The Year of Reading Proust discussion

Not much is written about Proust's syntax (if you have references I'd appreciate them) but that is one reason why I began to read ISOLT several years ago; not having read his sentences, they frightened me, I dreaded them, they made me feel anxious like a child having to sleep without my goodnight kiss. But after reading some of Swann's Way tweeted at 140 characters an hour @proustr, I opened the book--why should I be afraid.

I wouldn't say I've read ISOLT, even though I've read most all of its 7 volumes & some passages many times, I say I'm reading ISOLT & I probably always will be reading Proust or about him.

"Still, even in its haphazard state, the work (Jean Santeuil) is valuable for its record of the development of Proust’s voice. He has evolved the comparatively simple sentences of his early stories into much longer, winding periods.

He has also drawn out his penchant for using multiple perspectives into a method of cursory description, looping around an event a chain of interpretations or analogies: 'the Duchess left the room to make tea, saying, "Those who would like some of my tea had better come too," as though her tea was a commodity supplied under letters patent, a delicious and forbidden pleasure, a sort of a test by which to separate the sheep from the goats….'

Here and in his contemporary essays, Proust gave potent evidence of his engagement in working out the terms of a style of mind, the deadly precision of his observations and the elaborate control of his sentences provoking one writer to announce, “Marcel Proust is the devil”."

http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wi...

Proustitute wrote: "Moonbutterfly wrote: "This reminds me of the idea, the reality of an event is less important than one's perception of it. "

Or, and maybe this is what Proust is getting at, there is no such thing ..."

This is my first time with the entire "Remembrance" but my second with "Swann's Way." I read the original Moncrieff translation and I have to say that this is a much smoother, more gripping and personal read thus far in the revision! It reminds me of Pevear and Volokhovsky's work translating Tolstoy.
But in this initial reading...especially since Proust will soon be focusing on "Place-Names," I was again struck by something related to Moonbutterfly and Proustitute's comments. Proust is a master of subjective reality, of course, but what strikes me most in this beginning is something which happens quite a bit through "Swann's Way" and I anticipate will happen more and more as he darts through the chronology: the power of names. Marcel (I call the narrator Marcel, I can't help it, so expect this for the rest of the year) associates names and objects alike with certain qualities and sensations, the Madeleine most obviously, but the other characters all do as well and it is these differing perceptions which drive the drama and conflict. In this initial instance, Marcel, the child on the verge of manhood, still sees himself as a child, while his mother sees him as a growing person...it is this disparity which makes her so reluctant to give him the kiss. And Swann is so closely associated with his father that the others in Marcel's family cannot recognize his standing for what it is in a changing world. The name "Swann" is too close to the other Swanns for them to see the difference in this particular Swann.
I'm curious to see how this continues over the course of the next six volumes...and what I'll remember and rediscover for the rest of "Swann's Way."

ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote: "My reading style is such that I don't concern myself too much with details of the how and why of the story but enjoy reading to discover an author's/translator's pla..."

I'm learning as I go along, too, ReemK10. I have an art background, so you're not alone. Please feel free to chip in on what you notice in your reading. Sometimes a fresh eye is better than someone who came to the book with preconceived notions. You might notice things that others did not. And please don't delete your posts unless it's of Paris Hilton. Some of us may appreciate the post, but do not respond. This thread is going really well, so I'm quietly enjoying the updates.

Eugene, regarding syntax, I am curious about it, but would have no idea how to analyse it, as I don't know French well enough to be aware of subtleties of wording. Are there any particular things that you've observed to be unique/unusual about his syntax? (Other than some unusually long sentences, I guess!)

J.A. wrote: "Kalliope wrote: And this waving to-and-from in time continues for the rest of the book it seems….

Amazing.

I would add that simultaneously, there are shifts in consciousness, whether from young ..."

Yes, I agree. Those continuous shifts that break perceptions but create others.

I went this afternoon to an exhibition on portraits from the Modernist period (brought from the Pompidou center) and I kept looking at Matisse, Delaunay, Picasso, Modigliani, Bonnard etc.. thinking of those shifts in Proust's narrative.

