More Proust Sites

http://www.tempsperdu.com/ops.html

Reading along and listening to the Saens-Saens Sonata with nothing to report.

Helas

Odette

Swann Song

Still reading up a storm about Swann and Odette and the Vinteiul Sonata. I've been listening to the Saens-Saens Sonata which is reputed to have inpsired Proust, and I think I've identified the "little phrase" but I really need to sit down and just listen to the music without distractions. The narrator never mentions what the Verdurin's serve for dinner. Hmmmm.

The thing is, with a whole nightstand full of books, I still pick up Proust regularly.

Odette

Proust on Ebay: The Ultimate Weirdness

This is a cool Proust site that you will want to investigate.
http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/proust.html

I am reading about Swann and Odette now, but nothing has piqued my interest enough to post about. Mme. Verdurin is an interesting type and I wrack my brain to figure out if I have actually known anyone like her. The hostess with the leastest. Somehow, she seems very modern with her self-absorption and her pretense at intellectualism and her pushing of minor musicians and artists. And her jealousy. One could write an entire book about Mme. Verdurin, n'est pas?

Odett

Blogger hosed my "Odette" profile when blogger went to it's new software. Lots of grousing among the rank and file. What's a blogger to do?

Proust Film

Here is a review of one of the attempts to film Proust. The movie was actually very good. We saw it in Harvard Square (where else) with a few others. Not exactly SRO, but a decent crowd.

http://www.filmscouts.com/SCRIPTs/review.cfm?File=tem-ret

Proust and Food

Some quotes I found.

Proust, Marcel Quotes
"Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust."Walker Percy (1916-1990)


"In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece."A.J. Liebling

I'm chronicling all the references I found to food, and there are more than Walker Percy or A.J. Liebling imagined. I am interested in the Verdurin's dinner parties. Will the narrator mention the menu? Good stuff coming up.

Monet had the perfect life in his later years. A beautiful kitchen and dining room, a fantastic gardens, and many friends who came to visit ON HIS SCHEDULE. The whole household ran on his schedule, even more so than Marcel's Aunt Leonie. It's hard for me to imagine anything running on MY schedule. Women accommodate others. So be it.

Odette

Madamoiselle Vintieul

I real the narrator's account of Vintieul's only daughter and her female lover spitting on the composer's photograph. A sad scene, and yet the narrator seems to have a strange sympathy with the daugter, and he feels that although she is trying very hard to be evil, she at heart, cannot be. People in Proust are very strange, almost like in real life. Tante Leonie finally dies, and Francoise, whom she terrorized, is bereft.

I like how Proust compared Francoise and some of the denizens of Combray and environs to medieval sculptures in the churches. Haven't you ever seen a face or recognized a character that belonged to another age? Happens all the time. How clever of Proust to see it. I admire Proust more with every page I read. His genius shines in every sentence.

Go ye forth and read Proust.

Odette

Proust News

I don't have any news, but here is a link to the NY Times, which has update on Proust. How cool is that?

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/marcel_proust/index.html

Two Beautiful Phrases

No, it's not the "petite phrase" from Vinteuil!

". . . experience of life stored up and slowly ripening in one's heart."

About the rain coming up suddenly.
"Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching order. . . . the sky would be as greatly darkened as by the swallows flying south.

What fantastic images. I love the word "Montjouvain." Wouldn't you like to live in a place with this name? Montjouvain The word makes me see fountains and hills and beauty, like Tuscany. Montjouvain.

I live in Foxborough, which sounds nice until it's abbreviated "Foxboro," which is short and turgid.