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2enevada
Before the plunge let me clarify some terms (specific to me but hopefully recognizable by other readers of Proust): Space is a fixed, specific geographic boundary. Place is an unfixed, eternal, boundless destination or result. Time in the Proustian sense (as I understand it) can be measured by the continual succession of images and impressions that may arrive in a semi-chronological manner (as we live) but do not behave in a chronological manner. Proust uses a function that I call pause to arrest time to allow for focus – it is this action that reveals the evolution of space into place.
It gets heavier and messier, from here. But also quite beautiful. Worth following?
It gets heavier and messier, from here. But also quite beautiful. Worth following?
3DLSmithies
Oooh, yes please. I read in E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel last week about how innovative Proust's treatment of time is - something about how he has the narrator serving supper to his mistress at the same time as playing ball in the yard with his grandma. Bemused, I mentioned this to a literature-student friend, who said "oh yes, Proust does do that, it's very interesting". Any chance you could explain the trick toa stupid layperson?!
4enevada
Explain the trick? Well. the effort took Proust - how many years? And it killed him. And I am also a stupid layperson who is just scratching at the surface.
But let's see what we come up with together. Once the math kicks in, I'll need some help.
Let's see: to Proust all artists and all artistic endeavors use the pause function. Think just about music - the art in which time is the very medium - you play one note and it vaporizes. The note escapes (if not the vibration) and all that is left is the memory of the note followed by another, and so on...resulting in a musical entity that is at once both vanished and present.
That is what I mean by pause - it is the capture of that very transference - and act of time or the cessation of time.
You can work it out in any creative process: visual arts, poetry, music, even (as my beloved Francoise shows) in the domestic arts. Love, certainly, and Odette is no less a creative artist than Vinteiul and Swann recognizes this, even as he realizes that her genius is not first rate.
(And not to give dperrings yet more work, but really, a thread on our favorite characters might be fun - if exhausting).
But back to time - this is step one of a twenty seven (at least) step process. Pause. Does it make sense thus far?
But let's see what we come up with together. Once the math kicks in, I'll need some help.
Let's see: to Proust all artists and all artistic endeavors use the pause function. Think just about music - the art in which time is the very medium - you play one note and it vaporizes. The note escapes (if not the vibration) and all that is left is the memory of the note followed by another, and so on...resulting in a musical entity that is at once both vanished and present.
That is what I mean by pause - it is the capture of that very transference - and act of time or the cessation of time.
You can work it out in any creative process: visual arts, poetry, music, even (as my beloved Francoise shows) in the domestic arts. Love, certainly, and Odette is no less a creative artist than Vinteiul and Swann recognizes this, even as he realizes that her genius is not first rate.
(And not to give dperrings yet more work, but really, a thread on our favorite characters might be fun - if exhausting).
But back to time - this is step one of a twenty seven (at least) step process. Pause. Does it make sense thus far?
6enevada
So, we covered using pause as the artistic technique used in all creative processes to display the evolution of space to place. Pause in my view is the cessation of time, or a break in the boundary. A freeze frame, an absolute zero, whatever you want to call it – not fixed, not specific, not existent. Literary (or artistic) dark matter.
Proust himself believes that these breaks in the fissure can not be recalled or summoned at will but certain confluences of events will recall impressions, remembrances, and ghost sensations to reveal a temporal collapse or expansion (depending on your mindset) that is outside of time, universal and collective.
(I happen to believe that our lives are pause functions - but it is way too early for this and for the record I am of East Coast sensibilities and not in the least a new age, Left coast type).
So outside the boundary of time – in the realm of what is eternal and true (because given the ephemeral nature of time that which is past is vanished and only the residual memory of the sensation remains) there are no temporal restraints, and it is true that one will be playing ball with grandmere while feeding his mistress while listening to a sonata while ingesting fillet de sole while smelling a hawthorn in bloom….
For a completely un-poetic visual I think of a koosh ball, the center as the locale of pause ; the countless, limitless strands as individual residual memory sensations. Proust plays with several koosh balls at once. Most can barely manage to juggle one.
Still with me? And please, if anyone can do a better job explaining this, jump in.
Proust himself believes that these breaks in the fissure can not be recalled or summoned at will but certain confluences of events will recall impressions, remembrances, and ghost sensations to reveal a temporal collapse or expansion (depending on your mindset) that is outside of time, universal and collective.
(I happen to believe that our lives are pause functions - but it is way too early for this and for the record I am of East Coast sensibilities and not in the least a new age, Left coast type).
So outside the boundary of time – in the realm of what is eternal and true (because given the ephemeral nature of time that which is past is vanished and only the residual memory of the sensation remains) there are no temporal restraints, and it is true that one will be playing ball with grandmere while feeding his mistress while listening to a sonata while ingesting fillet de sole while smelling a hawthorn in bloom….
