What follows is a collection of thoughts and notes that I have finally transcribed from post-its, napkin doodlings, margin scribbles and ideas floating around in my brain for weeks. Please forgive its faults and incompleteness. I hope there is something in it of sense to be retrieved:I.tSeeing“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”-ChekovA couple of years ago I started to lose my sight. Oh, it’s nothing drastic. Just one of those things that my mother was right about (“stop reading under the covers you’ll ruin your eyes!” …. “.. I can still see that light!”). Unfortunately. Though I prefer to think of it as my eyes have adjusted to my bookworm nature. Anything you hold in front of me at the typical distance of a book or a computer looks crystal clear. … road signs and, you know… billboards, occasionally less so.There are some side effects to this, though, that I’m finding are sometimes not so bad. Instead of a boring metal post with some green paint on it and a rock next to it, one time I saw an old man in a green hat bent over his little dog. Instead of a colorful shopping bag flying quickly across the highway, I saw a fluttering peacock. I frequently find that long grass across a meadow momentarily becomes full of shiny creatures due to some trick of the light.So, this actually sounds bad, doesn’t it? But I think this is also what de Lint and all those other urban fantasists of that ilk are talking about. That is, how they make a great deal out of the fairies you see out of the corner of your eye and how they build whole cities within cities upon it. It does allow me some fun new perspectives on things sometimes. Of course, the only thing is that these random things at the corner of my eye don’t exist. But it doesn't make it any less charming to daydream about these phantoms for a few moments until they disappear.Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to see this way all the time and have the fantasies and bright colors I see for a fleeting second at the center of my vision. Now I know. It is like Proust. This novel is many things. It is a man, a child remembering. It is a person telling us about his greatest loves and fears and his most petty experiences. But mostly it is the record of a pair of eyes that sees the world in the most extraordinary, detailed, exquisite ways. We walk through the home and the paths of his childhood, the Guermantes Way and the Way by Swann’s and experience the trees in the sort of high-definition pictures that televisions can only dream of: hyper-real, warm-and-feel-the-sun sort of detail, with the additional color added by fanciful allegories, comparisons and sharp feelings that make it all feel so particular to the reader. Indeed, there are passages that almost feel Shakespearean in their magic, taking us to a bank where the wild thyme grows and where Titania sleeps sometime of the night: “The air was saturated with the finest flower of a silence so nourishing, so succulent, that I could move through it only with a sort of greed… before I went in to say good morning to my aunt, they made me wait for a moment, in the first room where the sun, still wintry, had come to warm itself before the fire, already lit between the two bricks and coating the whole room with an odor of soot, having the same effect as one of those great rustic open hearths, or one of those mantles in country houses, beneath which one sits hoping that outdoors there will be an onset of rain, snow, even some diluvian catastrophe so as to add to the comfort of reclusion the poetry of hibernation… and as the fire baked like a dough the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was all curdled and which had already been kneaded and made to “rise” by the damp and sunny coolness of the morning, it flaked them, gilded them, puckered them, puffed them, transforming them into an invisible, a palpable country pastry…”Proust looks around him with all of his senses so that they become confused with each other, as we can see as sight becomes smell, and becomes touch in the example above. Proust is constantly looking somewhere, whether that is out into his immediate surroundings, or deep within himself and then outward again to a remembered world that never quite existed. He is so precise about making sure that every last little nook and cranny and knickknack is pointed out to us so that it ends up being so dizzying that it all adds up to something that dances on that line between total fantasy and lived reality.This puts us in limbo, formally speaking. We are always and ever in the twilight world of Between, Nowheresvillle, and therefore just as open to the smack of the laws of the reality of the earth we know as the unreality of inner dreams and feelings that are just as apt to take control. For Proust, his trust in his senses, his many different ways of “seeing” must therefore be trusted above and beyond what a conventionally “realistic” author might need. Seeing is believing, to be sure. It’s just, in Proust, that “seeing” is apt to mean many different things in the literal sense. But in the figurative, it means that you won’t miss a thing. Not a thing. Not even if you maybe wanted to.II. ThinkingProust’s ability to see the world from such a beautifully exquisite perspective comes from his powerful intellect. For, don’t let him fool you, this fine French dandy who took cures and apparently never took off his fur overcoat because he found it so lovely... for all his airs and graces, there is an amazingly subtle, supple, nimble and gorgeous mind eternally at work here. Stream of consciousness it may be, but I would put my emphasis on the consciousness part of that equation.Proust is a highly sensitive observer of the world (in the sense that you would call pressure gauge needles sensitive, not ladies who cry at Hallmark commercials). The slightest motion, re-calibration, the merest turn of his head sets his sensors rolling into overdrive, taking in and processing his experiences on multiple levels, all at once.Even while he is giving us beautiful descriptions of the world around him, he is also simultaneously weaving these things into thoughts, into a larger picture that begins to weave together into larger statements and ideas. This begins to occur on the first page, as Proust begins by applying a remarkably analytical and observant tone to a state that is usually taken to be ruled by excessive sensibility, or the unconscious brain: the sleep process. After two pages of examining the odd, somewhat surreal “symptoms” of his sleeping habits he comes to the conclusion that: “A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the sequence of the hours, the order of the years and the worlds. He consults them instinctively as he wakes and reads in a second the point on the earth he occupies, the time that has elapsed before his waking; but their ranks can be mixed up, broken. If toward morning, after a bout of insomnia, sleep overcomes him as he is reading, in a position quite different from the one in which he usually sleps, his raised arm alone is enough to stop the sun and make it retreat, and in the first minute of his waking, he will no longer know what time it is, he will think he has just gone to bed. If he dozes off in a position still more displaced and divergent, after dinner sitting in an armchair for instance, then the confusion among the disordered worlds will be complete, the magic armchair will send him traveling at top speed through time