Ventilation
Marcel Proust aside Svan summary. Stream of consciousness "in the work of M

Marcel Proust aside Svan summary. Stream of consciousness "in the work of M

I have long been accustomed to going to bed early. Sometimes, as soon as the candle went out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have time to say to myself: "I'm falling asleep." And half an hour later I woke up from the thought that it was time to sleep; it seemed to me that the book was still in my hands and I had to put it down and put out the light; in the dream I continued to think about what I had read, but my thoughts took a rather strange direction: I imagined myself to be what was said in the book - the church, the quartet, the rivalry between Francis I and Charles V. This obsession lasted a few seconds after I woke up; it did not disturb my consciousness - it covered my eyes with scales and prevented them from making sure that the candle was not burning. Then it became vague, like a memory of a former life after metempsychosis; the plot of the book was separated from me, I was free to associate or not associate myself with it; thereupon my sight returned, and to my astonishment I saw that there was darkness all around me, soft and soothing to the eyes, and perhaps even more soothing to the mind, to which it appeared as something inexplicable, incomprehensible, as something really dark. I asked myself what time it might be now; I heard the whistles of locomotives; from them it was possible to determine the distance, they evoked in my imagination the expanse of deserted fields, the traveler rushing to the station and the path imprinted in his memory due to the excitement that he also experiences at the sight of unfamiliar places, and because he is now acting unusually, because he still recalls in the stillness of the night his recent conversation, his parting under a strange lamp, and consoles himself with the thought of a speedy return.

I lightly brushed my cheeks against the soft cheeks of the pillow, as fresh and plump as the cheeks of our childhood. I struck a match and looked at the clock. It's almost midnight. This is the very moment when a sick traveler, forced to lie in an unfamiliar hotel, is awakened by an attack and he rejoices at the strip of light under the door. What a joy, it's already morning! Now the servants will rise, he will call, and they will come to his aid. Hope for relief gives him the strength to endure. And then he hears footsteps. Footsteps approach, then recede. And the strip of light under the door disappears. It's midnight; put out the gas; the last servant left - it means that you will have to suffer all night.

I fell asleep again, but sometimes I woke up just long enough to hear the characteristic crackling of the panels, open my eyes and take in the kaleidoscope of darkness, feel, thanks to an instant glimpse of consciousness, how things are fast asleep, the room - all that insensible part of which I was and with which I had to connect again. Or else, without the slightest effort, I was transported, falling asleep, into the irrevocable time of my early years, and childish fears again took possession of me; so, for example, I was afraid that my great-uncle would pull me by the hair, although I stopped being afraid of him after they cut my hair - this day marked the onset of a new era in my life. In the dream, I forgot about this incident and again remembered as soon as I managed to wake up in order to escape from my grandfather, however, before returning to the dream world, out of caution, I hid my head under the pillow.

Sometimes, while I was sleeping, a woman would emerge from the awkward position of my leg, like Eve emerging from Adam's rib. She was created by the pleasure I was anticipating, and I imagined that it was she who gave it to me. My body, sensing my own warmth in her body, strove for rapprochement, and I woke up. Other people, it seemed to me, were now far, far away, and from the kiss of this woman, with whom I had just parted, my cheek was still burning, and my body ached from the weight of her waist. When her features were reminiscent of a woman whom I knew in reality, I was seized by the desire to see her again - this is how people get on the road who can not wait to look with their own eyes at the longed-for city: they imagine that in life you can enjoy the charm of a dream. Gradually, the memory dissipated, I forgot the girl in my dream.

A thread of hours is stretched around a sleeping person, years and worlds are arranged in succession. Waking up, he instinctively checks with them, instantly reads in them where on the globe he is, how much time has passed before his awakening, but their ranks can mix up, get upset. If he suddenly falls asleep in the morning, after insomnia, reading a book, in an unusual position for him, then it is enough for him to stretch out his hand to stop the sun and turn it back; in the first minute he will not understand what time it is, it will seem to him as if he had just gone to bed. If he falls asleep in an even less natural, completely unusual position, for example, sitting in an armchair after dinner, then the worlds that have descended from their orbits will mix completely, the magic chair will carry him with incredible speed through time, through space, and as soon as he opens his eyelids , it will seem to him as if he lay down a few months ago in other parts. But as soon as I fell asleep in my bed in a deep sleep, during which my consciousness came to a complete rest, my consciousness lost its idea of the plan of the room in which I fell asleep: waking up at night, I could not understand where I was, for the first second I even couldn't figure out who I was; only the primitively simple sensation that I exist did not leave me - a similar sensation can also beat in the chest of an animal; I was poorer than a caveman; but then, like help from above, a memory came to me - not yet of the place where I was, but of the places where I lived before or could live - and pulled me out of non-existence, from which I could not get out with my forces; in an instant I ran through the centuries of civilization, and the vague notion of kerosene lamps, of shirts with turn-down collars gradually restored the features of my "I".

Perhaps the immobility of the objects around us is inspired by our certainty that it is they, and not some other objects, by the immobility of what we think of them. Whenever I woke up under such circumstances, my mind tried in vain to establish where I was, and everything around me swirled in the dark: objects, countries, years. My stiffened body, by the nature of fatigue, sought to determine its position, to draw from this the conclusion where the wall went, how the objects were arranged, and on the basis of this to imagine the dwelling as a whole and find a name for it. Memory - the memory of the sides, knees, shoulders - showed him room after room where he had to sleep, while invisible walls, spinning in the dark, moved depending on what shape the imaginary room had. And before the consciousness, which stopped in indecision on the threshold of forms and times, having compared the circumstances, recognized the dwelling place, the body recalled what kind of bed is in this or that room, where the doors are, where the windows open, whether there is a corridor, and at the same time recalled those thoughts with which I fell asleep and woke up. So, my numb side, trying to navigate, imagined that he was stretched out against the wall in a wide bed under a canopy, and then I said to myself: “Ah, that's it! I did not wait for my mother to come to say goodbye to me, and fell asleep ”; I was in the village with my grandfather, who died many years ago; my body, the side that I lay in bed - the faithful guardians of the past, which my mind will never forget - brought to my memory the light made of Bohemian glass, in the form of an urn, a night lamp suspended from the ceiling on chains, and a fireplace made of Siena marble , which stood in my Combray bedroom, in the house of my grandparents, where I lived in the distant past, which I now took for the present, although I did not yet clearly imagine it, it loomed more clearly when I finally awoke.

