My Year With Proust - Day 69

"This compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without result, was so cruel a scourge that one day,  noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a tumour which would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with anything further, that it was his malady which was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end.  If indeed, at this period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so much the keenness of his sufferings as from monotony of his struggle.

   And yet he would have wished to live until the time came when he no longer loved her, when she would have no reason for lying him, when at length he might learn from her whether, on the day when he had gone to see her in the afternoon, she had or had not been in the arms of Forcherville.  Often for several days on end the suspicion that she was in love with someone else would distract his mind from the question of Forcherville, making it almost immaterial to him, like those new developments of a continuous state of ill-health which seem for a little time to have delivered us from their predecessors.  There were even days when he was not tormented by any suspicion. He fancied that he was cured.  But next morning, when he awoke, he felt in the same place the same pain, a sensation which, the day before, he had, as it were, diluted in the torrent of different impressions.  But it had not stirred from its place.  Indeed, it was the sharpness of this pain that had awakened him."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 334-335

As I've said before, in the hands of a lesser writer these lengthy discussions of Swann's obsession with Odette and his suffering at her betrayal might seem tedious or at the very least over-done. As much as I like The Sorrows of Young Werther, there are times when I'm quite ready to help him kill himself.  And it's difficult to read Swann's desire for death without thinking of Ralphie's bout with soap poisoning in A Christmas Story.  However, Proust carries it off.  Beyond Proust's almost preternatural perception and his mastery of language, I think the reason why this works is that we've all been there, all suffered through that same pain; at least, we should have if we've lived our lives right. If we haven't felt that pain then we haven't felt that depth of love.  And it is an actual pain, not simply a sense of loneliness or sexual frustration or sadness, but an actual, physical pain, a doubled-up on the floor pain.  Proust tells us that Swann longed for death, to "escape not so much the keenness of his suffering as from monotony of his struggle."  It's exhausting to be that much in love.

At the same time Swann wishes that he could pass through this suffering to a time when he didn't love Odette anymore, when her name meant nothing to him.  It is the final victory, when you feel neither love nor hate.  If indifference is the opposite of love, as compared to hate, then what better proof of conquering love, or of conquering her, than to just not care?  Of course, it's also best if she sees that we just don't care ("who is noticing that I don't care?"), which proves that we really do still care. Or, if it's just remarkably important that I realize that I don't care, as compared to just not caring, then it speaks to the level of self-absorption that made the entire experience worse.

My Year With Proust - Day 68

"He would ask himself: 'What does it mean, after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who Odette de Crecy is? Reputations of that sort, even when they're true, are always based on upon other people's ideas'; he would reflect that this legend - even if it were authentic - as something external to Odette, was not inherent in her like a mischievous and ineradicable personality; that the creature who might have been led astray was a woman with frank eyes, a heart full of pity for the sufferings of others, a docile body which had had pressed tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers, a woman of whom he might one day come into absolutely possession if he succeeded in making himself indispensable to her.  There she was, often tired, her face left blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish preoccupation with the unknown things which made Swann suffering; she would push back her hair with both hands; her forehead, her whole face would seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some worthy sentiment such as are to be found in all creatures when, in a moment of rest of meditation, they are free to express themselves, would flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold.  And immediately the whole of her face would light up like a grey landscape, swathed in clouds which, suddenly, are swept away and the full scene transfigured, at the moment of the sun's setting.  The life which occupied Odette at such times, even the future which she seemed to be dreamily regarding, Swann could have shared with her.  No evil disturbance seemed to have left any effect on them.  Rare as they became, those moments did not occur in vain.  By the process of memory, Swann joined the fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity . . ."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 331-332

Once again, Proust provides a lovely example that works perfectly for, on the micro level, our first year Concepts of the Self students, but, more importantly, on the macro level, for the rest of humanity.  If the self is truly a negotiated concept - and perception and memory are deeply flawed instruments - then how in the hell do we every truly know anything?  Seriously, love is a dicey proposition even if we know what's going on, but what small percentage of the time do we possess any great certainty about our own actions and emotions, let alone those of the ones we love?  I've always told my students that I have an instant, clear understanding of why everyone in the world does everything, with the obvious exception of myself.  Of course, none of us actually truly understand the other people in our lives.  Here Swann, a worldly and experienced man, by "the process of memory . . . joined the fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast as in molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity." Don't we all do exactly the same thing.  And aren't we, in the end, glad that we can?

My Year With Proust - Day 67

   "Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge.  When he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was in love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded complexion, returned on certain days.  'Really, I am making distinct headway,' he would tell himself on the morrow, 'when I come to think it over carefully, I find that I got hardly any pleasure, last night, out of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought her ugly.' And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long way beyond the province of physical desire.  Odette's person, indeed, no longer held any great place in it.  When his eyes fell upon the photograph of Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he had difficulty in identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the pasteboard, with the painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his mind.  He would say to himself, almost with astonishment, 'It is she!' as when suddenly someone shows us in a detached, externalized form one of our own maladies, and we find in it no resemblance to what we are suffering.  'She?' - he tried to ask himself what that meant; for it is something like love, like death (rather than like those vague conceptions of maladies), a thin which one repeatedly calls in question, in order to make oneself probe further into it, in the fear that the question will find no answer, that the substance will escape our grasp - the mystery of personality.  And this malady, which was Swann's love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past operation."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 325-326

I love Proust's discussion of our attempts to talk ourselves, rationally, out of being in love, including "reminding" ourselves that the woman really isn't that good looking and, come to think of it, not very good in bed. Of course, our heart or unconscious mind or brain chemistry has a completely different agenda.  I can remember a particular time when I was madly, passionately in love and had my heart shredded pretty thoroughly.  I took off for a seven week, seven country trip that took me from the Middle East to a sojourn across the Silk Road in China to eastern Europe to, finally, the backstreets of Barcelona in Spain.  The trip was mainly academic, but had also become essentially a quest to expunge her from my mind.  My clearest memory was standing in a Buddhist temple in Beijing praying, in classic Buddhist fashion to remove all distracting passion, for her to disappear from my mind and heart.  Yeah, about that.  And so ended my brief seven minute flirtation with becoming a Buddhist (and, of course, the infamous fight with the Tibetan monk; but, seriously, who hasn't had that happen?).  When I finally made it back to Vermont I knew that I would run into her and had prepared this whole exchange in my head wherein she would ask if she could stop by and I would say, "No, I would prefer that you didn't."  And then I would be free, and clearly well on my way to achieving Nirvana.  My second day back I did run into her, and she did ask if she could swing by (even though I was comically averting my eyes so as not to have to look at her), and I replied, classically, "Yeah, that would be great."  As Homer would say, "Doh!"  Clearly, I was "past operation."

