Le décor est posé : nous sommes dans ce que Balzac a si souvent raconté, la mesquinerie, l’âpreté au gain des petites gens, les villages où tout se sait. Ce n’est jamais une toile de fond plaisante, et mon expérience de lecture est certainement teintée par le fait que je viens moi-même d’un village vieillissant de l’Ile-de-France qui, pour n’être plus habité par de tous petits exploitants agricoles, n’en a pas moins gardé une culture locale encore fortement influencée par l’ascension petite bourgeoise des XIXe et XXe, par la montre (pas celle au poignet, hein…) et la pesée soigneuse des statuts sociaux. Sur cet arrière-plan un peu glauque, une femme se détache : Thérèse, notre âme forte, qui pressée par ses deux consœurs, va raconter son histoire, d’abord avec une hypocrisie bienséante, puis, aiguillonnée par l’une des deux autres, une commère qui a le goût du scandale, avec une froide franchise qu’on est tenté de prendre pour la “vraie” version de son histoire. L’histoire de Thérèse est exposée en trois grands mouvements : le premier, raconté par elle, la décrit comme une jeune fille ordinaire, qui s’enfuit avec son amoureux pour aller l’épouser ; le second, où la commère prend la main, vire (on y vient) au roman balzacien, où le mari de Thérèse, métamorphosé en aigrefin, profite de la jeune fille et de la bonté d’une famille bourgeoise pour se faire une petite fortune ; le troisième et dernier mouvement, raconté par Thérèse et la commère, se présente comme une révélation : un monstre plus grand que nature se tapissait dans toute cette vilenie ordinaire, en tirait les ficelles, et trompait avec volupté la vigilance ragotarde de toute la communauté.

Il a de petits détails qui m’ont gênée au cours de la lecture ; par exemple, mon “deuxième mouvement”, raconté par la commère, fournit de très nombreux détails que l’opinion générale, si bien renseignée soit elle, ne pourrait connaître (notamment des pensées, des gestes intimes, etc.) ; on ne peut pas décemment leur donner comme excuse l’invention populaire (non que nous ne remplissions pas tous les blancs lorsque nous racontons une histoire, mais un peu plus d’incohérence, de sensationnalisme ou d’hésitation serait nécessaire pour crédibiliser l’hypothèse). La commère a donc des accès d’omniscience, ce qui est franchement embêtant dans une histoire qui démonte les mécanismes de l’opinion villageoise et les extrêmes qui sont nécessaires pour la tromper. Finalement, je crois que ce livre aurait mieux fonctionné pour moi sans l’inutile complication du récit à deux mains, si Giono soit n’avait pas répondu à la question “qui raconte” (narrateur invisible), soit s’il s’était concentré sur un seul narrateur (Thérèse était tout de même la mieux placée…), soit enfin s’il avait laissé la fin de son récit moins structurée, moins affirmative, et redonné à la narration le jeu qui lui manque pour s’accommoder de multiples points de vue. Reste également la question de la motivation du récit (on la comprend chez la commère, mais Thérèse partage soudain des secrets vieux de plusieurs décennies sans que l’on comprenne bien pourquoi).

Il reste néanmoins la très belle écriture de Giono, qui pour être ici moins poétique et bruissante qu’à son ordinaire (ce n’est après tout pas lui qui parle) n’en est pas moins maîtrisée, ni moins pure et sensible sans sombrer dans la sensiblerie. C’est justement parce que s’enfoncer dans le récit est un tel plaisir que les interruptions narratives m’ont ennuyée ; en revanche, elles nous offrent le plaisir de la langue parlée, avec ses mots tout entiers surgis du passé comme le “trimard”, sa saveur crue (“avec un cul du tonnerre de Dieu, neuf dixièmes en crin, comme de juste, mais l’autre dixième incontestablement ce qu’il y avait de plus valable“) et ses subtilités que seul permet un usage un peu relâché (“elle avait perdu les sens” pour une déclaration d’amour, est-ce que ce pluriel/ cette conglutination d’expressions ne sont pas tout simplement géniaux ?). Tiens, peut-être que j’aurais dû tout simplement lire le livre entièrement à voix haute…

Première phrase: “Si on ne croit pas à la prédestination, alors, il faut admettre que les circonstances d’une rencontre, que par facilité nous attribuons au hasard, sont en fait le résultat d’une incalculable suite de décisions, prises à chaque carrefour dans notre vie, et qui nous ont secrètement orientés vers elle.”

Catherine Millet, faut-il le rappeler, à fait scandale (et succès d’édition) avec sa Vie sexuelle de Catherine M., paru en 2001. J’avais bien aimé ce livre, malgré l’effet refroidissant que produisait l’accumulation d’aventures sexuelles ; il me semblait qu’il y avait un sous-texte, une armature formelle que je ne m’étais pas donnée la peine d’identifier, mais qui donnait une certaine qualité esthétique à l’ensemble, comme une sorte de trompe-l’oeil, l’impression que sous l’amas des corps se dessinait une émotion mal racontée et que donc j’étais libre d’imaginer. La sensation de dissociation, de flottement qui se dégageait du texte n’était pas très gaie, mais elle était intéressante.

