The Year of Reading Proust discussion

Regarding Proust's bedroom:

"my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred”

This also, to me, sounds like Physics.

Aloha wrote: "Regarding Proust's bedroom:

"my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred”

This also, to me, sounds like Physics."

To me, it reads more like an exercise in surveying or mapping. Is that the passage he follows it up by talking about birdcalls and trains?

One of the other things he does in these early chapters is thin the barrier between living and inanimate objects. When he's talking about sleeping, for example, and talks about how he might become like the furniture, or when he talks about people as 'envelopes' or 'museums'.

Madame X wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Regarding Proust's bedroom:

"my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred”

This also, to me, sounds like Physics."

To me, it reads mor..."

He follows that passage with details about the magic lantern.

Here's the passage:

"...my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Someone had indeed had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come; and, after the fashion of the master-builders and glass-painters of Gothic days, it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted as on a shifting and transitory window..."

Ah, sorry. I was thinking of the wrong page.

Having read both Moncrieff and now Davis, I still must say I struggle with "Remembrance of Things Past" vs "In Search of Lost Time." While the latter is more accurate, the former has a more lyrical feel to it. Anyway, here are some of my thoughts thus far:

** Pg. 20 (Davis): "... I pass from the Swann I knew later with accuracy to that first Swann... in whom I rediscover the charming mistakes of my youth."

How true that we get to "know" certain people through various means, and then after some time they seem to become someone else entirely. And so do we, to an extent. Proust does well to capture this concept, but then he goes a step further: "... fragrant with the smell of the tall chestnut tree, the baskets of raspberries, and a sprig of tarragon."

With this last, we've roped in the olfactory power of memory; in a snap, certain smells bring us back to a vanished time. And our future selves evaluate the past, try to grasp and relive those memories (vainly), and our minds are consumed with "longing for impossible voyages through time."

One theme that already appears, and which I think becomes a pet subject for Proust, is the damaging effect that the force of habit (l’habitude) can have in the way we perceive our lives. Habit damps our sensorial abilities and becomes a kind of death, because the everyday routine kills our potential to experience And while he is not a vitalist (like his grandmother), he is a “sensorialist” (!). Although Proust acknowledges that to adopt habits is also necessary, to a certain degree.

In this early section I have found so far two clear sections with this theme. But his writing itself is already putting in practice this fighting the deadening effect of unaware living

I think it is a big theme indeed. In some translations, it is capitalised throughout as Habit, when Proust speaks of its effects. It's one of the pernicious forces of life which he points out to both us and himself.

I have liked the way the Narrator’s grandmother sees a danger in the way photography reproduces art, and how engravings are a preferable way to reproduce paintings. The Narrator is aware of the double removal that photographs of engravings of paintings present.

This idea goes straight into Walter Benjamin’s attack on “reproductions” of art, dated 1936, in his essay , included in the volume
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Proustitute wrote: "As for the magic lantern, I quite like Gerard Bertrand's series of Proust, Photographies recomposées, from which this image is taken (click for larger):


"

These are great, Proustitute.

Curious why ISOLT as a title is one you aren't thrilled by -- apart from RoTP being more lyrical, as you say, don't you find ISOLT to be more accurate, not only as far as the French title goes but also in how the search is an essential part of the novel?


I do find it more accurate and a core part of the story. However, when I first came across Proust in a bookstore (I was probably 18 or so), it was the Vintage set that the store had, and so that title just stuck. Plus (and back to smells again), those books had a certain, wonderful smell to them, as they still do. Sounds strange, but that's it.

Liberty wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I have liked the way the Narrator’s grandmother sees a danger in the way photography reproduces art, and how engravings are a preferable way to reproduce paintings. The Narrator i..."

No, not that I recall. I read Benjamin long ago, but some of his ideas (like this one on reproductions) come back to my mind easily... But I do not remember one on Proust. Where can I find it?

The essay on reproductions is this one:

http://design.wishiewashie.com/HT5/Wa...

Proustitute wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I have liked the way the Narrator’s grandmother sees a danger in the way photography reproduces art, and how engravings are a preferable way to reproduce paintings. The Narrator i..."

A thread where readers could share their Proust "ah-ha" moment(s) would be terribly satisfying.

