Little Proust Bravely Facing his Parents

One evening, because of a visit,  his mother did not come upstairs to say goodnight and, after waiting for a long time,  Proust decides to write "a line" and have a servant bring it to her. But ......

I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma [...], I had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep until I actually had seen her

and my heart began to beat more and more painfully as I increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm and to acquiesce in my ill-fortune.

Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided, a feeling of intense happiness ran through me, as when a strong medicine begins to take effect....

....because little Proust decides bravely to take action and to confront his parents head-on as they came upstairs.

The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely alert, no less than my sense of expectation, [....]  

Presently I heard her coming upstairs [....]  I saw in the well of the stair a light coming upwards, from Mamma’s candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw myself upon her.

For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not realising what could have happened. Then [....] she said not a single word to me; [....] 

...because there now comes his imposing father who was a surgeon, a scientist, a man  unaware of the other universe. And little Proust understands at once that he has placed his mother in a bind.

she heard my father coming [...]  and she said, in a voice half-stifled by her anger: “Run away at once. Don’t let your father see you standing there!”

But I begged her again to “Come and say good night to me!” terrified as I saw the light from my father’s candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail.

Too late.
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Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase, where I had watched the light of his candle  climb, has long ago been demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I imagined, would last for ever

Here is The Great Proust, the world-class author drawing up the metaphor that will show the ultimate meaning :

But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to control in my father’s presence, and which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their echo has never ceased: it is only because life is now growing more and more quiet round about me that I hear them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively drowned during the day by the noises of the streets that one would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until they sound out again through the silent evening air.

:-(  remember this is Moncrieff's translation. Proust never used things like  "increasingly able to catch", "round about me", "hear afresh" , "effectively", "one would suppose"

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That is in a nutshell the 9 volumes of "Time lost". -- But  only the first  5 volumes are top quality, and the very first one, "Swann's Way", is also the greatest of  all nine, though the first ten pages are no good as a beginning, because they are overwritten and seem vain or even conceited in their self-awareness, and you will have to skip the last chapter, an awful collection of etymologies.


This is the last page of his manuscript. It was his brother who prepared the last three (or 4?) volumes for publication. That brother is never even mentioned.

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The complete text is free at
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96s/chapter1.html#chapter1
It is the beginning of "Swann's Way".


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Noah's Ark seen by Marcel Proust

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In short:  truth in art is remembered and recalled, but not copied.

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado says the same.

(c) Drawing of Noah's Ark by ghD. The carriage is for the very small animals, bichitos, spiders, Käferchen

Quote Marcel:

"When I was little, no story of the Holy Bible seemed to me as sad as Noah's, because of the flood which kept him shut up in the ark for forty days. Later I was often ill, and for lots of days I also had to remain "in the ark". I understood then that Noah could never have seen the world so clearly as from his ark, though it was closed and it was night on Earth."
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Quote Machado

Pensar el mundo es como hacerlo nuevo

de la sombra o la nada, desustanciado y frío.
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To think about the world is like making it anew from its shadow or from nothing, cold and almost lifeless.

Pensar: borrar primero y dibujar después,

y quien borrar no sabe camina en cuatro pies.

To think is to erase first and draw afterwards. Those who don't know how to erase walk on four feet.
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Elsewhere Proust explained art as "the Devine Captive".

If our soul is not eternal, then our notions of love, beauty, justice,  won't last either. They are our "divine captives", and to die in their company is "somehow less humiliating and even less probable" says Marcel, though this time quoted from memory.

The astute supposition is that we took these notions from God as pawns or hostages to be redeemed at life's end.

The more complete quotes are at

http://cantueso1.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/marcel-proust-immortaity.html

Proust: Tea and Muffins

Proust mentions an old saga where a spirit is imprisoned in a stone and you can free it by listening to its call. -- Similarly, he says, truth is hidden in an object or a sound and can be freed only by someone who listens.

In other words, a  sound, a smell,  a texture or even a taste would bring back memories that cannot be reached by any mental effort.

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Summarized in his own words:

“It is the same with our past. It is in vain that we try to call it up;  our mental efforts are all useless, because that past is hidden outside the domain of our intelligence and beyond its reach."

“Il en est ainsi de notre passé. C'est peine perdue que nous cherchions à
l'évoquer, tous les efforts de notre intelligence sont inutiles. Il est
caché hors de son domaine et de sa portée."

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That is the meaning of the little cup cakes called Madeleines.  Pronounce madlenn

He was feeling sad after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing future. His aunt served him some tea and muffins. As soon as he tasted the muffins, he felt such glorious joy as could not be explained by the tea, nor by some trivial memories of candle light appearing in a staircase or of the door bell tinkling  at the garden gate..

But the tinkling of the door bell (Swann's evening visit) and the light in the staircase (a desperate confrontation with his father) became the beginning of  his 2000 page novel that he says he pulled out of that glass of tea.

