I’m not sure I’ve accomplished much, but I am certain that getting three people started on Proust counts for something. I’ve been randomly re-reading and just finished the account on the narrator’s grandmother’s death, which is the first section of Part II of The Guermantes Way. It’s only 31 pages long.
Now Remembrance of Things Past is certainly not an easy read and getting started is something of a long haul. Seemingly hundreds of pages elapse before anything happens, including the famous madeleine. Unfortunate, perhaps, because Swan’s Way is actually the most conventional novel of the group.
In any case, Proust has a reputation for being obscure, hieratic, tenebrous, gloomy, perverted and metaphysical in the worst way. Yet after reading the section on the grandmother’s death, harrowing as it is, the term that came to mind was Mozartian. Or maybe de Ponteian. The ensemble effects and the acute characterization of the different social classes, the telling details, the deftly drawn supporting characters, the phenomenal craftsmanship, the humor and pathos all could come right out of Figaro. As could the exceptional tact and delicacy of sentiment.
Proust, like Wagner, whom he admired, is not generally amenable to being excerpted. The notion of time become space is central both. Likewise, both achieve their greatest effects by making us wait and both are unreasonably demanding of our time.
But if you want to get a sense of the humble, domestic pleasures of classical narrative to be found in Proust’s great work, check out the mere 31 pages I’ve selected for your consideration
The above image is the cover of "Paintings in Proust" which includes reproductions of all the (real) paintings discussed in the book. It went out of print almost immediately - I suspect the London
The uninitiated should know Proust knew a great deal about painting and wrote about it extensively in his book. The "unreal" paintings are those painted by his characters.
Because of your challenge/encouragement, I read all of "In Search of Lost Time" and enjoyed the journey. The book, the writing, the descriptions and the world he created have become part of me. I recycle many of my books by passing them on to friends or giving them to the library, but not these.
ReplyDeleteIn the first paragraph of Part Two, Chapter One, after the writer has realized his grandmother is very sick, he says: "She had suddently returned to me the toughts, the griefs which, from my earliest childhood, I had entrusted to her for all time. She was not yet dead. But I was already alone."
Amazing writing.