About book In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower (2005)
À L'OMBRE de la REPRÉSENTATIONOn my review of Du côté de chez Swann I had concentrated on the pre-eminence of the visual. The careful attention paid by Proust to light, to colour, to objects that add colour such as flowers, and to painting and the visual arts in general, led me to conceive of his art as painterly writing. All those elements continue in this second volume. I could easily select another rich sample of quotes that would illustrate this visual nature. Indeed, sight is explicitly designated in this book as the principal sense. It is through seeing that we make sense of our world. Things, people… …, ne sont portés sur nous que sur une plane et inconsistante superficie, parce que nous ne prenons conscience d’eux que par la perception visuelle réduite à elle-même ; mais c’est comme déléguée des autres sens qu’elle se dirige vers… (les autres sens) vont chercher...les diverses qualités odorantes, tactiles, savoureuses, qu’ils goûtent ainsi même sans le secours des mains et des lèvres (559)This extract then introduces another aspect which is the one on which I wish to focus this time. ..et, capables, grâce aux arts de transposition, au génie de synthèse où excelle le désir, de restituer sous la couleur.., ... 559This review will examine the concept and activity of Transposition or Representation as the very core of what constitutes artistic creation. FASHIONING the FASHIONSIn À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, we see the Narrator fascinated by the way people represent themselves. When he observes those who have awakened his imagination, he pays attention to the way they dress and cloak their presence. The choice of clothes is part of the way a person manifests the self. And although the Narrator confesses that he is infatuated with Gilberte Swann, in reality his fascination is with the mother, with Odette, who has changed her life and made herself into Mme Swann. He notices how in her self-transformation Odette has moved from the rather theatrical Japonisme décor, outfits and somewhat garish choice of clothes,--that we saw from a close up in Un amour de Swann--to a more delicate style in which subtle pastel colours in silk crêpe reflect the tender and gentle manner seen in the depictions Watteau, the painter of the gallanterie, and which suit better the wife of Monsieur Swann. But in this new style of clothes in which she has concocted herself there are traces of her past that the Narrator can sniff, as she lets her breasts be caressed by the silk and abandons herself to the enjoyment of the new luxury, (230, desquelles elle faisait le geste de caresser sus ses seins l’écume fleurie, et dans lesquelles elle se baignait, se prélassait, s’ébattait..). Similarly the decorative buttons are a quote of those more functional which in the past would have been an invitation to their being unbuttoned. (235 déceler une intention... une reminiscence indiscernable du passé). Odette works relentlessly at transforming and creating her own image and is completely aware of the transcendence of her self-fashioning, for herself and for the world... (522 disciplinant ses traits avait fait de son visage et de sa taille cette création),. And also 234 On sentait qu’elle ne s’habillait pas seulement pour la commodité ou la parure de son corps, elle était entourée de sa toilette comme de l’appareil délicat et spiritualisé d’une civilisation.Because with all this calculated impersonation, Odette is acting indeed as a creator. Rightfully, she feels satisfied with her art when she conceives her toilette (254... ayant l’air d’assurance et de calme du créateur qui a accompli son oeuvre et ne se soucie plus du reste)SALONS and THEATRICALITYBut Odette’s transformation will reach its apex and she will be in full command of her new delicate and purified self, when she can also design her own setting, her own stage, her Salon. In that composition she can become, finally, a Grande Dame. Surrounded by white flowers, by white furniture, by white accoutrements, echoes of the Pre-Raphaelites, and of the original Primitives, will resonate. She can evoke images in which angels announce a miracle and designate the virginity in a woman, with all its inebriating effect. All of this thanks to the harmonies of a fully orchestrated (252 -- Symphonie en blanc majeur)For it is through a Salon that a lady can best picture herself, fully. The emblematic surroundings situate one as the model to which one’s society can look. Salons are the dramatic setting in which something is created out of sheer theatricality. The guests form a frame around the Hostess who behaves as if she were the main guest, the main actress, the main sitter. So much so, that it becomes difficult for some people to be able to picture a lady, Odette, outside of her own Salon.For the art of creating a Salon is the art of nothingness... (212 -- bien qu’ils ne fassent que nuancer l’inexistent, sculpter le vide, et soient à proprement parler les Arts du Néant: l’art... de savoir “réunir”, de s’entendre à grouper, de “mettre en valeur”, de “s’éffacer”, de servir de “trait d’union” (inverted commas in the original). And in this art we saw in the previous volume that Odette’s teacher had been Mme Verdurin who “était elle-même un Salon”.REPRODUCTION