Cette impression, je l’ai retrouvée avec Jour de souffrance, mais pas intacte. Elle est raffiné dans la première partie, Résumé, qui commence par un si et poursuit sur de longues théories qui semblent intelligentes mais ne vous laissent que fumée dans les mains. Le temps y revient en arrière, s’emboîte, se corrige, de nouveaux motifs apparaissent, se précisent, se délitent. Ces va-et-vient sont passionnants, techniquement admirables, et leurs décalages constants me sont plus intelligibles après le travail réalisé cette année sur la conscience et les motifs du temps et de la mémoire. Cette partie est, à première lecture, à peine compréhensible ; elle produit cependant l’effet libérateur d’une série de questions, d’un amas de photos floues, et constituent la matière du récit.

La suite du roman, en revanche, m’a laissée plus indifférente. Catherine Millet y relate la découverte par son alter ego des aventures de son compagnon et la souffrance masochiste qui l’envahit alors, au mépris de tous ses choix intellectuels de femme libérée, puis le long parcours pour dominer tant que faire se peut cette douleur. La narration, plus classique, se distingue surtout par son écriture d’une précision “blanche” quasi-impitoyable. La tentative d’honnêteté totale est bien sûr vouée à l’échec, dissoute dans l’indicible et l’animal, et cela est accepté. Le regard, cependant, reste d’une dureté glaciale. De plus, récit d’une obsession, l’écriture garde ce caractère hermétique de l’obsession, la faculté d’exclure celui à qui on la raconte, la faculté de se passionner pour “une incalculable suite de” détails sans grand intérêt, l’incapacité de vivre quoi que ce soit qui ne soit lu en relation avec son obsession. Il est fort possible que cela soit voulu : le résultat en est la même lassitude que l’on ressent à écouter quelqu’un ressasser toujours les mêmes idées.

On le voit, il y a matière intellectuelle dans ce livre ; cependant, sans doute suis-je trop “accro” d’une lecture émotionnelle pour m’y trouver tout à fait à l’aise. Je retrouve bien là une de ces immaturités de lectrice qui me rendent le XIXe siècle littéraire tellement plus naturel que les expérimentations formelles plus récentes… Un lecteur plus “adulte” y trouverait probablement mieux son compte que moi sur le plan du plaisir de lecture ! J’ai en revanche tiré un profit tout à fait personnel de la lecture dans le cadre de mon programme d’étude de cette année : la tentative de reconstitution de mouvements psychologiques ancrés dans le corporel, la jalousie, le voyeurisme, le souvenir, le “feuilletage” de l’être, autant de thèmes très proustiens — et d’ailleurs référence explicite est faite à ce cher Marcel.

Il est donc assez amusant que ce qui m’ait le moins intéressée soit le blabla introspectif qui se glisse sournoisement dans le récit — on a tant reproché à Proust d’être psychologisant, et c’est tellement absent de son oeuvre… On voit bien ici pourquoi, car le personnage n’est jamais si distant que lorsqu’il est expliqué, nous privant de toute chance de le comprendre en nos propres termes…

Dernière phrase (dans le Temps, dans le temps !) : “De temps à autre, il m’arrive encore de déplier un papier que Jacques a laissé traîner, — par réflexe.”

(yes, French.  Lazy lazy lazy)

Je l’ai commandé sur la foi d’une citation dans un de ces petits livres scolaires (d’ailleurs bien fait et plein d’humour) qui vous règle en 27 pages le sort de La Recherche, sa genèse, ses personnages, son importance, son contenu et ses thèmes… Je ne me souviens plus s’il était dans la bibliographie “officielle” du cours, mais si c’est le cas, il devait être tout en bas de la liste, dans les “si vous n’avez rien de mieux à faire”…

Et je me régale. J’en ai lu une bonne moitié à date, qui à la fois illumine l’œuvre et y rajoute une profondeur supplémentaire en y retrouvant la part d’obscurité, la part de mystère que sans doute Proust veut cacher derrière son accumulation de détails et de sensations. C’est un peu paradoxal, sans doute, ce que j’écris là ; mais ce petit ouvrage, en pointant vers les grands cycles, les modèles mythiques et la part d’avenir que contient le Temps retrouvé me permet d’y retrouver une respiration qui me faisait défaut, une part de poésie que je n’ai (enfin) pas tant à comprendre qu’à ressentir.