Marcel Proust
The work “Towards Svan”

Habit comes into its own and with skillful slowness begins to fill the habitable space. But the memory has already awakened: this night Marcel will not fall asleep - he will remember Combray, Balbec, Paris, Doncieres and Venice.
In Combray, little Marseille was sent to bed right after supper, And mother came in for a minute to kiss him goodnight. But when the guests came, my mother did not go up to the bedroom. Usually Charles Swann, the son of a grandfather's friend, came to see them. Marcel's relatives had no idea that the "young" Swann leads a brilliant social life, because his father was just a stockbroker. The inhabitants of that time did not differ too much from the Hindus in their views: everyone had to rotate in their own circle, and the transition to a higher caste was even considered indecent. It was only by chance that Marseille's grandmother learned about Swann's aristocratic acquaintances from a boarding house friend, the Marquise de Villeparisi, with whom she did not want to maintain friendly relations because of her firm belief in the good inviolability of castes.
After an unsuccessful marriage to a woman from bad society, Swann visited Combray less and less, but each of his visits was torment for the boy, because his mother's farewell kiss had to be taken with him from the dining room to the bedroom. The greatest event in Marcel's life came when he was sent to bed even earlier than usual. He did not have time to say goodbye to his mother and tried to call her with a note sent through the cook Francoise, but this maneuver failed. Deciding to achieve a kiss at all costs, Marcel waited for Swann to leave and went out in his nightgown to the stairs. It was an unheard of violation of the established order, but the father, who was irritated by "sentiment", suddenly understood the state of his son. Mom spent the whole night in the sobbing Marcel's room. When the boy calmed down a little, she began to read to him a novel by George Sand, lovingly chosen for his grandson by his grandmother. This victory turned out to be bitter: mother seemed to have renounced her beneficial firmness.
For a long time, Marcel, waking up at night, recalled the past in fragments: he saw only the scenery of his going to bed - the stairs, which were so hard to climb, and the bedroom with a glass door into the corridor, from where his mother appeared. In fact, the rest of Combray died for him, because no matter how the desire to resurrect the past increases, it always escapes. But when Marcel tasted the biscuit soaked in linden tea, the flowers in the garden suddenly floated out of the cup, the hawthorn in the park of Swann, the water lilies of Vivona, the good inhabitants of Combray and the bell tower of the church of St. Hilary.
Marcel was treated to this biscuit by Aunt Leonia in those days when the family spent Easter and summer vacation in Combray. Auntie told herself that she was terminally ill: after the death of her husband, she did not get up from the bed that stood by the window. Her favorite pastime was to follow passers-by and discuss the events of local life with the cook Françoise, a woman of the kindest soul, who at the same time knew how to calmly turn a chicken’s neck and survive an objectionable dishwasher out of the house.
Marseille loved summer walks around Combray. The family had two favorite routes: one was called “the direction to Mezeglise” (or “to Swann”, since the road passed by his estate), and the second - “the direction of the Guermantes”, descendants of the famous Genevieve of Brabant. Childhood impressions remained in the soul forever: many times Marcel was convinced that only those people and those objects that he encountered in Combray truly pleased him. The direction to Mezeglise with its lilacs, hawthorn and cornflowers, the direction to Guermantes with the river, water lilies and buttercups created an eternal image of the country of fabulous bliss. Undoubtedly, this was the cause of many mistakes and disappointments: sometimes Marcel dreamed of meeting someone just because this person reminded him of a flowering hawthorn bush in the park of Svan.
Marcel's whole later life was connected with what he learned or saw in Combray. Communication with the engineer Legrandin gave the boy the first concept of snobbery: this pleasant, amiable man did not want to greet Marseille's relatives in public, since he became related to aristocrats. The music teacher Vinteuil stopped visiting the house so as not to meet Swann, whom he despised for marrying a cocotte. Vinteuil doted on his only daughter. When a friend came to this somewhat masculine-looking girl, Combray was openly talked about their strange relationship. Vinteuil suffered unspeakably - perhaps the bad reputation of his daughter brought him to the grave ahead of time. In the autumn of that year, when Aunt Leonie finally died, Marcel witnessed a disgusting scene in Montjuvin: Mademoiselle Vinteuil's friend spat on a photograph of the deceased musician. The year was marked by another important event: Francoise, at first angry with the "heartlessness" of Marseille's relatives, agreed to go to their service.
Of all the schoolmates, Marcel gave preference to Blok, who was welcomed cordially in the house, despite the obvious pretentiousness of manners. True, grandfather chuckled at his grandson's sympathy for the Jews. Blok recommended Marcel to read Bergott, and this writer made such an impression on the boy that his cherished dream was to get to know him. When Swan said that Bergott was friendly with his daughter, Marcel's heart sank - only an extraordinary girl could deserve such happiness. At the first meeting in the Tansonville park, Gilberte looked at Marcel with an unseeing look - obviously, this was a completely inaccessible creature. The boy's relatives paid attention only to the fact that Madame Swann, in the absence of her husband, shamelessly receives the Baron de Charlus.
But Marseille experienced the greatest shock in the church of Combray on the day when the Duchess de Guermantes deigned to attend the service. Outwardly, this lady with a big nose and blue eyes almost did not differ from other women, but she was surrounded by a mythical halo - one of the legendary Guermantes appeared before Marseille. Passionately in love with the duchess, the boy pondered how to win her favor. It was then that dreams of a literary career were born.
Only many years after his separation from Combray, Marcel found out about Swann's love. Odette de Crecy was the only woman in the Verdurin salon, where only the "faithful" were accepted - those who considered Dr. Cotard the beacon of wisdom and admired the playing of the pianist, who at the moment was patronized by Madame Verdurin. The artist, nicknamed “Maestro Bish,” was to be pitied for his rough and vulgar style of writing. Swann was considered an inveterate heartthrob, but Odette was not at all to his taste. However, he was pleased to think that she was in love with him. Odette introduced him to the "clan" of the Verdurins, and gradually he got used to seeing her every day. Once he thought it looked like a painting by Botticelli, and with the sounds of Vinteuil's sonata, real passion flared up. Having abandoned his previous studies (in particular, an essay on Vermeer), Swann ceased to be in the world - now Odette absorbed all his thoughts. The first intimacy came after he straightened the orchid on her corsage - from that moment they had the expression “orchid”. The tuning fork of their love was the marvelous musical phrase of Vinteuil, which, according to Swann, could not have belonged to the “old fool” from Combray. Swann soon became madly jealous of Odette. The Comte de Forcheville, who was in love with her, mentioned Swann's aristocratic acquaintances, and this overwhelmed the patience of Madame Verdurin, who always suspected that Swann was ready to "pull" out of her salon. After his "disgrace" Swann lost the opportunity to see Odette at the Verdurins. He was jealous of all men and calmed down only when she was in the company of the Baron de Charlus. Hearing Vinteuil's sonata again, Swann could hardly restrain a cry of pain: he could not return to that wonderful time when Odette loved him madly. The obsession passed gradually. The beautiful face of the Marquise de Govozho, nee Legrandin, reminded Swann of the saving Combray, and he suddenly saw Odette as she is - not like a Botticelli painting. How could it happen that he wasted several years of his life on a woman who, in fact, he did not even like?
Marseille would never have gone to Balbec if Swann had not praised the "Persian" style church there. And in Paris, Swann became the “father of Gilberte” for the boy. Françoise took her pet for a walk on the Champs-Elysées, where a girl's "flock" played, led by Gilberte. Marcel was accepted into the company, and he fell in love with Gilberte even more. He was fascinated by the beauty of Mrs. Swann, and the rumors about her aroused curiosity. Once this woman was called Odette de Crecy.
© E. D. Murashkintseva

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Time slips away into the brief moment between sleep and waking. For a few seconds, the narrator Marcel feels as if he has become what he read about the day before. The mind struggles to locate the bedroom. Could it be that this is grandfather's house in Combray, and Marcel fell asleep without waiting for his mother to come to say goodbye to him? Or is it the estate of Madame de Saint-Loup in Tansonville? So Marcel slept too long after a day's walk: the eleventh hour - everyone had supper! Then habit comes into its own and with skillful slowness begins to fill the habitable space. But the memory has already awakened: this night Marcel will not fall asleep - he will remember Combray, Balbec, Paris, Doncieres and Venice.