or EYE LENSESIn a line of argument that Walter Benjamin may have picked up from Proust, the Narrator notices the other mode of visual representation, photography, with a similar view to his grandmother’s in the Combray section of the first novel. Industrial reproduction vulgarises that which art had filtered as beauty (495- il faut.. reconnaître que, dans la mesure où l’art met en lumière certaines lois, une fois qu’une industrie les a vulgarisées, l’art antérieur perd rétrospectivement un peu de son originalité). But the Narrator is no reactionary. Photograhy has a value, since it stores images that have been lost (409 -- La photographie acquiert un peu de la dignité qui lui manque, quand elle cesse d’être une reproduction du réel et nous montre des choses qui n’existent plus). And more interestingly, it can also widen and enrich the capabilities of our eyes. “d’admirables” photographies de paysages et de villes... image différente de celles que nos avons l’habitude de voi…. telle de ces photographies “magnifiques” illustrera une loi de la perspective, nous montrera telle cathédrale que nos avons l’habitude de voir au milieu de la ville, prise au contraire d’un point choisi d’où elle aura l’air trente fois plus haute que les maisons et faisant éperon au bord du fleuve d’où elle est en réalité distante. Futhermore, it is thanks to these reproduced images that the Narrator has constructed his mental and ideal picture of the church at Balbec before he can visit it. If sometimes his confrontation of reality leads him to disappointment, in this case representation is not at odds with its origin and has on the contrary aggrandized the significance of the original. The Narrator is conquered by awe when standing in front of the real object, the thing-in-itself (283 --maintenant c’est l’église elle-même, c’est la statue elle-même, elles, les uniques: c’est bien plus.UNVEILING the CLOTHESBut if we saw that any one person will fashion her or his clothes with the idea of embodying the self in a particular desired way, here comes the artist, the painter, ready to disentangle that conception and model both the art of fashion designers and the projections of a sitter into yet another level of transformation.For Elstir teaches the Narrator that the modistes are artists who with just one gesture they can convert simple matter into something sublime (571 their art “le geste delicat par lequel elles donnent un dernier chiffonement – aux noeuds et aux plumes d’un chapeau terminé). And yet, he will, with also a single gesture, unlock the camouflage set up by the fashion makers and the sitters and reveal their inner reality – (523 -- cette harmonie, le coup d’œil d’un grand peintre la détruit en une seconde,..So the Narrator presents the duel between a sitter and her portraitist, in which they fight for different representation of her image. By the inclusion of a revealing element in the portrait of a cousin to the Princesse de Luxembourg, (523 - “un vaste décor incliné et violet qui faisait penser à la Place Pigalle) the painter leaves a trace that can lead to her dubious moral past. This is a signal which the sitter, however, may not detect – un grand artiste ne cherchera aucunement à donner satisfaction à...la femme …but the artist is not ready to compromise and he will désenchanter le spectateur vulgaire.And it is in his portrait of Odette that the Elstir enthralls the Narrator by extracting from her that very quality which has fascinated our protagonist from early on but which Mme Swann had covered up. In her portrayal as Miss Sacripant, Elstir has rendered all her theatricality, fictitiousness and double-entendre. Not only is she dressed up in costume and figuring as someone else, but even her sex appeal is ambiguous and elusive. 506ff -- Odette – Miss Sacripant...le caractère ambigu de l’être dont j’avais le portrait sous les yeux tenait, sans que je le comprisse, à ce que c’était une jeune actrice d’autrefois en demi-travesti... en costume.. un être factice.Dismantling the construction of the mantle of purity in which Mme Swann had wrapped herself, the painter has unfolded the full fan inside the young Narrator’s imagination by expanding the two poles of Odette’s spectrum, the Grande Dame or the Cocotte. PAINTERLY REPRESENTATIONElstir as Eye Opener.For it is in the painter Elstir that, so far, our Narrator finds the most pure inspiration. When he finally encountered Bergotte, the object of his fascination from an early age, our Narrator felt disappointed. Prior to the meeting he had already become very familiar with the writer’s exquisite prose so there was no discovery. And may be as a sign of his youth, he had fallen into the trap of expecting appearances to match substance, when Bergotte’s common physique did not match his stylized prose. So, even though Bergotte sits at the crest of writing, the art in which the Narrator dreams to excel, it is another art medium that will, literally, open the Narrator’s eyes. There is no disappointment in his meeting the metamorphosed Monsieur Biche. And this Biche-turned-into-Elstir presents him with new and unknown wonders.Pervasive Images.But one wonders at what point in time this Narrator has opened up his eyes. As we read these memories we do not know when the painterly way of conceiving things entered his mind. The novel