Don't go away!!

Well!! Life has intervened, and despite my best efforts, Monsieur Proust has had to take a back seat to some of the other things in my life, like starting organ lessons again. I am often cited for trying to do too many things at once, and cannot deny it. It is the curse of my life: to be interested in so many things, and have so little time to pursue them.

But fear not. I am not done with Le Recherche by a longshot. However, devoting several hours a day to unraveling Proust's extremely convoluted writing in a language with which I have little facility is not realisitic. I shall, however, be picking it up again in the very near future and anticipate posting to the blog once every two weeks or so.  

So, don't go away. I'll be back!! And many thanks to those of you who have continued to check in and not lost faith. Merci mille fois!!

A bientôt!
Michel

Next post coming soon!

I'm sure you are all out there waiting with bated breath for my next post.... :-)

I am sorry, if there are those who have been keeping up... I was away to visit Portland and have been neglecting my writing duties here; however, I will be posting this weekend for any who are interested.

A bientôt,
Michel

Day 55: Not over yet!

I am now on page 142 in my Gallimard Folio edition - far beyond where I expected to be, but still, I have been in a definite slump the last week. I'd like to blame it on being sick, which I have been, but to be honest, I've not had much to say. 

Don't get me wrong, I am still as much in thrall of the writing as before and am enjoying reading every day. But the foundations of such a monumental work are just beginning to be laid out, characters developed, places described...

I also just finished the chapter on "How to be a Good Friend" in de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your LIfe and found myself rather disturbed by his revelations on Proust's dim view of friendship as a fraud, an insincerity, a polite hypocrisy. And not because of the idea, so much as the grain of truth that lies within. He felt that friendship was no more than "...a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone." 

It is no wonder then, if he felt that true honesty in friendship would be its undoing, and he sought to conceal it by being overly generous, fawningly attentive, self-deprecating, amusing, extremely witty, and modest to a fault. This, of course, resulted in his being described as the greatest of friends, munificent, the ultimate listener... when one is a good listener, then people concentrate on talking about themselves, diverting attention away from what they may think of you. He had very low self-esteem, with a pathological need to love and be loved, which paradoxically drove him to such behavior, yet only served to reinforce his dim views of friendship and love. "Friendship does not exist," and "Love is a trap and only reveals itself to us by making us suffer," he said.

Such sentiments can, in part, explain his retraction from the world and his retreat to one of his own making by writing La Recherche. He said, "In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to." 

Quelle tristesse... quelle vérité...


À bientôt, 
Michel

Day 46: le velours violet de l'air du soir

"...le velours violet de l'air du soir..." "the violet velvet of the evening air..." How does he come up with these descriptions? According to his biographies, he wrote and rewrote and edited over and over to achieve this kind of writing; but the result is so magnificent, so revelatory... I am fully in thrall of this man's gift.

Proust was apparently pained by people who could not come up with expressions any better than common clichés, like "it's raining cats and dogs," and "deaf as a doorknob;" and from his writing it is more than evident the pains he took to depart from this practice which he so decried. 

In his chapter entitled, "How to Express Your Emotions," Alain de Botton goes into great depth on the subject, saying that clichés "are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface." (p88) While this may be true, not everyone possesses the ability to describe one's experiences with such singular eloquence as could Proust. 

For me, this is one of the main reasons I read literature: to taken away by how someone else sees the world and the way in which they are able to describe it, which is so superior to my own. The ability to put into words one's experiences in a way that creates a door to a new way of seeing - that is what captures me; the extent to which Proust is able to do this astonishes me page, after page, after page.

I hope you are all as in thrall as am I.

