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.

Advisory: "Comments" problem fixed

Apparently, some people have been having trouble posting comments, getting several options, all of which require you to "register." 

Mea culpa! I believe I have found and corrected the problem, so if you've been thwarted previously, you should be able to post now without any hassle or "registering" rigmarole! 

Pardon, et merci pour votre patience!!

-Michel
 

New Additions!

Dear Readers,

As a first-time blogger, I am learning something new about blogging and setting up my blog on a daily basis. Hopefully the changes that I've added to date will increase the accessibility and functionality of my blog.

Today I added: (accessibility)

1. RSS feed
2. Email subscription - enter your email and read my posts without having to go to the blog site. But please do come and visit from time to time!!
3. Followers - shows who's following the blog. 

I also moved the counter and my poll to the top where you can see them without having to scroll all the way to the bottom. Duh! 

And, for anyone who has a blog or is a blogging god, suggestions are welcome!

Look for my Day 6 post later today!

À bientôt!

Michel

Day 5: Proust down the rabbit hole

Honestly! I am beginning to think that perhaps Monsieur Proust was dipping into the acid when he started Du Côté de Chez Swann. Or perhaps too many absinthe parties at chez Toulouse-Lautrec (did they ever meet? Doubtful... anybody know?).


We've had whistling trains, goodbyes under unfamiliar lamps echoing in the silence of the night, leading to infant cheeks and abandoned invalids, to kaleidoscopes of the dark; a beckoning dream-woman born of a mal-placed thigh... now a drowsing off in another more aberrant posture, possibly in an armchair after dinner... worlds hurling out of orbit, magic chairs careening through time and space... Rip van Winkle...dark, animal consciousness...and then, " I was more destitute than a cave-dweller; but then the memory - not yet of the place in which I was but of various other places where I had lived and might now very possibly be - would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse centuries of civilization, and out of a blurred glimpse of oil-lamps, then of shirts with turned-down collars, would gradually piece together the original components of my ego." Whew!! 


Now I begin to agree with Jacques Madeleine's assessment, feeling "drowned in unfathomable developments," and that "one doesn't have a single, but not a single clue of what this is about. What is the point of all this. What does it all mean?  Where is it leading? Impossible to know! Impossible to say!"  


But, bon courage - it is not time to give in yet! In his introduction to ISOLT, Joseph Wood Krutch has these words of encouragement for the first-time reader: 

"Proust knew with uncommon exactness what it was he was about; he has a purpose in everything that he does, and even what appear to be digressions of inordinate length actually occupy a carefully proportioned and predetermined place in a structure whose architecture can only be understood when one stands off and regards it as a whole. The first rule for reading him, therefore, is complete submission to an author who will certainly take you where you ought to go and who will give you, not only vivid descriptions, subtle analyses, precise portraits and full participation in a strange new sensibility, but also compose all these things into a vast symphonic structure which is probably the most amazing thing of its kind in literature."

Plus, with my own twilight-zone-ish experiences with sleep and dreams, I should be a bit more sympathetic! I find it discomfitting, however, to be reliving those dark days...


On the other hand, memory and dreaming are two of the most intriguing elements of the human mind, and also two of the things about which we know the least. How, for example, are memory and dreaming connected? And why do we so often not remember our dreams? 
So, let us continue on...


   -Michel


 

Day 4: Où est la boeuf?? Where's the beef?

Bonjours mes amis!! You are probably wondering when I am going to get around to actually reading the book! Well, let me tell you, I have been reading!!!  And painfully slowly. I have gained ground on page 3 today, and although I cannot say that I am understanding the point, I am understanding the words, for the most part. 

Literary French, I am finding, is quite different from spoken French. I have already been tutored on the difference between the Imperatif and Passé Simple (literary past), and the Passé Composé (spoken past).  These are quite evident even within reading the first few lines. I have not come across any of his famous 50-line sentences yet, but most of them are least 5-6 lines, subordinate clause, after subordinate clause. 

So far, a man falls asleep, only to be woken by the thought that it is time to go to sleep, then is taken by a myriad of strange half-dreams and recollections into that floating world of near concsiousness.... I have experienced this myself in the morning upon first waking, then repeatedly falling back into a semi-dream state where the oddest of things will come to mind. 