La structure initiatique que souligne C. Robin est évidente, mais son éclairage symbolique (rôle des éléments fondamentaux tels que la terre, le feu et l’eau, renaissance, passage par les pays des limbes et du désespoir,  parade funèbre comme prélude à la renaissance et à la révélation quasi-mystique) est d’une élégance rare. Elle montre que l’inversion folle, presque carnavalesque, des hiérarchies parisiennes à la fin de TR (“ce monde où toutes les valeurs se trouvent renversées“), relève de la dissolution générale des amarres de la réalité, qu’elle préfigure (comme les figures de la mer, de la lune et de la porte, symboles qu’elle relève tout particulièrement) l’épreuve initiatique du narrateur. J’ai pour ma part à cette lecture pensé aux Saturnales (les fêtes de fin d’années où les Romains relâchaient les tensions dans un pseudo-délire d’inversion sociale, fêtes qui seront assimilées à une naissance avec laquelle on nous enquiquine encore chaque année à la fin décembre), à la traversée de l’Achéron ou du fleuve du bout du monde de Gilgamesh ; j’ai pensé, aussi, à une autre évocation du pouvoir d’illusion et de mystère des éléments fluides, celle du critique G. Genette lorsqu’il parle (dans Figures 1) de “l’univers réversible” de l’époque baroque. Elle met ensuite en lumière le parallèle entre Charlus, le bien-né qui se comporte si mal, et Prométhée, en montrant l’association du premier au vol, au feu, à la “race maudite” (d’ailleurs la comparaison est explicitement faite par Proust lorsqu’il évoque Charlus enchainé à un lit). Charlus, nous dit-elle, “garde… le monde intérieur de l’esprit” ; c’est sans doute vrai, mais alors à la manière d’un devin fou, aveugle et délirant.

La descente dans le royaume des Enfers du narrateur est ensuite éclairée d’un relevé d’expressions morbides du “Bal de têtes” qui se produit à la matinée Guermantes, une scène où le narrateur retrouve, vieillis et décatis, la fantastique troupe au complet de La Recherche (classique), mais aussi de ce qui vient avant et qu’on doit au passage ajouté sur la guerre, passage que j’ai eu tant de mal à lire et que j’ai maintenant envie de relire. C. Robin cite à ce propos une phrase de Proust qui, en 1906, comparait ses projets de personnages à “ces ombres qui demandent dans l’Odyssée à Ulysse de leur faire boire un peu de sang pour les mener à la vie” : c’est la position-même où se trouve le narrateur à la fin de La Recherche…

Cette nature cyclique de l’univers proustien fait le sujet, sous le beau terme de constellations comme “[matérialisation] du temps”, de la deuxième partie de l’analyse, qui me plaît presque autant. Elle montre comment Proust brise l’image de la ligne temporelle ( “cette convention qui prétend réduire le temps à une histoire”) non seulement par la figure du cercle, mais encore en y apportant ces notions de mouvements, de densités et de correspondances qu’évoquent la lourde et poussiéreuse structure des amas d’étoiles dérivant dans l’infini où tout peut se croiser. Une originalité par rapport à beaucoup des lectures que j’ai faites jusqu’ici, et qui se concentrent presque toutes sur les rapports entre passé et présent, est que C. Robin insiste sur l’avenir, un avenir qui (en y réfléchissant) est en effet toujours présent dans le livre, que ce soit par le biais de rêves, d’aspirations, de menaces ou bien sous la forme visible des jeunes gens, qu’ils soient de la génération du narrateur, de celles qui le précèdent — Un amour de Swann porte tant de germes de la suite du roman — ou de celles qui le suivent, petits jeunes hommes séduisant Charlus ou fille de Gilberte pour laquelle on fait des projets douteux. “Les extases de mémoires engagent ainsi l’avenir tout entier” résume bien cette liaison faite entre passé et avenir par la solidité du présent et de l’immuable. La progression est aussi mise en avant par le système des “rimes intérieures” (l”expression est de J.Y. Tadié), qui en introduisant “quelque chose qui est à la fois pareil et autre que la rime précédente” (ici, c’est Proust qui parle) montre les évolutions de perspective ; à noter que souvent pour Proust la nouvelle rime s’ajoute à l’ancienne, mais ne la remplace pas.

La troisième partie aborde les “structures synthétiques” du roman, et j’ai hâte de la lire !

En résumé… Une courte lecture critique que je recommande à tous ceux qui ont du mal à apprécier Proust non pour sa complexité, mais pour une certaine impression de minutie qui se trouve pulvérisée ici.

This attempt at a more instinctive manner of communication is, of course, hard to read. We are used to texts being neatly put together, to rational explanation, to synthesis following analysis (or vice-versa, depending on culture). Used to, in short, a modicum of linearity. It is a well known human prejudice that we over-explain, draw conclusions where there is nothing but correlations, and guess correlations at the drop of a hat. Hence astrology, reading in entrails and people thinking they can predict the stock market based on some Fibonacci, pi or moon cycle-based formula.

But I digress.