À bientôt,

Michel

 

Day 39: The Tao of Seeing

TAO

Proust was often engrossed by things he encountered, rendered oblivious to the world around him. His close friend and sometime lover, Reynaldo Hahn, were walking through the garden of a Château when Proust stopped dead before a rosebush, taken suddenly by something he saw. He sent Hahn to continue on, and, when he returned sometime later, found Marcel still there, entranced, “...his head tilting forward, his face very serious, he blinked, his eyebrows slightly furrowed as though from a passionate act of attention, and with his left hand he was obstinately pushing the end of his little black mustache between his lips and nibbling on it.... How many times I’ve observed Marcel in these mysterious moments in which he was communicating totally with nature, with art, with life, in these ‘deep minutes’ in which his entire being was concentrated....” (White, p.6)

This kind of seeing, so deep, so profound, drinking, tasting, touching, feeling the pure essence of a thing, I feel, is what makes Proust’s writing so magnificent and astonishing, the unique and breathtaking way he is able to take the most mundane things and, through such intense and insightful observation, infuse them with such wonder and magic.

For example, his description of the memorial stones at the church in Combray, “...beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray who lay buried there furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time had softened them and made them flow like honey beyond their proper margins, here oozing out in a golden stream, washing from its place a florid Gothic capital, drowning the white violets of the marble floor, and elsewhere reabsorbed into their limits, contracting still further a crabbed Latin inscription, bringing a fresh touch of fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed characters, closing together two letters of some word of which the rest were disproportionately distended.”

This tao of seeing is something I think we lose to a certain degree when we obtain language, as we then rely on words to describe things, thus losing the wordless essence of that thing, which is inexorably linked to base sensations, particularly smell and taste, rather than cognition.

I use the word “tao” because it is, paradoxically, a word used to describe the indescribable. From both Chinese (tao - pronounced 'dao') and Japanese (dô), it can be translated loosely as “the way,” or “the path.” However, in such Japanese words as sadô (the way of tea)  and shôdô (the way of calligraphy)  or iaidô (the way of the sword), “the way” is something completely intangible, which can only be fully comprehended by losing the “self” and becoming the essence of tea, becoming the brush, becoming the sword....

Mon dieu!!!  I am waxing philosophical!! Must be all the drugs I’m taking for my cold.... Although, I guess I am not that far afield, really. Proust certainly had a way of communing with the world and people around him which he was then able to absorb and crystalize, like the varnish in the stairwell of his house, and transmit back to us.

I’d love to hear your thoughts....

À bientôt,

Michel

Day 35: Ce ne marche pas!!

OK, so I'm stuck. J'ai un crise de créativité.

I knew it would happen, but I was still not prepared for it - I feel terrible. Now that the MAHvelous madeleine scene is over, I'm in a bit of a slump. A bit of post-partum depression, I suppose.

However, I am finding his description of Combray to be quite amazing, though I do wish that he could write just one, just ONE simple, easy sentence that does not have 50 subordinate clauses nested in it...as much as I love a challenge, there are times when I find this stream of consciousness style quite tiring, even in English.

But, I am used to consuming books in large gulps, like my bad habit of eating too quickly; I need to slow down and learn to savor the experience a bit more. Proust is definitely to be enjoyed slowly, in les petites gorgées, rolling the phrases around on one's tongue, allowing the flavors to develop.

Of course, the town of Illiers, on which Proust based his imaginary town of Combray, was re-baptized as Illiers-Combray on the 100th anniversary of Proust's birth. It is indeed a rather small, medieval-looking town of apparently no repute other than that of Proust's having stayed there in his aunt's house. Some say that the addition of "Combray" to Illiers was merely a means of attracting attention, and hopefully, commerce, to this allegedly unremarkable town. Néanmoins (I love that word!), I would like to visit when I make my pilgrimage next year, as I have a weakness for places with ancient histories, having grown up in a country with such a comparatively short one. 

There is something very mysterious and resonant to me about places and things that have been around for a very long time. My first experience with such places was when I visited the temples in Kyoto which have been around for over a millennium and are mentioned in the Tale of Genji. It was as though one could sense the spirit of all the souls who had inhabited and tread on these hallowed grounds; and it felt old...I'm sure it is the same kind of sensation when walking into a cathedral or castle in Europe that has been around for centuries and centuries. 

