If one is not emotionally repulsed by the snobbery and pretentious French world at the time of the Dreyfus affair described within this book than one probably is missing out on what the author is trying to get at. Volume I needs to be read in order to follow what's going on in this book. The first fourth of the book wraps up the story from the previous volume. Marcel's (the narrator) name is not mentioned in this book and is only briefly mentioned in the first book. The maternal grandmother doesn't even recall Marcel's family name when polite convention required it. I'm intrigued by Odette (Swann's wife) and I'm anxious to see how she comes back into the story. This story mostly covers a season at a resort and how Marcel would reflect on how he experienced falling in love. Our memories are shaded by who we have become and the author illustrates that by his story telling.

Proust could best be shelved under Philosophy or Psychology rather than Literature. Our experiences of the world are determined by what our prior beliefs were weighted by our expectations of what we thought was going to happen discounted by what actually did happen. Or in other words, we are all Bayesians. Proust gets that and will show how we always are extrapolating from the past into our interpolation of the 'now' and projecting a future. Sartre quotes Proust extensively in his "Being and Nothingness" for a reason. (Though, I seriously doubt Proust would have thought of himself as an Existentialist if he had lived into the 1940s, but I suspect he would have been comfortable with the Phenomenologist label in the style of Gadamar as laid out in "Truth and Method". One gets the similar lessons in each book, but Proust reads like a story instead of reading like a dry philosophy text book).

Almost every other page in this book has a wry observation or two on being-in-the-world and the story is only acting as a pretense in order for the reader to understand deeper truths about being human. The world is not best experienced by atomization (that's a Nietzsche word and sentiment and the author within this book refers to Nietzsche many times). The totality of the whole through our familiarity of our being-in-the-world is how we must cope with our understanding about our own taking a stand on our own being. Even though, we are constantly in a Bayesian trap (the author doesn't use the word Bayesian but he continuously describes how we create our experiences in those terms).

One of the wry observations the author made is that even though we may dream about animals, animals are different from humans because they have reason with certainty and humans have reason without certainty. It's not important if one agrees with that sentiment (though, I do, and it's actually one of the better definitions I've seen for what makes humans different from animals), what is fascinating about this book is it has many psychological insights that are worth pondering. Another observation, when our inclinations are formed or discovered in our youth if we deny those inclinations latter in life we will be inauthentic to ourselves and much the less for it. The narrator was specifically referring to himself as a writer but it's easy to generalize that sentiment in to other areas.

It's our phrases (e.g., scraps of music, works of art, or lines in a book) that make up our life and give us our understanding for the sublime. A real artist needs to break the mimetic trap from which we our thrown into the world and break free from the imitation of the 'they'. The narrator, Marcel, believes that a great piece of art such as a great book can help us move beyond the herd mentality of the they and allow us to transcend (he'll say that or equivalently in the narrative). There are a lot of deep thoughts within this book, but one needs to discover them for oneself and just be aware that this book does not read like "The Girl on the Train" because it has something it wants to give to the reader beyond mere mindless repetition of stale story telling.

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می توانی یک عمر گفت و گو کرده و هیچ نگفته ، کاری جز تکرار بی نهایت خلا یک دقیقه نکرده باشی ، هنگام تنهایی کار آفرینش هنری ، به سوی ژرفا ست .
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وقتی ذهن آدمی دنبال خیال است .نباید او را از خیال دور کرد . نباید خیال را برایش جیره بندی کرد . تا زمانی که ذهنتان را از خیال هایش دور نگه می دارید، مانع آن می شوید که آن ها را بشناسد . و گول ظواهر بی شماری را می خورید چون نتوانسته اید به ذات آن ها پی ببرید .
اگر کمی خیالبافی خطرناک باشد . راه درمانش کم تر کردن خیال نیست بلکه باید خیال را بیشتر کرد ،
خیال و باز هم خیال .
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چهره ی آدمی به راستی همانند چهره ی خدا در یکی از اساطیر شرقی ، مجموعه ای از چهره های بر هم افتاده در سطح های گوناگون است .
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صدا بخشی از ورطه ای دست نیافتنی است .
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ممنون آقای " مارسل پروست "
ممنون آقای " مهدی سحابی "

Adolescent Aesthetics

The temptation to compare Philip Roth and Marcel Proust is one I can’t resist. Both Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint seem to me inverted interpretations of Proust’s Within the Budding Grove. Using the same technique of relentless interior monologue, all are coming of age novels featuring sex, taste of one kind or another, and social class set against a background of contemporary manners and Jewish assimilation.

