Proust's Aesthetic of Reading Author(s): Robert Soucy Source: The French Review, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Oct., 1967), pp. 48-59 Published by: American Association of Teachers of French Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/384504 Accessed: 04-09-2017 22:15 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/384504?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Proust's Aesthetic of Reading by Robert Soucy
THE NARRATOR IN PROUST'S A LA RECHERCHE DU
TEMPS PERD U, after a long pilgrimage through life in which society, conversation, love and friendship all leave him disillusioned, eventually realizes that his salvation lies in literary creation. But what of the nonartist? What of the reader? What does Proust provide for him? A very great deal, it so happens. In fact, implicit in Proust's works as a whole, in such writings as Contre Sainte-Beuve, Jean Santeuil, Les Plaisirs et les jours and his Ruskin prefaces, as well as in A la recherche du temps perdu, there is a complete aesthetic of reading, one that forms an integral part of Proust's attitude toward art in general.
Reading not only played an important role in Proust's own life, of course, but it played a significant role in the lives of a great many of his fictional creatures also-so much so that Proust often gives us glimpses into their essential natures through their response to books, often characterizes them by their approaches to literature, approaches which are often illustrations of poor kinds of reading. There are all sorts of "bad" readers in Proust's works. There is Frangoise's young footman in A la recherche du temps perdu who reads books from the narrator's library for their snob value, filling his letters to his native village with references to famous authors to impress the folks back home. Or there is Monsieur de Norpois, the "busy" reader, who maintains that the increasing complexity of life and world problems "laisse A peine le temps de lire" and prevents him from bothering with authors who indulge in "toutes ces chinoiseries de forme, toutes ces subtilit6s de mandarin." 1 Or there is Saint-Loup who adheres to the "best" aesthetic formulas and who judges works by their appeal to the intellect exclusively instead of by their appeal to the imagination. There is also the Duchesse de Guermantes who exercises her "wit"
by denigrating works which have become classics and by extravagantly praising lesser-known works in her desire to express "novel," titillating 1 A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), Pldiade edition, I, pp. 473, 474. Subsequent references will be indicated in parentheses immediately following the quoted material as La Recherche. 48
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PROUST
49
literary faith.
ju
Or,
if
literature a casino and misses as th On the oth reading is a Both Jean often comp For them b Sundays wh very web a newspapers "tandis que y a des cho Proust felt if they pro Holy Writ. tended to s that
books
further
c
for
existence
go
minds, min of the will. his resource a new adren however, a theme of so Indeed, in h as "an impu
very
cente
alone is It must
not be
Bergotte
b
read. Conve a "lazy min ...
j'ftais
quelque
inc
lec
2 "Ruskin an (Garden City
Sesame.
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50
FRENCH
attention
REVIEW
4
des
chose
ite presentee dans la mort pour retrouve peindre (La Recherc Why
is
the
narrator
Whence the power a an answer, a partial partie, avait comme
Proust
believed
literature's most vital functions. It is no coincidence that in Contre Sainte-
th
Beuve he called attention to the dream-like quality of G6rard de Nerval's work, adding that even so, "Peut-6tre y-a-t-il encore un peu trop d'intelligence dans sa nouvelle." 3 The child at Combray with his copy of Frangois le Champi is a reader with imagination as well as intelligence, a reader who
dreams. The narrator recalls: ". . dans ce temps-1h, quand je lisais, je revassais souvent pendant des pages entibres a tout autre chose" (La Recherche, I, 42). There is no glorification of speed-reading in Proust; for one thing, it would allow no time for day-dreaming. Proust pointed out repeatedly in his writings that good reading is often a
highly subjective act. There are many times when the good reader is completely impervious to objective standards of aesthetic value when he approaches a book. "What matters, what sets him dreaming is the fact of his admiration, even when it may be given to what is unworthy." 4 The reading in hand need not be a masterpiece to inspire fruitful reveries, indeed it need not even be a book-especially when one is young: A partir d'un certain dge nos souvenirs sont tellement entre-croises les uns sur les autres que la chose d laquelle on pense, le livre qu'on lit n'a presque plus d'importance. On a mis de soi-meme partout, tout est ftcond, tout est dangereux, et on peut faire d'aussi pricieuses decouveries que dans les Pensees
de Pascal dans une reclame pour un savon (La Recherche, III, 543). The Surrealists were not the first to teach that there is often a "marvelous"
side to the most commonplace objects. Proust was well aware also that different persons, that is, different subjectivities, might respond quite differently to the same stimuli, depending on the associations it aroused, or failed to arouse. Just as the smell of gasoline might be unpleasant to one individual while intoxicating another with memories of past voyages, so a particular book might leave I Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1954), p. 169.
4 Quoted in Walter Strauss, Proust and Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 212-213. Subsequent references will be indicated as Strauss.
