At the Thursday zoom lecture, there was a classmate who mentioned how they are afraid of not being able to understand or missing an important point in the novel, since english is not their first language. I can totally relate to that, since it is not my first language as well. I am able to read and understand the words but not the meaning behind it. The beginning of Proust was super confusing to me. I even asked my friend if it is normal that I don’t understand a single thing. I need to re-read them a few times to fully get them into my head. In this blog, I will mainly focus on my thoughts and ideas on this reading.
In the beginning, the narrator often switched between his dreams and reality. However, the excessive amount of transitions could be distracting to the readers. I personally found it distracting as I have to pay more attention to whether it’s been switched to reality or to a different dream. Fortunately, it got easier to understand as the story progressed. The story became more focused and clear as it focused on one specific memory, which is the narrator’s memories back when he was in Combray.
One of the most vivid parts for me was how attached and close he is to his mother. The narrator would wait for his Mama to give him a goodnight kiss before he fell asleep. However, he is not able to ask for another one as his father, who found it absurd, would be irritated. It made me wonder if the fact of him not being able to sleep is due to the insecurity he has. As he is not able to ‘fulfill’ his attachment needs with his Mama.
The other vivid part for me was “[…] lacking a confidant whom she could communicate with, she announced them to herself” (p.52). That part made my heart ache. After his aunt’s husband has passed, she has been in a state of grief. She has no one else to talk to which then gives her a habit of talking to herself/thinking out loud.
When I first read this book, I noticed how he used a lot of descriptive words and comparisons which provided a lot of imagery to the readers. I am able to picture the memories the narrator had recalled while dreaming. I also wonder if the reason he drowned himself into his memories was because of nostalgia or perhaps because of his desire to escape from reality. My question for you is: Which part of his memories gave you the most vivid image? and Do you think there is a reason why he drowned himself into memories?
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As I initially began reading the text, I thought the main theme would be around the inability to sleep, and how the mind can race at night much to one’s dismay. Ideas of lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis came into my mind. Early on, Proust mentions the thought of falling asleep waking him up, this […]
From the first paragraph of Proust’s Combray, the author’s intrinsic, attentive, and stunning control over language is evident. The manner in which he captures the disorientation of hovering listlessly in the place between sleep and awake–that long moment of disequilibrium as we return to ourselves following a dream (“it seemed to me that I myself […]
blog#2 – Combray and Childhood Guilt — While reading Proust’s Combray, I automatically and unconsciously tried to categorize it in my brain with themes of other texts and books I’ve read in the past. The result was somewhere between ‘intimacy-deprived only child soliloquy‘ and ‘anxiety fueled mommy issues‘. Though Combray left with me with more […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with babyhood, childhood guilt, french, lost in translation, mother
Reading Proust’s “Combray” was such a delightful experience, especially thanks to his wonderful use of descriptive language. One line that quite amazed me was this: “[…] she derived from this very constraint one more delicate thought, like good poets forced by the tyranny of rhyme to find their most beautiful lines […]” (24). The simile […]
After our conversations about our attitudes towards reading in class on Thursday, I was definitely more intentional and considerate about my reading patterns and behavior while I read Combray. In my contemplative state during my reading, I actually picked up on synchronicity between the conversations we had in class and the author’s attitudes towards reading […]
Before I relate to the text, I would like to admire the lofty imagery that we are left with when reading Proust’s Combray. It is almost like a string of thoughts that we are bombarded with and is an open ground for feeling many of the emotions and the experiences that the author himself has […]
This first section of Michael Proust’s Combray is to me a tangled web of meaning and tangential breaks that feels as disconnected and warped as the narrator feels when dealing with sleep. First things first that was a lot … Continue reading →
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Hello everyone! My name is Abi Franceschetti and I am one of the many students in Rmst202. I think it is sort of cool that the course is structured like this where we write blog posts in a setting like this compared to canvas and all, so that will be exciting! Im a first year […]
Posted in Blogs, Introduction | Tagged with writing
Marcel Proust’s Combray utilizes elegant and complex language to introduce the memory of the narrator. Although the work seems to be an autobiographical reflection on Proust’s own life, its classification is closer to that of a semi-autobiography in my opinion, as the descriptions used by him are associated with an extremely significant amount of details. […]