In Combray, little Marseille was sent to bed right after supper, And mother came in for a minute to kiss him goodnight. But when the guests came, my mother did not go up to the bedroom. Usually Charles Swann, the son of a grandfather's friend, came to see them. Marcel's relatives had no idea that the "young" Swann was leading a brilliant social life, because his father was just a stockbroker. The inhabitants of that time did not differ too much from the Hindus in their views: everyone had to rotate in their own circle, and the transition to a higher caste was even considered indecent. It was only by chance that Marseille's grandmother learned about Swann's aristocratic acquaintances from a boarding house friend, the Marquise de Villeparisi, with whom she did not want to maintain friendly relations because of her firm belief in the good inviolability of castes.

After an unsuccessful marriage to a woman from bad society, Swann visited Combray less and less, but each of his visits was torment for the boy, because his mother's farewell kiss had to be taken with him from the dining room to the bedroom. The greatest event in Marcel's life came when he was sent to bed even earlier than usual. He did not have time to say goodbye to his mother and tried to call her with a note sent through the cook Francoise, but this maneuver failed. Deciding to achieve a kiss at all costs, Marcel waited for Swann to leave and went out in his nightgown to the stairs. This was an unheard of violation of the established order, but the father, who was irritated by "sentiment", suddenly understood the state of his son. Mom spent the whole night in the sobbing Marcel's room. When the boy calmed down a little, she began to read to him a novel by George Sand, lovingly chosen for his grandson by his grandmother. This victory turned out to be bitter: mother seemed to have renounced her beneficial firmness.

For a long time, Marcel, waking up at night, recalled the past fragmentarily: he saw only the scenery of his going to bed - the stairs, which were so hard to climb, and the bedroom with a glass door into the corridor, from where his mother appeared. In fact, the rest of Combray died for him, because no matter how the desire to resurrect the past increases, it always escapes. But when Marcel tasted the biscuit soaked in linden tea, the flowers in the garden suddenly floated out of the cup, the hawthorn in the park of Swann, the water lilies of Vivona, the good inhabitants of Combray and the bell tower of the church of St. Hilary.

Marcel was treated to this biscuit by Aunt Léonie when the family spent their Easter and summer holidays in Combray. Auntie told herself that she was terminally ill: after the death of her husband, she did not get up from the bed that stood by the window. Her favorite pastime was to follow passers-by and discuss the events of local life with the cook Françoise, a woman of the kindest soul, who at the same time knew how to calmly turn a chicken’s neck and survive an objectionable dishwasher out of the house.

Marseille loved summer walks around Combray. The family had two favorite routes: one was called "the direction to Mezeglise" (or "to Swann", since the road passed by his estate), and the second - "the direction of the Guermantes", descendants of the famous Genevieve of Brabant. Childhood impressions remained in the soul forever: many times Marcel was convinced that only those people and those objects that he encountered in Combray truly pleased him. The direction to Mezeglise with its lilacs, hawthorn and cornflowers, the direction to Guermantes with the river, water lilies and buttercups created an eternal image of the country of fabulous bliss. Undoubtedly, this was the cause of many mistakes and disappointments: sometimes Marcel dreamed of meeting someone just because this person reminded him of a flowering hawthorn bush in the park of Svan.

Marcel's whole later life was connected with what he learned or saw in Combray. Communication with the engineer Legrandin gave the boy the first concept of snobbery: this pleasant, amiable man did not want to greet Marseille's relatives in public, since he became related to aristocrats. The music teacher Vinteuil stopped visiting the house so as not to meet Swann, whom he despised for marrying a cocotte. Vinteuil doted on his only daughter. When a friend came to this somewhat masculine-looking girl, Combray was openly talked about their strange relationship. Vinteuil suffered unspeakably - perhaps the bad reputation of his daughter brought him to the grave ahead of time. In the autumn of that year, when Aunt Leonie finally died, Marcel witnessed a disgusting scene in Montjuvin: Mademoiselle Vinteuil's friend spat on a photograph of the deceased musician. The year was marked by another important event: Françoise, at first angry with the "heartlessness" of Marseille's relatives, agreed to go to their service.

Of all the schoolmates, Marcel gave preference to Blok, who was welcomed cordially in the house, despite the obvious pretentiousness of manners. True, grandfather chuckled at his grandson's sympathy for the Jews. Blok recommended Marcel to read Bergott, and this writer made such an impression on the boy that his cherished dream was to get to know him. When Swann said that Bergott was friendly with his daughter, Marcel's heart sank - only an extraordinary girl could deserve such happiness. At the first meeting in the Tansonville park, Gilberte looked at Marcel with an unseeing look - obviously, this was a completely inaccessible creature. The boy's relatives paid attention only to the fact that Madame Swann, in the absence of her husband, shamelessly receives the Baron de Charlus.

But Marseille experienced the greatest shock in the church of Combray on the day when the Duchess de Guermantes deigned to attend the service. Outwardly, this lady with a big nose and blue eyes almost did not differ from other women, but she was surrounded by a mythical halo - one of the legendary Guermantes appeared before Marseille. Passionately in love with the duchess, the boy pondered how to win her favor. It was then that dreams of a literary career were born.

Only many years after his separation from Combray, Marcel found out about Swann's love. Odette de Crecy was the only woman in the Verdurin salon, where only the "faithful" were accepted - those who considered Dr. Cotard the beacon of wisdom and admired the pianist's playing, who was currently patronized by Madame Verdurin. The artist, nicknamed "Maestro Bish", was supposed to be pitied for his rough and vulgar style of writing. Swann was considered an inveterate heartthrob, but Odette was not at all to his taste. However, he was pleased to think that she was in love with him. Odette introduced him to the "clan" of the Verdurins, and gradually he got used to seeing her every day. Once he thought it looked like a painting by Botticelli, and with the sounds of Vinteuil's sonata, real passion flared up. Having abandoned his previous studies (in particular, an essay on Vermeer), Swann ceased to be in the world - now Odette absorbed all his thoughts. The first intimacy came after he straightened the orchid on her corsage - from that moment they had the expression "orchid". The tuning fork of their love was the marvelous musical phrase of Vinteuil, which, according to Swann, could not have belonged to the “old fool” from Combray. Swann soon became madly jealous of Odette. The Comte de Forcheville, who was in love with her, mentioned Swann's aristocratic acquaintances, and this overwhelmed Madame Verdurin, who always suspected that Swann was ready to "pull" out of her salon. After his "disgrace" Swann lost the opportunity to see Odette at the Verdurins. He was jealous of all men and calmed down only when she was in the company of the Baron de Charlus. Hearing Vinteuil's sonata again, Swann could hardly restrain a cry of pain: he could not return to that wonderful time when Odette loved him madly. The obsession passed gradually. The beautiful face of the Marquise de Govozho, nee Legrandin, reminded Swann of the saving Combray, and he suddenly saw Odette as she is - not like a Botticelli painting. How could it happen that he wasted several years of his life on a woman who, in fact, he did not even like?

Marseille would never have gone to Balbec if Swann had not praised the "Persian" style church there. And in Paris, Swann became the "father of Gilberte" for the boy. Françoise took her pet for a walk to the Champs Elysees, where a girl's "flock" played, led by Gilberte. Marcel was accepted into the company, and he fell in love with Gilberte even more. He was fascinated by the beauty of Mrs. Swann, and the rumors about her aroused curiosity. Once this woman was called Odette de Crecy.

Avdeeva Maria

Seminar 4

Lyric epic by Marcel Proust"Toward Swann"

The creative path of Marcel Proust. The history of the creation of the novel cycle "In Search of Lost Time".

Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust(fr. Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust; July 10, 1871 - November 18, 1922) was a French writer. One of the most significant writers and philosophers of the 20th century.

