How to start reading Proust?

[dfloyd]

Proust should be read in bed. He is the perfect cure for insomniacs. Just read a couple of pages, and you will fall asleep.

[Red-Headed]

Proust should be read in bed. He is the perfect cure for insomniacs. Just read a couple of pages, and you will fall asleep.

Man, that's just cruel. Didn't Proust spend a lot of time in bed listening to Opera on the telephone?

Anyway, I'm reading 'Guermantes' at the moment...oh oh...

[tscherff]

just read the following exerpt from swann's way---about page 15.
if you can't appreciate the beauty of this passage, you will never appreciate the beauty of proust


"My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which
I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden
dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw,
rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the
keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached the
stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong
the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.
Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to
call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but I knew that
then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made
to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of
peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and
she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the custom
of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting
the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was
already crossing the threshold. And to see her look displeased destroyed
all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a moment before, when she
bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host,
for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of
her real presence, and with it the power to sleep. But those evenings on
which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared
to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come
at all."

[Red-Headed]

just read the following exerpt from swann's way---about page 15.
if you can't appreciate the beauty of this passage, you will never appreciate the beauty of proust


"My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which
I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden
dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw,
rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the
keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached the
stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong
the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.
Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to
call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but I knew that
then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made
to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of
peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and
she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the custom
of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting
the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was
already crossing the threshold. And to see her look displeased destroyed
all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a moment before, when she
bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host,
for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of
her real presence, and with it the power to sleep. But those evenings on
which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared
to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come
at all."

I like the bit at the end of Overture when he writes about the petits madeleines & a cup of tea. After all, who hasn't had a Proustian moment like that at some time in their life? Luckily Proust captured his moment so succinctly & beautifully that we now have an adjective for the very moment of remembering what we were doing once many years ago triggered by eating something like soggy cake & drinking herbal tea.

I believe that they still sell petits madeleines where Proust used to eat his. I know France is geographically quite near (to me anyway) & I have relatives there, but I have never had the urge to eat any cakes when I visit. I'm not too keen on French lager either. Can't they brew a decent bitter?