I finished the first section of the reading a few days ago and am now just catching up on the thread. Wow.

I have to say that while I'm struck with the passions of the Narrator's memories of himself as a child, I can't find anything 'abnormal', 'in or out of spectrum', 'Oedipal' or anything other than a range of emotions a kid would experience in the type of household in which he (or she) grew up. In other words, there seems to me to be a completely internal consistency to the whole thing (whether either fictional or authorbiographical - oops was that a Freudian slip - I meant to type auto!) and that consistency is a contextual flag which (to me) proves Proust's honesty - ie, his values are reflected in what he writes, irrespective of whether it is roman a clef or otherwise.

He shows a sensitivity to fears children experience (and a deep understanding of how insensitive adults can perceive those fears) and the wonder is that he writes so clearly as an adult sifting those memories not just for the portrayal of the Narrator as a child but the Narrator's memories of all the other characters.

While I have to admit that thirty pages to describe the memories (conflated, separated, re-visited) of rolling over in bed as demanding a keen effort on behalf of the reader, it must certainly be one of the most comprehensive ever written.

Oh dear...my internet connection broke and I just realised I had missed one hundred comments before posting mine. Please excuse me.

Erm...lots of wonderful comments. Being new to Proust I doing my due reading before due diligence so have not much to say (that's not already been said, in one form or another).

Although I finished reading this (and the next) section in the last week of December, I'm only now getting around to reading the comments. My thanks to everyone who has contributed the comments. I'm not sure if I'll have much to add at this point.

Thirteen years ago, I listened to an unabridged cassette type audiobook of Swann's Way on my daily commute, and was only mildly intrigued. But it probably wasn't the best way to read Proust.


Now I've got the complete D.J. Enright bundle of six book on my Kindle. What I discovered is that I love reading Proust. His long sentences, his vivid details are a marvel of writing. Even the pace (which would be unforgivably slow by contemporary standards) is captivating and refreshing: there is no rush and it would be wrong to read in a mad hurry to the end. The joy is in the reading. I missed that in the audiobook the first time around.

Scribble wrote: "I finished the first section of the reading a few days ago and am now just catching up on the thread. Wow.

I have to say that while I'm struck with the passions of the Narrator's memories of hims..."

Having experience with children, I see it as not much more than something similar to a temper tantrum. He made himself very upset.

Aloha wrote: He made himself very upset.

It was also a lot of emotional drama for a little boy growing up in a strict environment. First he decides to defy his parents and stay up for one more kiss from his mother, anticipating his mother's anger. Then there's the drama with the letter, the long wait, seeing his mother, and then the extraordinary encounter with the father who is unexpectedly compassionate and sends the mother to spend the night with the boy. Finally the joy of having his mother at last countered by his knowledge that he should send her away. A lot of emotions for one night!

Scribble, I also read his closeness with his mother as being non-Freudian, non-neurotic, if you will. :)

J.A. wrote: "It was also a lot of emotional drama for a little boy growing up in a strict environment..."

Certainly yes. I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but as an only child, he would have been lonely, especially at night. If he had a sibling to play with, he probably would have been less clingy. I don't have any children, so maybe a parent might chime in on this thought.

Bye bye.

Read you all in next week's thread.

I'm Swann'ing around lurking about reading all of these fascinating posts and observations.

Kalliope wrote: "I decided to go back to the begining because I wanted to pay more attention to the way the Narrator shifts backwards and forwards in time.

Someone earlier on in this thread had wondered whether i..."

I found this perspective that helps explain the shifts in time.

"Put simply, people seem to think that the “lost time” of the title denotes the past, but in fact it denotes the present. More specifically, it implies a present that is present to itself in all its plenitude. So why, you might ask, was there all this talk of involuntary memory? Why care so much about memory if what you really want is a full present? It is my thesis that it was not involuntary memory as such that interested Proust, but rather the problem of narrating the atemporal plenitude which that memory implied. In short, Proust raised to the level of a literary phenomenology the split between Erzählzeit (time of narrating)and erzählte Zeit (narrated time)."

http://thinkingblueguitars.wordpress....

