This summer I decided to read Marcel Proust’s In Search of
Lost Time. And because I am trying to
keep busy, here’s the blog. And it is
going to be very informal.
The first book is Swann’s Way. I am using the most recent Penguin
translation. Swann’s Way is translated
by Lydia Davis. The Penguin editions are
nice, with end flaps so you can keep track of you are in terms of the notes.
Combray, where a good portion of
the book takes place is Illiers-Combray.
It was originally Illiers but the place added Combray because of the
association with the book in 1971.
Seems very pretty if the online
pictures are anything to go by.
Link to NY Times Photo essay Around
Marcel Proust’s Illiers-Combray - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The whole bit about in what
position you fall asleep is quite true.
It can effect how you remember where you are and how you wake up. Proust isn’t the only one who writes about
that between time between sleeping and wakefulness.
There is a really good book about
the Burgundians – The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire: A History 1111 years
and One Day by Bart Van loo, so if
you want to know about why Charles V and Francois I battles.
“ . . . where in icy weather the
pleasure you enjoy is the feeling that you are separated from the outdoors
(like the sea swallow which makes its nest deep in an underground passage in
the warmth of the earth)” (7) Does he
mean the blue sea slug here? Or the
tern? I kind of like the end of the sea
slug, but he most mean the bird. But
terns don’t tunnel do they? Maybe cliff
swallow is what I should be thinking of.
“
. . . like a titmouse rocked by the breeze on the tip of a ray of light”
(8).
On his (the narrator who is in many
way a version of Proust himself) great-aunt, “Whenever she saw in others an
advantage, however small, that she did not have, she persuaded herself that it
was not an advantage but a detriment and she pitied them so as not to have to
envy them.” (22-23).
Found a really good recipe for madeleines
on Epicurious. Madeleines
With Lavender Honey Recipe | Epicurious.
The yield is slightly more than 24, around 26. Regular honey works fine, and the only
special gear you need is madeline pan.
“There is a great deal of chance in
all this, and a second sort of chance event, that of our own death, often does
not allow us to wait long for the favors of the first.” (44).
Bergotte is really Anatole France
who wrote Penguin Island among other things.
Swann’s garden is really Proust’s
uncle.
Do love how he writes about
asparagus “ . . .but what delighted me were the asparagus, steeped in
ultramarine and pink, whose tips, delicately painted little strokes of mauve
and azure, shade off imperceptibly down to their feet – still soiled though they
are from the dirt of their garden bed – with an iridescence that is not of this
earth. It seemed to me that these
celestial hues revealed the delicious creature who had merrily metamorphosed
themselves into vegetables and who through the disguise of their firm, edible
flesh, disclosed in these early tints of dawn, in these beginnings of rainbow,
in s this extinction of blue evenings, the precious essence that I recognized
again when, all night long following a dinner at which I had eaten them, they
played in farces as crude and poetic as a fairy play by Shakespeare, at
changing my chamber pot into a jar of perfume.” (123-124).
You know what is good? Asparagus with orzo and garlic breadcrumbs. Just as good as roasted asparagus.
Swann
loves Odette because he thinks she is a Giotto maiden come to life. No wonder he keeps his lower class bit on the
side for a while. What Swann really
wants is to make love to a painting, he just doesn’t realize yet. Odette just wants some guy with money to buy
her nice things. At least she is honest
about that.
Swann, my man, you had your side
piece, she can have one too.
Yeah, I know she can’t but she
should be allowed one. I though the France were down with that as long as the
public didn’t know. Totally different that the women who hang with our
narrators uncle where the relationship is all above broad. Swann seems to have acquired a courtesan
without realizing that is what he did.
Also why would you hang with someone who didn’t like Vermeer, inquiring
minds what to know?
Interesting comment about Night
Watch. Artists that make use of light seem to be preferred here.
Everyone seems to love Dumas fils
in this book. He’s Alexandre Dumas’ son. His mother was a dressmaker, parents weren’t
married, and Dumas Pere took his son away from the boy’s mother. Dumas fils is most famous The Lady of the Camellias
aka La Traviata. Reference makes sense because
of the doomed love affair. Thing is it just
makes me want to rewatch the Three Musketeers movies that came out directed by
Martin Bourboulon. They were excellent.
I know I am suppose to see Odette
as desire and emblematic of the changing class structure. That she willful seduced Swann, but I don’t particularly
like Swann. I think he gets what he has
coming to him because he does seem to use the woman around him in a variety of
ways. I don’t think he sees it this way,
but he does.
Odette’s friends seem far more
clear sighted about what is going on.
They also, despite their pretentious, seem in a way less cruel than
Swann’s almost off the cuff feelings.
Odette and Swann are making think
of Swan Lake.
Lots of doomed love here.
Citations from:
Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. Trans. Lydia Davis. Penguin, 2002.
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