is full of terms related to surfaces and paintings and frames. There are many fenêtres, cadres, rideaux, peintures doubles, cloth covered paintings, hublots (portholes), vitraux and vitrines, écrins, études en verre, rétables or predellas, and a lot of glass and glass gallerias. Here is an extract loaded with them. 454 -- changea le tableau que j’y trouvais dans la fenêtre... dans le verre glauque et qu’elle boursouflait de ses vagues rondes.. sertie entre les montants de fer de ma croisée comme dans les plombs d’un vitrail.... un tableau religieux au-dessus du maître-autel.. parties différentes du couchant, exposées dans les glaces des bibliothèques basses en acajou.... couraient le long des murs... on exhibe à côté les uns des autres dans une salle de musée les volets séparés que l’imagination seule du visiteur remet à leur place sur les prédelles d’un retable.Observing Reality and Extracting Truth.The Narrator comes to the realization that talent is neither inherited nor is it contagious. He had already admitted that by hanging out with Bergotte in social activities he would not absorb the writer’s mastery. Observing and talking with Elstir, he becomes mesmerized with the painter and tries to unlock the mystery of his artistic ability. He apprehends that it cannot be obtained by sheer effort of the conscious mind or l’intélligence. Time and memory are necessary to extract the truth out of the surrounding reality and these cannot be summoned by the pure and cold intellect. Perception tuned at its finest, together with a poetic eye, will bring the ability to dissolve one’s preconceived notions and 492--voir la nature telle qu’elle est, poétiquement”. One is to let free the whole array of immediate sensations and not let the intellect’s preconceptions.498 – L’effort que’Elstir faisait pour se dépouiller en présence de la réalité de toutes les notions de son intelligence.Reality needs to be reflected, but the kind of mirror that is capable of reflecting beauty and truth is just not any mirror, it has to be the mirror of genius and it is in this mirroring activity that beauty is generated.157 -- De même ceux qui produisent des oeuvres géniales sont... ceux qui ont le pouvoir, ... de rendre leur personnalité pareille à un miroir, de telle sorte que.... , le génie consistant dans le pouvoir réfléchissant et non dans la qualité intrinsèque du spectacle reflété.Such is Elstir’s abiltiy at detecting hidden beauty, that the Narrator also learns from him that it can also be extracted out of common objects. This is a huge revelation for him, because he no longer needs to block obstacles and vulgar intrusions when he wants to admire his Balbec church. Elstir is capable of distilling beauty even out of Dead Nature, or Still Lives. 532 – “j’essayais de trouver la beauté là où je ne m’étais jamais figuré qu’elle fût, dans les choses les plus usuelles, dans la vie profonde des natures mortes.Mental Transformation & Construction.But registering sensations is not enough. As the Narrator tells us, the process that Leonardo called “cosa mentale” is necessary if one is to approach truth. The artist will arrange a new grouping of the constituent elements of the sensory experience and this new arrangement will reveal its deeper nature. 522 –- génie artistique – pouvoir de dissocier les combinaisons d’atomes et de grouper ceux-ci suivant d’un ordre absolu.In the magic transformation in which beauty is distilled out of common elements, Elstir’s alchemy converts his atélier or studio into a Laboratory. Using his capabilities as Creator he will conjure up order out of chaos and will produce a new reality. 491 – L’atélier d’Elstir m’apparut comme le laboratoire d’une sorte de nouvelle création du monde, où, du chaos que sont toutes choses que nous voyons, il avait tiré..... And in this he is comparable to the supreme creator because if He named things, Elstir renames them. 492 -- si Dieu le Père avait créé les choses en les nommant, c’est en leur ôtant le nom, ou en leur donnant un autre, qu’Elstir les recréait.Art Becomes its own Force.Depicted things enter a new realm of existence. They continue to be that which they may no longer are, but cease to be what they were by acquiring this new nature. 491 pris une dignité nouvelle du fait qu’ils continuaient à être, encore dépourvus de ce en quoi ils passaient pour consister…la vague ne pouvant plus mouiller ni le veston habiller personne.With such a transformational ability, Art eventually is no longer just an outcome in a process. It will consolidate its own existence and become a new force. With this impulse it will act in a boomerang fashion and having emerged out of reality it will project itself back and change its nature. Similarly to the way Swann fell in love with Odette, by clothing her with Botticelli’s images, the Narrator begins to see a charm in Mme Elstir once he projects Titian onto her. These two artists, Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Fillipeppi (a.k.a. Botticelli) and Tiziano Vecellio are an example of how two individuals, before Elstir, were able to elicit beauty out of their sitters and surroundings, thanks to their sensibility and ability to transform and represent bequeathing to us their art and enriching our perceptions.FINAL CURTAINSIn this volume we continue to accompany the Narrator in his Education Sentimentale, but as we join him in the exploration of his feelings, fascinations and obsessions, we witness the particular and wholehearted attention he pays to the phenomenon of artistic Representation. We see with his eyes how he discovers it through the visual arts and its aesthetics and participate in this Education Artistique.And if the novel finishes with the opening of the curtains in the Narrators room, we shall now close them tightly until it is time to open them up again and let light stream in beautifully and poetically and enable us to continue to see.And all of this we see through text.-----------Page references are to the Gallimard-Folio edition.FIFTEEN stars.
