Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion

Use this topic thread for all Sodom and Gomorrah discussions through page 82 / location 27835.

Regarding the "Prologue" of this volume:
- Did Proust give this section its specific, lengthy title or did Editors? If it was Proust, he seems to have wanted to make sure the reader knew what was going to be discussed. At least in an age when people knew the Bible. Today, I guess folks might be "surprised".
- I was struck by the continuity of time between Guermantes Way and this volume. The Narrator had said he would get back to what he had learned "on the stairs", in the previous volume, but he has made references to future "disclosures" in other places that (as far as I know) I'm still waiting to learn. A reading habit of mine is to keep track of time and place. So I note the continuity of the same day that has been "occurring" since I was at (91%) of the Guermantes Way (my 99 cent ebook doesn't have pages) when the narrator went to see the Duchess to find out if his invitation to the Princess de Guermantes was for real.

I was amused by the climbing around the Narrator had to do to satisfy his curiosity about what was going on. I find a lot to laugh at in Proust, comedy he has deliberately written. I see/hear a lot of comedy in this section. Even when the narrator "seems serious" in his observations or asides, it comes across as "tongue in cheek". Listening to the audiobook helps to bring out this aspect for me.

The comedic highlight of this section for me comes when the Narrator blames God for "inversion!" Something along the lines he sent the wrong angel to destroy Sodom and Gommorah and the angel bungled the job and let some of them "get away" - and now they are everywhere! lol

This section contains Proust's longest sentence.
Via Jim Everett's Proust Reader:
http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com...

(Decided to link from a good university (Maryland) resource.
Literary Influences: http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com... )

Thank you Marcelita for all these wonderful resources. I love Proust's long sentences. And this reading is greatly expanding my vocabulary. Sometimes, listening to the audio and sensing the beginning of a long sentence, I touch the screen to highlight and follow the words down the page through the phonetical bramble and grammatical hedgerows in pursuit of elusive period.

Marcelita wrote: "This section contains Proust's longest sentence.
Via Jim Everett's Proust Reader:
http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com...

(Decided to link from a good university (..."

Marcelita, you also mentioned (in an earlier response to Sunny I believe) that the section also contains the saddest sentence. Would you elaborate please?

Marcelita wrote: "This section contains Proust's longest sentence.
Via Jim Everett's Proust Reader:
http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com..."

Wow, that sentence was truly the longest I've ever read. I tried adding its Portuguese translation as a quote here in Goodreads but it was too long, no kidding! I'm just glad I understood everything, which is in line with what Jonathan said in a previous topic about Proust improving one's reading skills. I remember when I first started reading Swann's Way, I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs without being all confused as to what was going on.

I felt the same recently when reading Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, this sense of being kind of lost, but then after some pages, everything was ok. Is it improving reading skills or adjusting to the author's style of writing?

Renato wrote: "I felt the same recently when reading Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, this sense of being kind of lost, but then after some pages, everything was ok. Is it improving reading skills or adjusting to the author's style of writing? ."

I know what you mean about getting used to an author's style. I was going to start S&G today but I'd only finished Life and Fate yesterday and, after all the Proustian reading, I felt that I'd had to de-Proust my mind as 'Life and Fate' was written in a Soviet-approved style which is almost the opposite of such a 'decadent western writer' such as Proust. I now have to re-Proustialise my brain before I can start again. I often find it difficult to start a book that's completely different from the preceding one - a sort of reading inertia.

Jonathan wrote "only finished Life and Fate yesterday ". Added Life and Fate to my Amazon Wish List. Thank you Jonathan, I had never heard of it.

Dave wrote: "- Did Proust give this section its specific, lengthy title or did Editors? If it was Proust, he seems to have wanted to make sure the reader knew what was going to be discussed."

In my book it's more an epigraph than a title. And I think it is Proust's.

Dave wrote: "So I note the continuity of the same day that has been "occurring" since I was at (91%) of the Guermantes Way (my 99 cent ebook doesn't have pages) when the narrator went to see the Duchess to find out if his invitation to the Princess de Guermantes was for real. "

That's a cool observation, Dave. This is a loooong day indeed! :)

Art mentioned in this section:

“Here is one who, should we intrude upon him in the morning, still in bed, will present to our gaze an admirable female head, so general is its expression and typical of the sex as a whole; his very hair affirms this, so feminine is its ripple; unbrushed, it falls so naturally in long curls over the cheek that one marvels how the young woman, the girl, the Galatea barely awakened to life, in the unconscious mass of this male body in which she is imprisoned, has contrived so ingeniously by herself, without instruction from anyone, to make use of the narrowest apertures in her prison wall to find what was necessary to her existence.”

