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The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3)
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The Guermantes Way, vol. 3 > Through Sunday, 26 May: The Guermantes Way

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message 1: by Jason (last edited Jan 04, 2013 08:21PM) (new) - added it

Jason (ancatdubh2) This thread is for the discussion that will take place through Sunday, 26 May of The Guermantes Way, to page 362 (to the paragraph beginning: “Mme de Villeparisis meanwhile was not too well pleased...”)


Richard Magahiz (milkfish) | 111 comments Reading the first part of this week's section, I'm finding it a little difficult determining exactly what Proust is describing in his non-linear style. I might need to re-read a bit.

In journalistic fashion instead, this is what I'm gleaning:
WHO: the Narrator, Mme. de Villeparisis, Mme. de Guermantes, three women of noble extraction including one reminiscent of Marie Antoinette, Bloch turned considerably more serious instead of farcical, miscellaneous others. Not mentioned are people like the Narrator's grandmother or anyone else in his family, Swann and his family, Mme. Verdurin, several others I would have thought might have rated a mention.

WHAT: Salons, though I can't tell how many and precisely who's playing host at all of them.

WHERE: Again, I can't tell whether they're at Mme. de Villeparisis' residence, at the elegant Guermantes salon, or a mixture of these.

WHEN: I'm guessing over a somewhat extended length of time, though maybe not if the Narrator is planning to return to Balbec early this year. Proust is as always vague about this aspect of what he's describing.

WHY: This one is at least mostly unambiguous -- the quest for social status and notoriety among the members of high society. But it's fun to see how Proust undercuts the whole enterprise by talking about the superficial conversations that go on and the subterfuges required (ensuring that men attend without their wives through a ruse, for instance). The principals seem serenely unaware that anything could be going wrong with their plans.

So do I have the basics right at least?


message 3: by Eugene (new)

Eugene Wyatt | 102 comments Waiting in a barber shop for a haircut, killing time until noon when my house keeper leaves. Her name is Loretta but I want to call her Celeste.

Even though I've read/listened to ISOLT before, this is the first time I've read it so closely. The salon scene spans 150 pages & I should read it all before I comment but for now: what a jerk the Duc is, he makes the Narrator look so much better, in fact all the attendees do. 2 more hours...I guess I could read, but what ;-?


message 4: by Martin (new)

Martin Gibbs | 105 comments I'm with you Richard on the confusion about these salons, but I am loving the scenes.

I also appreciate how Proust sees words/names in colors:

".... beautiful and profound, they would have had to reflect that amaranthine colour of the closing syllable of her name ...."

".... without seeming to feel that there were latent in her name the glow of yellowing woods in autumn and a whole mysterious tract of country.... "



It's a wonderful dimension to his narrative description and, for me at least, creates a fuller picture of the people/objects being described, as I tend to "colorize" letters, numbers, and dates.


message 5: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Richard wrote: "WHERE: Again, I can't tell whether they're at Mme. de Villeparisis' residence, at the elegant Guermantes salon, or a mixture of these."

I have to say I'm finding this episode has more of a narrative drive than some of the other more philosophical ones, and it seems to me to be a faster read because I don't stop to reflect on what I've just read so much. Perhaps I'm missing some nuances but I'm not finding it very hard to follow at all.

As to the Where, you mention, Richard, it is definitely Mme de Villeparisis's home/apartment where Norpois seems to be a semi-permanent resident, at least in the first forty pages of this week's reading. My only query about that is where exactly is Mme de V's home located. In book two, the Narrator's grandmother visited Mme de V in her home and met the tailor, Jupion, who lived downstairs or in the same courtyard, and she was advised by Mme de V to move there as it would suit her health better. Now they have moved to this hôtel particulier where Jupion has his workshop, but it is Mme de G who is in residence in the main part of the building and there's no mention of Mme de V living within the same courtyard complex....

