“Within a Budding Grove” is the second volume of, “In Search of Lost Time,” the rambling masterpiece by Marcel Proust. Assuming you are considering this, second volume, you have probably already read volume one, “Swann’s Way.” If not, then please go back and start there – although there is not a ‘plot’ as such, this is the story of a life and it needs to be read in order. If you enjoyed volume one, then, presumably you are now comfortable with the meandering sentence structure and pace of this work. Indeed, I find these books to be something I like to read late at night, when it is quiet and I can concentrate. Then, Proust’s story telling is almost therapeutic. Try to read this while commuting, when I cannot concentrate fully, and I find I end up having to re-read parts. So, although it may seem to some that ‘nothing happens’ in this work – indeed, there is a lot going on, often beneath the surface, and it requires the reader to give full attention to what is on the page. There are two main parts in volume two: the first deals with ‘Madame Swann at Home’ and the second with our narrator’s trip to Balbec with his grandmother and the faithful Francoise.

This book begins with the narrator still very much infatuated with Gilberte Swann, daughter of M. Swann and his wife, Odette, who we met in “Swann’s Way.” He is also under pressure to think of some kind of career. His father wishes for him to be a diplomat, but he hates the thought of being ambassador to capitals where there is no Gilberte…. He desires to be a writer, although his father is opposed initially to this plan. However, the main theme of this part of the book is his desire to be introduced to the Swann’s and become a visitor to their home. Mme Swann is a celebrated hostess and much admired, although her background means that his own mother will not receive her personally. So, we have not only his relationship with Gilberte, but her parents, which are central to this part of the book.

In the second part of this novel, our narrator goes to Balbec on a trip with his grandmother and portrays life in the Grand Hotel they stay in. Along the way, he meets many new friends, including Robert de Saint-Loup. More importantly, he meets a group of young girls, including Albertine Simonet. The author perfectly captures the cliques and snobbery he encounters, as well as contemplating love, attraction and infatuations. I have read that the third part of this epic novel, “The Guermantes Way,” can be the most difficult volume to read and that it is the book which is likely to stall readers. However, I have not found these novels difficult so far and, with the narrator now on the cusp of adulthood, I look forward to reading the next in the series and hope I will find it as enjoyable as I have found the previous volumes.

Pauline a la plage



Questa lettura mi ha accompagnata durante oziose giornate estive con la sua prosa ariosa, come un cielo estivo attraversato da soffici nuvole bianche. Quello che ho apprezzato di più è in effetti proprio la scrittura e il tono svagato dell’autore che ricorda una lontana giovinezza senza un pensiero al mondo.
L’immagine che mi viene in mente è una maestosa torta di panna e crema chantilly, con sfoglie e zucchero a velo, una millefoglie di grandi proporzioni nella quale immergersi per ore riposanti, cullati da pensieri e immagini di una Balbec lontana nel tempo, grandi spiagge, mari luccicanti, fanciulle con ombrellino.



Mi aspettavo più immagini impressioniste di spiagge normanne e mari increspati, non ne ho mai abbastanza.
Le pagine più belle sono dedicate alla signora Swann, che fiorisce con la pienezza e la delicatezza dei colori di una peonia.
La qualità che riconosco in Proust è la capacità di essere sgradevole nella giusta misura: credo che la nota stridente sia quella che permetta di rifugiarsi nella torta di panna senza trovarla stucchevole, ma rinfrancante. Di sgradevolezza ce n’è parecchia: fuori dalle pareti di vetro del ristorante c’è l’oscuro popolino che guarda ma è escluso. Le signore borghesi sono le più maligne giudici dell’accettabilità sociale: la nobiltà non ci pensa nemmeno, il popolo non se lo può permettere. La malignità Belle Epoque per eccellenza è il ricordare periodicamente che Madame Swann per gli uomini è una donna affascinante e per la Società una cocotte, Odette de Crecy. Il protagonista, pur nella sua gioventù, è un ambiguo figuro attratto da qualunque fanciulla, ma in particolare da quelle secondo lui di bassa lega, in modo da potercisi strusciare impunemente; la riflessione poi non è spontanea, ma attraversata dalle elucubrazioni morbosette tipiche del protagonista. Evolverà verso un’età adulta più esperta ed equilibrata? Lo saprò solo leggendo i volumi successivi.
Tutti i personaggi sono più simpatici di questo adolescente attaccato alla mamma, presuntuoso, egocentrico, nevrotico, snob nel modo più completo. Le ragazze della piccola banda che frequenta sono molto più mature e moderne e stupisce che abbiano accolto l’impacciato ragazzo dalla personalità multipla, lupo e agnello.
Lui intanto si bea della compagnia e si inebria come davanti a un mazzo di fiori, ciascuno coi suoi colori e il suo profumo: il titolo è perfetto.

