The last volume of Proust’s great novel is, from the sado-masochistic fantasies of Baron de Charlus in the first half, to the final party given by the Princesse de Guermantes (formerly Mme. Verdurin) in the second, a reckoning with the body as a vessel not just for life in time, but for time itself. The meditations on the body resemble, intersect with, and then develop … Continue reading 219. (Marcel Proust)
Perverse as it is to redefine words against conventional meanings, it is nonetheless possible to loosen from conventional meanings an implication that enlarges the significance of a word. The word “tact” seems to me susceptible to such an operation, where beneath its concern for social proprieties, for the embarrassment of others, and for good manners is a suggestion of tactility, so that the word might … Continue reading 218. (William Wordsworth)
Even though it is frequent in contemporary fiction, present-tense narration is not easily justified. People and place are no more immediate in present than in past tense; time progresses and spins out, back on itself, and suddenly forward, in any tense. The present tense, maybe, pretends that something is not settled, that the fixity of the past has been surmounted by the possibilities carried along … Continue reading 217. (Ishmael Reed)
In the sixth volume of Recherche, Proust approaches Tennyson: the section of The Fugitive entitled “Grieving and Forgetting” is an extended elegy, an expression of grief and mourning that is also a reflection on grief and mourning. For Proust, however, the grief and mourning for Albertine prompts an elegy for desire (which is a dimension of love), whereas Tennyson’s grief and mourning for Hallam provokes … Continue reading 216. (Marcel Proust)
In the fifth volume of Recherche, The Captive, Baron de Charlus refers to a visit he has recently paid to the famed writer, Bergotte, who has been for some time dead. Even after reading the explanatory note, I wanted to believe that the Baron was supposed to be shown in a lie, but even the aging Charlus would not commit such a blunder. Neither, though, … Continue reading 215. (Marcel Proust)
When someone says that something possesses the quality of the literary, or refers to the literary or even artistic imagination, they refer, I’ve suggested, to a special sort of imaginative tact: one that apprehends bodily experience. On the one hand, it might be said that not all literature is or should be about the body; on the other hand, it might be said that any … Continue reading 214. (T.S. Eliot)
Aristotle, whose “hexis” is not passive habit, but whose thought of human happiness and nature turns on habituation, tells us that tragedy differs from history in that the latter is concerned with the actual and the former with the probable. By probable, he is taken to mean and likely did mean, something that could have taken place, given what we know through probabilistic reasoning. But … Continue reading 213. (Marcel Proust)
