Psycho Proustians discussion

Hi Proustians, I thought we should perhaps keep the logistics separate from just chatting and from the thread about additional background info and reading, so let's do our scheduling here.

So far the overwhelming vote is for the weekend, and although the poll has by far not concluded yet, for planning sake, I am going to stick my neck out and say that on every Saturday midnight, or Sunday which I will deem to have started on 1AM Greenwich time, I will set up the next thread with the delineation of what has to be discussed for the next week. For some of you parts of that day will still be Saturday, and for some of you, parts of it will be Sunday or almost Monday.

It will probably be best if we allow the early birds to start posting about the week's reading on what for them is the next Friday, see the discussion through to Sunday, and then latecomers can still post on that thread whenever. But we have to keep our comments to the designated section in the thread that it's meant for. Sound okay to you? I will repeat this message on the starting or chat thread.

It will be inevitable that some people will want to go faster and some slower, but sometimes one has to make sacrifices if you want to do things as a group, I guess.

I know some of you are rearing to go, but since we're starting on a Tuesday (Jan 3), we can do a mock start, of, say, the first 10, 11 pages of Combray that we can then start discussing on Friday, January 7. These first few pages pack a lot of discussion, and may even seem rather confusing for a first-time Proust reader.

So on January 3, (or before, if you like) we can convene here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks, Trav!

Thank you!

Oh, glad you'll be part of the group, Ewa!

Good to see you around, both Ewa and Linda, looking forward to your participation!

Ok, back to business:

So, from Jan 3 to Jan 7, we discuss the first little bit (10-11 pages) from

For a long time I would go to bed early. Sometimes, the candle barely out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have time to tell myself: “I’m falling asleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to look for sleep would awaken me; I would make as if to put away the book which I imagined was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had gone on thinking, while I was asleep,

and ends with :

"And as soon as the dinner-bell rang I would hurry down to the dining-room, where the big hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard but well acquainted with my family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the same light as on every other evening; and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience."

DISCUSSION THREAD HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

From Fri Jan 7 to Thursday Jan 13 , we will discuss the following bit, (about 55 pages) from:

But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet.

to

And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

So from Fri Jan 14 to Sat Jan 22, we will discuss:

Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it from the railway when we arrived there in the week before Easter, was no more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about its long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as a shepherdess gathers her sheep, the woolly grey backs of its huddled house……

To

And in front of every house, even those where it was not the custom, the servants, and sometimes even the masters, would sit and watch, festooning the doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe, like the border of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual leaves on the beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when the sea itself has retreated.

From Sunday Jan 23 to Sunday Jan 30, we will discuss:

Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read in peace. But the interruption and the commentary which a visit from Swann once occasioned in the course of my reading, which had brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, Bergotte, resulted in the consequence that for a long time afterwards it was not against a wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but against a wholly different background, the porch of a Gothic cathedral, that I saw the figure of one of the women of whom I dreamed. ……

To


….a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never have inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain—as from his knowledge of my grandmother’s character, he really ought to have been—that we would never have dreamed of making use of it..
We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt Léonie a visit before dinner.

( P 188 in my edition)

From Sunday Jan 30 to Sunday February 6, we will discuss:

At the beginning of the season, when the days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the setting sun in the windows of the house and a band of crimson beyond the timbers of the Calvary, which was mirrored further on in the pond; a fiery glow that, accompanied often by a sharp tang in the air, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of the fire over which, at that very moment, was roasting the chicken that was to furnish me, in place of the poetic pleasure of the walk, with the sensual pleasures of good feeding, warmth and rest.

To the END of Combray:


...the writing-table, which my memory had clumsily installed where the window ought to be, would hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the fireplace and sweeping aside the wall of the passage; a little courtyard would occupy the place where, a moment earlier, my dressing-room had lain, and the dwelling-place which I had built up for myself in the darkness would have gone to join all those other dwellings glimpsed in the whirlpool of awakening, put to flight by that pale sign traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted forefinger of dawn. .

From Sunday Feb 6 to Sunday Feb 13, we will start to discuss SWANN IN LOVE .
Starting with:

To admit you to the “little nucleus,” the “little group,” the “little clan” at the Verdurins’, one condition sufficed, but that one was indispensable: you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose articles was that the young pianist whom Mme Verdurin had taken under her patronage that year and of whom she said “Really, it oughtn’t to be allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!”

To about 120 pages on:

“His jealousy, like an octopus which throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle, fastened itself firmly to that particular moment, five o’clock in the afternoon, then to another, then to another again. .

(Page 392 in my copy)


From Sunday Feb 13 to Sunday Feb 20,
We will start with:

But Swann was incapable of inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the perpetuation of a suffering that had come to him from without.
From without, however, everything brought him fresh suffering.

And end with:

The end of Swann In Love.

From Sunday Feb 20 – Sunday Feb 27 we will read the entirety of PLACE-NAMES • THE NAME, and have our ending discussion.

And voilà! We have read Le Recherche Du Temps Perdu Vol.1 !

Thanks you Traveller, you have scheduled it very nicely.

Nidhi wrote: "Thanks you Traveller, you have scheduled it very nicely."

Thanks, Nidhi, and for the actual discussion we can go here:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I look forward to seeing you on the discussion thread!