Dedicated to Leon Doudet.
The narrator is being cruel about Francoise. I am beginning to feel very sorry for
Francoise. #TeamFrancoise.
I too love Whistler and Proust. I do.
I am feeling very lucky that I am familiar with Phèdre
considering how popular it is in the book.
“So, La Berma’s interpretation was, around Racine’s work, a
second work, it, too, enlivened by genius” (42) – comment on how acting is
another level of art of a play. Or a
totally different level of art of the play to be more exact.
Dude, my man, you are a stalker.
He says of the Duchesse, “ . . .to transform her morning
walk - and for me she was the only one
in the world out walking – into a whole pome of elegance, into the most refined
adornment, the rarest flower under the sun” (53).
Didn’t he speak this way about Odette?
Still chasing girls and mothers.
Rich society woman as a vulture. Peering over and under society.
I keep feeling that Francoise is being maligned.
“The life led by servants is perhaps even more strange and
abnormal and it is only familiarity that conceals the fact from us” (58). Something a person who has servants would
say.
He does have a thing for older woman.
“And perhaps the resurrection of the soul after death is to
be thought of a s phenomenon of memory” (82)
A lot of Dreyfus stuff is going on here.
Elestir- Whistler, am I correct in thinking this.
“And since Habit, among all the plants that grow in human
beings, is the one that has least need of nutritious soil to live . . ‘(116)
“We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their
participation in a collective crime” (146).
Is this true? It was the idea
behind the treaty of Versailles, wasn’t that?
But did WWII change everything?
Yes and no. German guilt but have
we moved beyond that. Do we talk about
society or society instead? Changing how
we view the collective.
Page 150 – Narrator notes that the Saint-Loup wants a good
“brilliant” marriage so he can keep his mistress and he can’t marry her because
than you will have the Swanns.
Saint-Loup’s Rachel is Odette 2.0 with acting desires.
Devil’s Island- Dreyfus prison
“She was clumsy with her hands, when she ate on got the
impression that she must appear extremely awkward onstage. She recovered her dexterity only when she was
making love, with the touchingly intuitive foresight of women who are so in
love with men’s bodies that they immediately sense what will give most pleasure
to those bodies, which are yet so different from their own” (161).
“Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into
action in which there is no great joy, it would take sadism to turn it into
something pleasurable; unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain
on someone equally unkind” (167). Nice
to see excuses for bullies’ date back.
Pg 176-177 Saint-Loup appears to beat someone up who thinks
he is gay.
“But a piece of writing, even if it directs itself
exclusively to subjects that are not intellectual, is still a work of the intelligence,
and to achieve a perfect impression of frivolity in a book, or in a talk that
is not dissimilar, requires a measure of seriousness that a purely frivolous
person would not be able to muster” (179).
Really doesn’t like Block because he is a fellow social
climber. It’s the lack of breeding in
terms of society behavior is how the narrator sees Bloch.
“You’re right she doesn’t look like cow. She looks like a whole herd of them”
(226). Okay, that is a good burn.
“The Duke used his wife as a decoration but he did not love
her. His inflated self-importance made
him hate to be interrupted, and he was in the habit of being brutally curt with
her in private, quivering with the twofold rage of a bad husband who is not be
spoken to and a gifted talker whose words go unnoticed, he stopped short and
glared at the Duchesse in a manner that made everyone feel uncomfortable.” (229).
As excepted searching American weed and France simply lead
to websites stating whether or not you could bring weed into France. What plant is he talking about that came to
France via a traveling rug?
Saint-Loup being holier than thou about Mime Swann is not a
flex.
So basically our hero’s uncle left him what was at the time
Playboy. Nice way to past porn down in a
family.
Is Charlus the devil?
Is Saint-Loup the good angel?
“In a war, a man who does not love his country says nothing
against it, but regards it as doomed, pities it, sees everything in the
blackest terms” (317).
“Priests, like specialists in mental disorders, always have
something of the examining magistrate about them” (335-36).
Part II, Chapter 1 – the decline and death of his
grandmother made me think of John. The
whole pattern of it and the amount of detail describing it. I was not expecting to be so moved by it.
Narrator being confused for more notable people.
Is corruption part of the motif here? De Charlus seems to want to do this. Narrator is an outsider who has access to
insiders.
He seems to have low view of women as well as Jews. Talks about the upper crust women as only
marrying wealthy dukes but does really address the real reasons why that
is.
The first part of the book was better, I think. It suffers after his grandmother dies. The events leading up to the death of his
grandmother were moving and powerful.
How his mother reacted and how he himself reacted by getting her the
doctor right away. The desperation and
even how Francoise acted. It makes it
very real.
The sequence in Doncieres was also good, even the military
lectures that Saint-Loup gives are all wonderful. The salons less so. Maybe because he seems like he doesn’t really
like anyone at the salons. Marcel, the
narrator, claims to be impressed but near as I can tell, he is very similar to
Bloch, just more aware and controlled by the conventions of the society in
which he wants to move. And he does want
to move up into the rarified society. He
isn’t Jewish, despite being Proust himself in a way, (and is Swann, we are told
he is and isn’t. Is Swann basically like
Proust as well? I think so).
So Marcel doesn’t seem to like women, in particular society
women, but also Jews, in particular Bloch.
He seems to more in love with the idea of Mime Guermantes than in love
with her himself. He doesn’t even really
know her. It isn’t the lust he seems to have felt with
Gilberte and what he does feel with Albertine.
He is pretty a social climber,
isn’t he?
It also addresses the conflict with the old and new guard as
it were.
Marcel is kind of like Romeo – in love, or says he is in
love, with women who are unavailable in some way or form.
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