À La Recherche Research Articles

Swann's Way Helped Shape Lawrence's Work on Cyclotron

Swann's Way Helped Shape Lawrence's Work on Cyclotron

Fullness of Dissonance: Modern Fiction and the Aesthetics of Music (review)

REVIEWS DANIEL C. MELNICK. Fullness ofDissonance: Modern Fiction and the Aesthetics ofMusic. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1994. 159 pp. Music and literature were born together; and, as Daniel Melnick's study postulates , they have been following a similar destiny: the dissolution of Apollonian form into Dionysian dissonance. For Melnick (via Nietzsche), the dissolving of harmonic, coherent form into dissonant fragmentation is welcome, for it awakens human consciousness (or spirit, or élan vital perhaps), challenging it to respond to the discordant nature oftwentieth-century life/art and thereby making the reader/listener a participant in the creative process. Just as he considers Beethoven's piano sonata Opus 1 1 1 the end of classical sonata form, so the author regards Thomas Mann's DoctorFaustus as the coup degrâce to traditional narrative fiction. Writers ofthe modernist era, following the influence oftheir musical counterparts in promoting the demise oftraditional form, created the "dissonant narrative," or "dissonant fiction," a mode ofcomposition that Melnick seeks to define and illustrate in his study. An initial example is extracted from the Author's Note to Heart ofDarkness in which the Conrad, discussing the significance of his novella, uses a musical analogy and, by doing so, anticipates the musicalization offiction by the likes of Proust, Mann, and Joyce. After a concise definition of musical dissonance as "a structure oftones unresolved into the familiar cadences ofharmonic closure" (8), Melnick calls on aesthetic theorists Theodor Adorno and Ernst Bloch to help distinguish the "experimental, destabilizing strategies, which, under the guise of musicalization, assume and achieve the effect of dissonance in the novel" (8). Finding the roots ofdissonance deeply embedded in Romanticism, Melnick traces its development as a musico-literary phenomenon through the nineteenth century, with the Romantic composers Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, and Liszt and the Symbolist poets Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine represented in this perspective. Although not numerous, specific quotations are illuminating, especially those taken from Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Inner struggle, desire to transcend or transform reality, impressionism, illusion, irony, ambiguity—all are considered part of the complex legacy ofthe nineteenth century which culminated in the figure and works of Richard Wagner. His efforts to fuse the arts into one form—the Gesamtkunstwerk , his extensive use ofleitmotifs, and, above all, his creation of long chains of unresolved harmonies profoundly influence the course of literature as well as music. In his chapter devoted to Nietzsche and Schoenberg, "Music and the Modern Imagination," Melnick engages the support ofdeconstructionists Derrida, de Man, and Foucault to reiterate Nietzsche's rhetoric in terms oftwentieth-century critical theory. In his examination of Schoenberg's renunciation ofthe triadic harmonies ofthe common practice period, Melnick sees (or rather hears) the composer as the emancipator ofdissonance. An idea which could have been explored in this context is the balance between formalism and dissonance inherent in the codified use ofthe tone row as practiced by Schoenberg and his successors. Although the tone row represents a radical departure from the traditional, it does establish a new, strict format which, while usually imperceptible to the ear (which is busy with all the new dissonance and fragmentation), is obvious in the musical score. In this sense, dodeVoI . 20 (1996): 190 THE COMPAnATIST caphonism successfully continues to counterbalance formal constraints and imaginative freedom. In the tomes ofÀ larecherche du tempsperdu, Proust seeks the transcendence and elevation ofsoul proposed by the Symbolists through the fictive composer Vinteuil 's music, through involuntary memory, through "figure-laden prose" (64), and through "paradoxical metaphors" (65). Melnick posits that Proust's use of the musical idiom is not only structural (contrapuntal leitmotifs), nor only thematic (the role ofVinteuil's music); more significantly for the purposes ofthis study, music provides "an aesthetic and ethic at the core of [Proust's] vision" (61). This vision is defined as the breach between spiritual illumination on the one hand and spiritual corruption on the other, a rift which produces alienation, ambiguity, negating paradox , and dissonant narrative (71). Proust's dissonance exerts a "rending, inspired pressure" on the reader, which evokes a "Dionysian response" in Nietzsche's terms, "enduring insight" in Melnick's (78-79). In the analysis of Doctor Faustus as dissonant fiction, prime importance is given to the influence...

Proust in the Tearoom

In French, the words tasse ‘teacup’ and théière ‘teapot’ also denote a public rest room where men have sex—a “tearoom” in English—and prendre le thé ‘to have tea’ means “to have homosexual sex.” Most of the narrative of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is said to result from having tea with a madeleine. This essay examines the possibility that the passage in which Charlus engages in tearoom sex may imply that there are other such tea parties in the novel. More broadly, I consider the importance of coded or secret languages in the production of sexual knowledge. Revealing the tearoom's secret opens up a Trojan horse (to use Monique Wittig's term) of interpretive uncertainties in the novel, as well as a contagion of doubt concerning heterosexual masculinity and male subjectivity.