All three books assay the problems of male adolescence - hormones, separation from family, impending career - and their possible solutions. But whereas Roth views these problems as arising from perceived cultural deprivation, Proust shows how inadequacies emerge equally among the privileged in much the same way. And while Roth treats the evolution from child to adult in terms of neurosis to be overcome, Proust describes milestones in psychological and social realisation that are necessary steps to becoming a person.

Proust would likely agree with Roth’s take on adolescence: “A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.” Marcel’s warring self is in essence not much different from Portnoy’s, although a tad more refined, “…our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal..” says Marcel, inverting St. Paul's observations about vice.

But the aims of each author/protagonist differ fundamentally. Roth’s ambition through Portnoy is “to raise obscenity to the level of a subject.” Marcel’s goal is to experience romantic love in which he “penetrates the soul of another.” Sexual intimacy for the latter is an expected consequence of this spiritual union but not its objective, perhaps because of his access even as a young teenager to the brothels of Paris which he found unsatisfying.

As the son of a senior government official, Marcel is exposed to ministers of state, the nobility and other VIP’s from infancy. What he learns without knowing what he is learning is protocol, how to act formally in social situations: What to say and not to say, how to stand, who to quote, the techniques of assessing relative social standing, and distinguishing the outre from the avant garde.

Roth’s characters come from the antithesis of Paris, namely Newark, New Jersey. They too learn skills, those that are equally necessary to survive in a dominant culture which is not their own and in a political environment which may be just as brutal as that of Paris but far less gentile. Nevertheless the ‘manners’ each acquires because of his background are equally problematic for all.

For the Newark boys, their lower class immigrant Jewish roots impede assimilation into middle class American society; for Marcel, his learned reserve and internalised emotional calculation inhibit his naturalness and makes him shy in the company of the relatively free-wheeling middle classes. For all, their backgrounds get in the way of relations with women, the former with Gentile girls, the latter with modern females unimpressed by ‘breeding’. All persistently pursue the same ‘types’ with predictable, disappointing results.

What Roth seems to lack almost totally, however, and which Proust emphasises, even in his stylised accounts of sex and class, is the development of taste, the aesthetic sense which substitutes in Proust's work for religious belief. It is this sense of the beautiful that provides an increasingly important guide for Marcel’s actions.

Early in Within the Budding Grove, Marcel marks the centrality of the aesthetic even in relationships of love, “The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.”

He then goes on to make love instrumental to the appreciation of beauty rather than vice versa: “…fully as much as retirement, ill health, or religious conversion, a protracted love-affair will substitute fresh visions for the old…” This aesthetic sense is the pivot around which all of Proust’s writing in this volume rotates. It is what makes the work a coherent whole. And it is the lack of an equivalent centre of gravity in Roth that makes his work somewhat unsatisfying in comparison.

Marcel is aware of himself in a way that the Newark boys can’t be without a sense of the aesthetic. In Jungian terms (and there can be little doubt that Proust is a natural if not a well-read Jungian), Marcel is an Objective Introvert, that is he is particularly sensitive to his environment and he tends to adapt himself to that environment rather than to try to change it. He comes to know this towards the end of the volume: “…contrary to what I had always asserted and believed, I was extremely sensitive to the opinions of others…[and] I feel it is eminently sensible of them to safeguard their lives, while at the same time being unable to prevent myself pushing my own safety into the background.” That is, he learns; something that is not possible without an aesthetic standard of what constitutes learning.

But because Marcel has a developed aesthetic sense, he also has a solution to his, rather common, problem of objective introversion. He has another aspect to his personality which on its own also causes him additional and frequent trouble: he constantly projects himself onto other people. He believes that they are either like himself in terms of desires and likely responses, or that they conform to his primitively articulated ideal. This causes recurring disappointment - a famed actress is far less talented than he expects, church sculptures are less impressive than he had believed, a prospective friend turns out less approachable than he anticipates.