and space, and, at the moment of opening his eyelids, he will believe that he went to bed several months earlier in another country.”The setup and structure is almost dry and scientific… were it not, of course, for the fact that it just so happens to be beautifully written and processed through a mind with a literary predisposition (and excellent powers of a certain kind of observation, as we saw earlier.)This sort of time out from a spongelike intake of items into his mind shows that despite the front, there is a powerful filter at work that makes this, perhaps, much less of a “stream” than it appears at first glance. For all the appearance that Proust can give of spending his days with his head firmly in the clouds, there are many points that show that that ain’t necessarily so- indeed it could not be. On several occasions, Proust demonstrates a keen connectedness with the world through his scenes of social commentary. These have a sharpness, wryness and insight to rival Jane Austen in insight: “If you were determined to assign Swann a social coefficient that was his alone, among the other sons of stockbrokers in a position equal to that of his parents, this coefficient would have been a little lower for him because, very simple in his manner and with a long standing craze for “antiques” and painting, he now lived and amassed his collections in an old town house which my grandmother dreamed of visiting, but which was situated on the quai d’Orleans, a part of town where my great-aunt felt it was ignominious to live. “But are you a connoisseur? I ask you for your own ask, because you’re likely to let the dealers unload some awful daubs on you,” my great-aunt would say to him; in fact she did not assume that he had any competence and even from an intellectual point of view had no great opinion of a man who in conversation avoided serious subjects and showed a most prosaic preciseness only when he gave us cooking recipes, entering into the smallest details.”There’s a long, welcome sequence towards the end, inserted in the middle of Swann’s descent into jealousy and the dark side of his “love” for Odette, where Swann dissects the inner workings of a party. Another section lovingly but rather viciously takes apart his agoraphobic old aunt observation by observation, piercing eyes always watching. He sees so much that sometimes his brain, which is apt to just keep following a stream as long as it can, has to put on the breaks for a full stop and surface for some Real Talk. Even Proust likes to loosen his tie and giggle over the Real Housewives sometimes: “When she found herself next to someone she did not know, at this moment Mme. Franquetot, it would pain her that her own awareness of her kinship with the great Guermantes family could not be manifested outwardly in visible characters like those which, in the mosaics of the Byzantine churches, placed one below another, inscribe in a vertical column, next to a holy personage, the words he is supposed to be uttering.”and “The Marquis de Forestelle’s monocle was miniscule, had no border, and requiring a constant painful clenching of the eye, where it was encrusted like a superfluous cartilage whose presence was inexplicable and whose material was exquisite, gave the Marquis’ face a melancholy delicacy, and made women think he was capable of great sorrows in love.”I liked this element of Proust. Not only did I find it challenging, exciting and inspiring in turns to see what his long analyses had come to, it also made him more human. It made him less of an alien deep sea diver with a lungs of infinite capacity, and more of a guy that I could hang out with at happy hour that once in a blue moon he makes himself show up. Not even Proust can see, process and understand, understand, understand forever. Sometimes, girls just wanna have fun, you know?All in all, I looked forward to these sections and started looking ahead to see when the next one would appear. Proust could be a surprisingly down-to-earth, straight talking, funny guy to spend some time with. But I didn’t see this guy as often, or for as long as I would have liked to, even if he was there underneath most of the time.III.tFeeling “But I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I had at last filled with myself to the point of paying no more attention to the room than to that self. The anesthetizing influence of habit having ceased, I would begin to have thoughts, and feelings, and they are such sad things.”This is the key to the story here, all of it, all his beautiful eyes can encompass, all his piercingly sharp mind can process: It’s all held prisoner to, held tight to, inferior to, his incredible capacity to feel the world around him. His eyes may be brilliant, his mind may be ready, but it’s nothing to this deep chasm of feeling that he trips and falls into on a moment’s notice, one second after the other. I think that this is why I looked forward to the breaks (and they were only breaks) that Proust took to think through his ideas. Once he starts feeling something, there is no possibility of stopping until each ounce of it is worked through and over repeatedly, until it is either flattened out into a shape acceptable to him, or at least become so familiar that can no longer hold in his intellect any longer.But this “intrusion” of feeling should not be taken to mean that Proust substitutes histrionics for thought, or melodramatic adverbs for well considered word choice. No, all of Proust’s tools stay, all of his mind is still visibly at work.. it’s just more that there is no choice of subject. This feeling is going to be what his mind focuses on, words on, imagines on and tortures himself with for however many weeks, months or years it takes to work it out. God, was that distressingly familiar. That one thought repeating again and again, with variations on a horrible or rapturous theme, as appropriate, echoing off the sides of your brain until you want to scream, going to bed with it, waking up with it. It is as if until it is resolved, it’s reserved the use of every one of your faculties.The most famous example of a feeling taking over thought and pushing it off in an entirely different direction, is, of course, the taste of the madeleine. But the sun bathed vision of the stage of his aunt’s absurdist comedies is, it turns out, a mere childish rehearsal for the real, far more tragic version coming later in the book: Swann’s obsession with Odette. Proust swung for the fences on this section and hit it, hard. Again and again. Proust is just exquisite on the stages of love and grief, leading his narrator through the various altered perceptions of reality that one can experience through choosing to love deeply. Proust gets it right, from the way that love can start totally from an outside source, to the transition into real feeling, to the whirlwind period of mutual rushing towards each other, to the slow, painful dissolution hat goes on… and on… and on. He gets the all-consuming nature of the thing, from the first to the last, and illustrates both its most euphoric and its silliest iterations, it’s pettiest hates and its most pathetic deceptions. I was really struck by his elucidation of something that others can sometimes forget: the step-by-step nature of the build up and dissolution of the idea of being in love. Proust really gets the rhythm of it, the ebb and flow, and makes us experience every last inch of it, the cynical and the overwrought: “Other people usually