Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Barr and with me as always is Alex Pretty. How are you Alex? We're doing well David.
When you're in your new home painting away? No, this is not the old home, packing away. Packing away. But soon you're to move into your new house and you'll have a matter of days now and a matter of days for the birth of your new child.
Yeah, a matter of weeks but you know how it is. It could be a couple days too. Yeah, the stork is always surprising us. And speaking of children, we have, well I was going to say something unkind about Greg since he's not here.
Greg's not here. He's hiking somewhere Mount Zion. Is that where he is? Yeah.
A religious pilgrimage? No, you taught that. Not in the Near East. Yeah.
Sin National Park, which is beautiful. I'm actually jealous of him. Yeah, he hiked 21 miles. This is his claim over at Rocky Terrain with a group of Christians.
It's like his own handerberry tails. It's really wonderful. But today I'm so excited. I'll tell a quick story.
We have Alex's beautiful mother, Fresh to Preyoh. How are you today? Fine. Thanks David.
Thanks for joining us. She's a she's modest but a Fresh to us a Proust scholar. So today we're going to be discussing the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, which is Swan's way. We had been patching this theme for the longest time for about a month now to surprise Alex with this episode.
Greg was involved as well. And we had kept it secret. We had been discussing it and how nice it be for the grandchildren later on in life to capture the voice and also video of their grandmother discussing things with her father. And we signed it to Zoom last night to do a trial one.
And unfortunately that alerted Alex. And so he discovered, he discovered our plot. It's a it's I gotta say it's a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand it's lovely to record this and talk with him.
On the other hand, David, you've also hatched the plan that we're going to do all of the Proust, which is 4000 pages. So I got to read all this stuff now. I mean, every snippet because my mom is always writing on it. But yeah, it's only wonderful.
Andics. I got you. I got you. As you're aware.
Yeah. Well, this is all about memory and loss of memory. So I'm sure you'll find teams to identify with it soon. So firstly, can you tell us?
So what's launching into maybe a nice way to start is who was Proust? And then if you could talk a little bit about the creation, I mean, his, his work in general in search of lost time. Yeah. So yeah, I, first of all, thank you for organizing this.
That's really an honor for me. And I'm excited with my son and you. I'm glad that Alex didn't get the shock, you know, get too emotional to have this moment here. But you want all this air.
We should do a little bit of background before you jump into this because I think it's important to say that, you know, my mom has run. This is probably the thing. I think that's the biggest feather in your cap. You don't have a cap, but if you had one, you have a very large feather in it.
And the feather would be you've been running a reading group on Bruce for how long now? Since 2007. And you went through it. And after seven years, right?
You got through the whole thing doing like 30 pages at a time or something. Well, one volume a year, basically. Yeah. And you got through the whole thing.
And then at the end of that, the very next week or the next meeting, you just started over again. And how many times have you read Bruce five times now? No, I have read it four times. And I've listened to the audio book.
That's you know, one of the readings is audio book. So five times, yes. Well, I mean, I, so I think that's really impressive. And I remember you occasionally will host, right?
So with readings, right? Yeah, like a little game to run, right? No, I did. No idea.
Yeah. I have nice nerves and there's music performances and sing out into two of them, as well as readings from it and they're very well attended. And some of the people in your group have been there for the whole time, right? Yes.
Which is now now 15 years. Yes, 15 years. I'll be finishing the last volume in in November. And I plan to start again, generally, with the first volume.
So that's when a lot of people get interested because they get opportunity. It's always on Zoom and it's free. So I was lucky to have the audience sponsor of Greenwich and also the local Greenwich Library, Barham Sugar Library, supporting me and sort of redated it all together. So it has been, you know, very popular in our area.
And now, and because it's on Zoom, a lot of people from other states, four of their places, they joined the group. So I really didn't small pieces. So it's not, I mean, 4000 pages, they don't take tasks. But when you just read it in small bars and people read it in different languages or some French people in the group, but you always discuss it in English.
So it's nice. And every time I read it, I find new things in the book. So that's what makes it exciting. Hopefully you don't find a whole new volume.
But you missed. But and this is the last thing before we jump into it. I just want to say you also written short pieces and you're working on a book, which hopefully whenever that's done, we can have a conversation about that. I've had many conversations with you obviously about it.
And I think it would be a really valuable thing to have a sort of, it'll be a more granular sort of argument, I think about about the book. But I know the book is called In Search of Lost Time, but I've probably done much time already. So I sometimes think in search of lost time, it's a really funny title for such a long work. Well, it's interesting because in French, French, you don't care do in French as a meaning.