Proust's main work is the cycle "In Search of Lost Time" (vols. 1-16, 1913-1927, the last 6 volumes published posthumously), consisting of seven novels.

Marcel Proust was born in Paris on July 10, 1871 into a wealthy family: his father, Adrian Proust, is a professor at the Faculty of Medicine, and his mother, Jeanne Weil, is the daughter of a Jewish stockbroker.

In the spring of 1880 or 1881, Proust experienced his first asthma attack.

In 1882, Proust entered the Lycée Condorcet. Often absent. He passed his final exams for the title of bachelor in July 1889, and was especially noted for writing in French. Proust soon began visiting fashionable literary and art salons. He studied at the Faculty of Law of the Sorbonne, but did not complete the course. He led the salon chronicle department in the Le Figaro newspaper. Of the Parisian salons, three played a special role in the life of Proust: the salon of Madame Strauss ( Genevieve Halevi 18491926)), Bizet's widow; salon Mrs. de Caiave, beloved Anatole France; salon Madeleine Lemaire (18451928 .

Proust took an active part in political life only once, during the Dreyfus affair. He signed the appeal of cultural figures on the revision of the sentence, persuaded Anatole France to also sign this text. In February, Proust attends the Zola trial.

Proust washomosexual, and is believed to have had a long association with pianist and composer Reinaldo Ahn.

During the First World War, he subsidized the maintenance of a brothel for homosexuals.

Around 1907, he began work on his main work, In Search of Lost Time. By the end of 1911, the first version of The Search was completed. It had three parts ("Lost Time", "Under the Shadow of Girls in Bloom" and "Time Regained"), and the book had to fit into two voluminous volumes. In 1912 it was called "Interruptions of Feeling". Proust can't find a publisher. At the end of the year, Faskel and Nouvel Revue Française (Gallimard) publishing houses send refusals, at the beginning of the next year Ollendorf is rejected. The publisher was Bernard Grasset. He released the book (at the expense of the author), but demanded that the manuscript be cut.

The novel "Towards Swann" was published in November 1913 and was met with a cool reception by readers and critics. The outbreak of war, Grasset's departure to the front and the closure of the publishing house (although the second volume was already being typed), forced Proust to continue his work.

Although Proust believed that he had completed the book in 1918, he continued to work hard and edit it until the last day of his life.

Creation

Proust made his creative debut at the age of 25. In 1896, Pleasures and Regrets, a collection of short stories and poems, was published. Then, for several years, Marcel translated the works of John Ruskin into French. In 1907, Proust published an article in the Le Figaro newspaper, in which he tried to analyze the concepts that later became key in his work - memory and guilt.

In 1909, Proust wrote the essay "Against Sainte-Beuve", which later grew into a multi-volume novel, which was in the process of being written until the end of Proust's life.

In the history of French literature, Proust is known as the founder of the psychological novel.

The proofs of the first edition of Towards Swann, with the author's revisions, sold at Christie's in July 2000 for £663,750 ($1,008,900), a record for a French literature manuscript.

In 1999, two of France's largest bookstore chains conducted a survey among their customers to identify the 50 best works of the 20th century. At number 2 on this list was the novel "In Search of Lost Time" (in the first place is the novel "The Outsider" by Albert Camus)

A crater on Mercury is named after Proust.

The concept of life and man in the work of Proust. French society based on the novel.

Proust's aesthetic views find expression primarily in the genre specificity of his extensive series " Searching for lost time"(7 novels, 1913-1927, the last 3 novels were published posthumously). The unusual genre of the Proustian work puzzled its first readers and critics. What was offered to their attention as a novel was, at first glance, a chaotic heap of random perceptions that were not no compositional or ideological unity. Of course, even before Proust, in novels one could find impressions from the glare of the sun on the bell tower, the states of sleep and awakening, the view of the sea. But it never occurred to anyone that these impressions could be considered as a reason for psychological discoveries, to be the support, the foundation of a huge epic.A number of critics declared the Proustian novel “simply memoirs.” There was some truth in this.

On the one hand, in terms of genre, "The Search for Lost Time" is adjacent to such works of French literature as "Notes" by the Duke of Saint-Simon, "Grave Memoirs" by Chateaubriand, "Confession" by Rousseau. They are especially close to memoirs such as "The Life of Henri Brular" by Stendhal and "The Book of My Friend" by Anatole France, in which the events of the hero's life are by no means always the memoirs of the author, who combines reality and imaginary facts in accordance with the artistic conception.

However, if "The Search for Lost Time" is a memoir, then it is a memoir of a very special type, in which the author, based on the impressions of his life, seeks to give a philosophical explanation of the laws of the human psyche and intellect. Moreover, in addition to the problems that arise in the sphere of artistic expression, in "Search" we are faced with a number of purely philosophical and psychological digressions about time, memory, human passions. These "experiments" and "maxims" in terms of genre correlate with Montaigne's "Essays", the works of moralists of the 17th-18th centuries, and Stendhal's treatise "On Love".

"Higher reality" can be comprehended in the most insignificant objects and phenomena from the point of view of the "practical" mind. The concepts of "main" and "secondary" are "conditional", "relative". Proust surrenders undividedly to all his impressions and emotions, not forgetting a single spiritual movement, visual or auditory perception. The smallest details of the life of the narrator of "Search" turn out to be valuable and worthy of careful study, while somewhere in the background is the Dreyfus affair or the first World War. Therefore, in the novel, the most important events in the life of the characters (the marriage and death of Swann) are deliberately omitted or left in the shade. Proust's task is to find the characteristic laws of the life of feelings, hidden from us by the automatism of "ordinary" thinking. Thus, Proust analyzes the human psyche not in its social conditionality, as the writers of critical realism, and primarily Balzac, analyze it, but in its "true", "authentic" essence.

Proust is especially interested in the states that free thinking from the "fetters" of the mind. Toward Swann, the first novel in the Proustian epic, begins with a description of the half-asleep, half-awake experience, when whole pieces of our past are resurrected with extraordinary power and brightness.

On the other hand, these memories "destroy" the action of time, free it from its power, put it over it. Time in the Proustian novel is time in the subjectivist sense, "real duration", "spiritual reality", depending on the change in our feelings and states: "During sleep, a person keeps around him a thread of hours, the order of years and worlds. He instinctively copes with them, waking up, in one second he guesses the point of the globe which he occupies, and the time elapsed before his awakening; but they may be confused in it, their order may be disturbed" ("Toward Swann"). For Proust, there is no "usual", "practical" measurement of time, its flow must be felt through the evolution of the hero's consciousness. There are no dates in the novel, and only individual events: the Dreyfus affair, the Russian seasons, the world war - make it possible to correlate the action with the "generally accepted" chronology.

Proust abandons the composition of nineteenth-century novelists (although he pays great attention to the question of the unity of the work). The structure of "Search" reflects the process of remembering: whole parts arise from a random association of perceptions, fleeting mental states. However, the structure of both individual volumes and the entire epic is strictly thought out. A peculiar rhythm is already created as a result of the repetition of similar feelings, judgments and perceptions. Some themes, such as the themes of sleep, jealousy, imagination, awakening the power of proper names, become, as it were, Proust's "leitmotifs" and create a special, "musical", "Wagnerian" construction of "Search for Lost Time". But Proust also introduces a conscious, rationalistic element into the structure of the book. In a letter to critic Paul Sude dated November 10, 1919, Proust wrote that the composition of his novel was "hidden" and "large-scale", and explained this in one of the episodes of Swann's Side, which, when the book appeared, caused bewilderment of readers as its "obscene" , and the fact that he seemed isolated in the overall structure of the novel. We are talking about the scene in the house of the composer Vinteuil, which Marseille had to witness. The significance of this episode becomes clear only as further volumes are read. Only then does it become obvious that the story of Mademoiselle Vinteuil and her friend, as well as the story of the strange behavior of Baron Charlus at his first meeting with the narrator in the novel "Under the Shade of the Girls in Bloom", are absolutely necessary as a thematic and plot anticipation of the situations of the novels. "Sodom and Gomorrah", "The Captive" and "The Fugitive".