Proust was an insomniac, as is the narrator of this story. And, like most insomniacs, appears to be obsessed with sleep. I had an intensely unpleasant and extraordinarily frightening experience with insomnia and sleep deprivation when I worked the night shift on a job for about 8 months. 

I was working a combination of days and nights -THE worst thing ever- and going to school full time: two night shifts, followed by a full day of school, then a 4p-12p shift, a full school day, a 7a-3p shift, and then a 5p-1a shift.... This crazy up and down, back and forth sleep schedule very quickly started to have an ill effect on me - it would take longer and longer for me to get to sleep after coming home from the night shifts, and, after about 5 months of this, it would take me 3-4 hours to get to sleep at all. Then, like clockwork, almost exactly thirty minutes after falling asleep I would spring bolt-upright awake, completely disoriented and having no idea whatsoever where I was, what day it was, whether it was day or night, and sometimes even who I was. I started to put up big written signs in my bedroom telling me what day is was, where I was and to call my parents' home phone. My mother was understandably worried about me!!

After 8 months I had progressed to the point where I started to have waking dreams and hallucinations, but some kind of external stimulation would usually bring me back around and I would be aware that I had been dreaming or seeing things. But this did not last.

One day, at work, I asked my friend, Paul, if he had brought the book we had been talking about the previous day. He looked and me and said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "What do you mean, what am I talking about?? We spent most of the shift talking about that book yesterday, Paul!!"  Then came the breaking point for me: he said, "But Michael, you weren't AT work yesterday!" ...........

At that point my world fell apart and I had a serious breakdown, as the realization dawned on me that I could no longer tell whether I was awake or dreaming!! It gives me shivers and goosebumps over my whole body to even think about it now!!!  Apparently I got this panicked look in my eye and started to gibber.... my boss was there and she realized that something was seriously wrong. Plus I had voiced my concerns over the effects of my sleep problems and told her that I needed to get off of nights ASAP. I was sent to the hospital, where my concerns were taken quite seriously and was watched overnight.  I was taken off work entirely for two weeks in order to try to reestablish a regular sleep pattern. But the thought that I could not distinguish sleeping from waking continued to haunt me for over a year. For weeks, every time I fell alseep, I would wake up shortly thereafter in that state of complete disorientation. Sometimes it would take me fifteen minutes to regain my bearings! 

At that time, i was working in a hotel as a PBX operator. Some years later, with the greatest trepidation, I was faced with working the night shift again, this time as a new grad RN. I had a serious talk with my manager about my previous  disastrous experience and she agreed to try to get me off night shift as quickly as possible, but that it would probably be several months before that happened. 

And sure enough, despite it being a regular schedule, after only three months the waking dreams started to come back, this time with the direst of consequences: I began to dream while awake that I had done certain things to and for my patients, which I had, in fact, NOT done, but only dreamed that I had. Things like administering IV medications, hanging new IV solutions, and taking vital signs. Fortunately, this did not cause any mishap, but did get me onto the day shift mighty fast!!!

The processes of sleeping, dreaming and memory are incredibly fascinating to me, and perhaps, considering the extent of Proust's own experience with this, this is why I am drawn to ISOLT. 

Food for thought. And, speaking of which, I'd love to hear anyone else's experiences with sleep deprivation or insomnia.

À demain, et sommeil bien!!
Michael

Day 3: Longeur vs. Langour

It is an established fact that "In Search of Lost Time" (hereafter referred to as ISOLT) is one of the longest novels in the history of literature, if not the longest. Weighing in at over 3000 pages, long does not adequately describe its length. Even Proust's brother, Robert, had a dim view of it, saying, "The sad thing is that people have to be very ill or have a broken leg in order to have the oportunity to read In Search of Lost Time." Indeed!! I should think that most readers of ISOLT are or have been neither ill, nor posessed of a broken limb, but I can see how that might how that might come in handy, having spent a half an hour slogging through the first page.... thinking that by the time 365 days of this have passed, I will be renaming my blog "In Search of Lost Marbles." (OK, so in trying to read Proust with a mere year of French from 30 years ago I have only myself to blame; but still, his brother has a point.)