Liberty wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I have liked the way the Narrator’s grandmother sees a danger in the way photography reproduces art, and how engravings are a preferable way to reproduce paintings. The Narrator i..."

What has been a bit of a shock to me is that Proust wrote this long long before Benjamin. While we all trace back this idea back to Benjamin when it should probably be, at least, back to Proust.

ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "A thread where readers could share their Proust "ah-ha" moment(s) would be terribly satisfying."

Here ya go, ReemK10.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Walter Benjamin was the German translator of Proust!!.. I did not know.


http://www.amazon.de/Gesammelte-Schri...

That is an absolutely beautiful Turner painting! I forget that he paints in other colors beside the brilliant gold. I'll have to modify a photograph of mine to look like that.

I appreciate the esthetics of an engraver documenting the art piece. There is more of a personal touch when an artist records an art work, rather than any photographer technician recording the piece. However, the invention of photography have propelled painters and other visual artists to find a new mode of expression that is beyond merely copying the subject, but to develop a more personal and interpretative point of view. Photography eventually became an art in its own right, and have developed its own esthetics and conflicting point of view as to what makes good photographic art.

Liberty wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "No, not that I recall. I read Benjamin long ago, but some of his ideas (like this one on reproductions) come back to my mind easily... But I do not remember one on Proust. Where ca..."

Yes it is..!!.. I have to see if I can find it on its own, because that book is in storage.

Interesting passage in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections on Proust and newspaper reporting:

"the past is [quoting Proust] 'somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect, and unmistakably present in some material object (or in the sensation which such an object arouses in us), though we have no idea which one it is...' [end quote]

According to Proust, it is a matter of chance whether an individual forms an image of himself, whether he can take hold of his experience. It is by no means inevitable to be dependent on chance in this matter. Man's inner concerns do not have their issueless private character by nature. They do so only when he is increasingly unable to assimilate the data of the world around him by way of experience. Newspapers constitute one of many evidences of such an inability....But its intention is just the opposite, and it is achieved: to isolate what happens from the realm in which it could affect the experience of the reader...(Karl Kraus never tired of demonstrating the great extent to which the linguistic usage of newspapers paralyzed the imagination of their readers.)...

...The replacement of the older narration by information, of information by sensation, reflects the increasing atrophy of experience....It is not the object of the story to convey a happening per se, which is the purpose of information; rather, it embeds it in the life of the storyteller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening..."

I bold the last line because it is significant to why Proust writes the way he writes.

"How perfect is that image of the blossoming paper in the porcelain bowl?"

Exquisite...an entire world sprung into being from his cup of tea. The description of unfolding...fleshing out of memory...as flat pieces of paper are 'baptized' (just as the madeleine was dunked) to create a rich world forgotten and now remembered. Such a delicate and powerful passage.

Something I find myself wondering is to what extent the consciousness of the narrator of the novel actually represents the way Proust's own mind worked, and to what extent it's a literary device which heightens and exaggerates for artistic effect. For instance, the great focus on detail, the intense sensory experience, and the way the consciousness is so very controlled by association that the mind constantly switches to and from various points in time, and various places, and none takes precedence as the here and now, but all are equally vivid and detailed and part of the experience, no matter how long ago or how far away.

I'm curious because I was under the impression that most people's minds don't work like this. Mine does, as I'm on the autism spectrum, but my understanding was that most people's minds automatically filter information, block out most of the details, and don't follow every association. They don't, for instance, automatically think of every single bed they've ever been in when they wake up and don't know where they are. If this is the way Proust's mind really worked, maybe he was on the autism spectrum.

Gail wrote: "Something I find myself wondering is to what extent the consciousness of the narrator of the novel actually represents the way Proust's own mind worked, and to what extent it's a literary device wh..."

Gail, I don't think Proust is in the spectrum, but I think creative minds do pay attention to certain details and create more active linkages than the norm. Here is an interesting FYI on creativity by Dr. Nancy Andreasen, a leading expert on creativity.

http://nancyandreasen.com/id2.html
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/s...

Proust not only had a vivid knack for detail, but he asked detailed questions, too. He would pres people, make them repeat their responses with sufficient detail so he could get an intimate picture of everything.

But I can see why you can see a similarity between a person within the autistic spectrum and a creative type's attention to detail that are often overlooked by others, since that is often a quality of a person within the autistic spectrum.