My Year With Proust - Day 66

"'Think of listening to Wagner for a fortnight on end with her, who takes about as much interest in music as a fish does in little apples; it will be fun!' And his hatred, like his love, needing to manifest itself in action, he amused himself with urging his evil imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the perfidies with which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and would be able, if it turned out - as he tried to convince himself - that she was indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her, emptying upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 318

Here Swann is getting more and more angry with Odette, which, of course, explains why he should end up with her. I know it's an old chestnut, but the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Having said that, it's funny how we will romanticize our beloved way out of proportion, and then demonize her with the same exaggerated magnitude of scale.  Part of this, as I've previously opined, is our own self-absorption.  Just as we are capable of, and for that matter worthy of, that great love which eludes the ordinary man, we must also be victims of extraordinary cruelty, endless "perfidies." As my friend Alfonso and I will often propose, mainly when we're complaining about administrators, don't assume Machiavellian cunning when it's just clumsy indifference.

My Year With Proust - Day 65

"All the same, it was a matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began at length to bewilder him."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 297

As I've mentioned previously, the latter part of Swann's Way features a lengthy, if insightful, discussion of Swann's struggle to understand Odette.  In this case I've just pulled out one line.  How often in literature and film is the default setting that women have "unrelieved sorrow" (at least the interesting ones)? Of course, this goes back to my well-documented fascination with dark European actresses with terrible secrets.  Beyond that, is there some essential truth to this view or is it one of those essential tropes of popular culture?  If it's true is it because women truly are more emotionally sophisticated and sensitive than men are, and the general horror of life wears them down more quickly?  Or is it just the general horror of living with men?  I remember sitting in a coffeeshop in Madrid once - allegedly working, but mainly girl watching - and I was struck (and should been struck) by the fact that most of the women were of two types: breathtakingly beautiful young women or dramatically weathered old women bent into question marks by the weight of the world.  And I remember thinking at the time - is this what living with a Spanish man does to you?  In a larger sense, is this what living with all men does to women?  Or is this all mythology, partially promoted by women themselves, in an attempt to exoticize their lives? As Swann himself points out later on, "People don't know when they are happy.  They're never so unhappy as they think they are." (373)

My Year With Proust - Day 64

"Swann had, in fact, reached an age the philosophy of which - supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of his life, the group that surrounded the Princess des Laumes, in which one's intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members - is no longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their aspirations upon external objects, endeavour to separate from the accumulation of the years already spent a definite residue or habits and passions which they can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with which they will deliberately arrange, before anything else, that the kind of existence which they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 296

There is a point in life when intelligence and sophistication and disbelief becomes absolutely exhausting. On the now famous Trip of Excellence with my great friend Sanford Zale we had this running friendly argument about which age is better, the Enlightenment or the Romantic, with Sanford favoring the former and me the latter.  While we were mainly play-acting to keep our sanity while driving thousands of miles, we did truthfully come down on the sides we had chosen. I think I've been fighting a battle, largely unconsciously, over the last few years between faith and reason, as, I suppose, most people do, so I shouldn't make too much of it. Year ago I wrote an unpublished novel (thankfully, because it really was quite bad), which started off as an exercise that celebrated the power of the intellect, and in the end, essentially organically, became an affirmation of the heart. Novels tend to write themselves, and mine had become something quite different than its initial intent.  By the conclusion the protagonist (and more importantly, in this case, the author), without having anything as dramatic as an It's a Wonderful Life moment, came to understand that the mind if left alone can justify any sort of behavior.  Back when I ran Playboy to the blind in Atlanta I remember reading an article where some man had researched affairs and placed them in a number of categories, one of which was Maintenance Affairs.  This would be affairs which actually allow you to stay in your marriage because they provide something that the marriage was lacking, which could be sexual or it just be someone who actually enjoys going to the museum.  At the time I thought this was quite interesting and insightful, but maybe I liked it because it provided a lovely justification for bad behavior.  Maybe I've just reached the point in life where I want to believe in something, and not just my steadfast belief in disbelief.  In Nasr's brilliant The Heart of Islam he talks about secular fundamentalism, which doesn't get nearly as much attention as Christian fundamentalism or Islamic fundamentalism or Hindu fundamentalism. When I first read that book I was really taken aback because I realized that, at that particular moment in life, I was pretty guilty of being a secular fundamentalist - my default setting was that people of faith clearly didn't understand what they were talking about, and was in many ways as close-minded as the worst sort of religious fundamentalist.  Maybe the reason why I found this so unsettling was because I was already beginning to feel this internal struggle and, in classic cognitive dissonance, was reconciling it by being so close minded to issues of faith.  A long road awaits on this one.

The stack of books sitting next to me while I was working, which somehow seemed a fitting metaphor for the discussion.

My Year With Proust - Day 63

"But the real, the fundamental reason was quite different.  What had happened was that they had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the Princess de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, or entirely converting him to their faith, the like or which they had never come across in anyone before."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 265

Proust is explaining why the Vendurins stopped inviting Swann around, which in the end had nothing to do with his affair with Odette or his failure to share the intimate details of said affair with Mme Vendurin.  Instead, they discovered to their horror that they could not entirely impose their will on him, discovering "an impossibility of imposing their dogmas upon him."  In this case Proust is not talking about dogma or faith in a religious context, although that may have played some very small role, but rather in regard to world view. They wanted him to believe what they believed and feel the same way about certain people and concepts and objects. It makes you wonder, is this what we really want when we make new friends, whether we've done so deliberately or accidentally? We don't actually want to learn about new ideas or try new things or, at the very least, hear new stories. Rather, we're all in our heart of hearts evangelical; we're actively spreading the faith, and, again, the faith is our view of the world and its people and places and things. Or maybe it's better to think of us as capitalists, continually looking for new markets. And so our new friendships fail not because the person is not interesting, but because we can't convert them or get them to buy our products?

My Year With Proust - Day 62

"'Very well!' he went on, with the slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they came from someone else."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 264

See previous post - and everything I've ever said in my entire life.

