If you're like me, you've always been intimidated by the thought of reading Proust, and he can certainly write some complicated sentences (I think one of his sentences took up three pages on my Kindle.) but he is addictive. After finishing the first volume, I read some little fluffy thing that I finished in a couple of days, and then, when I started thinking what I wanted to read next, I realized I didn't want anything so much as more Proust. I won't wait very long before taking up volume three.
There are lots of translations available. I'm reading the Modern Library series of books. Apropos of not much, when I was in school, these books were always referred to collectively as Remembrance of Things Past, which baffles me. My French is non-existent, but even I can see that the correct translation is the one being used now.
All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.
In the words of a fine Arab proverb, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on!"
Victory is on the side that can hold out a quarter of an hour longer than the other, as the Japanese say.
We live in expectancy, constantly on the alert; the mother whose son has gone to sea on some perilous voyage of discovery sees him in imagination every moment, long after the fact of his having perished has been established, striding into the room, saved by a miracle and in the best of health. And this expectancy, according to the strength of her memory and the resistance of her bodily organ, either helps her on her journey through the years, at the end of which she will be able to endure the knowledge that her son is no more, to forget gradually and to survive his loss--or else it kills her.
When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in arranging for tomorrow's rendezvous.
....hills of a harsh green and a disagreeable shape, like that of the sofa in one's bedroom in an hotel at which one has just arrived...
They gave to this room with its lofty ceiling a quasi-historical character which might have made it a suitable place for the assassination of the Duc de Guise, and afterwards for parties of tourists personally conducted by one of Thomas Cook's guides, but for me to sleep in--no.
...the international phenomenon of the "de luxe" hotel, having taken root at Balbec, had blossomed there in material luxery rather than in food that was fit to eat...
...a man with a receding forehead and eyes that dodged between the blinkers of his prejudices and his upbringing...
...a striking contrast to the the sort of people one usually saw at Balbec, whom she condemned as impossible to know so long as she did not know them.
...like those expressive themes invented by musicians of genius which paint in splendid colours the glow of fire, the rush of water, the peace of fields and woods, to audiences who, having glanced through the programme in advance, have their imaginations trained in the right direction.
....meals that my grandmother...described as "of a sumptuousness to make you die of hunger."
Hence, for Francoise, Mme de Villeparisis had to make amends for being noble. But (in France, at any rate) that is precisely the talent, in fact the sole occupation of the aristocracy.
I felt that it was unreasonable to forfeit, for a purely conventional scruple, my share of happiness in what may very well be the only life there is...
People weren't so free then with the word 'genius' as they are now, when if you say to a writer that he has talent he takes it as an insult.
...the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants. Often she had seen them born. That's the only way to get really good ones.
...that vague respect which one has for the rights of other people, even if they do not know one's aunt, in accordance with which I did not behave in quite the same way towards an old lady as towards a gas lamp.
The hard and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from our complete ignorance of life.
In fact, all the famous people M. Bloch claimed to know he knew only "without actually knowing them..."
....a world where assurance, far from being tempered by ignorance and inaccuracy, is increased thereby.
5 comments:
Remember my comment about "lost" posts, this was one of them. And, yes, I supposed it was operator error, but wanted you to know that I was at least attempting something.
What I wanted to say before was my amusement at this quote: "In fact, all the famous people M. Bloch claimed to know he knew only "without actually knowing them..."
The rest were fascinating, I need to muster the energy to read something this good some time. Meanwhile, I am trying to keep up with Danielle Steele.
An erudite friend, who has read all of the Proust volumes and is steeling himself to do it all over again, suggested to me that the overall tone of the books is comic. After he said that, I continued reading with that in mind, and I rather like it.
The trouble with Ms Steele is that she is so damn prolific. I have never Steeled myself to try reading her.
And don't forget shallow.
And don't get the wrong idea, I would read a run of the mill torn-bodice novel before I would read anything from her again.
Of course I suspected shallow but, never having read her....But prolific I remember from my part time job in a book store.
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