I'm certainly no great master of the French language, which must be why I'm completely mystified by how A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs translates to Within a Budding Grove.

Good thing I have the ever-trustworthy (....???) C. K. Scott Moncrieff to translate this all for me!

--------

AAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!

I GIVE UP! I mean, not permanently, but for now, yeah, I do. I give UP! I give UP!!! I give up on this Proust! I give up despite this recent line: "I ask you, what in the world can he see in her? He must be a bit of a chump when all's said and done. She's got feet like boats, whiskers like an American, and her undies are filthy...."

It pains me to do so, but I must GIVE UP!

I'm about three-quarters of the way through this, and I've been reading it since the winter and I just.... I need to stop. I need to GIVE UP!

Reading Swann's Way was such an exhilarating shock because it was nothing at ALL like how they all said Proust would be. But this -- this was just EXACTLY like how they said Proust would be! There were incredible moments in here -- passages that blew out fuses in huge portions of my brain because they were so amazing, like nothing I'd ever read, passages you'd kill for, that great.... but the heavy lifting that went into making it through to those parts.... O! Dear! I GIVE UP!

I really wish I'd waited longer between finishing Swann's Way and starting this. I was overexcited, and the stimulation and effort were probably too much for my weak and sickly constitution. Reading Swann's Way felt like landing in a foreign city at night and stumbling hungry into some random restaurant off a side street and having one of the most incredible, magical meals of your entire life. Unparalleled food, delicious drinks, and then this wholly unexpected and thrilling experience of everyone else in the place and the waiters and the owners and the kitchen staff all coming out and all of you sitting around eating dessert and drinking wine on the house until the wee hours of the morning.... just one of those great nights that comes out of nowhere and completely surpasses any expectations you've held. But of course then, like an asshole, instead of leaving it for what it was or at least waiting, you try to replicate this unique experience by going back to that restaurant too soon, and anticipating that it will be anything at all like how it was that one night, when of course it can't ever be. It's just a restaurant, after all. And that kind of disappointment is unbearably crushing. But that's what you get!

I'm not through with Proust forever -- this shit is fantastic, don't get me wrong -- but it feels fruitless and sordid to keep forcing myself on this book when it's just clearly not happening. I do hate to give up because there's so much in here to love, but this has gotten ridiculous, and for now.... I give up. I've just got to. I hate myself for doing it, but.... I give up, I give up, I give up I give up I give up I give UP!

((Poor, defeated Jessica collapses into hysterical, snotful sobbing on the floor, flailing her arms and clutching this unfinished volume in one frail and pallid hand.))

WHY?

Or: The Brain on Proust

There’s a group of 7 ladies I’ve known for quite some time. We meet regularly for afternoon tea, going round turn and turn about, although Barbara has now been excused from hosting in deference to her great seniority and some health issues that come along with the seniority. We have nothing in common except that we are all English native speakers, living here in Germany, and all of us married at one time or another to German husbands. So it’s only the language that connects us; our teas are a place where we can let go and speak ‘naturally’ (ahem) without worrying about whether t’others will understand – although we’ve all been here for so long now that our English would probably sound oddly quaint to native ears, and we do spend considerable chunks of the afternoon attempting to find adequate equivalents of German words that have popped into our minds because the English is missing. A group of ladies that I meet regularly, and who I would definitely consider as friends, even though we do not necessarily share many common interests.

Recently we went out for a bit of a posh nosh to celebrate Angela’s 70th – there’s a wide range of ages too you see, and I’d like to point out that I am much the youngest. Now Angela is a reader, so I can talk to her about books – we pass stuff to each other too – and when Janet overheard that I had embarked on this project of reading Proust’s great masterpiece, she just looked at me and said:

“Why?”

And it was an incredulous why, a why-on-earth-would-you sort of why, not a why now, why have you chosen to do so at this juncture, as she made plain when I started to say that the initial trigger was the fact that it was 100th anniversary of publication, which led to the motivational force of an online group to help me through. No, but why would you do such a thing at all?

Now I have to admit that I was a bit flummoxed. No simple answer came to mind, especially since at that time I was struggling a little, so could not even say that I was enjoying it, because I have to say that at the time I wasn’t. And that struggle reached a real crisis point later that very week, as I was developing a cold and already beginning to feel woozy that evening. I dragged myself to work the next day, but then gave up and cancelled all classes and snuggled up with the cat on the sofa. Three days at home with very little human contact or physical exercise makes me go slightly stir-crazy. So when I had the strength to pick up a book again, to find myself trapped inside the head of a self-absorbed neurasthaenic endlessly obsessing over unrequited love for a cold-hearted companion nearly drove me to distraction. Pages and pages of interiors, pages and pages of nothing but his thoughts about Gilberte or Mme Swann. Why indeed.

But then at last! Fresh air and sunshine and the clear blue skies and seas of the Normandy coast! I could breathe freely again. I felt my mind opening like a flower in the sun. So here’s one good answer to that question: in Proust, everything is so much more intense than any other work. When he describes the inside of the church at Combray, when he bathes in the colours of the famous hawthorn flowers, when he ceaselessly agonizes over Gilberte, questioning himself and his motives, questioning her and her motives, pondering over strategies to win her, when he describes his room at the hotel in Balbec, everything, everything is seen with a preternatural attention to detail, to associations, to images called up in his mind.

