Be sure to engage the text well before Tuesday, as it takes a while to get the flow of his singular writing style. Remember that I have already noted that in the passage "nothing happens," so you don't have to anticipate any sort of "story" to get rolling. But, rather than mere ephemeral Franco-babble, the text does have an interesting narrative frame. And, the connection with the film I am going to make in class concerns the specific socio-cultural moment of early part of 20th century (an era loosely called modernism). The notes on the webpage point to the specifics here. Don't give up when reading In Search... It just might end up being one of the coolest things you've read; but, you've got to give yourself over to it for this to happen.
I know that Proust is a challenge. I know that it is difficult to make it through; I know that it is even more of a challenge to “do something” with Proust. His narrative style seems to deflect entry. But, I hope that I am able to tie together the text in such a way that we can see how Proust narrates and how his narration is the “thing itself.” That is, “the thing itself” and the “knowing the thing” are the same, that the form becomes the content, that the narration is the story. I use Proust in this class because he makes us think about narration so differently (particularly in contrast to the mode of narration we’ve grown accustomed to through Hollywood’s transparent style).
I see some similarities in Proust's narration and Kafka's. They both drop any sort of background information and introduction and just dive right into the story. I must admit I feel frustrated when reading these texts because I don't feel like I'm getting to the point, or at least see it as clearly as I would like.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I noticed there are painfully long sentences in Proust's writing which look more like long streams of the character's consciousness. I thought that was interesting because it made the narration more dream-like and appropriate for a plot such as recalling a forgotten dream.
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ReplyDeleteI'm going to take the conversation in a different direction and bring up the documentary. When I watched Man with a Movie Camera, I couldn't help but notice how much music played into the narrative. Vertov constantly used musical rhythm to convey the mood of the scenes he put together, and he edited images together according to the beat of the music. For me, the music enhanced the "story" being told. That being said, there wasn't really a clear narrative to follow. Initially I thought that the girl at the very beginning whom we saw wake up and get dressed was going to play some part in the rest of the film. However, I don't believe we saw her at any other time as the movie progressed. The film seemed to consist of mini stories and situations, more focused on showing a general day in that Russian town than focusing on any one person in particular.
ReplyDeleteI think Andrea was right on spot when she said that Proust's long sentences are "like long streams of the character's consciousness." Proust's long periods don't mimic the way we dream, but the way we think in general. Every morning that we wake up, our consciousness rushes to place us back into context by gluing together our surroundings with our past. This process happens within milliseconds that we are unable to grasp, but yet it happens without exception. Proust takes these milliseconds and en-lengthens them into whole paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteWhat Proust seems to do is he "cheats" time, time as it came to be redefined by the world of industrialization (there are a number of references of clocks, especially, in the beginning of the text.) The clock's hands tick a second of a minute and then a second one, and these seconds pass so quickly and one barely has the time to realize them, but our brain can. Our consciousness beats the clock's hand every time it ticks a second, because our train of thought runs so quickly down the most forgotten paths of our memory. Proust listens to his consciousness and ignores the clock's ticking, thus cheating the very construction of time as perceived today.
As for his "painfully long periods", they are to me a breath of original writing. Written language as we know it is a convention, and Proust breaks through it while still "playing by the rules." He properly uses punctuation so that he is easily understood by the reader, but he remains faithful to his consciousness, as well, by putting an end to his periods only when necessary. After all, our thoughts never come to a halt, they never reach an end. One thought leads to the next, which leads to the next one in an ever-ending manner.
Also, I would like to respond to Cwerty's comment, and say that the music is indeed fantastic! I watched this film for the first time in the Opera Hall of Athens, where the music was played by a live orchestra, while the film was projected on the screen in the background. Music and film complement each other in an almost natural way, however, we must not forget that the film was originally produced to be silent and since then, many different scores have been written to accompany it. So, it wasn't Vertov's footage being edited according to the music, but vice versa!
ReplyDeleteMy mistake! Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteI wanted to bring up the idea of control. I noticed it through out the passage, especially after finally getting to the end of it. Not only does the narrator mention aspects of control throughout but the passage itself is controlling the reader. Proust controls what we are reading, just as any author does, but the way he manipulates language to make us feel as if we could be feeling these things to is crazy. At least that is what I got from it.
