Moncrieff: 1-12; Grieve: 3-11
by Dennis Abrams
M. de Norpois is invited to dinner. Swann, now that he is married to Odette, is a changed man, “braying out the fact that the wife of an undersecretary’s undersecretary had returned Mme. Swann’s visit.” Professor Cottard is now a successful physician, and one who has changed his nature and adopted an icy demeanor; “cold and taciturn,” except when with the Verdurins. The Marquis de Norpois and his diplomatic career. Men of breeding who lavish their attentions on politicians. “Government mentality.” M. de Norpois befriends and takes an interest in Marcel’s father. Marcel’s mother attempts to admire the ambassdor for her husband’s sake, despite the fact, as the Narrator describes it that “M. de Norpois’s conversation was such a complete catalogue of outmoded speech forms belonging to the style of a particular career, class, and period — a period which, for that career and class, may not have quite ended yet..” Marcel’s parents to make up for his unhappiness at gilberte being gone for the New Year holidays, decide that his grandmother should take him to see the actress La Berma.
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Since most of us are reading (I think) are reading the Moncrieff et al translation of Volume II, I thought I’d share with you excerpts from James Grieve’s introduction to his translation, published by Penguin as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
“This section section of In Search of Lost Time is in two parts: “At Mme Swann’s” and “Place-Names: the Place.” In Proust’s original conception, the book was not split after Swann’s Way. Grasset, his first publisher, required him to make more than one volume of it. Proust transposed some pages from a later passage, to round off what thus became the first major section of the novel as we know it. This is why, at the end of both Swann’s Way, and “At Mme Swann’s,” we find Mme Swann with sunshade in an avenue in or near the Bois de Boulogne. The consecutiveness of the original text remains visible, despite the division of the book: at the beginning of this section of Proust’s work, the narrator is still moving into the vicinity of the Swanns, as he was at the end of Swann’s Way. In “At Mme Swann’s” the narrator continues to be infatuated with Odette and besotted with her daughter, Gilberte. She is the first of the adolescents with whom he dallies here. The others he will meet at the seaside, at Balbec in “Place-Names: The Place.” The cast of Proust’s great and memorable characters is now enriched, especially by the advent of Albertine and (briefly) of Charlus, who will both figure largely in the later volumes, and by Bergotte and Elstir, who completes the trio of artists begun in Swann’s Way with Vinteuil. Proust’s characters are, be it noted, the work of a caricaturist: he gives to each a distinctive voice and mode of speech, most noticeably here Norpois and Charlus…
Largely devoted to the narrator’s attempts to love and be loved by a serious of girls, and to his serious acquaintance with love as a source of pain, this section also expands three other worlds he will explo9re further in later volumes: art, society, and friendship…
Love, art, society, friendship: these are the major realms of experience to be explored by the young protagonist. From the narrator’s encounters with these great engimas and temptations, Proust distills his lengthy mediations, variations on some of the most structural themes of his novel: the disparities bebween cognition and thing, theory and practice, desire and discovery, appearance and truth, imagination and reality. For the narrator is now coming to an awareness of life as a mystery, full of passions that baffle, appearances that conceal, illusions that seem to promise, impressions that tantalize.”
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Wednesday’s Reading: (I thought I’d keep it short because the next natural break would probably have been too long because of people’s schedules and the upcoming holiday. I’ll post again for Christmas Eve, and the next reading I “assign” will take us through the beginning of next week.)
Moncrieff: Page 12 “But it was because M. de Norpois…” through Page 20 “The doors will be closed at two o’clock.”
Grieve: Page 11 “It was because M. de Norpoise…” through Page 17 “The doors will be closed at two o’clock sharp.”
Enjoy.
From the Grieve translation, on Swann’s character refinements:
“…even our virtues are not extraneous, free-floating things which are always at our disposal: in fact, they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions we feel they should accompany that, if we are required to engage in some different activity, it may take us by surprise, so that we never even think that it too may entail the use of those very virtues.”
I don’t know why, but that one just had we thinking all day.
Lagging behind but greatly enjoying the journey. Appreciate your commentary and the comments of those ahead. Thanks!