For a completely un-poetic visual I think of a koosh ball, the center as the locale of pause ; the countless, limitless strands as individual residual memory sensations. Proust plays with several koosh balls at once. Most can barely manage to juggle one.
Still with me? And please, if anyone can do a better job explaining this, jump in.
7dperrings
"breaks in the fissure"
reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a Leonard Cohen song,
"Ring the bell that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack, a crack in everthing
thats how the light gets in"
and also the follow poem by Miller Williams
The Curator
MILLER WILLIAMS (b. 1930)
We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come,
were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two,
the youngest assistant curator in the country.
I had some good ideas in those days.
Well, what we did was this. We had boxes
precisely built to every size of canvas.
We put the boxes in the basement and waited.
When word came that the Germans were coming in,
we got each painting put in the proper box
and out of Leningrad in less than a week.
They were stored somewhere in southern Russia.
But what we did, you see, besides the boxes
waiting in the basement, which was fine,
a grand idea, you’ll agree, and it saved the art-
but what we did was leave the frames hanging,
so after the war it would be a simple thing
to put the paintings back where they belonged.
Nothing will seem surprised or sad again
compared to those imperious, vacant frames.
Well, the staff stayed on to clean the rubble
after the daily bombardments. We didn’t dream-
You know it lasted nine hundred days.
Much of the roof was lost and snow would lie
sometimes a foot deep on this very floor,
but the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell.
Here is the story, now, that I want to tell you.
Early one day, a dark December morning,
we came on three young soldiers waiting outside,
pacing and swinging their arms against the cold.
They told us this: in three homes far from here
all dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad
to see the Hermitage, as they supposed
every Soviet citizen dreamed of doing.
Now they had been sent to defend the city,
a turn of fortune the three could hardly believe.
I had to tell them there was nothing to see
but hundreds and hundreds of frames where the paintings had hung.
“Please; sir,” one of them said, “let us see them.”
And so we did. It didn’t seem any stranger
than all of us being here in the first place,
inside such a building, strolling in snow.
We led them around most of the major rooms,
what they could take the time for, wall by wall.
Now and then we stopped and tried to tell them
part of what they would see if they saw the paintings.
I told them how those colors would come together,
described a brushstroke here, a dollop there,
mentioned a model and why she seemed to pout
and why this painter got the roses wrong.
The next day a dozen waited for us,
then thirty or more, gathered in twos and threes.
Each of us took a group in a different direction:
Castagno, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Cezanne, Matisse,
Orozco, Manet, DaVinci, Goya, Vermeer,
Picasso, Uccello, your Whistler, Wood, and Gropper.
We pointed to more details about the paintings,
I venture to say, than if we had had them there,
some unexpected use of line or light,
balance or movement, facing the cluster of faces
the same way we’d done it every morning
before the war, but then we didn’t pay
so much attention to what we talked about.
People could see for themselves. As a matter of fact
we’d sometimes said our lines as if they were learned
out of a book, with hardly a look at the paintings.
But now the guide and the listeners paid attention
to everything-the simple differences
between the first and post impressionists,
romantic and heroic, shade and shadow.
Maybe this was a way to forget the war
a little while. Maybe more than that.
Whatever it was, the people continued to come.
It came to be called The Unseen Collection.
Here. Here is the story I want to tell you.
Slowly, blind people began to come.
A few at first then more of them every morning,
some led and some alone, some swaying a little.
They leaned and listened hard, they screwed their faces,
they seemed to shift their eyes, those that had them,
to see better what was being said.
And a cock of the head. My God, they paid attention.
After the siege was lifted and the Germans left
and the roof was fixed and the paintings were in their places,
the blind never came again. Not like before.
This seems strange, but what I think it was,
they couldn’t see the paintings anymore.
They could still have listened, but the lectures became
a little matter-of-fact. What can I say?
Confluences come when they will and they go away.
David Perrings
reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a Leonard Cohen song,
"Ring the bell that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack, a crack in everthing
thats how the light gets in"
and also the follow poem by Miller Williams
The Curator
MILLER WILLIAMS (b. 1930)
We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come,
were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two,
the youngest assistant curator in the country.
I had some good ideas in those days.
Well, what we did was this. We had boxes
precisely built to every size of canvas.
We put the boxes in the basement and waited.
When word came that the Germans were coming in,
we got each painting put in the proper box
and out of Leningrad in less than a week.
They were stored somewhere in southern Russia.
But what we did, you see, besides the boxes
waiting in the basement, which was fine,
a grand idea, you’ll agree, and it saved the art-
but what we did was leave the frames hanging,
so after the war it would be a simple thing
to put the paintings back where they belonged.
Nothing will seem surprised or sad again
compared to those imperious, vacant frames.
Well, the staff stayed on to clean the rubble
after the daily bombardments. We didn’t dream-
You know it lasted nine hundred days.