And I have this theory that reading Proust is akin to meditation. Those infamous sentences that require multiple readings, sometimes, just in order to work out what the subject is in the following subordinate clauses, they demand a certain kind of concentration. No distractions: silence, laptop shut down, mobile switched off. And as you read, you develop a certain rhythm of thought, a deliberate slowing of pace, no skipping or skimming but a mindfulness, a quietening, a letting go of the world around you to find yourself one with the mind of an asthmatic man who lived more than a hundred years ago. And there are those mysterious moments where you feel your mind easing and stretching, new circuitry opening up, new dimensions glimpsed, a feeling of wholeness and integrity that results from a disintegration of self and your own petty concerns, that moment when you move beyond the text and discover new intellectual horizons, expansive, transformative, euphoric.

I wonder if there’s ever been a brain scan of someone on Proust?

1η δημοσίευση Book Press:
https://www.bookpress.gr/siggrafeis/m...

Η τέχνη της ανάδειξης του επουσιώδους

Τι είναι σημαντικό και τι ασήμαντο ως δομικό υλικό σε ένα μυθιστόρημα και εν γένει στην Τέχνη; Πώς στοιχειοθετείται η ιδιαιτερότητα και πώς ορίζεται το μείζον γεγονός; Εφόσον, καταρχάς, αποδεχτούμε πως κάθε έργο τέχνης είναι ένας κόσμος δημιουργηθείς εκ του μηδενός από τον συγγραφέα του, προφανώς εκείνος είναι κι ο μόνος κριτής και ύπατος ρυθμιστής (σίγουρα πάντως όχι η εποχή του ή οι προσδοκίες και οι προτιμήσεις της αφαίρεσης που αποκαλούμε «κοινό»).

Αυτή ακριβώς η διάκριση του ουσιώδους από το επουσιώδες ήταν μία από τις πρώτες σκέψεις που έκανα κατά τη διάρκεια της ανάγνωσης του "Στη σκιά των ανθισμένων κοριτσιών". Συγκεκριμένα, η αναγωγή του –θεωρητικά (και πρακτικά ίσως)– ασήμαντου γεγονότος σε σημαίνον αποτελεί βασικό στοιχείο για την κατανόηση ή/και τη μέθεξη με το πολυπρισματικό αυτό κείμενο.

Η καθημερινότητά μας ως έλλογων όντων βασίζεται σε σημαντικό βαθμό στη διάκριση αυτή (προς όφελος σχεδόν πάντα του «ουσιώδους», όπως κι αν το εννοούμε αυτό). Εντούτοις, αυτό που ισχύει για τη ζωή παύει να ισχύει στην τέχνη. Κάθε φορά που ανοίγουμε ένα βιβλίο άξιο λόγου (και πόσα λόγου αξιότερα από το έργο του Προυστ;) ενδόμυχα αναμένουμε την απόλυτη ανατροπή: τη Διακήρυξη της Ανεξαρτησίας του Ήσσονος, την ανάδειξή του σε Μείζον, το αναποδογύρισμα της κλεψύδρας με τον χρόνο (έννοια-κλειδί εδώ!) να κυλάει προς τα πίσω, με το παρόν να είναι παρελθόν και την ανάμνηση μιας στιγμής (ενός δείπνου, ενός φιλιού, ενός αποχαιρετισμού), να έχει μεγαλύτερη αξία από το όποιο καταγεγραμμένο ιστορικό γεγονός αποκαλυπτικής σημασίας για τα ανθρώπινα. Εκεί όμως κρύβεται και η επαναστατική δύναμη της Τέχνης – όχι στις διακηρύξεις της, όχι στα μηνύματά της, αλλά στον τρόπο που αναδιατάσσει τον λόγο και ρίχνει το φως της στο χθαμαλό, στο χθόνιο και στο κρύφιο, ανάγοντάς το σε αιώνιο, σε ατέρμονο, σε ιδιάζον (έστω και ειδεχθές).

Από λογοτεχνικής πλευράς, και στον 2ο τόμο του μνημειώδους "Αναζητώντας τον χαμένο χρόνο" το σημαντικό και το ασήμαντο συνυφαίνονται, αλλά ταυτόχρονα και τα δύο υποχωρούν και υποκλίνονται στα καταιγιστικά πυρά του χρόνου. Ο δημιουργός «συγκεχυμένα ανασύρει τα λησμονημένα» με τον εμβρυουλκό από το παρελθόν, τα μεταφέρει στο δικό του ατέρμονο παρόν, τα μεταστρέφει και τα παραδίδει στο μέλλον (στους ανδρείους της λογοτεχνικής ηδονής) – ποτέ όμως ως απτή πραγματικότητα, χωρίς πρόθεση ρεαλιστικής απόδοσης ή ιστορικής αλήθειας. Τίποτε δεν προσφέρεται προς εργαλειακή χρήση στο έργο του Προυστ. Καμία γνώση της εποχής, του κοινωνικο-ιστορικού γίγνεσθαι των αρχών του 20ού αιώνα. Αυτό είναι έργο των ιστορικών, όχι όσων πλάθουν τον μύθο.

Αν, σύμφωνα με τον Στεντάλ, «η τέχνη στήνει τον καθρέφτη της απέναντι στο υπάρχον» (σε σκοτεινούς ή φωτεινούς τόνους δεν έχει σημασία), ο Προυστ προχωρά ένα βήμα πιο πέρα και στήνει ένα πλήρες καλειδοσκόπιο. Η ίδια η ερμηνεία της λέξης καλειδοσκόπιο μας προσφέρει ένα ακόμα κλειδί για την κατανόηση αυτού του πυκνού και δυσπρόσιτου κειμένου: «Κάτοπτρα που αντανακλούν το εισερχόμενο φως με τέτοιο τρόπο, ώστε εμφανίζονται συμμετρικές εικόνες από τα μικρά κομμάτια γυαλί». Ο συνθέτης/δημιουργός χωροθετεί και χορογραφεί μικροσκοπικούς καθρέφτες που αντανακλούν, διαθλούν και διαμελίζουν το παρελθόν, συνυφαίνοντάς το κατά βούληση με το παρόν. Ο ίδιος ο συγγραφέας είναι τελικά ένα μέγα πρίσμα και τα πάντα (δηλαδή ο κατά Προυστ κόσμος) φιλτράρονται υπό μορφή σκέψεων και συναισθημάτων, τα οποία μεταφέρονται στο χαρτί.

