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

Day 18: A Dilemma - au secours!!

I am wondering whether I should just put away all the extraneous biographies, reading guides, art guides and other miscellany about Proust and just read the book.

On the one hand, "the book" is really the main course, if I may use gastronomic metaphors, and all the rest are little side dishes and condiments - tasty in themselves, some quite delicious, in fact. However, are they adding flavor, umami, if you will, or masking it? This is my dilemma.

Proust, of course, who is adamant that the man is not the book, would without hesitation tell me to cease and desist all my extracurricular reading. And he does have a point. All these guides and biographies are incredibly fascinating - Proust and his environs, the rich panoply of people and places in his life, on whom so many characters and places are modeled - and provide the reader with a great deal of "inside' information. But having all this information also invariably leads to comparisons between the book and the man, the fiction and his real life. And once read, cannot be erased from one's mind, perhaps creating a bias that would not be there otherwise.

On the other hand, the side dishes and condiments can also add to and complement the flavor of the main dish, enhancing and bringing out subtle flavors that might be missed without them. I am certainly finding Proust's life to be intriguing, and seeing the parallels to it in the book.

I have read that when Proust realized he was not ever going to have the life that he desired, he decided to create it in his book: in his introduction to the Moncrieff translation, Joseph Wood Krutch wrote, "Having come at last to reject completely that active participation in life which had never, in his case, been very full, he was determined to construct for himself out of memory and imagination, a more than satisfactory substitute. That is what Remembrance of Things Past is."

So, perhaps it is better to just read what it is Proust wanted his life to be, rather than what is was. Kind of like seeing the movie first, then reading the book.  Because, invariably, when one reads the book first, the movie is often disappointing - they've cut things out and added others, changed the plot, added new characters, taken others (always your favorites)... things you'd never notice if you hadn't read the book first (the bias I mentioned above....).

I'd love to hear what you all think... I'm torn!! I do know, however, that just reading the book would simply my life immensely, as I often do not know which book to pick up first, and so end up reading a chapter out of three or four.....but it is all SO fascinating!!

Help!!!

-Michel

Day 17: Progress!!

Well, I am making progress! I was able to get through ten, yes, ten pages today! Of course, my head is now pounding and my eyes feel like I've been rubbing sand in them... but it's a glorious feeling!

Now that we've left the magic chairs and worlds out of orbit behind, the language is easier to understand, although no less serpentine.  I am finding that writing out the very long sentences is a great help, as I can visually dissect and then reconstruct them in a way that makes sense. Provided they are not too long!

However, I did come across a sentence 23 lines long today! We have been introduced to M. Swann, and are being treated to the mistaken opinionations of the great-aunt. The sentence begins, "Mais si l'on avait dit a ma grand-tante que ce Swann qui,..."  Even in English, there are so many clauses within clauses that the mind begins to spin in the process of trying to  figure out what belongs to what.

But that is one of the things that makes Proust Proust. It seems very à propos that his writing style should be so very stream-of-consciousness, in the way that memories are very seldom linear and tend to not only jump around, but lead to thoughts within thoughts within thoughts.....

Proust's sense of humour is also most definitely now evident, especially in his descriptions of the grandmother, her two silly sisters, and the tart, disapproving opinions of the grand-aunt, who is constantly trying to turn everyone against grand-mère. 

I especially enjoyed the scene where Swann is invited to dinner and the two silly sisters wish to thank him for the case of Asti he brought, but for some reason feel it would be "vulgar" to just thank him, and they, "in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to whom it was addressed." The ensuing conversation at dinner is hilarious, where the two sisters try, in vain, via such circumlocution to thank M. Swann for the wine, and also show that they know of his being 'mentioned' in the newspaper, le Figaro, despite having been forcefully dissuaded of doing so by the dour grand-tante. Brings to mind Jane Austen...

And how is everyone else coming along with their reading?? Bien, j'espère!! 

À bientôt!! Two Aleves and off to bed...
-Michel


 

Day 16: Memory: an inquiry

Dear Readers, 

Please accept my apologies for the late posting! I hope this will make up for it, as I think it is quite interesting....