Este segundo volumen me ha parecido incluso mejor que el primero. Está claro que juega en otra liga, esa de los libros que se pueden leer y releer, como El Quijote o Justine, abriendo el tomo por cualquier página sin que pierda frescura.

El título hace referencia a aquella historia de Parsifal, que escogió Wagner para escribir su famosa ópera, en la que un impío caballero Klingsor creó por medio de su magia un hermoso jardín donde existían muchachas-flor y donde el ingenuo Parsifal fue tentado, como aquí le ocurre al Narrador con las amigas de Albertine.

Lo habíamos dejado enamorado de la chiquilla Gilberte. Ahora quiere dedicarse a las letras y no seguir la carrera diplomática como sus padres pretenden, pero entretanto vivirá su primer desamor. El pobre es un sentimental y desarrolla una teoría del amor muy pesimista, en la que cree que el amor es puro sufrimiento. Hace continuas proyecciones subjetivas de su mundo sobre el objeto amado, incluso sobre los amigos y conocidos —me intriga el carácter de su amistad con Robert de Saint-Loup—, y todas sus expectativas con la gente se ven siempre defraudadas, hasta el punto de dejar Paris y refugiarse en el paraíso costero de Balbec, ante la imposibilidad de viajar a sus adoradas Venecia y Florencia. Es allí donde conocerá a Albertine, su siguiente enamorada.

El genio de Wagner está muy presente en este volumen. Efectivamente, Proust es muy consciente de su propio talento, por lo que aprovecha para que el Narrador desgrane otra teoría más, la de la obra artística, resumida en una frase que me llamó poderosamente la atención: el genio consiste en el poder reflectante y no en la calidad intrínseca del espectáculo reflejado. El "espectáculo reflejado" aquí se mantiene como en el primer volumen: ramilletes sociales heterogéneos de burgueses y aristócratas, esnobs y pelagatos, que frecuentan salones selectos y comedores de hotel, pasean en landó y se reúnen en parques y jardines, visitan exposiciones y asisten a matinés, todo ello para hacer girar en las sucesivas veladas el caleidoscopio mundano. Vamos, un continuo de experiencias de sociología recreativa, como diría Swann.

Pero en cuanto al cómo, al "poder reflectante", Proust es un maestro en hacer pasar las vicisitudes de esta sociedad por el espejo su personalidad, del perfecto voyeur. He de recordar aquí lo que hace poco aprendí de Juan Benet: mientras los ingleses practican una literatura que busca el movimiento centrípeto hacia el yo, Proust lanza el yo hacia una trayectoria centrífuga. Un yo nada mediocre que devuelve una imagen de un ser enamorado de las letras, de la música y de la pintura (atención al diseño de los personajes de Bergotte, el escritor; Vintueil, el músico, y Elstir, el pintor) con agudas y continuas reflexiones en torno al arte entrelazado, adelantando ya la certeza respecto a su creación incomprendida: toda obra de arte se ve obligada a incluir en el conjunto de su belleza el factor tiempo.

If a reading experience could turn you into a butterfly, that would be the magic in this book. And would any of us be surprised by Proust having that kind of conjuring power, the wizardry to misremember us into flying, floating little bugs? No. There is surely magic in these pages, in its remembering and misremembering, in shaping and re-shaping: magic to move beauty marks all around faces, to remember dresses into petals and monocles to wings. In the end, Proust remembers us all into flowers and butterflies lounging in the shade near water, wrapped up and mummified by the golden sun of his memory.

These memories are my own, too, of friendships with boys and girls. They are the magic of wondering about and judging people before knowing them, finding out you are were wrong, and then, maybe, learning you were actually right. They are memories of the vulnerability of imagining another person’s life and then becoming a part of that imagined world. This book is the birds and the bees, only here, it is the butterflies and the flowers. It is more delicate, and it is about the show of courtship among all people (friends, family, lovers, etc.), not the mechanics of sex.

My friend who reminds me so much of Proust keeps including in his emails to me lately the qualifier, “I am telling you that to make myself ridiculous so you will laugh. Are you laughing?” We were talking about that, and he said, “That’s why Rosamond and I still talk. I make fun of myself, and she laughs. It is a pretty simple relationship. I can say just about anything to Rosamond to make her laugh. And I think I make cheap insults of myself that might kinda hurt, but I’d rather see someone laugh, cause then maybe I can be happy later.” I think that is a nice sentiment, which is brave in a certain way, and also rather specific. And with Proust, I do laugh. I laugh at his purposeful avoidance of Gilberte that he so deliberately expresses by hanging out at Gilberte’s house with her mom. I laugh at his falling in love with the big girl on the train, his love affair with Saint Loup, his social anxiety over procedures at the Grand Hotel. I laugh at his passage about throwing himself in front of a bullet out of the selfish wish to prove he would throw himself in front of a bullet. He is very funny.

