Friday Column: Proust

As indicated in an earlier Friday Column, one of the things I wanted to read this year was some of Proust. I am reading the venerable old translation of Swann's Way by C.K. Scott Moncrieff instead of the new one by Lydia Davis mainly because the bookstore had the Moncrieff and not the Davis. However, that said, Ben Marcus in BookForum does make me wish just the least bit that I was reading the Davis. In a review of Davis's new collection of short stories, Marcus quotes her introduction to the Proust:

In a novel and four major collections of stories, Davis has pursued essayistic and philosophical narratives so sculpted, so enamored of logic, and so unnervingly patient that one suspects another estimation she offers of Proust might serve as her own credo: "The shape of the sentence was the shape of the thought, and every word was necessary to the thought."

This makes me interested in Davis both as a writer and as a translator. But, enough of that, for better or worse I have the more embellished translation.

Reading Proust nowadays verges on bandwagoning. I don't think there's another member of the Modernist canon that is so celebrated these days as Remebrance of Things Past. The aforementioned Penguin translations greatly heightened the series' profile, and in addition to those new editions there are numerous recent books either about Proust or about reading him. There are societies devoted to discussing him, webpages full of discussion and analysis, reading groups that endeavor to read it all.

Normally this would make me turn to something a little more neglected, perhaps less loved (The Magic Mountain?), but in the case of Proust I feel like I should read it, even though it's such a trendy thing to do. I'm a lover of big books, and this grandest of the grand has always loomed in my imagination as some great mountain I would eventually enjoy climbing. Moreover, I hear it mentioned so often as a touchstone, that I feel like it is something I can't afford not to know about.

And lastly, Modernism may be my favorite style of literature. I like it largely because it is often described as "difficult"; it's a style of writing in which authors felt free to indulge their desires to write obscure prose, yet unlike Postmodernism (which I feel is too often obscure or indulgent just to be clever or different), I think that in Modernism it is often toward a significant purpose. It is revealing the way a certain consciousness or logic works, and I like the difficult nature of Modernist works because in figuring out how to read them you are extending your mind into this other way of thinking.

All that is to say that I am interested in seeing how Proust attacks the problem of putting the consciousness of his narrator (really himself) onto the page. As I work my way through Swann's Way, and, hopefully, the rest of these novels, I hope to discuss them from time to time on this blog.

Let's get to the book. I've barely penetrated this large first novel--so far I've only read the first chapter, entitled "Overture"--but already I've found much to like. Proust starts with a rather long monologue on the narrator's experiences when falling asleep and waking which strike me as perfectly embodying experiences I've had. For example, on waking up in the nght:

. . . when I awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute than a cave-dweller; but then memory--not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived and might now very possibly be--would come like a rope down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being . . .

Also in this opening description of feelings surrounding the act of sleep, Proust does something that I have seen Nabokov (in Speak, Memory), but not that many other authors, do. He will take a certain motif, for example the feeling of coziness brought on by being in bed, and then he will link together a number of sensory experiences from various points in his life that bear out that motif. At first this can be dizzying, as we jump from one place to another without as much as a period to indicate the jump, but as one gets used to it, it takes on a poetic logic all its own. This is what it feels like to look around dumbfounded on the verge of consciousness. And, I'd risk, this is what it feels like toward the end of one's life as one looks back on the memories of things past.

To me, this beginning section feels like a metaphor for what will come--Proust is going to sift through the memory of his narrator, and it will come to him in fits and starts like it does when one is thrashing around in bed on the verge of consciousness.

In the overture, a simple, but quite tender narrative soon begins to emerge. The narrator, remembering when he was young, discusses his only real memory of like in his family's house (called Combray). This memory is of how he would always long for his mother to kiss him good night. It was the highlight of his evening, something he could not get to sleep without, and his father always was after his mother to stop indulging the narrator in this childishness.

Conflicting with the narrator´s wish was the regular appearance of M. Swann, who would come to sit with the family from time to time. Swann's appearance prevented the narrator's mother from giving him his good night kiss, sending the narrator into untold misery. One night, this all comes to a head, and it is resolved quite authentically, with the father realizing the pain he was bringing to his sone every night. The upshot is that the mother sits with him, giving him his first ever taste of the novels of George Sand. The description of reading a novel for the first time (actually, having it read to him) is wonderful:

The narrative devices designed to arouse curiosity or melt to pity, certian modes of expressions which disturb or sadden the reader, and which, with a little experiece, he may recognise as common to a great many novels, seemed to me--for whom a new book was not one of a number of similar objects but, as it were, a unique person, absolutely self-contained--simply an intoxicating distillation of the peculiar essence of Francois le Champi.

"Overture" closes with the famous scene involving the madeleine. The narrator tells us that the memories of his nightly agonies was all he could remember of Combray, distinguishing those authentic memories from the "intellectual" ones he felt he could not trust. It is only when the narrator tastes the madeleine that suddenly new authentic memories come to him.