Mr. Swann socially and morally. Swann and Odette.

Novel " Towards Svan”did not immediately become one of the books in the In Search of Lost Time series. It was originally planned by Proust as the first of three parts of the book of the same name. It was to be followed by "At the Guermantes" and "Time Regained". The draft of this book was already ready in 1909, 1910 to 1912, Proust worked on its first edition. By publishing Towards Swann in 1913, Proust had already finished work on the book as a whole. Of the 712 pages handed over to the publisher Grasse in December 1912, 467 pages were included in Towards Swann. The book was published on November 14, 1913 and remained almost unnoticed by critics.

Deep shock experiencedProustin1914(the death of his secretary Alfred Agostinelli and the war), led to a significant change in the plan of the novel. The volume of the work has doubled due to parts related to Albertina, a character introduced into the novel in 1914 or1915

ODETTE(fr. Odette) - the heroine of the epic "In Search of Lost Time" (1907-1922) by M. Proust. Like Marcel and Swann, O. occupies one of the main places in the epic, starting with the first novel “Toward Swann”, and although Proust gives the main role in love to a man, the “object” of love (in this case Swann’s love) not at all expressive. And if Swann is a modern version of the Chevalier de Grieux, then O. is undoubtedly Manon Lesko of the 20th century. In Proust's epic, there are, as it were, two images of O. One is a real one, which gradually emerges through the impressions of different characters. The other is Swann, poetized by love, seen in a fresco by Botticelli and heard in a musical phrase from Veitel's sonata.

O. is a type of beautiful bourgeois cocotte, a demi-monde lady who is completely dominated by the laws of bourgeois morality. O., unlike Manon or the Balzac ladies of the demi-monde, is not capable of love, she is not capable of passion, and even of a rash act that will violate the generally accepted middle-class notion of decency. O. not only makes Swann jealous, which is excusable, because, according to Proust, love does not happen without jealousy, she dumps Swann's love in the mud, humiliates him and constantly lies to him, in essence not really hiding her irresistible craving for vice.

Observance of propriety and a craving for vice - this is the main thing that M. Proust finds and shows in the form of first an adored mistress, and then an unloved wife of Swann.

The conception and leisurely execution of Proust's artistic saga dates back to the years following his mother's death in 1905.

When in 1918 the second part of "Under the shadow of the girls in bloom" appeared, the mood of the public changed. Proust received the prestigious Prix Goncourt, which contributed to the subsequent success of his books. He broke away from seclusion, began to receive a few enthusiastic fans, found time to publish a few small essays, while continuing to work on a burgeoning novel. The third part of "At the Guermantes" turned out to be so long that it was published in two editions, the first came out in 1920. Critics greeted the novel favorably, but noted the imperfection of the architectonics.

The cycle of novels "In Search of Lost Time" can probably be called the main work of the French writer. The cycle consists of seven novels. All seven books are united by the image of the storyteller Marcel, waking up in the middle of the night and reminiscing about his life: about his childhood, about his parents and acquaintances, about his beloved and secular friends, about travels and social life.

"Towards Svan"(1913) - the first novel of the cycle. The image of the hero - Swann - is divided into many components. So, Swann, a smart and sophisticated visitor to aristocratic salons, as he appears on the first pages of the novel in Marcel's children's perception, and Swann is Odette's lover, and then seen through the eyes of the matured Marcel, Swann - a prosperous family man, currying favor with the insignificant guests of his wife, and, finally, Swann - a terminally ill, dying person - all these are, as it were, different people. Such a construction of the image reflected Proust's idea of the subjectivity of our ideas about personality of the other, about the fundamental incomprehensibility of his essence.A person comprehends not the objective world, but only his own subjective idea of it.This approach to the inner world of the novel reflects one of the main features of the psychologism of the work itself.

It should be noted that Proust's work is difficult to classify by genre: although it is firmly connected with the romantic tradition, it is not quite a novel, not a memoir, despite its in-depth autobiographical nature. The method used to create it is not only realistic, although realism is the core here. He absorbed the properties and principles of a wide variety of movements: such approximate in time as symbolism and impressionism, and such distant ones as romanticism and classicism. The intrigue in The Search is practically absent: instead, the function of the cementing substance of this huge structure, which the author liked to compare with a Gothic cathedral, is performed by the sensations that drive the mechanism involuntary memory and connecting the past with the present. Thanks to identical sensations that fuse together the various moments of the storyteller's life, and even more often thanks to the art of psychological analysis, the past avoids oblivion and finds salvation from death in art.

AT "Search" can be divided into three large cycles - the Swan cycle, the Guermantes cycle and the Albertina cycle, through which the evolution of Marcel and other characters can be traced. Sometimes the complex interweaving of destinies creates the impression of an uncontrollable chaotic narrative, and the consideration of the same characters in different circumstances and from different angles of view leads, as it were, to splitting the characters into a number of isolated, contradictory faces. This splitting is carried out in the perception of different characters and in time, it is most consistently carried out in relation to people of art. For example, the narrator is surprised to discover that a vulgar person, who from time to time comes across to him in one of the bourgeois salons, and a famous artist who delights him with his landscapes are one and the same person, that a great actress turns out to be an egoist in life, and a brilliant writer is vulgar. ambitious. But Proust insists on the creative integrity of artists. According to his theory, any artist gives the world one single individual and "unchanging" beauty and is always the author of one single work, no matter how quantitatively great his creative productivity, because both beauty and work live in the unity of style, which of a true creator is always identical to himself and serves as the most reliable sign of genius and vocation. The search for one's own beauty, the search for one's vocation, is essentially "the search for lost time". "In Search of Lost Time" is not only a work of art, it is also an aesthetic treatise, which ends with the hero's thought about the need to write a book about his life.

In Search of Lost Time is perhaps the greatest novel of the twentieth century; these are reflections on the nature of time, memory, the meaning of human existence. The whole picture unfolded in "In Search of Lost Time" is connected with the development of Marseille, given through his perception. And this perception is constantly changing over the years. “Gradually,” Proust writes, “reality forced my dream to give up one position after another.” And the reality of the novel becomes more and more gray and everyday. A peculiar process of "deromanticization of the world" is taking place. The life story of Proust, told in the novel, turns into a story of disappointment.

Thus, it is quite characteristic that the title of the novel "In Search of Lost Time" acquires an ambiguous connotation. This is at the same time lost time, because Proust the pessimist considers his entire life to be fruitlessly lost and the time already lost, which Proust the apologist tries to artificially resurrect once again in his memories.

Proust's psychologism is based precisely on memories, reflections on the nature of time and memory. However, at the same time, the writer does not want, resorting to the help of memory as a supplier of material, to reconstruct the former reality, but, on the contrary, he wants, using all imaginable means - observations of the present, reflections, psychological calculations - to be able to recreate the actual memories. So, not things that are remembered, but memories of things, is the main theme of Proust. For the first time, memory, from a supplier of material by which another thing is described, becomes itself the thing that is being described. Therefore, the author usually does not add to what he remembers what he lacks, he leaves the memory as it is, objectively incomplete - and then the unfortunate cripples mutilated by time appear in a ghostly distance.