Eugene, the way the duc is described is very amusing, as is the very detailed portrait we get of his wife and her conversational style. Proust is so good at this kind of social satire and it gives us such a fascinating insight into the lives of such people, and the etiquette of their salons. It is quite like the world described in Anatole France's Le Lys Rouge although the satire there was less pointed.

Martin, I also marked the 'amarante' reference, pleased to have finally found the name of the flower that reminded the Narrator of the colour he associated with the name Guermantes although the 'amarante' flower seems to be a bordeaux colour and not orange or yellow...

And I think some familiar names are going to crop up in this section, already I was reminded of Swann when the Narrator describes the way Mme de G rarely mentioned poetry or literature to her author guests when she invites them to dinner, and then he actually does mention Swann. And then others...


message 6: by Jocelyne (new) - added it

Jocelyne Lebon | 745 comments Like Richard and Martin, I too was a little confused as to where we were but this section is such a wonderful, vivid tableau of a salon of the time, and Proust such a great satirist.

Fionnuala, I thought amarante was yellow. I would have put my head under the guillotine. You just saved my life. And thank you for reminding us of Le Lys Rouge.


message 7: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments I thought it was yellow too, J, but the French dictionary I looked in described a plant with Bordeaux coloured flowers. But it doesn't make sense. I'm sure Proust must have meant yellow. We need Kalliope to sort this out.


Richard Magahiz (milkfish) | 111 comments Amaranth comes from a Greek expression meaning unfading.

Thanks for clearing up the WHERE of this section. Part of the problem for me is that sometimes he makes it seem as if the salons belong to Mme. de Villeparisis, but then he portrays the Duchesse as dictating how the conversation is to proceed.


message 9: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Richard, I think that's because she did dictate the conversation since her status was greater and also because the Narrator does an omniscient trick and comments on how the Duchesse behaves in her own home even while he is describing Mme de V's afternoon salon at which he is present, as an observer and a participant.


message 10: by Kalliope (last edited May 21, 2013 11:31AM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Kalliope Here is an orange Amarante. It is the kind Amarante à fleur de coquelicot...




But yes, mostly it is of a fuchsia or bourdeaux color..

Here is the one Crête de coq



And I think this is the more common one:




Kalliope I agree with Fionnuala in that this section reads very fast, but I also agree with everyone else in that this is a delusively easy read because, at least I, do not know what is really happening.

Interesting is the atypical background of Marquise de Villeparisis; her close relationship with M. Norpois; that the Duc behaves, or talks, a bit like a bourgeois; that Mme de Cambremer the younger is not aging well; and that the Duchesse will soon fall from the pedestal on which our Narrator had placed her.

And also how very traumatic was the Dreyfus affair for everyone.


message 12: by Fionnuala (last edited May 21, 2013 11:32AM) (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments I knew you'd sort out the confusion, Kall. The 'Amarante à fleur de coquelicot' sounds like the right variety. Orangey yellow. Just right.
And is it related to amaryllis?


Kalliope Fionnuala wrote: "I knew you'd sort out the confusion, Kall.
And is it related to amaryllis?"


Well, I am just relieved that we finally know why he saw the Guermantes as orange... from the early Combray section that was a mystery.

As for amaryllis, I am not an expert, but it does not seem so. The funny thing is that yellow in Spanish is "amarillo".

But there is this poem by Rimbeaud called Plates-bandes d'Amarantes

Juillet, Boulevard du Régent.

Plates-bandes d'amarantes jusqu'à
L'agréable palais de Jupiter.
- Je sais que c'est Toi qui, dans ces lieux,
Mêles ton Bleu presque de Sahara !

Puis, comme rose et sapin du soleil
Et liane ont ici leur jeux enclos,
Cage de la petite veuve !...
Quelles
Troupes d'oiseaux, ô iaio, iaio !...

- Calmes maisons, anciennes passions !
Kiosque de la Folle par affection.
Après les fesses des rosiers, balcon
Ombreux et très bas de la Juliette.

- La Juliette, ça rappelle l'Henriette,
Charmante station du chemin de fer,
Au coeur d'un mont, comme au fond d'un verger
Où mille diables bleus dansent dans l'air !