Marcel comes to know he does this and he begins to appreciate the consequences. But instead of trying to eliminate this tendency toward projection from his personality, something he recognises as impossible, he seeks to make it conscious as a sort of control on the other part of his personality, his natural introversion, “For beauty is a series of hypotheses which ugliness cuts short…” Projections are no longer neurotic (if they ever were), but a means to test the world, in an almost scientific way through hypotheses, to find out what is really there. This is a very clever psychological strategy that neither Freud nor Jung ever considered, a sort of pragmatic aesthetics which allows the parts of his psyche to function productively together. And it works.

Moreover, in the manner of St. Augustine, Marcel, recognises that aesthetically driven desire leads beyond itself, like a religious icon which points to a reality not yet occurring, “The most exclusive love for a person is always a love for something else.” It is this ‘something else’ which he first brings up in volume 1 and alludes to subtly throughout volume 2. Always just beyond our linguistic grasp, it is that which draws language forth. He goes even further and creates a quasi-religious ontology of that which lies beyond, “For a desire seems to us more attractive, we repose on it with more confidence, when we know that outside ourselves there is a reality that conforms to it, even if, for us, it is not to be realised.”

Therefore, Marcel’s/Proust’s aesthetic is, remarkably, both pragmatic and spiritual. Even more remarkably, it is also ethical. The advice of his painter friend Elstir is precise, “We do not receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves.” Although Marcel’s aspiration is to become a writer, this advice is general. ‘Discovery’ implies that there is something new to be seen, heard, touched, painted, talked about, invented. He is able to come to several conclusions therefore, which are rather more insightful than anything in Roth.

Regarding which of a gang of girls to woo, for example, he puts all his newly acquired skills together to picture the future somewhat longer than the subsequent few hours:

“As in a nursery plantation where the flowers mature at different seasons, I had seen them, in the form of old ladies, on this Balbec shore, those shrivelled seed-pods, those flabby tubers, which my new friends would one day be. But what matter? For the moment it was their flowering time.”

Innovative indeed for a man on the make.

The recognition and maturing of this aesthetic sense is the necessary next step from Marcel's insights in volume 1 about purposefulness, the capacity to choose appropriate purpose. The aesthetic criteria he is developing apply not only to appreciating beauty but to understanding what is important, that is, what is valuable. Value is not an economic category in Proust but an aesthetic one; therefore inseparable from taste. And it in taste that Marcel is more than a bit advanced over his New Jersey fellow-adolescents.

--Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time Volume II)

Notes
Addenda
Synopsis

جلد اول جستجو رو سالها پیش از کتابخانه پدرم قرض گرفتم و بارها خوندنش رو آغاز و باز رها کردم تا زمانی که به یکباره درگیرش شدم و تا تمامش نکردم دگر هیچ نکردم
بعد از اون سالها بعد جلد دومش رو از یک کتابخانه عمومی به امانت گرفتم و باز هم آغاز و رها...
اما این بار و مجدد از همان کتابخانه امانت گرفتم و در صورت رها کردنش برای خودم تنبیهاتی درنظر گرفتم...
اما یک نکته قابل تامل این بود که از بیست و پنجم اسفند هشتادونه که من کتاب رو به کتابخانه عودت دادم تا امروز تنها سه نفر و هر کدام در زمانهای کوتاهی کتاب رو امانت گرفته بودند

Τελειώνοντας το δεύτερο μέρος αυτού του αριστουργήματος, δηλώνω περισσότερο εντυπωσιασμένος. Δεν ξέρω αν υπάρχει δεύτερος στην ομορφιά του λόγου.

Ξεκινάει ο έρωτας του πρωταγωνιστή για την Αλμπερτίν. Οι περιγραφές των αισθημάτων του είναι φανταστικές. Στο σύνολο του, το έργο, είναι λίγο πιο φιλοσοφικό.

Διαβάστε το. Αυτά.

A character, the Marquis de Norpois, quotes a fine Arab proverb- The dogs may bark; the caravan goes on. And so the ISoLT saga continues– Marcel has a meandering tale to tell and he will take his fine time telling that–fall in line or else, vamoose!