Much of the roof was lost and snow would lie
sometimes a foot deep on this very floor,
but the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell.
Here is the story, now, that I want to tell you.
Early one day, a dark December morning,
we came on three young soldiers waiting outside,
pacing and swinging their arms against the cold.
They told us this: in three homes far from here
all dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad
to see the Hermitage, as they supposed
every Soviet citizen dreamed of doing.
Now they had been sent to defend the city,
a turn of fortune the three could hardly believe.
I had to tell them there was nothing to see
but hundreds and hundreds of frames where the paintings had hung.
“Please; sir,” one of them said, “let us see them.”
And so we did. It didn’t seem any stranger
than all of us being here in the first place,
inside such a building, strolling in snow.
We led them around most of the major rooms,
what they could take the time for, wall by wall.
Now and then we stopped and tried to tell them
part of what they would see if they saw the paintings.
I told them how those colors would come together,
described a brushstroke here, a dollop there,
mentioned a model and why she seemed to pout
and why this painter got the roses wrong.
The next day a dozen waited for us,
then thirty or more, gathered in twos and threes.
Each of us took a group in a different direction:
Castagno, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Cezanne, Matisse,
Orozco, Manet, DaVinci, Goya, Vermeer,
Picasso, Uccello, your Whistler, Wood, and Gropper.
We pointed to more details about the paintings,
I venture to say, than if we had had them there,
some unexpected use of line or light,
balance or movement, facing the cluster of faces
the same way we’d done it every morning
before the war, but then we didn’t pay
so much attention to what we talked about.
People could see for themselves. As a matter of fact
we’d sometimes said our lines as if they were learned
out of a book, with hardly a look at the paintings.
But now the guide and the listeners paid attention
to everything-the simple differences
between the first and post impressionists,
romantic and heroic, shade and shadow.
Maybe this was a way to forget the war
a little while. Maybe more than that.
Whatever it was, the people continued to come.
It came to be called The Unseen Collection.
Here. Here is the story I want to tell you.
Slowly, blind people began to come.
A few at first then more of them every morning,
some led and some alone, some swaying a little.
They leaned and listened hard, they screwed their faces,
they seemed to shift their eyes, those that had them,
to see better what was being said.
And a cock of the head. My God, they paid attention.
After the siege was lifted and the Germans left
and the roof was fixed and the paintings were in their places,
the blind never came again. Not like before.
This seems strange, but what I think it was,
they couldn’t see the paintings anymore.
They could still have listened, but the lectures became
a little matter-of-fact. What can I say?
Confluences come when they will and they go away.
David Perrings
9dperrings
In Leonard Shlain's Book: Art and Physics, Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light, he has a discussion of Proust and his concept of time in Chapter 20, Literary Forms/ Physics Formulas. He also lists other authours and their concept of time.
The following is the excerpt:
"In his epic novel The Remembrance of Things Past (1913), Marcel Proust did for the past what Wells had dome for the future. As if the constraints of linear time were absent, holding time as relative and local rather than absolute and universal, Proust folded time back upon itself like a piece of origami paper and traveled back into a past when he did not yet exist to tell Swann's story in the present. All this was further evidence that the writer at the turn of the century was beginning to grow restless, chafing against the confines imposed by the classical Newtonian mechanical view of the world. Encapsulating the idea of the speed of light, and spacetime, in the very last line of The Remembrance of Things Past, Proust, wrote:
... to describe men first and foremost as occupying a place, a very considerable place compared with the restricted one whcih is allotted to them in space, a place on the contrary immoderately prolonged-for simultaneously, like giants plunged into the years, they touch epochs that are immensely far apart, separated by the slow accretion of many, many days-in the dimension of Time.
The Past Recaptured, trans. Andreas Mayor, Vintage, 1971
The following is the excerpt:
"In his epic novel The Remembrance of Things Past (1913), Marcel Proust did for the past what Wells had dome for the future. As if the constraints of linear time were absent, holding time as relative and local rather than absolute and universal, Proust folded time back upon itself like a piece of origami paper and traveled back into a past when he did not yet exist to tell Swann's story in the present. All this was further evidence that the writer at the turn of the century was beginning to grow restless, chafing against the confines imposed by the classical Newtonian mechanical view of the world. Encapsulating the idea of the speed of light, and spacetime, in the very last line of The Remembrance of Things Past, Proust, wrote:
... to describe men first and foremost as occupying a place, a very considerable place compared with the restricted one whcih is allotted to them in space, a place on the contrary immoderately prolonged-for simultaneously, like giants plunged into the years, they touch epochs that are immensely far apart, separated by the slow accretion of many, many days-in the dimension of Time.
