Tag: Marcel Proust

Perhaps indeed there exists but a single intelligence, in which everyone in the world participates

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Within a Budding Grove, somewhat continuing the previous observation of the Platonic imagery often surfacing in Proust – though here I feel he pulls more from Plotinus and the Neoplatonics:

And yet I ought perhaps to have reminded myself that, since it was in all sincerity, abandoning myself to the train of my thoughts, that I had felt, on the one hand, so intensely in sympathy with the work of Bergotte and on the other hand, in the theatre, a disappointment the reason of which I did not know, those two instinctive movements which had both carried me away could not be so very different from one another, but must be obedient to the same laws; and that that mind of Bergotte which I had loved in his books could not be anything entirely foreign and hostile to my disappointment and to my inability to express it. For my intelligence must be a uniform thing, perhaps indeed there exists but a single intelligence, in which everyone in the world participates, towards which each of us from the position of his own separate body turns his eyes, as in a theatre where, if everyone has his own separate seat, there is on the other hand but a single stage. Of course, the ideas which I was tempted to seek to disentangle were probably not those whose depths Bergotte usually sounded in his books. But if it were one and the same intelligence which we had, he and I, at our disposal, he must, when he heard me express those ideas, be reminded of them, cherish them, smile upon them, keeping probably, in spite of what I supposed, before his mind’s eye a whole world of intelligence other than that an excerpt of which had passed into his books, an excerpt upon which I had based my imagination of his whole mental universe. Just as priests, having the widest experience of the human heart, are best able to pardon the sins which they do not themselves commit, so genius, having the widest experience of the human intelligence, can best understand the ideas most directly in opposition to those which form the foundation of its own writings.

J’aurais peut-être dû pourtant me dire que puisque c’était sincèrement, en m’abandonnant à ma pensée, que d’une part j’avais tant sympathisé avec l’uvre de Bergotte et que, d’autre part, j’avais éprouvé au théâtre un désappointement dont je ne connaissais pas les raisons, ces deux mouvements instinctifs qui m’avaient entraîné ne devaient pas être si différents l’un de l’autre, mais obéir aux mêmes lois; et que cet esprit de Bergotte, que j’avais aimé dans ses livres ne devait pas être quelque chose d’entièrement étranger et hostile à ma déception et à mon incapacité de l’exprimer. Car mon intelligence devait être une, et peut-être même n’en existe-t-il qu’une seule dont tout le monde est co-locataire, une intelligence sur laquelle chacun, du fond de son corps particulier porte ses regards, comme au théâtre, où si chacun a sa place, en revanche, il n’y a qu’une seule scène. Sans doute, les idées que j’avais le goût de chercher à démêler, n’étaient pas celles qu’approfondissait d’ordinaire Bergotte dans ses livres. Mais si c’était la même intelligence que nous avions lui et moi à notre disposition, il devait, en me les entendant exprimer, se les rappeler, les aimer, leur sourire, gardant probablement, malgré ce que je supposais, devant son il intérieur, tout une autre partie de l’intelligence que celle dont une découpure avait passé dans ses livres et d’après laquelle j’avais imaginé tout son univers mental. De même que les prêtres, ayant la plus grande expérience du cur, peuvent le mieux pardonner aux péchés qu’ils ne commettent pas, de même le génie ayant la plus grande expérience de l’intelligence peut le mieux comprendre les idées qui sont le plus opposées à celles qui forment le fond de ses propres oeuvres

Unanswerable simply because they were without reality.

~ Walter Shandy ~ 1 Comment

From Within a Budding Grove – I was going to comment on the Platonic flavor here but it seems Moncrieff beat me to it by rendering ‘Participant à la valeur universelle des esprits‘ as ‘being itself a part of the riches of the universal Mind.’  I’d call that one of his rare clear missteps.