A lot happens in the second book– new characters, new themes are introduced. Old characters & old themes are expanded upon. Marcel gets to share the interior lives in the Swann household but can he ever know/understand the inner workings of Gilberte & Mme. Swann's minds? The difference/disappointments between expectations & reality- whether it be love, Berma's much-awaited performance in Phédre or the church in Balbec brings home the point that emotional/instinctive response can carry you only so far unless it's backed by knowledge. In this regard, the aesthetic musings in portions involving writer Bergotte & artist Elstir are superb!

In Swann's Way, Bloch opened up a new world to Marcel by introducing him to Bergotte's work, now he initiates the latter into mysteries of flesh. There's this amusing comment by Gass in The Tunnel : O sure, we know why Proust wrote: to justify one man's sordid sadomado ways to the interested asses of other men. And that, as we also know, requires an endless book.

Sure enough we meet homosexual charcters here & Robert de Saint-Loup tells Marcel:

One day, a man who just now is very much in the eye, as Balzac would say, of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but who at a rather awkward period of his early life displayed odd tastes, asked my uncle to let him come to this place. But no sooner had he arrived than it was not to the ladies but to my uncle Palamède that he began to make overtures. My uncle pretended not to understand, made an excuse to send for his two friends; they appeared on the scene, seized the offender, stripped him, thrashed him till he bled, and then with twenty degrees of frost outside kicked him into the street where he was found more dead than alive; so much so that the police started an inquiry which the poor devil had the greatest difficulty in getting them to abandon.

Perhaps a reference to the repression & hypocrisy of the times & Proust's struggle with his own sexuality.
The irony is that  this uncle, M. de Charlus is indeed gay & makes overtures to Marcel in the most frightful manner!  He is perhaps the best drawn character in the two books so far.

If Dickens had his Smallweeds, Proust has the Blochs- the anti-Semitism gets virulent in this book & with reference to the Dreyfus affair & tensions seething out of the rise of the bourgeoisie & the decline of the aristocracy, things will only take a turn for the worse in the coming books.

It was with some relief then, that I read the final part- Seascape, wth frieze of Girls whose impressionistic, poetic prose is a paean to youth & beauty that Marcel, laying aside all friendly-familial obligations, is rejuvenated by:

...artist...are also under an obligation to live for themselves. And friendship is a dispensation from this duty, an abdication of self. Even conversation, which is the mode of expression of friendship, is a superficial digression which gives us no new acquisition. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute, whereas the march of thought in the solitary travail of artistic creation proceeds downwards, into the depths, in the only direction that is not closed to us, along which we are free to advance — though with more effort, it is true — towards a goal of truth.

In its myth-making, the final pages take the book to a different stratosphere:

...like Rubens, make goddesses out of women whom they know, to people some mythological scene; at those lovely forms, dark and fair, so dissimilar in type, scattered around me in the grass, I would gaze without emptying them, perhaps, of all the mediocre contents with which my everyday experience had filled them, and at the same time without expressly recalling their heavenly origin, as if, like young Hercules or young Telemachus, I had been set to play amid a band of nymphs.

So much to admire here & yet at times I found myself struggling with this book–in his Proust review, Nathan N.R. wrote about one's preference & taste. My problem was different- slow reader that I am, the tension of meeting reading targets & group schedules, somewhat detracted from savouring this book- since when did reading become a military drill & not the intense joy it was supposed to be? Maybe I should reduce/scrap that reading target because Proust asks for this kind of sensibility:
And yet to myself the sound of my own voice was pleasant, as were the most imperceptible, the most internal movements of my body. And so I endeavoured to prolong it. I allowed each of my inflexions to hang lazily upon its word, I felt each glance from my eyes arrive just at the spot to which it was directed and stay there beyond the normal period.

Proust is about sauntering, gliding by, stopping to smell the roses, admiring the hawthorns & cornflowers.
In an age where we power walk & still not satisfied, say " why walk when we can run?", Proust becomes an anachronism– perhaps all the more reason to read him.

Recommended for Proust completion enthusiasts & readers "whose sensibilities are trained on poetry".