When I am laughing at those things, it is partly because of their simple ridiculousness, but also because it is a ridiculousness I see in myself. Ludicrous daydreams and misunderstanding social cues. And even though there is a lot that is gendered in here, at the same time, I think at its base, it is more about difference, and not so rigidly gendered. Part II is a boy wondering about a group of girls, but it could just as easily be me wondering about boys. The details might be different, but the wondering is similar, I think. When Marcel imagines who Saint-Loup will be to him, he knows the answer; but, when he encounters the girls, it is all confusion and misunderstandings. And the divide of gender, whether created by nature or nurture, is so ridiculous like that. Does she want to kiss me or laugh at me? Does he want to hold my hand or beat me up? We must consult our research guides and use magnifying glasses to seek the answer. And most of us, like Marcel, are very ridiculous in the process.

I don’t think this book is so much about, “wimmin folks ain’t like men folks.” I think it is, rather, about how awkward we are in bridging those differences. I want to say, “how awkward we are in adolescence,” but I am still awkward in that, and no longer adolescent, so it still applies at least to me. With Marcel, though, it is so pretty how much he loves all of these people, how generous he is to them, while still making fun of his own self-interest.

And the stories about why, above all else, you must not be gay are such kicks in the gut and so knifingly told.

Like I say, I think there is a certain bravery mixed with the odd self-interest in Proust making himself ridiculous and vulnerable in the way he does in these books. Maybe I am wrong about this, but it seems like there is a tendency in the Proust readership to think that somehow reflects well, or reflects at all, on the reader. I kind of don’t get that. It seems to me like when someone makes himself ridiculous or vulnerable for our entertainment, a reader can react with a myriad of feelings, among which are, of course, sympathy; alienation; eye-rolling; distancing laughter; or self-importance, as though Proust’s vulnerability, artistry, and ridiculousness says something about our merits. As if our identification with him says something about us, rather than everything about him. We all react according to our own experiences, but I have been very surprised at how dissimilar my feeling about these books is to how I anticipated feeling.

Maybe part of this book’s magic is in being a different shady, watery place with different flowers and butterflies for every reader.

Marcel Proust is a writer I completely miss the point of. I have no interest in society, especially this dead French one. I can't seem to interest myself in these children's parties or these petite bourgeois parents scheming to meet this or that VIP government minister. My God, the tedium! Yet Tolstoy and Bellow and Ozick and scores of others have all written about particular dead cultures which I've enjoyed reading about immensely. I can't put my finger on it with Proust. His inability to involve me remains a mystery. Well, I shall stop trying to read him and cut my losses for good.

Deuxième volume d’A la Recherche du temps perdu, ou on retrouve le narrateur devenu un adolescent. Lors de cette première période de la jeunesse pleine de confusion, d’énergie et d’espoir dans le monde. C’est un adolescent timide, frêle, rêveur et avec de fortes tendances à l’intellectualisation. On est porté à vivre avec lui son expérience intime de la vie, des personnes qu’il côtoie, le groupe social ou il évolue, ses impressions les plus subtils et ses émotions les plus profondes vis-à-vis des gens et des choses qui remplissent cette petite vie bourgeoise.

La grande part de ce roman est ce qui peut être considéré comme un exercice de méditation. Il s’agit la plupart du temps de s’installer à une distance confortable pour observer le flux des idées, des émotions et de l’imagination du narrateur. On est souvent amusé, plus souvent impressionné par sa capacité à verbaliser ce qui chez la plupart de nous passe inaperçu dans le temps d’un éclair. C’est bien une dissection de l’expérience humaine subjective.

La finesse de l’analyse psychologique nous amène à remettre en question plusieurs aspects de l’expérience humaine. Le narrateur est tellement conscient de ce qu’il ajoute à ses perceptions, de ce qu’il tire de lui pour en peindre et déguiser le monde extérieur, pour enrichir, parfois déformer et biaiser ses expériences, en créer du plaisir ou de la peine selon l’occasion. Ce leitmotiv si présent dans l’œuvre de Proust rappelle l’épistémologie Kantienne, est-il possible de connaitre le monde tel qu’il est, ou l’homme sera toujours prisonnier de sa subjectivité, de ses sens, de son imagination et de sa mémoire, incapable d’échapper à ce filtre imposé par ces mêmes moyens qui permettent l'expérience du monde.

Les conclusions Proustienne vont même plus loin. Cette subjectivité est irascible, échappant à la volonté de son propre agent. Ainsi, une grande part de l’intimité humaine devient un champ de bataille entre le sujet et sa propre volonté sur la manière de vivre l’expérience. Les émotions et les idées lui échappent au moment où il se voit en train de les maitriser, pour le submerger au moment où il n’en a pas besoin. A chaque occasion ou il croit soumettre sa subjectivité à l’autorité de sa volonté, c’est la désillusion et le désappointement qui suivent.