leave us so indifferent that when we have invested in one of them the possibilities of causing us pain and joy, that person seems to belong to another universe, is surrounded with poetry, turns out life into a sort of expanse of emotion in which that person will be more or less close to us… Now and then, as he saw, from his victoria, on these lovely cold nights, the shining smooth spreading its brightness between his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other face, bright and tinged with pink like the moon’s, which, one day, had appeared in the forefront of his mind and, since then, had cast on the world the mysterious light in which he saw it.”His engagement with the little phrase, from the first time he hears it and makes it into something, to, and especially, the end of its enchantment over him, was an especially powerful example of Proust living inside his feelings. I’ve got enough quotes in this review already, but if I could I would quote ten straight pages of its gorgeousness.It was sad, in a way, to see such a mind with apparently few choices as to what it was going to pursue. But on the other hand, I suspect that, in the end, it is this element of Proust that is the wellspring of all the rest. I wonder, as someone put it in a documentary a few years ago, if Proust could have pushed a little red button to make these intense, all-consuming feelings go away... if he would have. Would he choose to lose tapestries that came to life in cathedrals? Would he choose to never again be rendered breathless by a melody so intensely calibrated to his mind and love that he could not move? Would you want the sunlight to be the sunlight and not a finely puffed pastry baking on a windowpane?If you could escape, would you? It's such a fine line distinguishing between experiences that enrich our lives and those that truly deprive us of life in some unfair way. Which is which and who is to say? I wasn't sure before reading Proust and now I am even less so. I don't think (within some reasonable limits) that anyone really has the right to say. Epilogue:“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.”-WoolfFinally, Marcel Proust, it seems to me, is writing his way out of a fast-moving river, of the undertow that Woolf and others have described so well, because it is the only thing that works. It is the only thing that frees him to take another step forward. In so doing, he descends down into the loneliest, ugliest, brightest, highest, darkest, Dickensian contrasting parts of himself and finds…the world.And what is that world? After all the heartache, all the agony and ecstasy, all the obsession, exhaustion, cursing and crying, after all of it… Why, it turns out it’s a poem. Didn’t you somehow know that to start with? It feels like I should have, that it was going to be the only answer all along, but somehow, it was one of things that crept on so gradually I hardly knew it was there until it seemed inevitable.Poetry is even not a full enough word, though, I don't think. It is a poem, that's the case, recited, by turns, desperately and carefully but more than that… it’s just… breathing. It’s being able to breathe, what you take in, what you need to expel out again. The scents that float inside you when inhale, the breeze that whispers past and almost dies and then has one more thing to say before it’s truly gone. These words are like breathing, air drawn from the depths. It’s one long deep breath, one after the other, just trying to get to the next.“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest”, says Clarice Lispector. I have to believe that Proust was attempting something similar here. I don’t know much about him personally, but I do hope that that is what he found. He deserved it.
PART ISpoilersFor reasons that will become apparent, my review focuses not on the plot of the novel, but on its style and themes.If you want to develop your own relationship with these aspects of the novel, then it might be better to turn away now.This is partly why I paid little attention to the excellent discussion group at Proust 2013, before writing my review.“Swann’s Way” is one of the most personal books ever written, and I want to define my personal relationship with it, without viewing it through the prism of other people’s insights, words and interpretation, no matter how right they might be and how wrong I might be.I wanted my reading experience to be intimate and personal, not shared and social. Until now.To the extent that I might reveal any plot points, I think it’s like telling you that Christ died in the New Testament. (Sorry that I had to spoil the surprise.)Anyway, this is my warning to the spoiler-sensitive.Apprehended by the SuspectI have to confess that, before I actually bought the book and opened it, I regarded Proust with greater apprehension than any other novelist.18 months before, I overcame the perceived intimidation of “Ulysses” and discovered the joys that had awaited me there.I felt that my apprehension had cheated me of pleasure. It was like starting a relationship with someone, and discovering that it could have happened six months earlier, if you’d only had the courage.This time, I was determined not to be put off, so I just dived in when the reading schedule was announced. In retrospect, I think this is the only way to do it.Jump in, the water’s not as cold as you anticipate. In fact, it’s like a warm bath. You won’t want to get out.Sentenced to LifeThe source of my apprehension was the length of sentences and paragraphs.People who know me know that I write one sentence paragraphs. No matter what you think of my sentences or paragraphs, nobody has ever had to turn over a few pages to see when they ended.I haven’t always written this way. When I was in secondary school, I acquired a large vocabulary and a love of etymology (which helps). We were taught that good writing involved a display of our vocabulary, hopefully correctly used.I turned my back on this practice, as soon as I was exposed to lecturers with different views at university. Later, newspaper editors drummed single sentence paragraphs into me. Voilà.In the meantime, I read a lot of Dickens and Hardy, and towards the end of school I became obsessed with Henry James, which resulted in my (unfulfilled) ambition to become a diplomat and work in nineteenth century Europe.This background is just to show that I am not averse to a long sentence, as long as it’s put to good use.Ex Cathedra SentencesRight now, I regard Proust as the greatest ever architect of sentences.His sentences encapsulate a single, complete thought, like mine attempt, only my thoughts are parish churches and his are cathedrals.I just want you to nod (or shake, disagree and argue) when you read one of my sentences. Proust forces your eyes and your mind to follow a sentence as it aspires upwards to, yes, the spire of his vision.His sentences are not just vehicles of communication, they are architectural constructs that inspire awe and wonder.They take life and love and build a monument to them that will last through the ages, like architects before him built monuments to the belief in God.His sentences don’t just perpetrate meaning, they perpetuate meaning and beauty into perpetuity.Proust mounted the most concerted campaign to take the ephemeral and make it perpetual.Previously, this task was attempted by painters. Only now, when you inspect the damage done to some of the artworks housed in the Louvre, do you you realise the