It's brilliant; it's a bit boring; it's brilliant again; it's a bit boring again.

This book covers his initiation into sexual desire and romantic love, beginning with his obsession with Gilberte and ending with his summer sojourn on the Normandy coast where he falls for another unattainable girl. At times, because of the way he's mollycoddled by his family, it's hard to conceive of him as being much older than ten. It thus comes as a shock that he's capable of intellectual discourse and predatory sexual feeling. I enjoyed this volume less than the first. Maybe at the time some of his ideas about desire - of it being essentially projection - were novel but, though there are some gems of insight, I often found his formulations on the subject long-winded and even banal at times. And I've come to dread the advent of another set of brackets on his pages - I think I'm yet to find anything he puts in parentheses anything but an annoying distraction. Once or twice I found myself wishing Proust had lived an outwardly more interesting life - though there's no denying that he milked out every drop of nectar given to him.

I remember a startlingly brilliant passage about a sunrise seen from the sleeping car of a train. I remember a fantastic passage when he conceives of his feeling as being much grander and more momentous than the view of the sea and sky, as if there is more reality inside him than in the entire external universe. I remember a brilliant passage when he comes to conceive of desire as an inward journey with knowledge of self as the real and ultimate destination. And there's lots of great stuff about both the transfiguring and deluding powers of habit.

Onto volume three…

بالاخره جلد دو هم تموم شد. خوندن جلد دو خیلی طول کشید. درواقع دقیقا در میانه‌ی خوندنش چند ماهی وقفه افتاد و دوباره رفتم سراغش.
خوندن این کتاب سخت بود و هست. یعنی کتابی نیست که دست بگیری و تند و تند بخونی و تمومش کنی. حداقل برای من که اینطور نبود. سبک نگارش پروست خاصه.. خیلی خاص. به همین خاطر خوندنش حال و هوای خاص خودش رو می‌طلبه. گاهی می‌رفتم سراغش و از همه‌ی توصیفات طولانی و پر از جزئیاتش از وقایع خسته و کلافه می‌شدم و گاهی همین توصیفات به شدت من رو جذب می‌کرد. انگار خیلی به حال و هوای آدم بستگی داشت. پس بهتره با حال و هوای مناسب کتاب برید سراغش. ولی وسط همین شاید کلافه شدن‌ها از توصیفات صحنه‌ها و مهمانی‌ها و گشت و گذارها جاهای زیادی از کتاب از احساسات درونی خودش میگه و باعث می‌شد مبهوت بشم و تو آسمون‌ها سیر کنم.. مثلا یک پاراگراف کوچک از کتاب رو میارم. در جایی حوالی صفحه سیصد و شصت کتاب از این صحبت می‌کنه که در کالسکه در حال گذر بوده و دختری رو می‌بینه که به نظرش زیبا بوده.. و دلش می‌خواد که پیاده بشه و اون دختر زیبا رو پیدا کنه.
"آیا چون تنها یک آن دیده بودمش او را آن اندازه زیبا می‌پنداشتم؟ شاید. پیش از هر چیز، اینکه نشود کنار زنی ماند، و این خطر که نتوان دوباره دیدش، ناگهان همان جاذبه‌ای را به او می‌دهد که بیماری و نداری به سرزمینی می‌دهند که به خاطرشان نمی‌توان رفت و دید، یا جاذبه‌ای که چند روز باقیمانده‌ی زندگی از مبارزه‌ای می‌یابد که بی‌شک در آن شکست می‌خوریم. به گونه‌ای که، شاید اگر عادت نباشد، زندگی در چشم کسانی که هر ساعت در خطر مرگ‌اند -یعنی همه‌ی آدمیان- بس شیرین جلوه کند."