Banc vert où chante au paradis d'orage,
Sur la guitare, la blanche Irlandaise.
Puis, de la salle à manger guyanaise,
Bavardage des enfants et des cages.

Fenêtre du duc qui fais que je pense
Au poison des escargots et du buis
Qui dort ici-bas au soleil.
Et puis
C'est trop beau ! trop ! Gardons notre silence.

- Boulevard sans mouvement ni commerce,
Muet, tout drame et toute comédie,
Réunion des scènes infinie,
Je te connais et t'admire en silence.

Est-elle almée ?...

Est-elle almée ?... aux premières heures bleues
Se détruira-t-elle comme les fleurs feues...
Devant la splendide étendue où l'on sente
Souffler la ville énormément florissante !

C'est trop beau ! c'est trop beau ! mais c'est nécessaire
- Pour la Pêcheuse et la chanson du Corsaire,
Et aussi puisque les derniers masques crurent
Encore aux fêtes de nuit sur la mer pure !

Juillet 1872.

Arthur Rimbaud



In my first fast reading I got all excited as I read "orate" as "orange"..

Watch out for the White Irlandaise...


Richard Magahiz (milkfish) | 111 comments Fionnuala wrote: "Richard, I think that's because she did dictate the conversation since her status was greater and also because the Narrator does an omniscient trick and comments on how the Duchesse behaves in her ..."

I also know I'm missing something in the talk about hats - carried in the hand at home and lain on the floor. What does it mean to people of the period?


message 15: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Et le duc qui fais que je pense..


I'll have to reread this, it's full of jeux de mots.


message 16: by Fionnuala (last edited May 21, 2013 11:59AM) (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Juillet, Juliette,
Jeux enclos,
Kiosque, station de chemin de fer,
cages, fesses des rosiers?
Lots of little echoes of Proust here...
And the white Irlandaise - must be a type of rose, Irish people aren't famous for the guitar unlike the Spanish. Now If it had been a fiddle...


Kalliope I also see the orange (next to the blue, its complementary color) in the Sahara....




message 18: by Fionnuala (last edited May 21, 2013 12:39PM) (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Kalliope wrote: "I also see the orange (next to the blue, its complementary color) in the Sahara.."

Mme de G lying down with her eyes open ( but not visible here.)?


message 19: by Fionnuala (last edited May 22, 2013 05:35AM) (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Richard wrote: " ..I also know I'm missing something in the talk about hats - carried in the hand at home and lain on the floor. What does it mean to people of the period? ."

I think it's simply a new fashion the younger set had of wearing their hats all the time and just placing them on the floor while in the presence of women. But the narrator leaves his in the hall à l'ancienne. And then Norpois borrows it, in order to appear like the younger set, entering the room still carrying his hat, as if he was still young, and had just come from somewhere else, or as if this was a peculiarity of his own...


message 20: by Karen· (new) - added it

Karen· (kmoll) | 318 comments @Richard: I found that bit about the hats in last week's part strange too. All I know is that in the 19th Century in GB, it was NOT done for a gentleman to hang up his hat when he came to call on ladies in the afternoon. He would nurse it carefully on his knee until he left again. A gentleman would only hang up his hat in his own home, normally - although I suppose that footmen and butlers would relieve the gentlemen of their hats at an evening 'do'. I haven't got anywhere on this week's reading so far, as I needed to re-read the end of last week's first, but wasn't that salon an afternoon? A tea? And maybe relaxed, minimal servants, so the gentlemen would have held on to their hats, and presumably the thing must have got in the way at some stage so they would put it down.

But the idea of a man carrying his hat around in his own home, well, that was a weird one!


message 21: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments ·Karen· wrote: ".But the idea of a man carrying his hat around in his own home, well, that was a weird one! "

Do you mean Norpois, Karen? I don't think he's meant to be 'in his own home', just at home chez Mme de V. but trying to appear as if he isn't, for the sake of appearances...


message 22: by Elizabeth (new)

Elizabeth | 366 comments Crête de coq
We have those around here. We call them Rooster Combs.