foresight of his choice of creative vehicle.People will read Proust until, at least, the temperature reaches Fahrenheit 451.”From Marvel to Marvel”If every sentence is a cathedral, and every cathedral is a marvel, then the novel as a whole is a gallery, a galaxy of marvels.So much so that Genet could witness it and remark:"Now, I'm tranquil, I know I'm going to go from marvel to marvel."I cite Genet, not just to mention the marvel, but to highlight the tranquil.Proust’s sentences calmed me, as in a warm bath or a gentle sea. He immersed me in a sea of tranquility, a “Mare Tranquillitatis”.Proust lulled me. First, he rocked me, then he lulled me. Ultimately, he sang me a lullaby.Proust engendered tranquility in me.Observations of a Ladies’ ManI was worried that I would react aggressively to Proust.How would I, a male, of sorts, react to a novel that apparently lacked a hero, that lacked action, that lacked a battle and a victory, that lacked a seduction and a conquest?How would I react to Proust’s effeminacy? His apparent insight into the feminine and oversight of the masculine?Moreover, was Proust just a gossip, to quote another anecdote of Edmund White, a “Yenta” (the Yiddish word for a female gossip) ?Proust was in a unique position to document the affairs of a bourgeoisie that didn’t have to work, that had inherited wealth and could survive by the management of its securities and investments.In the words of Veblen, it was a leisure class, and Proust’s mission was to document its leisure activities.In “Swann’s Way”, the chief leisure activity is love and sex.Would it be fair to say that most men wouldn’t be able to write a 440 page novel about love and/or sex?Or that the sex life of many men might not even have added up to 440 minutes during their entire lifetime?To that extent, Proust understands love and sex like only a woman can.Observations of a Man's LadyIf I am correct in this interpretation, then Proust deserves a large audience of women.Yet, what puzzles me is that Proust, at least in this volume, only presents the male’s perspective, never the female’s.I read the novel as a male, and during “Swann in Love” I inevitably identified with Charles Swann.All the way through, I reacted, “That is so me! (I hope none of my friends guess.)”However, how is a woman to react to “Swann in Love”?Do they, like me, identify with Swann? Or do they identify with Odette?Is there an antagonism between the genders? Does Proust call upon us to take sides? Or does he take the side of love?Is the gender of each lover irrelevant, as long as there is love on the agenda?Must our perspective on love have a gender? Isn’t it enough to engender love?Anyway, I wanted to know what was going on in Odette’s mind.As a first person narrator, “Marcel” knew far too much about Swann’s inner life and too little about Odette’s.I wanted (want) to know what women think.Is that so unreasonable? Or is it too reasonable?PART IIHelmet Cam-brayThe first chapter, Part I of "Combray", is 49 pages long and deals with the narrator's childhood in a home that also houses his grandmother and two aunts.Over the last couple of years, there have been a few books, the most obvious being Murakami's "1Q84", where I started to use the term "helmet cam" to describe the narrative.Although it was presumably constructed and edited by an author, it still gave the impression that a helmet cam was seeing everything in front of it, without any editorial cutting or rearrangement.It saw everything, it recorded everything, it passed on everything to us.Normally, a helmet cam cannot see the face of the person wearing it. Thus, it sees everything that the person sees from their own perspective.In "Swann's Way", the verbal description is so vivid and precise that we see the narrator himself.The Subject is also the Object.The Subject is its own Object. At least until he discovers M. Swann.Up until then, the narrator is like a juvenile crustacean, slowly constructing a shell, but not quite there yet.He is sensitive, even over-sensitive, soft, fleshy, pink, much to the masculine disgust of his father and the embarrassment of his mother.Yet the helmet cam hones in on every element of sensitivity and emerging sensibility.He is almost too sensitive for this world, yet he is imminently sensitive to its charms.He does nothing but observe, imagine, remember, write.Like a helmet cam, however, he gives the impression that neither he nor anybody else has edited him.This is the narrator's mind recording time and place with nobody pressing the pause button.Sentences and paragraphs are irrelevant to this narrative.Each paragraph is as long as an attention span needs to be.Only when his attention falters does the narrator need to pause and restart.Each paragraph is almost like a can of film.It captures life until there is no film left. Then you remove the film and put in a new reel. And we're off again on another flight of the mind.The Awakening of the Author as a Young ManThe first section of the novel starts in bed and finishes in bed, a cocoon, a comfort zone.The narrator is a child, still very much attached to his mother and the comfort of her love, and so is prone to separation anxiety.His experience of life depends solely on her, and is therefore restricted by her, a woman.Only if he overcomes his anxiety can he venture out into the world, in order to discover the love of others.This is a period of intense sensations and associations.It’s here that Proust develops his concept of involuntary memory, an association of memories with physical sensations common to the past and the present.The act of soaking a petite madeleine in a cup of lime-blossom tea evokes powerful memories:"I feel something quiver in me, shift, try to rise, something that seems to have been unanchored at a great depth...and suddenly the memory appeared...the immense edifice of memory."The narrator describes the sensation as a "delicious pleasure". It renders "the vicissitudes of life unimportant", the brevity of time illusory:"...acting in the same way that love acts, by filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not merely inside me, it was me..."Much of the analysis of Proust focuses on the mechanism of involuntary memory.However, it’s equally important, if not more so, to recognise the analogy with the workings of love.Love is an intensity of sensation. We detect everything so much more sensitively. We preserve it and we recall it. We remember all of the detail of our relationship: where we met our lover, our first words, our first kiss, our first correspondence.So when Proust describes madeleines and tea, he also adverts to the precious essence of love.He is not just writing about the psychology of perception and memory, he is investigating, in a way nobody had done before him, the essence of the gaze, desire, lust and love.Each moment that is recalled by involuntary memory is a moment in love.The Semiotics of DesireOver the course of the novel, both Proust and the narrator assemble a list of qualities that recognise or recall or "magnetise" desire.The narrator refers not just to madeleines and tea, but to light, perfume (or fragrance) and colour.To this list, Swann adds music. He is captivated by a piece of music by the (fictitious) composer, Vinteuil.Every time he hears it, he is reminded of his love for Odette.In the last section, the narrator summarises:"From then on, only sunlight, perfumes, colours seemed to me of any value; for this alternation of images had brought