Le narrateur à la fois vit et exprime ses états d’esprit successifs avec clairvoyance, pour en tirer les lois générales de la psychologie humaine. A travers les changements de scène, de personnage, de groupe social, reste un substratum humain qui est commun à ce tourbillon de variété confuse. Tantôt visible sous cet aspect et tantôt sous un autre, mais au fond il s’agit de la même chose : un esprit humain qui cherche à fuir sa propre agitation, cherchant en dehors de lui ce qu’il peut ingérer et transformer pour créer les conditions du repos. Mais à chaque fois cette quête est vouée à l’échec. La seule différence entre le narrateur et ses personnages est que ces derniers sont beaucoup moins conscients des forces invisibles qui les agitent.

Como num plantio onde as flores amadurecem em épocas diferentes, eu tinha visto como senhoras velhas, naquela praia de Balbec, aquelas duras sementes, aqueles moles tubérculos que as minhas amigas um dia viriam a ser. Mas que importância tinha isso? Naquele momento era a estação das flores.
(p. 476)

Li o primeiro volume desta obra há quase um ano e agora estava um pouco receosa de que, ao pegar no segundo volume, tivesse dificuldade em voltar a agarrar o comboio. Foram receios infundados, já que, mal iniciei a leitura, fui transportada para a narrativa como se não tivesse havido interregno. Deixei de "ter medo" dos sete volumes porque percebi que para chegar ao fim não será necessária uma overdose de Proust.

n  À Sombra das Raparigas em Florn está dividido em duas partes. A primeira, Em Torno da Senhora Swann, faz a ligação com o tomo anterior. Combray ficou para trás, estamos agora em Paris, onde reencontramos os Swann e Marcel, desenvolve-se a amizade deste com Odette, e cresce o seu amor adolescente por Gilberte para depois se extinguir. Na segunda parte, Nomes de Terras: A Terra, ficam para trás Paris, os Swann e Gilberte, e Marcel viaja para a estância balnear de Balbec com a sua avó, onde enceta novos relacionamentos, novas amizades, novos enamoramentos. Agora o seu coração e os seus sentidos são como um pêndulo entre Albertine, Andrée, Gisèle e Rosemonde, acabando por eleger Albertine como o segundo amor da sua adolescência.

Já não era simplesmente a atracção dos primeiros dias, era uma verdadeira veleidade de amar que hesitava entre todas elas, de tal modo cada uma era naturalmente substituta da outra. A minha maior tristeza não seria ser abandonado por aquela que preferisse entre as raparigas, antes logo haveria de preferir aquela aquela que me tivesse abandonado, porque nela fixaria a soma de tristeza e de sonho que entre todas flutuava indistintamente.
(p. 527)

A mesma beleza e a mesma virtuosidade que me encantaram no primeiro livro encontrei-os neste segundo. Continua a não ser uma leitura fácil, porque, tanto pelo estilo como pelo conteúdo, exige uma completa dedicação do leitor. É necessário o estado de espírito adequado, paciência e serenidade, para a fruição da leitura, uma vez que a narrativa, não é movida pela acção ou pelos diálogos, mas alicerçada em minuciosas descrições com matizes impressionistas e em reflexões filosóficas que nos dão conta do cambiar das emoções, dos sentimentos, dos relacionamentos, e da perspectiva do mundo e dos seres. Como pessoa inquieta que sou, o meu lado contemplativo ficou, de momento, saciado, mas um dia destes retornarei para ler o que mais Marcel tiver para me contar.

(Book 685 From 1001 Books) - À la recherche du temps perdu II: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (À la recherche du temps perdu #2) = In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time, #2), Marcel Proust

Writing about this novel should be a separate book in itself. You do not know where to start, as if you want to describe the pyramids of "Egypt" stone by stone, and you really do not know how to deal with the storm of words, the glorious word is small for this novel. Far superior to the Gothic cathedrals, the opera's of Wagner, Beethoven, and all of the Expressionists. But what we learn most about this novel is that, the book is full of a concern, a concern called the fear of death, and the fear of dying, and not saying all the words that eat your mind. This may or may not be understandable to many people. That your brain is full of words, that knock themselves on this door and that wall, to get out, but they can not, they despise life, and devote themselves to an incredible imagination, with which nothing can be equal to it.

در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته؛ کتاب دوم - مارسل پروست (مرکز) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش ماه نوامبر سال1994میلادی

عنوان: در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته، کتاب دوم: در سایه‌ ی دوشیزگان شکوفا؛ نویسنده: مارسل پروست؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، سال1372، شابک9643052176؛ چاپ پنجم سال1385؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - سده20م

کتاب نخست: «طرف خانه سوان»؛ کتاب دوم: «در سایه دوشیزگان شکوفا»؛ کتاب سوم: «طرف گرمانت یک»؛ کتاب چهارم: «طرف گرمانت دو»؛ کتاب پنجم: «سدوم و عموره»؛ کتاب ششم «اسیر»؛ کتاب هفتم «آلبرتین گمشده (گریخته)»؛ کتاب هشتم: «زمان بازیافته»؛