Re the duc's bourgeois-style conversation. He's an idiot.


Kalliope I think the Duc would feel more insulted if he were called a bourgeois than if he were called an idiot....

LOL


message 24: by Jocelyne (last edited May 21, 2013 01:52PM) (new) - added it

Jocelyne Lebon | 745 comments Elizabeth wrote: "Crête de coq
We have those around here. We call them Rooster Combs.

Re the duc's bourgeois-style conversation. He's an idiot."


We have the Crêtes de Coq here too, and the funny thing is that I have the purple and most common one in front of my house! I knew they were called amaranthus but did not even make the connection. The truth is right now I am totally enthralled by the blooming jacarandas. A veritable feast for the eye which easily eclipses the amaranths.


message 25: by Karen· (new) - added it

Karen· (kmoll) | 318 comments Fionnuala wrote: "·Karen· wrote: ".But the idea of a man carrying his hat around in his own home, well, that was a weird one! "

Do you mean Norpois, Karen? I don't think he's meant to be 'in his own home', just at ..."


No, this was really last week... Mme de Villeparisis talking to Bloch about something to do with a man and his hat and then telling Bloch that when the King came to call then he turned every home into his court, so that you were then a visitor in your own house. Did I get that right? Something like that.
I still haven't really started this week. Work and life getting in the way of reading.


message 26: by Eugene (last edited May 21, 2013 06:22PM) (new)

Eugene | 479 comments Beauty:

Proust cuts between speaking voices in the salon scene; they are different and appear to be what the Narrator overhears. He comments on the speakers and what they say as the present Narrator and as the reflective Narrator, but in this case that could be Marcel Proust himself.

About Mme de Marsantes,

Possibly the reflective Narrator or Proust is speaking:

Being a great lady means playing the great lady, that is to say, to a certain extent, playing at simplicity. It is a pastime which costs a great deal of money, all the more because simplicity charms people only on condition that they know that you are capable of not living simply, that is to say that you are very rich.

The present Narrator is speaking:

Someone said to me afterwards, when I mentioned that I had seen her: "You saw of course that she must have been lovely as a young woman."

Possibly the reflective Narrator or Proust is speaking:

But true beauty is so individual, so novel always, that one does not recognize it as beauty.

The present Narrator is speaking:

I said to myself that afternoon only that she had a tiny nose, very blue eyes, a long neck and a sad expression. ML p. 340

The verbal textures, the way people speak, alternate between speakers and between Narrators: I find these changes beautiful, Proust is to be lauded for them--how interesting, how fresh, how... And what he has to say about beauty is as contemporary now as it was when it was written 100 or so years ago, beauty is "...individual...novel...one does not recognize it...", another reason I enjoy reading ISOLT.


message 27: by Eugene (new)

Eugene | 479 comments This week was a fast read; normally I finish on Thursday but this week on Tuesday, as there was much dialog. Proust is known for his long sentences; Lydia Davis in the introduction to her translation, Swann's Way mentions that Proust also pared his longer sentences into more manageable utterances, if he could. He was only long if it was required by the the sense of the sentence.

Look where Proust takes you when the Narrator speaks/thinks at
Mme de Villeparisis's salon:

Mme de Villeparisis's evening party
Afternoon outings in Paris
Shopping in Paris
A succession of salons
The streets of Paris from tall open windows
Combray
Tansonville
Rue de la Paix

The length of the sentence is required to travel as the reader does.