about a change in direction in my desire, and – as abrupt as those that occur now and then in music – a complete change of tone in my sensibility..."For often, in one season, we find a day that has strayed from another and that immediately evokes its particular pleasures, lets us experience them, makes us desire them, and interrupts the dreams we were having by placing, earlier or later than was its turn, this leaf detached from another chapter, in the interpolated chapter of Happiness."Later, the narrator refers to "the highest sort of immediate happiness, the happiness of love".To be in love is to be happy. To love is human, to be loved is divine.These ideas are collected together in the discussion of place names:"I needed only, to make them reappear, to pronounce those names – Balbec, Venice, Florence – in the interior of which had finally accumulated the desire inspired in me by the places they designated."Words present us with little pictures of things, clear and familiar, like those that are hung on the walls of schools to give children an example of what a workbench is, a bird, an anthill, things conceived of as similar to all others of the same sort."But names present a confused image of people – and of towns, which they accustom us to believe are individual, unique like people – an image which derives from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the colour with which it is painted uniformly, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which, because of the limitations of the process used or by the whim of the designer, not only the sky and the sea are blue or red, but the boats, the church, the people in the streets."PART IIISwann’s WayIn the first section of the novel, Proust offers the narrator two alternative methods of traversing the countryside: the Meseglise way and the Guermantes way.These "ways" come to symbolize the alternative ways of approaching life and love:"...so the Meseglise way and the Guermantes way remain for me linked to many of the little events of that life which, of all the various lives we lead concurrently, is the most abundant in vicissitudes, the richest in episodes, I mean our intellectual life."Much has been said about the alternative translations of the novel and its title.However, for me, “Swann’s Way” doesn’t just represent a viable linguistic option, it hints at the way that the tale of Swann’s love in the heart of the novel represents a way or method of loving that becomes an option or choice available to the narrator.In short, the novel is concerned with Swann’s way of loving and what can be learned from it.I don’t think this is communicated by a translation of the title as "The Way by Swann’s", which seems to focus on the geographical path, rather than the metaphysical one. Swann in LoveThe centerpiece of the novel is the second section, “Swann in Love”.While narrated by the same character (Marcel?), it betrays a wealth of personal detail about Swann’s mental processes that only a third person omniscient narrator could be familiar with.This quibble aside, the section is probably my favourite literary analysis of any particular character trait, in this case, the capacity for love and jealousy, which in Proust’s hands are flipsides of the same two-sided coin.We witness the relationship between Swann and Odette transition between first meeting, flirtation, lust, consummation, self-doubt, suspension, reconciliation, suspicion, jealousy, oscillation, irritation, agitation, indifference, torment, unhappiness, despair, estrangement and cessation.She has a reputation as a courtesan or kept woman, yet Swann, just as much a philanderer, falls madly in love with her. In the words of the narrator in a different context (that of Gilberte) , they are “sister souls”.Witness what the equally flirtatious Odette says in her letters:"My dearest, my hand is trembling so badly I can hardly write."(This letter, Swann keeps in a drawer with a dried chrysanthemum flower.)"If you had forgotten your heart here too, I would not have let you take it back.""At whatever hour of the day or night you need me, send word and my life will be yours to command."”Making Cattleyas”Proust is relatively coy about the physical consummation of the relationship.It becomes sexual, although we are not told how soon or for how long.Nor are we told why the two lovers fall out, only that Swann starts to feel jealous of other real or imagined companions.Just as words and sensations have significance for the characters, Swann and Odette develop a code for their assignations.They describe sex as “making cattleyas”, an expression which refers to the orchids that were present at the time of their first mutual seduction.So, ultimately, it is clear that we are dealing with not just love, but love and sex intertwined.Love and JealousyProust displays a remarkable insight into the flip sides of love and jealousy:"...what we believe to be our love, or our jealousy, is not one single passion, continuous and indivisible. They are composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, which are ephemeral but by their uninterrupted multitude give the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity."The life of Swann’s love, the faithfulness of his jealousy, were formed of the death, the faithlessness, of numberless desires, numberless doubts, all of which had Odette as their object…"The presence of Odette continued to sow Swann’s heart with affection and suspicion by turns."Love is Space and Time Measured by the HeartProust persists with the language of involuntary memory throughout the novel, only, he extends it to both time and space.Time passes, and the reality we once had no longer exists.Similarly, "the places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience."It is the task of memory to revive time and space (and therefore love) that might otherwise be lost.Our minds work like a filing cabinet of memories. Each memory is:"...a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years."Conversely, time and space are lost, to the extent that they are not preserved by memory.Just as “Ulysses” is Joyce’s attempt to record and preserve an Odyssey through 20th century Dublin, “Swann’s Way” is Proust’s attempt to perpetuate moments in love, so that we who follow him may better understand love and, in turn, experience better love, as well as perpetuate and remember our love.SOUNDTRACK:Art of Noise – "(Moments in) Love"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-whU...Erik Satie - "Trois Gymnopédies"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DBoi...Francis Poulenc - "Melancholie"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG_pMH...Claude Debussy - "Golliwogg's Cakewalk"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrdhg...Gabriel Fauré - "Pavane Op.50" (Du coté chez Proust)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTiOut...Cesar Franck - "The Little Phrase"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKxXWP...Jorge Arriagada - "Sonate de Vinteuil"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXD-37...HAIKU AND VERSE:On Reading Proust, Alone, Rising IFancy strays alone, In ecstasy, inhalingThe scent of lilac.On Reading Proust, Alone, Rising III read not alone, But thrilled by a creature of A different kingdom.On Reading Proust, Alone, Rising IIIReading, reverie:Occupations that demandConstant solitude.For more verse inspired by Proust, see here:http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...