Have you ever spent any time thinking about what memory is, exactly? How do we remember? How many different kinds of memory are there? Why do we remember some things and not others? Why do some things trigger spontaneous memories while other things require some digging around? 

I think we all take for granted the many things that our memory does for us on a daily, even momentary, basis. For example, take the simple task of walking from the kitchen to the living room. Muscle memory allows your limbs to move in the correct manner to get you from one point to the other; proprioception, or being able to interpret where your body is in space, allows you to get from one point to the other without falling down or bumping into every object you pass. Memory, both short- and long-term, allows you to remember and recognize the objects around you, and to know which way to go to get from one point to the other successfully. We don’t normally even think about these things - we just get up and walk from the kitchen to the living room.

Memory is such an amazing thing! Try to imagine life without it. To not be able to remember one second to the next. I have taken care of people in the hospital with advanced Alzheimer’s for whom that is their life. One patient would want to know if her book was there, even though it was in her hands, and she would ask over and over and over, “Is my book here?” even when no one was in the room, all day long.

As little as 20 years ago, imaging of the brain was limited to CAT scanning, angiography and a barbaric procedure called pneumoencephalogram, used to image the ventricles of the brain, in which the cerebrospinal fluid is drained and replaced with air; even a small leak of csf can cause a terrible headache. Imagine then, having ALL the csf drained from your brain and being replaced with oxygen or helium, then being placed in a torture device which would spin you around like a carnival ride,  even upside down, in order to get the injected gas into the various spaces or ventricles of the brain. The headache was so extreme, patients would actually scream in agony; the procedure often lasted 30 minutes or more, and the headache for 2-3 months while production of CFS caught up!

The physiology of memory is extremely complex and is still very poorly understood, but we have come a long, long way in the last 20 years. Many types of extremely sophisticated neuroimaging are available today, some of which are exquisitely sensitive and can show the chemical and electrical activity of the brain (called “functional” neuroimaging) as well as its structure.

These include:
CAT - computerized axial tomography
DOI - diffuse optical imaging
EROS - event-related optical signal
fMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging
MEG - magneto ecephalography using SQUID (superconducting quantum interference devices
PET - positron emission tomography
SPECT - single positron emission computed tomography
(Notice all the acronyms - truncation devices used to help remember groups of words, and in this case, long words!)

 Many of these devices can be used to pinpoint with great accuracy metabolic and electrical activity in the brain while the patient is awake and being given tasks to do during the scan.  Stroke patients are scanned to determine which parts of their brains have been damaged; epilepsy patients are scanned to determine the source of aberrant brain activity that causes their seizures; patients with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia are being studied to try to determine what is causing the degradation and loss of memory. It is a science still in its infancy, but has brought unprecedented progress to our understanding of the human brain.

Day 15: Enfin!! On respire! And petit Michel meets a tragic end (almost)

At last!! I've emerged from the constantly metamorphosing state of twilight into the solid world of Combray and grand-mère! 
Directly after the episode of Golo transvertebrating on the doorknob, we have our first introduction to his family, and the first hint of his attachment to his mother: "Après le dîner, hélas, j'étais bientôt obligé de quitter maman qui restait à causer avec les autres... (After dinner, alas, I was obliged to part from Mamma, who stayed to chat with the others)..."

Then we meet grand-mère, who seems at first to be a rather stiff, cold type, who feels her grandson needs to "buck up," and disapproves of his father's coddling. I especially love the image of her standing out in the thunderstorm, her grey hair drenched, face to the wind and rain, declaring, "Finally one can breathe!!"  This image brought a flashback of my early childhood in Landstuhl, Germany.... 

My mother had engaged a part-time nanny, named Helena, of whom I was reminded when I read about grand-mère. She was of very sturdy German stock and would have agreed fervidly with the grand-mère's views of health and hygiene. She got into extremely heated arguments with my mother over the virtues of fresh, cold air, espousing that even in the dead of winter, the bedroom windows should be wide open all night long to allow the fresh air in. The windows were screened and she also felt these should be removed to encourage the circulation of the frigid air.