The sharpness and power of impressionability in Proust are extraordinary. He himself says about his nerves that they "not only do not delay on the way to consciousness, but, on the contrary, easily admit to it in all distinctness the constant painful, exhausting complaints of the smallest elements of our "I". Undoubtedly, such sharpness borders on obvious morbidity and, indeed, finds its explanation in the fact that Marcel Proust suffered from the most severe attacks of nervous asthma, so that for the last ten years of his life he hardly left a room covered with cork.In a less gifted writer, such impressionability could easily degenerate into scrupulous and unnecessary pettiness, he would not be able to master the material. Proust is saved by this genius and culture; thanks to his wonderful gift, he dominates the material, conquers it, the writer does not dissolve in it, but dissolves it in himself; therefore, what would be a source of irreparable shortcomings, mistakes and errors, Proust becomes a great and unconditional artistic achievement.

The role of music in the novel. Relationship between music, time, memory.

Music in literary heritage Proust occupies a significant place, as, indeed, in his very life: "to live among his loved ones, among beautiful nature, a sufficient number of books and notes, and not far from the theater." Such an ideal picture of his life was drawn by Proust, while still a very young man, in 1886. Musical allusions in the novels of his opus magnum are extremely numerous: at the very beginning, in the first paragraph of "At the Guermantes", also in "The Captive", they fill the entire second part of "Toward Swann" ("Love of Swann").

"Sonata of Vinteuil"

"Musical phrase", "short musical phrase" or even so - "small musical phrase" - is a motive in which all the thoughts and feelings of Swann and Odette, the heroes of the novel "Toward Swann" (more precisely, the second part of the novel - "Swan's Love"), This motive is contained in the musical work of Vinteuil, a composer, a fictional character in the novel.

Proust testifies that one of the prototypes of the "short musical phrase" in the novel is the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Saint-Saens. The question of the prototype of the "Sonata of Vinteuil" is perhaps the first to arise in the reader of the novel. It was asked to the writer himself.

When Proust characterizes her: "This phrase - airy, peaceful, blowing like a fragrance, flew by (...) Having reached a certain limit and after a second pause, she turned sharply and at a different pace, accelerated, frequent, dreary, continuous, gratifying, led him to the unknown distance. Then she suddenly disappeared. He longed to hear her a third time. And she appeared again. ", - what he means, as some researchers argue. Ballade for piano and orchestra (1881) by Gabriel Fauré. In its first movement, Andante Cantabile, a soft, changeable phrase slowly emerges, very similar in character to the one Proust describes here.

And, finally, Proust's clear emphasis on the "water element" of the described music attracts attention (Swan's impression of the piece he heard for the first time): violin trumpet; bursts of moisture; purple swell; swam before us; blowing in the damp evening air; to wash away with one's course, with one's "flow"; plunging into drowning; sound waves. And it's only on incomplete two pages! This made it possible to see Debussy's "Sea" (three symphonic sketches) as its prototype in this music. In the end, Proust, as it were, “let it slip” - he puts these words into the mouth of Ms. Verdurin: “You probably didn’t think that you could achieve this on the piano. Everything was here, but not the piano, I give you my word Every time I come across: I hear an orchestra. Only this is better than an orchestra, even fuller. "

The image of a "short musical phrase"

Above were the characteristics of the "short musical phrase" from the Sonata of Vinteuil, which shed light on its possible prototypes. However, one cannot ignore those descriptions of this fictional work that depict its poetic artistic image. It consists of a mosaic of these characteristics:

(...) because of a long sound, stretched out like a sounding curtain hiding the secret of birth, a cherished rustling, isolated musical phrase flies out and moves towards him;

(...) she, guiding, fast, disappeared in the clubs of her fragrance;

(...) He began with violin tremolos, and for several measures they sounded, only they filled the entire foreground;

Meaning of "short musical phrase"

The sonata does not appear at random in the course of the novel. Every time she "voices" the state of mind of Swann. A year before his first appearance at the Verdurin salon, Swan, says Proust, "I heard a piece of music for piano and violin at the evening". It conquered him. Then he did not know who was its author. He was just taken by the music. She prepared his soul for love. "It seemed that this love for the musical phrase opens the way for some spiritual renewal for Swann". And so, this love appeared - love for Odette.
At the next soiree in the Verdurin salon - the first one at which Swann appeared - the pianist, then the idol of the salon owner, performed the work - "Sonata in F sharp major" (a small musicological clarification: N. Lyubimov's translation refers to the "sonata in F sharp", but this not exactly, or rather, not completely; the fact is that when the name of the tonic is written with a capital letter - "F sharp", as it is in Proust in the original French, this means a major key). In this composition, Swan finally (before that he had long tried to find out what the composition was) heard the motive that captivated him - a short musical phrase. Now he "grabbed" her. This was Swann's second encounter with the Vinteuil Sonata.

New meetings with Odette - and new "shades" of the "short musical phrase"! Now Odette herself plays it at Swann's request: "... he asked to play a phrase from Vinteuil's sonata, although Odette played badly, but the beautiful visions that we have after music often rise above those false sounds that are extracted by clumsy fingers from an out of tune piano". So far, Swann's feeling is not overshadowed by anything, but some fatigue is already felt.

The description of the Sonata here is longer than in previous episodes, which suggests that this time is the most significant of all. First, the music shows the difference between evenings at the Verdurins and at the Marquise de Saint-Evert: The Verdurins love popular music, for example, Wagner, St. Everts listen to music more than traditional- Chopin. Different tastes show the difference of classes. The Verdurins are clearly bourgeois, while the Saint-Everts are aristocrats. When the sonata sounded. Swann was not ready for her, she takes him by surprise. Now the Sonata plays the most important role in Swann's life - while he listens to it, everything is revealed to him. He is a vessel with "subconscious memory"; without any desire and suddenly his heart is filled with thoughts of happy days with Odette. In music, he lives every moment again. He remembers the chrysanthemum petals that symbolized the beginning of their love.

Allusions to works of art in the novel.

The artistic method of Marcel Proust - the search for lost, primary sensations, cleansed of rational activity - deserves full attention. The significance of this method in art is enormous, but it requires certain limitations; not under all conditions and not always this method is equivalent. It is of incomparably greater value to a writer of advanced years than to a young writer, and it is required to a much lesser extent for artists of a rising class than for artists of classes doomed by history and sinking.

In the cycle of novels "In Search of Lost Time", by the effort of recollection (with special attention to bizarre associations and phenomena of involuntary memory), the author recreates the past time of people, the subtlest overflows of feelings and moods, the material world. Proust's experience of portraying the inner life of a person as a "stream of consciousness" had great importance for many writers of the 20th century.

Genre and compositional features of the book "Towards Svan".

Marcel Proust - deep psychologist. Some contemporary literary critics compare him to Dostoyevsky. Proust himself speaks of the joy of extracting from oneself and bringing to light something hidden in the twilight of the soul, peculiar to him. Proust's works can hardly be called novels, rather they are psychological memoirs, but with a plan carefully considered and consistently carried out. The analytical gift of the writer is amazing. He manages to reveal the most complex, intricate, barely perceptible movements of the human spirit. The psychology of recollection, the lonely expectations of a child at mother's night, the analysis of jealousy, falling in love, the diversity of the "I", inspiration, affection, friendship, etc., are distinguished by Proust's true penetration and visual persuasiveness. In particular, in the works of Proust, the reader will find precious material relating to the psychology of the creative artistic process.