My Year With Proust - Day 61

"This charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appeared to him by their beauty, but without recalling her.  Besides, having allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his skepticism, as a finished 'man of the world', had gradually penetrated them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most refined."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 261-262

Here Proust is reflecting on how Swann continued to change himself to "fit" Odette, even down to altering his own aesthetics to match her own. This is one of those slippery slope aspects of a relationship.  On the one hand it is a good idea to take an active interest in what your partner likes, and that is a key part of constructing a relationship - and it's always great to be introduced to new ideas and activities.  I think every woman I was ever with left something of herself behind in the things she introduced into my life.  It might be a movie or a novel or a hobby, although it's often just a memory, which, truthfully, you're much more likely to retain than all the other more tangible objects. Now, I think this all becomes a problem when you sublimate your own interests to the new and improved and clearly better interests of your partner, in an effort to fit in - and thus stop being the person who she loved in the first place.

Having said that, what I find far more interesting in this section is Swann's belief that "the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions."  On the one hand, yes, it's true that these objects are very much a matter of often highly subjective perceptions.  I love the Chess Garden, but certainly part of the reason for that it is because it is associated in my mine and emotion with my friendship with my Sarah Cohen. However, I also think that some objects are transcendent, and here I make a very poor deconstructionalist.  My students, in an attempt at intellectual bravado, will claim that all that matters is the reader's (or in their case, the viewer's) perception of the work and not anything intrinsic in the work. As you might expect, I abuse them pretty thoroughly on this front. First off, I point out the obvious, and that is that this is a fun game to play if you're pissing on Shakespeare, but it would not be nearly as funny if people were saying that their (my students or my) work had no intrinsic value.  More importantly, I do think there are works of profound, and I would argue transcendent beauty, that are simply better.  There will never be a time until the ending of the world, to paraphrase Henry V, where people will not be reading Shakespeare or Dickens or Rumi or the Ramayana or, well, Proust, and I think this speaks to a greater intrinsic value.  So, in this case I think Swann is clearly posturing.  And, of course, this is the opinion of a clear and consistent intellectual snob (for which I'm at peace).

My Year With Proust - Day 60

"Once he was left alone he would see again that smile, and her smile of the day before, another with which she had greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her answer, in the carriage that night, when he had asked her whether she objected to his rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of Odette at all other times, since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all directions, traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable smiles.  But, once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which Swann still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it was not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it, some friend who knew them both, and, suspecting that they were in love, had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cap trimmed with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her bosom.  This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not wholly subordinated to his own . . ."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 254-255

And doubt begins to creep into Swann's mind almost immediately, which may just be part and parcel of love, sadly. What I find interesting in this section is that the doubt springs from Swann making an amazing discovery: that Odette was actually a separate being.  We're all, I suspect, even the most emotionally generous of us, solipsistic at our hearts.  Everything is an extension of our own beings, planets orbiting around our central sun, merely reflecting our light. One of the great shocking discoveries that new parents make is that one day they discover that these little creatures who now inhabit the house are, in fact, separate little creatures, who almost certainly have their own agenda.  In the end, hopefully, we get over this and come to appreciate their difference and their independence and their unique worldview.  Not always, of course. Some parents never grasp this fact, and tend to lose interest in their kids when they discover that they are their own separate entities and not merely evidence of their parents' success.

Oddly, I think the same thing happens with lovers.  We assume they patiently wait around in their apartments or houses for us to call them - or, maybe more accurately - call them into being, as they're really just extensions of our imagination.  So when we see them out and about we can only assume that there has been a jailbreak in our self-imposed narrative, and thus they are clearly doing something wrong.  I forget which Kurt Vonnegut novel it is where at the end he frees all the characters. Maybe we need to do the same thing.

Why I Love My Friends

This showed up on the bulletin board outside my office.  Obviously, I am loved.  It's a picture of me playing with giant tortoises on Changu Island in Zanzibar.  I'll be seeing them again in only two weeks. I wonder if they'll remember me?

To me this is much more representative of me trying to get the junior faculty to do something.

My Year With Proust - Day 59

"Perhaps it was to that hour of anguish that there must be attributed the importance which Odette had since assumed in his life.  Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 250

Much of the latter part of Swann's Way is a lengthy discussion of the suffering of Swann at the hands of Odette, or at least the imagined suffering of Swann at the hands of Odette.  As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, life is only what you deem it to be. Proust is such a beautiful writer, and his insights are so true, that it carries the day in a stretch that would be tedious, if not outright annoying, in the hands of a lesser writer.  By this I guess I mean that you can't read it and at a certain point think, much like Cher in Moonstruck, snap out of it! However, when we're in that place we will talk endlessly of our misery, and we need to do so, although it is also a self-perpetuating phenomenon.  I have a friend who is going through something similar right now and we've had many conversations about his frustration with a woman he is in love with and his very real pain - and I'm happy to listen because I've been in the same situation before, pouring my heart out for hours to friends (mainly my great friend Cinse, who would listen patiently and then have the good sense to say, essentially, "stop it, we're not going to talk about this any more, we're going to talk about something else," which is the appropriate answer).  I suspect, even though the latter stages of this volume are beautifully written, I will probably end up including less of them.  Although, when I go back and look at my notes, and read Proust's words again, it never seems to happen.  Maybe that is one of his greatest talents, the ability to take what could (and probably should) be ordinary and make it extraordinary.

What I also find interesting about this little snippet of a section is the thought that we so willingly hand over to people the ability to make us miserable, and also, hopefully, blissfully happy.  Are we really so lonely, so afraid of fading away unnoticed, that we will sign away everything?  As I was saying to my friend yesterday, there is a difference between being utterly steadfast, essentially that guy who is always there through thick and thin, and giving away every aspect of our self, stripping ourselves bare - almost a form of self-flagellation - to be with that person.  And in the process do we become something that the woman, and more importantly we ourselves, won't like in the long run.  Do we run the very real risk of hating the person we love and also ourselves because of the level of emotional deprivation we've suffered?  And yet we've done so voluntarily. I think my current relationship has a better chance of workout now (my own long-term Quixotic adventure) because at a certain point I stepped back and I think I started to give less, if that makes any sense; not that I'm not still that guy who is always there, but that I made a conscious, or maybe completely unconscious, unplanned and organic, decision to regain part of myself.

Finally, and this started out as a four line post and keep evolving (again, typical of my relationship with Proust), I love his description of the contact between you and the person you love.  It becomes almost a tangible thing.  In Freeland's Portraits & Persons she talks about icons and the notion that they were designed to connect you, not metaphorically but actually, to the divine; an almost physical link. In our desire for another form of transcendent love do we do the same thing with the woman we've fallen for?  We almost feel them out their in the world.  I'll need to think more about this, but now I need to get back to the Iliad and my other writing project. This is one of the reasons why I get up at 5:00, it's very quiet here in Bleak House and I find it a good time to write.