It means the last time, which is going back in memory trying to retrieve the memories of past, but also, don't care do means waste the time, which we see in the book, you know, Marcel, I call the narrative more self, he calls himself. So he also wasted a lot of time trying to, you know, attend his a stockarache, societies and gatherings. So there's a lot of both. But that's something that gets lost in translation, because in English, it's just last time.
And I believe, sorry, let's just one thing here. And I believe David, you've written the book called otherwise, do you do what kind of do is? Do you know what kind of do is? Oh, no, I think I've got much for French does basically.
Oh, really? I keep very close to a track. I'm sorry. I've interrupted you.
No, but really clear. So your son understands he understands course in search of last time is the title of, you know, all of the volumes. Right. Yes, each volume has his own name and this time we are discussing so on, so which is the first volume.
So I like to say a little bit about cruise life, a little bit about his style. And then a question I'm often being asked them what translation is the best. So we're going to talk about this before starting with the first volume. So Puss was born on January or in July of 1871 and died in November of 1922.
So last year was 150 years anniversary of his birth and this year, the 100th anniversary of his death. And it's great that the new thinkery is the honor and team by the series of podcasts. Puss's father was Adrien Puss was a physician and became a university professor. He himself published some books on her his brother was a doctor to Robert Puss.
But he was, Adrien Puss was the first one in his family who became a, who became a, the family were grocers. So he was the one who became a, went to university by getting a scholarship. His mother on the other hand, Jan Beil was a prominent and wealthy Jewish family. She loved literature and she was an accomplished pianist.
So even though his mother was Jewish, Puss was raised as a Catholic and he always said like my brother and father and Christian but my mother is Jewish. And he's also known to be homosexual or as he calls it in the book and in God but he himself always denied it. Even as for inviting the door with Jean-Dorraine who was a literary critic, pushing it in over the third but he called him Adrienne or something like that and he they fought the door. But it's, it's suggested that he had a relationship with his driver and Alfred Agassimeli and also with Reynold Dohon a composer.
So he, he portrays his narrator Marcel as a not Jewish and not homosexual. So basically he, the way he wanted himself to be seen because he denied both of those things but he names him Marcel. So, but it's not, it's offhandedly like he doesn't deny it, it doesn't come out at the beginning and say my name is Marcel. You don't find out until thousands of pages later in volume four where he offhandedly says let's assume I have the same Christian name as the author and this is one of the rare cases in literature where the and the narrator refers to the author.
Yeah, I mean, so it's, it's interesting because you see this, a lot of authors like Plato has Socrates, right? And a lot of authors will have their sort of literary foils. But it's interesting when I think about Prusan and Marcel, Wilford of the authors, Prusan and the characters Marcel. I think about it, it reminds me a little bit of Rousseau, right?
David, right? If he writes, for instance, The A Meal, there's a tutor named Jean-Jacques who's never seen any writes a whole book called the dialogues, right? Rousseau, Jean-Jacques or Jean-Jacques. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.
Yeah, and he's a conversation between Rousseau and Jean-Jacques as well. And then also Nietzsche does something similar though it's less obvious where he kind of creates a character out of himself, here in Nietzsche, or first, you know, this turn Nietzsche. So it's interesting, you see this more in late modern thought where people are exploring, I think, different versions of themselves, ideal versions of themselves, and they become their own characters in a way, but sorry, I just thought that was interesting. No, that's interesting.
Actually, that's what the book is, a proof book is about the multifaceted nature of our personality. We present different facets of ourselves to different people. But anyway, it's apart from homosexuality and Jewishness and the name Marcel, there are a lot of other things that they have in common. Marcel was a sickly person since childhood, he was a smart geek, and so is the narrator.
And just to allow you to our audience, actually, is Marcel, he carries on throughout the duration of each volume. In search of last time, are you talking just in Swan's way right now? No, right now, we are going to just cover Swan's way. This is just...
No, no, I meant to correct this. No, no, no, it's all through Marcel's narration. The whole thing. Yeah, I don't want to say...
For listeners, right. Except for one part of which I mentioned later, but it's Marcel, the narrator, Marcel's recollections. So both of them are sickly proves the right of respiratory problems again. But the narrator, Bruce was also a social climber.
So we see that that facet of him in the narrator. Also, I mean, in Swan's way, we learned that the narrator's father wanted him to be a diplomat. And that's what happened to Bruce himself, because David's father was very worried about his career, what he's going to be. It was not a great way to student at school.
But he always knew that he wanted to be an author. But he took some classes in the political science and so on. But anyway, he spent the last years of his life as a hermit in a co-client room and really focused on his writing. And the reason it was co-client, because he...