But I digress...the influence, I am sure, of Monsieur Proust. Although I am not sure if it is not digression, but rather, regression in his case.

Well, it appears that the words came out somehow. Whether it is anything worth reading is another question. But one cannot be perfect all the time.

À bientôt,

-Michel 

 
 

Day 30: Un mois!! Bon anniversaire à moi!!!

So, it’s official - I’ve managed to make it through one month, and what better way to celebrate my first month’s anniversary and having reached the famous “madeleine scene” than with madeleines and tea!!

I’ve gone back and read that passage over and over, and, like the pressed Japanese paper capsules which metamorphose when placed in water, new facets and depths of meaning unfold and materialize with each reading. It is such an exquisite description of that kind of memory he calls “involuntary,” which comes out of nowhere, completely unexpected, from a smell, a taste, or a sight, and which triggers a flood of memory so complete and immediate that nothing else exists in that moment; one is transported away; where the "smell and taste of things remain poised a long time...and bear, unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection ;  l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir."  Mon dieu!!

I had just such an experience a couple of years ago when I started skating lessons at the rink where I skated often as a child and teenager. Just the sight of the building brought back many fond memories (except when I fell and broke my wrist when I was 10); but - the second I went inside, the smell!! Such a peculiar, but totally unique, mix of smells...the popcorn and hotdogs from the snack bar, the musty leather of the skates, the wooden skating floor... I was instantly and so wholly transported back to my childhood that I stood transfixed for must have been quite a while, as I came out of my reverie only when someone stood waving their hand in front of my face, saying, “hello? anyone there?” 

It is interesting to note that these “Proustian moments” are most often triggered by smell or taste, and much less often by sight or sound. He says in Swann, "The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I had tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them..."

From a scientific perspective, this is possibly due to the fact that smells and tastes are chemical in nature, which in turn causes our brains to create very specific chemical memories which allow us to differentiate among thousands of smells and tastes.

Why, then, does not every smell and taste have this "Proustian" effect? Again, from the scientific perspective, it has been shown that adrenaline causes us to remember things much more quickly, clearly, and intensely; and it is emotion, both positive and negative, that causes the release of adrenaline.  That is why the mundane, the boring, the repetitive things in our lives are often not remembered - they have little or no emotion attached to them -  the indelible ink of adrenaline was not used to write the memory. 

My favorite part of this scene, however, is his use, to describe the process of his recollection, of those Japanese paper tablets, which when immersed in water would slowly expand and unfold into beautiful flowers and pagodas: 

"And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour, solid and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea."

These were still around when I was a child in the early 1960s, and I have vivid recollections of the magic they created, and of which I never tired, no matter how many times I saw it.

 Je suis un peu triste de quitter cette belle scène... 


À bientôt,
Michel

 

Madeleines à la Michel

Les madeleines et du thé a chez Michel

My kitchen has been a whirlwind of activity!! I tested Julia’s and the Silver Palate recipes, then came up with my own version.  If you wish to see their recipes, here are the books with page numbers:

David Lebovitz: The Sweet Life in Paris, Lemon-glazed Madeleines, p. 221
Julia Child: The Way To Cook, Madeleines (à la Commercy), p. 448
Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins: The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, Scented Madeleines, p. 109

Thanks to all of these very fine chefs for their wonderful madeleine recipes!! Although I loved all three, I think that David Lebovitz’s recipe came out on top for me: light, fluffy and with a very tender crumb. I liked aspects of all three, though, like the browned butter in Julia Child’s version, and the heady amaretto scent of the Silver Palate version. I tried combining the browned butter and just a few drops of almond extract, which ended up adding an umami, or taste sensation which my friends were crazy for, but couldn’t identify. Thus, the “secret” ingredients! Shhh!!
However, I am not one to keep culinary secrets (most of the time), and am delighted to share my version with you:

