Without Lifting A Finger

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, except what lay in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its ori...

Haven't yet given up on FMF's Parade's End (good bits but it's not the poetry of Proust), but downloaded some Baudelaire while I was sitting at Bucks. Started rereading Paris Spleen . Two clips: The contemplation of Beauty is a duel where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. * One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed.

Contemporary Proust? Who knows. Post-Nobel, more and more of Modiano is coming out. Someone's making $$$. Lots on Kindle now. When I first read him (a year or so ago), there was hardly anything. * From Pedigree :      Over the following months, my father had to resign himself to my finally leaving the dormitories where I'd lived since age eleven. He made appointments to see me in cafes. And he trotted out his standard grievances against my mother and against me. I could never establish a bond between us. At each meeting, I was reduced to begging him for a fifty-franc bill, which he would give me very grudgingly and which I'd bring home to my mother. On certain days, I brought nothing home, which provoked furious outbursts from her. Soon -- around the time I turned eighteen and in the years following -- I started to find her, on my own, some of those miserable fifty-franc bills bearing the likeness of Jean Racine. But nothing softened the coldness and hostility ...

This quote comes from the very end of Benjamin's essay on Proust: As it was, however, this malady was destined to have its place in the great work process assigned to it by the furor devoid of desires or regrets. For the second time there rose a scaffold like Michelangelo's on which the artist, his head thrown back, painted the Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: the sickbed on which Marcel Proust consecrates the countless pages which he covered with his handwriting, holding them up in the air, to the creation of his microcosm.

Certainly democracy is the great leveller. Reading anything is better than reading nothing. If it's point-and-shoot or apes reality TV, how can it be great art? For the few people with "strong opinions" about such things (I suppose I'm one of them), the world is drowning in kitsch. And yet: the times they are a changin... * Peeting essentials: a good cup of coffee and maple scone (in lieu of madeleines and tea); some reading apparatus (paper or Kindle); something good to read (Kafka's Trial will do). Before I get started, I look at a message from Amazon (something I rarely do, as they're usually just pushing more of what I've recently chosen myself--in this case Thomas Bernhard--or something I have little interest in). Knausgaard (a name I've never heard of) is linked to Bernhard (and, after a series of clicks and glimpses: to Proust). * I'll reserve judgment (for now) and let the pot simmer. Maybe eventually I'll sample more (what I...

I only have the Indian variety, but they always remind me of him. They're blooming now. 

Pere Lachaise was close enough to our 3rd hotel that I didn't have to take a Metro. Besides I wanted to walk: see things along the way. I woke early--even Mickey D's was closed on the corner--and walked in cool, on-and-off-rain. Had forgot to check when it opens (I was off an hour plus). OK, I had a couple coffees and a pain aux raisin. Kept dry by sitting at a busstop; kept warm by pacing over a vent. I only wanted three biggies (de Nerval, Balzac, Proust) and Aux Morts : I  got that and a little more.                                                                                                   ...

Hawthorn blossom , a photo by Rhian vK on Flickr. The Proustian variety. * I shall not find a painting more beautiful because the artist has painted a hawthorn in the foreground, though I know of nothing more beautiful than the hawthorn, for I wish to remain sincere and because I know that the beauty of a painting does not depend on the things represented in it. I shall not collect images of hawthorn. I do not venerate hawthorn, I go to see and smell it.    [Marcel Proust - preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904)]

From Proust's  In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu): [ Translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff ]

Dear Reader, You find the patch of yellow wall [From Wikimedia Commons:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Delft_(Vermeer )]

As I vaguely recalled (It's been a year or so since I drifted from beginning to end of The Novel), the patch of yellow wall is somewhat contentious: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/proust/proust.html