I've long debated with myself - and friends - the actual benefits of re-reading versus a fresh read of a new book. Would re-reading really bring me a considerable number of new reflections, ideas and opinions to add to the first impressions I've gathered on my first read? And wouldn't this time spent on this repeated task be better employed by reading a completely different book that would instead and therefore give me completely different reflections on different subjects I perhaps haven't touched yet? In short: would a re-read prove effective considering time spent and rewards obtained?For being in the middle of a serious Proustmania - obsession, really - I decided to re-read all of the volumes of his Recherche, even having questioned so much and for so long the advantages of a re-read. Well, in addition to everything else which I'll address along this review, this rexperience came to show me that, for some books, a re-read is extremely beneficial - if not almost required -, especially in the case of a very long novel, with intricate plot, underlying motifs and interconnections that are impossible not only to absorb - but also to notice - on a first read. "Thus it can be only after one has recognised, not without having had to feel one's way, the optical illusions of one's first impression that one can arrive at an exact knowledge of another person, supposing such knowledge to be ever possible. But it is not; for while our original impression of him undergoes correction, the person himself, not being an inanimate object, changes in himself, we think that we have caught him, he moves, and, when we imagine that at last we are seeing him clearly, it is only the old impressions which we had already formed of him that we have succeeded in making clearer, when they no longer represent him."In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower starts off by addressing one of Proust's most important beliefs - and a theme that will recurrently permeate his narrative: that what we understand to be someone, how we perceive and describe them, expect them to be, are merely an effort of our own intelligence into molding all of the characteristics we've been shown and seen through our own perception into an sculpture we believe to be a fully functional person. In order to develop his point, it seems the second volume makes a case of confusing us: majestic Swann is described as someone of little prestige while buffoon Dr. Cottard is a must-have guest in any respectable dinner party. Surely the writer confused their names after such a long hiatus between volumes?A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was only released in 1919, a good six years after the first volume was published due to the Great War. This time, however, Proust wasn't to pay for the publication costs and the book would even win the prestigious Prix Goncourt award, making him widely known and appreciated not only in France, but also across Europe.The changes we observe in characters' reputations and actions are not exclusively confined to Swann and Dr. Cottard. Besides them, we also learn of M. Norpois and how his political views evolved over time. Just in the first twenty pages or so of this volume, the writer already sends us the clear message that people and their status are never set in stone and prepares us to a big roller-coaster ride when it comes to his characters (and that will last throughout all of the volumes). Proust's treatment of his personages feels like a superposition of a multitude of layers constituted of their past beings with the addition of the most current state at that particular time, which, granted, is only at the surface for a brief period, shortly being covered by yet another fresh and new layer that is for its turn as expirable as the previous one. This constant shift is, of course, accompanied by his narrator's - and our own - which follows the same pattern and, with these ever changing subjects, arises a million possibilities as to what will happen every time a character reappears, thus making Proust's creations always exciting and never predictable.In addition to the conditions mentioned above - of a person's own interior alterations and how our perception of those is in constant transformation as well - there is the question of change of reputation by association. Being someone respected and admired in the most prestigious and intimate circles of the Parisian society wasn't enough to keep Swann from having his esteem considerably downgraded after his marriage to Odette, like those chemical elements that form a good substance while associated with hydrogen and are poisonous