Drink a lot of wine. Well, he was not really a much of a drinker, but he wanted himself from a noise, like he usually wrote through the night and slept during the day. For the past for the last eight years of his life, he was careful about his posquipers, Elissa Barrett, who was exactly 10 years younger than he came to Paris after marrying Bruce Driver for the first time. And so he took care of Bruce again.
And when he died, she wrote a book called Mosio Post, a very nice book. A quick question. Are you implying that towards the end of his life, he was like, Howard Hughes, he was mentally unwell, or was this was kind of understood that he didn't have much time left and was driven to finish his Yeah, he was very worried about time and not being able to finish. But also you need to remember that it was the Spanish view was something that happened in those years.
And I have searched internet a lot and also his biographies to see if I can find something. There's no mention of it. But I think nowadays when we went into confinement, I think he went into confinement. And then he started writing, focusing really on his work.
And he wrote till basically based on what Celeste Agarit says, until his last days of his life. So the book of the La Vosheres, there are seven volumes. A few of them, I think three of them were published, personally. He has written other books, one of them is John Santoy is an unfinished book, but basically the same story about a young kid with literary ambitions, entering society, but he's in third person.
That's the difference. He has written a book called Country Santoy, or Against Santoy, which he, he rejects the theories of Santoy. He has written a book of poetry, pleasures, and ways. They just found a new manuscript that Gellima published it.
It's called For Yet, for 75 pages. And he also translated books of Ruskin from English, funny because he spoke German, but he didn't speak much English, but his mother helped him. And one of the books he translated, Sesemia and Vivis, is mentioned in La Vosheres. You probably remember David.
But a good biography of Bruce is done by John Yvesadier, he's really excellent. We find a lot about him. That the red cupboard, just over the short work. My father has that book.
Okay, good. I only know the podcast. We'll be able to see you by my mother. That's the first.
The gels of a proof spider. So as for his style, well, he's known as being one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. And but he was mocked during his lifetime by his contemporaries. And he was rejected by publishers, his payments that Andrejida rejected Swan's way when he first came out.
He didn't like the beginning, you know, a kid that's tossing and turning in bed for pages and pages. But that was true. But he later apologized and he admitted that he missed the significance of the book. However, this was true until 1919.
In 1991, the prestigious Kriegenköf, the Gungköf prize for the second volume, Jean Fianfloev, the young girls and flowers. Then he got the recognition and the respect that he deserved. So I'm going back to his style in his book, Confer Saint-Boff, against Saint-Boff. He says that great literature is written in a sort of foreign talk.
So he means for his writing to be a little bit big and, you know, like a puzzle that one has to figure out. What he does, he mixes every day ordinary stories with his deep reflections. So a lot of people wonder is it a novel or is it an essay? And another great post scholar, Antoine Compagnon, has given a series of lectures about whose essay is in College de France.
And he basically discusses, the fact that whose book could be a novel and an essay, of course, is both. But readers are often impressed by the gems of his reflections. So the storyline becomes secondary. But of course, the storyline is important because it's true these stories that we get to discover and add to Marcel.
Because he doesn't, you know, he's completely unknown. He doesn't give any of his physical characteristics. We don't know what he looks like, he's tall, short, blonde, you know, yes. I mean, that probably means he's ugly, if he's not old.
Some oratory. So one thing I want to emphasize, something you said, because I think it's important, is that we have a work of this size. This happens with a lot of Montesquieu is a good example, right? David, where you have this massive work, and people don't know how to put it together.
So they choose particularly dazzling passages or in the case of Montesquieu arguments and ideas. And then when they look at the whole thing, it's kind of diffuse to them. And same thing, but one thing that's come out in our conversations and things you've written is that you do focus much more on Marcel's own development, your own path in psychology, which while very diffuse, especially for social art work, it seems like you'd have to say is really the binding glue of the whole thing, right? If you're not focused on that, you're doomed not to understand the work, right?
Yes. And that's probably something that you missed in the first reading. And so it's a book that needs to be read and reread in order to figure it out. And every time I read it, I find new things in it.
Freshly, really quick, did for our listeners, did Proust conceive of, say, the general outline of each volume, each of the seven volumes, was it conceived initially as a, as this massive project, or did it grow through a creation, you write Swan's way, because you know, it makes sense to second volume, do you know the history? No, I'm not sure really about his process. I know he too, he's caught and pasted all these, you know, different sections together, there was a show at Morgan Library about his, you know, his manuscripts, their pictures of it, it's amazing for, you know, of course they didn't have the word processor like they have today, so he had to do that. And I think Celeste's helped him a lot with that process.
But you know, I'm not sure how he structured it. But he's very complex. Yeah, yeah, I just wonder, it's such an awesome project. I mean, you often see with writers too, it's interesting.