The Lessons of the Living Dead: Marcel's Journey from Balbec to Douville-Féterne in Proust's Cities of the Plain: Part Two

The Lessons of the Living Dead: Marcel's Journey from Balbec to Douville-Féterne in Proust's Cities of the Plain: Part Two

The Proustian itinerary from sensation to memory.

Information processing streams that proceed through the sensory unimodal and multimodal areas of the cerebral cortex, and hence the limbic system, bring from perception to memory. This itinerary through the neural networks underlying perception and cognition is briefly outlined through famous passages from Marcel Proust's "Swann's Way", in which the flavour of the "petites madeleines" triggers vivid recollection.

A voz do outro na literatura: Proust

In Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu there is only one voice: the narrator's. All the characters in the romance lie because language displaces us. Meaning arises from detours of the discourse: lapses. This problem is the main theme of the paper.

The gay bashing scene chez Proust.

This essay presents a contemporary translation of and brief commentary on the gay bashing scene found in Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps perdu: Le Côté de Guermantes, Tome I. The paper notes that Proust argues in this passage for the acceptance of homosexuality for two main reasons: because gay bashing won't eradicate it; and because gayness is the simple, direct movement of a being toward perceived beauty. The paper suggests that Proust reveals his own gayness (and that of his protagonist) by employing the latter argument in defense of homosexuality whereas, throughout the novel, he presents heterosexual attraction as an immensely indirect, artistically manufactured construct.

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Marcel Proust: ‘Swann's Way’. By SHEILA STERN. (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge University Press, 1989. xviii + 128 pp. Hb £12.95; $19.95; Pb £4.95; $7.95. The UAB Marcel Proust Symposium: In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of ‘Swann's Way’ (1913–1988). Edited by WILLIAM C. CARTER. Birmingham, Alabama, Summa, 1989. xiii + 139 pp. Hb $25.95. RICHARD BALES RICHARD BALES THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITYBELFAST Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XLVII, Issue 1, January 1993, Pages 96-b–97, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XLVII.1.96-b Published: 01 January 1993

The UAB Marcel Proust Symposium: In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of "Swann's Way" (1913-1988) (review)

The UAB Marcel Proust Symposium: In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of "Swann's Way" (1913-1988) (review)

Novel source of parasitological information

Seldom if ever have parasitological insights been found in the great works of literature. Important observations on the transmammary transmission o f hookworm, however, may be found in a literary manuscript recently discovered in a Parisian archive. The concept of transmammary transmission is now well established, and while canine hookworm species are generally considered incapable of reaching maturity in man, they may well be capable of producing transient patent infections in neonates. The manuscript, to judge by its literary style, is clearly a fragment written by Marcel Proust (1871–1922) for his great seven-part masterpiece À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) and perhaps it will appear in future editions. The manuscript was discovered by Professor C.A.M. Bell, who has kindly provided the following translation.

Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court.

Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court.

Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court

Never has what goes on behind the red velour curtain--the give-and-take between the Supreme Court Justices in an important case--been described in such detail. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was the first case to decree extensive busing as part of a school desegregation plan; it established the framework for all future busing decisions. This behind-the-scenes account traces the Swann case from its origins in Charlotte, North Carolina, to the decision announced by Chief Justice Warren Burger in a packed Supreme Court Chamber. Bernard Schwartz, a leading legal scholar, draws on confidential papers and extensive interviews with justices, law clerks and others involved in the case to provide the first detailed presentation of the decision process in the Court. When Chief Justice Burger undertook to write the Swann opinion himself, Schawrtz notes, he departed from more than a century of Court tradition, for he held the minority view, leaning toward overturning the district court's pro-busing position. The book reconstructs the secret conferences and discussions in which the majority of the Justices ultimately induced the Chief Justice to give way. Schwartz traces the revisions in the opinion through six drafts and redrafts and shows how even at the last minute a strong dissent from Justice Black almost frustrated the effort. A fascinating work of microhistory, the book will be of compelling interest not only to Court-watchers but also to anyone interested in the history of civil rights.

The Poetics of Pleasure: Expansive Images inSwann's Way

(1983). The Poetics of Pleasure: Expansive Images in Swann's Way. Kentucky Romance Quarterly: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 359-372.