The Past Recaptured, trans. Andreas Mayor, Vintage, 1971
10DLSmithies
OK, I think I'm following. So was the story of Swann told in the Narrator's voice, retrospectively? I like the Koosh ball analogy, that makes sense to me. But we haven't totally transcended the linear narrative progression, have we? Literally speaking, the narrator plays with Grandmere in vol. 1 and serves supper to his mistress in a later volume. So are we talking about involuntary associations of present experiences with past ones, manifested emotionally? Have I vaguely understood? Oh, if only my temprament were more artistic!
11enevada
The story of Swann is told post-actively (as for Swann), pre-actively for the boy Marcel and retroactively from the Narrator, who famously begins his work at the end of the story (as all storytellers do).
Proust the man cannot escape linear progression (or the illusion of linear progression) but the narrator can and does. And, by my counts, DL, you are getting it.
Proust the artist lives like we all do within the bubble - but his greatest gift was being able to see outside of it. And to construct a universe that was beyond our own, and was not subject to the space/time laws of nature as we understand them.
One point about the koosh ball - there are an infinite number of koosh balls each with an infinite number of sensory thread s, upon which are an infinite number of sensory departure/destination points.
Which brings us to the math. Maybe engineer Dave can weigh in. Anyone else see certain math functions jumping out at them?
Proust the man cannot escape linear progression (or the illusion of linear progression) but the narrator can and does. And, by my counts, DL, you are getting it.
Proust the artist lives like we all do within the bubble - but his greatest gift was being able to see outside of it. And to construct a universe that was beyond our own, and was not subject to the space/time laws of nature as we understand them.
One point about the koosh ball - there are an infinite number of koosh balls each with an infinite number of sensory thread s, upon which are an infinite number of sensory departure/destination points.
Which brings us to the math. Maybe engineer Dave can weigh in. Anyone else see certain math functions jumping out at them?
12enevada
"chafing against the confines imposed by the classical Newtonian mechanical view of the world. Encapsulating the idea of the speed of light, and spacetime"
There is a passage in Albertine Disparue (I think, but can not look to be sure just now - shoddy, but not terribly important) where the narrator looks to the sky to see a plane - or l'oiseau du Wilbur - a brand new phenomenon - and is able to anticipate a future in which time will be transcended. We haven't yet figured out to travel faster than the speed of light - but it is coming. The fact that Proust could anticipate such a thing in the earliest days of aviation is astounding - and thrilling.
(The Albertine/Agnostinelli connection is worth noting - Agnostinelli, the object of devotion from real life Marcel, died in an airplane crash - in an airplane that Proust had bought for him - it makes it especially poignant, don't you think?)
There is a passage in Albertine Disparue (I think, but can not look to be sure just now - shoddy, but not terribly important) where the narrator looks to the sky to see a plane - or l'oiseau du Wilbur - a brand new phenomenon - and is able to anticipate a future in which time will be transcended. We haven't yet figured out to travel faster than the speed of light - but it is coming. The fact that Proust could anticipate such a thing in the earliest days of aviation is astounding - and thrilling.
(The Albertine/Agnostinelli connection is worth noting - Agnostinelli, the object of devotion from real life Marcel, died in an airplane crash - in an airplane that Proust had bought for him - it makes it especially poignant, don't you think?)
13desultory
OK, I'm still stuck on message 2. Hurrah for me!
What do you mean by "the continual succession of images and impressions " arriving "in a semi-chronological manner (as we live)"?
I completely buy in to the idea that all of our memories are accessible to us at any time, and we don't have to (to put it really stupidly) fast-rewind to get to them, but it's the bit in brackets that gets me - surely we live (the new impressions arrive) in chronological order (I'm sure there's a tautology in there somewhere), even if we process the impressions in a non-chronological manner?
I dunno, maybe I'll just go back to my Flashman group. Although, now I think about it, isn't there an oddly Proustian edge to old Flashy's ramblings? Hmm, I think I'm on to something here!
What do you mean by "the continual succession of images and impressions " arriving "in a semi-chronological manner (as we live)"?
I completely buy in to the idea that all of our memories are accessible to us at any time, and we don't have to (to put it really stupidly) fast-rewind to get to them, but it's the bit in brackets that gets me - surely we live (the new impressions arrive) in chronological order (I'm sure there's a tautology in there somewhere), even if we process the impressions in a non-chronological manner?
I dunno, maybe I'll just go back to my Flashman group. Although, now I think about it, isn't there an oddly Proustian edge to old Flashy's ramblings? Hmm, I think I'm on to something here!
14enevada
Stay, please. And help us work this through. I think it will be worth it - like a difficult hike with a spectacular summit.
We live in a chronological manner - so it seems. But Proust suggests (in the passage quoted in message 9) that this "allotted space" is a limited, abbreviated illusion of our actual, eternal, expansive, collective existence - the "very considerable place" that exists outside of limited physical presence.