This revelation adds another reason to explain why Proust begins the narrative with sleep--perhaps the narrator's musings about the narture of sleep bring him closer to those days as a child, in effect primed him to dip into the story that occupies the bulk of the overture.

The overture ends with Proust hinting that the memory brought on by the madeleine is a very significant one, yet I think that the reader will not know exactly why for quite some time. I think that in hinting this Proust is demonstrating the way memory works; that certain, important memories, lay undiscovered for a long time, and that even when we recover them we may not recognize their importance for quite some time. As I move forward in the second section, "Combray," I'm interested to see what new memories the narrator dredges up and why they take us from the revelation that is almost brought forth by the madeleine.

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Comments

[Sarah]

I have to say, as a former independent bookseller I once avoided books that appeared "trendy," (in part because I was tired of hearing about them every day) but I've come to the realization that avoiding a book--in this case Proust--just because "everyone else is reading it" is just as ridiculous as reading it because it's the thing to do. I believe in reading a book because I want to--end of discussion.

That said, I'm taking all of Proust on this summer. I have wanted to read this for years, and it's time I do. I too read the BookForum review of Davis' work and even though I have the "more embellished" version of Swann's Way on my shelves, I'm going to buy the Davis translation...I can't resist a new translation!

[jon]

I applaud your pluck in the face of such. i bought a second copy of the Moncrieff a few years back with the idea of my wife and reading in tandem, I have since thought that copy in her native Serbian would bolster our success.
I remain elated with the Bolano.
Always a fan -- jon faith

[Keith]

Thoughtful post as always, Scott. As you're reading Proust, it's worth checking out the work of Andre Aciman, a Proustian scholar; he has a great essay on Proust in is collection FALSE PAPERS, and is a pretty darned good writer in his own right.

Best,
Keith

[Brian Hadd]

The book continues to change from time period onward, leaving me at least clearly entranced. Davis didn't translate the other books so I think you won out because the Moncrieff is going to be the same from a tone and nuance standpoint.

The Hood Company

[Rodney Welch]

Reading Proust has always been trendy. Finishing him is another story.

[Mike Patrick]

I took on Proust about ten years ago after my dad died. It seemed like a good time to tackle the mother of all reading projects. All in all, I'm better for having done so.

Still, there are stretches, particularly in the middle two (three?) volumes, that are a huge chore to get through. Proust prancing around in Society is nowhere near as compelling as his more 'personal' moments, which are legion, fortunately.

Anyway, good luck. I think the payoff in the last two volumes is HUGE, especially if you've been in love/infatuation and ESPECIALLY if that love/infatuation was unrequitted.

Mike

[Carolina B.]

I started reading Proust this past summer, on the gentle recommendation of a close friend; all to find at the beginning of 'Swann in Love' that apparently Proust is mainstream enough to be featured in film Little Miss Sunshine. That being said, I definitely agree Brian that finishing Proust is a feat that liberates it from that ethos of bandwagon-ing.

I feel more enamored with Proust and his work after reading his early short stories "Days and Pleasures" and also from listening to a podcast from Stanford University French and Italian Department's "Entitled Opinions", where Proust scholar Joshua Landry, talks about how Proust's prose and his investigation of memory, jealousy, love, snobbery, and other themes, really make 'In Search of Time Lost' truly worth reading.

[Carolina B.]

correction: 'Pleasure and Days'

[Ms Baroque]

Hi there - I've just found your fun blog, and this fortuitous post. It must be the Zeitgeist: I've just started reading this as well! I'm reading Lydia Davis, and I think it's well worth getting a copy if only for her long, fascinating and really illuminating translator's introduction.

The prose itself is limpid and elegant, as you'd expect, given her mandate.

And the book itself is blowing me quite away! It's magical: I've been reading for a week with a strange feeling as if this book had been sitting there all this time like a secret, waiting for me to discover it. It's the best description I think I've ever read of what it feels like to be a certain kind of introspective child.

The first section, where he describes the different walks and all the flowers and atmospheres, is amazing. It's structured like poetry, and it's incredibly intense and exciting, considering how little happens. It's like having a dream.

He's reminding me of Henry James, too, which is something I hadn't anticipated. The godchild of the Master.

Thank God, though, I don't feel as if I'm "taking" anything "on," or embarking on a huge "project"... I'm reading for pleasure and illumination, but Proust - exciting and wonderful as he clearly is - will have to fit into all my other reading just as all my other reading has to do.

By the way, I think the advice to just read, and damn fashion, is sound. It is sort of embarrassing in one way to be seen "reading Proust" but I don't care. He's just so great.

[Scott]

Thanks to all for your comments and encouragement. It looks like I'm in good company in my decision to read Proust.

And Rodney, you're right. The starting of it is rather easy, but finishing it isn't nearly so popular. I'll do my best.