Time and Memory in Pinter’s Proust Screenplay

Time and Memory in Pinter’s Proust Screenplay Enoch Brater Those of us who have watched Pinter develop a personal style dramatizing the effects Time works on the shape of Mem­ ory are not at all surprised by his attraction to Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu as raw material for cinematic adaptation. What is surprising, however, is his admission that he had read only Du Côté de Chez Swann, the first volume of the work, before he embarked on this project.1 For Pinter’s theater has long been engaged in what we might be tempted to call a Proustian fascination with recapturing the past. On stage Pinter’s characters habitually struggle to recreate a past which they say they can remember—a past which exists on stage in that hazy realm somewhere between imagination and reality. “That imagining,” the playwright has said with particular reference to Old Times, “is as true as real.”2 How Pinter came to write the Proust screenplay and how he reworked Proust’s grand design into a bold cinematic reduction offer us a new study in literary relationship, for the adaptation through condensation has im­ portant implications as it bears on Pinter’s work as a whole. Let us for a moment situate the Proust screenplay in its proper place in the Pinter canon. Early in 1972 Nicole Stéphane, who owned the film rights to À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, asked Joseph Losey if he would like to work on a film version of the book. Losey then asked Pinter if he was interested.3 They had already worked together on three films: The Servant, The Accident, and The Go-Between. The planning stage, however, actually began some months before that. Late in 1971 Pinter told Mel Gussow of the New York Times that he was thinking in terms of this project, though at the time he was still reluctant to discuss the venture in the public forum of an interview. He admitted only that the new adaptation would be “a film which 121 122 Comparative Drama is going to be the most difficult task I’ve ever had in my life— and one which is almost impossible. I’m pretty frightened, but I’m also excited.”4 Pinter spent three months in 1972 reading Proust and taking hundreds of notes. That summer he made several trips to Illiers, Cabourg, and Paris, steeping himself “in the Proustian locations.” He finished a draft of the screenplay in November and a complete final revision in early 1973. “Working on A la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” says Pinter, “was the best working year of my life.”5 What we should be careful to notice about this chronology is that Pinter worked on the Proust screenplay after Old Times and before No Man’s Land, the two plays which deal most definitively with the changes Time works on Memory. In adapting Proust to the screen Pinter makes us see an A la Recherche du Temps Perdu which bears his own personal stamp. Quickly dismissing the notion of producing a film cen­ tered around only one or two novels of Proust’s seven-volume network, Pinter was determined “to distill the whole work, to incorporate the major themes of the book into an integrated whole.”6 Joseph Losey and Barbara Bray, an authority on Proust who was for many years script editor for B.B.C. Radio, supported Pinter’s decision, agreeing that this would make a far more comprehensive cinematic statement. The choice was a crucial one, for what results from it is the experience of seeing Proust through Pinter’s eyes. Unlike the architecture of the novel where the narrator builds sustained, stable constructs of memory in generous selections of prose, the screenplay evokes sharp, momentary images encapsulating Proustian duration. We move quickly from scene to scene as the past, dissected and fractured, suddenly moves before us in a vast panorama of concise visual segments. Broken up as it is into short pieces, the past is not so much recaptured as it is recycled in a style more Pinteresque than Proustian. In place of long sections of verbal rotundity, the result of the...

The developing role of money in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu

THE DEVELOPING RÔLE OF MONEY IN PROUST'S A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU Get access ALISON WINTON ALISON WINTON CAMBRIDGE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XXXI, Issue 2, April 1977, Pages 164–181, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XXXI.2.164 Published: 01 April 1977

Proust's Aesthetic Analogies: Character and Painting in Swann's Way

Proust's Aesthetic Analogies: Character and Painting in Swann's Way

Proust's Aesthetic Analogies: Character and Painting in Swann's Way

Proust's Aesthetic Analogies: Character and Painting in Swann's Way

The Relationship between the hero and Francoise in A la recherche du temps perdu

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HERO AND FRANÇOISE IN A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU JANE ROBERTSON JANE ROBERTSON CAPETOWN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XXV, Issue 4, October 1971, Pages 437–441, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XXV.4.437 Published: 01 October 1971

Review. Swann's Way, transl. by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Proust, Marcel

Review. Swann's Way, transl. by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Proust, Marcel

Illiers and Combray: A Study in Literary Geography

bray he created in A la Recherche du Temps perdu. In spite of the mass of criticism directed at Proust, however, this era in his life has been only imperfectly described, and Illiers itself has remained in a sort of respectful limbo. Harold March, in The Two Worlds of Marcel Proust, places the town at twenty-four miles from Chartres instead of twenty-six kilometres, and remarks that the town is on the Loire; actually the river which flows through the town, the Loir, joins the Loire near Angers over eighty miles to the west.' Leon PierreQuint states that Marcel spent his I1liers vacations chez un de ses oncles, whereas the family actually stayed with the widowed Mme. Jules Amiot; he speaks of the vaste proprikte which the family owned in Illiers, although both Prousts and Amiots were only modest bourgeois citizens.2 A single full-length work, Andre Ferr9's Geographie de Marcel Proust,3 has been devoted to Proust's settings, but this study is more concerned with identification of place-names than with any analysis of the relation between model and creation. A resident