Το παρόν στο έργο του ιδιοφυούς λογοτέχνη είναι ο τόπος, μια ερημική έκταση, ένας κενός χάρτης που περιμένει να οριοθετηθεί, να εποικισθεί από την τέχνη του, καθώς δεν προϋπάρχει παρά μόνο ως αποκύημα της φαντασίας του. Τα πρόσωπα που το κατοικούν είναι περισσότερο οπτασίες, φασματικές μορφές, που ενσαρκώνονται σύμφωνα με τις λογοτεχνικές ανάγκες του Προυστ, επενδύουν με μουσικό/ποιητικό τρόπο τις σελίδες και στη συνέχεια αποσύρονται διακριτικά στο παρασκήνιο ή χάνονται στη λήθη. Η απώλεια όμως αυτή δεν δημιουργεί αντίστοιχα αισθήματα στον αναγνώστη, καθώς η ταύτιση με ένα μετείκασμα δεν μπορεί παρά να λειτουργεί αποκλειστικά σε αισθητικό επίπεδο. Όπως δηλαδή το επιθυμεί και ο ίδιος ο συγγραφέας, για τον οποίον οι αναμνήσεις και οι άνθρωποι αλληλοπεριχωρούνται, με το πρώτο στοιχείο (της μνήμης) να κυριαρχεί σαφώς απέναντι στο δεύτερο (τα άτομα), καθώς αυτό είναι που προσδίδει λογοτεχνική υπόσταση.

Από την άλλη πλευρά, το παρελθόν παραμένει ο εσαεί Παράδεισος, απολεσθείς μεν, δυνάμει δε ανακτήσιμος μέσω της δημιουργικής ορμής του συγγραφέα που αναπλάθει, αναδομεί, αναδημιουργεί. Το βιωμένο υποκύπτει στη σαγήνη της μνήμης, η οποία καλλωπίζει, λειαίνει, θάλπει. Ακόμα και οι τραυματικές εμπειρίες κλίνουν το γόνυ στην επωδή της ανάμνησης, δηλαδή στη λογοτεχνική ανάπλασή τους, στο αισθητικό ρετουσάρισμα που λειτουργεί ως αυτοάνοσο της πραγματικότητας.

Ο λογοτεχνικός ιμπρεσιονισμός του Προυστ, όπου τα πάντα καταυγάζονται από το αγλαό φως της τέχνης του, αποτελεί εξίσου σημαντικό στοιχείο για την κατανόηση. Οι λέξεις αποτελούν την καταγραφή της εντύπωσης που αφήνει ο χρόνος στον εσώτερο οφθαλμό του καλλιτέχνη, η απόδοση του ενυπάρχοντος, όχι βέβαια η αναπαραστατική ρεαλιστική περιγραφή. Ο καμβάς της δημιουργίας γεμίζει με λεκτικά χρώματα, με φασματικές παραστάσεις, με ονειροφαντασίες, ασυνήθιστες οπτικές γωνίες και έμφαση στο φως.

Ολοκληρώνω το σύντομο αυτό σημείωμα με τα λόγια του δασκάλου Βλαντίμιρ Ναμπόκοφ, ο οποίος στις λαμπρές διαλέξεις του συνόψιζε το "Αναζητώντας τον χαμένο χρόνο" ως εξής: «Το σύνολο του έργου είναι ένα κυνήγι θησαυρού, όπου ο χρόνος είναι ο θησαυρός και το παρελθόν η κρυψώνα του».

https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2019/12/...

“Back in Paris in the May of the following year, how often I was to buy a sprig of apple from a flower-shop, then spend the night hours in the presence of its blossom, which was steeped in the same creamy essence as the frothy dust on the unopened leaf-buds…”- Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

In Part 1 of Volume 2 of “In Search of Lost Time”, we meet the narrator, who is now in his early teens and is in love with Gilberte Swann, and is at the same time infatuated with her mother, Odette Swann. In Part 2, while on vacation to the fictional (?) resort town of Balbec, the narrator spends the majority of his time people-watching because of his poor health. Eventually he falls in love with the titular “Young Girls in Flower”, but in the end chooses one.

I preferred Volume 1 to Volume 2 but I am in no way taking away the brilliance of Proust’s writing. I am now comfortable with his very long sentences and I don’t have to concentrate on them as much as before. I do tend to read his writing a lot slower than my usual speed because I enjoy the language, the imagery and the soothing nature of his descriptions.I enjoyed his introspective musings on love and the process of falling in and out of love. Even if I didn’t quite agree with all his ideas,I could see how his thought process works, and that was fascinating to me. Proust gives us a lot to think about, for example in the following quote:

“But it is difficult for any of us to gauge the scale on which others register our acts and words; for fear of seeing ourselves as over-important, and by magnifying hugely the dimensions to which other people’s memories must stretch if they are to cover a lifetime, we imagine that all the peripheral aspects of our speech and gestures make little imprint on the consciousness of the people we talk to, let alone stay in their memory.”

