07/07/2021
Robert Harrison contre Proust
A brief monologue by Robert Harrison on Marcel Proust for the 150th anniversary of his birth on July 10, 1871. Outro song: “She's Not There” by The Zombies
07/07/2021
Robert Harrison contre Proust
A brief monologue by Robert Harrison on Marcel Proust for the 150th anniversary of his birth on July 10, 1871. Outro song: “She's Not There” by The Zombies
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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I'm Robert Harrison for entitled "Pendous."
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Let's get a 21st century groove going before we head back
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to the long 19th century.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Yeah.
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Steve Hunter giving us the vibe.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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The show is called entitled "Pendous."
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So here we go with one of mine.
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Am I nor the opinion to be sure?
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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150 years ago, on July 10, Jean Clemoss-Pust
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gave birth to a boy whom she would go on to cuddle and pamper,
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nurturing in him a ferocious egotism that she would be forced
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to indulge, negotiate, and manage.
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She instilled in him a love of the arts,
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and upon her death in 1905, she'd be stowed upon him a vast
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fortune, all of which enabled her son to become the towering
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literary figure we know today as much as it was.
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Whoever loves poo seven volume opus in search of lost time,
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owes Jean Clemoss a big debt of gratitude for bringing
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much said into the world, and for putting up with his
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important demands on her devotion during his childhood
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and youth, which much said so fondly remembers in that
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sprawling, uninhibited novel.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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In search of lost time is not for everybody,
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and I include myself in that category.
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Back in college, I had a professor who, when I expressed
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frustration with the book's vagaries assured me that I
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would grow into poost if I just stuck with him long enough.
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Well, even professors can be wrong at times,
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and after decades of periodically returning to poost to give
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him another chance, I now know that I will never fit into the
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gauzy mantle of that novel.
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It's an exquisite fabric to be sure, but I feel awkward and even
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ridiculous when I put it on.
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As for its prose, it has that spongy, honey taste of a
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blend, which I personally find slightly sickening.
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Nor am I enraptured by poost's highly touted
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ruminations on time, memory, and a higher order of reality
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glimpsed in moments of heightened sensation, to each
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his own, I suppose.
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Poost has many August venerators whose entitled opinions I
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respect, but don't share.
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When I hear George Steiner, whom I greatly admire, say, as he
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did in an interview that, quote, "poost has expanded the
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possibilities of human consciousness as very few have done,
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Shakespeare and Dante maybe, but not many others.
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I can only shake my head and wonder what kind of sorcery is at
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work here, or what is it that I'm missing."
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It's not that I don't understand why some people love
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poost and why the world of comb-re and chance them, or why
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the 4,000-page novel can become addictive.
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I do.
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In search of lost time has the one salient feature of any
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literary masterpiece.
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It is unique.
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There's nothing remotely like it.
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It's written at the edge of sleep.
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It slows down the pace of thought and perception.
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It lulls you with the undulating waves of its liquid,
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languish prose.
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It has a distinctly musical effect on readers.
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The cadence of its sentences, the recurring melodies or
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thematic motifs, and the way its successive volumes represent
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so many movements of a unified composition, all this makes for a
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kind of symphony and words.
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I also get that the novel opens its doors and invites you
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into the glittering world of the Bele-pok in France, which,
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along with the 19th century, came to an end with World War
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One.
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Even today, in our wholly altered historical reality, many
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among us can't resist the allure of an defeat and self-in-close
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society populated by rich people, artists, and aristocrats.
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As well as their servants, of course.
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You have to have the servants.
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I think I read somewhere that Downton Abbey may be having a
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seventh season.
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Oh my.
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Then there is Marcel, the narrator author, who passes through the
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external facades of the novel's characters into their inner
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psyches.
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Somewhat like Pus contemporary Henry James did with his
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characters.
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The difference between Pus and James, however, is that James
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maintained a certain tact and reserve toward his characters,
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allowing them to withdraw behind veils of discretion.
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A Jamesian character tends to retreat into indeterminacy and
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medicines, while a Prustian character tends to get exposed to
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one degree or another.
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Which is fine.
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I have nothing against narrative in discretion.
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My problem with Pus is that Marcel aggressively draws you the
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reader into the deeper recesses of his own idiosyncrasy.
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He doesn't invite but drags you into his confidence.
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In psychology, this is called annexation.
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Pus and nexus his reader by disclosing the most private aspects
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of his selfhood and thereby forcing you into intimacy with him.
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So yes, I understand the bewitching appeal of Marcel Pus.
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Yet when I read him, I feel like the person in Ezra Pound's
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poem endurance who says, "I am homesick after my own kind."