So depending on also how they're making their money. So Dickens famously made his money by serializing his novels in the journals of the day and getting paid, which is what they're so long, and you can remove a few chapters and it doesn't really affect the work. Well, I don't know how he could have structured it because it's going back into time and remembering all your past memories. And that's one of the natures of the book he just escapes back and forth from time, you know, he talks about like at the beginning, he's late, is it a young kid, you know, reading a novel and dreaming or is it an old man reminiscing about his life?
So it's, and it's the nature of our memories. And we can think about one minute about, you know, the case they go by the very kid. And the next moment you remember what you did yesterday and you didn't reject that. So I think the, I'll shut up right up to this.
I promise the beauty of this work, which you the reader senses immediately upon opening Swan's way, certainly within 50 to 100 pages, who's invite you into this tactile world, where you immerse yourself immediately into the surroundings and he takes his time as a writer. And so for I think modern readers, much more sadly accustomed to action right from the beginning, a proof doesn't proceed in that manner. But I think if you take time with him, it's this, it's the minute details of this entire world kind of unfold. And it's a very, it's a very wonderful kind of world to let yourself go in.
So I think it's a good point to transition into, I don't know if you had more prefatory remarks, but maybe transition to Swan's way. Do you want to tell us because that's one of the things you've remarked quite a bit is that in a way, the beginning is kind of alienating because it's you're like, wait, what is all this going on? But when you're reading, you see a lot of significance and these opening images that you find. Yes, yes.
And I'm, you know, I'm going to talk a little bit more before getting to Swan's way, but yes, that's one of the points we're going to address. But anyway, he sees a star is known as the stream of consciousness, which was quite new at the time. Nowadays, there are a lot of books written in that style, but the stream of consciousness, what is this train of thoughts and train of thoughts doesn't come in short sentences. So that's typical of proof, long sentences he has the longest sentence in literature, with a bit more than 900 words in one sentence in one line.
You're serious? In the fourth volume, yes. Yes. And actually the whole book, the whole level shares 50% of it are sentences that are 50 words or longer.
So that's very, The Garistophanes is the longest Greek word, at least. Oh, that's the word. At the end of the assembly women having a feast, it's just one word, it's like a buffet, one word of all the things they're going to eat. I know it's David, you're probably recited by her, but sorry, I'll let you go.
I just say if he was about translations, because some people always ask him that question. But first of all, I think the best way to read it is in French. I was telling David that just as Stephen Breyer, he claims that he learned French by reading proofs. Even years ago, when he was a younger man, he went to Paris to work for an American law firm, and I'm sure he had some knowledge of French, but he claims that he decided to perfect his French by reading proof.
So let him be an example to all of us. But the first there are... The jurisprudence, but in his technique for life. That's right.
So the first translation was done by C.K. Scott Montgrave, which is great. It has been called the Masterpiece by itself. Yes, you have the original one, David.
Modern Library Classic has a set of six books. Two of the volumes in one book is translated by Montgrave Kilmott and devised by Envite. I use that with my proof book. Years ago, Penguin published a totally new translation, but it took seven translators, one for each volume.
I have read the first one, so once I read by Lydia Davis, and it's quite wonderful. William Carter, another proof scholar, he just completely completed. I don't think he's totally finished. I think one or two volumes are still pending, but he completed editing Montgrave's translation, added a lot of annotation, annotations for clarification.
I have my copy in Kindle. Audio book, I mentioned Jason, he's beautiful voice. He's British accent. He reads the book.
That's a good way to read it. But anyway, there is no best way to read it. One just has to read it. It's a real great life experience.
So, Conbré. Conbré is one of my favorite volumes. I mean, I say that about every volume, but it's really so and so it's really nice. It starts with Conbré.
Conbré is the fictional town, which is modeled after a town that was used to be called I is an ordinary French village. It's the house of Tom Pionini. It's there now. It's more the cruise museum.
You see the church, the two roads, the river. So, it's sort of the discover. But reading the book, you imagine this beautiful village, but it's not even more selling the book. It says it's a bit depressing, which is true, but in his imagination, Conbré is quite beautiful.
Conbré is an important place because it's not the first volume starts with Conbré, but also the last volume starts with Conbré. It's about 6% of the total entire book, but it's full of significance. The first 10 pages or so or 10-20 pages seems a bit purposeless. You just don't know where he's getting at.
The first time readers, mostly they abandon. I've talked to people, they say they cannot, they get discouraged because it's 4,000 pages and they think the rest of it is going to be like that. So, they give up. But those who are more determined, they will just go through these initial pages quickly because they're eager to finish the book.