In a word, the meaning and main goal of Proust's psychoanalysis is inseparable from this desire of his. The psychologism of his works is due to his main artistic method.

With equal skill, Marcel Proust depicts human types, characters and the social environment that surrounded him. Aunt Leonie, Françoise, Eulalia, Swann, the circle of Verdurins, Odette, Madame de Villeparisi, Bloch the father, Bloch the son, Saint-Loup, Albertine, Monsieur de Charlus are brilliantly outlined by Proust. Proust's work in this area is completely independent and original. He does not repeat any of the previous masters. The types and images of people he created are quite individual, new, and drawn by Proust carefully, convexly and subtly. This is all the more surprising that the people portrayed by the writer are taken in the most ordinary, gray life. Proust does not place them in extraordinary, acute, exceptional positions.

The main themes "Towards Svan".

An important feature of the work's psychologism is precisely the fact that it laid the foundation for a new type of novel - the "stream of consciousness" novel. Architectonics 1 "flow novel", recreating the memories of the protagonist Marcel about childhood in Combray, about parents, acquaintances and society friends, indicates that Proust captures the fluidity of life and thought. For the author, the "duration" of a person's mental activity is a way of resurrecting the past, when past events reconstructed by consciousness often acquire greater significance than the present every minute, undoubtedly affecting it. Proust discovers that the combination of sensation (gustatory, tactile, sensory), which stores the subconscious on a sensory level, and memories, give the volume of time.

Life in Combray for Marseille begins with sounding names: Mr. Swann, Guermantes, Odette, Albertine, daughter of Swann Gilbert, and so on. Then the names begin to combine with persons who lose their charm with a closer acquaintance. The initial periods of fascination with people and words are then replaced by disappointment in the hero, because the detailed knowledge that arises when approaching a person deprives the perceiver of illusions. Just as consistently, following Stendhal and Flaubert, the writer defends the notion of the relativity of feelings. The author says that a person does not fall in love with a certain person and not at the moment of meeting, but with his own idea of him, which already exists in his mind. For a lover, it is not love itself for a woman that is more important and essential, but her anticipation and expectation, because love lives in the soul until a real date, which inevitably leads to a distortion of personal perception.

Principles of organization of Proust's artistic system:

Proust's creative method is complex and contradictory. One of its components is impressionism. Proust believes that the only criterion of truth for a writer is impression; it is for him "the same as experience for the scientist" ("Recovered time").

A number of psychologization techniques are associated with "impersonality" in "In Search of Lost Time".". As a rule, Proust does not give a detailed physical portrait of his characters. At the first mention or appearance of a new character, Proust never interrupts the narrative in order to describe his manners, mannerisms, character. They appear gradually, usually through one external feature. Similar in a way, by highlighting one line, Proust reproduces the vocabulary, syntactic turns and intonations of his characters.Thus, Swann, being a secular person, tends to avoid serious topics in conversation, and accompanies a number of "serious" words with intonation quotation marks.The "very ancient French past" of the maid Françoise, in her speech characterization, is conveyed through a series of obsolete turns, which she is wont to use, and which bring her language closer to that of Madame de Sevigne, La Bruyère, and Saint-Simon. parodying the style of the Parnassians. oh the language of M. de Norpois, the diplomat-routiner.

On such a play on the features of speech, as well as facial expressions, gestures, gaits, all comic and satirical images of Proust are built. An exhaustive characterization of the Duke of Guermantes is associated with a description of his manner of entering the living room. The stupidity of M. de Cambremer is captured in his extraordinary nose, which strikes the narrator at first sight. Often, Proust builds an image by skillfully playing with some accessory; such are the masterfully executed characteristics of two episodic characters - M. de Saint-Candet and M. de Breaut, repelled by their monocle.

Thus, the characters of "Search for Lost Time" are, as it were, a set of external signs that should testify to their essence, comic side, hidden vice or secret motives. This is connected both with the general philosophical basis of "Search for Lost Time", and with the impressionistic dominance of detail in Proust's creative method. At the same time, Proust's individual methods of psychologization are close to those of the literature of the 17th century. In particular, this applies to comic and satirical images based on the grotesque, buffoonish sharpening of one characteristic feature. Here Proust is close to Moliere, whose characters, according to Pushkin, are types of one passion, one vice.

9. Proust style. Proustian phrase.

Proust's stylistic searches were much less successful and led him to assimilate a number of symbolic techniques. Proust considers metaphor to be the basis, the core of his style, his vision of the world. Recognizing Flaubert as a great artist, Proust nevertheless believed that he, perhaps, did not have a single metaphor, while only it could tell the style something from eternity ("On the "style" of Flaubert", 1920). According to Proust, stylistically, reality can only be expressed through comparison: truth arises when a writer takes two different objects, reveals their connection and encloses them in the "necessary links of beautiful style", connects them with an "indestructible" metaphor ("Time Regained") .

Proust's style is also, to a large extent, a style of similes and metaphors, any subject for Proust exists only insofar as an analogy can be found for it. So, the narrator says about himself that a philosopher always lives in him, striving to find the common in the different ("The Captive"). Proustian comparisons and metaphors are typical of symbolism. Particularly characteristic is the frequent assimilation of nature views and heroes to works of art, the comparison of people with the world of plants or animals. Comparisons and metaphors in Proust are so frequent, developed and mutually continued, that in a number of volumes and parts of the epic they form the very fabric of the text. Their aesthetic value is not equal. Next to precise or poetic images, there are often pretentious and pretentious figures, the artistic imperfection of which is explained mainly by the subjectivist, intuitive sides of Proust's worldview.

A number of aspects of the Proustian style are also associated with impressionism.. According to Proust, style is not a prefabricated form into which the writer casts his thought.

On the contrary, the thought must condition the expression. The main quality of style is therefore its originality. In a letter to Mrs. Strauss, Proust writes that every writer should have his own language, just as a violinist has his own sound. This does not mean that a writer can write badly in the name of originality; on the contrary, having found his own language, he begins to write well. Since style is a reflection of an endlessly developing consciousness, therefore, its turns cannot be guessed in advance. In the unforeseen beauty of phrases, Proust saw one of the main advantages of the style of the Duke of Saint-Simon and the fictional writer Bergotte ("Under the shade of girls in bloom"). This property of "unforeseen" Proust sought to convey to his style. Thus, it manifests itself in the device that Yvette Luria proposes to call Proust's "stylistic convergence" 4 ). Luria calculates that this technique occurs over 4,500 times in the 3,500 pages of In Search of Lost Time.". TO

In the style of Proust, in addition to impressionism, there is another side of his method, directly related to his philosophical views. Above, we have considered the connection between Proust's idealistic worldview and a number of artistic features of The Quest, such as the plot, composition, and principles of image construction. In Proust's style, intuitionism manifests itself mainly in the system of metaphors.

A number of researchers have already pointed out that Proust's creative method and such a side of it as style cannot be reduced to impressionism, and noted that Proust sought to overcome impressionistic one-sidedness and subjectivism.

Indeed, it is easy to see that, despite the impressionistic basis of Proust's method, in his worldview, reality is not reduced to a subjective combination of sensations and perceptions. In Under the Shade of Girls in Bloom, for example, we find a very interesting observation that the combination of sensations is our self-conscious rather than the material body. If reality were only a "waste of our experience", then the cinematic film would replace literature ("Time Regained").