Ah, yes, I do read novels as fiction - I just wonder, sometimes, about the lives/minds of the authors who created them. Most don't seem (to me) to be on the spectrum, but occasionally one does. Then I google and generally discover other people have speculated it too, but no one seems to have speculated it with Proust.

Thanks for the links, Aloha. Creativity is an interesting thing - there is, for instance, the link between mental illness and creativity/genius, and so I wonder whether a mind that works differently is more likely to be creative, because it explores things in unusual ways.

To me, this isn't about natural gifts or tendencies. I think it's the reverse: he's talking about experiences that we've all had at least once or twice and trying to nail them down, to dissect and unravel them. [ed to add: to make a natural process unnatural, by rendering it into art]

I think that's why he writes about art so often. Not because artists are a different breed or class of person but because art is about mediating experience, freezing and capturing experience in a way that can be properly examined.

There's been a little discussion of the title. I'm not too fussed about the translation (I like both), but in this case it's a cue for us. In Search of Lost Time isn't a memoir - it's a project. And right now, in these pages, he's telling us both the question and the answer.

Madame X wrote: "To me, this isn't about natural gifts or tendencies. I think it's the reverse: he's talking about experiences that we've all had at least once or twice and trying to nail them down, to dissect and ..."

This is exactly what I, as a person on the autism spectrum, do. I have to analyse everything in great detail to fully understand it. The experiences that others don't need to put into words, I have to put into words. Not that everyone who does this is autistic, but it's something a high-functioning autistic person has to do to function effectively in the world, as the mind doesn't process the world automatically.

I wasn't really talking about natural gifts or tendencies though - I was thinking about how Proust has created a fictional consciousness which is very very influenced by association. I was thinking either he has created a consciousness which is deliberately unusual, or he is depicting how his own mind works. Or else he has distorted reality for artistic effect, which I think is what you are suggesting.

(There's also the fact that this narrator, as a boy, gets incredibly distressed if his bedtime ritual is disrupted. Of course, this could be true of any kid, but it's generally heightened in autistic kids, and so together with all the details, the associations, and all the sensory sensitivity, just made me wonder. Maybe, though, by simply freezing and dissecting and magnifying regular experience, he is unwittingly creating something which seems to me more like an autistic experience.)

I'm reading this for the first time, so I don't know the significance of the title. If it's a project for the narrator to remember everything (I haven't yet become aware of this through what the narrator has written) then I guess it could be compared to Sterne's Tristram Shandy, although obviously very different in style and tone. So I wonder to what extent the narrator (like Tristram Shandy) is aware of the impossibility of such a project, and so maybe the detail and association is a way of demonstrating this - that each moment is filled with so much detail, and so much association, that it's impossible to recount all the time that one has lived. Each moment doesn't even stay within itself but crosses over to other moments, and becomes a vast, limitless chaos. I've actually tried such projects myself, and found the impossibility of them for this very reason.

@Proustitute - yes, habit is a strong theme in the narrator's mind. Although I don't see ritual as so different from habit. We call it 'ritual' in certain situations, and 'habit' in others, but there is a lot of overlap.

And I don't necessarily see the two interpretations as mutually exclusive. You're talking about an overall theme of the book, which is of course there, but I'm talking about a detail of experience, which, while it relates to the overall theme, may also relate to a certain way the mind works.

It's not impossible, because this isn't Borges or Sterne, it's not an exhaustive catalogue. The success lies in the depth of the memory he resuscitates (how closely it duplicates lived experience), not the breadth (how many details he can hammer down). But, in writing, the profusion of detail informs us how complete the memory is.

And he's already succeeded, with the madeleine. First the experience comes to him by chance. Then he chases it. He tries in different ways - by removing distractions, by concentrating on distractions, by repetition. He persists when he would rather not and ultimately the whole world of Combray opens up for him, like the Japanese game.

I'm thinking if there's a sort of Socratic progression here. How Socrates talks about learning earthly love, and then romantic love, and then pure love - Proust is talking about categories of longing. His mother's kiss, concrete and offered on a regular schedule. Swann, who waits and waits for a woman. And now the narrator, in his old age, chasing after time, which will never turn around for him.

