The Year of Reading Proust discussion

Marcus wrote: "Francoise reminds me of my mother...i am concerned that she acted like my servant, with that kind of sly (my word of course) power"

Then, your mother must have been an extraordinary, if sly, lady. Françoise is an extraordinary woman.

Fionnuala: yes, the Guermantes had German relations. Charlus' mother was "a duchess in Bavaria." And at the Prince de Guermantes' reception Charlus took the narrator aside, feeling (I guess) arm muscles as they talked, "a German habit."

This week's reading mentions (obliquely) the English Blockade of Germany. This was considered scandalous at the time; the British Navy effectively stopped all imports (including medicine & food) into Germany. Nowadays we do it without a thought.

When Saint-Loup says to the Narrator that the air-raid sirens was a "Ride of the Valkyries" how many of you remember that incredible scene in Apocalypse Now where the U.S. helicopter gunships swoop down upon the hapless Vietnamese village, playing "The Ride of the Valkyries" full blast? No wonder Wagner was Hitler's favorite composer. And the German author Günter Grass says that as the Red Army entered Berlin, the last remaining radio stations began to play the Götterdämmerung. It's in one his fictional works, and I've always wondered if it were true.

Elizabeth wrote: "Fionnuala: yes, the Guermantes had German relations. Charlus' mother was "a duchess in Bavaria." And at the Prince de Guermantes' reception Charlus took the narrator aside, feeling (I guess) arm m..."

Yes, Elizabeth, and a little further on when Gilberte describes the war viewed from Combray, we see that du côté de Guermantes can also mean du côté des Allemands...
(and I love your Charlus!)

Elizabeth wrote: "When Saint-Loup says to the Narrator that the air-raid sirens was a "Ride of the Valkyries" how many of you remember that incredible scene in Apocalypse Now where the U.S. helicopter gunships swoop..."

Great to see everyone so excited with the reading that we are moving ahead from this week's reading.

Please post these comments in next week's thread, otherwise it can get confusing.

Thank you .

Fionnuala wrote: "I can't view this live interview on my iPad but will look at it later. It sounds like a real treasure.
In the meantime I'm still preoccupied with the Narrator's meditation on writing and art, GF p..."

I have gone back to reread the Pastiche and the Meditation on the kind of writing that interests the Narrator and that exalts his imagination and "makes him paint" (Alors mon imagination était partie, avait commencé à peindre), and this third time I relished on this very Proustian passage because he agains resorts to painting when he was to identify the artists who manage to reach a deeper truth and who shows it by the way he has transformed that which he depicts:

Les artistes qui nous ont donné les plus grandes visions d'élégance en ont recueilli les éléments chez des gens qui étaient rarement les grand élégants de leur époque lesquels se font rarement peindre par l'inconnu porteur d'une beauté qu'ils ne peuvent pas distinguer sur ses toiles, dissimulée qu'elle est par l'interposition d'un poncif de grâce surannée qui flotte dans l'oeil du public comme ces visions subjectives que le malade croit effectivement posées devant lui. Mais que ces modèles médiocres que j'avais connus eussent en outre inspiré, conseillé certains arrangements qui m'avaient enchanté, que la présence de tel d'entre eux dans les tableaux fût plus que celle d'un modèle ... p. 94

Marcus wrote: Very tender, I agree Eugene. I have LOL'd sometimes as well...

Humor as well as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but what made Botticelli laugh is probably not what would make us laugh today, yet his Zipporah is still as beautiful as the day he painted it. Humor is more temporally affected than beauty as we see. That Botticelli attempted humor, if he did, is also a feather in his cap, and Proust attempting to be funny is not "clumsy", as I had said, but in many ways laudable no matter if he succeeds with you and fails with me, but the attempt at humor is one of valor in the dark days that began in 1914, not that earlier days were not as dark, but we are still in the shadow of those days that began with the Great War, and worse, the children are blind, as always ;-)

In the Modern Library translation we have read 3903 pages including this weeks reading and in those pages I chuckled once, but as I didn't remember where and about what, I said "never". If I'd laughed and said 10 or 20 moments were LOL or "hilarious" it would amount to a similar sum compared to the moments we've read in 3903 pages. Yes, humor is 'in the eyes of the beholder'.

Where I see Proust's humor is in the preposterousness of the entire novel and its characters. They are sad and all defective in one way or another but a writer who takes aesthetics, learning writing, social relations/personalities, social history, etc. as his subjects and peoples it with the ridiculous and convenient cast he has chosen is not only funny but witty. So, it's not that I'm a humorless person, Marcus, I just laugh at different parts.

