proust thread

enright's revisions of kilmartin's revisions aren't that big of a deal imo -- those two are trying to abolish howlers and make a style a little more consistent, but hardly changing the book's basic deal in english. i can't read french though so take this w a grain of salt!! -- there's a really good i think lrb article about the changes?

davis is fun to read and wonder about whether her studied affectlessnesslessness is more of a mesh w proust than one had ever realised, but i think it's better to start triangulating what proust is like from the version we had around for decades than to go to the scorched-earth penguin one

Love how often this question comes around (boo on me for noticing).

There are only two translations. try one - then if you don't like try he other one.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n13/christopher-prendergast/english-proust

This is the LRB piece i think (came up randomly on my twitter feed just now).

reminds me of this podcast (feat. Prendergast). don't like Matthew Sweet and Prendergast was know-it-all iirc but worth a listen if you'd like to be annoyed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lpxj2

Why would anyone take a dog to a dentistry exhibition?

dogs love smiling so

These are Parisian dogs though, theirs is a look of raffishness mixed with contempt.

Wasn't this strange?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n14/perry-anderson/different-speeds-same-furies

I liked the fact that it was critical of Proust - something that no one of authority ever is in print. Proust has been untouchable for as long as I can remember. I literally don't remember seeing anyone contemporary ever writing a sentence critical of him.

yeah, it's refreshing I guess to see someone have a go at Proust, but the pro-Powell stuff didn't work for me at all - didn't feel like the close readings were persuasive, just assertions of value/quality. The stuff about specific historicity of A Dance was decent.

Passionate defences of Powell often seem to have this 'I know this milieu/these people' thing hanging behind them - reductive, but I suspect Anderson as Eton + Oxford might feel that acutely.

Tariq Ali a big Powell fan too iirc but I don't know enough about the New Left to come up with an entertaining hypothesis about why Powell should do it for them so.

I agree. I would separate the Proust element (very refreshing) from the Powell element where I don't have the knowledge to judge the claims.

I think I tend to agree that the reading of Powell wasn't terrifically convincing re: his value.

And I think it must be true about knowing Powell's milieu, as a big factor.

Ali seems as self-indulgent a writer as almost any of his generation. His recent LRB interview woeful - rather confirming the recent ILB point about space in the paper being wasted.

I get that Proust (and everyone bar idk Shakespeare, Milton and Dante) needs ppl having a go at and some of the criticisms are decent - but attacking Proust for his focus in on one particular class wasn't exactly mind-blowing. That's reasonable and true but it so doesn't matter. Or that he might be weird on relationships (I need to re-read those bits again)

Its been a while since I've read something that I think its quite good yet also a colossal folly. Just a sinking feeling - if you want to talk Powell up then don't place this albatross around him. Their mode of expression is so different anyway.

I had a lovely summer reading ADTTMOT eleven years ago but only its length is comparable to Proust.

my take (which shd perhaps go on the perry anderson thread we seem not to have started) is that there's an element of a bet here (if only with himself): that PA can punt powell up into the upper-layer blessed euro-criticosphere that he probably does actually belong in

also and more importantly he shd have written a *three*-part piece (=half as long again) comparing proust, powell and robert jordan's the wheel of time

lol, iirc Pound has a small go at Shakespeare and a big go at Milton

I thought PA's criticism of Proust's odd, perhaps distorted approach to sexuality was bold and interesting.

Likewise his argument re: Proust's solipsism and lack of real interest in other minds and people.

I happen not to like Proust, which combines unhappily with the fact that everyone else does, so this critique was a once in a lifetime gift for me.

Mark, would the PA thread be on ILB? I think so.

iirc Harold Bloom and Roger Shattuck have also analyzed the novel's queer-in-every-sense sexuality

Yes. I expect they said it was great.

not really, more like, to use a phrase I loathe, "it is what it is"

I Love Amphibology

xxxxxxxpost pinefox, you are not alone; I read In Search last year and thought it could be even better if half as long, though maybe that's too harsh. But def. appreciated one of the (Penguin Deluxe) translators passing reference to the Guermantes sector of high society as "a desert," although a geographical desert would be more consistently interesting to me than to the narrator. But he's into reading about science, and making his own observations etc., and the strata of society (as well as seeming liked massed figures/materials on diff planes, with individual elements and subsets brought through diff degrees of lighting, also thinking of orchestral and other boilerplate processing, with themes and plants and rocks and birds and things apparent for a while, 'til the cue/factory whistle/office nurse gives the signal---"The only constant in life is change," and so it grinds on); the strata can be of most interest to geologists or their fans though. Of course he's also preceded by Zola, and some of his characters pump each other for hot gossip with "Balzacian reasons" as alibi ho-ho.
He is interested in other minds, and different strata/shadings of class, incl. the nanny from childhood right through the time the narrator does with Albertine in the family apartment, and beyond. And the guy who spends all those aeons with Charlus.