And @Aloha, thanks hun :)

Jim wrote: "J.A. wrote: "It was also a lot of emotional drama for a little boy growing up in a strict environment..."

Certainly yes. I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but as an only child, he wou..."

Children are sensitive to the dynamics between parents. It was mentioned that the father disapproved of the mother's coddling of the boy. The mother has been trying to go along with the father's wish and trying to remedy that. In an environment where the child has been fussed over, due to a sickly disposition, the mother's distancing is a traumatic blow. It's during this tense period that the child would most likely act up in order to prevent the change.

ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I decided to go back to the begining because I wanted to pay more attention to the way the Narrator shifts backwards and forwards in time.

Someone earlier on in this thread had w..."

That is a terrific analysis on the usage of the complex French tenses and time. Boy, I really need to brush up on my French. Thanks!

Nick wrote: "I'm Swann'ing around lurking about reading all of these fascinating posts and observations."

Haha, I feel the same.
It's my first time reading Proust, and I don't know anything about ISOLT. So I'm flabbergasted following this discussion!

ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "http://thinkingblueguitars.wordpress...."

Kalliope, I wonder whether the Moncrieff translation is faithful to the subtle shift in tenses. You're fluent in French and will have an easier time of noting that. Can we get an accurate play with time based only on the Moncrieff translation? Since this is important to the theme of the book, I would think the translator would be sensitive to that.

ReemK10 wrote: "...Sometimes a fresh eye is better than someone who came to the book with preconceived notions. You might notice things that others did not."

Gail Wrote: "...Are there any particular things that you've observed to be unique/unusual about his syntax?"

ReemK10 I agree with you about "a fresh eye" but I'm selfish; the reason I'm reading ISOLT (& secondary texts) is to become a better writer; I want to focus on the smaller portions (as I suspect Proust did) of his writing. The quotes were a preamble, but bear with me for one more, as Malcolm Bowie, "Proust and the Art of Brevity" from the Cambridge Companion, ed. Bales, says it so much better than I.

"Proust's novel has always been famous for being long…Yet brevity too is a Proustian watchword…Proust's writing (in "the phrase, the sentence and that of the self-contained narrative episode") can often be brisk, pithy, pointed, laconic, concise, poetically compacted, and it would be unfortunate if these qualifies came to be obscured by his long-range plotting, his wide-angle view of French society or the headlong inventiveness of his 'grand style'."

Gail, I plan to share my 'fresh eye' observations here of his "unique/unusual" syntax in as much time as I have in the 2nd week & beyond.

Great discussions! I have the feeling we will end up with something even better than Patrick Alexander's book, lol.
Not sure anyone mentioned it, but it strikes me this time, I had not perceived this before, how many ironic passages there are.
My evaluation is that Proust uses self-irony as a key for revisiting and interpreting his past. I may be totally off, have not done critical reading for ages. That would be one of the clues for the backwards/forwards shifts.

Moonbutterfy wrote: " In Roger Shattuck's book, he states Proust uses what grammarians call the hypotactic and paratactic style; the hypotactic style being used for the majority of the book."

Occasionally, but rarely, Proust uses parataxis, e.g. in a series or a series-like structure.

Both you & Shattuck are right, Proust is a hypotactic writer.

Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote: "...Sometimes a fresh eye is better than someone who came to the book with preconceived notions. You might notice things that others did not."

Gail Wrote: "...Are there any particul..."

Actually it was Aloha who said those words. I think it's a great idea to read Proust if you want to write like Proust. It should be fun to see you master his writing style. I would suggest that you read aloud to educate the ear.

Listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTIXKU... over and over, and over again and learn the rhythm.

ReemK10 wrote : "Listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTIXKU... over and over..."

It would even put the narrator to sleep ;-)

Yes Neville Jason is excellent; Proust writes in "a conversational style". He is a good listen. I have all 7 volumes of Remembrance of Things Past (unabridged, Neville Jason reads the Moncrieff translation) from audible.com.

Nick wrote: "I'm Swann'ing around lurking about reading all of these fascinating posts and observations."

Same.