while in a chemical reaction with lead. Following this pattern, other characters will go up and down in the social scale depending on whom they're associated with, and also accompanying their respective ups and downs.Just like the characters change depending on the point of view they're being observed from - much like the narrator's description of the Martinville steeples and their positions in relation to each other while on his car trip -, certain events on the plot also do so. Seemingly insignificant little moments - such as an insistent look from someone, a face expression, a phrase that appears to be innocently said in the midst of a longer dialogue or even a statement surrounded by a lengthy digression from the narrator that could be overlooked - retroactively take on a huge importance when analyzed from another perspective (even if that only comes 500 or 600 pages later) and one can't help to admire Proust's skillful incorporation of such "little details" that make his future events feel natural once they're fully developed, just as in life, where things certainly don't appear to us classified by importance - or even by the future importance they'll attain in our lives - and always in the right order. This is one of the characteristics that make his writing so organic and lifelike and what, at the same time, may be perceived as boring for some readers.Still on the subject of how an event from one volume is important and brought to life again on a subsequent volume, we continue to witness how the narrator is incapable to control his nervous impulses - an inability that was first exposed to us in the goodnight kiss drama from Swann's Way - and easily gives in to his impulses even though he's fully aware of the consequences. Only this time such matters are related to love: his ungovernable need to establish a love connection with Gilberte and to receive it back from her makes him go to such lengths and to scheme manipulations that could be easily attributed to a sociopath. Besides the aforementioned connection to the previous volume, these pages are also connected to a subsequent one, anticipating in hundreds of pages his behavior and conduct he's to develop later in another relationship.But back to the concerned volume, while Charles Swann is no longer a renowned gentleman, he still greatly influences the narrator's life, as the falling gent seems to be the one who drives our hero to accomplish those that were mere dreams in his mind when it came to places he wanted to visit: it's because of Swann and his mention of how Bergotte (the narrator's favorite writer) admires Berma that our pupil develops his obsession with the theatre and the great actress; it's also Swann who invites him to enter the much anticipated Gilberte's world and her mother's salon life (his first one) and, to conclude the dream trinity, his trip to Balbec was rekindled in his desires after a comment made by Charles about the roman cathedral in that beach. While Swann's and the Guermantes ways were still separate paths to the narrator, it was through Swann that he was able to enter the Guermantes way, for was in Balbec (following Swann's recommendation) that he eventually met important characters that lived in that still obscure world. It is precisely because of this trip that the narrator embarked on that we can also call this volume a book of firsts: the first time he meets people from the Guermantes clan; the first time he meets the artist - Elstir - that will influence his life and art so much; and the first time he sees the young girls in flower. All events that might seem like random plot directions but that, in the future, come together to form an unity. After much longing in the first volume, the narrator finally makes a trip he's been anticipating for so long, and what a trip! Not only the change of scenery was a breath of fresh air, providing us a warm beach breeze, after the cloistered feeling that came from the first chapter (Madame Swann at Home), but this second part (Place-Names: The Place) depicts a major life changing experience: while I was reading this chapter for the second time, it hit me how much of the future developments comes from this single summer trip, like one of those occasions in life where you stop and analyze what could've been if this or that event never happened, if you never went to such place or never met a certain person; you're left with no clue as to who you'd be if not for that, almost like being born in a different time, country or family would make you a different person than you are now. In such a supple time in one's life - adolescence - where even going to a different school and bonding with other friends could design a different personality, imagine (and it really requires a powerful imagination to picture that) if you hadn't met three of the most important people - aside family - of your life. Aside the place and the people - or maybe because of them -, it's also at that time that the narrator stars playing with his theories and philosophies about life and art.And now that I've mentioned 'art', I suppose it's time to talk about Elstir. Proust's brilliance in not only conceiving a fully realized painter - when he himself wasn't one - but also in developing and depicting his talents so precisely as if he actually existed impressed me so