The continual succession of images and impressions is the proto-conscious and subconscious means in which each of us create a formal sensory (visual, audio, tactile, aural, etc.) language - a language that is at once specific (to the individual, in a fixed locale, at a fixed chronological point - or many points, as it happens) and collective (it is shared and understood by all and it is through this shared mechanism that art can be comprehended and understood).
Too muddy? Or helpful? Will you stay?
We live in a chronological manner - so it seems. But Proust suggests (in the passage quoted in message 9) that this "allotted space" is a limited, abbreviated illusion of our actual, eternal, expansive, collective existence - the "very considerable place" that exists outside of limited physical presence.
The continual succession of images and impressions is the proto-conscious and subconscious means in which each of us create a formal sensory (visual, audio, tactile, aural, etc.) language - a language that is at once specific (to the individual, in a fixed locale, at a fixed chronological point - or many points, as it happens) and collective (it is shared and understood by all and it is through this shared mechanism that art can be comprehended and understood).
Too muddy? Or helpful? Will you stay?
15dperrings
I am finding this conversation very interesting. Although it may be above me. I am going to have to think about this for a while before it all starts to sink in i am afraid.
And i still have not got the math connection the Elizabeth has mentioned above.
I do think that while our lives unfold in a chronological order, the sequence of memorable and worthwhile events do not. Thus reflecting back on things to make sense and find meaning requires reordering things, especially time. I do not know if this is where Proust is going, but it makes sense to me.
David Perrings
And i still have not got the math connection the Elizabeth has mentioned above.
I do think that while our lives unfold in a chronological order, the sequence of memorable and worthwhile events do not. Thus reflecting back on things to make sense and find meaning requires reordering things, especially time. I do not know if this is where Proust is going, but it makes sense to me.
David Perrings
16desultory
"Thus reflecting back on things to make sense and find meaning requires reordering things, especially time. I do not know if this is where Proust is going, but it makes sense to me."
And me. So far, so good ...
And me. So far, so good ...
17dperrings
Here is a poem which illustrates my point about re ordering things.
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
-- Lisel Mueller from Alive Together
David Perrings
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
-- Lisel Mueller from Alive Together
David Perrings
18enevada
Reordering of time: let's reverse that for a minute: Proust reveals that our habit of chronological ordering is the re-ordering and that it is illusory.
Once an artist sees this, it is impossible (and undesirable, as the Monet allusion suggests) to return to one's former perspective.
Once an artist sees this, it is impossible (and undesirable, as the Monet allusion suggests) to return to one's former perspective.
19dperrings
Enevada,
would you say that Jeffery Malpas’s Place and Experience: a Philosophical Topography lays out Proust concept of time thoughly and clearly?
David Perrings
would you say that Jeffery Malpas’s Place and Experience: a Philosophical Topography lays out Proust concept of time thoughly and clearly?
David Perrings
20enevada
Not exactly - Malpas is interested more in terrain than time. He identifies something he calls the Proust Principle - that the search for lost lime is a search for lost place (and think in terms of Proust's "considerable place").
Malpas, like most, suggests that Proust uses memory to regain this place - I think he uses a function of time. Or at least that is my hunch.
But certainly his chapter 7 is worth reading and re-reading. And it is beautiful too, for its own sake.
Malpas, like most, suggests that Proust uses memory to regain this place - I think he uses a function of time. Or at least that is my hunch.
But certainly his chapter 7 is worth reading and re-reading. And it is beautiful too, for its own sake.
21dperrings
Do you have any suggestions where i might find this book, the library did not have it, and amazon is selling it for $60 to $70 dollars
david
david
22enevada
alibris has it for the low price of $37.93 or, the time-honored tradition of inter-library loan, of course.
He'll soon have you reading Heidegger - that's the only downside.
He'll soon have you reading Heidegger - that's the only downside.
23dperrings
yes i saw Heidegger mentioned. It sort of looks like this whole place space and time thing goes beyond Proust and philosiphiers have spend a lot of time on it.
I listened to hundreds of lectures on Philosophy through the Teaching company tapes which introduced me to the subject which i had no real understanding of before. A funny thing happens when Philosophy gets to the 20 century though. It all seems to go "Poof"
David
I listened to hundreds of lectures on Philosophy through the Teaching company tapes which introduced me to the subject which i had no real understanding of before. A funny thing happens when Philosophy gets to the 20 century though. It all seems to go "Poof"
David
24enevada
Yes, that is when we are supposed to kill ourselves. I'm half way through Being and Time right now - and wondering why I do this to myself.
Proust has the gift to keep us entertained while he informs us, Nabokov feeds us endless charming riddles as does Borges...is it any wonder we prefer literature?
Proust has the gift to keep us entertained while he informs us, Nabokov feeds us endless charming riddles as does Borges...is it any wonder we prefer literature?