So, when she put us to bed, under the immense weight of layer upon layer of heavy quilts and down comforters, she would then fling the windows wide open and stand, like grand-mère, with her face to the wind, taking in huge gulps of the frosty air. And I do mean frosty, as she would open the windows ever if it were snowing!!


Of course, the second she left the room, my mother would stomp in and, while chaffing her arms and muttering under her breath "Oooo, that stubborn woman!!", slam the windows shut, lock the handles and shut the curtains.  And not five minutes later, Helena would sneak back in, open the curtains and fling open the windows again!!


At some point, I think my mother realized she had lost the battle and threw her hands up in despair. I can't say that we ever suffered from the cold, fresh air; however, there was an accident related to this which could have had quite a tragic end. And it invoved yours truly. :-)

My mother actually did win the screen argument and the screens were back to stay. However, my mother was never known for her handyman abilities, and it was she who re-installed the window screens in our bedroom.

One day soon shortly thereafter, I was in the bedroom, yelling out the window to get my sister's attention; she did not seem to hear me, so I pulled a chair over, thinking perhaps some height might increase my volume, and while pounding on the screen and screetching a the top of my lungs, all of a sudden the screen gave way and out I went, ass over teakettle, just as my mother walked into the room to see what I was screaming about!!

She said she collapsed to her knees and could not look out the window.... we were on the first floor, but the window was a good ten feet off the ground, and I landed squarely on my head (yes, yes, yes... I know.. that explains a lot... I've heard it before!). Fortunately, I landed on wet grass, and although I was unconscious for several minutes, I did not fracture my skull or break my neck ( although I did get a really impressive grass stain on my scalp); apparently it appeared that the latter was the case when my mother got to the window and saw my motionless little body crumpled on the ground below. She thought I was dead.

But here I am.  My sister, with whom I shared the room, suffered the trauma of seeing me fall and land on my head. But worse than that, she developed a morbid fear of giraffes after constantly hearing my mother tell Helena the windows MUST be shut to keep "drafts" from coming in....she thought my mother has said, "giraffes!!" 

À demain,
Michel

Day 14: Word of the Day: Transvertebration...huh?!?!

What is it? What could it possibly mean? Where did it come from? After spending a fruitless hour searching online in dictionaries, blogs, and Wikipedia, I found many other people stymied by this word, and not a single definition. I am beginning to wonder if it sprang forth from Proust’s forehead like Brunnhilde from Wotan (minus the brass bra and winged helmet, of course)!

I found “vertebration,” which is defined as “division into segments like those of the spinal column.” But adding the “trans-” screws it all up. Personally, I think he means something more like “transmogrification,” which to me better describes the magical quality of the projections as they distort and swirl across the drapes and then the fun house mirror convexity of the doorknob. 

Moncrieff translates it as “transubstantiation,” which is more of a substance changing into another substance and not quite how I imagine it. The later revisions by Kilmartin and Enright both use “transvertebration,” which makes one wonder if they knew what it meant. It is, after all, a Latin-based word and so why not just render it the same in English? That gets rid of having to provide a pesky translation!

I love how this section evokes for me the way of seeing as a child, so full of imagination and magic; the way he describes Golo and his steed as if they were really there and changing magically before his very eyes, rather than just as the projections of them on the various surfaces.

As adults we are often excited to revisit something we loved from our childhood, only to be disappointed to find that the magic we experienced is no longer there. For Proust memory is the key, as he believes that that magic resides not in the thing itself, but in our memory of the thing.

And that, I believe, is what In Search of Lost Time is all about.

Day 13: Of Magic Lanterns and Kinetoscopes

I have finally made it through the wonderful description of the magic lantern, which was put in the young Marcel's room to provide some degree of distraction from his nocturnal melancholy, and, although he tries to enjoy it, it has the unfortunate effect, through its phantasmagorical, iridescent shiftings of light, of rendering the familiarity of a bedroom which had just become endurable into an unrecognizable place, as uncomfortable and discomfiting to him as room in an unknown hotel at which one has just arrived at for the first time (how's that for a Proustian sentence?).