IS Panel

I just wanted to post some pictures from a panel discussion we ran this week here at Champlain on the Islamic State.  We really need to do this more often, and I'm thinking of folding it under the "Honey Boy" umbrella (much more on that later) so make it more formalized.  My friend Rowshan has put together at least three panel discussions (at least I've been involved with three of them), but it would be great if we could present something once or twice a semester. It was a great discussion and folks brought up great points.  I mainly just told stories and came within walking distance of a good point now and then.

The excellent Cyndi Brandenburg acting as moderator, or maybe just having painful flashbacks to the online harassment training we all underwent lately.

David Kite, Maggie Hunter and Ciaran Buckley. Here Ciaran is holding forth, and doubtless trying to initiate some sort of argument.  David was, as is his wont, mainly transcendent.

And my long-time friend and office-mate, Bob Mayer.  We really do have a lot of talent on the faculty here, which would make a panel series potentially really valuable.

My Year With Proust - Day 58

   "But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or perhaps reluctance to appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days.  If she had any cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: 'It is most unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not be disturbed as they were the other night; I think, though, that this one isn't quite straight.  May I see if they have more scent than the others?  Or else, if she had none: 'Oh! no cattleyas this evening: then there's nothing for me to arrange.' So that for some time there was no change from the procedure which he had followed on that first evening, when he had started by touching her throat, with his fingers first and then with his lips, but their caresses began invariably with this modest exploration.  And long afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the ritual pretence of an arrangement) of her cattleyas had quite fallen into desuetude, the metaphor 'Do a cattleya', transmuted into a simple verb which they would employ without a thought of its original meaning when they wished to refer to the act of physical possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor possesses nothing), survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long-forgotten custom from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular manner of saying 'to make love' had not the precise significance of its synonyms. However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may regard the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure if the women concerned be - or be thought to be - so difficult as to oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the cattleyas."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 247-248

And so, picking up from where we left off last time, we've probably moved from the sublime to the ridiculous: the establishment of the catchphrase for sex, in this case to "do a cattleya."  In some ways this is just representative of the normalization of any relationship.  At some point or another you almost inevitably move from fucking to making love, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you still leave room for the occasional spontaneous, wild, sweaty cattleya.  If you don't then the normal becomes the ordinary, and you end up with too many exchanges like this:

   "'No cattleyas, then, to-night?' he asked, 'and I've been looking forward so to a nice little cattleya.'

   But she was irresponsive; saying nervously: 'No, dear, no cattleya to-night.  Can't you see, I'm not well?'

   'It might have done you good, but I won't bother you.'" (288)

What I love about this exchange, beyond the universality of the sentiment, is that I suspect he didn't really want to do a cattleya either, but this allows him to grab the moral or at least emotional high ground, and the resulting relationship capital, which can be used as a negotiating chip later.

It seems to me that the establishment of the catchphrase for sex is totally organic and idiosyncratic, and does speak to a level of intimacy.  "Do you want to hang out?" This may seem like a classic come hither line between potential partners, but I've also seen long-term couples say this with the same, although I guess more definite and planned, meaning.  "Want go go upstairs?"  Classic.  What would a couple sitting downstairs watching Netflix be doing going upstairs?  Oh, and speaking of Netflix, the individual and unique catchphrase for sex can obviously be part of the larger societal lexicon as well.  "Netflix and chill."  This is, at least for the moment, the common term for casual hookups among college students, although, doubtless, it will be different next week.

And, truthfully, who doesn't need a good cattleya?

And, to be honest, I was once involved in a long-term relationship with a woman that featured lovely notes like, "Cattleya Tuesday?" As Sei Shonagon reminds us, "the rain that swells the waters."

My Year With Proust - Day 57

   "' . . . But don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would have fallen out if I hadn't.  Like that, now; if I just push them a little farther down . . . Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if I just sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent?  I don't believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now.'

   Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who should say, 'You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it.'

   He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her eyes on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women of the old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type of hers; swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes, large and finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from her face and rolling down her cheeks like two great tears.  She bent her neck, as all their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as well as in the scriptural.  And although her attitude was, doubtless, habitual and instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such moments, and was careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all her strength to hold her face back, as though some invisible force was drawing it down towards Swann's.  And Swann it was who, before she allowed her face, as though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips, held it back for a moment longer, at a little distance, between his hands.  He had intended to leave time for her mind to overtake her body's movements, to recognize the dream which she had so long cherished and to assist at its realization, like a mother invited as a spectator when a prize is given to the child whom she has reared and loves.  Perhaps, moreover, Swann himself was fixing upon these features of an Odette not yet possessed, not even kissed by him, on whom he was looking now for the last time, that comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his departure, a traveller strives to bear away with him in memory the view of a country to which he may never return."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 246-247

This is part of a delicious passage describing the first time that Swann made love to Odette, an evening that, as we'll see next, began with him "arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete surrender." I'm breaking it up because I think it works better that way thematically, and both sections deserve the attention - and because it is appropriately consistent with the anticipation at the heart of this section.  Obviously there are so many moments in a relationship that will etch themselves into your memory, even, sadly, the ones that mark the end of the affair, but is there anything more wonderful and exhilarating and, yes, memorable, than that anticipatory moment before the first kiss?  There is almost a shared understanding from both parties that you pause, lingering, inches away, before that first kiss, although I'm not really certain whether we're genetically hard-wired to pause or whether we've learned it from popular culture (more fodder for the nature vs. nurture argument). Certainly once you're even a little experienced you know that the anticipation of that instant is always better than the reality of the moments that follow (although the moments that follow are also pretty damn sweet). It seems that we've been talking a lot about liminal spaces, as Proust wrote, "it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns."  Maybe the other reason we linger is because once we cross that boundary the world changes and we can never go back.  "Perhaps, moreover, Swann himself was fixing upon these features of an Odette not yet possessed, not even kissed by him, on whom he was looking now for the last time, that comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his departure, a traveller strives to bear away with him in memory the view of a country to which he may never return." That person you hungered for has ceased to exist, as have you.  Now, their replacements may be wonderful, but they are also different people living in a different country.

Troubadours or Troublemakers

When my excellent friend Andy Burkhardt took off to live in the Giant Mitten that is Michigan (if anyone actually truly lives in the Giant Mitten that is Michigan) he inspired a number of going away parties, a very tangible indication of the central role he plays in all of our lives.  Somehow I doubt that I will inspire the same general sadness and corresponding going away parties when I move on, although, knowing me, I'd probably wait until the end of the semester and then, unannounced, disappear like a ghost. Here's a picture from one of Andy's going away parties, this time at the home of the esteemed Sanford & Debbie Zale.  This is a musical performance from a promising young group (yet unnamed).

