One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

End of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower/Within a Budding Grove.

I was just about to create this thread, haha. We'll end volume 2 next week, quite the milestone! Looking forward to this very much.

If I were to rate parts of ISOLT so far, I'd rate Balbec just after but very close to Combray. It felt welcoming to come here after the tedious days of Paris. I hope I like later sections as much. To begin some various comments:

Those who have the opportunity of living for themselves - they are artists, of course, and I was long since convinced that I would never be one - also have the duty to do so...

He go on to disavow friendship and inane conversation. This is one of those instances when we know that Proust's narrator is speaking directly for Proust, the legendary socialite become recluse. What I find more valuable, however, is to consider what this tells us about the narrator. We know he aspires to be a novelist, although his aspirations have recently been overshadowed by his Balbec experiences. This is the older narrator reflecting on his friendship with Saint-Loup, and more generally his vacuous social life and his time in Balbec; he knows full well what ambitions he had and how they turned out (alas, we haven't yet found out!). This is related to the theme that keeps cropping up: the narrator hopes to one day be a novelist. I also think this sentiment sounds surprisingly Nietzschean. I won't elaborate right now, but it occurred to me.

A second point from this week, the narrator frequently comments on the motives of various individuals in such a way that everyone seems inauthentic. It wasn't until this week's reading that I started thinking that he is in fact psychoanalyzing them, commenting on their unconscious motives but in a way that makes it seem consciously intended. Here's an example:

Another present she had received [i.e., other people's behaviors Albertine had adopted] was her way of having you repeat things you had just said, so as to appear interested in the subject and give herself the air of wishing to form a personal view on it.

The "as if" and "wishing" make it seem like this is a studied and calculated practice of Albertine's. He describes many people in similar ways. I always thought everyone was so guileful and phony until this week when I realized that they don't do this intentionally but unconsciously. If I assume this I realize that we're all like this, we just don't usually have a Proust to point out the real 'why' to our words and behaviors. If asked, Albertine would have probably just said, 'I like the phrase,' or she might not have even realized that she said it so often. It's times like this that we should remember that the narrator is finite and not disinterested. His descriptions are profoundly reflective and deeply analytical but not unequivocally true, or even if they are they aren't necessarily the conscious intent of his subjects. There are other good examples of this throughout.

Speaking from the perspective of a second reading of ISOLT. Although there are no plot points: (view spoiler)[After Albertine gives the narrator the note saying "I like you," he walks up a hill and muses, "that she was the one who would be the great love of my life." I've read this novel before and I say in all genuineness, I wonder if she will be? (hide spoiler)]

Here's a quote that winds down this volume with foreboding:

The consolation I drew from her words may even have had, much later, far-reaching and grave consequences for me, because it contributed to the development of a sort of family feeling for her, a moral core which gathered in the centre of my love for her, and was to be for ever inseparable from it. Such a feeling can be the harbinger of acute suffering: for a woman to cause us great pain, there must have been a time when we trusted her implicitly.

I found this funny: "Altogether, I had derived little benefit from being in Balbec, for which reason I was all the more determined to come back one day. I felt I had spent too short a time there." Didn't he just waste his time? Ok, I know he didn't, (see the first quote in this comment) but even so, it's amusing to read this summary of the second part of the volume.

Some good in-depth points again, Jacob, thanks! Makes you think quite analytically, interpretatively as you do. Personally I read Proust for the ideas and the flavor of the story, but i like going into interpretation with you from time to time.
I actually finished this volume way before the deadline and started with volume 3 immediately, but i didn't have the opportunity to collect and post my notes on this yet.

Haha! I found this odd to read because I would have said that I read it mostly for the ideas too (and the prose). The ideas I'm most interested in is Proust's conception of how we relate to our memories and the stories we tell (ourselves and others). In short, I'm interested in the idea of narrative in ISOLT. My interest in narrative is twofold: 1) what and how do we narrate (which we can consider by looking at the narrator/narrative relationship)? 2) How do we relate to or interpret the narratives of other people (which we can consider by looking at how we relate as readers to the narrative of ISOLT)?

This is usually my interest in "intellectual books." I'm rarely interested in the sociological or psychological insights or expressions of a book. Even more rarely in critical issues regarding the author and the origin of the text. With me, it's mostly narrativity. It's my obsession.

Ah, and i love the psychological, sociological and artistic ideas, trying to soak up life experience, and am less interested in thinking about how the narrative works. Still, as i said, it's interesting to talk about it, and i've learned a lot about the narrative from you that i didn't think about, like the discrepancy between the interiority of the novel and the scarcity of Marcel's own dialogue.

His artistic ideas are a major interest of mine as well. I underline pretty much all of them. I especially love that the narrator aspires to be a writer and after two volumes has done very little to accomplish his goal. Because I share similar artistic aspirations and struggles, I find this novel extremely inspiring and encouraging.

Jacob wrote: "His artistic ideas are a major interest of mine as well. I underline pretty much all of them. I especially love that the narrator aspires to be a writer and after two volumes has done very little t..."

Elstir's wisdom comes back to me...via two websites that gives me a reason to share:

1)
An favorite article on T. Alexander Harrison, one of the models for Elstir (and who Proust and Hahn met, when they were in love).

http://davidadamscleveland.com/wp-con...

2) A French search site, which has "translation." It's a good place to start, when you are looking for something specific (searching with a proper name or unique French phrase...leads you back to the English).

http://alarecherchedutempsperdu.org/s...

"But it was not Elstir is well with me; a true master - and this was perhaps the point of view of pure creation his only fault to be one in that sense the key word, as an artist to be completely in the truth of the spiritual life must be alone, and do not provide for his ego, even disciples - of any circumstances, she was relating to him or to others, he sought to extract for better teaching young people how much truth it contained. So he preferred to words that could avenge his pride those that could teach me. "There is no man so wise he is, he told me, that has at such time of his youth uttered words, or even led a life, the memory of it is unpleasant and that it would be abolished. But it should not definitely regret it, because it can not be assured of becoming wise, inasmuch as possible, if it has gone through all the incarnations ridiculous or hateful that must precede the latter incarnation there. I know that there are young people, son and grand son of distinguished men, whom their tutors taught the nobility of the spirit and moral elegance from the college. They may have nothing to subtract from their lives, they could publish and sign everything they said, but they are poor spirits without descendants doctrinal force, and that wisdom is negative and sterile. We do not receive wisdom; we must discover ourselves after a journey that no one can do for us, can save us because it is a point of view on things. The lives that you admire, attitudes that you find nobles have not been arranged by the father or the tutor, they were preceded by very different beginnings, having been influenced by that reigned around them wrong or banality. They represent a struggle and a victory. I understand that the image of what we were in a first period is most recognizable and in any case be unpleasant. It is not to be denied though, because it is a testimony that we have really lived, that is according to the laws of life and spirit that we, common elements of life, life workshops , artistic cliques in the case of a painter, extracted something beyond them." MP via GT

(Sometimes, you may need to scroll up, after clicking on #172.)
172: It is with these thoughts ruminated silently next to Elstir
https://translate.google.com/translat...

THE SITE in French:
http://alarecherchedutempsperdu.org/m...