Multiple Reading Personalities

Une si longue lettre, un si court roman, et pourtant si longtemps pour en noter quelques idées… Lu au coeur de la tourmente de la préparation des examens, pour faire une petite pause plaisir, que me reste-t-il en mémoire avant que de rouvrir le livre pour y vérifier mes souvenirs ? J’ai oublié les noms, l’écriture, mais ni les personnages ni leur histoire. En fait, le récit vit plus dans ma mémoire sur le plan de l’histoire personnelle que sur celui de la littérature, c’est-à-dire qu’il a pris place sur l’étagère mémorielle “biographies des amis et de la famille”, une petite place a-spectaculaire, difficilement analysable ou critiquable, car relevant de l’expérience personnelle et non d’une construction intellectuelle. C’est faux: Une si longue lettre est un roman, non un mémoire. Il a parfois été qualifié de semi-autobiographique (c’est un premier roman, après tout), mais “semi” est un terrain sur lequel mieux vaut ne pas trop se précipiter.

“Hier, tu as divorcé. Aujourd’hui, je suis veuve.”

Ces mots sont parmi les premiers de la lettre que Ramatoulaye (je viens de vérifier le nom) écrit à son amie  de toujours, Aïssatou, pendant les quarante jours de réclusion que lui impose son veuvage. Ces mots disent tout le livre. Les coeurs brisés, mais aussi l’opposition qui apparaît immédiatement entre les deux amies, entre celle qui a choisi son destin même dans l’échec et celle qui l’a accepté. Nous apprendrons en effet assez vite que les époux des deux femmes les ont soumises à la même épreuve, celle de devoir accepter une seconde épouse, et que les amies ont pris des décisions opposées. Mariama Bâ, qui avait pour sa part divorcé, fait donc un choix éclairant de point de vue en choisissant de donner la parole à la femme qui est restée. Le propos n’est pas de prendre parti, mais de comprendre.

Cette volonté d’empathie va d’ailleurs plus loin — les jeunes filles qui sont entrées, par une violence plus ou moins pernicieuse, dans la vie des maris, sont en grande partie justifiées, comprises, “contextualisées”  (Binetou, la seconde épouse du mari de Ramatoulaye, pourrait faire figure de chasseuse d’or tout à fait détestable si sa cruauté n’était expliquée : “victime, elle se voulait oppresseur”…). Il y a certes des figures féminines rien moins que positives (la mère de Binetou, la “belle-tante” haineuse d’Aïssatou) ; ce  sont systématiquement des femmes plus âgées, présentées comme des instruments de la société traditionnelle.

Les hommes en revanche manquent terriblement de profondeur dans ce livre, pas tant je pense par échec de l’écriture que comme représentation d’une incommunication réelle. Lâches et fuyants, ils sont surtout totalement incompréhensibles. Pourquoi deviennent-ils l’obstacle principal à la société plus moderne et plus bienveillante à laquelle ils aspiraient pourtant, jeunes hommes ? Pour une femme docile, jolie, et ne ressemblant plus en rien à ce qu’ils adoraient à vingt ans ? Il y a là un mystère irréductible, car Bâ n’évoque pas de simples beaux-parleurs, mais bien des hommes qui ont sérieusement consacré des années de leur vie à un rêve qu’ils “cassent” ensuite pour une manifeste chimère qui ne leur apporte évidemment pas le bonheur.

Le livre a été dédié par Mariama Bâ “à toutes les femmes et aux hommes de bonne volonté“. Cela reflète parfaitement l’aspiration désabusée, le désir de croire encore en l’homme (sans majuscule),  mais aussi la méfiance qui s’est installée, le besoin de qualifier : de quels hommes parlons-nous ? La tristesse, la déception dominent ; l’espoir a reflué de la vie de Ramatoulaye, même si elle veut encore se convaincre qu’il subsiste pour ses enfants, pour les générations à venir. Ses fils et ses filles semblent mieux armés, plus forts qu’elle ne l’était; l’amitié ne l’a pas trahie. La fin du livre est même ostensiblement positive, une décision d’aller de l’avant, de vivre à nouveau… Pourtant ce que j’en retiens c’est d’abord un profond sentiment de tristesse, les ”lacérations dans l’individu” évoquées, et une image (étrangère au livre) qui m’a accompagnée dans sa lecture, celle d’une Pénélope “inversée”, qui tenterait de tisser un ouvrage qui se déferrait sans fin. Bien sûr, la lettre écrite dans une période de deuil en a forcément une amertume circonstancielle que je ne voudrais pas généraliser. En fait peut-être le souffle d’espoir est-il cyniquement justement dans ce deuil : le vieux monde meurt, la société paternaliste meurt avec ses pères, et le deuil est possible. Alléluia?