Although I never had a magic lantern, I do remember the eerie, dreamlike scene in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander,

a movie with its own Proustian kind of magic,  where, after being put to bed, Alexander lights up a magic lantern and starts to tell the tale of Arabella...The room is completely dark, and the images projected by the revolving lantern make the walls seem alive - it's a great scene!

It is quite amazing how such things do have the ability to transport us right back into the past; one author who read Proust (can't remember who right now) remarked that she had relived, not recalled, more of her life through reading Proust than she ever could have by just trying to evoke those memories on her own. Andre Gide said, "through the strange and powerful subtlety of your style I seem to be reading .. my own memories and my own most personal sensations." Even in the just the first 8 pages or so, I feel I am experiencing the same thing. 

I've not yet come to the famous "madeleine" episode, and, if you've not read it yourself, I will not spoil the experience by going into detail about it now. I was quite struck by it when I read it in English, and am savoring the moment when I reach it again, but this time in the original French!! Je suis impatient de le lire!!

As for the kinetoscope, it is another contraption which led eventually to the development of the moving picture and is another example of the richly inventive time in which Proust lived: Edison and his discoveries of the electric light, the telephone, and the phonograph; the automobile, the discovery of anesthesia, x-rays, Pasteur and the proof of germ theory, and on and on... How much of it he paid attention to, sequestered as he was in his cork-lined, soundproofed apartment, is a good question!

In other news, my copy of William C. Carter's biography of Proust, also called Marcel Proust: A life, arrived today - all 946 pages of it!! I am like a kid in a candy shop... and am beginning to think that I'm going to need more like TEN years to get through all this!

À bientôt,

Michel

Day 12: Potpourri

First of all, I need help with some French stuff...I cannot figure out how to make sense of this sentence:  "souvent, ma brève incertitude du lieu où je me trouvais ne distinguait pas mieux les unes des autres les diverses suppositions dont elle était faite.."  I understand up to the text in red, then there are these three nouns in a row which I cannot sort out.. to which part of the sentence do they refer? I've read the English, which did not help. Can you?


Also, what is a glace à pieds?  And what is the "y" in "..à me rappeler les lieux, les personnes que j'y avais connues..." and the "en" in "...ce qu'on m'en avais raconté.?" These are the little things that are driving me crazy! 

On the more interesting (and less whiny) side, I have started to read Edmund White's biography of Proust, Marcel Proust: A life  which is know for its in-depth exploration of Proust's life as a closeted gay man.  Although not illegal in the 19th century(France was the first nation to repeal its laws banning homosexuality in 1791, following the Revolution), being gay was still not socially acceptable and was apparently a source of great misery for Proust. 


More on this to come later...


-Michel
 

Day 11: Posting change

Dear Readers, Due to the way my schedule works I am going to start posting after midnight, so I will be skipping a day today. In this way, my posts will appear first thing in the morning and those of you who are up early will not have to wait all day to see the posting. Hopefully this will be an improvement! À bientôt!! - Michel

Day 10: J'ai mal à la tête!!!

Je suis déçu!!  À partir d’aujourd’hui, j’avais lu seulement six pages. C’est très difficile!! Je ne connais pas la plupart des mots donc je dois regarder eux en haut dans le dictionnaire, qui prend la plupart de temps.

Wow!! This is so much more difficult than I had imagined it would be! Only six pages read as of today, so I’m not at all on track. But I am hoping, as I trudge on, that it will get easier. It must!  I’m having to look up about every other word right now, and then try to make the sentence or phrase make sense without thinking in English. It makes my brain hurt (I’m SO glad I went to hear the Evensong service at Grace Cathedral - the music calmed and cleared my mind...) but I firmly believe that constantly translating in your mind when learning a language is a huge stumbling block. So, I keep reading over and over and over, and eventually it begins to make sense.  I am even beginning to appreciate the beauty of his writing in his descriptions and choice of words...