(view spoiler)[But really, the only thing he's successful in capturing is time. It's terrible. (hide spoiler)]

Well, that depends on what you mean by ritual. Gail, I think your definition of a ritual is a mental compulsion to repeat things, without deep meaning behind it. Then there are rituals that are important because of meaning, such as a religious ritual. Here's a passage that suggests the reason why his mother's kiss is important, the "kiss of peace."

"Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her “Kiss me just once more,” but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to give me this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such rituals absurd, and she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the habit, of having her there at all, let alone get into the habit of asking her for an additional kiss when she was already crossing the threshold. And to see her look displeased destroyed all the calm and serenity she had brought me a moment before, when she had bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a host for an act of peace-giving communion in which my lips might imbibe her real presence and with it the power to sleep."

Madame X wrote: "It's not impossible, because this isn't Borges or Sterne, it's not an exhaustive catalogue. The success lies in the depth of the memory he resuscitates (how closely it duplicates lived experience),..."

I meant it's impossible for a person to recall every single moment of their life, in all the detail, with all the limitless associations. Even if a person had a flawless memory for every single moment of their life, I think it would be impossible to fully depict every single association and thought and detail. There's always more a person can say. And of course, as they write, life is still happening, so they are creating new memories to write.

Oh wow, geez, I can tell already I'm going to be pretty useless here—I can barely keep up with the threads. Aloha, I don't know if that passage relates so much the importance of his mother's kiss as rather the comfort he finds in the habit of it. I like the emphasis he places here on the thrill of the anticipation of the kiss rather than on the kiss itself. I think it's important that the joy we find in the things we look forward to is actually in the "looking forward" part. By the time his mother has entered the room, that kiss is practically in the past already.

Anyway, I came here to say that I'm always surprisingly pleased when I come across humor in a novel I expect to be serious and difficult. Humor is super important to me. That whole bit about him being a grown man and doing as grown men do by going off and crying by himself is something I found endearingly amusing.

Oh, and P—I love that you have learned how to embed HTML so that someone can click on a picture to enlarge it. You make me proud!

Aloha wrote: "Well, that depends on what you mean by ritual. Gail, I think your definition of a ritual is a mental compulsion to repeat things, without deep meaning behind it. Then there are rituals that are i..."

I don't believe ritual is meaningless. I was thinking of the kind of ritual an autistic person has, when they associate a certain behaviour/act/word with a certain part of their routine (like going to bed), and this ritual becomes necessary in their mind for the completion of this routine, to provide peace and comfort and familiarity.

In reality, everyone has their own rituals, and feels incomplete without them, but people generally don't call them rituals unless they are talking about an autistic person (or about some official ceremony, like religious communion, as you say - but religious rituals can also seem meaningless to those who don't understand them)! They are normally called habits. I guess because an autistic person's rituals don't always make sense to an outsider, and also it can be harder for an autistic person to accept not having the ritual. Most children would just accept that they don't have a kiss from their mother on some days.

Aloha wrote: "Well, that depends on what you mean by ritual. Gail, I think your definition of a ritual is a mental compulsion to repeat things, without deep meaning behind it. Then there are rituals that are i..."

Funny, I find religious rituals to be meaningless; they seems to me to be mindless recitations and symbolic gesturing more than anything, but that's a digression.

To bring it around, prayer is a ritual that many people practice before going to sleep, and I suppose its meaning could be in their association of prayer with sleep, and yet they could wake in the middle of the night, or the next morning, and realize they had forgotten to pray, but had fallen asleep anyway, much like our narrator who recalls waking in the morning and realizing he drifted off even without his mother coming to say goodnight.

I don't think I'm making a point (or counterpoint); more of a small inquiry into the circumstances of, shall we say, the necessities of life (e.g. sleep) and the habitual (or ritualistic, whatever the differences may be) associations we make therewith.

(P.S. I'm behind on the thread as well, but I wanted to make my presence known).

Jason wrote: "I don't know if that passage relates so much the importance of his mother's kiss as rather the comfort he finds in the habit of it. I like the emphasis he places here on the thrill of the anticipation of the kiss rather than on the kiss itself. I think it's important that the joy we find in the things we look forward to is actually in the "looking forward" part. By the time his mother has entered the room, that kiss is practically in the past already."

Great point, Jason. So much in Proust seems to have relevance to Buddhism - the inextricable connection between desire and suffering, the illusory nature of sense perception.

