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 […]
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. […]
The first thing that stood out to me was the ‘invalid at midnight’. He is excited because he thinks he sees the light, that his ‘journey’ is over, but it is the servants turning off the lantern, and he will have to suffer the whole night. At first, I thought this had religious undertones, but […]
When reading the “combray” part, I clearly understood the author’s unique writing style and thus recorded some of my insights into the author’s articles.The author takes his thoughts as the central point and combines his feelings and vague associations…
When reading the “combray” part, I clearly understood the author’s unique writing style and thus recorded some of my insights into the author’s articles.The author takes his thoughts as the central point and combines his feelings and vague associations…
Hello Everyone, Reading Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust reminded me greatly of Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I had to read the Notes from the Underground for a philosophy class; as challenging as it was, the moment I finally understood it, (though I feel that I could read it an endless amount of […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with comparison, marcelproust, notesfromtheunderground, oepidus, russia, similarities, swannsway, toothache
Let me preface all this by saying that I did not understand what I was reading, and this was further emphasised to me when I read the sparknotes pages after finishing “Combray“.
I really wanted to fall in love with this text. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust has an almost revered place in my home; my stepdad, who is at the beloved centre of our family first read Swann’s Way when he was my current age (20), albeit in the Persian translation. Since then, he has read it in English too, and is learning French for the sole purpose of being able to read all seven volumes of this masterful novel in the original language. I’m not kidding, Proust is the reason why he is learning French, and why the act of language-learning is a constant for us all.
I didn’t understand what was going on at all. I didn’t even realise that things were going on. I didn’t pick up a plot, I couldn’t follow the paragraph-long sentences—may I refer to a 192-word long sentence about buttercups—I was just lost. I remember asking my stepdad, who is a very intelligent man, if he understood what was going on when he was reading it for the first time at my age. He said that he didn’t, and that felt a little validating, to be honest.
Nonetheless, I did pick up a few small things. Now obviously, Marcel Proust and the narrator come from an affluent, upper-class background and, as with many writings from the early 20th century, there’s going to be some analysis about social class. I really liked the part of the story where he speculates about the appearance of the Duchess. He has all these theories and ideas about what she’s going to look like, before actually seeing her and being disappointed by her mundane-ness. She just looks like any other person in his social circle. She just looks like a person.
I’m sure that people have idolised the appearances of the upper class for many, many years. I think of European monarchs in the 1500s who would have portraits commissioned with their flaws concealed and their youth exaggerated, just to have the paintings taken around the country for their subjects to see what they supposedly looked like. I imagine there’s always been this notion that higher class automatically means more beauty, so it’s thought-provoking to see that notion shatter before the narrator’s eyes.
Also, I didn’t like that he pretends that Gilberte and the Duchess’ eyes are blue, just because he associates blue eyes with beauty. Sure, go on about beauty standards and all that but let it be known that I stand with my fellow brown-eyed people and would like to make it clear that brown eyes are also very beautiful and they deserve as much hype as blue eyes.
My question upon reading this part of the novel is that to what extent is the narrator’s relationship with each of his parents normal and/or healthy? Because I’m seeing some Oedipal subtexts and I can’t say I enjoy it.
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with classism, marcel proust, oedipus, perception, perspective