This seems to be an allusion to Gustave Moreau's Galatea, from 1880:



---

Painter Édouard Detaille was present in the Princesse de Guermantes party and was introduced to Mme. de Villemur by Marie-Gilbert:

“Madame de Villemur, M. Détaille, with his wonderful painter's eye, has just been admiring your neck." Mme. de Villemur interpreted this as a direct invitation to join in the conversation; with the agility of a practiced horsewoman, she made her chair rotate slowly through three quadrants of a circle, and, without in the least disturbing her neighbours, came to rest almost facing the Princess. "You don't know M. Détaille?" exclaimed their hostess, for whom her guest's nimble and modest tergiversation was not sufficient. "I do not know him, but I know his work," replied Mme. de Villemur, with a respectful, engaging air, and a promptitude which many of the onlookers envied her, addressing the while to the celebrated painter whom this invocation had not been sufficient to introduce to her in a formal manner, an imperceptible bow. "Come, Monsieur Détaille," said the Princess, "let me introduce you to Mme. de Villemur." That lady thereupon shewed as great ingenuity in making room for the creator of the Dream as she had shewn a moment earlier in wheeling round to face him.”

The Dream, Édouard Detaille, 1888

---

While the narrator was about to ask de Charlus to introduce him to the Prince de Guermantes:

“I had no recourse left save to M. de Charlus, who had withdrawn to a room downstairs which opened on the garden. I had plenty of time (as he was pretending to be absorbed in a fictitious game of whist which enabled him to appear not to notice people) to admire the deliberate, artistic simplicity of his evening coat which, by the merest trifles which only a tailor's eye could have picked out, had the air of a 'Harmony in Black and White' by Whistler; black, white and red, rather, for M. de Charlus was wearing, hanging from a broad ribbon pinned to the lapel of his coat, the Cross, in white, black and red enamel, of a Knight of the religious Order of Malta.”

Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert Montesquiou-Fezensac, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1891-92

Robert de Montesquiou is believed to be one of the inspirations used for creating Baron de Charlus.

---
In a funny episode involving Mme. d'Arpajon and a fountain:

“So entirely absorbed in the company that I did not learn until two days later, from the newspapers, that a Czech orchestra had been playing throughout the evening, and that Bengal lights had been burning in constant succession, I recovered some power of attention with the idea of going to look at the celebrated fountain of Hubert Robert.”
(...)
“Now, just as Mme. d'Arpajon was making for one of these staircases, a strong gust of warm air made the jet of water swerve and inundated the fair lady so completely that, the water streaming down from her open bosom inside her dress, she was soaked as if she had been plunged into a bath.”

The Fountain, Hubert Robert, 1760-65

I really enjoyed how the book starts with that epigraph that is an allusion to the Book of Genesis - reinforcing its own title -, to convey the message that he was going to talk about homosexuality, to delve more into the sexuality matters, and then he goes on to talk about botanics, genetics, flowers fecundation etc.. I thought it was clever how he blended together those two affairs.

I particularly appreciated this quote:

“At the same instant, just as M. de Charlus disappeared through the gate humming like a great bumble-bee, another, a real bee this time, came into the courtyard. For all I knew this might be the one so long awaited by the orchid, which was coming to bring it that rare pollen without which it must die a virgin.”

Dave wrote: "Marcelita, you also mentioned (in an earlier response to Sunny I believe) that the section also contains the saddest sentence. Would you elaborate please? "

This passage is a page or so before the longest sentence.
The sadness, to me, is the necessity to lie...always;
never being able to be honest with the person you love most in the world.

"A race upon which a curse is laid and which must live in falsehood and perjury because it knows that its desire, that which constitutes life’s dearest pleasure, is held to be punishable, shameful, an inadmissible thing; which must deny its God, since its members, even when Christians, when at the bar of justice they appear and are arraigned, must before Christ and in his name refute as a calumny what is their very life;
sons without a mother, to whom they are obliged to lie even in the hour when they close her dying eyes; ..."

I think of Proust and his mother.
It was only after she died, he was able to begin writing his masterpiece.

There is also another passage equally sad, but it is later....in The Captive.

Yes that is very sad, thank you.

Marcelita wrote: "This section contains Proust's longest sentence.
Via Jim Everett's Proust Reader:
http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com......"