Con grande entusiasmo prosegue la mia lettura della Recherche. Sin dal primo volume sono entrata in sintonia con la scrittura di Proust, e, da allora, è stato un susseguirsi di meraviglia e stupore di fronte a questa scrittura così coinvolgente e avvolgente, motivo per cui nutrivo grandi aspettative anche su questo secondo volume, aspettative che, pur con qualche rallentamento nella parte centrale del volume, sono state mantenute; ora però, pur avendo il forte desiderio di completare la lettura dei restanti volumi il prima possibile, sento di dover procedere con cautela e di far sedimentare con calma questo libro.

99th book of 2021. Artist for this review is French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).

Vol. 2 is really our introduction to our narrator "Marcel". He has grown up a little from the first volume and is now to be spending his time at a hotel by the sea in Balbec, and finds himself falling in love. I recently read Turgenev's First Love, and this reminded me of a very long and Proustian version of that. Our narrator is young, naive, unsure; it is something we all ourselves recognise. On starting this volume I said about there being far more "plot" than Vol. 1 and that is partly true, there is a little more; but on reaching the end of this 600 page novel, and looking back, I realise that, again, not much actually happened. Instead we remain in the ethereal internal haze of Proust's prose and our narrator's mind. Despite the blurb suggesting that our narrator meets 'the great love of his life', this plot element doesn't come into fruition till about 500 pages into the 600. Before that we have dinner parties, long discussions about certain French families and their reputations, winking memories of Combray from the previous volume, etc.


"Seacoast"—1854-57

My first journey with Proust failed when I took Swann's Way to Paris with me and sat reading it on the Eurostar and wondering what all the fuss was about. I tried again months later and something had, somehow, clicked. Proust isn't "hard" to read, but he requires a great amount of concentration. Last week I was in Cambridge, staying in the university accommodation, and found that I could only absorb about 10 pages at a time, before leaving in the morning for sightseeing, in the evenings, before I inevitably fell asleep, but later in the same week I then went west to stay in a Shepherd's Hut in the middle of the Dorset countryside and found that in those long drowsy afternoons after a walk, I could read a large chunks of it at once by sinking into it. By this point the novel was also making a lovely crinkling/cracking noise as I read it as on the way to the station in Cambridge, in torrential rain, the book got rather soaked through and as it dried it ballooned and warped. So I suppose that like with anything complex, Proust requires attention and patience. Though I enjoyed the narrator becoming a focal point in this volume, the middle section between his dreaming of Gilberte and the end section with his newfound dreaming of Albertine dragged a little at times. Proust makes the long sections about reputation, etiquette, French society, oddly compelling with his dreamy prose but it pales compared to the "Swann in Love" part of the first volume, which centred around love and jealousy, was more engaging for me.


"The Calm Sea"—1869

Recently I've been considering the idea that every novel has a single line or paragraph that can, alone, portray the entire essence of a work. If I had more time and faith in the theory, I would start doing it for every review, choosing a single line or paragraph at the end which sums it all up, so to speak. It is quite a long one for this novel, but for me, this felt like the very glowing heart of the whole volume. For some reason, this speech given by an artist the narrator befriends, feels like something Proust wanted the volume to convey. So I'll end with it, as it was also one of my favourite parts of the whole thing, and it is not often that the mistakes in our lives are celebrated.
n  

"There is no man," he began, "however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. 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 people, the sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement from their schooldays. They may perhaps have nothing to retract from their past lives; they could 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 do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have no been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups—assuming one is a painter—extracted something that transcends them."

n

Neste segundo volume da famosa Recherche de Proust, o tempo continua definitivamente perdido. A forma não está nas coisas, não estará nunca em Proust. Mas no mais impalpável possível. A forma está na brisa de Balbec; no som do guizo do gato que passeia ostensivamente, de forma quase provocadora, na marginal; no cheiro rosado das donzelas proustianas.

Muito pouco se mantém em relação ao primeiro volume. Aqui, temos uma acção claramente dividida. Por um lado, a descoberta do amor puro e radical, do desejo carnal e da posse almejada, com que o narrador se depara no início do livro. Um amor acirrado e incontrolável, uma primeira paixão arrebatada por Gilberte, filha do Sr. Swann, tão explorado no primeiro volume. Por outro, a viagem para Balbec de Marcel com a avó, em que a paixão se desvanece e a admiração pueril (embora não desinteressada) de outras banhistas toma o papel central da narrativa.

Pelo meio, vamos sendo introduzidos a personagens da alta sociedade parisiense, também eles turistas, por esta altura, em Balbec, tão desinteressantes quanto o estatuto social lhes permitia.

A escrita de Proust é genial e não encontra comparação no estilo. No entanto, este volume perde para o primeiro em acontecimentos e interesse genuíno. As descrições são mais que muitas, ostensivas até em alguns pontos. A narrativa é lenta no conteúdo e irregular na forma, com picos de acção claramente desacompanhados no livro como um todo.

Ainda assim, a classificação é claramente a máxima. Pela genialidade de Proust, pela deliciosa forma e pelo conteúdo interessante ainda que lento e por vezes desnecessário.