نوشتن در باره ی این رمان، خود باید کتابی جداگانه باشد؛ نمیدانید از کجا آغاز کنید، تو گویی بخواهید سنگ به سنگ اهرام «مصر» را، توصیف نمایید، و واقعا نمیدانید، با طوفان واژه ها و کلمات، چگونه برخورد کنید، واژه ی باشکوه، برای این رمان، کوچک است؛ شکوهی به مراتب برتر از ساختمان کلیساهای جامع «گوتیک»، اپراهای «واگنر»، «بتهوون»، و همگی «اکسپرسیونیست»ها؛ اما چیزی که، بیش از هر چیز، از این رمان درمییابیم، این است، که کتاب، از یک دغدغه، سرشار است، دغدغه ای به نام «هراس از مرگ»، و «ترس از مُردن»، و نگفتن آن همه واژه ای که، روانتان را میخورند؛ شاید این، برای مردمان بسیاری، قابل درک نباشد، و نیست؛ اینکه مغزتان پر از واژه هایی باشد، که خودشان را، به این در و آن دیوار میکوبند، تا خارج شوند، ولی نمیتوانند، زندگی را، ناچیز میشمارند، و خود را، وقف تخیلی خیال انگیز و باورنکردنی میکنند، که هیچ چیز را، یارای برابری با آن نیست؛ اینگونه میشود، که برترین وصف یکی از بزرگترین شاهکارهای تاریخ ادبیات، به شرح بیماری محدود میشود، و به این هم باور دارم، که بسیاری از شاهکارهای ادبی، پر از حالات انسانهای بیمار هستند؛ از «داستایوسکی» و «کافکا» گرفته، تا «سلین»، «هدایت»، «میشیما»، «فاکنر»، «وولف» و «جویس»، و ...؛ انسانها چیزی را نمیآفرینند، تا جاودانه شود، و همیشه این متفاوتها هستند، که جاودانه میشوند؛ «در جست و جوی زمان از دست رفته»، یکی از همین متفاوتهاست

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 01/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 07/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

"هیچ آدمی، هر چقدر هم عاقل، پیدا نمی شود که در دوره ای از جوانی اش چیزهایی گفته و حتی زندگی ای کرده باشد که خاطره شان آزارش ندهد و دلش نخواهد آنها را از گذشته اش پاک کند. اما به هبچ وجه نباید از آنها متاسف باشد، چون تنها در صورتی می تواند مطمئن باشد که عاقل شده که همه آن مراحل مسخره یا نفرت انگیزی را که باید پیش از آن مرحله نهایی بیاید پشت سر گذاشته باشد. جوانهایی هستند که پدر یا پدربزرگشان آدمهای برجسته ای اند، و مربی هایشان از همان سالهای مدرسه به آنها درس اعتلای روحی و نجابت اخلاقی داده اند. چنین کسانی شاید هیچ چیز پنهان کردنی در زندگی شان نداشته باشند، شاید بتوانند همه آنچه را که گفته اند منتشر کنند و امضاهایشان را هم پایش بگذارند، اما آدمهای بی مایه ای اند، بچه های کسانی اند که به اصولی معتقد بوده اند و از خودشان چیزی ندارند، و عقل و متانتشان منفی و سترون است. متانت را نمی شود از دیگران گرفت، باید خود آدم کشفش کند، آن هم بعد از گذراندن مراحلی که هیچ کس دیگر نمی تواند به جای آدم بگذراند و آدم را از آن معاف کند، چون متانت نقطه دیدی ست که آدم درباره چیزها پیدا می کند. زندگی هایی که ستایششان می کنیم، رفتارهایی که به نظرمان برجسته می آیند، از پدر یا از مربی به آدم نمی رسند، بلکه سابقه خیلی متفاوتی پشت سرشان است، از همه چیزهای بد و ناشایست یا مبتذلی تاثیر گرفته اند که در پیرامونشان رواح داشته. نشاندهنده مبارزه و پیروزی اند. شاید تصویر دوره های اولیه زندگی ما دیگر شناختنی نباشد و در هر حال ناخوشایند باشد. با این همه نباید انکارش کرد، چون گواه این است که واقعا زندگی کرده ایم، و توانسته ایم بر اساس قوانین زندگی و ذهن انسان، از عناصر مشترک و متداول زندگی، چیزی فراتر از آنها بیرون بکشیم...