Perhaps I should have been not quite so deeply stirred had I met her at Mme de Villeparisis's at an evening party, instead of seeing her thus at one of the Marquise's "at homes," at one of those tea-parties which are for women no more than a brief halt in the course of their afternoon's outing, when, keeping on the hats in which they have been doing their shopping, they waft into a succession of salons the quality of the fresh air outside, and offer a better view of Paris in the late afternoon than do the tall open Windows through which one can hear the rumble of victorias: Mme de Guermantes wore a straw hat trimmed with cornflowers, and what they re-called to me was not the sunlight of bygone years among the tilled fields round Combray where I had so often gathered them on the slope adjoining the Tansonville hedge, but the smell and the dust of twilight as they had been an hour ago when Mme de Guermantes had walked through them in the Rue de la Paix. ML p. 274

Might also I note a lovely string of words in the sentence "the smell and the dust of twilight" Ahh, what does twilight smell like, we ask. If this is not antithesis but called another rhetorical term, it matters not, it pleases.


message 28: by Fionnuala (last edited May 22, 2013 03:02AM) (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments ·Karen· wrote: "No, this was really last week... Mme de Villeparisis talking to Bloch about... when the King came to call then he turned every home into his court, so that you were then a visitor in your own house. Did I get that right? Something like that.. "

Yes, she seemed to be saying that her father only ever wore his hat in his own house if the king visited but that M le comte Molé, a contemporary of her father's and whom she seemed to rate highly, always carried his when he came down to dinner in his own home regardless of any royal visits. I'm wondering if Proust isn't trying to make a connection, via all this talk of the etiquette of hat holding, between Molé and Norpois, as if Mme de V is subtly transferring an extra veneer of prestige on Norpois by linking him with Molé since Norpois eventually enters the room holding a hat and she has indicated to everyone that he has been in another room all the time, attending to his own affairs, as if in his own home, and not coming from the outside like everyone else.

@Eugene, I loved that wonderful phrase about the flowers in Mme de G's hat (which she wears indoors because it is kate afternoon and not evening) and how they didn't evoke the sun-filled years of childhood when the Narrator had picked such flowers in Combray or Tansonville, but instead threw extra light on Paris life as it appears in the late afternoon by evoking the smell of dust at twilight, in the rue de la Paix:
Mme de Guermantes était coiffé d'un canotier fleuri de bluets; et ce qu'ils évoquaient, ce n'était pas, sur les sillons de Combray où si souvent j'en avais cueilli, sur le talus contigu à la haie de Tansonville, les soleils des lointaines années, c'était l'odeur de la poussière du crépuscule, telles qu'elles étaient tout à l'heure, au moment où Mme de Guermantes venait de les traverser, rue de la Paix

@Kalliope, so can we now presume that the spelling of the name Guermantes, and not just the 'colour' of the name, was somehow inspired by the word 'amarantes'?


message 29: by Kalliope (last edited May 22, 2013 04:40AM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Kalliope Fionnuala wrote: "i..."

Hard to say about the name.. there is a place called Guermantes and also this château:

http://www.balades-en-brie.com/brie/g...

Someone may have access to this article...

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307...

I have registered and can read the article... (can only be read on line, and no copy/paste is possible)

One extract...

Pourtant Guermantes existe. C’est un petit village de Moniz de deux mille habitants qui se situe non pas dans la Beauce comme Illiers-Combray, main en Ile-de-France, près de Lagny-sur-Marne, à vingt-cinq kilomètres à l’est de Paris.

A Guermantes on trouve en effet une allée Swann, une allée du Temps perdu une rue de la Madeleine, un espace Marcel Proust. Mais si les proustiens y sont si peu sensibles, c’est bien sûr parce qu’ils savent que la beauté et le charme de Guermantes n’existent pour le narrateur de la Recherche que dans son nom et que tout ce qui fait référence au Guermantes réel, telles ces explications que Saint-Loup croit bon de lui fournir de l’histoire de sa famille….



message 30: by Eugene (new)

Eugene | 479 comments @Fionnuala

Yes, the ML translation is more 'mystical' than what Proust wrote, l'odeur de la poussière du crépuscule...; either way the words are evocative as is the sentence.


Kalliope More from this article...

Pourtant Guermantes existe. C’est un petit village de Moniz de deux mille habitants qui se situe non pas dans la Beauce comme Illiers-Combray, main en Ile-de-France, près de Lagny-sur-Marne, à vingt-cinq kilomètres à l’est de Paris.

