that night it was settled that may be he was a lost case in terms of determination ...

Mais c'est plus volontiers de l'histoire de ma propre vie, c'est-à-dire non pas en simple curieux, que je la dégagerais; et ce serait souvent non pas à l'exemplaire matériel que je l'attacherais mais à l'ouvrage ... contemple pour la première fois dans ma petite chambre de Combray, pendant la nuit peut-être la plus douce et la plus triste de ma vie où j'avais hélas --dans un temps où me paraissaient bien inaccessibles les mystérieux Guermantes -- obtenu de mes parents une première abdication d'où je pouvais faire dater le déclin de ma santé de de mon vouloir, mon renoncement chaque jour aggravé à une tâche difficile -- et retrouvé aujourd'hui dans la bibliothèque des Guermantes précisément, par le jour le plus beau et dont s'éclairaient soudain non seulement les tâtonnements anciens de ma pensée, mais même le but de ma vie et peut-être de l'art. p. 286.

This is a key passage. For it is Sand's book that opens the period of lost time and closes it with the beginning of its recovery.

And that is why I posted the photo of the book in Proust's bedroom in Illiers-Combray at the beginning of this week's section.

And I just had to love the following section, given how much I like illuminated manuscripts...

He muses over the library that he would accumulate for himself, were he a bibliophile. His books would contain images. They would be illuminated books...

La bibliothèque que je me composerais ainsi serait même d'une valeur plus grande encore; car les livres que je lus jadis à Combray, à Venise, enrichis maintenant par ma mémoire de vastes enluminures représentant l'église Saint-Hilaire, la gondole amarrée au pire de Saint-Georges le Majeur sur le Grand Canal incrusté de scintillants bibles historiées, livers d'heures que l'amateur n'ouvre jamais pur lire le texte mais pour s'enchanter une fois de plus des couleurs qu'y a ajoutées quelque émule de Foucquet e que font tout le prix de l'ouvrage. p. 287.


Karpeles includes one Foucquet illumination.. but here is another one...



With Notre Dame in the background, in the île de la cité, I think.

But I just love this painting...

Proust has the Narrator say it point-blank,

And then a new light, less dazzling, no doubt, than that other illumination which had made me perceive that the work of art was the sole means of rediscovering Lost Time, shone suddenly within me. And I understood that all these materials for a work of literature were simply my past life; I understood that they had come to me, in frivolous pleasures, in indolence, in tenderness, in unhappiness, and that I had stored them up without divining the purpose for which they were destined or even their continued existence... ML p. 304

I wonder with so many of you studying Proust as you are, carefully making mental notes on everything,if you ever just experience the aesthetic beauty of the text. I was reading Proust while I was on the exercise bike at the gym, and 55 minutes later, I suddenly looked up from my reading and constant underlining and wondered if the people around me had any idea what kind of emotional work out I had just been through. It had to be written on my face! How can a novel written so long ago, just speak so personally to me? And mind you, I'm only reading the translation. I can only imagine what euphoria those of you reading in French must feel. The line between the narrator and the reader has just about diminished...

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I wonder with so many of you studying Proust as you are, carefully making mental notes on everything,if you ever just experience the aesthetic beauty of the text. I was reading Proust while I was o..."

Yes, that "aesthetic beauty of the text" is what drew me to this work in the first place, twenty or so years ago. But back then I was too immature to be able to work through it, as we have in this group.

how can a novel written so long ago, just speak so personally...?

It is amazing how it speaks to our own experiences, memories, emotions, isn't it?