What Proust was, and what In Search of Lost Time, when given the proper air and light, the proper attention, can instruct others to be, is an astute pupil of life. He was perhaps the most exacting and astute observer in modern literature, and his dedicated readers are, in essence, forced also to become as aware, as exacting, in their own perceptions, not only as they wade the ebb and flow of his tide of words, but beyond that, when the book is closed and put away. For as the sound of the ocean and the feeling of salt water and sun on skin lingers long into the night after one has been swimming all day (I am stealing images from Balbec), a patina forms on the surface of one's perceptions, when one has been so much immersed in and worked on by this immense novel, that lingers well after one's attentions are necessarily drawn back to life. And that is the magic of Proust. He dissembles and examines each experience, not so much like a scientist or a surgeon, but like one attempting to reduce a painting to the individual brushstrokes that compose the image, and more than that, he presents alternate colors, contradictory images, questions himself and the object of his observation, isolates and scrutinizes layer after layer of sensory experience in the hope of revealing a truth, an intent, a raw emotion, a lost memory; and this process, within his work, is life.

"There is a dual will to happiness, a dialectics of happiness: a hymnic and an elegiac form. The one is the unheard of, the unprecedented, the height of bliss; the other, the eternal repetition, the eternal restoration of the original, the first happiness. It is this elegiac idea of happiness- it could also be called Eleatic- which for Proust transforms existence into a preserve of memory." -Walter Benjamin

The happiness that Benjamin speaks of is rarely attained in actual experience by the narrator of In Search of Lost Time; he is more often confronted with a prolonged expectation of an event that almost universally fails to live up to his imaginings. So it is when he first goes to see Berma in Phaedra, or when he first meets his adored novelist Bergotte, or the entirety of his love for Gilberte, or his first visit to the Balbec cathedral (so lengthily imagined in Swann's Way), or his first night in the beach town, or his first actual conversations with Albertine. "First" is a necessary indicator here, for much time and many words are spent among Marcel's ruminations of what something or someone might be like from his initial, distant impressions or desires, and then the completely different and contradictory intellection formed when the experience is actually had, or the person actually comes to be known. Such might be expected with an imagination as active and vast as Marcel's, but it is also a technique of Proust the artist, another way of digging into the unique and individual nature of human thought; one confronts the reality behind his perceptions of the world, one is deceived, one must compensate, one seeks another truth in the wreckage of dashed expectations. After all these "firsts" that so often confound Marcel, a second, or a tertiary reality is formed from his "eternal restoration of the original"; it is from this churning and reworking of sensation and consciousness that Proust develops his suppositions and discovers his happiness.

Within A Budding Grove or In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, whichever title you prefer (the latter is a literal translation, the former a completely adequate descriptor), follows Marcel into his adolescence, and finds his thoughts more concerned with relationships, love, and one's place in society. He also begins to experience firsthand the world of artists and artistic expression. This is a consequence of Marcel's developing consciousness and his choice to become a writer (though in reality he mistrusts his own abilities and rarely ever sets pen to paper), and the new company he comes to know through Mme Swann's salon. Proust's satire of the aristocracy really begins to take shape and sharpens here, too; he derides the snobbery, hypocrisy, and dilettantism among the privileged classes in wonderful and lengthy dictations of banal salon conversations. But there is a more than disinterested curiosity underlying all of this, and his affection for Mme Swann is genuine, as is his admiration of the aesthetics of her house, her clothing, her world, not to mention her daughter. However, it is through a burgeoning artist's eyes that these are all taken in and adored. Each object, as viewed by Marcel, contains something of himself, is associated with a human being or an idea or an emotion; nothing under his gaze is permitted the useless existence of a mere possession or a trophy of wealth as it is to the middling bourgeoisie that he scorns. Or, more exactly, what he scorns is falseness, shallowness, stupidity attempting to mask itself in blind adherence to fleeting fashions, snobbery in position and wealth, a lack of understanding and pity for humanity. Marcel's love for Gilberte keeps him returning to these gatherings, but even that ends up more of a projection of his vivid longings and desires than any solid relationship. His last vision of Mme. Swann walking with her entourage along the Champs-Élysées feels like an elegy for that entire class of people who seemingly vanished after the Belle Époque faded into the realities of the new century, and I could not stop singing to myself, as I read and reread those passages, Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2 (that melancholy music from Kubrick's Barry Lyndon), which is exactly the feeling that last stroll of Mme Swann's evokes.

Then Marcel travels with his Grandmother to Balbec (the seaside resort city he so desired to visit at the end of Swann's Way, where he dreamt of witnessing the spectacle of thunderstorms over the ocean) for a 430 page summer. Here his senses expand in relation to the span of the sea and the unexpected brightness and play of the sunlight, his anxieties and sicknesses are seemingly tempered by the fresh air and the new relations he acquires there, and he quickly forgets thunderstorms and unrequited feelings for Gilberte. Marcel's sensitivity to place and instance are peaked at the seashore, and there are endless brilliant descriptions of sea, sun, and landscape. Three examples of the sea as seen from his window:

"...I returned to the window to have another look at that vast, dazzling, mountainous amphitheatre, and at the snowy crests of its emerald waves, here and there polished and translucent, which with a placid violence and leonine frown, to which the sun added a faceless smile, allowed their crumbling slopes to topple down at last."