What do You think about Swann's Way (2004)?
I came into The Year of Proustifarian Delights accompanied by a vague dread, worried that I was embarking upon a seven-book voyage of joyless obligation that would ultimately prove I have too much dullard in me to chug along with anything other than the empty appearance of rapt literary euphoria. I feared that I'd be approaching these books like they were the kind of high-school required reading that sucks all the fun from the one pastime that's stuck with me ever since I learned how to unlock the English language's secret treasures more than two decades ago. Because one of my lifelong constants has also been unflagging self-doubt.So imagine the flood of relief I felt when this book turned out to be the most pleasant surprise I've ever encountered in my literary travels. By all rights, I should have hated this first volume of "In Search of Lost Time." I don't really have it in me to care that much about a precocious child's mommy issues. I am not at all interested in the trifling concerns of society-obsessed folk. And I absolutely want nothing to do with a bitterly hostile love affair, especially when it comes to watching its ugliness unfold from an insider's vantage point (seriously, Swann, what the everlasting fuck). But here I stand on the other end of a book that brought me such needless apprehension, thoroughly enchanted by the magic Proust worked with "Swann's Way." His beautiful, seamless storytelling has proven that just about anything can make for a powerfully intoxicating reading experience when crafted by a master wordslinger. It's not just Proust's dazzling language that is the lone source of this novel's charms, though. That would be too easy. It's the ideas, the connections, the tangible humanity that proves our species' nature hasn't changed all that much in a century. That even with our nifty gadgets we're slaves to our lost pasts and need for love. That all anyone really wants is a little affirmation of our personal worth at the end of the day.The emotions here are absolutely palpable. If I couldn't outright understand the rises and falls in a character's moods and luck, I sure could sympathize. Far from being banal, each moment of lowest woe and highest elation were the very stuff comprising the whole of the human experience. I wanted to reach across time (and, you know, the boundaries of fiction) to hug little Marcel when he was so thoroughly caught up in the tragedy of being denied his mother's nightly kiss just as much as I wanted to celebrate with Swann over the onset of a seemingly loving romance (before I wanted to kick him in the ass for mistaking obsession for affection, knowing from my own failed relationships how that unhealthy need for complete possession of another person ends).The celebration of nature, music, food, books and human memory are all songs I know well. I found myself rereading passages not for a want of understanding but for the sheer joy of burrowing into some of the most achingly gorgeous prose I've ever had the joyful abandonment of losing myself in. Tell me more about thoroughly alien architecture! Describe in loving detail the perfumes and rainbow palate of spring to dull the pain of my American winter! Remind me that others have marveled over how a song that once embodied a love's rapturous early days can bring nothing but fresh heartache until the heart can distance itself from such pain to rediscover the melody's own merit as a living piece of art! My only complaint? This book made me feel too much. Every stab of loss, every bad decision, every mawkish pity-party dragged me right along with the fictional person wallowing in such emotional dregs. It got exhausting.Still. A round of hurrahs for the book that drove me to self-mastication and the discovery that, while I am sadly not as tasty as the teacakes of my shared appellation, this beautiful book sure is.