Kalliope wrote: ".. he agains resorts to painting when he was to identify the artists who manage to reach a deeper truth and who shows it by the way he has transformed that which he depicts:"

You've hit on the very passage which caused me to mentally compare Proust to Cézanne, and by extension, to Van Gogh, whom Cézanne met and admired. The genius of all three went largely unrecognized in their own time but all three, in their unique and individual ways, sought to reveal that 'deeper truth' you mention. Proust is such a painterly writer - I remember that while reading the Combray section, and right from the early pages, I wanted him to pick up some brushes and begin to paint.

I'm a little confused here. Did some of you say that you did not care for the Goncourt pastiche? I thought it was brilliant, and even that it should have been edited to be the closing final act of The Fugitive. This was the spark that was missing!

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I'm a little confused here. Did some of you say that you did not care for the Goncourt pastiche? I thought it was brilliant, and even that it should have been edited to be the closing final act of ..."

I loved the pastiche and it made me laugh several times and made me think that Proust must have had fun writing it (princesse en of, etc..). The preciosity can also be appealing at some stages.

But it is a pastiche after all. A parody.

To me what was interesting about it is that he used to it deal with his own characters, proving to us that he could have written his novel in a Goncourt-like manner had he wanted to do so.

But most important, it serves him as a "Negative Model", or the kind of writing which does not interest him. He then proceeds to explain the kind of art that he seeks. And that section is a fascinating one.

Marcus wrote: "Eugene wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: I probably tend to think of some of these parts as "hilarious" because Proust actually makes me laugh out loud. It's social satire at its most biting but done ex..."

I have LOL'd too, if only with Aimee's mangled French.

Marcus wrote: "...it was not because of the heat of the sun but from emotion in the presence of the majesty of death that the two virile men, on whose lips the words of grief and affection were almost unknown, no..."

Touching, wasn't it?

Elizabeth wrote: "When Saint-Loup says to the Narrator that the air-raid sirens was a "Ride of the Valkyries" how many of you remember that incredible scene in Apocalypse Now where the U.S. helicopter gunships swoop..."

I did not remember that it was Wagner in Apocalypse Now, Elizabeth. What an amazingly fitting soundtrack for that scene.

Kalliope wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "I can't view this live interview on my iPad but will look at it later. It sounds like a real treasure.
In the meantime I'm still preoccupied with the Narrator's meditation on wri..."

This reminds me of a quote at the beginning of the Karpeles book, from Proust to Jean Cocteau, "My book is a painting".

I love the Bvd Haussmann illustrations.

Jocelyne wrote: "...This reminds me of a quote at the beginning of the Karpeles book, from Proust to Jean Cocteau, "My book is a painting"..."

Exactly Jojo!

@Eugene - I sense your humour (a pun but not a joke)- I was expressing solidarity with you but also erring on the side of srupulousness...but thinking about it I have snorted - perhaps my version of chuckled - once on average per volume so not that many times more hsn you. The very thought of Boticelli's soh is delightful and wonderous...I am imagining his laugh like Tom Hulce as Mpzart in Amadeus. I celebrate out diferences including our senses of beauty and humour.

@kalliope mother still alive STOP send reinforcements STOP ... I appreciate her greatly but we haven't always seen eye to eye - English inderrstatement) - I am connecting to her through ISOLT she loves history paintings and ppsh people
.

@Jocelyne...yes beautifully touching.Loved his writing about gruff men who are not openly emotional, which nowadays is pathologised but in Proust's hands it becomes tender observation

@Elizabeth Apocalypse Now is one of the few films I could watch over and over...so epic, hallucinatory, dream like, crazy...mkes a lot of sense to me. Ride of the Valkyrie was of course the music of choice of the Robert Duvall character whose joyful catchphrase was "I love the smell of napalm in the morning..."

Marcus wrote: "@kalliope mother still alive STOP send reinforcements STOP ... I appreciate her greatly but we haven't always seen eye to eye - English inderrstatement) - I am connecting to her through ISOLT she ..."

All my apologies to you and to your mother... Your using the past tense led me to the wrong conclusion... It sounds like you may be à la recherché of your mother with this years reading and the paintings...

Kalliope wrote: loved the pastiche and it made me laugh several times and made me think that Proust must have had fun writing it (princesse en of, etc..). The preciosity can also be appealing at some stages.


Yes, it was well done!

@Marcus, you're a nice guy. Your mother did a good job raising you.

I'm trying to catch up with the thread.