Madeleines à la Michel     - makes 20-24 3” madeleines
Prep time: 15 minutes, plus one hour for refrigeration
Preheat oven to 400 deg. F (205 deg. C), rack in upper third of oven

9 T. (135g) unsalted butter, preferably European stye, such as Plugra (less water, more butterfat)
Large bowl filled with ice and water
1T. melted butter mixed with 1T. flour, for buttering the pans
2/3 c. (130g) granulated sugar2
2 large eggs, room temp.
1 1/4c. unbleached white flour (do not use bread flour!)
1 t. baking powder, aluminum-free if you can find it - aluminum causes a  bitter taste()
1/8 t. salt, plus a pinch
2t. fresh lemon juice
grated zest of one lemon, pref. organic
1t. vanilla extract
1/2t. almond extract

Optional Lemon Glaze
2T. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
water

1. Cut the butter into pieces and place in a saucepan over med-high heat. Bring to a boil and allow to brown just slightly, to light amber color - watch it carefully, as it will go from golden to a nasty, smoking mess in a heartbeat!! This will ruin your day and the madeleines. Pour into a small glass bowl and immediately place in the icewater, stirring constantly until room temp but still liquid. Set aside.
2. Place eggs in mixer with sugar and salt and beat over med-high speed until thick and lemony, about 5 min. Remove bowl from mixer.
3. Sift flour with baking powder and gently fold into egg mixture with a spatula just until incorporated.
4. Add lemon juice, zest, vanilla and almond extracts to cooled melted butter (if it has solidified, place in microwave for 10 seconds or so, until just melted, but not hot) and stir; fold gently but thoroughly into the batter. Place plastic wrap over bowl and refrigerate at least one hour; you may refrigerate overnight.
5. Brush madeleine molds with melted butter/flour combo and place in freezer or refrigerator. Preheat oven to 400F (205C)  if you haven’t already with rack in upper third of oven.
6.Make yourself a cup of tea of coffee and relax for a few minutes while the pans cool and the oven heats.
7.Using two teaspoons, scoop a mound of batter roughly the size of a small walnut or fig (you will have to eyeball this, but it takes less than you’d think) and plop it into the middle of each mold. Do not smoosh down!! If you are a perfectionist and eyeballing causes you to develop a tic, then by all means try a few sizes and bake them to see what you get! This also gives you the perfect excuse to eat three or four of them.
8. Place in oven and bake 8-10 minutes. If, like moi, you have a crappy electric oven with hotspots which blacken one area whilst leaving another raw, you will have to turn the pans around back to front at around 5 minutes. Remove when lightly golden on top and  edges are nicely browned.
9. Let cool several minutes, then slide off to a cooling rack - this is essential, or you will end up with soggy bottoms as the steam condenses on the underside of each lovely, beautiful madeleine. And nobody loves a soggy bottom!
10. While still warm, this is the time to glaze them if you are going to do so. Mix the lemon juice and powdered sugar, then add water until the glaze is runny but not watery - about the consistency of warm syrup. Dip each madeleine front and back, shaking off excess and place back on rack to cool. Allow to cool completely before storing.

Of course, these are best eaten the day of, but will keep for a couple of days in an airtight container, and freeze extremely well.  A quick pop in the microwave for 5 seconds or so will give you that right-out-of-the-oven taste, but be very careful or they will get tough.

Now, sit down with a nice cup of tea, lime-blossom, if you have it, or your favorite tea, dip your madeleine in the tea and who knows what will come to mind...

Voilà!! Can you smell them? O la la!! You may have noticed that there are a couple (or so) missing from the bottom row...Well! Il faut qu'on les goûter!!  Délicieux!! Naturellement. 

They came out quite beautifully and they have wafted their delicious aroma throughout the house! This is David Lebovitz's version, which, I imagine, I cannot post here; however, I can say that the recipe works beautifully and his lemon glaze makes them even more scrumptious and moist! 