much. The way he described Elstir's painting talents is in complete relation with his own literary ones: while Proust makes use of involuntary memories (those sensations that are already in us, but that we can't recover through intelligence alone or we risk distorting them), Elstir makes use of involuntary first impressions (those visions that appear to us right before we make use of intelligence to recognize them properly and to fit them to a pattern); the difference being that Proust is revisiting a memory after it settled into his consciousness, and Elstir is painting a vision before it does so. Both artists try to isolate a singular true feeling, removing all rationalization that we've been programmed to attack with every unknown sensation that comes our way, like our white blood cells fighting foreign invaders.It seems Marcel Proust and James Joyce will remain forever linked in my mind - they who only met once and had never read each other's works (although Joyce later admitted he had read parts of Swann's Way), and who are so far apart in their writing techniques, but that to me stand so close, not just because I read them at the same time last year (and now continue to do so as I'm re-reading the Recherche and the James Joyce biography by Richard Ellmann), but also because, having stated before that I wasn't much of a visual person while reading - that is, I could never really form a fixed image of what the writer was describing, I wasn't able to build that room and enter it in my imagination, only blindly feel the sensations the words awakened in me - after reading Joyce's Dubliners, began to be a little more creative in that aspect. So another positive aspect of re-reading is that we're able to approach the same text while provided with new tools to delve into it that we've acquired ever since finishing it the first time. While I was re-reading this second volume, I could picture what Proust meant when he described not only the sea and the sun and the landscapes his narrator envisioned outside of his window, but also even Elstir's paintings, which only existed in his mind. And the whole section the narrator spent in the painter's atelier that bored me a bit on my first read for I could not envision any of the described images, now became gorgeous and alive as if he actually removed the white sheets that were covering them. "And our dread of a future in which we must forego the sight of faces, the sound of voices that we love, friends from whom we derive today our keenest joys, this dread, far from being dissipated, is intensified, if to the grief of such a privation we reflect that there will be added what seems to us now in anticipation an even more cruel grief; not to feel it as a grief at all—to remain indifferent; for if that should occur, our ego would have changed, it would then be not merely the attractiveness of our family, our mistress, our friends that had ceased to environ us, but our affection for them; it would have been so completely eradicated from our heart, in which today it is a conspicuous element, that we should be able to enjoy that life apart from them the very thought of which today makes us recoil in horror; so that it would be in a real sense the death of ourselves, a death followed, it is true, by resurrection but in a different ego, the life, the love of which are beyond the reach of those elements of the existing ego that are doomed to die."Taking this review a bit to the personal side, one of the reasons this volume specifically resonated so deeply with me was due to the developed theories about loss and forgetting that Proust attributed to his narrator when he was obsessing about the end of his love for Gilberte or even for Albertine, but that can generally be used in the context of getting over someone - even with whom no romantic link is involved - that's gone away. I've always had a little trouble with that future when someone that is now so important, so vital, so present in my daily activities, simply won't be missed because time - and habit - will have worked their magic in making me comfortable with the new situation. As paradoxical as it can be - suffering because of a future time where we won't be suffering and fearing to forget exactly that which we won't remember -, it feels like an actual loss and it gets to me every time; whenever I changed schools, changed cities, changed jobs, I mourned about those friendships that I knew would cool down because of what would come from such situations.I find it mesmerizing how Proust was able to write like that in a work of fiction (of course there's a lot of himself here and the very ideas he's developed his entire life), but for someone not currently experiencing all the situations while writing his book, it's pretty impressive how he could take a moment to dissect just about every possible feeling so well. And when you find yourself - or rather a piece of you - so masterfully depicted in a work of art, being thoroughly analyzed, looked at from every possible angle, considering all hypothesis and implications, you can't help but to consider it a tool to mirror life and to understand yourself better and to highly value it.Rating: for a volume that stands on its own and gets better on second read, without losing its initial charm, but becoming even more interesting, and therefore strengthening in my not only my decision, but also my will to keep re-reading: 5 stars.-------For my re-reading experience of the entire À la recherche du temps perdu:Vol 1. Swann's Way: ★★★★★ reviewVol 2. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: ★★★★★ reviewVol 3. The Guermantes Way: reviewVol 4. Sodom and Gomorrah: reviewVol 5. La Prisonnière (The Captive): reviewVol 6. Albertine disparue (The Fugivite): reviewVol 7. Time Regained: review