Aubrey wrote: "Nick wrote: "I'm Swann'ing around lurking about reading all of these fascinating posts and observations."

Same."

I was wondering if anyone would do that Swann pun! I love it!

Madame X wrote: "Proustitute wrote: "Why had I forgotten the dualistic portrait of Swann that Proust creates in these opening scenes?"

That struck me too - but I thought it was so appropriate that the book starts ..."

Great, "parallels", P. The reading is already deepening.

Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote : "Listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTIXKU... over and over..."

It would even put the narrator to sleep ;-)

Yes Neville Jason is excellent; Proust writes in "a convers..."

:) I doubt that. Just pick up the rhythm and then start writing with the speed of the words and the way they sound in your head. If you have the audio, then listen to it as you read. You'll soon be speaking like Neville Jason too. Cheers.

Aloha wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "http://thinkingblueguitars.wordpress...."

Kalliope, I wonder whether the Moncrieff translation is faithful to the subtle shift in tenses. You're fluent i..."

Aloha,

I cannot really answer your question. I am reading La recherche in French, but because I am not reading any English translation (except in the Karpeles book, which was a mistake on my part to buy in the English version), I cannot say whether Moncrieff or Davis are rendering well the subtleties of the various past tenses that French has. But my guess is that these translators feel very comfortable with both languages and can render the differences very well.

I will post my opinion on this Blueguitars blog as a direct response to the original posting.

ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "I decided to go back to the begining because I wanted to pay more attention to the way the Narrator shifts backwards and forwards in time.

Someone earlier on in this thread had w..."

ReemK10,


I agree with the author of this blog in that one has to pay attention to the subtleties of the different uses of the past tense in French, whether it is the incisive Passé simple, the continuous Imparfait, or the finished state of the Pluperfect. But I think this author is, as we say in Spanish, curling the curls (complicating the complicated – rizar el rizo). The passé simple to me does not indicate a present. It is just very incisive on the very moment at which something, very clearly in the past, happened.

So, I find the opinion of the author of the one comment in this blog, much more convincing. Signed by Andrew Kahn, whom I think is Proustitute, our Chief Moderator and our Humble Servant. Kahn thinks that in Proust the present is always absent.

As I have barely began reading La recherche, I cannot be entirely certain, but Kahn's interpretation seems to me, now, to be in the right direction.

Proust's French presents some difficulties to a translator. We often have to make do with the preterite (passe simple). Proust defeats the would be translator right from his first sentence. It is a bit tricky to really convey how it reads to a French person correctly in English.

Prendergast has a nice essay in LRB about some difficulties for translators of Proust here:

I will reproduce it here:

"Scott Moncrieff renders it as ‘For a long time I used to go to bed early.’ Terence Kilmartin reproduced this in his revised translation, but Enright, in his revision of Kilmartin, has altered ‘used to go’ to ‘would go’. In addition, James Grieve’s Swann’s Way offers the refreshingly simple ‘Time was when I always went to bed early’, while Richard Howard proposes going into print with ‘Time and again, I have gone to bed early.’


One can argue the toss indefinitely over the respective strengths of these different renderings. (view spoiler)[Grieve’s ‘Time was’ and Howard’s ‘Time and again’ have the merit of beginning with the capitalised word on which the novel also ends, thus tracing a textual circle that mirrors the circular character so often assumed by Proustian Time. On the other hand,| (hide spoiler)] ‘Time was’ is a bit too colloquial for this notoriously indeterminate narrative beginning, while ‘Time and again’ carries an unwarranted implication of the compulsive. Similarly, while ‘used to go’ and ‘would go’ correspond rather to a French imperfect, Howard’s boldly literal ‘have gone’ takes on board the implied imbrication in Proust’s perfect tense of past narrated and present speaking; on the other hand, in French (but not in English) the perfect tense is also routinely the spoken representation of the written preterite.