I actually found three recipes, all quite different. This one uses a bit of baking powder, added, as Mr. Lebovitz says, "for those who must have a hump." These did rise quite a bit (baked at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes) and did not flatten out after cooling; so, they do have quite a nice "hump," and are delightfully light and fluffy.

Tomorrow I am going to try Julia Child's recipe, which she claims to be the original recipe from the Commercy bakery, where Proust got his madeleines. This recipe is nearly the same but has no baking powder, and the eggs are not beaten for 5 minutes; she also adds vanilla and lemon juice. In the photo in her book (p241), The Way to Cook, the batter appears to be more like a dough and is not chilled in the refrigerator. I imagine they will be a bit denser and I think I will like the addition of vanilla as well. Hers are baked in a cooler oven at 375 deg., for 15 minutes.

The third recipe is from Rosso and Lukins' The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook (p109) and it titled "Scented Madeleines." Theirs is also roughly the same as the previous two, but with the addition of almond paste, almond extract and orange-flower water. They also use baking powder and refrigerate the dough. Baking temp is 400 deg.

So, I will post again Sunday evening, with photos of the other two versions and a discussion of that incredibly beautiful evocation of his childhood memory.

À dimanche!

-Michel

Day 27: Bientôt les madeleines!!

Well, I must say I am proud of myself: I've read 54 pages in 27 days - twice as far as I expected to get! Those first 20 pages or so were rough!! Now, at least, we are out of the hallucinogenic poppy field and into the Emerald City, as it were, and my brain feels less like that of the Straw Man!! Now, if only the Wizard could insert the entire French language into my brain!!

I am exactly one page, ONE, UNE, from the famous madeleine scene! And drat if I don't have  a full day assisting in surgery tomorrow...But that's OK - I am off Friday and will be heading out to get my madeleine pans and some high quality butter!! You will wish that you were here with me, as the house becomes redolent with the scent those warm, luscious little cakes, fresh out of the oven... I promise to take pictures! I know.... a lot of good that will do. You will just have to bake your own :-)

So, what is happening in the book at this point...

He has now begun unveil about his theory that we cannot retrieve the past by voluntarily summoning it from our memory, our "voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect...which preserves nothing of the past itself..." The only way for the past to be revived in any "real" way is purely by chance. We may get a sudden glimpse of it unexpectedly, but if we then consciously try to reel it in, the harder we try, the further away it gets. Like something on the tip of the tongue - the harder you try to get it to come out, the further it recedes; only letting go and allowing it to come back spontaneously ever seems to work, but not always.

Try thinking of something from your childhood, some event or person, or thing that had special meaning for you, and see if, by using "voluntary" memory, you experience the same feelings you did then. I'm betting that you won't, as I think M. Proust was onto something here. 

More on this soon, après les madeleines!

À bientôt,

-Michel  

Day 24: Cet escalier détesté

I have just reached the spot where, after all his subterfuge to persuade his mother to come kiss him goodnight and her refusal, he pounces on her as she passes his room, shocking and angering her. Before she can shoo him back into his room, his father appears, and to his complete astonishment, tells his mother she ought to spend the night with him and comfort him, as he looks so miserable.

It is an amazingly vivid scene, set up beautifully by the boy's description of the "hateful staircase" which smells of varnish that has "absorbed and crystallized the special quality of sorrow" which he feels every night when he is forced to climb it against his heart's desire. One can truly feel his despair.

And it is a feeling I think most of us have experienced - a mother's love, withheld. It can be devastating for a child. I myself had a special attachment to my mother, although nothing approaching the obsession that Proust felt for his mother and can remember quite vividly times when, perhaps after being punished and sent to my room, I wholeheartedly believed that she did not love me and would sob into my pillow.

Something that occurred to me while reading this passage, and which puzzles me greatly, is why Proust has not introduced his brother. I don't know if he will appear later in the story, but I find it very interesting that all the rest of his immediate family have made an appearance, but there is no brother. From what I have read of his biographies, he was quite close to his brother Robert, who was only 2 years younger than he, and of whom he was quite fond and protective. 