And the way people present themselves re Dreyfus, through the years, ditto re Germany, and technology (at least the influences of automobiles, photography, and cinematic narrative techniques, though the narrator turns up his nose at those last, in passing). But some of this is more a matter of Art Appreciation, giving a nod in thought and typing, than consistently engaging/enjoyable reading. Yes it is what it is, and wideangle-zoom rough patch rigor of the outside-insider autodidact narrator finding his voice may be the author's master plan---although the Penguin Deluxe translators report last second addenda and strikethroughs, notes sometimes garbled or otherwise hard to understand, previous fixes, incl. forgeries--but it all does seem of a piece.

You seem to know it very well, Dow.

As I say, I didn't like it much.

Someone needs to do this with Simon Raven rather than Powell, just for the hell of it.

Pound has a small go at Shakespeare and a big go at Milton

He succeeded in enunciating why Milton was not a viable model for his contemporary poets to emulate, but failed to make a dent in the pleasures Milton presents, once you've accepted his chosen diction. Retrospectively arguing that a poet's diction is bad, because it sounds awkward to contemporary ears and you would never make the same choices he made, for reasons he would not have given the same weight as you do, doesn't cut much ice.

Interesting thread. Half-way through a re-read of The Guermantes Way. Finding the Mark Treharne translation a big improvement on the Scott-Moncrieff/Kilmartin version I read first.

Yeah, Trehane's enjoyable---no clue how it compares with the original, but a good read, like all the Penguin Deluxe volumes. Lydia Davis's version of Swann's Way is amaaazing. She recently came out with a collection of his letters to a troublesome neighbor; excerpts look promising

Maybe I'll try Trehane when I get to volume 3 again. Last week I picked up a used set of the Penguin three-volume Kilmartin editions, and I've started on Within a Budding Grove. I think it captures the feel of the original really well. I was a bit put off by the sample of James Grieve's that I read.

Those Proust letters are OK, nothing amazing. He's too polite, never goes mental.

Finished Part II of the Perry Anderson essay yesterday. The discussion of Powell's politics turned the essay around -- as in it was finally selling Dance to the Music of Time to me and it was simply compelling to see Anderson trying to discuss why this Conservative radical came up with the goods. It just helps that Proust and Powell's politics can't be compared so he was left to mull over Powell's odes to Thatcher.

This was timely in the sense that I have been looking to start a reading project around the English Tory novelist. It did leave with a feeling that if I wanted to read elegant prose by a British reactionary, that out of Powell, Amis (father not son I am not that crazy), Larkin, Waugh, Naipul, Wodehouse (more of a question mark on that last one)...well I would've dipped into something short by all of them but now also actually feeling that I'd like to try a few vols of Dance.. as well. I'll see how that goes.

Fortunately, you can read three volumes of Dance in a week.

I don't think I shared that reaction -- as I probably said before, it seems like a case of PA's perverse attraction to people on the political Right. I couldn't see how he made Powell's politics valuable or appealing.

But I also don't read as much or as fast as xyzzz so I won't be up to reading the novels themselves.

I don't think its so much about making Powell's politics valuable or appealing. I am not sure that was the intention here.

The paradoxical radicalism might be worth delving into. The regret for the past as it was lived, with a lack of nostalgia for it - which does seem to separate him from others. I liked that he felt the world Powell described (unlike Proust's Third Republic) hadn't quite disappeared. Dancing to the time (finding the patterns across a time span), not trying to recapture...its interesting. Whether it'll turn out like that is something to be seen.

xyzzz, if you have the time/inclination I would also recommend the three volumes of Powell's journals published in the late 80s/early 90s. The right-wing politics/Thatcher-love are a bit more naked on the fork here (whereas most volumes of the Dance, superficially at least, are more 'even-handed'), plus you get lots of great book chat, sharp-eyed observation of people known and encountered, and a hilarious (and quite possibly self-aware) subplot of the increasingly tetchy, elderly Powell being harassed and pursued by adoring fans, academics, television producers, tradesmen etc. They're all v good toilet reading (as Hilary Spurling mentions in her biog, Powell himself plastered the lavatory in his home with a gigantic collage).