ReplyDeletePertaining to his ideas of control (our narrator) within the passage, I noticed it when he is describing sleep, and that the moment when and how we fall asleep can't be controlled. Second, is during the whole time he kept coming back to his mother when he was young, and wanting her to come upstairs and wanting her to kiss him, over and over. He made the waiter?(a man) take a letter downstairs to his mother, and made sure he did nothing before being able to say goodnight to his mother. Third is at the end when he tries so hard to recreate the experience of the memories he is engulfed with after having taken a sip of his tea as an adult.
As he closes with the cup of tea, and all the memories that came from just that one sip, he manages to reiterate the idea that we have no control over memories, or the ways in which they come back to us..or which ones we keep and often forget.
Both Vertov's film and Proust's text work in subversive ways that are generally not encouraged by the standards of 20th century art. The mantra of modern art has been, for a long time, that form follows function. It is of utmost importance that a piece fit into its environment in the most logical and effective way. This is true for both visual art as well as literature. However, both of these narratives force the function to follow the form. In Vertov's film, It is only important that we see the ways in which the camera perceives the world and not the ways in which we relate to the world. Similarly, in Proust's narrative, the form of the language and the ways in which he uses it convey certain tenses is the key to understanding the ultimate intention of the piece.
ReplyDeleteThese artists are able to show us truths that, unless they focused solely on the form itself, would not be seen. We would never see the parallels of women in a factory and at a switchboard and how meaningless they both seem if it were not for cinema. We would not see the immediacy of memory if Proust did not narrate memories in present tense and in such a way that they are a extension of his adult life.
Didn't mean to post that yet. One more thought. Does this force the narrative to function as something other than a narrative? Does it become a device used by the form instead of vice versa?
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment on Elna's comment about how "we would not see the immediacy of memory if Proust did not narrate memories in present tense and in such a way that they are a extension of his adult life."
ReplyDeleteI agree that the form used by Proust allows for more of an experience in reading his novel, a deeper connection, an immediate reaction, making the function follow the form.
In that, it might mean that the narrative begins to function as more than just the re-telling of events, or a presentation of a story, but as an interactive text as it begins by encouraging the reader to think of their own experiences with teetering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It then gently guides the reader into the narrator's past and into the purpose of the story in more of a gentle manor, instead of hitting them upfront with information.
On the subject of how the narration is the "thing itself" I found that I could not read Swann's Way silently I had to activley engage in the text by reading it out loud. Similarly to Gertrude Steins style of writing, their seems to be a natural cadence and rhythmn to the reading that gives it an abstractness that makes it poetic/musical in nature. Such as the passage below:
ReplyDelete"going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann — this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one’s life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality — this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon."
The text does seem to have a stream of conscious element to it that guides the reader to activley engage with the text or else be lost in a daze of details.
On Bryan's post, I'm glad to see someone else felt the urge to read aloud Proust's words not just due to their elegance, but, as you said, to help further grasp the rhythm and flow of the text. By the end of Overture, when the narrative had been explained to be brought on by a cup of tea and cake, I had gotten the feeling that "the thing itself" was taking on the shape of a series of loops (i.e. a Hot Wheels track, a roller-coaster, etc.), referring back to different points on a time-line (or several). These loops in the text (Ex. the narrator, after explaining in previous pages the reasons he had trouble sleeping as a child, recalled that "the evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma did not come up to my room.") deepen the work by allowing the reader to "know the thing". In order for the reader to "know the thing", Proust offers up details and background information telling how/why/when the ideas or events on page took place. "The thing itself" becomes the result of Proust's allowing the reader to fully "know the thing" by answering these questions with reasons essential to what "the thing" is.
ReplyDeleteThere is only one correlation that I could establish between Swann's Way by Proust and Vertov's Man with the movie camera. That correlation happens to be that the pacing eschews the narrative. They are the exact opposite of each other in terms of speed. Vertov shows people and vehicular movement in a bustling city. In doing so, everyone and everything seems to be doing the slogan from the Toyota commercials: "Moving forward."
ReplyDeleteSwann's Way, however, is constructed of very long sentences. So when we read, we are detoured from the narrative. Everything moves so slow because of the sentence structure that it seems like we are inevitably one step behind where we started. Unlike Proust, Vertov managed to keep our attention without a narrative. The reason for this is that he pauses briefly by injecting himself into the action when he is seen performing cuts with the camera before letting the action go even farther. But despite stopping the motion in the city, he himself is continually "moving forward."