—Madeleine
AFTER:Okay, well, I really screwed up my schedule this weekend, so now it's the latening am and nothing's happening for me in the sleep department. Honestly I can't think of a more appropriate time to review this book, which begins with insomnia.This was great. It really was. Granted, it's not for everyone, but nor is it the rarified hothouse orchid cultured specifically and exclusively for an elite audience of fancy-pants dandies with endless supplies of Ritalin and time. This book is fascinating and accessible, and, as noted below, quite risqué. I adored it, though I'm a little worried about singing its praises too loudly, since my low expectations might've played a role in my love for it.There are two main parts to this book. The first half is the narrator's first-person reminiscences of being a sensitive little rich boy in the French countryside (and, at the end, in Paris). This portion contained probably the most incredible writing on the subject of memory and nostalgia that I have ever read in my life.When I was a kid myself, I, like the boy in this book, read a lot. This had the result that somewhere around first through third grade, I had an unending stream of first-person narrative running through my head at all times, describing all my actions and thoughts in the past tense, just as they happened: e.g., "I stalked out of the classroom and towards the playground's jungle gym, thinking furiously of Lindsay Kagawa and her treachery in turning the Girls Are Great club against me." During that period I often stopped in the middle of what I was doing to contemplate the completely unfeasible logistics of actually writing down the endless novel unfolding in my head in real time. Not only could I never remember all the mundane details of my life and thoughts, but this book, were it somehow to be written, would be impossibly long!What I thought while reading Swann's Way is that Marcel Proust probably had a similar experience of a novel in his head, only he was a far more interesting child than I was and, much more importantly, he actually did the impossible and managed to remember all this stuff, and then, somehow, to write it all down. Proust's descriptions of the way he experienced and thought of the world as a boy are astonishing. He is not writing from a child's perspective, but from that of an adult remembering his childhood in spectacular detail, and the effect is incredible. I don't know much about brain science, really, but the vague rumors I've heard on the street on how they're now saying memory works could not be more clearly or gorgeously illustrated than they are in this book.If you're not fascinated by the processes of memory, sensation, aesthetics, identity, social relationships, and desire, this book will bore you out of your skull, unless you're really interested in fancy Belle Epoque French people, in which case, my friend, you are in for a real treat. The second part of the book recounts a love affair between the little boy's adult neighbor, M. Swann, and the woman of dubious reputation with whom Swann becomes infatuated. Maybe there is nothing especially new here -- it's almost 100 years old, what do you want? -- but I place this novel in an elite class with Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet for its absolutely excruciating depiction of desire and love. If you're not madly in love right now and are feeling any regrets about that, reading this book will clear that right up, and you'll feel the relief of a clean bill of health after testing for a particularly gruesome disease. This "Swann in Love" portion of the book also is very immersive, in the sense I think Natalie meant in her comment below, in that if you've never had any idea what it might be like to wear a monocle and have a bazillion francs and footmen and a carriage with horses that takes you around to fashionable Parisian parties where you hang out with princesses and a bunch of other rich French guys also wearing monocles, this book will get you so much closer to that experience than you are likely ever to get, even if you do happen to be insanely wealthy and live in Paris, because as Proust observes -- I won't quote him here, ya gotta read it yourself -- the time described in this book is lost, and it is impossible now to return to it.This book did strange things to me, actually. It made me crave what I didn't know I had the capacity to want; for example, it made me yearn to be outrageously wealthy, preferably in France. I've realized I have all these latent francophilic tendencies I've never acknowledged to myself, and now all I really want in the world is to go to Paris and stay in an obscenely fancy hotel for a few years and have fabulous clothes and all my every whim catered to immédiatement. And unlimited access to money. And suitors. And it would be good if it could be the nineteenth century, and I were super hot-looking. And helpful also if I could actually speak some French.... Anyway, a visit to the Frick, or the Met, or wherever I can look at some paintings of these ladies who never interested me so much until I heard what they were really up to, is definitely in order. Also, I bizarrely enough happened to find myself briefly at Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain's brasserie on Park Avenue, on Friday night, which is definitely not my usual habitat, and the influence of this book was such that I fell into a swoon there while imagining an alternate life for myself in which I spent all my time in Paris, perambulating along the Champs-Elysées with violets attached to my bosom, with everything about me and around me extraordinarily beautiful and slow and outrageously expensive....But anyway, well, I'd say I'm digressing, but in discussing this particular book I suppose there is no such animal. Were parts of this slow? Parts of this book were reminiscent of the principles of Buddhist mindfulness practice, which is to say, they could be pretty awesome but not necessarily lively, and at times a thoroughly painful bitch to slog through. Yes, I cannot tell a lie: there were times I'd realize I'd been stuck on the same paragraph for twenty minutes while my mind wandered off to something totally unrelated, and sometimes I'd have to set the thing down and come back to it later. This book does require some patience, and it's not a cover-to-cover thrillfest, no, okay, fine, it isn't. HOWEVER, its reputation as a total snooze, or as something just for the heroically literary-minded is, IMO, undeserved. I see plenty of valid reasons why someone would not get into this book, but if you have any interest in this type of stuff, don't be scared off by discouraging things you might've heard. Yeah, you might not like it, but you might also be pleasantly surprised. I sure was! I get bored very easily, and I have a hard time sticking with a lot of books, but this one sucked me right in, and was fascinating and satisfying on so many levels. The salacious sensory-candy-munching Jessica who loves Valley of the Dolls had a lot to savor here, as did the slightly brainier one who enjoys thinking about the mechanics of time and memory, and there was besides those things more more more, enough going on here for many of my multiple warring and confused personalities. I liked that.So yeah, in closing, I guess I should address the inevitable part-versus-whole question: Swann's Way is a satisfying novel by itself, only not really. It did have a very lovely ending and could stand up on its own, except for the fact that I'm hooked now, and want more. I'm not going to begin the next episode anytime soon, because I've got a bunch of other stuff I'd like to read and it can't just be Proust Proust Proust all the time, but I'm definitely planning to return to this famously overlong novel at some point in the not-too-distant future.... though I'm admittedly a bit nervous about this new desire for luxury, especially with the dollar and our economy being what they are. If anyone knows a hopelessly wealthy, balding Parisian gentleman who is easily led by boorish, uncouth, immoral women, please feel free to provide me with an introduction at your next salon!----------------BEFORE:This is one of those books I'd never really heard of and definitely never thought about until I joined Bookface. I mean, I'd heard the name "Proust" and the word "madeleines," but I'd never thought too much about all that, and I think I'd always sort of gotten Proust mixed up with Borges (different, different, yeah, I know) as a guy I'd never read with a name I wasn't sure how to pronounce. More recently, though this novel's acquired a kind of mystique in my mind based on people's reviews on here of it. Last night I noticed that my roommate happened to have a copy on her bookshelf, and out of some idly morbid curiosity picked it up, to see if it could possibly be half as dreadful as I imagined.But actually, so far it's incredible. So far (I'm on page 26), this book is AMAZING. Reading the first few pages was like doing yoga, except some kind of turn-of-the-last-century Frenchish kind of style, which of course is vastly preferable to the normal way. Beginning this book is also like inhabiting somebody else's half-awakened mind. Cool!Maybe the problem with it isn't really this book so much as the idea that it's supposed to be the beginning of a million and a quarter page novel, which is a pretty unappealing thought. On its own, though, so far this particular installment seems surprisingly awesome. Though, let's be honest here, I am not renowned for my patience, especially in affairs of the page, so let's see how long this infatuation lasts.Anyway, though, v promising beginning. Now, of course, I'm just waiting for the ACTION to start.... stay tuned!