25dperrings
the opinion of one of the lecturers was that in the 20 th century it is safe to conclude that philisophy after 2000 plus years was a failed project.
what other discipline can make that claim.
david
what other discipline can make that claim.
david
27dperrings
Of all of the pieces written about Proust's concept of time, what would you say is the best ? Besides Proust himself.
David
David
28enevada
I'm not sure that it has been written, at least that is why I am here - to find out.
Of those that I have read (many, but not exhaustive) the one that has had the most influence on my own understanding of Proust's understanding is Georges Poulet - especially his essay "Proust and Human Time" originally published in Etudes sur le temps human (1956); I found it Proust: a collection of critical essays edited by Rene Girard. (1962)
Poulet is mainly concerned with ontological time - being within time, and less of the mathematical structure, but he brilliantly describes what I have been calling the pause function here:
"The Proustian world is always to be an intermittent world. A world in which things project themselves before the the eyes in instantaneous images which in turn are replaced by other images belong to other moments and other places...where one may find himself going backward as well as forward; where 'the magic chair may carry us at all speed in time and space'*...The Proustian world is a world anachronistic in itself, without a home, wandering in duration as well as extent, a world to which the mind must precisely assign a certain place in duration and space, by imposing its own certitude upon it, by realizing oneself in the face of it." (pg 152 of the Girard)
*Proust, A la recherche..
Certainly worth reading, but my own copy is falling apart from over use. Malpas, you'll see, revisits Poulet, and our collective understanding deepens.
Of those that I have read (many, but not exhaustive) the one that has had the most influence on my own understanding of Proust's understanding is Georges Poulet - especially his essay "Proust and Human Time" originally published in Etudes sur le temps human (1956); I found it Proust: a collection of critical essays edited by Rene Girard. (1962)
Poulet is mainly concerned with ontological time - being within time, and less of the mathematical structure, but he brilliantly describes what I have been calling the pause function here:
"The Proustian world is always to be an intermittent world. A world in which things project themselves before the the eyes in instantaneous images which in turn are replaced by other images belong to other moments and other places...where one may find himself going backward as well as forward; where 'the magic chair may carry us at all speed in time and space'*...The Proustian world is a world anachronistic in itself, without a home, wandering in duration as well as extent, a world to which the mind must precisely assign a certain place in duration and space, by imposing its own certitude upon it, by realizing oneself in the face of it." (pg 152 of the Girard)
*Proust, A la recherche..
Certainly worth reading, but my own copy is falling apart from over use. Malpas, you'll see, revisits Poulet, and our collective understanding deepens.
29dperrings
THe person on Linkedin who steered me to LibraryThing recommended this book by Girard. My question was regarding Proust.
Deceit, desire, and the novel; self and other in literary structure
by René Girard; French title: Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque
Deceit, desire, and the novel; self and other in literary structure
by René Girard; French title: Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque
30dperrings
with all this talk of time, how come i seem to be running out of time ?
now proust wrote about time,
and
Nabokov wrote about time
Martin Amis wrote a book called Times Arrow
and he wrote on intro piece in an edition of Nabokov's Lolita
and of course Einstein wrote about time
who else in the lit. world is know to have writen about time ?
david perrings
now proust wrote about time,
and
Nabokov wrote about time
Martin Amis wrote a book called Times Arrow
and he wrote on intro piece in an edition of Nabokov's Lolita
and of course Einstein wrote about time
who else in the lit. world is know to have writen about time ?
david perrings
31rebeccanyc
I am just dropping in here, but it happens that I'm reading The Magic Mountain, which is definitely about time.
32dperrings
The Magic Mountian is on my list I just have not gotten to it yet so thanks for the information.
David Perrings
David Perrings
33dperrings
#2
"Place is an unfixed, eternal, boundless destination or result"
I am stuck on this def. could someone please elaborate further ?
David Perrings
"Place is an unfixed, eternal, boundless destination or result"
I am stuck on this def. could someone please elaborate further ?
David Perrings
34jveezer
Good point, rebeccanyc! You are right on about Thomas Mann.
From my review:
This book is about time. Thomas Mann referred to The Magic Mountain, both within its pages and outside of them, as his 'time-novel'. Michael Wood, in his excellent Introduction, says it is "dedicated to a deep and ironic exploration of what it means not to lose time but to get lost in time".
From my review:
This book is about time. Thomas Mann referred to The Magic Mountain, both within its pages and outside of them, as his 'time-novel'. Michael Wood, in his excellent Introduction, says it is "dedicated to a deep and ironic exploration of what it means not to lose time but to get lost in time".
35enevada
The turn of century (the last turn) was a time when our collective understanding of time evolved greatly - the visionary artists were exploring and writing about a phenomenon that they didn't completely understand (we still don't, clearly), Einstein figured out some of the How, but not all...we are still working on it.