Simon has a somewhat paradoxical project with La Route des Flandres (itself only a part of a biographical-related series of books). On the one hand, he is recreating a past experience (the trauma of World War II) in a more manageable form; on the other, he is trying to preserve the immediacy of it. To do this, he presents memories not in chronological order, but by way of associations. Here I must make a few side notes:

1. Cheating #1: Simon mentioned around that time the idea that memories present themselves to use not chronologically, but depending on their importance. That would imply sometimes, it seems to me, that you would jump from one thing to another without so much as the tenuous help of objective association. The sheer force of the affect should be justification enough. Simon never does that, though – there’s always some element linking one memory to the next. That’s a very Proustian way to go about things – a clump of related things, a huge nodes of sensations emerging in an otherwise pretty disjointed perception. Simon does indeed admire Proust and refer to him quite a bit.
2. Cheating #2: the book was in fact carefully reconstructed after a period of unstructured writing: Simon wrote a number of fragments which he then color-coded depending on the characters present in each. He organized the fragments to alternate colors – and that’s how the book was born.

This brings to mind the way I will write a dissertation given a limited amount of time: desperately scramble any idea that comes to mind on a piece of paper, then isolate a few themes, color code all rudimentary ideas, and shove them in each theme. Of course I’m doing the opposite of Simon (trying to bring together similar colors instead of trying to weave them through the course of the text); I’m amused to think that my draft paper might look more like his end product that my final dissertation.

Anyway – cheating or not, what Simon does is in fact remarkably successful. There’s a sort of indulgence, a sort of hypnosis that wants to lull you while you read the book, but every time you try to stop and think – the strands of meaning come undone, and you’re left feeling uncertain of where you are, what happened, and what Big Lessons you should take away. That last sentence would certainly make Simon very happy, but of course I’ll have to struggle with this in the context of academic learning. My plan of attack therefore is to start by focusing on the obsessions, the recurring motives of the book: horses, the mud, sexual desire, friends, suicide, etc. These are not really themes, more ornaments (at least at this stage, and in my mind), but we’ll see where they’ll take me.

Pages upon pages, summaries, thoughts, feelings, digressions. I feel like I’m beginning to get it, to understand how it works, but I’m not sure “I’m feeling it”. The magic of Combray — the first part of the first book in the In Search of Lost Time series — is long gone.

I’ve abandoned my excruciatingly slow reading pace for the end of Les jeunes filles (Within a Budding Grove), just so I could enjoy the text more, and as the narrative itself was picking up I had a really good time with it. I feel like I intellectually understand most of what the text is telling me, be it the story or the vision of Art, the importance of writing by one’s own vision, the filtering of reality which is not the weakness but the mark of a true artist; and yet I am still ill at ease.

(My apologies for the discombobulated post; it reflects my state of mind).

La Recherche is written by a narrator (which I’ll call Marcel, though that might be up for debate) largely inspired to Proust by himself — convoluted construction intentional. Proust was however adamant that the narrator was not him, and he indeed constructed Marcel’s life with noticeable divergences from his (and attributed other aspects of him to other characters). What is more, the narrator is telling his life through the prism of memories — something one could forget in the immediacy of the narration, but which obviously (the title says it well) is at the core of the novel. Memories and imaginations are so closely related as to be indistinguishable in Proust’s world… That is yet another caveat against taking the tale at face value.

Against this foggy background, Proust and Marcel both strongly assert that their only goal is to fish for these “deep truths” which reveal reality in the light of the creator’s idiosyncratic vision (careful, I’m reaching into my 50-cent words jar today!)

My problem is, I’m not sure I trust either of them.

For an “anti-intellectual” writer, one who wants to talk from the immediacy of sensations, Proust is incredibly wordy, and so theoretical that a lot of the material for his novel originates in earlier essays (gathered for the most part in the Against Sainte-Beuve collection I read along the novel). That’s the least of my worries: Proust’s interest with homosexuality and Jewish identity, for instance, are unquestionably genuine, but the incoherent ways he talks about them make me wonder whether he is honestly reflecting his inner conflicts or more simply lacks self-awareness in these matters. Another example might be in the romantic obsessions his young hero develops for unreachable girls. Is he depicting some true aspect of his romantic self (with a substitution of a “she” for a “he”, which I would not consider deception in the world of fiction); or is he just reflecting the cover-up lie he used for many years, when he pretended to be madly in love with women he could not have, to dispel any doubts as to his real sexuality?

These are some really big examples, and once these questions breach the trust between reader and writer/ narrator, everything else follows: by the end of his vacation in a chic hotel, was the initially rude lift operator really talkative, or is Marcel rearranging facts to claim one more social victory? Did the nobleman really stare at him unprovoked, or did he do something to attract attention? Did he really miss such train accidentally, or did he never really mean to follow through with his romanesque but unrealistic move? Am I meant to wonder about all this?

I’m hoping further volumes will help, but at that stage I feel like I’m trying to find my way by the moonlight in a beautiful, “Lewis Carollien” maze. I’m still unsure whether I like the feeling or not — but these sure are interesting times.