Someone in these forums (I forget) mentioned 'wisdom' as the target of the Search. The distance between Proust the author and Marcel the narrator is enormous in this context: Marcel spends most of the time bound up in obsessions, self-deceptions and misperceptions. The way Proust shows us wisdom is most often through his 'own' negative example (as Marcel).

Regarding ritual. I reckon it's impossible fully to understand the meaning of a ritual without participating in it. Its meaning is only realised by its practise; it can't be translated into a logical proposition or an argument. An analysis of a ritual can never exhaust its meaning, though it might enrich our understanding of it.

Anthropologically speaking (yes, FWIW, I achieved a degree in Anthropology...) meaning can come from two directions. There's the meaning participants give to it, and meaning those outside it can generate. I.e. there is what people do, what they say about why they do it, and what those looking at the situation think is "really" going on. Neither viewpoint is privileged. This is to understand a more literal meaning of ritual, rather than "I kiss my bat every time I step up to the plate" type of ritual, though that too could be analysed in the way above.

So, in a way I'd agree with you Joshua. Ritual can have many subtexts and meanings, known to their participants, known to none ("I don't know why we do this but we always have") or known to an outsider. The true value of it depends on your agenda :) (academic understanding, study, versus one's way of life -doing the ritual.) Performance does = meaning usually, but each party takes what meaning they need to from it.

To my mind Proust would have made a great sociologist or anthropologist. His probing mind misses nothing, though his downfall would have been essays (I think he would have had trouble with stipulated word count limits...:p)

Fwiw also I wasn't a great Anthropologist, mainly because I found Proust in my second year of University... :D

Proustitute wrote: "Joshua, have you read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's The Weather in Proust? She offers a really wonderful Buddhist reading of the Recherche there in the title essay. "

Sounds fascinating! I'm going to order a copy straight away. Maybe start a new auxiliary thread.

Nick wrote: "Anthropologically speaking (yes, FWIW, I achieved a degree in Anthropology...) meaning can come from two directions. There's the meaning participants give to it, and meaning those outside it can ge..."

Very well put! For me, the experiential is primary, the analytic secondary. I suppose your more relativistic formulation ('neither viewpoint is privileged') is more sensible in that there are things that can be known or seen by an outsider that participants don't or can't see.

Gail wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Well, that depends on what you mean by ritual. Gail, I think your definition of a ritual is a mental compulsion to repeat things, without deep meaning behind it. Then there are ritu..."

I was using religious rituals as an example because they originated with meaning behind them, but I agree that religious rituals can turn into a habit without meaning. I agree, Gail, that if an autistic person's actions has meaning and connection behind it, then it's a ritual. If it's merely doing things for comfort, without further meaning, then it's a habit.

The narrator requiring a kiss from his mother every night is a ritual to me. He puts deep association with her kiss, of peace and love.

I'm reading ISOLT with the knowledge that I've gotten from auxiliary or secondary readings: Jean Milly (La Phrase de Proust) who speaks of Proust's own writings as a parallel to the writing of one of his characters, Bergotte & Brian Rogers (Proust's Narrative Techniques) who, along with many others, speaks of Proust's 'double narration,' his ability to write from an earlier & a later narrator in the first person.

In the 3rd sentence of ISOLT Proust (after a semicolon in the Davis translation) shifts temporal narrators. This new "I" is the same as the "I" who began the novel but time has passed, the new narrator reflects, comments, etc., on many things, but certainly on time passed.

Thanks to the group for the effort and idea of setting this all up for us. I would not likely be reading this yet otherwise, which would be regrettable since I'm quite enjoying it.

We all sleep, and a lot, it's a great way to start. I was suddenly reminded of cool white sheets from grandmother's, how dreadfully cold her room always was, the coldest I've ever slept, and darkest, and whirling fans and also all the times I wake up and sleep is still pressing on me, my dreams are still masked over me and it's such an ordeal to put everything in place and shed away the sleep and sheets from one's eyes.

I am just train-of-thought-rambling. I would like to make madeleine now, has anyone? I am also surprised about the tone and difficulty of the book so far... I was expecting super serious hard stuff. It's time to give Proust to the masses!

RE autism: I don't think so, but granted I've read so little. I think the ritual with his mother has more meaning than what I have experienced with autism, which just seem to be laid out patterns in the mind to soothe or otherwise completely disrupt thinking, like speed-bumps. I do not personally experience the type of thinking style a la Grandin where when I think of a dog I have to think of every dog I've ever seen.