This grammatical difference already suggests certain incommensurabilities between the systems of French and English. There is, however, a further detail of the opening sentence which none of the five versions captures, but which is directly related to the restless shuttling of the text between identities. (view spoiler)[The movement of Proust’s novel can be described as the attempt to close the gap between ‘hero’ and ‘narrator’, to join the two, like the two ways, Swann’s Way and the Guermantes Way, which are discovered by the narrator in later life to connect up. The novel is based on a subject internally split and dispersed through time. (hide spoiler)] It is significant that its opening sentence should turn not on a transitive or an intransitive verb, but on a reflexive (‘je/me’). Proust’s grammar thus gives us a subject split into nominative and accusative, both speaker and spoken; and the book thus inaugurated is a many-thousand-page detour through that gap. Unsurprisingly, none of the English versions tries to do anything with this (‘I took myself to bed’ might just do, especially in connection with the semi-invalid side of the narrator’s condition, but again has connotations that the French reflexive does not have).

Here we encounter the translator’s problem at the outer limits of the transactable (at which grammatical differences would be joined by paranomasia, where inevitably Proust’s word play, or rather that of his characters, for the most part defeats the translator, who is forced to include the original French in parenthesis."

I like the story where Penguin solicited submissions for people to have a go at the first sentence, and some wag sent in "For absolutely bloody ages it was lights out early."

I favour the "took myself to bed for a long time" sort of translation as it has that reflexive aspect.

I do agree with you Kalli, that the blueguitars post does complicate things a little, especially beginning to introudce German terms (Heideggerian-isms?) into a topic that can be confusing already, to non native speakers of either French or German :P.

I am going to have to read it again to try and understand the concept: "À la Recherche is full of such failed nows; it is for this reason that the “lost time” of the title denotes the present and not the past."

"For absolutely bloody ages it was lights out early" - Hah. Touché - I doff my cap to him.

Richard wrote: "Aubrey wrote: "Nick wrote: "I'm Swann'ing around lurking about reading all of these fascinating posts and observations."

Same."

I was wondering if anyone would do that Swann pun! I love it!"

:)

Thanks, Kalliope. I'm looking forward to your analysis. I'm looking into the meaning of space, which links with memory (memory space), which links with how Proust uses words to illustrate memory. I'd like to finish all seven volumes to see how he architects the church of memory. The more I find out, the more intriguing it becomes.

You might like Bachelard's work on The Poetics of Space, Aloha. Kris mentioned it in another thread a few days ago. Maybe Debord too.

Aloha wrote: "Thanks, Kalliope. I'm looking forward to your analysis. I'm looking into the meaning of space, which links with memory (memory space), which links with how Proust uses words to illustrate memory...."

Yes, the issue of space is another fascinating topic, and you are very right to bring it up. So far one sentence struck me on this, but it belongs to the second week of Comments. I will post it there.

Nick wrote: "You might like Bachelard's work on The Poetics of Space, Aloha. Kris mentioned it in another thread a few days ago. Maybe Debord too."

Thank you Nick. I have seen it around, and it is in on my TBR and I think my shopping basket.

Proustitute wrote: "...to clarify what hypotaxis is"

Hypotaxis/Parataxis

Richard Lantham in Analyzing Prose discusses the terms; he reads a Hemingway paratactic sequence.

Stanley Fish in How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One reads a paratactic sentence by Virginia Woolf from To the Lighthouse.

about.com has definitions & examples of H/P

Late to the discussion group- I just wanted to say I was hesitant to give Proust a try. I'm not very well read- sticking mainly to fantasy novels and magical realism. I'm glad I gave it a try, already there are multiple passages that have stuck in my head- Proust is a lot more accessible than I first thought.

Patricia wrote: "Late to the discussion group- I just wanted to say I was hesitant to give Proust a try. I'm not very well read- sticking mainly to fantasy novels and magical realism. I'm glad I gave it a try, alre..."

Welcome, Patricia. Stick with it. We are peeling the onion and it's enlightening. The wording is not difficult, but the depth is wonderfully deep.

Exhuasted as I have finally caught up with these threads (or I should say THIS thread)! I am going to make sure I have part "3" done by the end of this week so I don't have to devote so much time to catching up! edit: I realize now that this discussion was to take place THROUGH the 6th where I had thought the reading was going to take place through the 6th...