Most of my reading these days is class-oriented, and it is an interesting experience in and of itself. There’s Proust, which represents an enormous amount of reading and demands close attention: I’ve never really read like this, taking notes, consulting commentaries, reading a novel and its author’s critical writing in parallel, and generally making myself be so deliberate (some would say mechanical!) about it. Some days it’s really hard and brings too much effort between the text and me; other days (like today), it can be really rewarding and glorious, when some deeper understanding, some new connection appears.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

At the beginning of the week, I went through a rough reading patch. Proust tasted dry and pompous. I decided to break my “one book at a time” rule, at first with very short reads. Nice… but unsatisfying. So I went to my TBR pile intending to pick a book at random: I choose Guenassia’s novel out of pique, because with its 750 pages, it was the thickest of the pile and mocking me and my Proust block.

It was of course a little paradoxical, looking for a breather in the longest book available, but Le Club turned out to be the right choice. A simple, generous book, it leaves its reader ample space to daydream and feel without demanding too much thinking. It is unfortunately not translated in English yet, but it’s been published so recently that I hope it will be soon: I’d love to share it with my husband, as it tells a lot about Paris without ever making it its subject (which avoids all the nostalgia and cliches and generalizations that seem to go hand in hand with this city).

The book’s hero, Michel, is 12 years old when the book starts in October 1959. We follow him through the next five years, until the summer after his baccalauréat. I guess if one was looking to criticize the novel, the main issue might be that in these five crucial years, Michel doesn’t seem to change a lot. The story, or rather the stories, are not in him but around him: in the collapse of his parents’ marriage, in the experiences of the Eastern European refugees who gather at the café Michel and his friends go to, in the political and intellectual effervescence of the early 60′s, in the books Michel reads voraciously, in his first love stories, in the repercussions of the Algerian War on French society… There’s an undercurrent of bitterness in the book — as Guenassia said in an interview, there’s probably not one character in his large cast who doesn’t commit a betrayal at one point or another, Michel included.

And yet the overwhelming feeling left by the book is one of delight, of the richness of the world and of the human experience. All these betrayals, even the worst, stem from aspirations, desires, idealism; and no matter how low men (and women!) fall, there’s always a measure of redemption for them. There is something very comforting in this book, something optimistic in the ease with which Michel makes friends with everyone, in the way the book tells us we all belong, we all have have fascinating stories to tell, in its amusement with human weakness which isn’t so much oblivious to the amount of pain it might inflict as deliberately forgiving, a choice of to smile and take it lightly.

I imagine there might states of mind where this glibness is not welcome, but for cold, damp winter days when one needs to know that the world of men is alive and well, and that not every motion of the soul needs to be scrutinized, nor can be – it is perfect.

The word with its sibilants is one of my favorites, the word as it slides like doors, like a pint of beer on a copper counter, with a rustle, from one place to another, the hint of geometry in it — one of the most basic transformations, the mirror image, so familiar and yet subtly altered by the very process of being reflected, or as is the case, translated. So much better than the presumptuous French “traduction”, as if you were leading anything from anywhere… Side notes, tangent – that’s what I think about when I think translation.

For years I didn’t think much about it; I was “translating”, sometimes, for work, a questionnaire or a presentation from English to French or, against all rules (but I didn’t know that), from my native language into my second. I was often the unofficial translator of choice, in part because I spoke decent English, in part because I was happy to, but I wasn’t naming what I did. It was just “writing in English”, or “putting it in French” — or at most, “traduire”. The innapropriate French word was a shield: as long as translation was only traduction, I could enjoy it casually. I liked it because it put me in touch with English, and in English, everything is simpler for me. Except, of course, complexity, but that was not the goal.

(My guess is that everything is simpler in English because my command of the language is so much more rudimentary that my thinking has to follow suit. In this regard, maybe my trying to improve my English is an enormous mistake that will eventually deprive me of the safe haven of a familiar but still foreign language).

Then two things happened: first, Sophia Coppola catapulted the phrase “lost in translation” into my life, and translation became incredibly alluring — mysterious, nostalgic and sexy. My younger sister enrolled in translation studies, and I realized I was a little jealous, but only the tiniest bit; mostly I was fascinated. Translation had become something both otherworldly – a puff of smoke in blue light — and something real, something an actual person who brushes her teeth twice a day was concerned with.

That’s how translation entered my consciousness, and how I started paying attention to it. It’s become one of these magic words — like ”gin fizz” or “by the sea”, for instance – that makes me pay attention. This is why I knew I had to read Vengeance du traducteur when I heard about it (first on Stella Polaris’s blog, and then all over the Internet); this is also the probable reason I didn’t enjoy it very much. I expected it to be a fun novel, which it is; I wasn’t expecting it to be the next Great Novel, which it isn’t; but I was also expecting it to give me some insight into the process of translation, which it really didn’t. I was expecting it to be more elegant than it is. It’s not so much that I expected it to be a greater novel than I expected it to be a different novel. In other words: it’s not his fault, it’s mine.