And, besides its length as a whole, it is also known for having the longest sentence in the history of literature, which Alain de Botton says in his How Proust Can Change Your LIfe , "... would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times."  The first publisher to consider Proust's manuscript, Alfred Humblot of the highly esteemed Ollendorf, said this: "I cannot understand why a gentleman should employ thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in his bed before going to sleep." Needless to say, this note was accompanied by the returned manuscript.

Jacques Madeleine of Fasquelle publishing said that after reading the seven hundred and twelve pages of the manuscript, and "innumerable griefs at being drowned in unfathomable developments and irritating impatience at never being able to rise to the surface – one doesn't have a single, but not a single clue of what this is about. What is the point of all this? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading? Impossible to know anything about it! Impossible to say anything about it!" One can imagine the the French shrug of the shoulders, the downturned mouth and wild gesticulations that must have accompanied this grim assessment. 

With such uninviting, even distressing assessments before us, how are we to begin to approach such a work? I am attracted to the comparison to a Gothic cathedral - a vast, immensely complicated structure, yet when viewed bit by bit, taking our time, we come to appreciate and savor the intricate designs and interweavings of which it is made, and in such a way come to appreciate it as a whole even more.


Some people, however, have managed to find humor and entertainment therein, inspiring games of sentence diagramming to challenge the brightest of linguists; on the humorous side, Monty Python (of course!) was inspired to create the "All-England Summarize Proust Competition," in which the contestants vie to give a summary of all seven volumes in fifteen seconds or less. Swimsuit competition first, of course, followed by evening dress. 

'Nuf said!


Now go and pick up that first volume!!


Bon chance!
Michel

Day 2 cont'd

Getting down to business!

It's only Day 2, and I can see the blog starting to take over my life already! It's now 7:30pm and I've been at this for over 6 hours just today... so much to learn, so much to share!! Being an ADD-type doesn't help as my mind flits around crazily like a moth in a lighting store - oh! that's a fun idea!! oh! I want to read that!! oh! I need to figure out how to insert a photo! Oh! now I need to read that!! ....

And, ironically, because of the length of my first post, I never got around to the second subject of the post- LENGTH!! It will have to wait 'til tomorrow. Besides, I don't want to wear out my readers right off the bat!

So, I will bid you adieu and bonne nuit, until tomorrow. 
 

DAY 2: A bit about Proust, and the issue of LENGTH!

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (with a name like that, perhaps we have our first intimation of the future length of À la recherche!) was born on 10 July 1871 in Auteuil to wealthy parents.  

Achille Adrien Proust

His father, Achille Adrien Proust (1834-1903), was a noted physycian and epidemiologist whose stout, bearded, bespectacled figure and steely gaze left one in no doubt of just who was in charge. Born in the Age of Enlightenment and with an insatiable curiosity, he went against his father's wishes and abandoned the priesthood in favor of pursuing a medical career. The nineteenth century was a time of major scientific and medical exploration when such profound discoveries as electromagnetism and the electric light, x-rays, germ theory, antispetics, and anesthesia were made, and Adrien wanted to be part of this exciting world. His subsequent studies both at home and abroad resulted in his playing a major role in discovering the epidemiology of cholera. He was also a prolific author, whose seminal work was Essai sur l'hygiène internationale. He died in 1903 of a cerebral hemmorhage.

Jeanne Weil

 Marcel's mother, Jeanne Weil, the daughter of wealthy Jewish stockbroker, was a sensitive, intelligent, extremely well-educated woman who doted on the sickly Marcel (he was not expected to live when he was born) and whose death in 1905 affected him profoundly. She was an accomplished pianist and had also a profound appreciation of literature and art, as befitted the daughter of a family of the haute bourgeiousie of Paris. Interestingly, her marriage to the Catholic Adrien Proust was not opposed by her family as they were apparently not orthodox Jews and did not keep a kosher house, nor observe the Sabbath. Of course, she was expected to raise the children as Catholics; however, she herself never converted, out of respect for her parents. Tragically, she died of nephritis in 1905, just two years after her husband, leaving Marcel unretrievably bereft.