Gail wrote: "I'm curious because I was under the impression that most people's minds don't work like this. Mine does, as I'm on the autism spectrum, but my understanding was that most people's minds automatically filter information, block out most of the details, and don't follow every association. They don't, for instance, automatically think of every single bed they've ever been in when they wake up and don't know where they are. If this is the way Proust's mind really worked, maybe he was on the autism spectrum."

I think the experience of waking up and not knowing in which bed you are is quite common, Proust only stylized it? I've moved a lot in the last 5 years and sometimes when I wake up I'm not sure in which room / bed I am - it's not Proust's detailed memory, but it is a moment of confusion?

Although (what I think we would call) mental illness is a running theme throughout the novel. When the narrator starts to cry after his mother agrees to come and sleep in his room, he narrates,

And thus for the first time my unhappiness was regarded no longer as a fault for which I must be punished, but as an involuntary evil which had been officially recognised as a nervous condition for which I was in no way responsible; I had the consolation that I need no longer mingle apprehensive scruples with the bitterness of my tears; I could weep henceforward without sin.

People seem to give a lot of oedipal / psychoanalytical readings to the episode of the goodnight kiss and relate it to love / longing, but I think its significance in shaping the Narrator's consciousness of himself as somebody with (something resembling?) neurasthenia, who can't control their 'impulses' and for whom this lack of control isn't a 'sin', shouldn't be under-estimated.

I do not see the Narrator as a child as either autistic, nor mentally ill in any way.

I just see him as very sensitive, or as we say in Spanish (no direct translation in English, which is telling) as "mimoso", which means something like: "someone with an attitude of needing and wanting and giving sweet affection". In French a word with a similar but not exactly the same meaning would be "cajoleux"

I think the Narrator-child is perfectly conscious of what he wants, of what he needs to do to get it and what he is willing to risk.

And he is relieved that the adults have finally given in and admitted that he is of a "nerveux" nature, and therefore that he is no longer guilty and has achieved his freedom. It is as if he was won the battle.

We are also dealing with a nineteenth century concept of what "a nervous personality" was.

Kalliope wrote: "I do not see the Narrator as a child as either autistic, nor mentally ill in any way.

I just see him as very sensitive, or as we say in Spanish (no direct translation in English, which is tellin..."

I totally agree with your assessment, Kalliope. I think in this instance, there is too much rush to assess the Narrator as mentally ill or disabled in any way. I think he is very sensitive and is reacting to his environment. He has a doting mother and a distant father. It is normal in such an environment to cling to the loving parent. Any time we are lavished attention and love, even if a small part of it is taken away, we feel a sense of dejection.

Aloha wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I do not see the Narrator as a child as either autistic, nor mentally ill in any way.

I just see him as very sensitive, or as we say in Spanish (no direct translation in English..."

Aloha, I am glad that at least one other person agrees with me... After posting my comment I was wondering if it would upset some people.

Thinking more about the risks he thought he was running (severe punishment inflicted by the father), he did not reckon with what happened and which upset him. He knew he had disappointed his mother irremediably.

This deep understanding of someone else's feelings is not shown in autism.

Kalliope wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I do not see the Narrator as a child as either autistic, nor mentally ill in any way.

I just see him as very sensitive, or as we say in Spanish (no direct translat..."

When I was a kid, we just called them "momma's boys". Usually part of the opening taunts leading to schoolyard fights...

We are, of course, reading fiction and not a case study, so it probably won't be profitable to debate the mental health of a fictional character.

If it were possible to travel in time and interview this fictional child, I'm sure he wouldn't have had the vocabulary or self-awareness to describe the habit/ritual/longing for maman's kiss the way the 40-something real world Proust described it. It is a memory, but it is also a fantasy colored by the interim of time and greatly romanticized by Proust's love for his dead mother.

If Proust's remembrances are an exploration of his favorite subject, that being himself, and if he believes that memory is imperfect(" corrupted by the lies of the remembering process"), then he has given us a reading of a somewhat fictional account of his childhood. Could he be playing with memory/recollection to prove somme other point( beyond the obvious) that we are to intuit somehow, particularly since he has provided us with detailed description of his mental state of mind?