Proustalia

All of the Search in one volume!! I learned about this from the Laure Murat book I'm translating (Proust: A Family Affair). It weighs over a pound!

Life in Portraits: Catherine Cusset on Hockney, Proust, and the Stories We Tell - French Library Power isn’t just for the powerful. In this timely talk, Professor Julie Battilana explains how understanding and exercising power is essential for anyone seeking to lead, influence, or create lasting ...

In Boston...September 11th? (French Library)
"Life in Portraits: Catherine Cusset on Hockney, Proust, and the Stories We Tell"
Register: frenchlibrary.org/events/cathe...

I managed to find a cheap copy while on holidays

"…He suddenly caught the notes of a piano, and life for him
stopped dead. What he was hearing was the little Saint-Saëns phrase. At first he did not recognize it, but felt a flood of freshness in himself, as though suddenly the weight of years had vanished and he was young again."—from Jean Santeuil

YouTube video by Granaine Marcel Proust rare footage, 1904

Proust coming down the stairs of the Madeleine after the wedding of Elaine Greffulhe and Armand de Guiche:
youtu.be/ttgv7VjBs2I?...

YouTube video by Artesquieu [Archive rare] Jean Cocteau évoque Marcel Proust

Cocteau talks about Proust here, imitating his voice near the end:
youtu.be/lucHsgHKvdI?...

Dining with Proust is out of print but still readily available

Lovely, I haven't seen it in a while

If you’re Search-ing for #Proust reading partners, this group starts Swann’s Way today. #Proustsky

Marcel Proust biography by Jean-Yves Tadié

First page of Jean-Yves Tadié's Proust biography in French.

I have read this one in English but could not resist picking it up in the original French when I saw it today on birthday outing at Moe's, one of the world's great bookstores.
#Proust
#booksky

The name Bergotte made me start, like the sound of a revolver fired at me point blank, but instinctively, to keep my countenance, I bowed... my greeting was returned by a youngish, uncouth, thickset and myopic little man, with a red nose curled like a snail-shell and a goatee beard. II139

#AContinuation25 Part 6: Proust Hello everyone!

#AContinuation25 Our Proust reading begins in less than a week! I just sent out a newsletter about it. All are welcome to join. readingkatebriggs.substack.com/p/acontinuat...

Writers Talking Writers: Elif Shafak on Jose Saramago and Mathias Enard on Marcel Proust PW Picks: What we're reading.

A nice brief interview

If you want to read In Search of Lost Time at a casual pace and with company, here’s a reading group that will start on August 2nd. Details in the quoted thread. #Proust #Proustsky

Je contemple souvent le ciel de ma mémoire Le temps efface tout comme effacent les vagues Les travaux des enfants sur le sable aplani Nous oublierons ces mots si précis et si vagues Derrière qui chacun nous sentions l’infini. Le temps efface tout il n’éteint pas les yeux Qu’ils soient d’opale ou d’étoile ou d’eau claire Beaux comme dans le ciel ou chez un lapidaire Ils brûleront pour nous d’un feu triste ou joyeux. Les uns joyaux volés de leur écrin vivant Jetteront dans mon cœur leurs durs reflets de pierre Comme au jour où sertis, scellés dans la paupière Ils luisaient d’un éclat précieux et décevant. D’autres doux feux ravis encor par Prométhée Étincelle d’amour qui brillait dans leurs yeux Pour notre cher tourment nous l’avons emportée Clartés trop pures ou bijoux trop précieux. Constellez à jamais le ciel de ma mémoire Inextinguibles yeux de celles que j’aimai Rêvez comme des morts, luisez comme des gloires Mon cœur sera brillant comme une nuit de Mai. L’oubli comme une brume efface les visages Les gestes adorés au divin autrefois, Par qui nous fûmes fous, par qui nous fûmes sages Charmes d’égarement et symboles de foi.

Le temps efface tout l’intimité des soirs Mes deux mains dans son cou vierge comme la neige Ses regards caressants mes nerfs comme un arpège Le printemps secouant sur nous ses encensoirs. D’autres, les yeux pourtant d’une joyeuse femme, Ainsi que des chagrins étaient vastes et noirs Épouvante des nuits et mystère des soirs Entre ces cils charmants tenait toute son âme Et son cœur était vain comme un regard joyeux. D’autres comme la mer si changeante et si douce Nous égaraient vers l’âme enfouie en ses yeux Comme en ces soirs marins où l’inconnu nous pousse. Mer des yeux sur tes eaux claires nous naviguâmes Le désir gonflait nos voiles si rapiécées Nous partions oublieux des tempêtes passées Sur les regards à la découverte des âmes. Tant de regards divers, les âmes si pareilles Vieux prisonniers des yeux nous sommes bien déçus Nous aurions dû rester à dormir sous la treille Mais vous seriez parti même eussiez-vous tout su Pour avoir dans le cœur ces yeux pleins de promesses Comme une mer le soir rêveuse de soleil Vous avez accompli d’inutiles prouesses Pour atteindre au pays de rêve qui, vermeil, Se lamentait d’extase au-delà des eaux vraies Sous l’arche sainte d’un nuage cru prophète Mais il est doux d’avoir pour un rêve ces plaies Et votre souvenir brille comme une fête.