And so, when Bergotte had to express an opinion which was the opposite of my own, he in no way reduced me to silence, to the impossibility of framing any reply, as M. de Norpois would have done. This does not prove that Bergotte’s opinions were of less value than the Ambassador’s; far from it. A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it. Being itself a part of the riches of the universal Mind, it makes its way into, grafts itself upon the mind of him whom it is employed to refute, slips in among the ideas already there, with the help of which, gaining a little ground, he completes and corrects it; so that the final utterance is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion. It is to ideas which are not, properly speaking, ideas at all, to ideas which, founded upon nothing, can find no support, no kindred spirit among the ideas of the adversary, that he, grappling with something which is not there, can find no word to say in answer. The arguments of M. de Norpois (in the matter of art) were unanswerable simply because they were without reality.

Et quand l’avis de Bergotte était ainsi contraire au mien, il ne me réduisait nullement au silence, à l’impossibilité de rien répondre, comme eût fait celui de M. de Norpois. Cela ne prouve pas que les opinions de Bergotte fussent moins valables que celles de l’ambassadeur, au contraire. Une idée forte communique un peu de sa force au contradicteur. Participant à la valeur universelle des esprits, elle s’insère, se greffe en l’esprit de celui qu’elle réfute, au milieu d’idées adjacentes, à l’aide desquelles, reprenant quelque avantage, il la complète, la rectifie; si bien que la sentence finale est en quelque sorte l’uvre des deux personnes qui discutaient. C’est aux idées qui ne sont pas, à proprement parler, des idées, aux idées qui ne tenant à rien, ne trouvent aucun point d’appui, aucun rameau fraternel dans l’esprit de l’adversaire, que celui-ci, aux prises avec le pur vide, ne trouve rien à répondre. Les arguments de M. de Norpois (en matière d’art) étaient sans réplique parce qu’ils étaient sans réalité.

It was the attachment to those objects

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From part 1 of Within a Budding Grove

“The most I was capable of was astonishment, when my visit was at all prolonged, at the nullity of achievement, at the utter inconclusiveness of those hours spent in the enchanted dwelling. But my disappointment arose neither from the inadequacy of the works of art that were shown to me nor from the impossibility of fixing upon them my distracted gaze. For it was not the intrinsic beauty of the objects themselves that made it miraculous for me to be sitting in Swann’s library, it was the attachment to those objects—which might have been the ugliest in the world—of the particular feeling, melancholy and voluptuous, which I had for so many years located in that room and which still impregnated it”

Tout au plus m’étonnais-je quand la visite se prolongeait, à quel néant de réalisation, à quelle absence de conclusion heureuse, conduisaient ces heures vécues dans la demeure enchantée. Mais ma déception ne tenait ni à l’insuffisance des chefs-d’oeuvre montrés, ni à l’impossibilité d’arrêter sur eux un regard distrait. Car ce n’était pas la beauté intrinsèque des choses qui me rendait miraculeux d’être dans le cabinet de Swann, c’était l’adhérence à ces choses—qui eussent pu être les plus laides du monde—du sentiment particulier, triste et voluptueux que j’y localisais depuis tant d’années et qui l’imprégnait encore;

The bolded phrase is probably the closest Proust comes to summing up what I find to be the core uniting theme of the social/emotional psychology his novel posits.  Whether it be the sentimental and aesthetic value of the narrator’s memories, Swann’s (externally) inexplicable passion for Odette, the narrator’s fixation on Gilberte/the Swanns and later Albertine, the Verdurins’ cultivation of a salon, etc. etc. it all comes together in this idea that is – by independent evolution or direct inspiration? – so close to the opening of section 5 of Epictetus’ Enchiridion:

ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα

What disturbs men are the things themselves, but their beliefs about those things

Which – for another hint at the many unappreciated links between Proust and Sterne – is also the epigraph to the first volume of Tristram Shandy

tristram

 

Sometimes the exact opposite, like a garment that has been turned

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From A l’ombre des jeune filles en fleurs, of the alteration in Cottard’s character between the days of Swann in Love and the opening of Within a Budding Grove.  So perfect an image of an alternate path of development but, with the loss of the practice referred to, I wonder whether it still resonates today:

we must bear in mind that the character which a man exhibits in the latter half of his life is not always, even if it is often his original character developed or withered, attenuated or enlarged; it is sometimes the exact opposite, like a garment that has been turned.

