// A la Recherchér du Temps Perdu // 29.03.11
Proust’s writing is long-winded and never rushed. He is amused by, “The self-satisfaction felt by ‘busy’ men - however idiotic their business - at ‘not having time’ to do what you are doing."
"A sincere book demands not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations can emerge and be disentangled.” - Alain DB
The benefits and limitations of reading
“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.” – Proust
“There is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying recreate in oneself what a master has felt. In this profound effect it is our thoughts that we bring out into the light, together with theirs.” – Proust
“There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone.” – Alain DB
Speaking vs writing
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last, rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Clichés are detrimental in so far as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation, while in fact merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we experience it.
Why would one be unable to chat with the level of thought contained in written words? In part, because of the mind’s functioning, it's conditioning as an intermittent organ, forever liable to loose the thread or to be distracted, generating vital thoughts only between stretches of inactive mediocrity, stretches in which we are not really ‘ourselves’, during which it may not be an exaggeration to say that we are ‘not quite all there’, as we gaze at passing clouds with a vacant childlike expression. Because the period of a conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not. By contrast, a book provides a distillation of our sporadic minds, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years, and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. Furthermore, conversation allows us little room to revise our original utterances, which ill suits our tendency not to know what we are saying until we have had at least one go at saying it; whereas writing accommodates, and is largely made up of, rewriting, during which original thoughts – bare inarticulate strands – are enriched and nuanced over time.
Beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered
Great painters posses the power to open our eyes, because of the unusual receptivity of their own eyes to aspects of visual experience. We might caricature the history of art as a succession of geniuses engaged in pointing out different elements worthy of our attention, a succession of painters using their intense technical mastery to say what amounts to, ‘Aren't those back streets in Delft pretty?’ or ‘Isn't the Seine nice outside Paris?’. And in Chardin’s case, to say, ‘Look not just at the Roman campagna, the pageantry of Venice and the proud expressions of Charles I astride his horse, but also have a look at the bowl on the sideboard, the dead fish in your kitchen and the crusty bread in the hall.’
Bad painters may be excellent draughtsman, good on clouds, clever on budding leaves, dutiful on roots, and yet still lack a command of those elusive elements in which the particular charms of spring are lodged. They can not, for instance, depict, and hence make us notice, the pinkish border on the edge of the blossom of a tree, the contrast between storm and sunshine in the light across a field, the gnarled quality of bark or the venerable, tentative appearance of flowers on the side of a country track – small details no doubt, but in the end the only things on which our sense of, and enthusiasm for, springtime can be based.
“Proust said, ‘Classically beautiful women should be left men without imagination’. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what happens when the beholder looks elsewhere? A subjective view of beauty makes the observer indispensible.”– Alain DB
How quickly we take things for granted
"We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale facsimiles.” – Proust
(Proust was a huge fan of the telephone, which was invented during his lifetime, and was shocked by how, after only 30 years of its existence, users complained about any faults in it's service!).
"Having something physically present sets up far from ideal circumstances in which to notice it. Presence may in fact be the very element that encourages us to ignore or neglect it. Depravation quickly drives us to appreciation.” – Alain DB
"When you come to live with a woman, you will soon cease to see anything of what made you love her; though it is true that the two sundered elements can be reunited by jealousy. Afraid of losing her, we forget all others. Sure of keeping her, we compare her to those others whom at once we prefer to her.” – Proust
Proust’s writing is long-winded and never rushed. He is amused by, “The self-satisfaction felt by ‘busy’ men - however idiotic their business - at ‘not having time’ to do what you are doing."
"A sincere book demands not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations can emerge and be disentangled.” - Alain DB
The benefits and limitations of reading
“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.” – Proust
“There is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying recreate in oneself what a master has felt. In this profound effect it is our thoughts that we bring out into the light, together with theirs.” – Proust
“There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone.” – Alain DB
Speaking vs writing
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last, rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Clichés are detrimental in so far as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation, while in fact merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we experience it.
Why would one be unable to chat with the level of thought contained in written words? In part, because of the mind’s functioning, it's conditioning as an intermittent organ, forever liable to loose the thread or to be distracted, generating vital thoughts only between stretches of inactive mediocrity, stretches in which we are not really ‘ourselves’, during which it may not be an exaggeration to say that we are ‘not quite all there’, as we gaze at passing clouds with a vacant childlike expression. Because the period of a conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not. By contrast, a book provides a distillation of our sporadic minds, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years, and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. Furthermore, conversation allows us little room to revise our original utterances, which ill suits our tendency not to know what we are saying until we have had at least one go at saying it; whereas writing accommodates, and is largely made up of, rewriting, during which original thoughts – bare inarticulate strands – are enriched and nuanced over time.
Beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered
Great painters posses the power to open our eyes, because of the unusual receptivity of their own eyes to aspects of visual experience. We might caricature the history of art as a succession of geniuses engaged in pointing out different elements worthy of our attention, a succession of painters using their intense technical mastery to say what amounts to, ‘Aren't those back streets in Delft pretty?’ or ‘Isn't the Seine nice outside Paris?’. And in Chardin’s case, to say, ‘Look not just at the Roman campagna, the pageantry of Venice and the proud expressions of Charles I astride his horse, but also have a look at the bowl on the sideboard, the dead fish in your kitchen and the crusty bread in the hall.’
Bad painters may be excellent draughtsman, good on clouds, clever on budding leaves, dutiful on roots, and yet still lack a command of those elusive elements in which the particular charms of spring are lodged. They can not, for instance, depict, and hence make us notice, the pinkish border on the edge of the blossom of a tree, the contrast between storm and sunshine in the light across a field, the gnarled quality of bark or the venerable, tentative appearance of flowers on the side of a country track – small details no doubt, but in the end the only things on which our sense of, and enthusiasm for, springtime can be based.
“Proust said, ‘Classically beautiful women should be left men without imagination’. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what happens when the beholder looks elsewhere? A subjective view of beauty makes the observer indispensible.”– Alain DB
How quickly we take things for granted
"We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale facsimiles.” – Proust
(Proust was a huge fan of the telephone, which was invented during his lifetime, and was shocked by how, after only 30 years of its existence, users complained about any faults in it's service!).
"Having something physically present sets up far from ideal circumstances in which to notice it. Presence may in fact be the very element that encourages us to ignore or neglect it. Depravation quickly drives us to appreciation.” – Alain DB
"When you come to live with a woman, you will soon cease to see anything of what made you love her; though it is true that the two sundered elements can be reunited by jealousy. Afraid of losing her, we forget all others. Sure of keeping her, we compare her to those others whom at once we prefer to her.” – Proust