Par exemple: around page 5-6, when he begins a long discourse on his successive memories of rooms in which he has slept and describes his rooms in summer:

“...chambres d’été où l’on aime être uni à la nuit tiède, où le clair de lune appuyé aux volets entrouverts, jette jusqu’au pied du lit son échelle enchantée, où on dort presque en plein air, comme la mésange balancée par la brise d’un rayon;"

“...rooms in summer where one enjoys being part of the warm night, where the light of the moon pressing against the half-open shutters, would throw down at the foot of the bed its enchanted ladder, where I would fall asleep as if it were almost outdoors, like a titmouse rocked by the breeze of a sunbeam;" (my poor translation)

OK. So I don’t get the titmouse part... but the description of the moonlight “throwing down at the foot of the bed its enchanted ladder....” That is such a beautiful image... I can hear Debussy's Claire de Lune playing in the distance.

May the moon's échelle enhantée fall at the foot of your bed tonight!

--Michel

Day 9: N'allez pas trop vite!!

Well, that is certainly my motto for today: don't go too fast!! Between being stuck in traffic for hours and trying to find to place to rest my travel-weary derrière, I have done absolutely nothing related to Proust today at all....


I had the best of intentions - I was actually expecting to get a great deal done today, as I am in San Francisco for the weekend and thought, "what fun it will be to sit in a nice cafe and read Proust whilst enjoying a good cup of coffee (or two..)."  But it was not to happen! I forgot that this is St. Patrick's Day weekend and the City is boisterously alive with green-clad hoards, all taking up the seats in all the restaurants and nice cafes!! 


I think I spent the better part of the day trying to find even just one place to sit down and read. I could hear my new iPad whining inside my bag..."but you promised!!"  Within a three-block radius of Union Square there a over 15 places to get coffee. I went to every single one and they were ALL full!! Even at 10pm, I couldn't get a seat in any of the four, count them, FOUR Starbucks within a two-block radius! Infuriating. Who are all these people? Don't they have HOMES??? 


So, I am just now sitting down to write and have nothing to offer except to share my frustrations. Monsieur Proust would be shaking his head, saying, "Il aurait été meilleur si vous étiez restés à la maison dans votre lit toute la journée!!" Well, perhaps I would have gotten more done by staying at home all day in bed; however, being back in San Francisco is marvelous and tomorrow is a new day.


Perhaps I'll go to the De Young and see the 19th and 20th c. French painters tomorrow for inspiration - Proust certainly lived during a rich period in French art and he knew quite a number of these painters personally. 


À demain,
Michel

Day 8: My Shelf Overfloweth

Day 8: My Shelf Overfloweth!!

I will post again later tonight, but for now, as I’m in the total thrall of a new iPad(!!!) I’ve nothing to report except excitement!! I think Proust would have LOVED having an iPad!

However, I thought I’d share my rapidly expanding Proust collection for your reference: (please excuse my citations... I need to pull out my Chicago Manual of Style!!!)

Proust, Marcel. Trans. Scott Moncrieff. Enright, D.J. rev. ed. In Search of Lost Time. The Modern Library, New York, 2003

Botton, Alain, de. How Proust Can Change Your Life. Vintage International, New York, 1998

Alexander, Patrick. Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to “The Remembrance of Things Past.” Vintage Books, New York, 2007.

Karpeles, Eric. Paintings in Proust.  Thames and Hudson, London, 2008

White Edmund. Marcel Proust: A life. Penguin Books, New York, 1999.

Foschini, Lorenza. Proust’s Overcoat. Harper Collins, New York, 2008

Carter, William C. Marcel Proust: A Life.  Yale University Books, 2000.

Proust, Marcel. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: Du Côté de Chez Swann, Tome I.
     Benediction Classics, Oxford, 2011

Proust, Marcel. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: Du Côté de Chez Swann. Folio Classique, Gallimard, Paris, 1987.

Proust, Marcel. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: À L’ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs. Folio Classique, Gallimard, Paris, 1987.