در سایه‌ی دوشیزگان شکوفا از دو بخش تشکیل شده است و از نظر من تماما داستان بلوغ است، کشاکش دست به یقه شدن با عالم هستی و انسان‌ها و تلاش برای درک منظور صحیح و شخصیت‌های واقعی‌شان.
بخش اول قصه‌ی عشق راوی و ژیلبرت سوان است و رفت و آمدهای راوی به خانه‌ی سوان‌ها و اینکه در پایان قصه‌ی این عشق نوزاده‌ی کودکی و بالیده‌ی نوجوانی چگونه خاتمه می‌یابد.
در بخش بعدی راوی سرانجام به سرزمین رویایی خیالپردازی‌‌هایش می‌رسد؛ «بلبک». اما داستان این است که بلبکی که راوی با آن مواجه می‌شود آن سرزمین مه گرفته‌ و زادگاه توفان‌ها و کلیساهای رازآلود و متروک نیست. حتی اگر اندوخته‌ی سفر چند ماهه‌اش آشنایی با دسته‌ی دختران زیبا و وقت‌‌گذرانی و درشکه سواری با مادام دوویلپاریزیس باشد در آخر باز هم حسرت می‌خورد که چرا در این سرزمین دریایی همیشه آفتاب در آسمان بود، آن هم نه آفتابی درخشان و شفاف، بلکه آفتابی مرده.
از سمت دیگر به‌نظر من «در سایه‌ی دوشیزگان شکوفا» گالری شخصیت‌هایی است که پروست آن‌‌ها را آفریده و مجموعه‌ای بی‌نقص از آن‌ها را دورهم جمع کرده و به مخاطب نشان داده است، شخصیت‌هایی که انگار نقطه‌ی صفر وجودی‌شان را قلم مارسل گذاشته و باقی به عهده‌ی خودشان بوده است که در میان سطور کتاب چگونه خود را به نمایش بگذارند.

YouTube kanalımda Marcel Proust'un hayatı, bütün kitapları ve kronolojik okuma sırası hakkında bilgi edinebilirsiniz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5e0i...

HAMDIM, PİŞTİM, PROUSTTUM

"Proustçu evren, parçalar halindeki bir evrendir, parçaları da parçalar halindeki başka evrenleri içerir." Gilles Deleuze

Hepimiz hayatlarımız boyunca aşık olabilmeyi ya da en azından aşk duygusuna sahip olmayı isteriz. Aşk kümesi çizgilerinin düşman rakipler tarafından kıskançlık koçbaşılarıyla aşılmaya çalışıldığı yerde, aşk, dışarıdan maddi bir sur gibi algılanır. Oysaki Mimar Sinan'ın çıraklık, kalfalık ve ustalık eserlerinde ya da tasavvuftaki "hamdım, piştim, yandım" sıralamasında olduğu gibi Marcel Proust 'un da kendisi için belirlediği "boşa harcadığımız zaman, kayıp zaman, ele geçirilen zaman ve yakalanan zaman" şeklinde bir zaman hiyerarşisi vardır. Marcel İhtiyaçlar Hiyerarşisi'nin tepesine ise maddi göstergelerin beyhudeliğinden vazgeçişle birlikte uyanan sanat arayışının, kitap karakterlerini manevileştirdiği noktayla birlikte ulaşılır.

Peki aşk, halihazırda sahipsiz bir çocuk gibi onu sahiplenmemizi mi bekler, yoksa içimizde doğuştan yüklenmiş ve keşfedilip açığa çıkarılmayı bekleyen madeni bir öz müdür?

Berger'ın Görme Biçimleri kitabında belirtildiğine benzer olarak, gözlerimizin bizzat gördüğü henüz maneviyatıyla tanışılmamış maddi görünüşe sahip olmak ve hayalimizdeki aşk çerçevesinin içinde bulunan kadının kendisine sahip olmak arasında ince bir çizgi vardır. Beğendiğimiz bir resmi aldığımızda nasıl ki o resme sahip olmuş gibi bir kibre bürünürsek, beğendiğimiz insanın peşinden koşturup aşk kavramını ona yakıştırdığımızda da o kişiyi ona sahip olma istencimizle doldururuz. Peki aşk ya da kişinin kendi kimliğini, kendi özbilincini inşa edebilmesi geçmişteki boşlukların doldurulmasıyla mı yoksa dolulukların boşaltılmasıyla mı gerçekleşir?

Tezatlıklar noktasında, Kayıp Zamanın İzinde serisinde ön plana çıkan zaman ve mekan sıçramaları, okurunu soğuk bir kış gününde nilüferlerin Marcel Proust kitapları olduğu bir edebiyat nehrinde aşk göstergelerinin aldatıcılığı, sosyete göstergelerinin boşluğu ve vasatlığı, duyumsanabilir çevre göstergelerinin maddiyatı arasında sıçrama kararsızlığına büründüren bir kurbağaya döndürür. Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde özelinde ise esas amaç Berma, Albertine, Andree vs. gibi karakterleri geçmişin mimikleriyle bir kil ustasının ilk şeklinden son şeklini verene kadar yoğurduğu bir karakter çalışma tezgahındaki gibi elde edip kenara atmaktansa, bu yoğurulmak için bekleyen silüetlerin salt somutluklarının ardında ne kadar sanatsal içselleştirmelerin yatabileceği potansiyelinin arayışıyla bağıntılıdır.

"Berma'nın bir jesti bir heykelin duruşunu çağrıştırdığı için güzeldir. Aynı şekilde Vinteuil'ün müziği, Boulogne Ormanı'nda bir gezintiyi çağrıştırdığı için güzeldir." (s. 44) Proust ve Göstergeler

Proust Yaşamınızı Nasıl Değiştirebilir eserinde belirtildiği üzere Marcel Proust'un babası olan Adrien Proust'un başarılarını kıskanmasıyla birlikte evrilen yazıp yazmama ikilemleri, Proust'un gençlik dönemlerinde kadınlardan aldığı olumsuz cevapların akabininde gelen varoluşsal edebi sancılar, Proust'un sıkıcı ve faydasız aristokrat arkadaşları, Proust'un aslında edebiyata ve yazmaya o kadar yeteneğinin olmamasından sonra gelen hayal kırıklıkları, acılar ve rahatsızlıklar dizisinin baharlaşmaya başladığı bir üründür Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde. Zaten Kayıp Zamanın İzinde serisi de zaman, mekan ve karakterlerin hayal kırıklıkları dizisi şeklinde örgülenmesiyle birlikte oluşmuş bir zaman yakalama mekanizmasıdır.