A Guermantes on trouve en effet une allée Swann, une allée du Temps perdu une rue de la Madeleine, un espace Marcel Proust. Mais si les proustiens y sont si peu sensibles, c’est bien sûr parce qu’ils savent que la beauté et le charme de Guermantes n’existent pour le narrateur de la Recherche que dans son nom et que tout ce qui fait référence au Guermantes réel, telles ces explications que Saint-Loup croit bon de lui fournir de l’histoire de sa famille….

Comme le dit Kristeva.. Guermantes, c’est dans la Recherche la « métaphore par excellence de l’Être en tant qu’objet littéraire », celle qui assure la transsubstantiation des fantasmagories de l’enfance en œuvre d’art, une fois dépassés les désenchantements qu’entraînent inévitablement toute confrontation et tout rapprochement avec le réel – une leçon que Philip Kolb a manifestement bien retenue lorsqu’il privilégie le motif euphonique pour expliquer le choix de Guermantes de préférence à Villebon



message 32: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Kalliope wrote: "une leçon que Philip Kolb a manifestement bien retenue lorsqu’il privilégie le motif euphonique pour expliquer le choix de Guermantes de préférence à Villebon "

Thank you for looking this up, Kalliope. And you have been well rewarded in your quest to throw light on the 'Guermantes' image which so fascinates the Narrator. The academics seem intrigued by it too, that there is a 'euphonic' motivation in the choice of the name as well as a link to colour, via the flower, amarante that we have worked out here. It is as if all the major themes of the Recherche are contained in the name...when we say it aloud, that long middle syllable can even suggests time passing; a little like the sound of 'maintes fois', so many times..

@Eugene, doesn't the 'odeur de la poussière du crépuscule suggest death in a vague kind of way too, death of an infatuation perhaps?..


Kalliope Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "une leçon que Philip Kolb a manifestement bien retenue lorsqu’il privilégie le motif euphonique pour expliquer le choix de Guermantes de préférence à Villebon "

Thank you for look..."


Looking at the etymology of the word Amarante... from the French Wiki

Amaranthus vient du grec ancien αμάρανθος, formé du privatif a-, « sans » et de maranthos, « qui se fane » : en effet, l'amarante a la réputation de ne pas se faner, et est pour cette raison un symbole de l’immortalité. Certaines espèces sont d'ailleurs utilisées dans les bouquets secs.

Proust has certainly made the name Guermantes immortal...!!!

But I keep thinking that he may have known the Rimbaud poem. He read everything and remembered.


message 34: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Immortality, euphony, flowers, colour, you have found so much in the name Guermantes, Kall, and also in Rimbaud'sPlates-bandes d'amarantes .


message 35: by Eugene (new)

Eugene Wyatt | 102 comments @Fionualla

Yes, it could suggest death but I try to 'stay on the page' and take only what's written by Proust & to not follow my fancies. The late afternoon is the 'death' of the day, if you will, and that is what I read.

Also, the utterance was by the present (younger) narrator who doesn't yet know that he will be "indifferent" to her. He's still infatuated with her at the moment of speaking; he experiences melancholy but not her figurative death, not yet.


message 36: by Karen· (new) - added it

Karen· (kmoll) | 318 comments Sorry to get back to such boring little details as hats after all your wondrous speculation on death and immortality:

I've reached the part where the young baron and Châtellerault put their hat down on the floor, and my edition gives me an annotation here: The handbook of etiquette of the day Les usages et le savoir-vivre en toutes les circonstances de la vie (Autran) says that it is only acceptable to leave your hat in the hall at a ball or an evening entertainment. Visiting a salon, the gentleman should hold his hat and his cane in his hand all the time, never putting it down anywhere. Also he should never have anything but the outside of the hat visible to anyone else. "En montrer la coiffe et ridicule" I presume coiffe is the lining? I didn't find any sensible translation.

Same as GB then.