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PROUST
51
one intellig could tell. favorite bo and then f toujours qu qui nous ra
nifeste cet Proust is re really know is to say, 'r Proust and from a deep
methodica Yet Proust intensely s response
to
a time, for existence in
instead of t stead of plu from life, Frangoise, copious tear but when s Giotto," th
sadistic
cal
longing to bothering Despite the ways
felt
th
This was o images in w association mediate ins
sequently t prdsente le
d'abord
pa
preceded th to the exp buried 5
Jean
deep
Sante
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52
FRENCH
REVIEW
from a sensibility im same held true for th
as
springboards
to
t
madeleine itself. The and abstract. Bergott
this sense:
... pour se separer de la pricidente generation, trop amie des abstractions, des grands lieux communs, quand Bergotte voulait dire du bien d'un livre, ce qu'il faisait valoir, ce qu'il citait c'etait toujours quelque scene faisant image, quelque tableau sans signification rationnelle (La Recherche, I, 55-6).
Proust felt that one of the major drawbacks of the Realistic school of literature was that it severely limited the reader's participation in the work
before him. Instead of making literature a catalyst to the imagination, it left nothing to the imagination, nothing to the reader's own powers of creation. Indeed, its greatest disservice, wrote Proust in Contre SainteBeuve, was that it suppressed the imagination, "la seule chose pr6cieuse." It is a considerable commentary on Proust's views on art that the narrator in La Recherche should reach the nadir of his disillusionment with literature
after reading an unpublished Goncourt journal! The "good" readers in Proust are invariably creative readers who discover analogies in their own lives with experiences described in books. Just as "la petite phrase" in Vinteuil's sonata returns Swann, mentally, a hundred times to the Bois de Boulogne with Odette, a passage or image in a book may return a reader to a moment in his past, or plunge him more
deeply into the present. Indeed, in La Recherche, Proust, with his tendency to draw analogies by three's, seems almost deliberately to be provoking
the reader to add a fourth. As he himself loved to create endless variations
on basic, general human experiences, on what he sometimes called "laws," so the reader, he seems to say, should join him in these perpetual creations and add variations of his own. In fact, at one point in the novel the nar-
rator actually calls upon his readers to acknowledge the Messieurs de Charlus whom they have known in their own lives. He himself notes that, after the death of Albertine, by evoking past impressions of his mistress, " . . . j'en nourrissais l'oeuvre que je lisais" (La Recherche, III, 56). There was nothing wrong with this, as Proust makes clear in Le Temps retrouve, for there are two parts to an impression, the object and ourselves, and all too often we tend to neglect that which is inside ourselves for that which is outside. There are, of course, those "erudites" who do nothing but this, but they "vieillissent inutiles et insatisfaits, comme des c6libataires de
l'Art!" (La Recherche, III, 892).
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PROUST
Proust lead to
53
was misr
actually valuable.
me
"Le
he wrote. " son image tous les con
In Le Temps someday mi into what t loved and w sex by a rea stitutions in the book mo literary
as
criti
worthy
a
Bible d'Amiens:
Les grandes beautes litteraires correspondent 4 quelque chose, et c'est peu 'tre l'enthousiasme en art, qui est le criterium de la verite. A supposer q Ruskin ce soit quelquefois trompS, comme critique, dans l'exacte appreciation de la valeur d'une weuvre, la beaute de son jugement errond est souvent plus
interessante que celle de l' wuvre jugge et correspond a quelque chose qui, pou Otre autre qu'elle, n'est pas moins precieux.6
And yet even such "mis-translations" are based on the principle that there is a generality as well as an individuality in human affairs, that there are "general laws" which permit the multitude of different subjec tivities who compose the human race to recognize and share certain unive sal experiences in common. It is the particulars that change, not the gen eralities. Since such experiences are general, and therefore communicabl they are the very stuff of literature. Consequently, when Proust's creatures
find themselves living an experience which they have read about in a boo
they may feel that what they are living is in some way "literary." Contre Sainte-Beuve, Proust tells how a politician with a bad reputatio who makes friends in a place where his reputation is unknown, yet wh realizes these friends will discover the truth someday and turn against him, is consoled by the fact that Balzac's Princesse de Cadignan lived i dread of a similar fate. Hence, ". . . il sait qu'il participe a une situation en quelque sorte litteraire et qui prend par 1l quelque beaut'" (Contr 6 John Ruskin, Bible d'Amiens (Paris, 1926), p. 76.
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54
FRENCH
REVIEW
Sainte-Beuve, p. 223 would not have poss On the other hand, erature is not someh echo in his own past Speaking of an artic observes that many understand it and w ognizes the foolishn to
say.
Comme
si
les
idles
et
pour les lire et les fai ce que les miens peuve
qui
en
poss~dent
nat
Thus in La Recherch the death of Lucien courtisanes than a h ments that certain
because
Dostoevski'
sensibility.