But the first 10-20 pages is full of significance, a lot of symbolic notions that are discussed in this first part. First of all, he starts by saying that he's in bed reading. And then right on the first page, he says, I, myself, seem to actually become the subject of my book, which is interesting because we learn later that he really writes a book about his life, he has literary ambitions. But also, he says something about the fictional nature of one's memories.
By saying that he, writing the first page, he tells us that everything that he says is his own perspective and maybe a little bit made up. He actually says our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. So, what does that mean? The way people see us.
And again, a commentary about the various facets of our personality. These symbolic notions that I talked about at the beginning, of course, many scholars have written about them. There is a huge influence French philosopher who has written a book called Pruss and Science. Alex, you gave me a copy many years ago as a gift.
I love that book. Is that really, you don't remember? There's no, I remember. I like to lose because, let's be honest, after Descartes and you know, maybe Montesquieu and French philosophers are a little bit.
Not as precise as their Germans, but to lose this is really. So, in this book, Pruss and Science, he argues that one's perception is subjective and therefore, his relevance to truth is questionable. Then there is somewhere they get to a wrote a book simply called Pruss is an essay, but he focuses on the concept of habit and habit is again another running theme in the book and he argues how habit could alter reality. But anyway, all through the book, Pruss refers to the concept of novels.
Then at the beginning, he talks about dreams. He talks about dreaming of his great uncle pulling his hair that he used to do when he was a kid and he hides his head in the pillow because he's afraid what he's a grown man. So, and he knows he's dreaming, but that is a commentary about how dreams is a little bit like Descartes, you know, is it dream or is it reality? And when interesting, he begins to novel, correct me if I'm wrong, but he's not fully awake and he's not fully asleep.
So, it's this no man's land prior to waking where you're vaguely, is he's describing the rooms for the circle, everything kind of coalescing, it's easy. So, it's this indeterminate place between a wakefulness and in total sleep where you're unsure of what's real and what's not. But that seems to be a psychologically and extremely fertile place for the young Marcel. Yeah, you're right.
He's age dreaming, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know if I took this as a way as the kind of headspace the reader might need to inhabit as he works through in Search of Lost. Yeah. And he talks about another dream, an erotic dream that is a bit odd, but Greg is not here, fresh to know.
I don't feel really comfortable. Me neither. So, let's let's let's focus on that. At one point in this section, he talks about the moment of waking up, that moment when you wake up and his comments about this very insightful, he talks about regaining memory at that moment, especially if you're in an unfamiliar place.
I mean, it happens to us all the time if you're in a hotel room and you get up in the morning for a few seconds, you don't know where you are, you have to think. And what happens then you regain your memories and you became yourself. So, that is, I think that shows the importance of memories. And here is the one, the first goal that I lost one of you to read.
I just want to, you know, it's a pity Greg's not here because he always tells us stories about waking up in reveals with blood on his hand and usually next time. Yeah. Yeah. Shall I read the first book?
Sure. But for me in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness. But then I lost all sense of the place in which I'd gone to sleep. And when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was.
I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as me lurking flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness. I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave dweller. But then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I lived. And right now, very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not being, from which I could never have escaped by myself.
In a flash, I would traverse in surmount centuries of civilization, and out of a half visualized accession of oil lamps followed by shirts with turned down collars would put together five degrees component parts of my ego. That's really, that's a beautiful quote. It's beautiful. And as I said, it happens to all of us, but it's remarkable how he can articulate it so beautifully.
And you see many instances of same kind of observances about ordinary things that he ought to place beautifully. There are a lot of talks of nature in the whole of Combre, vast passages on Hawthorns, for example. Then there are the cast of characters in the Combre section. Of course, the family, his parents, his grandparents, and his great aunt, and her daughter, Aunt Loni, who has this, you know, she pretends, or maybe she's sickly, but she pretends that she is not interested in the life going on outside of the rooms, but she is still very much interested, observing from her window everything that's happening outside and always having Olegi to come on Sundays, this is the time giving her the gossips of the result.
So everything is described in an anecdotal way, but everything represents something and is mental for something else. Like, you know, through these characters, the proof shows an entirely small common mentality. Major characters in the book are introduced in Combre, a son of the daughter, Gilbert, Charles, and Viciouso Giamon, Madame de Vicha, I see a few artists characters, well, the worst characters in the book, like, forgot,rement, Ventoy, Marcel's friend, Block, his Jewish friend, is also appears in this section, so a lot of those characters, but then there is the thing that he addresses right at the beginning is the case, is longing for his mother's kiss, and every night there is this, you know, commotion about when he gets the kiss, it has to be at the last moment, and then he begs her another time and other time, and she gets upset because she doesn't, she won't seem as he's getting older to get over his fixation with that kiss, but he calls it the theatre and the drama of my going to bed, and he describes how he hears, you know, the sound of her dress against the staircase of whatever going up to his room. These are all set in a witty way, and you know, it's amusing for the reader, but there is a torment going on in the head of the head of the head of the head, and the torment shows itself in the rest of the book because forever he associates love and desire in suffering, and we see examples of it in all the love relationships in the book, himself and Agarthin, we see it between Swan and Odette, between Sun Liu and Rachel, and then Sha'lu Samwe, whether it's the straight love or homosexual, you see all these sufferings associated with the concept of love.
