9.04.2009
Renée's Proustometer
I appreciated the Roger Shattuck paper for a glimpse of clarity for someone like me, new to Proust. Amazing that he once thought he may--purely as an excercise? write totally without chapters, paragraph breaks and sentence puctuation--just one giant sentence. I doubt I could have gotten through that! Anyway, I will use the paper to refer to as we go along. NOW, as for Renée on caffeine: YES, your Proustometer was waaaaaaay off the charts!
Summarizing Proust
Proustians: Thank you for coming tonight and making the evening quite special for me. After leaving you, I was so excited, I went to AIA, where there was a perfectly outstanding sunset in mauve reflected on the unmoving ocean, while the great white moon broke through the rain-soaked clouds to cast its shimmering light across the water and up the beach right onto my feet. I put this sunset moment at the end of all other sunset moments I've had and photographed and, as I often do, judged it the best ever.
Because I'd fallen asleep before the group, I'd had some caffeine assistance to perk up; I see now that it kicked in just when I needed to lay out the direction your reading could go. Sorry I was so one-track.... more than a little like Monty Python's hilarious Summarize Proust Competition!
I just set up http://readproust.blogspot.
One thing I meant to mention.... the French title... A la recherche du temps perdu literally translates into In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT), which was finally used in the Enright translation in 1998. Scott-Moncrieff chose Remembrance of Things Past (RTP), which is not exactly the same idea at all, but is a phrase taken from a sonnet by Shakespeare. He also named all the other books using Shakespearean phrases, which Proust hated. The latest translations restore the original titles.
Because I'd fallen asleep before the group, I'd had some caffeine assistance to perk up; I see now that it kicked in just when I needed to lay out the direction your reading could go. Sorry I was so one-track.... more than a little like Monty Python's hilarious Summarize Proust Competition!
I just set up http://readproust.blogspot.
One thing I meant to mention.... the French title... A la recherche du temps perdu literally translates into In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT), which was finally used in the Enright translation in 1998. Scott-Moncrieff chose Remembrance of Things Past (RTP), which is not exactly the same idea at all, but is a phrase taken from a sonnet by Shakespeare. He also named all the other books using Shakespearean phrases, which Proust hated. The latest translations restore the original titles.
9.01.2009
Combray (vol I) Pages for September 2009
Synopsis 1 SWANN’S WAY
Part 1 COMBRAY
Awakenings (1). Bedrooms of the past, at Combray (4), at Tansonville (6), at Balbec (8; cf. II 333). Habit (8). Bedtime at Combray (cf. 57). The magic lantern; Geneviève de Brabant (9).
Week 2
Family evenings (11). The little closet smelling of orris-root (14; cf. 222). The good-night kiss (15; cf. 29, 35-58). Visits from Swann (16); his father (17); his unsuspected social life (18). “Our social personality is a creation of other people’s thoughts” (23).
Week 3
Mme de Villeparisis’s house in Paris; “the tailor and his daughter” (25). Aunts Céline and Flora (27). Françoise’s code (38). Swann and I (40; cf. 419). My upbringing: “principles” of my grandmother (cf. 12, 13) and my mother; arbitrary behavior of my father (48).
Week 4
My grandmother’s presents; her ideas about books {i.e., “My dear,” she had said to Mamma, “I could not allow myself to give the child anything that was not well written.”} (52). A reading of Georges Sand (55). Resurrection of Combray through involuntary memory. The madeleine dipped in a cup of tea (60).
Part 1 COMBRAY
(Enright paging; yours may differ)
Week 1Awakenings (1). Bedrooms of the past, at Combray (4), at Tansonville (6), at Balbec (8; cf. II 333). Habit (8). Bedtime at Combray (cf. 57). The magic lantern; Geneviève de Brabant (9).
Week 2
Family evenings (11). The little closet smelling of orris-root (14; cf. 222). The good-night kiss (15; cf. 29, 35-58). Visits from Swann (16); his father (17); his unsuspected social life (18). “Our social personality is a creation of other people’s thoughts” (23).
Week 3
Mme de Villeparisis’s house in Paris; “the tailor and his daughter” (25). Aunts Céline and Flora (27). Françoise’s code (38). Swann and I (40; cf. 419). My upbringing: “principles” of my grandmother (cf. 12, 13) and my mother; arbitrary behavior of my father (48).
Week 4
My grandmother’s presents; her ideas about books {i.e., “My dear,” she had said to Mamma, “I could not allow myself to give the child anything that was not well written.”} (52). A reading of Georges Sand (55). Resurrection of Combray through involuntary memory. The madeleine dipped in a cup of tea (60).
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