Remarquons que la nature que nous faisons paraître dans la seconde partie de notre vie, n’est pas toujours, si elle l’est souvent, notre nature première développée ou flétrie, grossie ou atténuée; elle est quelquefois une nature inverse, un véritable vêtement retourné.

An exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere outward forms

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Du Côté de Chez Swann:

So on by degrees, until Françoise and my aunt, the quarry and the hunter, could never cease from trying to forestall each other’s devices. My mother was afraid lest Françoise should develop a genuine hatred of my aunt, who was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However that might be, Françoise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely scrupulous attention to my aunt’s least word and gesture. When she had to ask her for anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time, making up her mind how best to begin. And when she had uttered her request, she would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the expression on her face what she thought of it, and how she would reply. And in this way—whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the seventeenth century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, would consider that he was making progress in that direction when he constructed a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic family, or when he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere outward forms—a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the ‘machinery’ of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.

Peu à peu Françoise et ma tante, comme la bête et le chasseur, ne cessaient plus de tâcher de prévenir les ruses l’une de l’autre. Ma mère craignait qu’il ne se développât chez Françoise une véritable haine pour ma tante qui l’offensait le plus durement qu’elle le pouvait. En tous cas Françoise attachait de plus en plus aux moindres paroles, aux moindres gestes de ma tante une attention extraordinaire. Quand elle avait quelque chose à lui demander, elle hésitait longtemps sur la manière dont elle devait s’y prendre. Et quand elle avait proféré sa requête, elle observait ma tante à la dérobée, tâchant de deviner dans l’aspect de sa figure ce que celle-ci avait pensé et déciderait. Et ainsi—tandis que quelque artiste lisant les Mémoires du XVIIe siècle, et désirant de se rapprocher du grand Roi, croit marcher dans cette voie en se fabriquant une généalogie qui le fait descendre d’une famille historique ou en entretenant une correspondance avec un des souverains actuels de l’Europe, tourne précisément le dos à ce qu’il a le tort de chercher sous des formes identiques et par conséquent mortes,—une vieille dame de province qui ne faisait qu’obéir sincèrement à d’irrésistibles manies et à une méchanceté née de l’oisiveté, voyait sans avoir jamais pensé à Louis XIV les occupations les plus insignifiantes de sa journée, concernant son lever, son déjeuner, son repos, prendre par leur singularité despotique un peu de l’intérêt de ce que Saint-Simon appelait la «mécanique» de la vie à Versailles, et pouvait croire aussi que ses silences, une nuance de bonne humeur ou de hauteur dans sa physionomie, étaient de la part de Françoise l’objet d’un commentaire aussi passionné, aussi craintif que l’étaient le silence, la bonne humeur, la hauteur du Roi quand un courtisan, ou même les plus grands seigneurs, lui avaient remis une supplique, au détour d’une allée, à Versailles.

Stabbed and prostrated like a St Sebastian of snobbery

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Du Côté de Chez Swann (~3/4 through Combray):

I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going to the houses of people whom one did not know, it should be necessary to cling to one’s independence, or how this could give one the appearance of a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was that Legrandin was not altogether truthful when he said that he cared only for churches, moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very great deal, for people who lived in country houses, and in their presence was so overcome by fear of incurring their displeasure that he dared not let them see that he numbered among his friends middle-class people, the sons of solicitors and stockbrokers, preferring, if the truth must come to light, that it should do so in his absence, a long way away, and “by default.” In a word, he was a snob. No doubt he would never have said any of this in the poetical language which my family and I so much enjoyed. And if I asked him, “Do you know the Guermantes family?” Legrandin the talker would reply, “No, I’ve never wished to know them.” But unfortunately the talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin, whom he kept carefully hidden in his breast, whom he would never consciously exhibit, because this other could tell compromising stories about our own Legrandin and his snobbishness; and this other Legrandin had replied to me already in that wounded look, that twisted smile, the undue gravity of the tone of his reply, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had instantaneously been stabbed and prostrated like a St Sebastian of snobbery