Again:

"...in the greenish glass which it distended with the curve of its rounded waves, the sea, set between the iron uprights of my casement window like a piece of stained glass in its leads, ravelled out over all the deep rocky border of the bay little plumed triangles of motionless foam etched with the delicacy of a feather or a downy breast from Pisanello's pencil, and fixed in that white, unvarying, creamy enamel which is used to depict fallen snow in Galle's glass."

The third:

"...at the moment when I entered the room the violet sky seemed branded with the stiff, geometrical, fleeting, effulgent figure of the sun (like the representation of some miraculous sign, of some mystical apparition) lowering over the sea on the edge of the horizon like a sacred picture over a high altar, while the different parts of the western sky exposed in the glass fronts of the low mahogany bookcases that ran along the walls, which I carried back in my mind to the marvelous painting from which they had been detached..."

It is on people no less than nature that Proust fixates his exacting eye. At Balbec Marcel befriends Robert de Saint-Loup, an unselfconscious aristocrat who plays a larger role in the next volumes of the novel, M. de Charlus (who's advances are only confusing and vague to Marcel), the painter Elstir (who I believe was modeled after Monet, and there are incredible digressions on painting and the role of the artist, too long to quote here, that take place within his studio), and the "little band" of girls, among them Albertine, who, after labyrinthine digressions Marcel comes to love. Proust considered this volume of In Search of Lost Time to be a transitional piece, and it does do more setting up of expectations than presenting resolutions. But the brilliance of this book is in the minutiae of observation, the delicate, painterly prose that gives each thing life and particularity, the continual renewal and surprise of perception that is the ever present magic in Proust's art. And especially during his summer at Balbec, Proust allows Marcel to possess moments of that rare substance, happiness, the desperate seeking of which could be said to be the impetus for the whole composition of In Search of Lost Time:

"Stretched out on the cliff I would see before me nothing but grassy meadows and beyond them not the seven heavens of the Christian cosmogony but two stages only, one of a deeper blue, the sea, and above it another, paler one. We ate our food, and if I had brought with me also some little keepsake which might appeal to one or other of my friends, joy sprang with such sudden violence into their translucent faces, flushed in an instant, that their lips had not the strength to hold it in, and, to allow it to escape, parted in a burst of laughter. They were gathered close round me, and between their faces, which were not far apart, the air that separated them traced azure pathways such as might have been cut by a gardener wishing to create a little space so as to be able himself to move freely through a thicket of roses."

In my second book of ISOLT, I find myself with both more patience and more impatience while reading. The glories of the writing are simply wonderful. The moments of insight sweep me away and I read them over again, once or twice to get their meaning completely. But there are some passages in between that test me, not yet to the point where I feel any threat of desertion but I do occasionally wish I could shake our narrator a bit, tell him to open his eyes perhaps a bit wider, take in more than one nose or eye at this time. (I know I'm being a bit silly here but haven't each of you had such moments?)

But there are such glories too---the description of the train trip to Balbec and the sun rising and setting. The descriptions of Albertine as he first meets her and of lying on the beach, his room at the hotel. His descriptions of young love. Proust is testing me as he tests himself and his memory to tease out all the small details of the past. And I will continue on this ride.

I have added a link to Teresa's review as I found it says much I appreciate.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Viene de...

n   “«el Bergotte» era ante todo un elemento precioso y verdadero, oculto en el núcleo de todas las cosas y después extraído de ellas por aquel gran escritor gracias a su genio, extracción que era el fin del dulce cantor y no el de escribir a lo Bergotte.”n

Proust continúa en este segundo tomo con su excepcional descripción literaria de una personalísima forma de sentir, de una especial sensibilidad ante la vida y uno mismo, capaz de convertir en oro literario las naderías de una existencia tan mediocre e insulsa como la de cualquier mortal. Y lo hace a través de un personaje complejo y contradictorio, Marcel, tan atrayente como repulsivo, siendo cautivadoramente atractivo por ambos motivos.

Un ser absolutamente dependiente de las opiniones ajenas, egoísta, cobarde, putero y escritor en ciernes, patológicamente necesitado de protagonismo, de atención constante, tan profundo en sus reflexiones como superficial en sus inclinaciones (“la belleza es una sucesión de hipótesis que la fealdad reduce, al cortar la vía que ya veíamos abrirse a lo desconocido”), presa constante de extraños arrebatos sensitivos ante los más peregrinos estímulos de los que espera verdades para mí incomprensibles y que le procuran una felicidad o una tristeza indecibles de las que, en muchos casos, desconoce el motivo.

n  “Muy pocas veces experimentaba aquel placer, cuyo objeto tan sólo presentía, que debía crear yo mismo, pero en todas ellas me parecía que lo sucedido en el intervalo carecía de la menor importancia y que centrándome exclusivamente en su realidad podría comenzar por fin una vida verdadera.” n