I don't have a lot of new things to say but a few things to add my thoughts to. I will not be reading anything auxiliary so surely some of my thoughts may not be as correct as someone who has read the entirety and has more knowledge of the rest of the book to form their opinions.

Based on the just the first part of Cambray I am not of the opinion that the narrator has an Oedipal complex. We all read this through our personal life experiences and a multitude of fiction and non-fiction that we have read. From my personal experience I remember how important it was for my father to tuck my brother and I in at night. To the point that we would yell for him to come in and it would seem like an eternity at times and I found out much later in life that was because he was reading to my sisters during that time and not simply ignoring us rude children! And in turn my children, more so when they were younger cherished the bed time rituals as much as I did and now do from a parent's perspective. For this reason I am not yet seeing the narrator as having an Oedipal complex with the exception of the passage that compared Swann as waiting downstairs for a lady but that is not enough for me. Perhaps as I get deeper into this vast writing my opinion will change.

I am very pleased that I am enjoying this writing as I expected I would. There was a fear in me that I had committed to a year's worth of reading and would end up not enjoying even though I tend to enjoy authors who are very detail oriented. And when I say details I don't mean so much specific colors of items and such but to go into great detail about his thoughts and memories is so perfect for me. Even still, it is early yet for me to figure on how Proust will compare in my mind to my favorite authors and that will be part of the fun for me to place him somewhere (hopefully high up there).

Knowing that this was going to be a long journey of many words and dense paragraphs I was pleasantly surprised to find the outright humor. And this is common to me when I read older works. I often equate non modern writing to dry and antiquated and it is almost universally the opposite. In many ways the humor is fresh and applicable to my own life and most of the character experiences could be people from today. The two particular humorous incidents that jumped out at me were firstly the scene that Kris mentioned where the Aunts think they are thanking Swann for the wine and he just looks at them confused. The second is the passage where Grandma always buys antiques for people and sometimes a newly wedded couple finds that the chair collapses the first time they use it. There was a lot to like and I find myself highlighting entire paragraphs which is a habit I hadn't gotten into much in the past. One particular passage that was powerful for me from early on:

"When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly bodies. Instinctively he consults them when he awakes and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the time that has elapsed during his slumbers."

A very unique way to describe how we are all naturally obsessed with the passage of time from the moment we wake.

I would also add that I agree with some other people that the Narrator's obsession with his mother's kiss, at least at this point in the book, does not give me the impression that he has a neurosis. Someone aptly pointed out that he is an only child which could lend to his emotions and actions. However, there was one post that suggested that the Narrator was actually a teenager (which I do not agree with but could certainly be wrong!). If that is indeed the case then I would start to think the the boy has some adjustment issues.

Ah, the kiss! The kiss becomes the prototype for adult love experiences (separation, jealousy, paranoia). This panic recurs through the novel. And the fulfillment of the kiss is devastating because it is momentary - to have the kiss is not to have it (it's gone). It's the anguish of time - to have it is not mourn it. The intensity of the narrator's desire cause the desire to stay in the 'not yet'. Loss of the kiss is a sort of loss of life (the bed is as a tomb and a kiss is a 'host' (15) that allows redemption and resurrection (reborn).

The narrator tries to convert the fleeting moment in to stable terms therefore he prepares for it ("as a painter who can hove his subject for short sittings only prepares his pallet") , tries to separate and extract it from those things that diminish it. The kiss is also described as a 'work of art'.

I think it's also important that this narrator's note to his mother is the first act of writing in the book. It was a sort of literary subterfuge to get his mother but also has a secondary function, the letter is an intermediary - a continuation of his own body. The letter being ignored (or misread) also leads the boy to - out of frustration - to literature.

The humour was a welcome discovery to me, on my reading, too Jeremy. I very much understand what you mean about expecting older books to have no humour! What a nice surprise to be proven wrong, and to realise that in fact, we didn't invent humour in the 20th Centruy!