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Which is a roundabout way of saying, "I don't share much sense
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sensibility.
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I would not want to spend an evening with any of the novels,
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two thousand characters, and among all the dead authors I would
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like to meet in person if I could, Pus ranks near the bottom of
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my list.
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If only because I think Samuel Beckett was right in his
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scintillating short book on Pus, when he wrote a "two tendencies
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highly developed in Pus, his domination complex, and his
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infantilism."
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That's a combination I can do without.
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I would rather sit on the deck of the Nelly and listen to
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Marlowe spin his yarns than sit at the table of the Bez view
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as.
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Question, "Is in search of last time a novel from which you
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could not remove or alter any of its constituent parts
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without visualiating the whole?"
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I'm not sure.
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I tend to believe that by streamlining large portions of it
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and reducing it to maybe half its size, one could improve it
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considerably or at least render it less tedious.
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Yet maybe the genius of Pus' novel lies precisely in its excess
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and overflow, like Moby Dick or Finnegan's Wake, and maybe
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by condensing it one would in fact denature it.
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I certainly would not want to tinker with it.
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That's for sure.
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For all its stylistic and descriptive expansiveness in search of
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last time remains from the psychological point of view at
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least, a claustrophobic novel.
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I'm referring here not so much to the confined social world
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of the swans and the Git Mounds and so forth, but to the passion of
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jealousy that marks the novel's center of gravity.
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For Pus' and his narrator, love and jealousy are interchangeable terms.
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Love has only one modality, the compulsive desire to gain full
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possession of the loved one.
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Not simply of the loved one's body, but of her devotion,
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attention, and innermost desires.
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In Pus' mental universe, only the torment of failing to
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achieve such possession counts as love.
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Marcel declares in propositional form, "We love only what we do not
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wholly possess."
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So much of Pus' novel, wallows in the murky depths of this
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self-devouring and other devouring passion for possession.
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We see it at work with swan, the bachandha chadlus, and
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Marcel himself.
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Marcel would never understand the sentiment in rain or
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rilke's slumber song, "Where the Speaker," comparing his
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beloved to a book asks, "Will you be able to sleep without my
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closing you and leaving you alone with what is yours?"
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By his own admission, Marcel desired total and exclusive possession
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of his mother when he was a child.
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Later in life, he carried over the same vampiric desire into
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his relationships with women, above all albedine.
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When he believes he is taking possession of albedine,
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Marcel starts losing interest in her.
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When he once against suspects, there is something in her
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that eludes and excludes him, his passion gets re-inflamed.
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The only time he is at peace without a bachandha is when she is a
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sleep beside him as a smooth surface of physical presence
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without secrets or hidden depths, or so he believes.
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Because in reality, the other is never so far out of reach
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as when he or she is asleep as rilke's slumber songs
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exist.
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In his purest manifestation, jealousy seeks possession
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through penetration.
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Again, not so much sexual penetration, but a penetrating
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knowledge of the inner being of the loved one.
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This knowing gaze into the interior is always denied to the
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jealous person, since none of us can ever know another from
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within.
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That is to say, no, the other subjectively.
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That's why much said goes to such extreme lengths to empirically
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discover where and with whom and in what manner are the
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bachteen spends her time when they are not together.
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This is a failing proposition.
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For while external facts may tell us whether we have been betrayed,
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they will never give us access to the inner psyche of the
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person who inspires in us a pathological desire for total
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possession.
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And Pus was clear of why not to realize this.
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That's why in search of lost time ends up sublimating the
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psychology of jealousy into a metaphysics of unknowability.
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We can never know or truly commune with the other.
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If Pus had stopped there, we could say that he learned a valuable
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if rather obvious lesson.
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Yet he went further and put himself and the rest of us in a
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hermetic box, I quote him, "Man is the creature who cannot come
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forth from himself, who knows others only in himself and who,
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if he asserts the contrary, lies."
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That statement tells me all I need to know about why I will never
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grow into post.
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Why I will always feel suffocated by his novel and why I can live
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without the sublimated solipsism that he called arts redemption
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of reality.
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I'm happy to assert the contrary of that statement and leave it to
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the gods to decide whether I lie.
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To assert that is that I am someone who exists outside myself,
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that I come forth from myself day in and day out and that I know
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myself through others rather than no others through me.
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In some, I live extatically.
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And that's why from here on out, I will no longer revisit the
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shadow world of post masterpiece.
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I'm Robert Harrison and I hereby declare an end to our year
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long hiatus and the beginning of a new season of entitled
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opinions.
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We have a number of new shows coming your way in the weeks ahead,
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so stay tuned and spread the word, take care.
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