Here's the poem in the original French with alt text transcription

I Often Contemplate My Memory’s Skies Time erases all just as the waves Efface the children’s castles on the beach We’ll forget these words so precise, so vague Still sensing the infinite behind each. Time effaces all it does not erase the eyes Be they of star, clear water, or opal As rich in the skies or on the jeweler’s table They flame for us, joyous or sadly wise. The joyous, flown from their living bevels, Will pierce my heart with their gem-hard glints As on the day they were set in their lids Gleaming with a precious, deceptive sparkle. Other sweet fires Prometheus ravished Have sparked a love that flashes in their eyes With a brilliance too pure and jewels too lavish We carry it off in a torrent of sighs. Constellate ever my memory’s skies Dream like the dead and gleam like the day To all whom I loved for your endless eyes My heart will shine like a night in May. Forgetting, like a mist, erases faces Adoring gestures to gods now dead Who drove us wise, who drove us mad The errant spells and faithful traces.

Time erases the closeness of evening My hands on her neck as virgin as snow Her gaze down my nerves in an arpeggio As over us spring sets its censors swinging Others, otherwise happy women, have eyes That, like their griefs, run dark and vast The dread of night, of evening’s demise Holds the soul between each charming lash And her heart as empty as her look was gay Others as soft and shiftless as the sea Led us to soul in her eyes astray As through a maritime twilight, the unknown leads Oceanic eyes, we’ve sailed your crystal shoals Desire launching our ragged sails aloft Unmindful of previous storms, we set off Across gazes hoping to discover souls The gazes so varied, yet the souls all one. Old prisoners of eyes, we were roundly deceived We should have stayed under arbors, soundly asleep Though had you known, you still would have gone To have such promising eyes in your heart Like an evening sea dreaming up the sun You’ve skillfully practiced your pointless arts To reach rosy lands of dreams that moan Beyond the true waters in ecstasy aloud Below the holy ark of a prophetic cloud How sweet, instead of dreams, these wounds laid bare And your memory blazing like a country fair.

Here's the poem in English with alt text transcription

La poesia sul tempo di Marcel Proust, sul valore dell'amore per la memoria Scopri questa splendida poesia sul tempo di Marcel Proust sul tempo, l'amore e la memoria, che prepara al libro"Alla ricerca del tempo perduto"

The article discusses the poem 'I Often Contemplate My Memory's Skies' published in English in the book Marcel Proust: The Collected Poems

With just as much drama!

Well, you have the sea! I only ever got day trips to Baltimore when living in VA. But later back in Australia, we lived on the Gold Coast, and I miss the ocean so much

I'm Australian, but I actually grew up in a religious cult of sorts that had 140 acres in rural VA. All the problems of such an extreme society aside, we kids used to race through those woods all the time to swim in the river, dodging the cottonmouths, trying not to get shot by deer hunters

I'll confess I'm a bit jealous of where you live. You couldn't drag me back to the US in the current political climate, but I do hope one day in the future to visit the East Coast woods where I played as a kid. Maybe hike the Appalachians again

How's your river looking this summer? I haven't seen it in a while

"But what has she got to do with the Zoo?" "Everything!" "What? You don't suggest that she's got a sky-blue behind, like the monkeys?" "Charles, you really are too dreadful!" II125

Fra Bartolomeo, Portrait of Girolamo Savonarola, c. 1498.

The one thing to be said for [Mme Blatin] is that she's exactly like Savonarola. She's the very image of that portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolommeo. II125

Besides, it was she whom I loved and whom I could not therefore see without that anxiety, without that desire for something more, which destroys in us, in the presence of the person we love, the sensation of loving. II118

Note: In his Proust's Playlist, James Connelly recommends the Guarneri Quartet on RCA. Robert Layton, in his Gramophone review, recommends the Quartetto Italiano on Decca. I like the Alban Berg Quartett on EMI. Additional recommendations welcome

...an advance if not in the quality of artists at least in the community of minds, largely composed today of what was not to be found when the work first appeared, that is to say of persons capable of appreciating it. II120-121

...It was Beethoven's quartets themselves (the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth) that devoted half a century to forming, fashioning and enlarging the audience for Beethoven's quartets, thus marking, like every great work of art...