So it's a bit odd because in one volume he compares, I mean, many instances, but one volume I got the quote he compares kissing his girlfriend Agarthin to kissing his mother, he says, I could barely restrain myself from kissing Agarthin, with almost the same kind of pleasure that I should have taken in kissing my mother. So it's a little bit, you know, that's something that needs a lot of... These are just the more, it's the more of the French, which you say. It sounds like Greek mores, more so.
I would have to keep a few things to himself, it sounds like more than a few. But it appears also in the kind of books, like some book that the Grandmother gives him, but anyway, that's the subject of another long discussion. So he's especially anguished in Acts that Swan comes through with it, and because his mother says down, she has a guess and doesn't go upstairs, he gets a kiss, or he sometimes doesn't get a kiss and has to go upstairs to his room. Swan is an old family friend.
His father and Moses grandfather were good friends, he is Jewish, he's wealthy, and even though Swan is younger than the grandfather, one generation younger, he loves coming and visiting the grandfather and they have conversation about, you know, working matters, literature, philosophy. But so Swan, there are a lot of theories about who was the model, they say Charles Hoss or Charles Efruzi, but that's we don't elaborate on that. But Swan is sort of represents one facet of Marshall's personality. Swan had ambitions to write an essay on the mirror, he never accomplishes that.
So he represents, so he is depicted as a failure, because he fell in love with and he didn't focus on his location, which was writing that essay. And so Swan represents the fright that Marshall has in becoming a failure. But there are other characters, like there is Bloc, who is a Jewish friend, and we see that Marshall's grandfather acts on the cemetery, he calms the regime whenever Bloc comes to visit, even though Swan, his friend is Jewish, but he thinks Swan is a different category of Jew than Bloc. And a lot of people say why Pus, his book is so underestimated, but it's not really, he's just making a commentary of the society of the time, that's all people were, and probably that's why he did that, the pick, the narrator has Jewish, because if he were depicted as a Jewish man, then he couldn't make this kind of commentary.
So it gives him sort of a free brain to make comments about the society. It's so interesting, scholars do this, it's a very, I think, ordinary reaction, but people will reject a work if one of the characters is unseemly, or they don't like them, right? They'll, it's almost like they can't, they can't help but view the main character as somebody they ought to identify with, right? That's why I don't like that book that said in New Orleans with the Batman that eats the hot dogs and velocipies.
Forgetting anything with what is it called? You know what I'm talking about? I know exactly what you're talking about. It's a famous novel.
You find it really enjoy. So this goes all the way back, this goes all the way back to Plato. I mean, there's a character in the hippiest minor named Abimantis, and well, he's not a character in the dialogue, but he's the father of one of the characters. And he says, I like the ilead, because I like a kilius, but I don't like to audition because I don't like what this is.
And it's this sort of, you know what I mean? So you, one of the things I think people ask is, well, if Proust is an anti-Semite, why would he put a character like this? Who's trying to show you something about society, or he's contrived as a character as maybe a cautionary character, right? Or showing some of the dynamics that's independent of their own opinion.
People have this initial aversion that they just can't think in that way. And as one of the Jewish characters, he comes to as a very sympathetic kind of person. You end up liking the match. The same with Blogg.
Blogg is one of the people who became, he becomes an author. He comes and accomplished now. So Proust, that shows all the facets that Proust wanted to see himself as. But he says that he, more so the character in the book, says that he has a lot of similarity between him and Swann.
And we see in the last chapter of Swann's way that he comes on his nose. He wants to look like a swan and he wants to be bold like Swann. So he sort of wants to resemble that although, you know, putting on his nose, it hints at Swann's ethnicity, but still it shows that he wants to emulate there. So let me point something out.
This is Marcel, right? He wants to have a bigger nose and to be bold. This further supports my theory that he's very ugly. So I'm thinking maybe he has a very strange hair and maybe a freakish small nose.
You don't have a big nose, but no, he doesn't. You know, fresh that it was really funny. We were on, I don't know, I think John's very late in the evening. And I don't know what we're talking about.
Facial appearances. Alex, you see this nose, David, this is a French regal nose. He's like, he's like, talking about an hour. I remember it's having his whole nose.