—Jessica
Review of Swann's Way by Marcel Proust.Shelf: 2013- The year of Reading Proust,Classic- ever-enduring-appeal.Recommended for: Lit lovers."narratives we have written inside of us, those that make us who we are."There are books that we are supposed to read or our reading is not taken to be complete- it's like the seven wonders of the world-you may choose not to visit them but seeing them will somehow make you a part of their cultural heritage & history. Proust's ISOLT is one such cultural landmark. In his obssesive recollection of memories,the writer has also captured the charm & the vanity of belle époque life and culture & what's not to like in that?This book (series) is indeed for the middle-aged,the old*,for the youth is in a hurry to meet the future or busy enjoying the moment.Nostalgia is the reward for the rest, for, as the end nears, one feels the need for stock-taking, a contemplation on the meaning of it all & memories are all we got:"when from a long-distant past nothing subsists,after the people are dead,after the things are broken and scattered,still,alone,more fragile,but with more vitality,more unsubstantial,more persistant,more faithful,the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time,like souls,ready to remind us,waiting and hoping for their moment,amid the ruins of all the rest...the vast structure of recollection."The mind is free from the constraint of Time and Space & can travel anywhere,anytime- what a marvellous, modern, time-lapse sequence we get here:"For it always happened that when I awoke like this,and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt to discover where I was,everything would be moving round me through the darkness: things,places,years...while the unseen walls kept changing,adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the darkness."And yet an escape to the past doesn't prevent one from suffering in the present:“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.” Proust combined in his fiction, his philosophical musings on the nature of time, memory,reality & fiction & the power of arts esp.music, to convey meaning & emotions beyond words. Different readers will take different elements from this reading but what appealed most to me was his astute depiction of psychological states:The child narrator's Oedipal attachment to his mamma & his later realization that no woman will ever measure up to the unconditional love as symbolised by her, Swann's step-by-step entrapment in his nightmarish 'love affair',the portrait of the artist as a child in the evocation of lazy summer afternoons, spent in the garden under a chestnut tree, getting lost in the "Truth and Beauty"of books, waiting for life,for love to reveal itself! The narrator's boyhood version,getting bewildered by world of adult hypocrisy,simulation & dissimulation-all is rendered pitch-perfectAll along the novel,enough hints were dropped that M.Swann made an unfortunate alliance in marriage & was shunned by genteel society of Combray- we then get the largest portion of the book devoted to the anatomy of an obssession--I was amused, intrigued, befuddled, dismayed, disgusted & saddened by turns as Swann & Odette's dance macabre continued. I wouldn't call it love- it was power play,self-deception & vanity of a priviledged man & his 'kept' woman where ironically the weaker party stooped to conquer & the mighty was brought to his knees! All cause of the feudal mind set where a man's honour is invested in the body/chastity of a woman.Odette may be odious but Swann is no angel either- he turns out to be a snob at heart.Yet what was the purpose of this 'Swann in Love' segment?It's cause our child/boy narrator shares Swann's aesthetics in arts & women- a taste of things to come perhaps? I'm worried about him.Swann's Way is an immersion in aesthetics -the sensual richness of sight- the paintings,fields of flowers,architectural delights- of sound-Vinteuil's sonata which becomes the signature tune/theme song of this book- of taste- the madeleines & a perfect cup of tea,the asparagus! -of touch- the 'cattleyas"- is an exquisite delight to be savoured.Proust,the art connoisseur,wrote his book like a painting- the images throughout the book are outstanding-esp.in its evocation of Combray with its natural beauty,the church,the pink hawthorns,the walks. Many artists were referenced but I jumped for joy when I could see Monet in the renderings of the water lilies,flower fields & the church steeple as seen through differing sunlight during various hours of the day.It was my first introduction to Proust's world & I looked in wonder at how similar our worlds are in all their dissimilarity: the typical small town nosey neighbourhood- the kind that kept an eye on everything you did, yet there was a sense of community,people looked out for each-other. This is a world fast disappearing before our very eyes. Hell is other people, no?This wasn't a perfect world though: the racial bigotry of those times,the class differences** with their inherent snobbery & patronising attitudes are hard to swallow but let's accept it,they exist in our world too albeit finely concealed under the mask of political correctness.Another thing that stood out was the 'morality' of those times- more like Victorian in its hypocrisy,surprising cause it was France that gave the world the infamous ménage à trois concept!You don't have to be an aesthete in order to like this book (although it would help greatly if you were!), you don't even have to be in your dottage/middle age cause all the book asks for is a certain sensibility- a love for the language & imagination.And how can I end without mentioning the language! Proust's languid,limpid prose with its dulcet tones gives wings to your own reveries so that it's not unlikely that during your reading,you'll find yourself dreaming & getting lost in your own memories. A great gift for the insomniacs really & I say that with due reverence!Do read it.*The late Christopher Hitchens advised starting Proust in midlife, after one “has shared some of the disillusionments and fears, as well as the delights, that come with this mediocre actuarial accomplishment” and “learned something of how time is rationed, and of how this awful and apparently inexorable dole may conceivably be cheated.” ** Proust understood the Hindu caste system which is so complex that even lots of Hindus themselves don't get it. Hats off to you Sir!
—Mala
