Life, love and friendship in Proust...
"I said to myself that our social existence is, like an artist's studio, filled with abandoned sketches in which we have fancied for a moment that we could set down in permanent form our need of a great love, but it did not occur to me that sometimes, if the sketch be not too old, it may happen that we return to it and make of it a work wholly different, and possibly more important than what we had originally planned."- Marcel Proust, "The Guermantes Way", Pt 2, (Chatto and Windus, 1943), p112
The essence of this extract is instantly recognisable to those who have experienced a flicker of love but not quite the full illumination of being in love; only tints and shadows of what we recognise in others and in our own memories and anticipations of love. The insight is mesmerising, giving a warm reassurance that the sketches of our past are not to be simply forgotten or cast off; they are to be left alongside each other as a remembrance of former anticipations and as a reminder of how we formerly felt. Proust, in summoning memories of unrealised hopes in his past, bring himself back to life with full clarity. He realises the love and fondness is felt by himself and that the sketches are his own, to be completed when the proper moment arrives. Love, or the hope of a love fulfilled and reciprocated, is to be kept close at all costs.
"But whatever might be my opinion of friendship, to mention only the pleasure that it procured me, of a quality so mediocre as to be like something half-way between physical exhaustion and mental boredom, there is no brew so deadly that it cannot at certain moments become precious and invigorating by giving us just the stimulus that was necessary, the warmth that we cannot generate in ourself."
- Ibid, p119
I believe that this understanding of friendship is of a more subjective kind; it's hard to objectify in any case. Friendship for the introvert and the kind of person who is used to seeing the world in a slow, panoramic motion is altogether a different experience; it is a means of repose and comfort, and is the irrational but altogether soothing experience of relying on one another. Friendship is there when inner inspiration is beyond reach or out of scope: the man without friendship feels isolated; however, in moments of weakness or spiritual trouble, the resort of simple, instinctive comfort is available to the man with friends close by.
Reading Proust is a wonderful experience; his decades of philosophical insight suffuse into what on the surface appears a story of upper-class society and no more. Between the dense language, the involuntary but precisely explained recollection of memories, and the way Proust drifts in and out of high society is a running thread of wonderful introspection and philosophy, the action of which is never insincere or dishonest. Proust disguises a profound philosophical work in the cloak of narrating the events of French high society. My awe and the appreciation of this is quickly setting in.
The essence of this extract is instantly recognisable to those who have experienced a flicker of love but not quite the full illumination of being in love; only tints and shadows of what we recognise in others and in our own memories and anticipations of love. The insight is mesmerising, giving a warm reassurance that the sketches of our past are not to be simply forgotten or cast off; they are to be left alongside each other as a remembrance of former anticipations and as a reminder of how we formerly felt. Proust, in summoning memories of unrealised hopes in his past, bring himself back to life with full clarity. He realises the love and fondness is felt by himself and that the sketches are his own, to be completed when the proper moment arrives. Love, or the hope of a love fulfilled and reciprocated, is to be kept close at all costs.
"But whatever might be my opinion of friendship, to mention only the pleasure that it procured me, of a quality so mediocre as to be like something half-way between physical exhaustion and mental boredom, there is no brew so deadly that it cannot at certain moments become precious and invigorating by giving us just the stimulus that was necessary, the warmth that we cannot generate in ourself."
- Ibid, p119
I believe that this understanding of friendship is of a more subjective kind; it's hard to objectify in any case. Friendship for the introvert and the kind of person who is used to seeing the world in a slow, panoramic motion is altogether a different experience; it is a means of repose and comfort, and is the irrational but altogether soothing experience of relying on one another. Friendship is there when inner inspiration is beyond reach or out of scope: the man without friendship feels isolated; however, in moments of weakness or spiritual trouble, the resort of simple, instinctive comfort is available to the man with friends close by.
Reading Proust is a wonderful experience; his decades of philosophical insight suffuse into what on the surface appears a story of upper-class society and no more. Between the dense language, the involuntary but precisely explained recollection of memories, and the way Proust drifts in and out of high society is a running thread of wonderful introspection and philosophy, the action of which is never insincere or dishonest. Proust disguises a profound philosophical work in the cloak of narrating the events of French high society. My awe and the appreciation of this is quickly setting in.
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