Thanks for the all the beautiful illustrations Kall (you found the ¡¡Petit Dunkerque!!). :)

But I OBJECT strongly to the rampant use of aristocratic nicknames in these threads... JoJo The Instigator should be punished with the Complete Goncourt Memoirs... ;p {<----- wink + tongue out = I'm teasing you :) }

*congratulates self about un-nickname-able user name*

Kalliope wrote: "...He and his lover and later wife Princess Soutzo figure in the coterie that Gautier-Vignal describes...."

Céleste also talked about Proust attending Princess Soutzo's parties at the Ritz, always on the loukout for new details about aristocrats... I really have to read Gautier-Vignal's book... :)

Eugene wrote: "... why did Proust feel the need to allude to Raphael when he can write a 'stand alone (no allusion)' sentence (...) why the need for the allusion? Isn't Swann faulted when he saw (alluded to) Odette as Botticelli's Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter; is this a dependency that the Narrator will correct in time when moments show him how to write, to be free of allusion?... "

Eugene you always ask tough questions and I like them, even when I cannot answer them. :)

I think part of it reflects the culture of the era: Proust was raised reading the Humanities and being able to reference past artists was part of being well-educated, and an absolute necessity to shine in salons. A few years before Proust symbolists, who drew heavily on Antique references, were en vogue (poetry, painting...).

Another part is probably's Proust's own sensibility: he enjoyed visiting the Louvre frequently and as we know he was hyper-sensitive, glorying in all the sensations of the outside world and comparing them to how he had imagined them...

Our sensibility is different because our education generally relies less on Humanities and contemporary art is firmly forward-looking...

I didn't fully reply to your point but I'll keep mulling it over... :)

Fionnuala wrote: "Saint-Loup n'eût jamais pu, même torturé par les Allemands dire autrement que 'l'Empereur Guillaume' GF 115. ..."

This is so perfect to show Saint-Loup's character. And we get a tickle out of it. Proust is an underrated master of wit. :)

Kalliope wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "A final comment -when speaking of 'Dans les choux', the Cocteau character, Andrée's husband, it seemed to me that Proust was describing himself in the later years, or at least as ..."

I also thought that the description of "Dans les choux" recalled Proust's own reclusive last years, which doesn't correspond to Cocteau at all...

Proust contre Cocteau is an excellent read. Claude Arnaud knows both authors like the back of his hand (which made me think I would have really needed to read the bio of Cocteau beforehand but it's okay without) and he draws a very clear picture of their friendship and parallel rise in the world of aristocracy and literature: between demanding friendship and hidden jealousy... it does feel "à charge" against Proust but I'm not finished reading the book yet.

But as we know Proust wasn't a "believer" in friendship (the pages on Saint-Loup in Doncières...) and all the biographical accounts I've read so far point towards his disenchantment with friendship, similar to his frustrations with love... pauvre petit marcel!

Fionnuala wrote: "And today I got a present of Proust's Lettres à sa voisine, the previously unpublished let..."

I looked at it at my local fnac and really liked the map of Proust's 102 Boulevard Haussmann apartment that is included in the back of the book. It helped me picture the place when I was reading Céleste's book... But I couldn't find the picture of the map online to share it here. Any interesting details in these letters? :)

A historical/political reference: "la loi des 3 ans"

In 1913 the French parliament voted "the 3-year law" to increase the draft from 2 to 3 years in anticipation of the war against the more populated Germany.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_des_...

La « loi des trois ans » est une loi de 1913 augmentant la durée du service militaire de deux à trois ans en vue de préparer l'armée française à une guerre éventuelle avec l'Allemagne — ce sera la Première Guerre mondiale. Le 25 mai 1913, le pacifiste homme de gauche Jean Jaurès plaide contre cette loi à la fenêtre du Pré-Saint-Gervais. Voilà un extrait de son discours : « Vous connaissez l'impatience de ces travailleurs-soldats qui attendent impatiemment la libération pour aider leur famille, subvenir aux besoins d'une vieille mère, fonder un foyer et quelle a été leur déception lorsqu'on leur a dit : Vous resterez un an de plus à la caserne!»
from Le Parisien
http://www.leparisien.fr/seine-saint-...



Manifestation au Pré-Saint-Gervais contre la loi des trois ans (25 mai 1913): discours de Jean Jaurès

And here is a short radio programme (3 min) on this law (from the excellent series "Si nous vivions en 1913" that aired this summer on France Inter):
http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-si...

And an article in Le Figaro:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fran...


French soldiers, 1914, 64rd RI Dancenis

Book Portrait wrote: "...Lettres à sa voisine...
I looked at it at my local fnac and really liked the map of Proust'..."