Halil Cibran'ın Kum ve Köpük kitabındaki "Şayet kış; "Bahar kalbimdedir benim." deseydi, kim inanırdı kışa?" aforizmasında, kış Proust'un yazamadığı zamanlar, baharlaşmaya başlayan zamanları ise Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde kitabıdır. Zira çiçek açmanın başlaması bize baharı hatırlatır. Gölgesinde dinlenebileceğimiz ağaçların varlığı bize hâlâ bir yerlerde mevsimlerin süregeldiğini hatırlatan yegane kanıtlardır.

Proustçu evreninin içindeki Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde evreni, hayal kırıklıkları dizisinin başlarındaki ilk halkalardan biridir. Bir şehre gittiğimizde üst beklentilerimizin dışında sonuçlarla karşılaştığımızda hayal kırıklığı fidanımıza su vermiş oluruz. Misal, tırtıl, kendisini küçük, hayatı boyunca yürümeye ve ezilmeye mahkum bir canlı olarak görür. Ne zaman ki kendisini kozalaştırır ve kelebeğe dönüşür, işte o zaman uçma yeteneğine kavuşur. Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde kitabı ise Marcel Proust'un kendini edebiyat anlamında küçük görme tırtıllığından, usta bir kelebek yazar olmaya erişmesi için oluşturmaya başladığı bir kozadır. Kozanın adı hayal kırıklıkları, acılar ve rahatsızlıkların insanın manevi özünü bulma arayışıdır.

Onlarca sayfa boyunca bir kız grubunun içinde sanatsal maneviyat potansiyeli yüklenecek kızın arayışı ön plana çıkar Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde kitabında. "Ama daha ayrıntılı, sevgili dostum, çok hızlı gitmeyin." felsefesini savunan Proust'a göre annesiyle mektuplaşmalarında kendi uyku düzenini uzun uzadıya detaylandırması gibi bir yoğunlukta aşk, sosyete, duyumsanabilirlik ve sanat göstergeleri de hayatın anlık akışında detaylanabilir. Bu yüzden Swann'ların Tarafı incelemesinde de dediğim gibi, Kayıp Zamanın İzinde serisinde zamanın sınır nöbetçisi Proust'tur.

Göstergebilim detaylarınca aşkın dostluktan daha çok gösterge içermesi potansiyeli ile Proust'un romanındaki genç kızlara bilinçsizce bir çiçek açtırması arasındaki atom çarpışmaları, romandaki karakterlerin çehrelerinin birlikten çoğullaşmasına ve anıtlarla dolu bir sokağın yandan görünen perspektifini hatırlatırcasına eklektik bir detaya kavuşur. Nitekim, Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde kitabı da bir duygulanımdır ve Swann'ların Tarafı duygulanımındaki maddiliğe ne kadar karşı koyabilirse o kadar hakiki ve manevi kitaplığına ulaşır. Guermantes Tarafı da Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde kitabının duygulanımlarının maddiliğini aşmak için çabalayacaktır. Edebiyat atomunun parçalanma evrelerinin maddilikleri arasında kaybolan okur, en sonunda ortaya devasa bir maneviyat enerjisi açığa çıkarmak için uğraşır.

"Arayış'ın ritmini, yalnızca belleğin katkıları ya da tortuları
değil, süreksiz hayal kırıklığı dizileri ve her dizide bunların aşılması için uygulanan yollar belirler." (s. 34)
Proust ve Göstergeler

Yeterince nesnel bir inceleme yazabildik mi? Proust da böyle olmamı isterdi eminim ki. Serinin karakterlerinin başlangıç koflukları gibi biz de okurlar olarak henüz çıraklar sayılırız. Nesnel bir yorum girişiminde bulunmama rağmen bu inceleme ne kadar hayal kırıklığıyla sonuçlanırsa, ileride yazacak olduğum incelemelerde edineceğim ve geçmişin raptiyelerine yönelteceğim çağrışım kağıtlarım beni mutlaka öznel bir yorum çaresine ulaştıracaktır.

"Her çıraklık çizgisi şu iki andan geçer: Nesnel bir yorum girişiminden kaynaklanan hayal kırıklığı, sonra da çağrışımsal tümeller inşa ettiğimiz öznel bir yorumla bu hayal kırıklığına çare bulma girişimi." (s. 44)
Proust ve Göstergeler

KAYNAKÇA:
Proust ve Göstergeler - Gilles Deleuze
Proust Yaşamınızı Nasıl Değiştirebilir - Alain De Botton
Görme Biçimleri - John Berger
Swann'ların Tarafı - Marcel Proust
http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergile...

“A sabedoria não se transmite, é preciso que a gente mesmo a descubra depois de uma caminhada que ninguém pode fazer em nosso lugar, e que ninguém nos pode evitar, porque a sabedoria é uma maneira de ver as coisas. (p. 430).”

