February 4, 2006
In Search of Lost Time
I made a run a Proust about 20 years ago, when I was doing my grad work. I sorta bounced off him. Just didn't get it. But during a conversation a few years ago with Dave (LBJ's father), he urged me to get a new translation and give it another shot.
So I'm finally getting around to it. I'm reading "Swann's Way," the first part of what is now translated as "In Search of Lost Time." Much better. Lydia Davis' translation is fantastic. I only wish I could read French to see if the original is as beautiful. I'm sure it's even better. But this translation is pretty damn good.
I started it while I was in Jamaica, and the whole time/memory motif really hit home. This was our third trip to Treasure Beach, and it's odd how certain smells, sights, sounds evoke memories of past trips and experiences. I'm really getting my arms around what Proust was after in "Lost Time."
At first, the book was annoying me. The narrator's obsession with his mother, which borders on pathological, the tea-soaked madeleine that sets memories spinning, a Proustian cliche at this point, were a little off-putting. But as it moved forward, I was drawn in. Two passages really have resonated with me. The former lays out Proust's obsession with time and memory; the latter shows the immense beauty of his prose:
1. "I find the Celtic belief very reasonable, that the souls of those we have lost are held captive in some inferior creature, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, effectively lost to us until the day, which for many never comes, when we happen to pass close to the tree, come into possession of the object that is their prison. Then they quiver, they call out to us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and they return to live with us. It is the same with our past. It is a waste of effort for us to try to summon it. ... The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object (in the sensation that this material object would give us) which we do not suspect. It depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it."
2. "From the windows of (the church's) tower, placed two by two one above the other, with the exact and original proportion in their spacing that gives beauty and dignity not just to human faces, it loosed, dropped at regular intervals, volleys of crows which, for a moment, circled about shrieking, as if the old stones that allowed them to hop and flutter about without appearing to see them had suddenly become uninhabitable and emitted some principle of infinite agitation, struck them and driven them out. Then, after striping in every direction the violet velvet of the evening air, they would return suddenly calm to be reabsorbed into the tower, which was no longer baneful by once again benign, a few of them sitting here and there, apparently motionless, but perhaps snapping up some insect, on the tip of a turret, like a seagull as still as a fisherman on the crest of a wave."
Just as I was pulled back into Joyce's Ulysses a few years ago, I'm bouncing back to Proust this year. As I did with Ulysses, I'm chipping way at it, a few dozen pages at a time. Odd that I found myself reading each great work while listening to the sound of the waves in coastal Jamaica.
Thanks, Dave ...
Now Playing: Catching On from the album "Trace" by Son Volt
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)
The Jellyman
Jellyman jokes around with a coconut. We stopped at his stand on our way back to Montego Bay for our flight out, where I sampled some coconut water and jelly. Jellyman slices the top off the coconut, sticks a straw in it and offers a refreshing drink. When you're done, he cuts the coconut in half and gives you a pieces of shell to scoop out the jelly. Great stuff. More photos of our Jamaica trip are here.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)
Lara's neverending smugness
There's that smug look again. It's Lara's no worries Jamaica attitude, enhanced by a tall glass of Appleton rum. More photos of our Jamaica trip are here.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:23 PM | Comments (0)
The vegetable man
The vegetable man marks his ledger after selling his wares to Miss Joyce at Villa Hikaru in Jamaica. More photos of our Jamaica trip are here.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:22 PM | Comments (0)
Milk River Mineral Bath
The Milk River Mineral Bath in Jamaica features waters that have an unusually high radiation level. They'll allow you to soak for only 15 minutes at a time, which we did. I was expecting it to be like sitting in a tub of seltzer, with the radiation giving off some sort of a fizz. But that wasn't the case. Still, it was relaxing. More Jamaica photos here.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:19 PM | Comments (0)
Roy the woodcarver
Roy, a woodcarver who lives in the mountains above Treasure Beach, Jamaica, poses with one of his pieces, which we purchased. More Jamaica photos here.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:17 PM | Comments (0)