Finally reading through Antigone (and Oedipus the King) after the arduous walk through Antigone’s Claim felt really pleasurable — and so much more so for having some context as to the various readings of the play made by the likes of Hegel, Lacan and Luce Irigaray. Some pieces fell into place and some aspects that had not been discussed detached themselves more vividly against the backdrop of the rest of the text (for instance, what is this creonesque* obsession with monetary corruption? And how interesting that it echoes Oedipus’ suspicions about power hunger!). I still cannot pretend to understand everything Butler was trying to show, nor even most of it, but I at least felt like I had a richer experience with Sophocles’ plays.

Most readings of Antigone seem to focus on the opposition between the unwritten laws of family (of which Antigone, a woman, is the champion) and those of the state (defended by her uncle, Creon). I was struck, having read the Oresteia relatively recently, by how close this interpretation is to some of the commentary on Aeschylus’ trilogy (Electra and the – female – Furies would embody the preeminence of revenge and of family rights over official power; the situation is reversed at the end, when the Furies, changed into Eumenides, are sent into a softer, more domestic sphere — and the task of Justice transferred to an assembly headed by the appropriately male Apollo). I can see how that would reflect political preoccupations of the time (the passage to organized cities cannot have been all that simple), but I wonder how much of this also reflects the way critics wanted to read these works. Butler makes compelling points about how the readings categorize things that really are not so neatly distributed (Oedipus’  daughter standing for traditional family is a grand joke, of course, and her opposition to Creon is not all that evident — her speech, the way she makes her stand, even her multiple descriptions, most notably as manly… Their similarities are enough to not oversimplify their relation into a simple opposition).

Probably what I liked the most about the plays was how individual each of the characters are, and how essential to the storyline their personalities are. Everything that happens may happen because of an incredible coincidence or two (Fate, the Gods, whatever you want to call it)… But mostly it happens because Sophocles created characters who are who they are. What drove them to where they are is consistent with the way they act: Antigone is strong, stubborn (and used to leading blind men!); Oedipus is smart, relentless and swift to anger; Creon is principled to the point of self-righteousness, but ultimately smart enough to adapt (even though his timing is uniformly atrocious). These are no cardboard characters acting out the roles designed for them, they are making that destiny. Contrary to our current Sacred Principles of Writing, Sophocles shamelessly has his characters tell their own story, rarely ever bothering to put on a ‘show’ moment. The idiosyncrasy of each individual’s speech however is the show elements; characterization in a way is the story. It’s easier to enjoy of course because the story is known enough that we don’t really care how subtly it is revealed — but that really brings me back to translation and the importance of finding one that works for you to be able to identify the singular voices of the characters. Fagles’ worked for me again, though it was not as breathtakingly visceral as his Iliad. I would guess that’s because the plays are less epic, but how to ever be sure?

* yes, I made that up

(French. English. I’ll just do anything I can moving forward.)

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.”

“aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre s’appliquer au petit pavillon (…); et avec la maison, la ville, depuis le matin jusqu’au soir et par tous les temps”

“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.

“As her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking.”

Strike 3 for the R.I.P. Challenge! The most authentic gothic novel in my reading list, The Mysteries of Udolpho is book-ended by scenes of simple happiness in the Gascony house of the Saint-Aubert family; in between these, much travel, much adversity and many preposterous twists and turns sprawl on the pages of Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel. There’s good fun to be had in dark castles and secret passages, among mysterious voices and ghostly apparitions, but there’s also a quantity of unnecessary devices and digressions. If a modern editor were to travel back in time and inform Radcliffe that more is not always better – and if she also decided to put in a good word for consistency in point of view – I believe I would be a perfectly content reader.

When we first meet Emily Saint-Aubert, she seems to have the perfect life: loving and wise parents, a comfortable house with a well-stocked library, a lovely park. Emily is her parents’ only surviving child, having lost two brothers a few years back (an information given by Radcliffe with amusing  offhand brutality:  after describing a charming pastoral scene, she mentions that Emily’s father’s “first interruptions to the happiness […] since his retirement were occasioned by the death of his two sons”). This last is an example of unnecessary information. Nobody in the novel cares, neither therefore does the reader, and the fact has no bearing on the plot. Why bother?