Dave: the boundless infinite place is the very same as Proust's "very considerable place" and Nabokov's "infinite expansure" (from the Appel review of Nabokov's Ada Sunday May 4, 1969):
"To be eternal the Present must depend on the conscious spanning of an infinite expansure,"
Do you see that it is all one in the same? The difficulty is that we are finite beings who cannot comprehend infinite consciousness - it seems a contradiction of terms.
Dave: the boundless infinite place is the very same as Proust's "very considerable place" and Nabokov's "infinite expansure" (from the Appel review of Nabokov's Ada Sunday May 4, 1969):
"To be eternal the Present must depend on the conscious spanning of an infinite expansure,"
Do you see that it is all one in the same? The difficulty is that we are finite beings who cannot comprehend infinite consciousness - it seems a contradiction of terms.
37jveezer
Here is a passage on time from Amulet by Roberto Bolano:
And that is when time stands still again, a worn out image if ever there was one, because either time never stands still or it has always been standing still; so let's say instead that a tremor disturbs the continuum of time, or that time plants its big feet wide apart, bends down, puts its head between its legs, looking at me upside down, one eye winking crazily just a few inches below its ass, or let's say that the full or waxing or obscurely waning moon of Mexico City slides again over the tiles of the women's bathroom on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, or that the silence of a wake falls over the Cafe Quito and all I can hear are the murmurs of Lilian Serpas's ghostly court and once again I don't know if I'm in 1968 or 1974 or 1980, or gliding, finally, like the shadow of a sunken ship, toward the blessed year 2000, which I shall not live to see.
And that is when time stands still again, a worn out image if ever there was one, because either time never stands still or it has always been standing still; so let's say instead that a tremor disturbs the continuum of time, or that time plants its big feet wide apart, bends down, puts its head between its legs, looking at me upside down, one eye winking crazily just a few inches below its ass, or let's say that the full or waxing or obscurely waning moon of Mexico City slides again over the tiles of the women's bathroom on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, or that the silence of a wake falls over the Cafe Quito and all I can hear are the murmurs of Lilian Serpas's ghostly court and once again I don't know if I'm in 1968 or 1974 or 1980, or gliding, finally, like the shadow of a sunken ship, toward the blessed year 2000, which I shall not live to see.
38enevada
Nice imagery, there, the wink, especially.
So an artist uses a function of time (as yet undetermined, un-named)
to pause, to freeze, to step into the conduit and float in the infinite expansure/considerable place/ significant place without boundary/ eternity.
I am most curious about the function being employed. I'd like to identify it.
So an artist uses a function of time (as yet undetermined, un-named)
to pause, to freeze, to step into the conduit and float in the infinite expansure/considerable place/ significant place without boundary/ eternity.
I am most curious about the function being employed. I'd like to identify it.
39barney67
I'm curious about why so many words need to be used for what is such an obvious and fundamental process: memory.
I have not read Proust, but even the titles suggest that this is what we are talking about, right? Memory?
For Wordsworth, a poem was "emotion recollected in tranquility" after traipsing through the fields. For Frost, "a momentary stay against confusion." For Eliot, the still point "where time and the timeless intersect."
I was told by a doctor that no one really knows how memory works in the brain, scientifically speaking. We know that psychiatrists can uncover "repressed memories." And that they can induce a trance state, via hypnosis or posthypnotic suggestion, which essentially causes a person to realize or to do something in the future. Thus, the doctor creates a memory before it has even happened. See the wikipedia entries on these topics, such as Milton Erickson, neurolinguistic programming, and hypnosis.
By the way, if you are a sociopath, these psychiatric techniques can be used for ill rather than good. You can really mess with someone's head, especially if that someone is young, innocent, sensitive, gullible, or all of the above.
For the record, I do not believe in the existence of wormholes. And the idea of creating one is so absurd as to be unworthy of discussion.
But I certainly believe in impressions, still points, moments when time and the timeless intersect. Some have used the word "eternity" to describe this placeless place and timeless time. To me it is difficult to describe such a place outside a religious context.
During a memory, we occupy psychological time more than chronological time. To an observer it appears we are in a trancelike state (to a doctor, it might appear to be mental illness, catatonia being the extreme example). We all know that psychological time passes differently than chronological time. Like when people say "time flies when you're having fun." Well, of course it does. Just as the opposite is true. I remember sitting in grade school, staring at those high, big wall clocks as the hand eased forward as though it were liquid, surreal as the Dali painting. That was almost a dream state, because I was very close to falling asleep.
I have also noticed that, as I have gotten older, time has sped up. Ten minutes doing anything doesn't feel like ten minutes did twenty years ago. It goes by much more quickly. No matter what I'm doing.
So…I don't know. You're talking about reading a lot of words in several volumes simply to describe a process which I already know exists.