Je ne comprenais pas bien que pour ne pas aller chez des gens qu’on ne connaît pas, il fût nécessaire de tenir à son indépendance, et en quoi cela pouvait vous donner l’air d’un sauvage ou d’un ours. Mais ce que je comprenais c’est que Legrandin n’était pas tout à fait véridique quand il disait n’aimer que les églises, le clair de lune et la jeunesse; il aimait beaucoup les gens des châteaux et se trouvait pris devant eux d’une si grande peur de leur déplaire qu’il n’osait pas leur laisser voir qu’il avait pour amis des bourgeois, des fils de notaires ou d’agents de change, préférant, si la vérité devait se découvrir, que ce fût en son absence, loin de lui et «par défaut»; il était snob. Sans doute il ne disait jamais rien de tout cela dans le langage que mes parents et moi-même nous aimions tant. Et si je demandais: «Connaissez-vous les Guermantes?», Legrandin le causeur répondait: «Non, je n’ai jamais voulu les connaître.» Malheureusement il ne le répondait qu’en second, car un autre Legrandin qu’il cachait soigneusement au fond de lui, qu’il ne montrait pas, parce que ce Legrandin-là savait sur le nôtre, sur son snobisme, des histoires compromettantes, un autre Legrandin avait déjà répondu par la blessure du regard, par le rictus de la bouche, par la gravité excessive du ton de la réponse, par les mille flèches dont notre Legrandin s’était trouvé en un instant lardé et alangui, comme un saint Sébastien du snobisme

Given over to his journées de lecture

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Roberto Calasso’s Ardor:

Having listed the other sacrifices, the sacrifice to brahman still has to be described. And so we read: “The sacrifice to brahman is the daily study of the Veda.” There is a line that starts off with the sacrifice as a long ceremony, structured into hundreds of movements and actions—and therefore entirely visible—and which leads up to a later and invaluable variant, the sacrifice as an invisible and imperceptible activity, as it is performed through the study of the Veda.
Study of the Veda, known as svādhyāya or “inner recitation,” had to be done beyond the confines of the village, to the east or north, where the roofs were out of sight. It was the first indication of a process by which the simple acquisition of knowledge would get gradually more distant from society and unshackled by it. But study could also be carried out in other ways, even in bed: “And, in truth, if he studies his lesson, even stretched out on a soft bed, oiled, adorned and completely fulfilled, he is burned by tapas up to the tips of his fingernails: and so the daily lesson must be studied.” Here we see a figure we thought was modern: the reader, described much as the young Proust might have been described, given over to his journées de lecture. Once again we can see Vedic open-mindedness: to practice tapas we don’t have to cross our legs or subject ourselves to those “mortifications” that some regard as the very meaning of the word tapas. No, even luxe, calme et volupté may help—or at least not hinder. It is enough that the fervor of the mind runs without respite, and burns “up to the tips of the fingernails.

… he might have written a masterpiece

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris

The Proust madeleine phenomenon is now as firmly established in folklore as Newton’s apple or Watt’s steam kettle.  The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book.  This is capable of expression by the formula TMB, for Taste>Memory>Book.  Some time ago, when I began to read a book called The Food of France, by Waverley Root, I had an inverse experience: BMT, for Book>Memory>Taste.  Happily, the tastes that The Food of France re-created for me- small birds, stewed rabbit, stuffed tripe, Cote Rotie, and Tavel- were more robust than that of the madeleine, which Larousse defines as “a light cake made with sugar, flour, lemon juice, brandy and eggs”.  (The quantity of brandy in a madeleine would not furnish a gnat with an alcohol rub.)  In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite.  On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.

Proust is what comes to me, not what I summon

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Roland Barthes’ Le plaisir du texte (pg 58-59):

Reading a text reported by Stendhal (but which is not his), I find Proust there through a small detail … in the same way, in Flaubert, there are flowering normandy apples that I read based on Proust …

I recognize that Proust’s work is, at least for me, the reference work, the general mathesis, the mandala of the entire literary cosmogony – as were the letters of Mme de Sevigne for the narrator’s grandmother, the novels of chivalry for Don Quixote, etc.; That does not at all mean that I am a “specialist” in Proust: Proust is what comes to me, not what I summon;  He is not an “authority”; simply a circular memory.  And that is indeed the inter-text: the impossibility of living outside the infinite text.