I suppose that it might detract from the misery he is trying to convey if he were to introduce a sibling. And considering that Robert seemed to be everything that Marcel was not, might induce one to be less sympathetic with Marcel, at a point where your complete sympathy is vital. 

Another point I found very interesting is his first mention of photographs, which he says his grandmother would have liked him to have in his room, but "she would find that vulgarity and utility had too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical nature of their reproduction..." This would have been around the 1880s when the daguerreotype  and collodion were established methods of producing photographs, and George Eastman was about to invent film as we know it. 

Photographs then were considered principally a means of accurate reproduction and certainly not in any way "art." And so, as a photographer myself, it is quite fascinating to read this passage and how the grandmother seeks to eliminate this "commercial banality" and replace it with "art."

But that is really a topic for another blog!! Proust's exposure to art as a young child, and his associations with some of the great artists of the time later in his life, however, are of great importance and will provide fertile ground for discussion.

How is everyone else doing? Still chugging along, I hope!  I'd love to hear from you!

À bientôt!

-Michel

Next posting: Thursday, April 5th

Next Posting + Lemon-glazed Madeleines!!

Sorry!! I forgot to include the date of the next posting, which will be Monday, April 2. Can you believe it's April already!! And in one year, I will be roaming the streets of Paris.

And in order to prepare my stomach and mind for the culinary delights I'm sure I will be enjoying, I have been recommended David Lebovitz's book, The Sweet Life in Paris. He was a pastry chef for Chez Panisse for many years before deciding to move to Paris. The book apparently has many of his renowned recipes in it, including one for Lemon-Glazed Madeleines! The LA Times wrote, "There's probably little else as fun as living vicariously through Lebovitz...especially when it involves chocolate spice bread... or lemon-glazed madeleines." So, you can be sure I will be visiting Sur La Table this weekend for a madeleine pan or two!!

Have a lovely weekend!

À bientôt!

Michel

Day 21: Onward ho!

Well, for better or worse, I have decided that I am going to continue my sideline reading and accept the fact that it may be coloring my perceptions a bit; but in the end, I find that reading about Proust, as I am reading Proust is proving very interesting and satisfying. 

It provides a base for comparison, as the book, although autobiographical in nature, is not a true autobiography but more of piecing together of a life, both recalled and imagined. 


I am now also reading William C. Carter's Proust in Love, which is a fascinating and thorough examination of his romantic and sexual life as a gay man in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how he portrays this in the Search. Look for discussions on this topic in the near future.


As for my reading, I am now zipping along at around 2-4 pages a day, and am finding his introduction of M. Swann very intriguing. It has already been hinted that the Narrator's family, although apparently very fond of M. Swann, find some things about him unsatisfactory, such as his marriage to a woman of "bad society;" they cannot seem to believe that his true connections in life are actually above their own; there have only been some hints about this so far, but I am sure it is going to be an interesting development, and I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

À bientôt,
Michel

Day 19: Time to slow down

Well, I have decided that I am going to reduce my blog posting to 2-3 times a week. Although I am having more fun that I could have imagined, it is  taking over my life, and I am literally doing nothing except reading and writing every spare moment I have, every single day from the time I get up to the time I go to bed (much too late!!). My house is a disaster!!

Now, if I didn't have a full-time job or so many other things to do, I could probably keep up the daily pace, but I am beginning to feel that I am not doing it justice, and would profit from having to post less often. Hopefully that way the quality of the posts will be better (and more interesting...) and I will not feel so pressured. I was warned by several other bloggers that trying to keep up a daily posting would be difficult, and so it has proved to be.

I am still committed to the 365 days, though, and I've decided that this journey is going to culminate with a trip to Paris, in April no less!!  And I hope you will keep following along for the duration as well!! 

I invite you all to comment, too, as that gives me more food for thought; plus, a dialogue is also much easier to keep up than a monologue, and much more interesting!!

Next post will be Thursday, March 29.

À bientôt!!

Michel