Left to right: Bill Vespa, Sean Leahy and John Stroup.  Recently at the St. John's Club Sean did pretty killer version of Springsteen's Thunder Road on karaoke night.

My Year With Proust - Day 56

   "Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human spirit.  For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love.  It is not necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others.  All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive.  And that condition is fulfilled so soon as - in the moment when she has failed to meet us - for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing need, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational, absurd need, which the laws of civilized society make impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage - the insensate, agonizing desire to possess her."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 244

Proust is here sharing more of Swann's soul-searching and misery as he decides he loves Odette and wonders why he can't seem to have her.  Well, he can have her physically just about any time he wants, but he can't seem to have her emotionally.  The author also takes the opportunity to reflect on why we love some one. We're at the end of a lengthy anecdote where Swann was rushing form restaurant to restaurant in an attempt to find Odette, "searching for his lost Eurydice."  My ex-wife used to opine that "the worse you treat them the more they want you."  It is simple and direct - and thus very un-Proustian - but I suspect Proust would have completely understood.  We can all remember - or, maybe I should just speak for myself; I reflect upon the women I've known her were completely locked into me and were ready to start their life with me that moment, and how I put them off, probably, no, undoubtedly, foolishly, to search for my own Eurydice.  Why do we do this?  Is it the allure of the unattainable?  Is it a version of that old Grouch Marx line wherein he would not want to be a member of any club that would have him for a member?  Of course, it may well be that these women that I now want to memorialize in my memory as bastions of devotion - and the fabled lost chances of true love - probably just loved me because I was maddeningly evasive.  And if they had me, truly had me, they would had started pursuing their own unattainable loves.

My Year With Proust - Day 55

   "He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in her face and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to recapture, both when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking of her in her absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine masterpiece was probably based upon his discovery that it had been reproduced in her, the similarity enhanced  her beauty also, and rendered her more precious in his sight.  Swann reproached himself with his failure, hitherto, to estimate at her true worth a creature whom the great Sandro would have adored, and counted himself fortunate that his pleasure in the contemplation of Odette found a justification in his own system of aesthetic.  He told himself that, in choosing the thought of Odette as the inspiration of his dreams of ideals happiness, an expedient of doubtful and certainly inadequate value, since she contained in herself what satisfied the utmost refinement of his taste in art.  He failed to observe that this quality would not naturally avail to bring Odette into the category of women whom he found desirable, simply because his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic taste. The words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to introduce the image of Odette into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler form.  And whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually reviving his misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the whole of her beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings were swept away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his estimate of her on the sure foundation of his aesthetic principles; while the kiss, the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but moderately attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat withered flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as exquisite as they would be supernatural."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 237

The picture of Proust's life is slowly coming together.  A couple posts ago we gained a soundtrack to the novel, and now we have a sense of how Odette looked, or at least how she looked to Swann.  The painting Swann is comparing Odette to is Botticelli's representation of Jethro's daughter. It's funny how we will fall in love - or at least develop a substantial crush - on a woman and then turn around and seek some outside validation of our choice.  Usually it's simply a case of us going to our friends and surreptitiously (although it never fools anyone) asking them if they think, purely as a hypothetical exercise, whether or not they think some seemingly random girl is pretty.  My ex-wife did that in college and her friends, who always referred to me as "Scary Gary" avoided her to stay far away, which she did for a long time by switching from one sidewalk to another whenever she saw me coming.  Sadly, in the end her friends were right, and clearly she should have listened to them.  In this case Swann is taking it up a notch by getting his validation from a Renaissance master, who, considering how badly Odette treated Swann, turned out to be a far worse prophet than my ex-wife's friends.

If you think back to the words that Swann used to describe Odette, I can certainly see why he made the connection to this work by Botticelli.

And, to be fair, I guess I should include a painting, this classic by Goya, which is a dead ringer of me gently remonstrating one of my students.

My Year With Proust - Day 54

   "Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the fist few months, to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation.  He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally stating his belief even of himself, that he would remain all his life in that condition, which death along could alter. More than this, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe in (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality.  He had grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations, which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance. . .

   But to-night, at Mme Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth - and recognized, secret, whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved.  And it was so peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which nothing else could have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met, in a friend's drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once, in the street, and had despaired of ever seeing again.  Finally the phrase withdrew and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the wandering currents of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a reflexion of its smile.  But now, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told it was the andante movement of Vinteuil's sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its language and acquire its secret."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 223-224

As much as anything, I suppose, this passage deals with the redemptive power of music, or at least redemption.  And, as my great friend Sanford is wont to opine, its always a tale of redemption (even if it inevitably ends in tears). I think I've managed to track down this particular of music from Vinteuil (or at least I think I have). So, I guess at least for now, we have a soundtrack for Remembrance of Things Past. If the name Vinteuil sounds familiar, his daughter featured prominently in a series of posts last week.  She was the one who had carefully placed her father's picture next to the couch, only to "discover" it when her female lover came for a visit.  Proust, beautifully, and me, clumsily, discussed the role that "sadism" played in love, so maybe this wasn't much of a story of redemption after all.

It does open up the question of the redemptive power of music, which could doubtless be discussed much more expertly and elegantly by so many of my friends: Dave Kelley, Mike Kelly, Gary Beatrice, Dave Wallace and, for that matter, my ex-wife Brenda (who had a much richer knowledge of music than I did/have).  It did get me thinking about one of my favorite music questions: what songs will immediately destroy a bad mood.  My default answer is two songs that are back to back on Van Morrison's Moondance album: Into the Mystic and Caravan.  Truthfully, how can you listen to the two of them and not realize that life is pretty sweet.

Goetta and the Sorrows of Young Andy

My most excellent friend Andy, who abandoned us to pursue new career opportunities and also move a lot closer to home, sent along this picture today.  The bad news is that we all miss him terribly.  The other day we were discussing why we were so far behind in planning our traditional social events and I told my friends that we needed to stop mourning Andy and get on with our lives.  He's doing brilliantly - and that's the great news, and that makes me very happy.  He was just offered a new position at the University of Michigan, and I have no doubt that he'll flourish.  Heidi, his wife, also loves her job so, although we miss them, it does my heart good to see them doing so well.  This is a picture of a low country scramble and (homemade) goetta breakfast that I made Andy and Mike one Sunday, before heading off to Smitty's to watch the Vikings (and eat even more food).