Lisant un texte rapporte par Stendhal (mais qui n’est pas de lui), j’y retrouve Proust par un detail minuscule … de la meme facon, dans Flaubert, ce sont les pommiers normands en fleurs que je lis a partir de Proust…

Je comprends que l’oeuvre de Proust est, du moins pour moi, l’oeuvre de reference, la mathesis generale, le mandala de toute la cosmogonie litteraire – comme l’etaient les Lettres de Mme de Sevigne pour la grand-mere du narrateur, les romans de chevalerie pour don Quichotte, etc.; cela ne veut pas du tout dire que je sois un “spcialiste” de Proust: Proust, c’est ce qui me vient, ce n’est pas ce que j’appelle; ce n’est pas une “autorite”; simplement un souvenir circulaire.  Et c’est bien cela l’inter-texte: l’impossibilie de vivre hors du texte infini

Caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate its mechanism

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Du côté de chez Swann (pg 166-167 of the new Pleiade).  The translation is Moncrieff’s, though I also give the same sentence in Lydia Davis’ immediately below since I think she does a better job of sticking to the precise imagery of engrenage and déclic (while still – as ever for me – missing Proust’s cadence).

Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants. At first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current, across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it would drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally repeating its double journey. Thrust towards the bank, its stalk would be straightened out, lengthened, strained almost to breaking-point until the current again caught it, its green moorings swung back over their anchorage and brought the unhappy plant to what might fitly be called its starting-point, since it was fated not to rest there a moment before moving off once again. I would still find it there, on one walk after another, always in the same helpless state, suggesting certain victims of neurasthenia, among whom my grandfather would have included my aunt Léonie, who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always retain to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange, ineluctable, fatal daily round. Such as these was the water-lily, and also like one of those wretches whose peculiar torments, repeated indefinitely throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who would have inquired of them at greater length and in fuller detail from the victims themselves, had not Virgil, striding on ahead, obliged him to hasten after him at full speed, as I must hasten after my parents.

Davis (pg. 173) has:

I would find it again, walk after walk, always in the same situation, reminding me of certain neurasthenics among whose number my grandfather would count my aunt Leonie, who present year after year the unchanging spectacle of the bizarre habits they believe, each time, they are about to shake off and which they retain forever; caught in the machinery of their maladies and their manias, the efforts with which they struggle uselessly to abandon them only guarantee the functioning and activate the triggers of their strange, unavoidable, and morose regimes.

Bientôt le cours de la Vivonne s’obstrue de plantes d’eau. Il y en a d’abord d’isolées comme tel nénufar à qui le courant au travers duquel il était placé d’une façon malheureuse laissait si peu de repos que comme un bac actionné mécaniquement il n’abordait une rive que pour retourner à celle d’où il était venu, refaisant éternellement la double traversée. Poussé vers la rive, son pédoncule se dépliait, s’allongeait, filait, atteignait l’extrême limite de sa tension jusqu’au bord où le courant le reprenait, le vert cordage se repliait sur lui-même et ramenait la pauvre plante à ce qu’on peut d’autant mieux appeler son point de départ qu’elle n’y restait pas une seconde sans en repartir par une répétition de la même manœuvre. Je la retrouvais de promenade en promenade, toujours dans la même situation, faisant penser à certains neurasthéniques au nombre desquels mon grand-père comptait ma tante Léonie, qui nous offrent sans changement au cours des années le spectacle des habitudes bizarres qu’ils se croient chaque fois à la veille de secouer et qu’ils gardent toujours; pris dans l’engrenage de leurs malaises et de leurs manies, les efforts dans lesquels ils se débattent inutilement pour en sortir ne font qu’assurer le fonctionnement et faire jouer le déclic de leur diététique étrange, inéluctable et funeste. Tel était ce nénufar, pareil aussi à quelqu’un de ces malheureux dont le tourment singulier, qui se répète indéfiniment durant l’éternité, excitait la curiosité de Dante et dont il se serait fait raconter plus longuement les particularités et la cause par le supplicié lui-même, si Virgile, s’éloignant à grands pas, ne l’avait forcé à le rattraper au plus vite, comme moi mes parents.