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Another reading of Marcel Proust,
Beauty:
Proust cuts between speaking voices in the salon scene; they are different and appear to be what the Narrator overhears. He comments on the speakers and what they say as the present Narrator and as the reflective Narrator, but in this case that could be Marcel Proust himself.
About Mme de Marsantes,
Possibly the reflective Narrator or Proust is speaking:
Being a great lady means playing the great lady, that is to say, to a certain extent, playing at simplicity. It is a pastime which costs a great deal of money, all the more because simplicity charms people only on condition that they know that you are capable of not living simply, that is to say that you are very rich.
The present Narrator is speaking:
Someone said to me afterwards, when I mentioned that I had seen her: "You saw of course that she must have been lovely as a young woman."
Possibly the reflective Narrator or Proust is speaking:
But true beauty is so individual, so novel always, that one does not recognize it as beauty.
The present Narrator is speaking:
I said to myself that afternoon only that she had a tiny nose, very blue eyes, a long neck and a sad expression. Modern Library p. 340
The verbal textures, the way people speak, alternate between speakers and between Narrators: I find these changes beautiful, Proust is to be lauded for them—how interesting, how fresh, how... And what he has to say about beauty is as contemporary now as it was when it was written 100 or so years ago, beauty is "...individual...novel...one does not recognize it...", another reason I enjoy reading In Search of Lost Time.
We pulled the "volunteer garlic", that had overwintered, that was missed in last July's harvest, that had planted itself (after fencing the sheep away) to make the lamb sausage that New York has been calling for since last Spring. Garlic must be good for the memory too.
It's no excuse, and I'm not he, Norman Mailer said that he was reading, not writing. I have been reading In Search of Lost Time, with others in a Goodreads discussion group, about 100 pages a week taking an entire year, and consequently by coincidence...
A comment to the group on this week's reading:
Marcel Proust wrote: The streets belong to everybody, I repeated to myself, giving a different meaning to the words, and marveling that indeed in the crowded street, often soaked with rain, which gave it a precious lustre like the streets, at times, in the old towns of Italy, the Duchesse de Guermantes mingled with the public life of the world moments of her own secret life, showing herself thus in all her mystery to everyone, jostled by all and sundry, with the splendid gratuitousness of the greatest works of art. Modern Library p. 190, vol. 3
This is a sentence I find beautiful; this is one of the several reasons that I began reading ISOLT (In Search of Lost Time) several years ago and it is one of the many, many syntactical marvels that are to be found in the novel. Let me attempt to tell you of some of its beauty for me.
The subject is "I", the main verb is "repeated" and the object is "The streets belong to everybody" which precedes them. All that follows would be qualifiers of the object or of the verb. I will not bore myself or you too much, I will simplify the exact and correct terms that a grammarian would use in her description of the sentence--in truth I don't know all the terms--and besides they are not required by me to appreciate the sentence's beauty. One intuits language, one intuits beauty.
...marveling that indeed in the crowded street, often soaked with rain, which gave it a precious lustre like the streets, at times, in the old towns of Italy, the Duchesse de Guermantes mingled with the public life of the world moments of her own secret life...
Within this qualifying utterance, telling what he did: "marveling", when he "repeated" the object, Proust has the Narrator further qualify it: "often soaked with rain" and he qualifies that by "...which gave it a precious lustre like the streets, at times, in the old towns of Italy..." and qualifies that likening simile by interrupting himself with "at times" before he gets to what he marveled at, "...the Duchesse de Guermantes mingled with the public life of the world moments of her own secret life...". And the qualifications continue...
This is why I like to read Proust and when you parse the writing like this you understand what Jean Milly says in Le phrase de Proust that the structure of ISOLT approximates the structure of his sentences.
~
The qualifications, or parentheticals that he uses, permit Proust to elaborate on character or situation in great detail, and greater but minute detail, for which he is famed as a verbal stylist; they enable Proust antithetical formulations: "...with the public life of the world moments of her own secret life..." that we find in subjects made more real to us or more lovely as in lyrical constructions that have a freshness of song to them by juxtaposing contrasting clauses, phrases or words as in "...with the splendid gratuitousness of the greatest works of art."
Thursday we weaned the lambs: we kept them in the barn and drove the eager mothers down hill to lush grass. The lambs had been eating oats and hay for several weeks and gaining weight; occasionally they sucked mother's milk but the milk was decreasing from the first weeks after birth.
There is a maternal attachment that lasts about three days after weaning; both the ewes, a half a mile away and out of earshot, in pasture and the lambs in the barn on free-choice oats and hay call for one another, mostly from habit—a real John Cage cacophony.
But all is well, calm and quiet now. Tuesday the lambs go to pasture and they will become sheep as the seasons turn and as night becomes day.
60 Blue took a sheep taxi up to the shearing shed.
Dominique leads Saxon Merino ewes up to the shearing shed to be shorn a week from today.
I took the photo above with my iPhone and tweeted the following but what's been running through my mind is that Twitter is for people who have nothing to say and who say it all the same. I'm afraid, I'm one of them.
Eugene Wyatt Evening sheep check: "Not a mouse stirring," said Francisco to Bernardo waiting for the Ghost in Hamlet. pic.twitter.com/UO7gq1cf
The sheep pictured are bred Saxon Merino ewes who will be shorn on Monday March 4th as they were shorn 12 months ago on the first Monday in March. The average fiber diameter of the wool will be 17 micron; it will yield 65% of clean wool upon scouring and will have a staple length of 3.5 inches. No one else, outside of Australia, can boast of such figures.
The barn on the horizon is our shearing and lambing shed. Next week we will slowly lead the ewes up the hill with a Kelpie sheepherding dog, Poem, following attentively behind. We are preparing the barn to house them inside in case of rainy weather over shearing. You can't shear wet sheep. The rest of the year they live outside under the stars, rain or shine.
About 20 days later, on the 23rd of March we will formally begin lambing but every year there are several early arrivals the week before which is good for us as we are able to get our 'lambing system' running smoothly for the scheduled deliveries of about 12 lambs a day for the first 18 days then lambing will slow to an average of 6 births a day for the next 18 day ovulation cycle.
After that, we're finished. The preceding October, 5 months ago (the time of gestation), we separated the rams from the ewes after two 18 day ovulation cycles.
It's now the 1st of May; the grass is green and growing. Another year has begun.
We dye yarn that we've sold out of. We began this Umber with a Gray Heather yarn that was custom spun for us at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont; where we specify the percentages of dyed black & undyed wool to be carded lightly before spinning. At the farm we overdye the gray with blue, red, purple, green and umber colors.
Our skeins weigh 2 oz (50 g) and measure 140 yd with 5 stitches per inch on US 8 needles.
Take a look at our work in the Yarn Store.