Bibliography
Feb. 6th, 2007 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyProust - In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
The second volume of Proust's masterwork, À la recherche du temps perdu, it has taken me a while to get to this. This is partly because of the richness of Proust's prose - it's very easy to overdose on it. However, it's very interesting that, having spent so long not reading Proust, it is so easy to pick it back up as if you never stopped - the thread is very difficult to lose, I think, which means that one has sufficient intellectual digestion time.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower deals with our narrator's maturation as an adolescent - his first sexual experiences, his first dealing with polite society, his first loves. Some of his illusions begin to be lost, and some of his very set opinions begin to be reformed. There is a huge theme running through this volume of things changing - for instance, the mutable quality of the sea, the interchangable nature of the gang of girls at the seafront at Balbec, Mme. Swann's continual shifting of her personality and persona, the vagaries of individuals and their presentation of themselves, the movement of things from one state to another, the illusions captured in the paintings of Elstir. These movements and changes reflect, I suppose, the changes within the narrator, who moves from his obsession with Gilberte Swann to a different sort of love for Albertine Simonet (markedly only with one 'n').
There is, of course, a very sly capturing here of the idiocy of society, the way that men like M. de Norpois, despite being exceptionally dull, are considered the judge of all that is fine by people who really ought to know better. The best example really is the performance the narrator goes to see by the famed actress La Berma - a better encapsulation of the experience of anti-climax I have yet to read. Genius.
Another wonderful passage I want to highlight is the description of Mme. Swann's reception room - the colours are amazing, the description of Odette's tea gowns are as fragile and delicate as the object (and incite in me a great desire for such a tea gown), the flowers are perfectly captured, the furniture and accessories are exquisite. Proust is a master of description - the people seem overpowered by their luxurious surroundings.
I am very much looking forward to the third volume, but I suspect there will be a similar interval before I attempt it!
The second volume of Proust's masterwork, À la recherche du temps perdu, it has taken me a while to get to this. This is partly because of the richness of Proust's prose - it's very easy to overdose on it. However, it's very interesting that, having spent so long not reading Proust, it is so easy to pick it back up as if you never stopped - the thread is very difficult to lose, I think, which means that one has sufficient intellectual digestion time.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower deals with our narrator's maturation as an adolescent - his first sexual experiences, his first dealing with polite society, his first loves. Some of his illusions begin to be lost, and some of his very set opinions begin to be reformed. There is a huge theme running through this volume of things changing - for instance, the mutable quality of the sea, the interchangable nature of the gang of girls at the seafront at Balbec, Mme. Swann's continual shifting of her personality and persona, the vagaries of individuals and their presentation of themselves, the movement of things from one state to another, the illusions captured in the paintings of Elstir. These movements and changes reflect, I suppose, the changes within the narrator, who moves from his obsession with Gilberte Swann to a different sort of love for Albertine Simonet (markedly only with one 'n').
There is, of course, a very sly capturing here of the idiocy of society, the way that men like M. de Norpois, despite being exceptionally dull, are considered the judge of all that is fine by people who really ought to know better. The best example really is the performance the narrator goes to see by the famed actress La Berma - a better encapsulation of the experience of anti-climax I have yet to read. Genius.
Another wonderful passage I want to highlight is the description of Mme. Swann's reception room - the colours are amazing, the description of Odette's tea gowns are as fragile and delicate as the object (and incite in me a great desire for such a tea gown), the flowers are perfectly captured, the furniture and accessories are exquisite. Proust is a master of description - the people seem overpowered by their luxurious surroundings.
I am very much looking forward to the third volume, but I suspect there will be a similar interval before I attempt it!