Because of this little disappointment, I don’t know if you can trust me to review the book, but here are my impressions: Vengeance du traducteur is a smart novel which tries a little too hard. It follows a translator (let’s call him, as he introduces himself, Trad) working on a novel about a triangle between a writer, his translator and his secretary/ mistress. Unsatisfied with the novel, Trad decides to break the Golden Rule of translation and to meddle with the writing; however, he soon notices that his interfering has consequences way beyond the closed world of the book.

This story line worked fairly well for me, and Trad’s language when he let it loose was alternatively sensual, wicked and whimsical, all with the clear mastery of a cultured writer with a musical ear. However Matthieussent seems to have found this too easy, and he added more levels, more complexity, notably through endless dream scenes, dramatic suggestions that maybe nothing is quite as it seems and reality could be elsewhere, a generous helping of heavy-handed symbolism, and a jump back in time to 1937 Paris with Dolores Haze, the actress and woman Nabokov’s Lolita became when she left her literary nymphet self behind. All of this felt a little too much, a little too referential, a little too reverential.

Early on in the book, Trad mocks his writer who indulges in adjectives and adverbs; perhaps he should have heeded his own advice and lightened up his own tale.

“I want to do whatever is most courageous. This evening I believe that means wearing the star. But where will it lead?”

It’s been a crazy beginning of a week, with substitute teaching for three days, fighting with Priceline over our Christmas France tickets (let’s just say that I will never use this company again), an assortment of administrative worries, and having friends over last night for the final table of the World Series of Poker (I love poker as a spectator sport). Lost in the minutia of the days, there was little time for reading, and even less for putting down more thoughts on Hélène Berr’s journal. It’s been in my mind on and off, though, and I did wonder if that was close to the way Hélène herself thought about her situation, especially in the early days when her work and her love life would often take over her worries.

In parallel to Hélène’s journal, I had to read the Last Day of a Condemned Man (by Victor Hugo), as I was teaching it. I remembered Stefanie’s review, which is excellent and with which I agree wholeheartedly. The book seemed to be more formally interesting than convincing: the use of slang (19th century slang was not a common thing; it was the private language of robbers, murderers and convicts, and using it did not go without an amount of critical outcry about the “bastardization” of language). As for the condemned man himself, Hugo wants to make him a symbol, a man who could be any man. He doesn’t flesh him out too much, which was counterproductive to me — if I oppose the death penalty, it is in great measure because of the fact that each man is unique, has feelings and a history, not because “it could be me”!

The two reads initially came together because Hélène mentions Hugo, wondering “if it would be like The Last Day of a Condemned man“ – “it” meaning being arrested and deported. I was then interested by the parallel in the reactions of Hélène and that of the unnamed man to the consolations of nature (romantics influences are perceptible for both) and their perplexity at the brutality and indifference of mankind. The difference lies in how they react to their situation: the condemned man cannot stop thinking about his own situation, and goes through alternatives of panic, anger and resignation; Hélène experiences ups and downs too, but she strives to always keep the suffering of others foremost, not to care for herself but to care for others. When early in the war, her father is released from captivity, she rejoices, but her joy is not, cannot be as pure as when others are saved from danger, because of the guilt associated.

This feeling of being a part of something bigger than she is informs the writing: while in the early days, Hélène’s journal is a chronicle of her life and feelings, it slowly becomes a deliberate testimony of what happened. Hélène feels a compulsion to share, to make people understand what is happening, but she fails to make the people around her get it, to illuminate their spirit, because (a last parallel with Hugo?) her reluctance to excite pity prevents her to use her own case (or that of people she knows) to illustrate her message. “Le principal problème qui se pose à moi: celui de la compréhension humaine et de la sympathie” (“the main problem I an facing: human understanding and sympathy”). Hélène struggles with the idea of a humanity split between people who feel for others and people who don’t. In an awful premonition, she sometimes is aware that she is really writing her diary for the people who will come after the war and will not be able to deny what happened. In the meantime, Hélène hurts herself with the insentivity of ordinary people such as a family friend, Mme Agache, who realizes in November 1943 that children are deported, when a friend of hers is deported with her two kids. “Depuis un an que nous vous le disions, vous ne vouliez pas le croire“, bitterly remarks Hélène’s mother (“we have been telling you for a year, you refused to believe“).

The hardest part of this hard document came for me at the end of the diary, when Hélène starts doubting her belief in the possibility of bettering others. Enamored with English writers and proud of her French heritage, there had always been a faint air of underestimating the richness of German culture in her writing (except musically), but she always fundamentally considers “the Germans” as people. On February 1st, 1944 (she was arrested at the end of March), she however notes “lorsque je vois un Allemand ou une Allemande, je me suis aperçue avec stupéfaction qu’une bouffée de rage montais en moi” (“when I see a German man or a German woman, I was astonished to realize that a feeling of rage arises in me”). On February 4th, she calls the Germans “les Boches” for the first time, and equates them to evil and ugliness. On the 15th, she pulls through as generous as ever, and reaffirms her certainty that the root of the problem is with the Nazi regime rather than with the German people, who have been conditioned not to think for themselves or to feel the difference between an order and duty. She asks the question of the potential difficulty in leading them back to their humanity: the temptation to think of a people as an entity instead of considering the myriad of human beings it is made out of is conquered.