True Proustians love long sentences! Size does matter. :-)

The first section of this week's reading was quite remarkable. Not only does he open with the narrator spying on a homosexual fling but, as we'd expect from Proust we get a nuanced explanation of homosexuality as at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I agree that the quotes listed so far superb. But I would also like to add this convoluted, but perfectly understandable, quote where the narrator is explaining some subtle differences between homosexual 'types'. Although it's not so much a 'type' as the different ways that they have to arrange their lives to conform:

But the second kind seek out the women who love women, who can procure a young man for them and add to the pleasure which they get from finding themselves with him; much more, they can, in the same way, find the same pleasure with them as with a man. [...] For in the relationships they have with them, they play the role of another woman for the women who love women, and the woman offers them at the same time more or less what they find in a man, so that the jealous friend suffers from feeling that the man he loves is inseparable from the woman who is for him almost a man, at the same time as he feels him almost escaping from him, because, for these women, he is something he does not know, a sort of woman.

Baron Charlus reminds me of Joe Orton as described in his own diaries: The Orton Diaries. Not just his homosexuality, but the fact that they're both brash, arrogant even; but they know what they want and aren't ashamed of it. Although Charlus has to be more circumspect than Orton.

Marcelita wrote: ""A race upon which a curse is laid and which must live in falsehood and perjury because it knows that its desire, that which constitutes life’s dearest pleasure, is held to be punishable, shameful, an inadmissible thing; which must deny its God, since its members, even when Christians, when at the bar of justice they appear and are arraigned, must before Christ and in his name refute as a calumny what is their very life;
sons without a mother, to whom they are obliged to lie even in the hour when they close her dying eyes; ..."

I think of Proust and his mother.
It was only after she died, he was able to begin writing his masterpiece. "

Marcelita, that's truly sad and so beautiful. I can't even fathom going through that myself as I have a very strong connection with my mother and she knows all my thoughts just by looking at me. I do have some friends that went through this whole process of lying and hiding their true selves even from their parents. Very, very sad indeed. :/

Dave wrote: "The comedic highlight of this section for me comes when the Narrator blames God for "inversion!" Something along the lines he sent the wrong angel to destroy Sodom and Gommorah and the angel bungle..."

LOL! I'm also struck by the sentence immediately before, where he says:

"...these exceptional creatures whom we commiserate are a vast crowd, as we shall see in the course of this work, for a reason which will be disclosed only at the end of it..."

I wonder if this plays into the ending that leads many folks to want to start reading all over again. So much time was spent on describing how the narrator never noticed certain things about Charlus, but then after the Julien incident, he wonders how he never noticed before. So, maybe the reader suddenly has their eyes opened about other characters?

I am really curious to find out what's all the fuss about the ending! But I'll stuck to the reading schedule is it is serving me well!

I notice that we're soon back in the soirees again. Although they're a good way of having the characters interact and reveal info about each other, I hope we don't get too many of them in this vol.

Sunny wrote ""...these exceptional creatures whom we commiserate are a vast crowd, as we shall see in the course of this work, for a reason which will be disclosed only at the end of it..." I wonder if..."

First, glad you're here Sunny, I was concerned you had quit posting.

You make a good point about why folks reread. Stephen not long ago (who was reading The Captive) said he was beginning to suspect we were dealing with an "unreliable narrator". that is a literary term that can be looked up on Wikipeadia. I find the narrator's claim to know nothing of Charlus' "inclinations" to be highly suspect. Proust in so many ways shows a piercing analysis of human behavior and for his 20+ year old narrator to be "shocked, shocked! to find that there are homosexuals in Paris" seems highly suspect. In fact, I find a lot of the narrator's soliloquy here highly self-serving.

Renato wrote: "I am really curious to find out what's all the fuss about the ending! But I'll stuck to the reading schedule is it is serving me well!"

I know, me too!

@Dave: I just take breaks between volumes to give the group time to catch up to me. I finished TGW way ahead of schedule, and I find it more enjoyable to be able to discuss my thoughts about the book when they are still fresh in my mind. :)

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Renato wrote: "I am really curious to find out what's all the fuss about the ending! But I'll stuck to the reading schedule is it is serving me well!"

I know, me too!

@Dave: I just take breaks b..."

