Here's a page for us to share passages that caught our attention in this month's reading.
Just send me a quote by email and I'll put it up.
11/27/12
Walden Browne writes with two quotations from the reading:
[1]
Ce que nous nous rappelons de notre conduite reste ignoré de notre
plus proche voisin; ce que nous en avons oublié avoir dit, ou même ce
que nous n’avons jamais dit, va provoquer l’hilarité jusque dans une
autre planète, et l’image que les autres se font de nos faits et
gestes ne ressemble pas plus à celle que nous nous en faisons
nous-même qu’à un dessin quelque décalque raté, où tantôt au trait
noir correspondrait un espace vide, et à un blanc un contour
inexplicable. Il peut du reste arriver que ce qui n’a pas été
transcrit soit quelque trait irréel que nous ne voyons que par
complaisance, et que ce qui nous semble ajouté nous appartienne au
contraire, mais si essentiellement que cela nous échappe. De sorte que
cette étrange épreuve qui nous semble si peu ressemblante a
quelquefois le genre de vérité, peu flatteur certes, mais profond et
utile, d’une photographie par les rayons N. Ce n’est pas une raison
pour que nous nous y reconnaissions. Quelqu’un qui a l’habitude de
sourire dans la glace à sa belle figure et à son beau torse, si on lui
montre leur radiographie aura, devant ce chapelet osseux, indiqué
comme étant une image de lui-même, le même soupçon d’une erreur que le
visiteur d’une exposition qui, devant un portrait de jeune femme, lit
dans le catalogue: «Dromadaire couché». Plus tard, cet écart entre
notre image selon qu’elle est dessinée par nous-même ou par autrui, je
devais m’en rendre compte pour d’autres que moi, vivant béatement au
milieu d’une collection de photographies qu’ils avaient tirées
d’eux-mêmes tandis qu’alentour grimaçaient d’effroyables images,
habituellement invisibles pour eux-mêmes, mais qui les plongeaient
dans la stupeur si un hasard les leur montrait en leur disant: «C’est
vous.»
(http://www.page2007.com/news/proust/0589-j-ai-raconte-bien-auparavant-ma-stupefaction-qu-un-ami-de-mon-pere)
"Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the
‘world,’ from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a
medium the permeability of which is of infinite variation and remains
unknown to ourselves; having learned by experience that some important
utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated (such as those
so enthusiastic speeches which I used at one time to make to all
comers and on every occasion on the subject of Mme Swann) has found
itself, often simply on account of our anxiety, immediately hidden
under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny
word, which we ourselves have forgotten, or else a word never ottered
by us but formed on its course by the imperfect refraction of a
different word, can be transported without ever halting for any
obstacle to infinite distances — in the present instance to the
Princesse de Guermantes — and succeed in diverting at our expense the
banquet of the gods. What we actually recall of our conduct remains
unknown to our nearest neighbour; what we have forgotten that we ever
said, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity even
in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions
and behaviour is no more like that which we form of them ourselves,
than is like an original drawing a spoiled copy in which, at one
point, for a black line, we find an empty gap, and for a blank space
an unaccountable contour. It may be, all the same, that what has not
been transcribed is some non-existent feature which we behold merely
in our purblind self-esteem, and that what seems to us added is indeed
a part of ourselves, but so essential a part as to have escaped our
notice. So that this strange print which seems to us to have so little
resemblance to ourselves bears sometimes the same stamp of truth,
scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and useful, as a photograph
taken by X-rays. Not that that is any reason why we should recognise
ourselves in it. A man who is in the habit of smiling in the glass at
his handsome face and stalwart figure, if you shew him their
radiograph, will have, face to face with that rosary of bones,
labelled as being the image of himself, the same suspicion of error as
the visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of a
girl, reads in his catalogue: “Dromedary resting.” Later on, this
discrepancy between our portraits, according as it was our own hand
that drew them or another, I was to register in the case of others
than myself, living placidly in the midst of a collection of
photographs which they themselves had taken while round about them
grinned frightful faces, invisible to them as a rule, but plunging
them in stupor if an accident were to reveal them with the warning:
“This is you.”
(http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96g/contents.html)
[2]
Certes Robert n’était nullement de ces fils qui, quand ils sont dans
le monde avec leur mère, croient qu’une attitude exaspérée à son égard
doit faire contrepoids aux sourires et aux saluts qu’ils adressent aux
étrangers. Rien n’est plus répandu que cette odieuse vengeance de ceux
qui semblent croire que la grossièreté envers les siens complète tout
naturellement la tenue de cérémonie. Quoi que la pauvre mère dise, son
fils, comme s’il avait été emmené malgré lui et voulait faire payer
cher sa présence, contrebat immédiatement d’une contradiction
ironique, précise, cruelle, l’assertion timidement risquée; la mère se
range aussitôt, sans le désarmer pour cela, à l’opinion de cet être
supérieur qu’elle continuera à vanter à chacun, en son absence, comme
une nature délicieuse, et qui ne lui épargne pourtant aucun de ses
traits les plus acérés.
(http://www.page2007.com/news/proust/0592-brusquement-il-s-arracha-d-aupres-de-sa-mere)
"Certainly Robert was not in the least of the type of son who, when he
goes out with his mother, feels that an attitude of exasperation
towards her ought to balance the smiles and bows which he bestows on
strangers. Nothing is more common than this odious form of vengeance
on the part of those who appear to believe that rudeness to one’s own
family is the natural complement to one’s ceremonial behaviour.
Whatever the wretched mother may say, her son, as though he had been
taken to the house against his will and wished to make her pay dearly
for his presence, refutes immediately, with an ironical, precise,
cruel contradiction, the timidly ventured assertion; the mother at
once conforms, though without thereby disarming him, to the opinion of
this superior being of whom she will continue to boast to everyone,
when he is not present, as having a charming nature, and who all the
same spares her none of his keenest thrusts."
(http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96g/contents.html)
11/22/12
Florence Joliff writes an email that is, I think, in its sensibility, a stealth poem in itself. Here is what I received from her:
Tom,
A few paragraphs that I have noted so far:
-I love the intensity / truth /lucidity of all these pages at the beginning of chap1 [that is, The Guermantes Way... Volume III, Part Two: Chapter One] about sickness and death: and a sentence like:
" peut etre si on faisait le vide en nous et qu on nous laissat supporter la pression de l air ...le poids terrible que rien ne neutraliserait plus."
- I hugely disagree with the following : " le manque d education des gens du peuple ....qu elle eprouve a voir la chair qui souffre": it makes me think that Proust does not have a full good knowledge of ALL social levels, too klicheeic [Is this a word? a typo? I have no idea. Florence? -- Tom]...
- i love the paragraph I read last time which reminds me of the Mont saint michel bay tide mouvements " par un mouvement convulsif, elle rejetait ...par les apports successifs du flux ".
- i love " il remuait encore, bien que peniblement, tandis que ses oeuvres...de son lit des admirateurs nouveaux"
- i love " et j arrivais a me demander ...l art ressemblait au contraire en cela a la science"
- i love " son instinct reproducteur ...qu il avait produit au dehors presque tout ce qu il pensait"
- i love " chez le pretre comme chez l alieniste, il y a toujours quelque chose du juge d instruction"
- I love " quand mes levres la toucherent , les mains de ma grand mere s agiterent ...pas besoin des sens pour cherir"
and i love in the very beginning of the next chapter : "or un changement de temps suffit a recreer le monde et nous meme"...so true ...
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