I've only glanced through it, Beepee but the shape of it alone makes it a pleasure to own - that wide format that recalls a sheet of expensive notepaper and which I've not seen an example of for ages.
I've ordered a second hand copy of Celeste's book and am looking forward to reading both...soon.

Fionnuala wrote: "I've only glanced through it, BeepeeBP but the shape of it al..."

Heeeee!

Fixed.

:P

Sorry, it should have been Bipi!

But, ok, I'll concede BP, reluctantly..

Fionnuala wrote: "I'll concede BP, reluctantly happily.."

:D

When I see the images of the soldiers and the manif Pré-Saint-Gervais, the reality of the war really strikes home.
Jean Jaurès was always a hero of mine - I remember one summer during my student days while au pairing in Paris, spending spare - and lonely - time in the Beaubourg media room looking up info on Jean Jaurès, among other things. The Beaubourg media room seems primitive now....

Book Portrait wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "A final comment -when speaking of 'Dans les choux', the Cocteau character, Andrée's husband, it seemed to me that Proust was describing himself in the later years..."

I have ordered the bio on Cocteau BiPi BP.

Fionnuala wrote: "I've only glanced through it, Beepee but the shape of it al..."

Do you recommend getting the Letters to the neighbour then?.. I have ordered, second hand, the exchange of letters with the mother (and got the audio version already).

Kalliope wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "I've only glanced through it, Beepee BP but the shape of it al..."

Do you recommend getting the Letters to the neighbour then?.. I have ordered, second hand, the exchange of letters..."

Yes, Kall, there are some photos, the interesting plan of the apartment that BP mentioned, and photocopies of some of the letters and the letters themselves are as beautifully written as you would expect.
Our Proust collections are growing and growing. Where will it end...

Fionnuala wrote: "

Do you recommend getting the Letters to the neighbour then?.. I have ordered, second hand, the..."

The plan of the apartment is a very attractive bait.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: loved the pastiche and it made me laugh several times and made me think that Proust must have had fun writing it (princesse en of, etc..). The preciosity can also be appealing at so..."

Thanks Reem - my lovely Dad, no longer alive, had a hand in the making of me too!

Kalliope wrote: "Marcus wrote: "@kalliope mother still alive STOP send reinforcements STOP ... I appreciate her greatly but we haven't always seen eye to eye - English inderrstatement) - I am connecting to her thr..."

None needed but I appreciate your thoughts - the past tense was because I was thinking of her when I was in her care

Kalliope wrote: "The plan of the apartment is a very attractive bait."

Maybe Fio can scan it or photograph it for you? :)


{Edited to remove the extra nonsense. :) }

Proust's humor. Eugene (and Book Potrait): the Narrator mentions that homosexuals, when they behave as homosexuals, make good husbands (i.e. don't keep mistresses) and mentions--I think it's a Courvoisier--who found out about male brothels and was a devoted husband, giving his wife many children and: "spent many hours in church, praying that the next baby would be a girl or a boy." I mean that really is fall-off-your chair stuff.

Book Portrait wrote: "Maybe Mlle FifiNuLala can scan it or photograph it?" ;D

Fionnuala wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: "Maybe Mlle FifiNuLala can scan it or photograph it?" ;D

"

Thank you. I posted earlier the photos taken from the cour.. I should post them again..., next to the plan...

Fionnuala wrote: "Book Portrait wrote: "Maybe Mlle FifiNuLala can scan it or photograph it?" ;D "

Oooh. Shiny!! <3

Thanks Fi.



{You posted just when I finished editing all the nonsense out of my comment to try to maintain my distinguished, serious Proustian creds... caught red-handed. lol}

Marcus wrote: Thanks Reem - my lovely Dad, no longer alive, had a hand in the making of me too!

Of course, may his soul rest in peace. I wonder Marcus, which of them was a reader? or were they both?

Kalliope wrote: "Thank you. I posted earlier the photos taken from the cour.. I should post them again..., next ..."

Notice the position of the Oeil de boeuf in the corridor by the main stairway, from which I imagine the Narrator sometimes spying on people going up and down the main staircase...
And Françoise's domain, far from the main rooms and with its own outside access.

Fionnuala wrote: "Notice the position of the Oeil de boeuf in the corridor by the main stairway,..."

Yes, I noticed the oeil de boeuf... also of use to Françoise...!!

Reem - both Mum and Dad read; lately my Mother had become an obsessive Tudor-phile

Book Portrait wrote: "Thanks Fi..."

Sorry about the shiny...