You can take Mike out of Ohio, but apparently you can't take the Ohio out of Mike.

My Year With Proust - Day 53

"In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would appear - since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure - that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical order, without any foundation in desire.  At this time of life a man has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, before his passive and astonished heart.  We come to its aid; we falsify it by memory and by suggestion; recognizing one of its symptoms we recall and recreate the rest.  Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember all that follows.  And if she begin in the middle, where it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 208

Again, so many wonderful points that I'd like to pursue here, so I'll have to come back several times in the next couple days. This mean that I often publish posts before they are completely finished, which is poor scholarship, but I view it as an evolutionary process.  Plus, I promised myself that I was going to put out something every day (and how I'm going to do that in Zanzibar is anybody's guess) so I'm sort of keeping a promise to myself.

To start off with, for some reason this reminds me of the first woman I ever fell in love with, although I'm sure that I never told her that at the time, probably because I didn't possess the emotional intelligence and language to understand it or to express it.  Her name was Patty and she was the older sister of a friend of mine.  She was twenty-four and I was twenty, but she might as well have been thirty years older than me in regard to emotional (and just general) maturity.  Essentially, she was a woman and I was doing a clumsy and unconvincing impersonation of a man.  Still, she was kind and patient and lovely and sweet.  Come to think of it, she looked much like the dark European actresses with terrible secrets I always fall for, except that I don't think she had any terrible secrets (other than, at least then, a terrible choice in men).

The Void

Here's today's (probably first) duh statement: cyberspace is an odd place.  I suspect it isn't if you grew up consistently online, essentially living in cyberspace. However, I'm of a certain vintage where I came to it later in life.  I'm always amazed/impressed when I bump into someone online, although, if you think of it, isn't this one of the points of the whole contraption?  This morning a nice USC graduate student (good morning, Christopher) asked me if he could study some aspects of my blog for his dissertation research, and, of course, I said yes - which I would have even if I didn't have painful memories of my dissertation.  When I was teaching at Franklin and finishing up my graduate work at UC I can remember asking a colleague if she would consider reading some of my chapters and she said yes, for money.  Thankfully, innumerable other folks did so out of the goodness of their heart.  I guess I bring up the request because I always assume that my blog sits out there floating inert in cyberspace bothering no one (unlike it's creator).  That said, since I started writing daily commentary on Proust I've been getting between 75 and 125 views a day, which, in my little corner of the world, is an explosion.  It's probably a case of tapping into the Proustian purists who will move on to more interesting subject matter when I finish misunderstanding Remembrance of Things Past.  Of course, I've never really made any attempt to "grow" the blog, which would mean tackling the whole project more systematically and linking to other blogs.

I've done a little bit of that in Twitter in that I'll reach out to other folks, especially in Yemen.  I want to follow them and the unfolding tragedy in Yemen - and inshallah the happy ending, although that, sadly, seems unlikely - but I want to be able to approach them with questions, and to do that I think you need to be at least somewhat on their radar.  There is definitely a generational factor at work with Twitter as well.  For example, musicians like Neil Young or Lucinda Williams use Twitter - or maybe more accurately their handlers use Twitter - as a promotional tool, while a younger generation like Kathleen Edwards or Neko Case tend to post funny stories or pictures (Edwards about her coffeeshop or Case about her dogs) like anyone else would.  I'm thinking about this because I wonder if the same thing is expressed in the Twitter responses - or non-responses - of the candidates.  All of the candidates dump stuff on Twitter, but it's just endless soundbites, even from folks who I really admire like Bernie Sanders.  Essentially, is this just a case of politicians guarding their words or is this representative of a generational understanding of the point of social media?  Going back to the beginning of this mini-rant, isn't the point of social media to bump into other folks, not just talk about them?  Are you facilitating a discussion because you want to hear what people think or are you just lecturing at them?

Every morning I send personalized versions of the same Tweet to all the presidential candidates, the Secretary of State John Kerry, and President Obama.  @BernieSanders Your thoughts on the #Saudi war in #Yemen? #BernieSanders  So far not one response, other than random folks ReTweeting them.  So, does this mean that the candidates and the Secretary of State and the President don't care about or understand Yemen - or that they don't care about or understand their audience - or they don't care about or understand social media?  Well, sadly, we know none of them care about Yemen . . .

Oh, and I just realized that this is my 800th post on this blog, which I guess makes some thematic sense.

My Year With Proust - Day 52

   "But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been the realization, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of a face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on his part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at the theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Crecy, by an old friend of his own, who had spoken of her to him as a ravish creature with whom he might very possibly come to an understanding, but had made her out to be harder of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be conferring a special favour by the introduction.  She had struck Swann not, certainly, as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style of beauty which left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire, which gave him, indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those women of whom every man can name some, and each will name different examples, who are the converse of the type which our senses demand.  To give him any pleasure her profile, her skin too delicate, her cheekbones too prominent, her features too tightly drawn.  Her eyes were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in an ill humour."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 206-207

And Swann, and we, are finally introduced to Odette de Crecy, who will end up taking up so much of his life and so much of the novel.  It's not much of an introduction, and leaves the reader more than a bit mystified by Swann's fascination with her.  It's not as if he's not experienced, because the previous paragraph featured a rundown on his usual routine in garnering invitations to parties for his innumerable mistresses.  When I am in my cups, I will sometimes describe an actress as being hot in that way that only not hot girls are hot, and I actually mean that as a great compliment.  However, I don't even think this applies to our initial physical description of Odette.  Desire, like love, is a mystery, and if not a mystery, then something chemical.  You can walk into a room full of people of your same general intelligence and social-economic status and appearance, and you will instantly fall in love with one of them - or you may descend into abject lust over only one of them.  And what's interesting is that while that woman may not have fit your initial definition of beauty, you will often then re-calibrate your definition to fit her - that is until you fall out of love or lust with her, at which point you'll revert to your original setting.  Obviously, we'll be talking a lot more about Odette.

Oh, and I can't be the only one who thinks that Proust is making a Swan Lake pun by having a Swann fall in love with an Odette?

My Year With Proust - Day 51

"For at such times desire, or love itself, would revive in him a feeling of vanity from which he was now quite free in his everyday life, although it was, no doubt, the same feeling which had originally prompted him towards a career as a man of fashion in which had had squandered his intellectual gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses; and this vanity it was which made him eager to shine, in the sight of any fair unknown who had captivated him for the moment, with a brilliance which the name of Swann by itself did not emit.  And he was most eager when the fair unknown was in humble circumstances.  Just as it is not by other men of intelligent that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders' that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated.  Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his east when a duchess, would tremble, for fear of being despised, and would instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.

   Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur to remain moored like house-boats to a certain point on the bank of the stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the end, to describe as pleasure, for want of any better, those mediocre distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he must pass his time, but to pass his time with women whom he had already found to be beautiful and charming.  And these were, as often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women painted or sculpted by his favourite masters.  Depth of character, or a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rose flesh."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 202-203

We now pass on to the section in Swann's Way entitled "Swann in Love", which recounts, at sometimes excruciating length (even by Proustian standards) the painful courtship between Swann and his mistress Odette. This is our first true, in-depth, analysis of Swann, and he doesn't come across too well.  He seems charming, and a bit tragic, but also a person who has wasted an extraordinary amount of time on social niceties, although, to be fair, he is also a product of a dying age.

Growing up in the hills of southern Indiana I have much less to add on the vagaries of society life, although even here I feel a touch of discomfort.  Because of the generally hillbilly nature of my family (which, truthfully, now I'm pretty proud of) we were sensitive to issues of decorum in an odd way.  Classically, we, through my father's hard work in going to medical school (he was the first in our family to go to college, and I was the second) we had arrived at a new social class, which I guess would be the upper middle class.  To be fair, in most ways I suspect my mother was far more guilty of this than my father, who would always joke that "we're just plain folks, your mother and me."  We grew up, eventually, in a large rambling monstrosity of a house, which my siblings and I still refer to as the "big house."  It began its life as a simple ranch house out in the country, but then underwent two massive expansions on both sides and became pretty huge (and unwieldy).  I can remember at a certain point when I new friend stopped by - he drove so I guess I must have been around 16 or 17 - and my mom asked me if I'd like to show him the house.  It dawned at me on that moment that we had suddenly evolved a sense of social responsibility, which made me vaguely uncomfortable. It's not that I was dismissive of my father's efforts or my family, but rather that the house had come to represent in my mind in the corruption of both things.

In some ways I feel an immediate sense of kinship to Swann because he is always drawn to a "depth of character, or a melancholy expression on a woman's face." I have the same malady.  My friends will joke of my fascination with dark European actresses with terrible secrets.  Of course with Swann (and I'm hoping only with Swann) it may also just be a matter of pragmatism.  I think it was Milan Kundera who proposed that the surest way to get a woman into bed was through her sadness.

A few of the dark European actresses with terrible secrets that I always love.

Isabella Rosselini in Blue Velvet.

Juliette Binoche in Three Colours: Blue

Marie Dompnier in the French series Witnesses.

Erik E

I'm always amazed when anyone actually reads my blog (my theory is that it's mainly English teachers calling it up to show examples of bad grammar and faulty logic to their students).  In the long run it will end up being for me, and thus I find myself increasingly featuring pictures or stories that I'll appreciate in my dotage.  Here's a funny, and totally non-representative picture of my excellent friend Erik. It took me a while to get to know him, mainly because neither of us are particularly good at jumping out and meeting new people.  He's popped up in my blog before, mainly in postings related to Gentlemen of Excellence shenanigans (he's one of the founding members) such as the Four Sport Triathlon.  Years ago in the first Four Sport Triathlon when he handed out the score sheet (which is very precise and detailed and the creation of which always leads to a lengthy argument/negotiation) it featured pictures of me.  The event was on my birthday, which I had not shared with anyone, so that was a mystery which I eventually solved - Erik, who I barely knew at the time, was the culprit.  It is a classic Erik move in that it was creative and funny and carried out behind the scenes, and never calls attention to him.  You never want to be the person handing out gifts at a birthday party after Erik, because yours will seem very pathetic and unimaginative by comparison.  I think he was also in the blog one time (you would think I'd know more about the contents of my own blog, but we're rapidly approaching 800 posts and I'm often quite surprised at my own posts) because we acted in a student film together; thankfully, we only had one scene together, so I wasn't too embarrassed.  Besides being a good actor, Erik is also a published author.  Essentially, he's that really talented and accomplished guy that you should hate, except that he's such a great guy and unassuming soul that you can't.  He's also the other resident film whore (as my students like to call me) at Champlain, so we often find ourselves squirreled away at the St. John's Club talking about Hal Hartley or Atom Egoyan or French or Italian films.  A couple different times when we've (mainly he's) run film series on campus the only people who showed up in Alumni Auditorium were the two of us, and so we showed the film anyway and happily sat chatting away.

This is him goofing and responding to my usual request when taking photographs to "show me angry," which I mainly do to get people to laugh and thus get a more natural picture.  Here he clearly ran with it.  In real life he's actually about the most calm and level-headed person (other than Andy Burkhardt) than I could possibly imagine.

My Year With Proust - Day 50

"And yet, because there is an element of individuality in places, when I am seized with a desire to see again the 'Guermantes way', it would not be satisfied were I led to the ranks of a river in which were lilies as fair, or even fairer than those in the Vivonne, any more than on my return home in the evening, at the hour when there awakened in me that anguish which later on in life, infiltrates love, and can become inseparable from it, I should have wished for any strange mother to come in and say good night to me, though she were far more beautiful and more intelligent than my own. No: just as the one thing necessary to send me to sleep contented (in that untroubled peace which no mistress, in later years, has ever been able to give me, since one has doubts of them at the moments when one believes in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to receive, in her kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or reservation, unburdened by any liability save to myself) was that it should be my mother who came, that she should incline towards me that face on which there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it appears, a blemish, and which I loved as much as all the rest . . ."  

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 194-195

Proust once again reflecting upon the purity and beauty of memory, and (well, duh) this is doubtless Proust at his best.  He speaks of the contented sleep and "untroubled peace" that his mother could give him, and which no mistress was ever able to give him in later years. The juxtaposition of mother and mistress is a little jarring here, and is doubtless ripe for psychoanalytical analysis (especially pseudo-psychoanalytical analysis) but that's less interesting to me than the merger of his mother and memory.  Granted, everyone has - or at least should have (we can all dream) - extraordinarily tender memories of our mothers. However, in Remembrance of Things Past I think that Proust's mother is more of a metaphor for the love and purity and steadfastness that one finds in memory. And truthfully, what loves you more totally and unquestionably and unconditionally than memory?