Proust tuvo siempre muy presente, y lo plasmó con una maestría única y sublime, que todo los que nos ocurre nos ocurre en el interior y que es allí donde las experiencias alcanzan su esplendor, lo que en Proust llega a extremos delirantes. El amor, la amistad, las vivencias de cualquier tipo, todo parece tener más importancia en la ausencia. La misma presencia del objeto o sujeto, dice, nos desvía de lo importante, nos hace “permanecer en la superficie de nosotros mismos en lugar de proseguir nuestro viaje de descubrimientos en las profundidades”. Del mismo modo, cualquier acercamiento a persona, objeto o lugar precisan, para gozar del encuentro como corresponde, ser soñados previamente y así solazarse en todas las posibilidades todavía no excluidas por el hecho en sí, que en verdad carece de importancia pues “sólo nosotros podemos infundir a ciertas cosas que vemos —con el convencimiento de que tienen una vida propia— un alma que después conservan y desarrollan en nosotros”.

n  “Despojar de ella (la imaginación) nuestros placeres es reducirlos a sí mismos, a nada… Es necesario que la imaginación, despertada por la incertidumbre de poder alcanzar su objeto, cree un objetivo que nos oculte el otro y, al substituir el placer sensual por la idea de penetrar en una vida, nos impide reconocer dicho placer, probar su gesto verdadero, limitarlo a su alcance.” n

Y en este sentir tan especial, cómo no destacar por encima de cualquier otro la experiencia del amor, una experiencia, claro está, insatisfactoria pues siempre se desea más cuando se tiene y es atroz cuando no. Un amor que con excesiva frecuencia tiene por objeto a nosotros mismos pues nosotros somos los que creamos a las mujeres que amamos, dotándoles de esa capacidad de “prolongación, esa multiplicación posible, de uno mismo que es la felicidad” .

n  “Al estar enamorados de una mujer, proyectamos simplemente en ella un estado de nuestra alma, que, por consiguiente, lo importante no es el valor de la mujer, sino la profundidad de ese estado, y que las emociones que nos infunde una muchacha mediocre pueden permitirnos hacer remontar a nuestra conciencia partes más íntimas de nosotros, más personales, más lejanas, más esenciales, que el placer que nos brinda la conversación de un hombre superior o incluso la contemplación admirativa de sus obras.” n

Leer a Proust es una experiencia compleja. Por utilizar una expresión mil veces usada por el autor, leerle es como si aráramos un campo inmensamente generoso para todo aquel que no desfallece ni se acobarda ante las muchas rocas y raíces que, en forma de largas acotaciones entre guiones o de oraciones subordinadas dentro de oraciones subordinadas, deben ser previamente desenterradas, aclaradas y muchas veces apartadas a un lado para que la reja pueda sacar a la luz todo lo que la tierra lleva dentro o, al menos, la parte que a cada uno, según su capacidad y experiencia, le es accesible. Y no es que esas incontables rocas y raíces no sean sobradamente interesantes por sí mismas, todo lo contrario, nada es desechable en los campos de Proust, pero bien cierto es que no son pocas las ocasiones en las que, a causa de ellas, nos vemos obligados a pasar la reja una y otra vez por el mismo surco hasta conseguir que la tierra por fin respire y sea todo lo fecunda que en realidad es.

Pero que mi torpeza a la hora de elegir símiles no les lleve a engaño, nada como el trabajo en el campo puede estar más alejado del mundo proustiano, lleno de arte y vacuo oropel, de sensibilidad y apariencia, de sutileza e hipocresía. Yo, que soy bastante torpe con las sutilezas, sobre todo cuando encierran una malicia que casi nunca espero y de las que tristemente soy consciente, cuando lo soy, tarde para dar cumplida respuesta, he disfrutado perversamente con esta lectura plagada de ellas.

n  “Su esposa se había casado con él contra viento y marea, porque era una «persona hechizadora». Tenía —cosa que puede bastar para constituir un conjunto delicado y poco común— una barba rubia y sedosa, facciones agraciadas, voz nasal, mal aliento y un ojo de vidrio.” n

Grande es la ironía, el sarcasmo, la inteligencia maligna que se gastan estos ociosos esnobs, clasistas, racistas y muchas veces ridículos miembros pertenecientes a la alta burguesía y a la aristocracia parisina en sus comentarios y chismes de salón hacia rivales, conocidos y, en teoría, amigos, que se mueven por estas páginas. Y en ello no se queda atrás nuestro protagonista, un adolescente, por otra parte, presa de grandes picores por las frescas y traviesas muchachas en flor.

n  “Simonet debía de ser el (nombre) de una de aquellas muchachas; ya no cesé de preguntarme cómo podría conocer a la familia Simonet y, además, por mediación de personas a las que ésta considerara superiores a sí misma, lo que no sería difícil, si se trataba de simples zorrillas de clase baja.” n

Angelito

Continuará...