One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

Our reading ends at:
“Perhaps the unconscious well-being drawn from the summer’s day helped to swell, like a tributary, the joy I had taken in seeing Harbour at Carquethuit (~79.2%).

There's so much of the narrator's interest in and desire for girls in this part! I love to what extent Proust drives this, the youthful bliss of longing for girls. How often does he spot a girl or even a group of girls and can't stop thinking about them?

I was at one of those times of youth when the idle heart, unoccupied by love for a particular person, lies in wait for Beauty, seeking it everywhere,
(p. 368).

The transience of brief strangers who enter our life and force us out of the normality in which all the women we are used to will eventually reveal their blemishes, puts us into a state of readiness to pursue them, in which nothing inhibits the imagination.
(p. 376)

This also reminds me of Chekhov's short stories, especially Ionitch, The Lady with the Little Dog and The Black Monk, for whom this also seems a common theme.

And another aphorism I like, from the overall interesting evening where the slightly drunk narrator again looks out for girls:

drunkenness brings about, for the space of a few hours, subjective idealism, pure phenomenalism; all things become mere appearances
(p. 396)
[a few lines before]
The enterprise of getting to know them now seemed easy, but a matter of indifference, since nothing but my present sensation, because of the extraordinary power of it, the euphoria afforded by its slightest variations and even by the mere continuity of it, had any importance;

This statement about the bias a name gives, the prejudiced way we imagine that which it represents from what we associate with it, made me reconsider my aversion against titles of stories that are names, like Anna Karenina or Ionitch. Maybe those unique titles prevent bias.

The names of things always express a view of the mind, which is foreign to our genuine impressions of them, and which forces us to eliminate from them whatever does not correspond to that view.
(p. 415)

(highlighted 11 times on Kindle)

Now slightly before the end of this week's part it seems like a longer episode with Elstir the painter starts. I'm interested and looking forward to that, even though i'm not the biggest lover of paintings and my technical knowledge there is limited. He seems to be an interesting character too, though.

I loved this section. It evoked for me a lot of the feelings I think many have when they first become interested in others in a romantic or sexual way. As Proust points out, it's not always the person per se that you're attracted to, but the time they come across your vision.

The end of this section does contain a rather lengthy description of one of Elstir's paintings, but I enjoyed it as it's so well done.

This is as far as I had gotten when I was reading on my own (now I seem to never catch up.
I thought Proust was brilliant in the way he describes art. To be able to do that with words is astounding.

Teresa wrote: "I loved this section. It evoked for me a lot of the feelings I think many have when they first become interested in others in a romantic or sexual way. As Proust points out, it's not always the per..."

I've just reached the section with Elstir. The section preceding it, with the narrator's musings on love, the women he had observed while at the Rivebelle, as well as by the hotel, were almost as intoxicating as he seemed to be from his drink. I like how you phrase it Teresa, and I think I agree. He seems to be trying to come to terms with what he sees around him, what he wants, who these women are, what women are and who they would be for him.

There are always a several paragraphs each week in which the psychological observations strike me. Not that I always find them particularly brilliant as observations, although the way he winds them into the narrative is, but they still resonate with my experience. Here is one example from this week which I will quote at length:

Since that moment when I first heard the name 'Simonet', I have often tried over the years to remember how it must have sounded there on the esplanade, in my uncertainty about its shape, which I had not quite noticed, about its meaning and the identity of this or that person to whom it might belong: full of the imprecision and foreignness which we later find so moving, when our unremitting attention to this name, with its letters more deeply imprinting in us with each passing second, has turned it (as the name of 'the Simonet girl' was to be turned for me, but not until several years later...

This paragraph is a good representation of the novel as a whole, a search for lost time, some kind of archaeology of memory. In part, he's talking about those times we become conscious of the fact that a unique experience has become normal. When this happens I, like the narrator, try to recall the original experience in all its novelty and brilliance before it had become ordinary and banal. This section of the book (the entire book) is itself an overt attempt to return to the original experience although he recognizes at this moment that his return is not entirely (or not yet) complete.

I think it's worth taking a moment every once in a while and recalling the first moment of our experience of something (or someone) that dazzled us. It helps refresh its value. It's fascinating to recall how moved I was by a place that amazed me at a first glance, a place that I've since become acquainted with and made my home. If I was dazzled at first glance, how much more in awe should I be now that I know the place well if I only sit up and take notice?