Thanks Ward, they actually sound really fun!

Any recommendations on good/interesting studies on Proust? In the next few days I plan to end my hiatus from la Recherche and finish it off (I just have Time Regained to go).

After reading Perry Anderson's essay, I'm intrigued by the Malcolm Bowie book, Proust Among the Stars, and Gerard Genette's Narrative Discourse. I've read Beckett's book which is great and which I think I'll re-read.

Ah, should have scrolled upthread and read through before posting...any recs in addition to Benjamin's essay (which I'll also reread) and Deleuze's book?

Roger Shattuck's book is valuable. So is Beckett's slim volume.

The Malcolm Bowie study is really good. Its a very intense, rigorous study that becomes a really great work in its own right.

I just started digging into Proust secondary lit this year, but a few things have stood out. Definitely Malcolm Bowie's book, which read to me almost like poetry criticism in its minute attention to particular sentences and patterns of imagery. I also really liked Edmund Wilson's chapter in Axel's Castle.

I read a philosophical study by Joshua Landy, Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust. I found some parts much more engaging than others, but worthwhile. If you're also interested in Kant's aesthetics, there's a great essay by Richard Moran comparing Kant and Proust.

Honestly, so far I've probably gotten the most enjoyment out of biographical studies. George Painter's two-part biography is great and seems to be the standard English biography. I'm in the middle of Caroline Weber's Proust's Duchess, which isn't primarily about Proust although he's all over the book. It's about three women who became social celebrities in the salon culture, and who gave Proust lots of material for the Faubourg set. I don't think one would need to be a big Proust fan to get into this book.

René Girard's Deceit, Desire, and the Novel is supposed to be a classic, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I want to have read Stendhal first.

NYRB has this coming out in November, and it sounds interesting. I've just been reading about Czapski in Bloodlands.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/jozef-czapski/products/lost-time

Anything by Michael Wood, who adores Proust, is great. Almost enough to interest me in Proust.

LRB archive:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/search?q=michael+wood+proust

Cool, thanks all for the recommendations. I'll make a point of looking out for the Bowie when I finish and will keep an eye out for the others.

Also, thanks for sharing that about the upcoming Czapski translation, I'd never heard of it but it sounds v compelling.

Really enjoying Time Regained so far and especially the way - despite Anderson's reading of Proust, though it is fair for the preceding vols - history really enters into the novel and really broadens the narrative. I haven't read much about Paris itself (or anything (?) that had been set in the city) during WWI, so it's also doubly interesting to me from that point of view.

That and, of course, all of the Charlus.

To add to the pile. Looks intriguing, would pick up if I saw it cheap:

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/lost-time

Malcolm Bowie has a nice way of putting things.

A diction of this kind, especially when it is combined with a literary syntax that seems to offer a working model of speculative thought, has an optimistic underlying message for the reader. Proust's writing – the fantastication of it, the fine-spun texture of it, the power, pace and precipience of it – is a song of intellectual gladness and an unwearying tribute to the music of comedy. If there were no stubborn philosophical problems in the world, and no war, famine, disease or torture in it either, all thinking might resemble a gracious and disinterested Proustian paragraph. In the present sorry state of the world we may find ourselves returning to Proust for a new sense of mental largeness and potentiality. From within our dull, platitudinous everyday language, we may go back to Proust, as if to a great poet, to be reminded of the wonders that such language, under pressure, can still perform. Proust’s novel is a three-thousand page incantation, an insolently protracted exercise in word-magic, a tonic, a restorative for any reader who has gone tired and listless under a late twentieth-century tide of verbal waste-matter. Perhaps Proust really is Europe’s last great writer, as some of his slogan-prone enthusiasts have claimed.