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In my second book of ISOLT, I find myself with both more patience and more impatience while reading. The glories of the writing are simply wonderful. The moments of insight sweep me away and I read them over again, once or twice to get their meaning completely. But there are some passages in between that test me, not yet to the point where I feel any threat of desertion but I do occasionally wish I could shake our narrator a bit, tell him to open his eyes perhaps a bit wider, take in more than one nose or eye at this time. (I know I'm being a bit silly here but haven't each of you had such moments?)But there are such glories too---the description of the train trip to Balbec and the sun rising and setting. The descriptions of Albertine as he first meets her and of lying on the beach, his room at the hotel. His descriptions of young love. Proust is testing me as he tests himself and his memory to tease out all the small details of the past. And I will continue on this ride.I have added a link to Teresa's review as I found it says much I appreciate.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
—Sue
There's a lot of stuff in Volume 2 of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, and people see different things in it. To me, though, the unifying theme is a continuation of Proust's analysis of how romantic relationships work, which he started in Un Amour de Swann. There, he examined one particular kind of relationship. Swann spends a fair amount of time with Odette, who is very nice to him and keeps saying how she wishes she could see him more often. Without realizing it, he comes to rely on her always to be there for him. One night, she isn't, and he suddenly discovers he's hooked. The balance of power changes completely: he needs her all the time, she's hardly ever available, and his life is taken over by psychotic jealousy. If you've never had this kind of thing happen to you, count yourself lucky.In the second volume, Proust looks at two more kinds of patterns, where the relationship isn't as clearly defined as it is with Swann and Odette. He shows how hard it can sometimes be to understand that a relationship has started or ended. With the narrator and Gilberte, he's involved with her in an early-teen way, and then, somehow, things go wrong. He's mad at her, and thinks he won't see her for a bit. Then it continues a bit longer, and he still hasn't seen her. After a while, it's clear that the relationship is over, but it's not obvious whether he ever made a real decision to end it. He examines all his shifting thoughts and emotions in the minutest detail, and you still don't know. At least, I didn't.With Albertine, in the last third of the book, we get the case that I find most interesting. He's at Balbec (apparently it's based on the real-life resort town of Cabourg; I first learned that from a Brigade Mondaine novel). He sees this rather rowdy gang of teenage girls who go around together, laughing and indulging in various kinds of horseplay. He's a sickly kid, and their boisterous animal spirits appeal to him. There's one in particular that he keeps on bumping into by accident. Her name is Albertine, and after a while he decides he's fallen in love with her. Being Proust, he has to carefully go though all the times they've met, and look at how his feelings evolved in response to those chance meetings. When he reconstructs everything, an interesting fact emerges: he thought he was meeting the same girl every time, but in fact he may not have. It's possible that he met different girls on the different occasions, and the feelings just crystallized out as deciding that he was in love with Albertine. He doesn't know, and they don't know! If the book had been written 15 years later, I would have wondered if this was an allusion to the new quantum theory: you have, as it were, a wave-function of girls, which collapses into the single Albertine observation. But I'm pretty sure that that was still in the future, so Proust made it all up himself. Impressive. Conceivably, the causality went the other way: perhaps some quantum physicist was inspired by Proust's novel!The thought I find so interesting here is that, as Proust shows, you can fall in love quickly, but then there is a philosophical problem: who are you falling in love with? At one point in my life, I was kind of interested in the semantics of denotation and reference, but linguistic philosophers like Kripke, Quine or Montague never seem to look at examples as complex as the ones that Proust makes up. I would love to know if someone has done an analysis of his books from this kind of angle. From the practical point of view, though, I think there is a useful lesson to be learned. If you fall in love quickly, the person you're in love with may not really exist. That's worth remembering.