The same, of course, is true of the people we know and care about as the narrator observes.

Admittedly, I've read into this a bit because he's more directly referring to the inverse of what I've described: the fact that novel experiences are at first vague. The things we come to value in a person (or a place) are often not even the things we noticed first. It's odd to think about the qualities of a person I love and realize that these qualities were entirely absent from or at least peripheral to my first excitement. Our first passion is often wildly inaccurate (even when our love is entirely merited for qualities we discover later but aren't yet aware of). This is, I think, a key point he's establishing in the Balbec half of the volume: the way his expectations and initial impressions both determine and differ from what he comes to know later. This has already been the case with M. de Charlus and Saint-Loup.

Wow, you put that excellently, Jacob! That could, with a different perspective, easily have been one of Proust's ponderings.
I didn't notice this theme that much while reading, but now it seems quite important, useful. I've only vaguely thought about this before, how we don't have access to those first impressions that habit now conceals, but it's a good idea to try to recreate them.

Proust, in general, makes me painfully aware of how little I 'see' as I'm running around in my day to day life. While sometimes I lose track of what he's saying when he gets into such long descriptions of such simple things, I do appreciate that he provides such detailed observation, and seems to see beauty in things others may take for granted.

And I like your point Jacob, about how we forget our first impressions of people/things along the way. If we stopped more to think about that, we'd be more able to see why we loved something/someone in the first place at a later point when it might not be so clear. I suppose there is the idea that we aren't the same person from the time we are first exposed to something as we are years or even days later, but to stop and try to remember first impressions would probably go a long way in our appreciation of things that may have lost their lustre.

Love these last posts by Steph and Jacob. Meaningful; thoughtful.

Jacob wrote: "There are always a several paragraphs each week in which the psychological observations strike me. Not that I always find them particularly brilliant as observations, although the way he winds them..."

Jacob~

So moved by your post, I needed to respond. You have captured in writing what is most difficult. How we feel, when we read Proust. Yes, "reading ourselves."

"I think it's worth taking a moment every once in a while and recalling the first moment of our experience of something (or someone) that dazzled us."

In 2010, after placing a card on Proust's grave, our little band of pilgrims made our way, down the path toward our taxi parked nearby.

As we passed the carved tombs, "for no particular reason," I looked left and saw with one 'n' ...


Like Proust taking in a rose, I motioned the others to continue while I just stared and wondered...if this was the same path Proust walked after visiting his father's grave.

More than the name, "Simonet," it was that moment my eyes fell upon it. Of all the tombs, why did I turn my gaze to that particular one?

Thank you, Jacob, for bringing my memory back this morning.

Thanks for the generous replies. I'm reading this novel a second time almost entirely because I want to be influenced by Proust. It's encouraging to find that he's rubbing off on me, at least in the few minutes after reading him while his voice still echoes in my mind.

Marcelita, it's difficult to discover the origin of the details in a novel, like a surname. While driving I've jotted down last names I saw on mail boxes that I thought might someday make a good character name. It's remarkable to wonder if you just happened upon the inspiration for Albertine's family name. I'll keep this in mind for the tour I'd like to make of Proust's world in France. It lends so much more reality to the fictional character, even if for Proust it was just a name on a stone that he liked.

Steph, I think your observation that we're not the same person as time goes by bears remembering as I continue to read. I haven't yet thought about it much but I suspect that someone could write a dissertation - or several - on this topic in ISOLT.

All of these comments are adding to my reading. I agree that in reading Proust we are reading ourselves (and those who elect not to may well not have found themselves in side). I also notice how I am considering my own memories lately, of important people, places, objects.... I wonder if a bit of Proust rubs off on his readers.

Jacob wrote: "Thanks for the generous replies. I'm reading this novel a second time almost entirely because I want to be influenced by Proust. It's encouraging to find that he's rubbing off on me, at least in th..."

Ah, names. Proust changed them many times, before he was satisfied. I have no proof that MP saw the Simonet tomb, which is near his parents' grave.

If I read French, I would flip through the notebooks to see if "Simonet" was ever edited. (Actually, it's a good thing I don't read French, otherwise I would become a 'name-detective' and never stop to smell the syringa.)


(pp 8v-9r)
http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/.... (another page)

Good website for research, for French readers.
http://www.item.ens.fr/index.php?id=5...

Didn't find the notebook, but here is an edited galley page, with the first mention of "Simonet."


Page 300r
http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/...