Proust thinks this immense joy meant that his soul had momentarily found the place where the present time and the past are simultaneous within the larger picture of eternity, so that death cannot exist.

Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century", and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the "greatest fiction to date".

The Proust pictures are from a large specialized collection at http://www.geoffwilkins.net/proust/gallery.htm
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Postscript 1
 

Above, there is a photo showing how Proust had "read " the proofs once they came back from the printer.  -- 

The last volumes were proof-read by Marcel's brother, because Proust could not finish them in time. This is why the last 3 or 4 volumes are not of the same quality as the first 3 or 4. 

In Spanish there is a good translation,  and even in German I once saw something, but in English?   
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Postscript 2

I see that now there is a new translation by Lydia Davis getting great reviews.  -- And now they all admit that Moncrieff's text is archaic! But that is not its real defect. It sounds false. Proust had quite a few "character defects" (compared to who ???), but false he wasn't.
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Postscript 3
added December 22, 2015

I have just found out that the Moncrieff translation is greatly admired in England.
The critics consider it a chef-d'oeuvre of Edwardian English.
Apparently, Joseph Conrad thought the English version is greater than the French original.


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Marcel Proust: Swann in Love

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Swann is a wealthy art collector who falls in love with a beautiful girl of expensive habits. He imagines her looking like Jethro's daughter by Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel.

He chases and finances her until he almost breaks down under the strain.

Finally he discovers that he does not love her, but ends up marrying her.

It is a good story included in the famous first volume of Remembrance of Things Passed, and it can also be read as an independent novelette. The English translation is stuffy, but freely available as Swann in Love .
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Proust's idea of art:



Since most people believe more or less coherently in some ideal like justice, beauty, love, loyalty, something that does not seem to serve their practical interests, Proust reasoned like this:

If there is no immortal soul, then:

 (quote)
 "these notions which exist in our mind must be nothing either. We must perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will share our fate.
And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable. "
(end of quote)

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http://didiergouxbis.blogspot.com.es/2010/07/marcel-proust-deviendra-t-il.html

Proust explains elsewhere:

A work of art makes you happy because it strongly relates the present moment  to a moment far away in the past.

Thereby the soul feels that it is where it truly belongs, outside of time, above time, not subject to time, enjoying its immortality.

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The original French text:

«Par là, la phrase de Vinteuil avait [...] épousé notre condition mortelle, pris quelque chose d’humain qui était assez touchant. Son sort était lié à l’avenir, à la réalité de notre âme dont elle était un des ornements les plus particuliers, les mieux différenciés.

Peut-être est-ce le néant qui est le vrai et tout notre rêve est-il inexistant, mais alors nous sentons qu’il faudra que ces phrases musicales, ces notions qui existent par rapport à lui, ne soient rien non plus.

Nous périrons mais nous avons pour otages ces captives divines qui suivront notre chance. Et la mort avec elles a quelque chose de moins amer, de moins inglorieux, peut-être de moins probable. »

Marcel Proust: Un amour de Swann

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Marcel Proust: M. de Norpois to dinner

It is Proust's great recurrent theme: your voluntary memory is restrained by facts and by common sense, all misleading when you try to recall a distant  past.  He gives Ambassador Norpois' old-fashioned language as an example. Proust had to re-create it to make it come to life in his novel:

“Norpois' conversation was such a collection of outdated formulas that I often regret I did not simply write down the things he said..
 That way, I could now produce an effect of retro decor as easily as that actor who was asked where he managed to find his surprising hats, and he answered: "I keep them."

Shortened and simplified from a free e-text at http://intexto.org/opus/en/proust/recherche/014 quoted below

I should add that his conversation furnished so exhaustive a glossary of the superannuated forms of speech peculiar to a certain profession, class and period [....]that I sometimes regret that I have not simply kept any literal record  of the things that I have heard him say. I should thus have obtained an effect of old-fashioned courtesy by the same process and at as little expense as that actor at the Palais-Royal who, when asked where on earth he managed to find his astounding hats, answered, “I do not find my hats. I keep them.”

The French original:

Et je dois dire que la conversation de M. de Norpois était un répertoire si complet des formes surannées du langage particulières à une carrière, à une classe, et à un temps — un temps qui, pour cette carrière et cette classe-là, pourrait bien ne pas être tout à fait aboli — que je regrette parfois de n’avoir pas retenu purement et simplement les propos que je lui ai entendu tenir. J’aurais ainsi obtenu un effet de démodé, à aussi bon compte et de la même façon que cet acteur du Palais-Royal à qui on demandait où il pouvait trouver ses surprenants chapeaux et qui répondait : « Je ne trouve pas mes chapeaux. Je les garde. »

In other words, in Proust's view, a novelist creates and does not copy. -- He doesn't keep old hats, but tries to call them up as pictures from his inners.