—Manny
I like to read books about people’s fucked up relationships more than I like to read about how lovely the flowers smell along the French seaside (unless of course the flowers are a blatant euphemism for something else), so I did not end up rating Within a Budding Grove quite as highly as I rated Swann’s Way.The first half of the book was great and made true my prediction that the narrator would experience a “Swann–Odette” type of relationship with Gilberte, replete with its ups and downs and its ins and outs. Here the narrator expounds on what his love for Gilberte feels like to him: When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other’s feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves. Much of this section reiterates what the narrator talked a lot about in the first book, which is how the happiness we attain for ourselves is based more in the exhilaration of wanting something than it does in actually possessing it in the end.The second half of this book finds the narrator on summer vacation with his grandmother in the fictional coastal town of Balbec, which I think is probably in Normandy or something. Until the end where things start getting interesting again with Albertine, a lot of this was flyover country for me. It isn’t that I don’t like reading about rich kids and their grandmother’s snobby friends but none of it had the bite of a good old-fashioned Mme. Verdurin parlor gathering, if you catch my drift.But then Albertine and her band of friends do enter the picture during the final third of this novel and Proust soars anew, demonstrating his eminence at describing the concept of memory, flirting with our own understanding of it, and putting into words an experience we’ve all had recalling the facial features of a person no longer in our line of sight. Essentially, our memory of the particulars of a person’s face is known to be transient. We begin “forgetting” details the moment we can no longer see the person, our memory of them immediately undergoing distortion, after which only as the person reenters our presence does that memory once again assimilate into the “real thing.”The same is true, in many ways, for other details which we accumulate by way of the senses. The taste of an orange, for example, is a taste that—for an orange lover—is known to be delicious, and one can be reminded of the fact that the orange is delicious but the actual taste of the orange eludes us until the moment at which we once again bite into one. Before that, and then again immediately after the flavor of it has left our palate, we are able only to rely on our untrustworthy memory of it which we know to morph and elude, and which supplies us with a superficial impression of deliciousness but without the details necessary to constitute what that deliciousness might taste like. With human beings, this cycle, repeating itself as it does, is further confounded by the idea that while our memory of a person fluctuates against the tide of reality, the reality itself is changing. A person in her late teenage years is no longer the same person we see before us in her twenties, and this additional dimension of change complicates our impression of a person to the extent that we have perhaps to admit that we can never really know a person.Proust also excels with comedy. And I mention this because I think it’s funny to imagine someone finding Proust funny. I don’t know too many people who read Marcel Proust for his comic moments, and I certainly don’t read Marcel Proust for his comic moments, but those moments nevertheless are there. There is a passage in which the narrator is playing a game with Albertine similar to Monkey in the Middle, and he is so preoccupied with the idea of Albertine’s hands touching his that when they suddenly do touch his, he becomes over the moon with excitement and disbelief that this glorious moment is happening to him. Not even a beat later, however, the girl shatters his reveries with a comment like, “Dude, I’ve been trying to give you the ball. Why are you not taking it? Guys, we can’t invite this guy to play with us anymore. He’s a complete tool who doesn’t know how to take the ball when it is handed to him. Seriously, what is wrong with him?”Reading this book took me a bit longer than I expected, and I will probably not start on Volume III until I have cleared enough time out of my schedule to enjoy it as much as I hope to. Until then, while I know I may begin forgetting the specifics of what I’ve enjoyed so far in In Search of Lost Time, I’m confident I’ll retain at least the impression of the enjoyment it has made on me, which—whether we like to believe so or not—has to be enough. Main Review Page for In Search of Lost Time
—Jason