It is Hélène’s last victory. A later entry, on the same day, enumerates some details she has just learned about camp’s life, and concludes on three words: “Horror! Horror! Horror!”

On March 8th, Hélène and her parents are arrested. Any other pages she might have written disappear; she is sent to Auschwitz, then to Bergen Belsen, where she dies from a beating administered because she could not get up one morning, weakened by the typhus. A few days later, Bergen Belsen is liberated by American soldiers. Hélène’s journal, entrusted to the family’s cook to be sent to Hélène’s love, shared by him with the rest of her family, remain a family document for over 60 years, before a family member decides to share it with the rest of us.

“immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion (…); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers” (translation found here)

The first volume of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way, is composed of three long chapters to which I reacted fairly differently. I came relatively unprepared to Proust: I had read the second part of Swann’s Way, Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love) in my early twenties, and blasphemously, I had been neither awed not befuddled by it. I found it to be a much easier read than I had been led to believe; at the same time, its genius didn’t leap out at me.

Missed connection.

The first part of Swann’s Way – Combray — deals with the summer months the unnamed narrator, then a child, spent with his family away from Paris in his aunt’s house in the village of Combray. This first chapter, which contains the madeleine anecdote (in which the narrator regains the emotional memory of his childhood when tasting the same type of cookie he used to get as child), simply blew me away. Proust starts with a longish, slightly nauseating account of the child’s bedtime ritual. I say slightly nauseating because the drama of it, the great question is: will Maman come kiss me goodnight? His longing for her struck me as both disturbingly amorous (and he does, indeed, compare his desire to the one Swann experienced when in love with a courtesan) and heart-wrenching in the loneliness it betrays. This detailed and intense memory is all that subsists in his memory of his summers in Combray; it is like a point of light, like the flame of a candle in darkness. Other memories can be accessed; but they are rational, affectless and dry, facts more than feelings.

 That is, until he tastes a madeleine dipped in tea, and all of it comes flooding back. Proust obviously was proud of his idea to compare this process to a Japanese paper unfolding into wonderful shapes when dropped in water, but I saw it as flows of light (which is why I chose the quote above): first there’s is darkness, against which the one illuminated room of the narrator shines brightly; then the door is opened, and light starts cascading down the stairs, rushing through the entire house, seeping through the door and window frames into the streets, pushing them open to crash over the village and into the nearby fields. It’s a magical feeling of dawn lighting up an entire world and then holding it into the light to sparkle and be examined; once in a while, a bold ray of light even reaches out further than Combray and extends all the way to Paris or Balbec, in Normandy. It really is breathtaking, but Proust doesn’t stop there: in the world he just created, which at first seems to be mostly a world of things and places, he starts dropping characters. They’re initially introduced mostly through their social connections to the narrator’s family (the old family friend, the faithful servant, etc); their best traits are revealed, they all seem pleasant and lovable — what we are told probably is what is openly said about them (the one exception in all this pleasantness is the early mention of Swann’s “unsuitable” wife — but is it really a negative when it tickles the narrator’s fancy so much?). Then Proust starts mentioning a few things his family didn’t know about their acquaintances – Swann’s worldly connections, Legrandin’s reputation as a writer. At first it is all very positive; but then we ineluctably progress to the darker sides of the characters, Françoise’s (the maid) brutality against the other servants, Legrandin’s snobbery, aunt Léonie’s ridiculousness… This gives depth to the conflict that Proust seems to be introducing as a central point of the Search: a desire to go both Swann’s way (the side of arts, freedom, easy women…) and Guermantes’ way (the side of respectability, history and religion). He shows how the narrator’s family cannot imagine both sides could ever coexist: an uncle is forever rejected when Swann meets an actress at his hotel, a friend who idly insinuates that aunt Leonie “lived the life” is banned from the house, and Swann himself is only accepted as long as  he keeps his distasteful wife and daughter under wraps. With so much interdict to recommend her, how could our narrator not fall in love at first sight with Swann’s daughter, Gilberte? That is exactly what happens at the end of Combray.