Jeffrey, I hadn't thought about that, the narrator's first writing we see is in its nature manipulative, coercive and full of the sort of innocent guile that only children can have. Might it be a step too far to suggest that this coercion - or rather desire to force a will onto another, to bend our will to theirs, is the foundation of every writer's project? including Proust's? It's a cynical way of looking at things, and your word subterfuge is a well chosen one. Every work of fiction uses this subterfuge I guess. But we tolerate it because suspension of resistance is pleasurable. We enjoy the art.

Regarding the goodnight kiss, Michael Wood has a very good point on this, and how it relates to Proust's real life relationship with his mother. As the narrator says, he feels like he was won a small victory over his mother. Wood (with quotes from Proust) goes on to say that, to adapt a phrase of Wilde, we each of us kill those whom we love, by making them worry for us, concerned for us, mindful of our doings and living.

I like your idea of frustration from the ignored letter leading to literature. Could you elaborate on the dynamics of that, how you see that happen or what clues you into that? I thought really though the kid was just a bit of a bookworm :D

Patricia wrote: "Late to the discussion group- I just wanted to say I was hesitant to give Proust a try. I'm not very well read- sticking mainly to fantasy novels and magical realism. I'm glad I gave it a try, alre..."

I promise it'll be heart-wrenching-soul-wrenching. This is the kind of stuff that makes people cry, even me. We all know Swanns and Odettes...

Nick wrote: "I like the story where Penguin solicited submissions for people to have a go at the first sentence, and some wag sent in "For absolutely bloody ages it was lights out early."

*snort*

Sorry Proust, but it's too priceless.

Thinking more on the conversations about how to integrate biographical information with our reading here, I was wondering if the boundary between author and subject is another one that Proust is explicitly making fluid? I mean, right on the first page, the Narrator blurs boundaries not only between sleeping and waking but also between himself and a book: "I had gone on thinking, while I was asleep, about what I had been reading, but these thoughts had taken a rather peculiar turn; it seemed to me that I myself was the immediate subject of my book."

Then, upon waking, "the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to apply myself to it or not" (ML 1).

Too much of a stretch? If the Narrator can associate and disassociate himself from a book, what does that mean about Proust and this book?

(Apologies if this has already been discussed. You guys move fast!!)

Rachel wrote: "Thinking more on the conversations about how to integrate biographical information with our reading here, I was wondering if the boundary between author and subject is another one that Proust is ex..."

Yes, you are right, but I see these comments on the blurring of the Narrator as reader and the Narrator as the subject of the book as going even deeper than a distinction between fiction and autobiography. These comments raise the more complex issue of Subjectivity, which was one of the major elements Modernism, which fragmented the “subject”.

And that is also why I think it is important to refer to The Narrator as such, rather than as Proust (issue raised somewhere in these threads).

One thing for sure after reading these 64 first pages of ISOLT is tomorrow morning, my usual Nesquik breakfast cereal, made of chocolate-flavored rice and corn puffs, mixed with milk, will take me to a whole new level of experiencing reality... and that's something to be grateful for

thanks Proust!!

and to the creators of this reading group of course

Edu wrote: "One thing for sure after reading these 64 first pages of ISOLT is tomorrow morning, my usual Nesquik breakfast cereal, made of chocolate-flavored rice and corn puffs, mixed with milk, will take me ..."

Bon appetit! :)

The first place (so far) in my ISOLT TOP TEN METAPHORS goes for this one:

These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope.

immediately thought of Muybridge's lapse photo:

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm20.html

this is a nice prelude to the "magic lantern" metaphor where the idea of  virtual scenes replacing reality appears again in a stronger way

"uncertainty" is a key word for me in the bioscope metaphor... it's like if narrator is saying to himself  "I need to order this elusive mind frames, but I can't!!!, I wish to have a bioscope inside my mind!!!!" and then, a few pages later, taste and odor comes very handy to make the real connection with the mind frames of the past.

Edu wrote: "The first place (so far) in my ISOLT TOP TEN METAPHORS goes for this one:

These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell..."

Yes, Muybridge's photo is brought up in Carter's The Proustian Quest.

This sequence of pictures showed that this "flying" horse by Rousseau was not possible, even if there is a short moment when all legs are off the floor.