شاید بد نباشه یکی دو تا توصیه بکنم برای کسانی که تازه می‌خوان کتاب رو بخونن.
همونجوری که گفتم این کتاب، کتابی نیست که تند و تند بخونید و تموم بشه، پس با طمانینه وآرامش بخونید حتی اگر قرار باشه خوندنش یک سال طول بکشه :) اینجوری لذت خوندنش رو بیشتر درک می‌کنید.
و توصیه بعدی اینکه جاهایی از کتاب که دوست دارید و پاراگراف‌های خیلی خوبش رو علامت بزنید و دوباره بعدا برید سراغشون. اینجوری خیلی بعد از خوندن کتاب هم می‌تونید برید سراغشون و دوباره لذت ببرید. (خودم هم این کار رو کردم و می‌خوام برم سراغشون)

First and foremost, any Marcel Proust experts that can clarify for me about where "Within a Budding Grove" begins? My Goodreads friend has a paperback copy and I think probably she has the correct order of the chapters because electronic reading is more prone to faults where paper is probably quite rare. Trying to figure this out for a couple of hours, then decided it did not matter. In my Kindle collection it starts with "Seascape, with Frieze Girls", "Madame Swann at Home" and finally "Place-Names: The Place". I had seen many Kindle version that have "Madame Swann at Home" and "Place-Names: The Place" but do not mention "Seascape" but probably it is at the end, just not mentioned. Which makes the most sense in the story order but in reality with Proust's writing it really is not important. In my opinion it is important to read book 1 before book 2, because there are many things mentioned that helps glue the story together but with regards to both books, you could read each chapter in different orders and really not be confused. Does that make sense? Yes, because his writing is not so much story driven but actually CHARACTER DRIVEN, meaning his stream of consciousness causes him to tell you things far ahead of schedule depending on what he is talking about. This is a story of the lives of our Hero and his family and friends but not too much activity.

What is the Hero's name? I have no clue yet but know that his narration is first person with a third person also. Is it important we know his name? No, but his friends and family it is important to be clearer. I am a big note taker, meaning I read and record in brief what is happening and my thoughts but I find that my note taking has been quite diminished though I keep quoting, the reason is because of the characters are the main focus, how they feel and about their lives. There is not an abundance of action in both these novels but thinking about these characters and what they do and how they feel.


Here in this excerpt, he shows how things are brought up. So in my version, I had an older Hero but still young and then after his relationship with The Swanns before he goes to the resort which is The Seascape. I actually enjoyed this being first because this section is my favorite.

"At a much later point in this story, we shall have occasion to see this kind of incompatibility expressed in clearer terms."


How do I feel about this collection so far? I actually am loving it more and more, book 2 is my favorite and I can see why this is and was a hit for many. I still need all my wits about me to read his work but I was able to speed it up a tad and that was with looking up artists, books and things unknown. I added many books and plays from his comments on other works. I did not have to read a part as many times as I did in book 1, because the flow started yet I needed it to be quiet for easier reading which life in a busy home does not always offer.


This is a bildungsroman read for out Hero learns about love, girls and friendship. In book 1, it is almost all Swann's obsession but in book 2, it is Our Hero's obsession. As I read the section on this young man, I thought many thoughts he thought about the opposite sex. As he would wander to run into a girl, I remember doing so when I saw a boy but both of us not having the nerve and not being noticed. I just could relate to this young boy, in many ways and see him making mistakes that he learns from. How family is the center and then thoughts of love becomes the driving factor.


Proust uses humor and thoughtful reflection which cause dreams to be analysed. Most of all he comments on people with all their good and bad in themselves.


From Project Gutenberg site.

"In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower(À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated as Within a Budding Grove) (1919) was scheduled to be published in 1914 but was delayed by the onset ofWorld War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all of the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception. When published, the novel was awarded thePrix Goncourtin 1919."

Excerpts below


Proust loves to bring art into his characters lives.

"I would say to myself: “Curious sunset, this; it’s different from what they usually are but after all I’ve seen them just as fine, just as remarkable as this.” I had more pleasure on evenings when a ship, absorbed and liquefied by the horizon so much the same in colour as herself (an Impressionist exhibition this time)"





“There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grandsons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."


This quote brings back memories to my young self, I could not fathom not being alive any longer, yet life continues without me, how could that be!
I have changed since those days and have no fear of death when it comes. "A time to be born and a time to die." Others must carry on and we must step off the stage.