Something about my nose is that a larger nose. But he still is. It was an aristocratic nose. Yeah.
And then he starts pulling out all these pictures in black and white. You know, it's special. Yeah. You know, I know where you go.
I look like Caesar. Yeah. Yeah. But first before we get close to the end, I wanted to wrap up your thoughts.
But I was hoping that you could dangle something in front of our listeners to recommend Swan's way to them. I mean, what would you have to say this in a pity statement on why Swan's way is a great book, let's say. How would you articulate it? Well, why is it a great book?
I mean, the whole set of seven volumes are great. Swan's way is a complex section is beautiful. Swan in love is well, it's important. The only part of the book that is in third person, contrary to the rest of the book that is first person.
It talks about the notion of, you know, the bourgeoisie and the vertebrae and the, you know, the meanness. We see some of the meanness in Combre, but it's more organic with vertebrae and it's less natural when they're just, you know, personal vendetta, especially against one, when they're banned from their society. I don't know. It's a, and it's, like I said, there is a storyline, but there is a lot of, you know, things that you can reflect on and you analyze and discover deeper meaning.
And also, Bruce book is known for you see yourself through the book. And that's why yeah, a book group where you can read, masturbate, you know, small pieces and then discuss. You can see other people's view and you constantly discover things through the opinions of other people. Now, I think that's wonderful.
That opening section, you know, you're reminded of the longing as a child you feel for your own mother, even if she wasn't having, you know, nice parties downstairs. But and just I think his sensitivity as a writer is really unparalleled, the way he describes taste and smell. So these are, again, it's this immersive delight that that really doesn't have a good parallel in modern literature. Yeah.
And I think you talked, you've talked about this a lot, but one of the first images, I think this is something you should talk about because I think this is one of the media things. One of the first images right is of this magical lantern. Yes, magic land. I mean, there are a lot that there is Madlan volunteer and evolutionary memory.
There is a caste system that the villagers are so obsessed with. Magic lander really talks about this symbolizes perspective. It's a little bit like the Plato's cave, you know, you see, you see the shadows of these protections, reflections that really hide the truth underneath. There is the two ways, for example, Guillermo say and Swansway.
He thinks they are both been never, they never reach each other. And that symbolizes the two families, the ice-security camp, Guillermo and the other one is Jewish swan. And of course, those families will never, you know, merge. But as we see later, the youth merge at the end and the marriage of Swanswater to Sandu.
So I think it just took back to the magic lander because we should explain what it is for people who haven't read, right? He's in bed as a boy, right? And he has these, sees these shimmering lights and then he's trying to make out the doorknob beneath it. Yes.
But it buys the donut. And he says that's the donut is the most, you know, ordinary thing in the room, but he still can't recognize it because he becomes the image of Godot. He's all this is the image of Godot, which is one of the, you know, not nicer characters in the book. So that's, that's very beautiful section.
Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. And I think that's, that's for the way that you read the book and I want to connect to what you said earlier, that there's full of puzzles about the plot and interesting connections that in a way, with all these pretty passages and glimmering things and some ugly things as well, there's, it's very hard to see just ordinary, the ordinariness of things and the or what, which just physically, you can get little glimpses, right? And I think that's, that's a really nice metaphor that you've teased out well to sort of represent what's going on.
Yeah. I love that metaphor, but he uses other things like the voyeuries and users voyeuries and that's a metaphor, you know, I mean, they find the man, Zilvantoy, who looks like a man, she's a little bit managed and they think that she has a relationship with a relationship with another woman. It discovers why he came to the window and see them in, you know, Amherus embrace. So it proves to him that is so he, it's a commentary about what you have to believe, what you see with your eyes because there is a gossip of her all through the village, but you know, he sees it with his own eyes and that's a little bit odd, these scenes of voyeuries and all through the book.
Then there is the lady in pink, you know, that he meets at Uncle Adolph because he's, has a lot of connection to the world of theater and court designs and so he meets her there and things later on proves that he's so dead and all dead herself, you know, that is mentioned as a courtesan in English translations, well, some of them, but proof never refers to her in the original French as a courtesan. It's all always cuckood, you mean again, which means it's the same thing, prostitute, but cuckood is and has a second, you know, as is a more respectful kind of prostitution because you have to have, you know, some knowledge of literature, music, I don't know, the art of talk and being dressed in a very fashionable nice way and so posters and refer to her as a courtesan, just cuckood or the meme on them. So that's another distinction and there are a lot of different women that they think is the model, some say, Lou Hyman, some assume it was Madame Strass, but Caroline Weber who wrote proof of such a great book, she says that Madame Strass was the model for Duchas de Guemann. So another thing that is constantly in the book is the image of the loved one, like he falls in love with Rebecca at the beginning without even seeing her just because one loves a blog talks to him about her god, who is an author that he reads and he wants to emulate, he wants to become the writer like her god.
