Manny’s Comments (group member since Mar 13, 2013)

Manny’s comments from the The Year of Reading Proust group.

Unfortunately, I have never read any Bergson, though he has been recommended to me several times...

Kalliope wrote: "Marcelita wrote: "

Harvard's Interdisciplinary Conference: Proust and t..."

Marcelita,

I have just printed this article. Thank you for this.. it will have to do until we hear from Manny's verdict."

Sorry... still haven't got back to it :( I will finish and report this evening, I hope...

Manny wrote: "Thank you Marcelita! Just accessed this and will check it out over lunch..."

Have so far only read half of it and now need to go to a meeting. On the basis of what I've seen so far, it looks like he's comparing Kant and Proust, and sees Proust as offering an interesting illustration of Kant's aesthetic theories. But he doesn't even appear to consider the possibility that Kant might actually have influenced Proust.

Will say more when I've finished it...

Marcelita wrote: "Last April, Harvard condensed their conference to just Saturday, due to the terrible bombing. Richard Moran was a presenter on Kant and Proust.

Harvard's Interdisciplinary Conference: Proust and t..."

Thank you Marcelita! Just accessed this and will check it out over lunch...

My experience is that an ingenious critic can assert or deny anything, but you would need to be very ingenious indeed to deny some connection here.

Maybe people have written about it, and it just isn't showing up on Google for some reason...

Kalliope wrote: "Before, throughout the work, the Narrator often mentions "l'idée" as something that has to precede experience."

Well, how can you get more Kantian than that? When I have returned from my voyage on the stormy ocean of metaphysics (the boat is leaving in about 30 pages), I will immediately go over to Le temps retrouvé and start searching myself.

I am more and more surprised that there isn't already a large literature on connections between Proust and Kant. Even if it isn't true, you'd think many people would speculate about it!

Kalliope wrote: "More for Manny...

the section on the "objectivation des sentiments"..

Je m'étais rendu compte que seule la perception grossière et erronée place tout dans l'objet, quand tout est dans l'esprit.> ..."

This is an interesting contrast with Kant; it seems to me that Kant would say that both "objet" and "ésprit" were essential. But in other places, Proust also seems to be saying that, so maybe this is just a flight of poetic exaggeration.

Kalliope wrote: "And now he seems to be thinking along more Platonic concepts...

Manny should have a look at this quote..

Les idées sont des succédanés des chagrins, au moment où ceux-ci se changent en idées ils perdent une partie de leur action nocive sur notre coeur, et même au premier instant, la transformation elle-même dégage subitement de la joie. Succédanés dans l'ordre du temps seulement, d'ailleurs, car il semble que l'élément premier ce soit l'Idée, et le chagrin seulement le mode selon lequel certains Idées entrent d'abord chez nous. Mais il y a plusieurs familles dans le groupe des Idées, certaines sont tout de suite des joies. pp. 309-310."

Kant does indeed talk about "modes" as ways of connecting ideas and experience, e.g. this passage at the end of the Refutation of Idealism:

The principles of modality, therefore, predicate nothing of a concept except the action of the faculty of knowledge by which it is produced. (...) We may therefore with the same right postulate the principles of modality, because they never expand the concept of things in general, but only indicate the manner in which the concept was connected with our faculty of knowledge.

But I am not sure that Kant would like the idea of chagrin as a mode, if that is indeed what is intended.

I must admit that Kant is very hard work, and not nearly as enjoyable as Proust. Though maybe that is because I am reading him in translation, which I never like much.

You are right. I must reread this immediately after Kant, so that I can compare easily.

Thank you Kalliope! This is indeed extremely interesting.

I am trying to think if the word 'mode' is being used in a Kantian sense here, but I am still hopeless unfamiliar with Kant's system...

I have exactly the same feeling. I think I will do that!

Kalliope wrote: "A great part of this weeks section could stand on its own. It could be Proust's Treatise on Aesthetics.

He addresses, as Kate and FioFio indicate above, the ancient debate of Life versus Art (Lit..."

I am strongly tempted to think that the passages you quote are linked to the ones I have just been reading in Kant, near the end of the Transcendental Analytic ("Systematic Representation Of All Synthetic Principles Of Pure Understanding").

They are beautiful and unique books in the original, but I don't know what the translations are like...

It occurs to me that the third volume in Kjærstad's trilogy is called The Discoverer - and it is indeed very much about the nature of art. Though I don't recall him referencing Proust.

It does indeed sound just like a Kantian antinomy! Alas, I have yet to reach the antinomies, and I only know them by reputation. This will at any rate motivate me to make faster progress...

Thank you Kalliope! This does indeed sound like it might point to a Kantian influence, but my Kant studies have not yet progressed far enough to be sure. I will revisit it when I have reached that section of the Critique.

It is possible that Nathan will understand better what is going on...

Thank you Kalliope, what a beautiful poem! Particularly appreciated just after finishing Proust connu et inconnu, which revealed many of the references...

I only know what's on the Gallimard page...

It is absolutely not a "poche" - it is huge! Look at the video on the bottom left-hand corner of the Gallimard page...