Towards Svan

Once he thought it looked like a painting by Botticelli, and with the sounds of Vinteuil's sonata, real passion flared up. Having abandoned his previous studies (in particular, an essay on Vermeer), Swann ceased to be in the world - now Odette absorbed all his thoughts. The first intimacy came after he straightened the orchid on her corsage - from that moment they had the expression "orchid". The tuning fork of their love was the marvelous musical phrase of Vinteuil, which, according to Swann, could not have belonged to the “old fool” from Combray. Swann soon became madly jealous of Odette. The Comte de Forcheville, who was in love with her, mentioned Swann's aristocratic acquaintances, and this overwhelmed Madame Verdurin, who always suspected that Swann was ready to "pull" out of her salon. After his "disgrace" Swann lost the opportunity to see Odette at the Verdurins. He was jealous of all men and calmed down only when she was in the company of the Baron de Charlus. Hearing Vinteuil's sonata again, Swann could hardly restrain a cry of pain: he could not return to that wonderful time when Odette loved him madly. The obsession passed gradually. The beautiful face of the Marquise de Govozho, nee Legrandin, reminded Swann of the saving Combray, and he suddenly saw Odette as she is - not like a Botticelli painting. How could it happen that he wasted several years of his life on a woman who, in fact, he did not even like?

lyrical

Rich cities were famous for these relations - Marseilles, Avignon, Arles, Narbonne, ... . These songs were of a varied nature - and lyrical, and narrative, and comic, and serious, and ... to serve epic, but they epic vividly denounced lyrical the nature of their...

Fundamentals of Religious Studies (2)

Abstract >> Religion and mythology

Faces of the richest mythologized epic India. In an Indian family... The founder of Catholic existentialism (Catholic) G. Marseilles. He believes that initiation to ... the church structure - Vagantov. Them lyrical poems about spring, about love, about a date...

Marcel Proust

Towards Svan

(In search of lost time - 1)

To Gaston Calmette - as a sign of deep and heartfelt gratitude.

PART ONE

I have long been accustomed to going to bed early. Sometimes, as soon as the candle went out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have time to say to myself: "I'm falling asleep." And half an hour later I woke up from the thought that it was time to sleep; it seemed to me that the book was still in my hands and I had to put it down and put out the light; in the dream I continued to think about what I had read, but my thoughts took a rather strange direction: I imagined myself to be what was said in the book - the church, the quartet, the rivalry between Francis 1 and Charles V. This obsession lasted a few seconds after I woke up ; it did not disturb my consciousness - it covered my eyes with scales and prevented them from making sure that the candle was not burning. Then it became vague, like a memory of a former life after metempsychosis; the plot of the book was separated from me, I was free to associate or not associate myself with it; thereupon my sight returned, and to my astonishment I saw that there was darkness all around me, soft and soothing to the eyes, and perhaps even more soothing to the mind, to which it appeared as something inexplicable, incomprehensible, as something really dark. I asked myself what time it might be now; I heard the whistles of locomotives; from them it was possible to determine the distance, they evoked in my imagination the expanse of deserted fields, the traveler rushing to the station and the path imprinted in his memory due to the excitement that he also experiences at the sight of unfamiliar places, and because he is now acting unusually, because he still recalls in the stillness of the night his recent conversation, his parting under a strange lamp, and consoles himself with the thought of a speedy return.

I fell asleep again, but sometimes I woke up just long enough to hear the characteristic crackling of the panels, open my eyes and take in the kaleidoscope of darkness, feel, thanks to an instant glimpse of consciousness, how things are soundly sleeping, the room - all that insensible part of which I was and with which I had to connect again. Or else, without the slightest effort, I was transported, falling asleep, into the irrevocable time of my early years, and childish fears again took possession of me; so, for example, I was afraid that my great-uncle would pull me by the hair, although I stopped being afraid of him after they cut my hair - this day marked the onset of a new era in my life. In the dream, I forgot about this incident and again remembered as soon as I managed to wake up in order to escape from my grandfather, however, before returning to the dream world, out of caution, I hid my head under the pillow.

Sometimes, while I was sleeping, a woman would emerge from the awkward position of my leg, like Eve emerging from Adam's rib. She was created by the pleasure I was anticipating, and I imagined that it was she who gave it to me. My body, sensing my own warmth in her body, strove for rapprochement, and I woke up. Other people, it seemed to me, were now far, far away, and from the kiss of this woman, with whom I had just parted, my cheek was still burning, and my body was languishing from the weight of her waist. When her features were reminiscent of a woman whom I knew in reality, I was completely seized by the desire to see her again - like people who are eager to look at the desired city with their own eyes, they imagine that in life you can enjoy the charm of a dream. Gradually, the memory dissipated, I forgot the girl in my dream.

A thread of hours is stretched around a sleeping person, years and worlds are arranged in succession. Waking up, he instinctively checks with them, instantly reads in them where on the globe he is, how much time has passed before his awakening, but their ranks can mix up, get upset. If he suddenly falls asleep in the morning, after insomnia, reading a book, in an unusual position for him, then it is enough for him to stretch out his hand to stop the sun and turn it back; in the first minute he will not understand what time it is, it will seem to him as if he had just gone to bed. If he falls asleep in an even less natural, completely unusual position, for example, sitting in an armchair after dinner, then the worlds that have descended from their orbits will mix completely, the magic chair will carry him with incredible speed through time, through space, and as soon as he opens his eyelids , it will seem to him as if he lay down a few months ago in other parts. But as soon as I fell asleep in my bed in a deep sleep, during which complete rest came for my consciousness, my consciousness lost its idea of the plan of the room in which I fell asleep: waking up at night, I could not understand where I was, for the first second I even couldn't figure out who I was; the primitively simple sensation that I exist did not leave me - a similar sensation can also beat in the chest of an animal; I was poorer than a caveman; but then, like help from above, a memory came to me - not yet of the place where I was, but of the places where I lived before or could live - and pulled me out of non-existence, from which I could not get out with my forces; in an instant I ran through the centuries of civilization, and the vague notion of kerosene lamps, of shirts with turn-down collars gradually restored the features of my "I".

Perhaps the immobility of the objects around us is inspired by our certainty that it is they, and not some other objects, by the immobility of what we think of them. Whenever I woke up under such circumstances, my mind tried in vain to establish where I was, and everything around me swirled in the dark: objects, countries, years. My stiffened body, by the nature of fatigue, sought to determine its position, to draw from this the conclusion where the wall went, how the objects were arranged, and on the basis of this to imagine the dwelling as a whole and find a name for it. Memory - the memory of the sides, knees, shoulders - showed him room after room where he had to sleep, while invisible walls, spinning in the dark, moved depending on what shape the imaginary room had. And before the consciousness, which stopped in indecision on the threshold of forms and times, having compared the circumstances, recognized the dwelling place, the body recalled what kind of bed is in this or that room, where the doors are, where the windows open, whether there is a corridor, and at the same time recalled those thoughts with which I fell asleep and woke up. So, my numb side, trying to navigate, imagined that he was stretched out against the wall in a wide bed under a canopy, and then I said: “Ah, that's it! I did not wait for my mother to come to say goodbye to me, and fell asleep ”; I was in the village with my grandfather, who died many years ago; my body, the side that I lay in bed - the faithful guardians of the past, which my mind will never forget - brought to my memory the light made of Bohemian glass, in the form of an urn, a night lamp suspended from the ceiling on chains, and a fireplace made of Siena marble , which stood in my Combray bedroom, in the house of my grandparents, where I lived in the distant past, which I now took for the present, although I did not yet clearly imagine it, it loomed more clearly when I finally awoke.