And it explains Mme de Villeparisis's little joke (haha) about Saint Loup, who likes to leave his hat in the hall, so she teases him, saying he must have come to wind the clocks - she is a card isn't she? Presumably the workman would come in by the workman's entrance and would leave his cap in the kitchen.

I lived in one of these huge houses in the 8ème arrondissement in Paris when I was working as an au pair. It had a magnificent front staircase, all gold and mirrors and plush carpet, and then there was the narrow wooden servants' staircase that went past the kitchen and up to the servants' rooms under the attics. It took you out past the other side of the concierge's office, out into the street through a much less sumptuous door. You still had to sneak past the nosy concierge though.


message 37: by Jocelyne (last edited May 22, 2013 09:57AM) (new) - added it

Jocelyne Lebon | 745 comments Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "une leçon que Philip Kolb a manifestement bien retenue lorsqu’il privilégie le motif euphonique pour expliquer le choix de Guermantes de préférence à Villebon "

Thank you for look..."


Should I feel a little miffed that Guermantes is more euphonic than Villebon, although I have to agree. Thank you Kalliope for looking that up. I like Fionnuala's linking the name to a color but it would have to be the yellow amarante. The name has mystery that glitters in it. I never thought of the passage of time being evoked by 'mantes' but I like it a lot.


message 38: by Karen· (last edited May 22, 2013 10:30AM) (new) - added it

Karen· (kmoll) | 318 comments Oh and hay fever too. I'm so glad I have such a fashionable ailment. (The only person who's quite glad when it rains at this time of year).

Does anyone understand the weird Norman saying about apples? My annotations complete it:
Pour une année où il y a des pommes, il n'y a pas de pommes; mais pour une année où il n'y a pas de pommes, il y a des pommes.

I think I shall take that one into my repertoire: no-one will understand it, but it sounds really deep.


message 39: by Jocelyne (new) - added it

Jocelyne Lebon | 745 comments I found the comments about the customs of the time so fascinating such as the etiquette about hats or how to fold which corner of a carte de visite mentioned earlier, or the expression 'bas bleus'. In a totally unrelated context I was just reading that up until the middle of the 19th century it was the custom for married Japanese women to blacken their teeth.

I am wondering about the high incidence of albuminuria at the time. It almost sounds like a fashionable disease of the time. How come we never hear the term now? Or is kidney failure what was then called albuminuria? I can't help wondering whether a hundred years from now, people reading our contemporary litterature will ask the same question about cancer.


message 40: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments ·Karen· wrote: ".Also he should never have anything but the outside of the hat visible to anyone else. "En montrer la coiffe et ridicule" I presume coiffe is the lining? I didn't find any sensible translation...."

I'm thinking they didn't wanted to avoid anyone having to look at the greasy inner band of the hat!
But if this was the etiquette of the day, and not just a vogue that some young people like Châtellerualt practiced, the Narrator, by leaving his in the hall, must be following Saint-Loup's clock-winder practice?


I siffler fromage Jay rêver
That was my French keyboard's version of : I suffer from hay fever too.


message 41: by Karen· (new) - added it

Karen· (kmoll) | 318 comments Ha! Then we can whistle cheese together.


message 42: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Gruyère would serve perfectly.


message 43: by Eugene (new)

Eugene | 479 comments @Fionnuala

Correction: The 1st half of the sentence, we were discussing in messages 32 & 35, before the ":" was said the the older (reflective) Narrator & what follows that was said by the younger (present) Narrator.


message 44: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala | 1142 comments Eugene wrote: "@Fionualla, Yes, it could suggest death but I try to 'stay on the page' and take only what's written by Proust & to not follow my fancies. The late afternoon is the 'death' of the day, if you will..."