Good! I can see your point. I joined the group in April about 5 weeks ahead and have moved further ahead. I'm in mid-October on the schedule. I've got the time and inclination to read now and I'm afraid if I break something will come up in my life that will carry me away from completion. I have dropped some comments in the threads for the week's ahead, and may do that some more. I do enjoy participating in the group, but I'm concerned that my "two volume ahead" perspective will shade all but my most innocent comment and something might be given away, or my comment just won't make any sense and I won't be able to explain why.

Speaking of being ahead of the schedule, I remember Stephen mentioned we would get the narrator's name at some point.

It was such a tease for me this week cause when he was about to be announced at the soirée, I thought that was it, that we would finally know it.

Renato wrote: "Speaking of being ahead of the schedule, I remember Stephen mentioned we would get the narrator's name at some point.

It was such a tease for me this week cause when he was about to be announced a..."

Really?!? For some reason, I thought I read somewhere that the narrator's name is never given... Clearly I was mixing something up in my, ahem, memory. LOL!

I can confirm Stephen's observation, but I would caution against expecting too much of this.

I imagine what it is to be honest, but I just thought the moment was coming.

Renato: Did you notice another mention of the narrator's duel(s)? This was when he was trying to get the nerve to go across the courtyard and spy on Charlus & Jupien:

'A fine thing,' I thought, 'that I should be more pusillanimous when the theatre of operations is merely our own courtyard and when the only steel I, who have just fought several duels without any fear, on account of the Dreyfus Affair, have to fear is that of the neighbours' gaze, who have better things to do than stare into the courtyard'

Well, we know they were over the Dreyfus Affair now, anyway.

Re: the announcement.

I was too busy being amused at the narrator's bashfulness at being announced loudly by the doorman. Although he says it was because he wasn't sure if he'd been the victim of a hoax, I suspect it was also because he didn't have a title.

BTW In my preliminary reading I probably read too many spoilers, so I know what the narrator's real name is, it's....

Jonathan, yes, we finally know now! I wanted to comment on that but I forgot.

I was kind of kicking myself though for not realizing it was because of the Dreyfus Affair though. What else would it be? haha

Something else I wanted to comment: Proust acknowledged his readers! I felt it was like "ok, you got his far, now I can give you some attention", LOL.

Jonathan wrote: "Re: the announcement.

I was too busy being amused at the narrator's bashfulness at being announced loudly by the doorman. Although he says it was because he wasn't sure if he'd been the victim of..."

You are killing me. I have still not come across anything to give me his name. I am a cat, and the curiosity is killing me.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "Re: the announcement.

I was too busy being amused at the narrator's bashfulness at being announced loudly by the doorman. Although he says it was because he wasn't sure if he'd b..."

Caution....regarding "a" name of the narrator.
I have spent hours in groups discussing this, but will return to it later, when it's the week to speculate.

Ahh I can't wait to get there!!

Jonathan wrote: "The first section of this week's reading was quite remarkable. Not only does he open with the narrator spying on a homosexual fling but, as we'd expect from Proust we get a nuanced explanation of ..

'But the second kind seek out the women who love women...."

The various types of relationships will be explored again, later in the novel.

Someone suggested that I ponder... "a lesbian trapped in a man's body,"
stating that helps to separate the "interior" desires from the exterior form.

Proust explores the whole range of sexuality, some which is extremely unsettling (and not the scenes that gather the most press).

Marcelita wrote: "Proust explores the whole range of sexuality, some which is extremely unsettling (and not the scenes that gather the most press)."

I'm looking forward to this volume, certainly if the first section is indicative of what is to come. That Proust should turn his gaze on sexual relations, rather than just love, is promising.

When thinking on the variety of sexual tastes I often think of this quote from Kurt Vonnegut (from Slaughterhouse-Five) that always amuses me:

One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally, had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again: Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.

The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals. There could be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old. There could be babies without men over sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth. And so on.

It was gibberish to Billy.

I haven't read that one. How... strangely yet interestingly weird!

Renato wrote: "I haven't read that one. How... strangely yet interestingly weird!"

I think that somes up Vonnegut's work...and very humane!

I just like the quote because it just tries to pose the question, in Vonnegut's flippant way, 'what if there were more to sexual reproduction than heterosexual coupling?' and 'is there an evolutionary point to homosexuality, bisexuality? etc.'

Proust will be approaching from a different angle but I get the sense that it will be just as illuminating, and maybe also a bit strange. :-)

Regarding the name of the narrator, and the feeling of anticipation around learning it for the first time, the desire to know it -- I think it's connected to the theme of names and the expectations that spring up around them that are eventually ruined by experience with the object of the name. I think Proust is presenting us with experience of that theme ourselves, like he does with many of the themes. Memory (we forget what the heck we read three volumes ago), boredom, ennui, etc. How are we going to feel when we finally learn the name? Will it live up to expectations? Align with our experience of the narrator?