- Michel

End of the day tidbits

For anyone interested, here is the original French of the Proust quote from Contre Sainte-Beuve in my last post:

"Un livre est le produit d'un autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dans nos habitudes, dans la société, dans nos vices. Ce moi-là, si nous voulons essayer de le comprendre, c'est au fond de nous-mêmes, en essayant de le recréer en nous, que nous pouvons y parvenir "

-Contre Sainte-Bueve, ed. Pierre Clarac, 1971, p. 221

À demain,
Michel

Day 7: Temps perdu

In French, perdu can apparently also mean "wasted," as well as "lost."
So, am I wasting my time? I believe Proust would have thought so....
Today I read the following from Proust:

"A book is a product of a different self from the one we manifest in our habits, in society, in our vices.  If we mean to try to understand this self it is only in our inmost depths, by endeavoring to reconstruct it there, that the quest can be achieved." 

And, indeed, Proust very firmly believed that the book is not the man, and that knowing about the man does absolutely nothing in terms of understanding his writing. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a respected 19th c. critic (1804-1869), felt that the artist and his or her work were inseparable, that one must know and comprehend the artist's biography in order to understand their work.

Proust took great exception to this, and set out to refute it in a series of essays, called Contre Sainte-Beuve (Against Sainte-Beuve), from which the quote above is taken. But how can one discount the life-experiences of an author and say that none of these have any bearing whatsoever on his or her writing. Proust was, I feel, contradicting himself, as so much of ISOLT is drawn from his own experiences: his illnesses, his insomnia, his relationship with his mother, his wide circle of friends and acquaintances who had a great deal of influence on his thoughts and ideas....


I suppose that knowing all this information before hand might predispose one to some prejudice of opinion when reading the author's work; however, as soon as I started reading Proust, I felt the need to learn more about the man and what shaped his life and mind, what might have led him to write in such a way and about such subjects as sleep, dreaming, and memory.


In any case, it is too late now!  I cannot take away the knowledge I have gained. 
"Tant pis!!" I say!


  -Michel

Day 6: Proust the Druggie

Well, today has been a day of listlessness and not feeling well, so I must apologize for the lateness of the post. I did, however, manage to fix the comment posting problem and update a few areas of the blog.

I tucked into Patrick Alexander’s Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to the Remembrance of Things Past which is quite fascinating! For one thing, I was not so off the mark when I remarked that Proust must have been on acid or indulging in too much absinthe when he started Chez Swann, with its endless stream of near-hallucinatory images.

According to Mr. Alexander, “With a steady and determined diet of caffeine (one of his hosts recorded his drinking seventeen cups of coffee in an evening), opiates, barbiturates, amyl nitrate and pure adrenaline, Marcel Proust probably consumed more drugs than any other figure in European literature. The vivid and hallucinatory memories that recur throughout the novel were obviously inspired by something stronger than madeleines and herbal tea.” (p.343)

Proust himself writes, “Not far from thence is the secret garden in which kinds of sleep, so different from one another, induced by datura, by Indian hemp, by the multiple extracts of ether - sleep of belladonna, of opium, of Valerian - grow like unknown flowers whose petals remain closed until the day when the predestined stranger comes to open them with a touch and to liberate for long hours the aroma of their peculiar dreams for the delectation of an amazed and spellbound being...”
And, having experienced a few drugs myself in college ( I didn’t inhale...) both voluntarily and involuntarily, I can attest in some instances to the very delectation of which he speaks, and say that it can most definitively open your mind to experiences which occur in a decidedly different plane of being and sensing, and which could not be experienced otherwise.

Alexander also has an excellent and enticing annotated bibliography of his own collection of books on Proust, which will prove fertile ground for further reading, such as:

Aciman, André, ed. The Proust Project. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. A compendium of 28 modern writers’ favorite passages and experiences of ISOLT. Covers all 7 volumes as a kind of synopsis.

For the art lover:
Karpeles, Eric, ed. and intro. Paintings in Proust. Thames & Hudson, 2008. Proust talks about many artists and their works in ISOLT. In this book Karpeles provides reproductions of the many paintings to which Proust refers.