A question

Mme de Villeparisis preferred, whether because of good breeding, graciousness, genuine modesty or even an unphilosophical cast of mind to explain her familiarity with all the arts by that purely material circumstance, managing to let it appear that she looked on painting, music, literature and philosophy as merely the unavoidable accomplishments of any young girl given an aristocratic upbringing and happening to live in a building famous enough to figure on the list of national monuments. She gave the impression of believing that the only paintings worth anything are the ones you inherit.

So is that the result of sharp observation or a brilliant act of creation?

Swann in Love: the middlebrow's Proust

He shall drink from the stream by the wayside
and therefore he shall lift up his head.

 I assisted at two masses and three baptisms today. I've said vespers (from whence the quote above comes, it's from Psalm 110 if you are interested) and I'm ready to unwind a bit.  I've gotten myself a helping of Tiramisu and some chilled grappa. I will almost certainly regret this later tonight but I feel like I owe it to Proust.

Let me give you some irresponsible advice. Advice that right-thinking people everywhere will deplore. My advice to those daunted by Proust is don't read the whole thing. Read just one small part of it. I'd go even further and say, listen to an audiobook of that one part. And don't ever feel obliged to read another page of Proust beyond that unless you really want to.

Not just any part mind you.

For years there used to be a little novel called Swann in Love by Marcel Proust (en Francais: Un amour de Swann) on the shelves at the bookstore and at the public library. If you tripped across it, as I did some thirty years ago now, you would think that this must be some shorter work that Proust wrote before launching into his epic novel. In fact, it is the second of three large sections that make up the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu.

This little book was sold back in the day when being a middlebrow was still an acceptable thing. Nowadays, few openly admit to being a middlebrow. Many are in secret but that is another matter.

In any case, the little volume that is Swann in Love works very well as a stand alone book. Read it and you will have read enough to handle most cocktail chatter about Proust. In fact, you will notice, if you look about, that an awful lot of the critical commentary about Proust deals with this relatively small selection of the masterwork. (No one admits this but you can, and many do, read the thing by skipping over large sections of the novel. I'll probably suggest some options, a cheater's Proust as it were, as I blog along.)

Besides being a good standalone, Swann in Love also consists of a great little story that is easy to get hooked into, which not true of a lot of the rest of Proust. This selection is about love, obsession, sexual infidelity, girls having sex with other girls and lots of other great stuff.

By the way, I'd go even further and say, don't read but listen to it. There is a great little audiobook read by Sir Ralph Richardson of Swann in Love.  Unavailable for many years, it can now be purchased from iTunes. One of the really difficult things about Proust is "getting" his sentences. They often ramble on for most of a page with introductory clauses and long, long parenthetical clauses. Sometimes you have to stop dead and go back over a sentence several times to figure out what it is about. Sir Ralph reads the sentences so well you don't have any trouble understanding them, making it much easier to follow the action.

If you want to read Swann in Love, you may not have much luck finding it anymore. It has been a victim of the war on middlebrowism. Not to worry, simply buy or borrow the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu. It's usually called Swann's Way in English. Then read just the middle section, helpfully called "Swann in Love". If it catches your interest, you can go back and reread from the beginning.

By the way, there is no shame in having only a single volume of the Novel on your shelf. If anyone asks, tell them that you are saving the rest for your retirement.

Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene

The date on this is a cheat. I started thinking of this blog on the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene and then got around to creating it some days later. Somehow, however, publishing in the past seems entirely appropriate for a Proust lover.

Saint Mary Magdalene is also entirely appropriate for the name "Madeleine" is a name derived from hers. "Magdalene" means either "from Magdala" or, less likely, "curling women's hair". The second theory goes better with the story that Mary was a reformed whore. These days scholars like to cast doubt on that story but I'm rather fond of it, not because I like to think ill of Saint Mary Magdalene but because I like very much the idea of redemption. For Jesus chose Mary as the very first person to appear to after his resurrection, and because nothing Jesus did was done by accident, it seems to me that w as a very powerful way of reminding us that he really came for sinners and not anyone who thinks themselves good enough as they are.

My inspiration for this blog is rather esoteric little site called Proust Said That. This site is, sadly, no longer operative. If I understand the sad story correctly, the owner of the site, one P Segal, is a Proust fan and a chef. A friend of hers asked her to help him for a "Proust support group" so that this group could help him finally finish À la recherche du temps perdu. (Literally that is "In Search of Lost Time", but translation of Proust, and particularly his titles, is a complex subject I may return to).

The group expanded and pretty soon they were having parties, baking Madeleine's and publishing an electronic fanzine called Proust Said That. 

This is conjecture but I think the sad history goes something like this. Ms. Segal also opened a restaurant called the Café Proust. Starting any business is a high risk activity and there is no shame, although there is much sadness, in failure. The Café went under in the slow down that occurred in the wake of 9/11. That is oddly appropriate for I cannot help but think that if Proust were still alive and still adding volumes to his great work, that he would handle and event such as 9/11 on a small canvas, perhaps talking about a Café.

In any event, when the Café was lost, I believe P Segal also lost the rights to Proust Said That. I don't know that for sure. It's conjecture. (P Segal has a blog and you can read more about her here.)

Over the years, I found that I miss reading Proust Said That. It seems to me that there is a place for a blog that approaches Proust and enthusiasms he inspires not in a scholarly or even serious way but with pure amateurism, which is to say, with love. So that is what I will do.

I'm not going to post terribly often. I will post at least once a week. The posts will all be dated Saturday but I will  probably (almost certainly) cheat. The idea is not that anyone would follow this blog but rather that the stuff will just be there waiting for Google to find it.

All the posts will be related to Proust in a  way that I find satisfactory just as, for example, Mary Magdalene is related to Proust. Perhaps you can't see why that connection is so obvious and natural to me? What I find satisfactory, you may not.