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A review by casparb
The Prisoner by Marcel Proust
marcel i'm gon get u
this one is REALLy good we're gently just allowed little glimpses at the wider shape of things, the parallelisms with vol. 1. This volume allows itself more aphoristic prose as well as the famous LONG sentence. proust is cheekily mocking by hypothetically just possibly supposing that our unnamed protagonist were named Marcel, then she would say 'darling marcel!'. the Real Concerns become clearer WITH the event, thus
What attaches us to people are the countless roots, the innumerable threads which are our memories of last night, our hopes for tomorrow morning, the continuous weft of habit from which we can never free ourselves.
getting in2 TECHNOLOGY there's a beautiful moment where we encounter an aeroplane, from afar, by sound at first (SOUND IN THIS VOL! Albertine's me faire casser le pot...). (was reminded of dalloway's plane{s}, I think my favourite part of that novel) .. this develops into a Benjaminian thought on adaptation and awe, how trains, too, must have evoked the same sensation..
I think this is such a great showcase piece. whereas long novels are ungainly, so often collapse - and they don't get much longer than this - this feels different, like the cruelty of setting off one of those million piece domino tracks. ultimately,
I told myself that after all it might be the case that, if Vinteuil's phrases seemed to be the expression of certain states of soul analogous to that which I had experienced when I tasted the madeleine soaked in tea, there was nothing to assure me that the vagueness of such states was a sign of their profundity rather than of our not having yet learned to analyse them, so that there might be nothing more real in them than in other states. And yet that happiness, that sense of certainty in happiness while I was drinking the cup of tea, or when I smelt in the Champs-Elysées a smell of mouldering wood, was not an illusion.
-- our not yet having learned to analyse them...
this one is REALLy good we're gently just allowed little glimpses at the wider shape of things, the parallelisms with vol. 1. This volume allows itself more aphoristic prose as well as the famous LONG sentence. proust is cheekily mocking by hypothetically just possibly supposing that our unnamed protagonist were named Marcel, then she would say 'darling marcel!'. the Real Concerns become clearer WITH the event, thus
What attaches us to people are the countless roots, the innumerable threads which are our memories of last night, our hopes for tomorrow morning, the continuous weft of habit from which we can never free ourselves.
getting in2 TECHNOLOGY there's a beautiful moment where we encounter an aeroplane, from afar, by sound at first (SOUND IN THIS VOL! Albertine's me faire casser le pot...). (was reminded of dalloway's plane{s}, I think my favourite part of that novel) .. this develops into a Benjaminian thought on adaptation and awe, how trains, too, must have evoked the same sensation..
I think this is such a great showcase piece. whereas long novels are ungainly, so often collapse - and they don't get much longer than this - this feels different, like the cruelty of setting off one of those million piece domino tracks. ultimately,
I told myself that after all it might be the case that, if Vinteuil's phrases seemed to be the expression of certain states of soul analogous to that which I had experienced when I tasted the madeleine soaked in tea, there was nothing to assure me that the vagueness of such states was a sign of their profundity rather than of our not having yet learned to analyse them, so that there might be nothing more real in them than in other states. And yet that happiness, that sense of certainty in happiness while I was drinking the cup of tea, or when I smelt in the Champs-Elysées a smell of mouldering wood, was not an illusion.
-- our not yet having learned to analyse them...