Este é o mote para este segundo volume de “Em busca do tempo perdido”.
Este livro sob o título “Á sombra das raparigas em flor”, está dividido em duas partes: na primeira surge Gilberta, a primeira paixão do nosso frágil narrador, a descoberta dos sentimentos, a deslumbrante e incógnita personagem que está do outro lado, o sexo oposto, a descoberta do pensamento do outro e do seu sentir em relação a nós;
Na segunda parte do livro, o autor/narrador parte para umas férias, desolado, angustiado e mal-amado por Gilberta, conhece umas “amigas” por quem se apaixona. A vida torna a ter os seus encantos: o espreitar as raparigas, o sonhar alto com o (re)encontro, a magia da descoberta da voz, da cor dos olhos, da macieza da pele, do toque, os jogos pueris que se inventam, enfim é o amor que assola o nosso jovem narrador.

Para além de prazeres e amores, o livro também aborda a pintura e a literatura, assim como, faz um retrato dos pseudo-aristocratas da época, que Proust tão bem caracteriza: uns falidos, outros em busca de protagonismo. outros há, que vivem na abundância e na simplicidade.

Relativamente a Marcel Proust, tem uma escrita muito enrolada, demasiado enrolada, em que o enredo se desenrola muito devaaaagaaaaar, as ações demoram imenso a ser contadas para leitoras comuns como eu que aprecia uma boa história, mas sem grandes salamaleques. Ou seja, 517 páginas para contar esta história torna-se aborrecido, porque a ação n��o avança e, entretanto, já me perdi nas palavras, nas frases e tenho de voltar a reencontrar-me.

Não sou entendida em Literatura Portuguesa ou Estrangeira, a minha área são as ciências exactas, como tal, não sei analisar livros/autores, tendenciais ou categorias, apenas leio por prazer, e limito-me a fazer a análise tendo por base, Gosto / Não-Gosto. Procuro nas minhas leituras sentir os personagens, compreender as histórias, colher uma mensagem para o futuro, por isso, apenas deixo a minha simples opinião, de leitora comum, despejada de qualquer sabedoria literária.

Contudo, posso afirmar que gostei da história e criei empatia por Proust, por me sentir dentro da história, na pele do narrador, ou seja, revi-me nos pensamentos do autor, senti-me eu, em busca de um tempo perdido, em que também me senti enamorada.

(Philip Wilson Steer, Young Woman At The Beach)

n  

"A sabedoria não se recebe, todos temos que a descobrir por nós mesmos, depois de um trajecto que ninguém pode fazer por nós, que ninguém nos pode poupar, porque é um ponto de vista sobre as coisas."

n

Virginia Woolf on Proust....

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7013...

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“If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.”

― Marcel Proust

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About two-thirds the way through this book he makes a new friend, Saint-Loup, and sometimes they talk for hours. But afterward Proust would say: "I felt vexed at not spending the time alone"

Solitude is the school of genius...

"Yet, in sacrificing not just the joys of foregathering with the fashionable, but the joys of friendship too, to the pleasure of dallying the whole day in this lovely garden, perhaps I was not ill advised. Those who have the opportunity to live for themselves— they are artists....for them, friendship is a dereliction of that duty, a form of self-abdication. Even conversation, which is friendship’s mode of expression, is a superficial digression, through which we can make no acquisition.

We may converse our whole life away without speaking anything other than the interminable repetitions that fill the vacant minute; but the steps of thought we take during the lonely work of artistic creation all lead us downward, deeper into ourselves, the only direction that is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can advance, albeit with much greater travail, toward an outcome of truth....Those of us whose law of growth is one of purely internal growth, and who cannot escape the impression of boredom inseparable from the presence of a friend, an impression that comes from having to stay at the surface of the self, instead of sounding our depths for the discoveries that await us, can only feel tempted by friendship."

=====================

Proust describes the art of Elstir [Monet], whom he met in Balbec...

The fact was that Elstir’s intent, not to show things as he knew them to be, but in accordance with the optical illusions that our first sight of things is made of, had led him to isolate some of these laws of perspective, which were more striking in his day, art having been first to uncover them. A bend in the course of a river, or the apparent contiguity of the cliffs bounding a bay, seemed to make a lake, completely enclosed, in the middle of the plain or the mountains. In a painting done at Balbec on a stiflingly hot summer’s day, a recess of the coastline, held between walls of pink granite, appeared not to be the sea, which could be seen farther off: the unbrokenness of the ocean was suggested only by seagulls wheeling above what looked like solid stone, but which for them was wind and wave. The same canvas defined other laws, such as the Lilliputian grace of white sails at the foot of the immense cliffs, set on the blue mirror like sleeping butterflies, and certain contrasts between the depth of the shadows and the pallor of the light. This play of shadows, which photography has also spread far and wide, had fascinated Elstir so much that at one point he had enjoyed painting veritable mirages, in which a château topped by a tower looked like a completely circular château with a tower growing out of the roof, and another one, inverted, beneath it, either because the extraordinary purity of a fine day gave the shadow reflected in the water the hardness and glitter of stone, or because morning mists made the stone as insubstantial as shadow.