Yet Proust’s novel has another, less encouraging, story in it. Seeking to localise this, we might be tempted to say, in the words of Shakespeare’s Troilus, that the narrator’s ‘desire is boundless but his act a slave to limit’, and there would be evidence for this view. Proust’s protagonist, for all his wishfulness, seems to have limited energy and willpower, and an ailing sense of purpose. In the course of a very long tale told about himself, he does not do very much. In society, he is immobilised by the spectacle of other people’s busy posturings. In the inner realm, he sees bright futures ahead of him, but often sinks back into an anxious torpor at the very moment when decisive action is required to actualise any of those possible worlds. He havers. He maunders. He drugs himself with retrospection. Surely the narrator’s vision of a boundless, endlessly self-transforming landscape of personal experience is a compensatory fantasy of precisely the kind that one would expect from someone who spent too long lazing indoors, refusing to pull himself together and seize the day.

Well, yes. This is partly right. Proust’s narrator is a comic creation, and he belongs, with Goncharov’s Oblamov (1859), a variety of Chekhovian males, the hero of Svevo’s As a Man Grows Older (1898) and Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952), to the company of those who, while seeming merely indolent and indecisive to the impatient observer, are withheld from action by what the connoisseur will recognise as an admirable reticence and pudeur. A la recherche du temps perdu is a comedy of hypertrophied appetites and shrunken deeds. But Proust is a tragedian, too, and the tragic vision that his novel sets forth is one in which desire is a slave to limit. Desire in Proust teases us with the promise of an unceasing plasticity, but underneath the changing array of its objects it is all the while subject to fixation. Early configurations of sexual feeling continue to haunt adult experience. Phobias, obsessions and fetishes keep turning the narrator’s prospective, forward-flung imaginings back towards the needs, the injuries and the blighted pleasures of infancy. Desire keeps on repeating itself. It nags and needles, and will not let the past go. And Proust’s lengthy book, even while it glitters with fantasy and invention, insists upon this bounded and fixated quality: a desolate pattern of recurrence, a sense of pre-ordained pain and dissatisfaction, governs the procession of its narrative episodes. All love affairs fail, and fail in the same way. All journeys end in disappointment. All satisfactions are too little and too late. Death picks off the narrator’s admired mentors one by one, rekindling and reinforcing his childhood feelings of abandonment.

New multi-translator effort here:

I am so happy to announce that I will be translating Vol. II of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu for the lovely folks at Oxford University Press! It is a dream come true -- there's nothing more fulfilling than translating Proust ❤ @OxUniPress

— Charlotte Mandell (@avecsesdoigts) October 19, 2020

The version I've been reading is from Yale University Press, "the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation edited and annotated by William C. Carter". The first three volumes have been published so far, and I am going to tackle the third sometime this winter. I found the annotations particularly helpful, since I have no idea who most of the painters, authors, actors and politicians mentioned in the text are.

oh cool, let 'em come down---was already gonna mention one reason that the manuscripts incl. catnip for translators: Davis and/or someone else in the series mentions somewhere re not only did Proust, like Balzac, keep trying to get changes in past the last minute, scribbling all over galleys etc., but discoveries have gradually accrued, some of them within each other, such as early editors etc., such as the author's brother Robert, tried to clarify, at times by nonprofessional means, and then there was the concerned citizen known to some as "Proust's Widow," who took it upon himself to re-write or maybe just write, in the manner of (what Marcel in Heaven might see and bless in *these* words after all) at least one passage, dunno exactly; I'll have to get the books out of storage.
The other thing I came here to say:
Thee other thing on my mind and in my headphones right now, is Willner's Bolan tribute, which for the first time has me struck by how B.'s words might seem too careless at first, but he always gets around to hitting the mark, as does MP, who can take much longer to do so, or not so longass long (sometimes even in the same sentence). This music lead back here here, as Madame Bowie reminded me.

Change to "led me" (back here)

PS: there's a footnote somewhere in the same series, with the author's marginalia from above: "This is bad writing"--but he didn't change that one!

am i sad enough to try reading this whole thing again? i had to bounce at sodom & gomorrah because i was so tired and also the language in the penguin translation was really clotted (which had not been the case with the previous three translations). unfortunate because it was getting really gay finally. (acknowledging the whole thing up to then is pretty implicitly gay)

It looks like Yale University Press published the final volume of William Carter's annotated edition just a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the volumes published since 2021 are still only in hardcover, so I'm stuck 3/7ths of the way through the book.

I cannot find time to actually read it all, so this is the next best option (there is an argument to be had about whether audiobooks "count as reading" but wherever it's taking place I'll be muting it)

Good recent piece.

https://archive.ph/EpFJs