My Year With Proust - Day 49

   "So the 'Meseglise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked with many of the little incidents of that one one of all the divers lives along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind.  Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the truths which have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have opened new paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for their discovery; but that preparation was unconscious; and for us those truths date only from the day, from the minute when they became apparent.  The flowers which played then among the grass, the water which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as environment to their apparition lingers around the memory of them still with its unconscious or unheeding air; and, certainly, when they were slowly scrutinized by this humble passer-by, by this dreaming child - as the face of a king is scrutinized by a petition lost in the crowd - that scrap of nature, that corner of a garden could never suppose that it would be thanks to him that they would be elected to survive in all their most ephemeral details; and yet the scent of hawthorn which strays plundering along the hedge from which, in a little while, the dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of footsteps followed by no echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the side of a water-plant by the current, and formed only to burst - my exaltation of mind has borne them with it, and has succeeded in making them traverse all these successive years, while all around them the once-trodden ways have vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and even the memory of those who thronged those trodden way, are dead.  Sometimes the fragment of landscape thus transported into the present will detach itself in such isolation from all associations that it floats uncertainly upon my mind, like a flowers island of Delos, and I am unable to say from what place, from what time - perhaps, quite simply, from which of my dreams - it comes.  But it is pre-eminently as the deepest layer of my mental soil, as firm sites on which I still may build, that I regard the Meseglise of Guermantes 'ways'.  It is because I used to think of certain things, of certain people, while I was roaming along them, that the things, the people which they taught me to know, and these alone, I still take seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith which creates has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 193-194

What is fascinating about this passage it that it touches upon the role, not simply that memory has on us, but the role that we have on memory, and thus reality. Through readings in both the Linden and Hock books from Concepts of the Self the students learn that memory is a malleable thing, and that when we recall a memory we're actually only going back to the last time that the memory was accessed, as compared to truly jumping back twenty years to when it was initially perceived and imprinted on our mind. This means that when we pull out the memory we are viewing it with new eyes, through different emotional and experiential lenses; we're different people, so we're seeing perceiving the memory in a different way.  And when we put the memory away again we aren't storing the original pristine memory, but the reconsidered and reconfigured one. So, the memory transformed us, but we continually transform the memory, which in turn continues to transform us; a dance across the decades. More philosophically, and I guess I would argue more importantly, in the very act of initially capturing the perception we have given it a permanence, a reality, albeit an evolving reality, that it would not have had on its own.  We have taken, to use Proust's own words, the most "ephemeral" of passing perceptions - an image or a scent (and because of the unique structure of the brain, especially a scent) - and transformed a spiderweb into an anvil (or, considering how the past weighs on people, it might be better to say an anchor), which has such tangible mass that what we see today cannot equal what we saw twenty years ago - or even be real.  As Proust opines, the "reality will take shape in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers."

It seemed like the appropriate place to include Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego, for the obvious reasons.  It's also the title of my one of my favorite Millennium episodes.

The Road or Maybe Ferry or Potentially a Plane to Zanzibar

Yikes, in a month I'll be back in Zanzibar.  The trip is coming together very nicely and the students are going to learn so much (and also have an epic time).  We're still organizing some travel issues, but most everything is nailed down.

This is either a picture of me playing with giant tortoises on Changu (Prison) Island or me trying to get our Tanzanian travel agents to finalize plane/ferry/bus arrangements.  Oh, and this may be the best picture that anyone ever took of me.

It's going to be -15 F here tonight in this #YankeeHellhole (my goal of getting this Twitter hashtag to trend has so far failed magnificently).  The high everyday in Zanzibar right now is 90 F.  I may not come back.

My Year With Proust - Day 48

"Then, quite apart from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflect from a stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they appeared to  be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover.  As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt.  And if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were themselves no more than the outer coverings.  It was certainly not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual value, and suggesting no abstract truth.  But at least they gave me an unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in that way distracted me from the tedium from the sense of my own impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great literary work."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p.188

What strikes me, at first blush, about this passage is that as much as Proust was trying to take a systematic approach to becoming a writer it was already too late; he had been born a writer.  My first year students are always amazing by the concept of synesthesia in Linden's The Accidental Mind.  For lack of a more elegant definition, synesthetiacs experience a blending of sensory perception.  So, for example, a synesthesiac might taste color.  It's one of the theories that attempt to explain why artists become artists; that is, they are just constructed differently.  He's frustrated by his initial inability to express the "secret treasure" in everyday items, but how many people even understand that there are these hidden worlds that exist beneath the surface? Oh, and I think we can agree that this is far more than an "illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind" with Proust.  One wonders how hard it would have been to be Proust (beyond all the emotional sturm und drang of his life)?  It seems like it would be like trying to pass through life with heightened senses that made everything scream out at you.

My Year With Proust - Day 47

"I used to dream that Mme de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there, that all day long stood fishing for trout by my side.  And when evening came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gardens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would teach me all their names.  She would make me tell her, too, all about the poems that I meant to compose.  And these dreams reminded me that, since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write.  But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock.  I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its development. . . Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the Government and with Providence that I should be the first writer or my day.  But at other times, while my parents were rowing impatient at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my actual life, instead of seeming an artificial creation of my father, and one which he could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be comprised in a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit, from whose judgements there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was bound, helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further possibilities lay concealed.  It was evident to me then that I existed in the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like them, and that among them I was not to be distinguished mere as one of those who have no aptitude in writing.  And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been given me by Bloch.  This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when someone is loud in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of conscience."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 182-183

I think I now have even more fodder for my tombstone, as the phrase "the nullity of my intellect" has to have a place there, if not also for the Scudder t-shirts.  I have also at times, and probably at my most prescient, have echoed the words: "before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering my development."  I suspect that the staple of all people who have accomplished a lot in their life (or in my case a slightly less embarrassing amount) is the gnawing fear/certainty that they are frauds and have absolutely no talent.  Maybe they consciously or unconsciously use this as fuel, sort of a Tom Brady phenomenon where he has never once forgotten that he was the 199th player picked in the NFL draft (I don't like sports analogies, but this one seems apt).  I remember my doctoral chair in graduate school writing a teaching evaluation of me, and describing me as a "reasonably intelligent young man of Hoosier bourgeois stock." I just remember thinking, "I'm going to bury you."

Just briefly, I was also struck by the use of the word vacuity, which has such different meanings in the East and West.  In Proust's mind it expresses something that is definitely (and maybe debilitatingly) missing, whereas in the East it can be considered something to strive for.  At one point in early in Journey to the West, Monkey is given a title, if I remember correctly, that is something like Master of Vacuity, which pleased him quite a bit. There's more than a bit of an inside joke there, but Monkey is pleased by the title because it hints at the achievement of the Buddhist concept of Emptiness.