Similarly, beyond the sea, behind a stretch of woodland, the sea began again, turned pink by the setting sun, but it was the sky. The sunlight, as though inventing new solids, struck the hull of a boat and pushed it back beyond another one lying in the shade; it laid the steps of a crystal staircase across the surface of the morning sea, which, though in fact smooth, was broken by the angle of illumination. A river flowing under the bridges of a city was shown from a point of view that split it, spread it into a lake, narrowed it to a trickle, or blocked it by planting a hill in it, covered with woods, where the city-dwellers like to go for a breath of evening air; and the rhythm of the disrupted city was marked only by the inflexible verticality of the steeples, which did not climb skyward but seemed, rather, like gravity’s plumb line marking the beat in a triumphal march, to have the whole vague mass of houses hanging beneath them, ranged in misty tiers along the crushed and dismembered river. Even that semihuman part of nature, a footpath along a clifftop or on a mountainside (Elstir’s earliest works dating from the period when landscapes had to feature the presence of a character), was affected, like rivers or the ocean, by the eclipses of perspective. And whether a mountain ridge, a haze of spume rising from a waterfall, or the sea prevented one from seeing the road in its entirety, visible to the character but not to us, the little human figure in outdated clothes, lost among this wilderness, often seemed to have stopped in front of an abyss, the route he was following having come to an end; and then, three hundred yards higher up, among the pine woods, we would be touched and reassured to see the reappearance of the thin white line of sandy path, friendly to the wanderer’s tread, the intervening turns and twists of which, disappearing around the gulf or the waterfall, had been hidden from us by a mountainside.

================

More beautiful descriptive writing....

Sunrises are a feature of long train journeys, like hard-boiled eggs, illustrated papers, packs of cards, rivers with boats straining forward but making no progress. As I sifted the thoughts that had been in my mind just a minute before, to see whether or not I had slept (my uncertainty about the matter already inclining me to the affirmative), I glimpsed in the windowpane, above a little black copse, serrated clouds of downy softness in a shade of immutable pink, dead and as seemingly indelible now as the pink inseparable from feathers in a wing, or a pastel dyed by the fancy of the painter. But in this shade I sensed neither inertia nor fancy, only necessity and life. Soon great reserves of light built up behind it. They brightened further, spreading a blush across the sky; and I stared at it through the glass, straining to see it better, as the color of it seemed to be privy to the profoundest secrets of nature. Then the train turned away from it, the railway line having changed direction, the dawn scene framed in the window turned into a village by night, its roofs blue with moonlight, the washhouse smeared with the opal glow of darkness, under a sky still bristling with stars, and I was saddened by the loss of my strip of pink sky, till I caught sight of it again, now reddening, in the window on the other side, from which it disappeared at another bend in the line. And I dodged from one window to the other, trying to reassemble the offset intermittent fragments of my lovely, changeable red morning, so as to see it for once as a single lasting picture.

The landscape became hilly and steep, and the train came to a halt at a little station between two mountains. Through the gorge, beside the swift stream, all one could see was the house of a grade-crossing keeper up to its windowsills in the flowing water. If a person can be the epitome of a place, conveying the charm and tang of its special savor, then this was demonstrated, more so than by the peasant girl I had longed for in the days of my lonely rambles along the Méséglise way, through the Roussainville woods, by the tall girl whom I saw come out of the keeper’s house and start walking toward the station, along a footpath lit by the slanting rays of the sunrise, carrying a crock of milk. In that valley, hidden from the rest of the world by the surrounding heights, the only times she ever saw people would be when a train made its brief halt there. She walked along beside the train cars, pouring out coffee with milk for a few of the passengers who were up and about. Glowing in the glory of the morning, her face was pinker than the sky.

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another writing sample....

On certain days, the Swanns would decide to stay at home all afternoon. So, as we had been so late having lunch, I could watch the sunlight quickly dwindle up the wall of the little garden, drawing with it the end of this day, which earlier had seemed to me destined to be different from other days. And despite the lamps of all shapes and sizes, glowing on their appointed altars all about the room, brought in by the servants and set on sideboards, teapoys, corner shelves, little low tables, as though for the enactment of some mysterious rite, our conversation produced nothing out of the ordinary, and I would go home, taking with me that feeling of having been let down which children often experience after Midnight Mass.

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From Elstir [Monet]....

"There is no such thing,” he said, “as a man, however clever he may be, who has never at some time in his youth uttered words, or even led a life, that he would not prefer to see expunged from memory. He should not find this absolutely a matter for regret, as he cannot be sure he would ever have become as wise as he is, if indeed getting wisdom is a possibility for any of us, had he not traversed all the silly or detestable incarnations that are bound to precede that final one. I know there are young men, sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose tutors, since their earliest high-school years, have taught them every nobility of soul and excellent precept of morality. The lives of such men may contain nothing they would wish to abolish; they may be happy to endorse every word they have ever uttered. But they are the poor in spirit, the effete descendants of doctrinarians, whose only wisdoms are negative and sterile. Wisdom cannot be inherited— one must discover it for oneself, but only after following a course that no one can follow in our stead; no one can spare us that experience, for wisdom is only a point of view on things. The lives of men you admire, attitudes you think are noble, haven’t been laid down by their fathers or their tutors— they were preceded by very different beginnings, and were influenced by whatever surrounded them, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Each of them is the outcome of a struggle, each of them is a victory."

======

Postscript....

The Introduction to Book 2 by James Grieve, who translated this volume, gives credit to Proust, but also very grumpy to the point of making me laugh.

A scholar-reviewer responds....

"He digresses to dissent vehemently from the notion of Proust as a social critic, calling him "a cosseted Parisian whose Right Bank world was narrow, who preferred to live in the past, in bed, in a cork-lined room, who rarely travelled and never did a day's work".

This seems superfluous: moreover, it seems misguided. Proust's social canvas is as great as that of Tolstoy (another cosseted layabout) and dwarfs Proust's much-loved George Eliot. Proust was hardly unworldly: before he took to his cork-lined room he trained as a lawyer, took a degree in literature, was an active supporter of Dreyfus and - more obviously - a much sought-after socialite; his work was the novel which would in time provide work for Grieve himself."