Don’t worry — I will move much faster through the last two parts of Swann’s Way! The second part is Swann in Love. It felt like a more traditional story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Set years before Combray, it tells rather exhaustively the love story between Swann and a woman, Odette de Crecy, who is in every way not right for him. “Love” could, and I think should be taken sarcastically here: while Odette might have had a crush on Swann for a week or too, it is obvious she rapidly outgrows it in favor of a more solid feeling of greed for his money and his connections. As for Swann, he develops an obsession for the woman despite her not being his “type” physically, intellectually or emotionally (amusingly, Proust seems to find overcoming a lack of physical attraction much more surprising than the other two). Swann’s love is what used to be called un amour de tête (love from the brain), in opposition to un amour de coeur (love from the heart); he is in love with an image he created for himself out of a Botticelli painting, a music phrase and a good dose of laziness. From such charming beginnings, Swan and Odette’s affair slowly descends into an elegant sort of abjection. I’m sure my reading is totally unorthodox, but since the character study was a little overwrought for me, what this ended up feeling like was — a mystery. I kept focusing on one question: is Odette the “unsuitable” woman Swann ends up marrying? Pure rooting interest (against, of course) kept me turning pages. Perversely, Proust leads his reader all the way to the death of Swann’s interest for Odette — without ever answering the question.

The answer, however, is contained in the last part of Swann’s Way, Place Names: The Name. This third part is much shorter, and truncated by Proust for publishing purposes, which is shockingly perceptible in the abruptness with which it ends. The writing is lovely, starting with long musings on everything there is in the name of a place, all the colors and smells and ideas a few syllables can convey… And yet, how deceptive names are, being both less than and besides the reality of a place. This idea of one being driven by illusions, led astray by one’s imagination of the world (names here, image in the case of Odette in the previous chapter) rather than by the world itself, is immediately illustrated again in the young love of the narrator for Swann’s daughter Gilberte. The passion is built on wind, and the narrator is never happier with Gilberte as when she is away. She is after all only a vivacious, friendly girl of flesh and blood, not her friendship with his beloved writer Bergotte, not her beautiful mother with her sinful past (we meet the mother, but in case you haven’t read the book — I’ll keep her name to myself), not a theatre play with a famous actress: and it is really these things the narrator is in love with.

Woo, that was some note! I’m afraid it’s not really adapted to a blog, but I wanted to put some ideas down before going to explore this website dedicated to reading Proust.

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The Phantom as The Red Death — illustration from Castaigne

This week-end was near perfect: Chris and I went to Kentucky with our friends B and G, going from Bourbon distillery to horse racetrack (where I bet on the darkest horse I could find, in honor of The Black Stallion – and won!), from city to nature, and from activity to long breaks at the motel. I finished the Phantom of the Opera just before we went to visit the Lexington Cemetery, a peaceful place of nostalgic beauty. Its atmosphere is perhaps one of the reasons that the Phantom finally settled into my mind as a tragic figure rather than the monster he also is. There were interesting parallels to Frankenstein, in the “if only his creator – or men – had been a little more merciful”…  (“peut-être l’eût-il été [un ange] tout à fait si Dieu l’avait vêtu de beauté au lieu de l’habiller de pourriture” — “), though in Leroux’s work there seem to be a greater fascination for the links between pain and genius, where Shelley seemed to have less sympathy for her creation.

The novel is both simple in its dynamics (a love triangle, a mystery to be solved) and ornate in its details; it mixes tragic romance with comedy, murder mystery and tragedy. It however never felt disorienting or labored thanks to fast facing, frequent comedic touches and what impressed me most – Leroux’s complicity with his readers. He shamelessly cultivates it by not only addressing them directly, but also including them in spirited mockery of some characters such as Mme Giry or the extremely secondary “juge d’instruction Faure”. How infinitely wiser, smarter, and better informed we feel! And how I wish Gaston was one of my friends, or even better, a coworker with whom to grab coffee and make fun of everyone else. Knowing full well, of course, that he’s probably had a few laughs at your expense too.

The story itself is that of the mysterious events that happened at the Opera between the time a director is found murdered and that a diva disappears with a viscount. The diva is Christine Daae, a young woman whose least secret is how her voice miraculously became more beautiful than any other; the viscount is Raoul, who loves her with all the stubborn passion of a man who cannot imagine anything beyond him; in-between them stands the long shadow of the Phantom, a creature of many talents and macabre taste who lives under the Opera. I must confess to liking him much better than that brute of Raoul (who is initially depicted as naïve, childish man, and who, like a rotten kid, throws jealous tantrums at the slightest provocation). The Phantom himself borders on the homicidal, and acts with a staggering mix of greed and disdain for others, but with such grandeur and such style that it takes incredible efforts to remember that this guy is a murderer and a torturer… I’m afraid I failed at it most of the time, and kept wishing for his triumph.

All in all, the Phantom was just delightful. Everything felt just right, down to the varied and colorful characters, down to the unrealistically sarcastic dialogue (“D. – Vous êtes superstitieux ? R. – Non, monsieur, je suis croyant” — “are you supersticious?” “No sir, I believe in God”). Leroux stops at nothing to entertain, not even at lifting lines almost straight out of Victor Hugo (“C’était l’heure tranquille où les machinistes vont boire”, “The peaceful hour where thirsty stage managers pass” switching the original lions with a more urban type of beast). Works for me.

Oh, and that ends my participation in the R.I.P. Challenge IV, I think, as I prepare to immerse myself in Proust for a few weeks!