And then someone tells him, oh, regard, he is a good friend of my daughter, they go together on excursions to visit the Church of that Church. And so he says, oh, I love Gilbert, he falls in love with Gilbert, he hasn't even seen her. So it's the image that we have of loved ones, the same thing to just to get more. He imagines her, you know, as this image is, he sees in the stained glass of the Church or the tapestries, she is representing aristocracy and that's what he has fired to associate with.
So he falls in love with her, then when he sees her, he's very disappointed because she's like any other woman, but then he concludes all what she represents, not being changed in mind. But that's a commentary about the image of a loved one. So after this one's way, at the end is the place names and we know that names are very processed, some sort of things. The third section is the third section, the last one, who says sort of the fixation of names are two chapters of his books about names.
And you know, one of the characters in two of them, the priest at Conbray and also Breschow, who is a university professor at the Babylon Society. They are both ecomologist and constantly talking about the original worlds and, you know, here in this chapter, he talks about even the names of train stations and that's true names, combated certain image. And so that's where the quote number three comes when he talks about Florence, Balbég and Venice. And he says how the name of these cities brings a certain image in his mind.
Maybe some one of you can read a quote three. Sure. Even in spring, to come in a book upon the name of Balbég, suffice to awaken to me the desire for storms that see and for the Norman Gothic, even on a stormy day, the name of Florence or Venice would awaken the desire for sunshine, for lilies, for the palace of the doge and for Saint-Mariot Del Fiore. Yeah.
So even in a sunny day, Balbég represents a stormy sea. So that's the image is stuck in his mind. So then we see he falls in the first of the city, and he wants to go to Venice or Balbég, but the doctor says he's completely so he ends up going to Champs-Elysée every day. And that's where he meets the jibégé and they became the come playmates.
But that's all his new fixation. He talks about her and the streets he lives in, the constantly with his parents and their baffled. And why do you talk about that street all the time with that building, your nicer buildings in Paris? Is there a particular name of a place long that evokes something like that for you?
I don't know if David is Chipotle. He's filled in with the referee of, you know, guacamole. And Paliac has a lot of... Which transports me to go have a more place.
Yeah, but anything that calls that to mind? I don't think that's right. For me? Yeah.
No, I don't think there is any particular name. What he wants to say is each name brings a certain image. Like I know someone, a young girl, I met, she was, I was talking about this concept of names. And she said it's funny because I went to Paris after my school with my friend, that was a gift for my parents.
And at the airport, there was a group of people tried to adopt them. They took young girls. Oh my god. It's like taking the movie, they're taken.
Who is this? I know it's crazy, but she said every time someone talks about Paris, they talk. So, you know, it's an amazing image. And all I think about this is horrible, you know.
Not being attacked, almost attacked, someone saves her anyway. So that's how it is. I'm not one particular place that I can identify for you, Alex. But anyway, after a real date, I thought I'd get something good.
I thought that was just trying to go fun. It was partially serious. I definitely was thinking, you know. So, on this question of names and what they about, I was going to ask you say, Alex and then Vanessa and the first things that come to mind, besides son and daughter.
My daughter and my son with things that happen to me in life. And of course, after this, this is what I asked. Okay, right. But anyway, okay, then he becomes very obsessed with Madam Swan, follows it all over.
And then bragging, Francois, he goes back years later and doesn't, you know, doesn't find, he says, I start to find them. Those memories again, as I remember them. But it's not the same because it's not the same people, the same place, everything has changed. So this is the I like to go number four, which is the ending of the end of the book.
If one of you can read it. Or I can read it. As a quote for the reality that I had no longer existed, it suffice that Madam Swan did not appear in the same attire and at the same moment for the whole avenue to be altered. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience.
None of them was ever more than a thin slice held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at the time. Remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment in houses, roads, avenues, or as fugitive alas as the years. That's a bummer. But again, you know, his place and time, those are everybody says time is a character in the book, but I think it's space also.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Freshly, this sounds like a nice place to end.
Thank you so much for joining our podcast and for the promise to read the totality of In Search of Lost Time. So our readers can get a jump on the volume. How do you pronounce Gouderman Tasa? What's the next, I can never pronounce.
The next volume? Yeah. Yeah. In the shadow of young girls and flowers.
That's the next volume of the search. The second volume. Yes. That's the one that won the Gunko Prize.
Well, thank you very much. Well, thank you for inviting me. Thank you for you know, coming from the university and looking forward to our next session together. Thank you for coming.
Thank you for making me. Thank you for seeing me. Okay. Bye bye.