(I think someone once told me the narrator's name which I thought would ruin this experience for me, but I was right there, totally rushing my reading hoping to get to the name in that short scene.)

I also think it's interesting that the narrator hated hearing his own name so much. Yes, in that moment, it's because of that acute fear that he wasn't actually invited to the party, but I think there is more to it than that. Does he not want to hear his own name because he doesn't want to be disillusioned about himself? That's complicated and half-baked but I do wonder.

Also, oh my goodness the Charlus-Jupien scene. I almost died. Laughed like crazy. Big eyes and dropped jaw. When Jupien calls Charlus "baby." O. M. G. HAHA!

Dwayne wrote: "I also think it's interesting that the narrator hated hearing his own name so much. Yes, in that moment, it's because of that acute fear that he wasn't actually invited to the party, but I think there is more to it than that. Does he not want to hear his own name because he doesn't want to be disillusioned about himself? That's complicated and half-baked but I do wonder."

That is a very interesting point and I think it goes along with everything he's showed us so far. We've also talked about him being an unreliable narrator: maybe him trying to regain time isn't so much about telling his story, about documenting it, re-living his moments - but instead he's showing us what he thinks he should've done, how he wanted his life to be, so if he (the narrator) uses his name, it'll remember him of the truth?

Dwayne wrote: "I also think it's interesting that the narrator hated hearing his own name so much. Yes, in that moment, it's because of that acute fear that he wasn't actually invited to the party, but I think there is more to it than that. Does he not want to hear his own name because he doesn't want to be disillusioned about himself? That's complicated and half-baked but I do wonder."

I still think it's partly snobbery; he's finally mixing in the company of Dukes & Duchesses, Princes & Princesses and he's going to be announced as Monsieur. But it's also because he's a bit ashamed on behalf of the Princess. When he begs the footman to keep his voice down it's explained this was to 'spare my amour propre if I had not been invited, and that of the Princesse de Guermantes if I had been...'

I'm finding Proust's comments on the medical profession throughout the novel quite amusing. In this week's reading we have:

The mistakes of doctors are innumerable. They err as a rule out of optimism as to the treatment, and pessimism as to the outcome.

And we get to meet the 'vulgar man, Professor E.' again.

Also, Swann keeps appearing in the background of several scenes; being whisked off by Prince G. I guess he's heard Swann's news and is discussing it - hopefully it will be revealed in next week's reading. Interestingly, the other guests think he's being shown the door. Do they think this because of his pro-Dreyfus views?

Renato wrote: "Something else I wanted to comment: Proust acknowledged his readers! I felt it was like "ok, you got his far, now I can give you some attention", LOL."

I didn't really notice this when I first read it but after your comment I watched out for it as I've just re-read the opening bit of the party before going on with the next week's reading. It's amusing that he basically tells us to shut up and listen to the next bit of the story...that puts us in our place. :-)

Jonathan wrote: "Also, Swann keeps appearing in the background of several scenes; being whisked off by Prince G. I guess he's heard Swann's news and is discussing it - hopefully it will be revealed in next week's reading. Interestingly, the other guests think he's being shown the door. Do they think this because of his pro-Dreyfus views?"

I guess it is! I was just thinking that in a way, Swann is swimming counter-current of what people wanted or hoped for him for years now. First, he married Odette, that everyone thought to be dishonorable, now he's a Dreyfusard... I wonder if he'll keep getting mentioned after his death - if he is indeed dying soon -, and how they'll talk about him, whether a positive or negative tone.

Does everyone else 'read' the episode in the Champs-Elysées between M de Châtellerault and the usher as another homosexual encounter?

I'm just re-reading the opening scenes of the party and I'm amused by the narrator's snooty attitude towards Prof. E:

...for nobody of his sort had ever been seen before or was ever to be seen again in the Princess's drawing-room

I love those phrases 'his sort', 'people like you', 'your crowd' as they're so dismissive and bitchy.

Jonathan wrote: "Does everyone else 'read' the episode in the Champs-Elysées between M de Châtellerault and the usher as another homosexual encounter?"

I sure did!

Jonathan wrote: "Does everyone else 'read' the episode in the Champs-Elysées between M de Châtellerault and the usher as another homosexual encounter?"

Yes, I did also.