"Death might have struck me down in that moment; it would have seemed to me a trivial, or rather an impossible thing, for life was not outside, it was in me; I should have smiled pityingly had a philosopher then expressed the idea that some day, even some distant day, I should have to die, that the external forces of nature would survive me, the forces of that nature beneath whose godlike feet I was no more than a grain of dust; that, after me, there would still remain those rounded, swelling cliffs, that sea, that moonlight and that sky! How was that possible; how could the world last longer than myself, since it was it that was enclosed in me, in me whom it went a long way short of filling, in me, where, feeling that there was room to store so many other treasures, I flung contemptuously into a corner sky, sea and cliffs."


I am very happy that I decided to read this and extremely glad, I did not give up the series because of book 1, was a great read but was missing something which I found in book 2, a story of human frailties and happiness. Our Hero is not very assured of himself, he wonders and is quite an invalid at times due to his failing health.

The story in short- Our Hero after being rejected looks for new loves and grows up but still wants many comforts of boyhood. Also thinking about if he sees things differently in regards to others but trying to agree but growing into his own thoughts.


Looking forward to see how this all plays out.

تنها یک کلام:


....................... "خدا" ست ........................

Sete d’amore, sete di sole

Stupendo secondo volume della Ricerca proustiana, un viaggio letterario ineguagliabile, un ritrovarsi in una prosa cristallina, netta, perfetta, dalla cifra stilistica che non corre mai il pericolo di lasciare indietro il contenuto, sapientemente dosato, centellinato nelle oltre cinquecento pagine, a riscoprire il piacere di un trama impalpabile ma tangibile, tesa ad annullare i fatti mentre li propone come solo la pittura impressionista sa fare. Impressioni , sensazioni, pensieri , colti nell’immediato ma arricchiti da considerazioni a posteriori che oscillano fra il gusto garbato dell’anticipazione e lo sguardo ricco di senno di chi ripercorre la propria giovinezza, o meglio una porzione di essa. Un’estate lunga, a Balbec, la prima lontana dai genitori, in compagnia della nonna, nel Grand Hotel che fotografa, cristallizzandola, la realtà sociale francese ancora in bilico, in questo primo scorcio del Novecento, fra nobiltà e borghesia, una realtà , di contro, tutta protesa verso la novità dettata dal progresso tecnologico. Un narratore alle prese con i suoi primi ardori, nella prima parte, di ambientazione parigina , nei confronti di Gilberte, la figlia di Swann e di Odette, dapprima agli Champs –Élysées poi, gradualmente, nella dimora della coppia, quasi un fortino da espugnare, per vedersi infine ripagato da un intero gineceo in spiaggia, in Normandia. Le fanciulle in fiore, visione prima, messa a fuoco poi e selezione fra esse di una predestinata al suo amore: Albertine, sfuggente come un cerbiatto, accessibile come una soglia da varcare a cui si frappone intanto un gradino inatteso. Un vissuto sottratto all’oblio cui sarebbe stato destinato, come tutto nella vita. Il processo dell’innamoramento, il mistero del ruolo giocato dalla casualità in certe alchimie che si vorrebbero lontane dal mistero e totalmente imbevute della nostra volontà, per scoprir poi che l’amore procede seguendo, dettato dal caso, semplicemente i binari della nostra fantasia, del nostro immaginare, supporre e ricercare nell’altro una porzione meno fumosa di noi stessi. Il volume è trapuntato di considerazioni di tal misura, ogni volta colpiscono per l’ingenua verità e truce che contengono, permettendo al lettore un ritrovarsi universale, meravigliandolo per la semplicità con la quale viene trasposto in scrittura un pensiero sicuramente abbozzato un tempo anche nella sua mente, senza averne mai avuto la capacità di recuperarlo, analizzarlo, fissarlo nella sua estrema veridicità. Proust ha il dono di recuperare il suo tempo, il suo vissuto, coinvolgendo il lettore in un’altra ricerca, simile alla sua, anche se ora più personale: quella del proprio tempo perduto. “All’ombra delle fanciulle in fiore” è semplicemente uno scritto contraddistinto dalla grazia della giovinezza, dall’eleganza del ricordo, dalla istantaneità di un quadro impressionista. Coglie l’attimo, lo fissa, per sempre dilatando la percezione del proprio universo temporale.