En rdalite, chaque le L'ouvrage de l'4criva au
lecteur
'tre
pas
afin
vu
en
de
lui
p
soi-m
Indeed, at times the pletely and think on the
surroundings
that
impressions only in simply a means of r
if the book is a child In fact, one might Proust puts literatur the author's point of
side
to
reading
wh
Proust was very mu temporarily annihil the author, of getti
another. time
in
It
may
order
to
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ev
get
PROUST
55
Proust in C ludicrous si completely his
various
w
shameful ab independen
Les personn par les livre independan de la libert6 de
ce
qu'on
(Bible
s
d'Am
One may br regard to R This theme It should n very first p reading, ho came that moi-meme Frangois ler secondes a I, 3). It is s his "reason the world of all good rea to give. What the great artist gives us, according to Proust, is a new pair of eyes, a new consciousness. Thanks to such gifts the world can be perpetually created anew for us. For it is the kind of eyes, the way we see things, that give objects their particular value, not so much the objects themselves.
Thus a hospital can be as beautiful as a cathedral, depending upon the sensibility, the eyes that see it. And it is through art that we best share the different visions of great eyes:
... car le style pour l'ecrivain ... est une question non de technique mais de vision. Il est la revelation, qui serait impossible par des moyens directs et conscients, de la difference qualitative qu'il y a dans la fa on dont nous apparait le monde, difference qui, s'il n'y avait pas l'art, resterait le secret eternel
de chacun. Par l'art seulement nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n'est pas le mJme que le ndtre, et dont les paysa-
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56
FRENCH
ges
nous
lune.
REVIEW
seraient
Grdce
d
re
l'art,
au
multiplier, et autan mondes 4 notre disp Therefore, new than a
to travel great wo
Le seul veritable voy vers de nouveaux pay les yeux d'un autre, d voit, que chacun d'e Vinteuil, avec leur p cherche, III, 258).
One way an artist pu is through the uniqu own special way of more than simply a s habitual, convention narrator in La Rech types" in the works art can cut through which haste and "pr her how the sharp k through this ersatz re such "phrase-types" remonter a la vie, c' et du raisonnement'q nous ne la voyons ja
Beuve, Habit and
p.
303).
(which
the
Prous
deadening
eff
Proust comes back Recherche is the na struggle
can .*.
to
overcome
defeat
certains
l'habitude,
heures
its
hold
romans
nous
remet
seulement,
co
qu'elles
produisent,
d
contre
lutter
o
elles
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l
et
PROUST
presque a
des
57
hyp
effects
Proust belie closely link entering int of
traveling"
into other c they help u grandmothe antique expr dans le tem becoming p from
ing
people
their
ow
Personally
s
room that ha foundly diff where I find thrives becau
p. 190). The same was true with the vision of a great author.
Proust recognized, however, that it was often a difficult transition for the reader to make. The effort it takes to grasp the mind of another, especially when that mind is a great one, is sometimes too much for us. The more original the author, the greater the effort we have to make to transcend
our normal way of looking at things. Used to hackneyed phrases and common metaphors, we find ones that are unique and subtle, difficult to follow
and exhausting-and therefore often displeasing. Consequently, after a first attempt, we may dismiss his work as unsympathetic. In this way, some readers reject what later become their favorite works. This is what happens to Jean Santeuil, for example. He reads Cinna and Phedre at first without pleasure and finds J. J. Weiss preferable to Moliebre. The classical writers of the seventeenth century arouse in him nothing but "un morne ennui" (yet we know that Proust had a deep love for these writers). Jean even rejects at first one of the greatest treasures of his youth,
Le Capitaine Fracasse, having "quelque peine a s'habituer A des descriptions" (Jean Santeuil, I, 123, 177). Just as the narrator in La Recherche finds Vinteuil's sonata disappointing at first, then grasps the "least valuable" parts, and finally the more lasting beauties of the work, so too does
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58
FRENCH
REVIEW
Jean only gradually La Recherche the nar value of a work of ar
takes
decades
befor
and appreciate a trul But if the effort is to overcome the me
lenses which prevent h ence what the narrato
cherished moments his favorite author B to
him,
Or
un
the
narrator
nouvel
c
6crivai
entre les choses etaien comprenais presque rie d'arrosage admiraient
sais le long de ces rou de Claudel.' Alors je n ville et qu'il m'?tait d n'Ytait
aller
pas
la
phrase
jusqu'au
bout.
qu
J
pour arriver d l'endro Chaque fois, parvenu d plus
tard
pour zero
&
le
au
pour
6tre
fagon
regiment
nouvel la
ainsi
des
ecriva
gymnastiq
reconnus
occulistes.
L
toujours agreable. Qu regardez. Et voici qu souvent qu'un artiste ferent
de
l'ancien,
mai
sable qui vient d'6tre gique que dechaineron Celui
mais pas
qui
par
avait
la
rempla
nouveaut
l'habitude
de
suivr
indiquait l'identite de sur mille je pouvais voyais .tait toujours ceux
que
j'avais
trouvg
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PROUST
Je
59
songeais
monde,
l'avait
pare
appo
Reading, th with each n reads with both, Prous reality
is
a
intellectual not unlike OBERLIN COLLEGE
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