Hasn't this become the territory of neuroscience rather than literature? In which case, my degrees were very likely a waste of time and money. Oh, my poor parents.
I have not read Proust, but even the titles suggest that this is what we are talking about, right? Memory?
For Wordsworth, a poem was "emotion recollected in tranquility" after traipsing through the fields. For Frost, "a momentary stay against confusion." For Eliot, the still point "where time and the timeless intersect."
I was told by a doctor that no one really knows how memory works in the brain, scientifically speaking. We know that psychiatrists can uncover "repressed memories." And that they can induce a trance state, via hypnosis or posthypnotic suggestion, which essentially causes a person to realize or to do something in the future. Thus, the doctor creates a memory before it has even happened. See the wikipedia entries on these topics, such as Milton Erickson, neurolinguistic programming, and hypnosis.
By the way, if you are a sociopath, these psychiatric techniques can be used for ill rather than good. You can really mess with someone's head, especially if that someone is young, innocent, sensitive, gullible, or all of the above.
For the record, I do not believe in the existence of wormholes. And the idea of creating one is so absurd as to be unworthy of discussion.
But I certainly believe in impressions, still points, moments when time and the timeless intersect. Some have used the word "eternity" to describe this placeless place and timeless time. To me it is difficult to describe such a place outside a religious context.
During a memory, we occupy psychological time more than chronological time. To an observer it appears we are in a trancelike state (to a doctor, it might appear to be mental illness, catatonia being the extreme example). We all know that psychological time passes differently than chronological time. Like when people say "time flies when you're having fun." Well, of course it does. Just as the opposite is true. I remember sitting in grade school, staring at those high, big wall clocks as the hand eased forward as though it were liquid, surreal as the Dali painting. That was almost a dream state, because I was very close to falling asleep.
I have also noticed that, as I have gotten older, time has sped up. Ten minutes doing anything doesn't feel like ten minutes did twenty years ago. It goes by much more quickly. No matter what I'm doing.
So…I don't know. You're talking about reading a lot of words in several volumes simply to describe a process which I already know exists.
Hasn't this become the territory of neuroscience rather than literature? In which case, my degrees were very likely a waste of time and money. Oh, my poor parents.
40enevada
Wormholes are hypothetical, yes. Absurd? I don’t think so – even if proven to be nonexistent the study of compressed space-time will have valuable applications. (For the record, I’m not a physicist, and I don’t believe that time travel for humans will be possible, despite the weekend projects I assign to my son. I think time is a receptive phenomenon and not a stand-alone dimension.) A book that is well beyond my scope and interest, but that others may find interesting is Matt Visser’s Lorentzian Wormholes.
Now, back to Proust. Why so many words? Proust uses the structures and mechanics of memory to recreate an entire universe. That he could compress it into just seven volumes is remarkably economic, in my view.
Neuroscience? Yes: Jonah Lehrer briefly covers this in an essay in his recent Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Psychology of memory? Jean Delacour has written some very interesting articles and books, as has Jeffrey Malpas. Malpas also covers the philosophical aspects of time and space with his re-reading of my favorite Proust scholar of all, Georges Poulet. Physics of Time? Julia Kristeva. Self-Help? Alain de Botton. …I’ll stop there – suffice to say the critical heritage of Proust is vast and meandering (cookbooks, even). The universe that Proust recreates cannot be reduced to a single topic, as it is an expansive universe.
As such it is well worth reading, and it invites re-reading – and, even, it is worthy of entire academic careers, just ask Jean-Ives Tardie. Proust expands your world, he hones your concentration, he sharpens your perception, he teaches you how to be a connoisseur of art, music, architecture, and he enhances your own response to the beauty in life. In addition, he is wickedly funny, and a delicious gossip. It’s not all highbrow, not at all.
Now, back to Proust. Why so many words? Proust uses the structures and mechanics of memory to recreate an entire universe. That he could compress it into just seven volumes is remarkably economic, in my view.
Neuroscience? Yes: Jonah Lehrer briefly covers this in an essay in his recent Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Psychology of memory? Jean Delacour has written some very interesting articles and books, as has Jeffrey Malpas. Malpas also covers the philosophical aspects of time and space with his re-reading of my favorite Proust scholar of all, Georges Poulet. Physics of Time? Julia Kristeva. Self-Help? Alain de Botton. …I’ll stop there – suffice to say the critical heritage of Proust is vast and meandering (cookbooks, even). The universe that Proust recreates cannot be reduced to a single topic, as it is an expansive universe.
As such it is well worth reading, and it invites re-reading – and, even, it is worthy of entire academic careers, just ask Jean-Ives Tardie. Proust expands your world, he hones your concentration, he sharpens your perception, he teaches you how to be a connoisseur of art, music, architecture, and he enhances your own response to the beauty in life. In addition, he is wickedly funny, and a delicious gossip. It’s not all highbrow, not at all.