Marcel was born in July of 1871 in the midst of a dangerous and violent insurrection know as "The Commune." His father, insisting on continuing to see his patients at the Hôpital de la Charité, narrowly missed being killed by an insurgent's musket ball one day on his way there. This incident left his wife, 6 months preganant with Marcel,  in state of extreme fear and trepidation, resulting in their leaving Paris for the relatively safe haven of Auteuil where her uncle Louis had a spacious home situated amidst a large garden. It was in this bucolic setting that Marcel was born and, shortly after his arrival, not expected to live, but did. His poor state was blamed on his mother's high level of stress and malnutrition due to the lack of food during the Prussian siege of Paris during that year. Despite his poor health, as he grew older, he showed signs of precociousness and charm, attributes which would later enable him to move up in society. However, his parents, especially his mother, lavished him with their attentions to the point of morbidity, creating an almost pathologic co-dependence which would later precipitate his withdrawal from society.

Marcel continued to be a sickly child and at the age of nine, after returning from a spring pollen-filled walk in the Bois de Boulogne with his parents, was stricken with an asthma attack so severe that his breathing ceased. His father feared he was dead, but he revived, only to have the specter of death loom over him for the rest of his life: the return of Spring, a walk outside in the park, the smallest whiff of pollen could mean his death. 

Although he attended the Lycée Condorcet from 1882-89, his attendance was irregular. Despite his health problems, he was able to fulfil his year of military service at Orléans, and later studied law at the Sorbonne but left before finishing. After this, his life was apparently taken up with failed attempts at finding an acceptable career: lawyer - given up after spending a couple of weeks with a solicitor ("In my most desparate moments, I have never conceived of anything so horrible as a law office"); Foreign Ministry - too far from his beloved mother; and even librarian - death from dust. Realizing he would probably never have a "proper" job, he then went the route of the idle rich: endless dinner parties, social ladder climbing, and insouciant spending of money, much to the chagrin of his father.

The year 1905 marked the beginning of his withdrawal from society. Marcel's relationship with and attachment to his mother was stifflingly neurotic (interestingly, he and Freud co-existed but had no knowledge of each other...I'm sure Freud would have had something to say about this!) and her death from nephritis in 1905 "severed the only tie that bound him to the life of the world." (Joseph Krutch)
What followed has many interpretations, but essentially, he withdrew to an apartment soundproofed with walls of cork, where his solitary cogitations produced his masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu.

Clearly, a fascinating man who lived in fascinating times. And about whom we shall learn a great deal more...

Sources and further reading:

How Proust Can Change your Life, Alain de Botton, 1997. "Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling.. It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." 
   - The New York Times

Marcel Proust: A Life, William C. Carter, 2000.

Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, trans. Scott Moncrieff, 1934. Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch is most informative.

Wikipedia: Marcel Proust, Achille Adrien Proust
 

Bienvenue and Welcome!!

 DAY 1

Welcome to my new blog "Michel & Marcel: 365 Days of Proust"!!

I'm sure you must be wondering what the title of the blog means....Well!! I've always wanted to be able to read Proust in French (you may ask "Why, oh why????), and unbeknownst to me, Rosetta Stone somehow knew this too (they so smart!!) and very kindly offered their 5-level Totale French program to me at nearly 50% off! How could I resist??

And now, two weeks into the total immersion, and thanks to the unexpectedly enthusiastic but most welcome participation of my French-speaking friends on Facebook, I had this totally koo-koo, fou idea, a lark, really, to do what Julie Powell did in "Julie and Julia," but with Proust instead: challenge myself to read at least one page of Proust a day for a year, in the original French!! 

It was a joke, meant to entertain, really; but the more I thought about it, the more appealing it became. I thought, "What an adventure this could be!!" (and maybe, just maybe, a movie deal, too!!)! And why not share it and invite the rest of the world to suffer along with me?

Now, many you French-speaking people out there are probably already shaking your heads and saying, "Mon dieu!! Il est complétement fou!!" And perhaps you are correct. But I do not expect to get through all seven volumes in a year...although who knows! Perhaps I'll get struck by lightning and become an instant French savant. Or not.

In any case, I mean to have les bon temps and am very much looking forward to seeing where this journey will take me. It is certain to be a roller coaster ride, and if that is your thing, I heartily invite you to join me!! 

And bring madeleines!!

À bientôt!!

Michel

Next installment: let's find out a bit about dear Marcel, shall we? And some photos of Le grand préparation!!!