The first seven chapters are similarly protracted, and I frankly felt that they belonged to the back-story, or at the very least should have been summarized in one chapter. In jest, Emily’s parents both die, leaving her in an embarrassed financial situation, and she meets a young man, Valancourt, whom she is attracted to. That’s it for the plot – the rest is all description of nature, gay peasant dances (I kid you not) and philosophical musings. One of these asides was about Emily’s education, in particular about teaching her to govern her sensitivity (Emily’s father teaches her that “sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions” and illustrates his point with the example of “persons [who] turn from the distressed […] because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated”). This type of moral education, so obvious until the 19^th century, seems to have gone out of fashion with the emergence of the ideas of “teaching by example”, “letting children become themselves”, and probably with the idea that human beings are born good (merci Rousseau!). I for one feel that I would have benefited to be taught what to do with excessive sensitivity – or with laziness, vanity, discouragement, etc. – but I’m not sure how other modern readers would enjoy these passages.

So back to the action: it picks up when the now-orphaned Emily is assigned to the care of her aunt, Mme Cheron. A silly, insensitive woman who delights in having power over others, she immediately indulges her petty impulses by coming between Emily and Valancourt. She also marries an Italian nobleman of suspicious character, and takes Emily away to Italy. There, amid enemies sly or brutal, Emily will have to fight for her virtue and her happiness in settings ranging from magnificent Venice palazzi to a ruined gothic fortress in the Apennines (and more – it is the rare chapter that doesn’t involve some change of setting). Bucolic promenades finally give way to treason and supernatural apparitions. The story from this point on is convoluted and coincidental to the point of absurdity, but with such lavish imagination, the only way to not enjoy oneself is to be impervious to the genre entirely. Of course, in the end, reason (if not probability) and courage will prevail, the worthy will be rewarded and villains will be punished.

I think it might read Radcliffe again in the future, but with a slightly different approach. As a writer, she is able of surgical wit, especially when criticizing fashionable society (for instance: “Madame Clairval, though a woman of fashion, was far less advanced than her friend in the art of deriving satisfaction from distinction and admiration, rather than from conscience”, or “the party continued to converse, and, as far as civility would permit, to torture each other by mutual boasts”); this ability to encapsulate realms of meaning in a short sentence sometimes even shines through without irony, an even rarer gift (for instance, when talking about the process of falling in love, she mentions “the danger of sympathy and silence”). She is unfortunately also inclined to great enthusiasm and lengthy descriptions for all things nature and heroines “full of timid sweetness” – not my cup of tea. I might just skip these passages in the future, as I skipped a majority of the poetry - editing as I read, in a way.

Well, let this be a cautionary tale of what happens when you decide of a book to buy based on the fact that it is available for the Kindle: it might be pretty terrible.

While I haven’t read too many fantasy books recently, they usually are a steady part of my diet. I love supernatural creatures and twisted parallel universes, and while not every author is a Tolkien or a Gaiman, I usually enjoy myself a lot more with an average fantasy book than with an average novel. I guess I am much more forgiving to weaknesses in the story or the writing when I have dragons to make up for it.

I have however had a run of bad luck recently: my random selections were mostly mediocre, and even in one case atrocious. That decided me to go with a recommended book this time; my original pick was The Birthgrave (also from Tanith Lee), based on an enticing review in Coilhouse.

But The Birthgrace wasn’t available for Kindle. Neither was The Silver Metal Lover, also highly recommended (in the tearjerker category – I am also a sucker for those). That disappointed me, as I prefer my “light” books (the ones I am not terribly likely to re-read or reference) in electronic format: they are much easier to carry with you when you move, and I enjoy the reduced price that fits the reduced usage. I foolishly solved my dilemma by deciding to go with any Tanith Lee that would go on my Kindle, thinking something glib like well a good author is a good author, right?

Hm. What a disappointment. I guess I’ll use the library next time I’m feeling cheap, something I should do more often anyway.

Metallic Love is the story of Loren, who warns us from the start that we won’t like her much — giving us to guess that it is because she’s not overly romantic. Well, thought I, I do actually like a tough gal; we’ll go along just fine. Then she proceeded to mope, whine and exhibit all the sign of teenage passion (i.e. talk about her undying love while it’s obvious that 1) she knows nothing about her lover, and 2) there is no sense of joy in their story). She act depressed and impotent for the rest of the book. My dislike of Loren, together with the fact that the central story was a fancy SF version of ”prince sleeps with peasant girl/ princess in hiding” , pushed all my annoyance buttons, making it impossible for me to root for the the girl.

A couple things about the universe were interesting – living under the threat of a poorly-stabilized asteroid and the religious deviancies it feeds, the class differences, etc. – and I have no complaints with the writing, so I might indeed try another Tanith Lee sometime. In the meantime, the hunt for decent fantasy continues!