Yes, it makes sense to 'stay on the page', Eugene and not anticipate the events of the story too much. There is more than enough to satisfy us in the present of the narrative.
But I'm struck by how copying out Proust's sentences here reveals even more about them than just passively reading the text. That is why I made that comment about death. Having copied out the words, the poussière and the crépuscule suddenly evoked endings and death.
Re the two Narrators, I am trying to read with more awareness of the difference in there perspectives and it does help.


message 45: by Eugene (new)

Eugene | 479 comments I just listened to Antoine Compagnon's last lecture Proust in 1913; his concluding subject was when did Proust realize he was a great writer. M Compagnon suggests that was in 1913, five years after he had begun his novel, when he was revising the proofs in Swann's Way on Bergotte's "talent" after Swann had spoken to the Narrator in Combray. A summation of what he says reappears in this week's reading but Proust uses the word "beauty".

But true beauty is so individual, so novel always, that one does not recognize it as beauty. ML p. 340

Five years...


message 46: by Eugene (last edited May 23, 2013 08:40PM) (new)

Eugene | 479 comments Much is made of wit at the salon:

"I don't remember making such a charming comparison, but if she was one before, now she's the frog that has succeeded in swelling to the size of the ox. Or rather, it isn't quite that, because ail her swelling is concentrated in her stomach: she's more like a frog in an interesting condition."

"Ah, I do find that funny," said Mme de Villeparisis, secretly proud that her guests should be witnessing this display of her niece's wit.
ML p. 282

As Proust must 'indict' the Duchess to show why the young Narrator falls out of love with her as disclosed earlier by an omniscient narrator, isn't this part of the indictment? Is making fun of a person you suspect to be ill, particularly one who will dine with you next week, wit or even funny? Probably more damned than the Duchess here is Mme de Villeparisis, as much as I've liked, among other things, the rebel in her, she's guilty of a poorly chosen pride.

These are disagreeable people at the salon, almost all of them. As offensive as Bloch is, he almost had me admiring him when he almost left the salon but he, true to character, stayed to talk to M de Norpois. Him, I best like among the attendees as he is such a master of conversational language, never to be pinned down. He has the almost good Bloch spinning about the Dreyfus case: 'does he or doesn't he' after listening to the ambassador's diplomatic, but sophistic, rhetoric.

This is less cartoonish than Mme Verdurin's get together but meaner.


message 47: by Kalliope (last edited May 24, 2013 06:36AM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Kalliope I just do not see a clear cut between two Narrators, one young and one adult. I am finding it much more complex than that. We do get indications of later times, of later judgments. These convey that the Narrator is benefiting from a more mature judgment and from the knowledge of what came later (..“un peu plus tard”). But there is a collection of younger Narrators, in the plural, and these are all intermingled. Even if there is the impression that a story is advancing in a sort of linear way and even if we seem to be following the Narrator as he grows up, there is a great deal of memories of earlier times interspersed in the supposedly middle parts. Combray and Balbec days keep coming up “later” on. Even in those two periods we noticed that memories corresponding to different age-ranges. We are presented with a one season in Balbec but in which we have a boy playing with sand in the beach while somewhat later he is going for dinner with another youth and having an intellectual conversation with a painter.

Memories are conflated into a deceiving linear continuum. I do not think one can identify two discrete points in this narrative.


message 48: by Martin (new)

Martin Gibbs | 105 comments Great post, Kalliope. I got that sense, especially at the tail end of this week's reading, where we have glimpses of the future (e.g., regarding the Prince Faffenheim), and then we are back.

This is the beauty of this search, I think. Sometimes-linear, and sometimes a kaleidoscope of swirling colors, memories, emotions, smells, and tastes.


message 49: by Kalliope (last edited May 24, 2013 06:38AM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Kalliope Martin wrote: "Great post, Kalliope. I got that sense, especially at the tail end of this week's .."

Martin,

I love your image of the kaleidoscope.. perfect.. it matches the Magic Lantern...


Richard Magahiz (milkfish) | 111 comments Kalliope wrote: "I just do not see a clear cut between two Narrators, one young and one adult. I am finding it much more complex than that. We do get indications of later times, of later judgments. These convey t..."

I remember marveling when I was very young at how memoirists were able to recall all the details of experiences and conversations months or years after the event, when I could barely remember what I did just yesterday. Only much later did I have an insight into the artifice of the writer.


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