{"id":9393,"date":"2023-04-29T09:40:36","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T07:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=9393"},"modified":"2023-05-28T22:38:40","modified_gmt":"2023-05-28T20:38:40","slug":"der-gewendete-tag-marcel-proust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2023\/04\/der-gewendete-tag-marcel-proust\/","title":{"rendered":"Der gewendete Tag \u2022 Marcel Proust"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

For a long time, I\u2019ve wanted to finally devote myself to Marcel Proust, a very famous French writer who entered literary history above all with his extensive novel cycle In Search of Lost Time<\/em>. I didn\u2019t want to start right away with the multi-thousand-page cycle, though, and when the Manesse publishing house presented the book Der gewendete Tag<\/em> in a new guise, I immediately recognized it as a good opportunity to dip a toe into Proust\u2019s cosmos. In this post I want to share my impressions and give anyone who\u2019s also thinking about tackling Proust a sense of what to expect.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Der gewendete Tag<\/em> comprises, in chronological order, several advance publications that Proust released bit by bit between 1912 and 1923. He later modified and greatly expanded these, and out of them ultimately grew his In Search of Lost Time<\/em>, which appeared between 1913 and 1927. So readers here are offered texts that in places can also be found in his great cycle; numerous figures from there appear as well, such as Albertine, the Duchess of Guermantes, or Madame Verdurin. One could say that Proust more or less assembled this book in the form in which he successively pre-published these texts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

With his lost time, Proust wanted to sketch a portrait of manners around the era of the Belle \u00c9poque, and he does this in the form of a fictional autobiography. The individual chapters are loosely connected chronologically, but each has its own focus, describing places, people, encounters, and events as the protagonist experiences and feels them\u2014sometimes called Marcel\u2014who is, with very high probability, the author\u2019s alter ego.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The first chapter begins with detailed descriptions of how he admires the beautifully flowering hawthorn. In the following chapter Proust describes how sunbeams on the balcony remind him of a first infatuation he felt at the tender age of twelve for a girl. The model for the girl he regularly met on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in summer was presumably Proust\u2019s youthful love Marie de B\u00e9nardaky. Already in this first chapter it quickly becomes clear that his work is very much about memories\u2014about how present sensory impressions arbitrarily evoke reminiscences in him. Proust\u2019s work is notorious for these involuntary memories. The most famous scene is the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea igniting a fireworks display of memories of his childhood. These numerous recollections crop up again and again throughout the book\u2014at first rather banal, in the form of a village church in a holiday town he often visited as a child with his parents, or his feelings about a planned trip to Florence that was then canceled due to illness.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The chapters are sometimes aimless, capturing the moment, wandering over various details\u2014from an infatuation to an unattainable marquise, to a friend\u2019s relationship with his mistress, all the way to his grandmother\u2019s final days. Always with a very precise eye for particulars, phrased in fine words enlivened by numerous comparisons. The chapters are arranged chronologically and describe different experiences in the protagonist\u2019s life, with later events then referring back to earlier chapters\u2014for example, how he returns to Balbec after his grandmother\u2019s death. As in In Search of Lost Time<\/em>, the book is thus a string of moments from his life\u2014or rather, a fictional life\u2014though the stories already seem to be of autobiographical origin.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In one chapter he describes the society around Madame Verdurin, a group of elderly professors, doctors, and artists, and he sketches the peculiarities of this circle\u2014their quirks and habits. That reminded me a bit of Balzac\u2019s The Collection of Antiquities<\/em> (Le Cabinet des Antiques<\/em>). Especially in his La Com\u00e9die humaine<\/em>, Balzac wonderfully captured a number of eccentric circles. Even though with Proust one already perceives numerous nuances, and through the descriptions one gets more a feeling than a fixed picture of these people, he is far removed here from what Balzac achieved with his expressive, clear, and wonderfully sonorous sentences.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I found one of the later chapters very entertaining, where his love for a woman awakens to whom he had previously shown a certain disdain. I found the cause of this affection very strange, as well as the way he renders his thoughts\u2014yet this was precisely the chapter that captivated me the most. It deals with homosexuality and how his love for a woman is constantly stoked by jealousy, and how he perceives that jealousy\u2014how he wants to possess this woman completely, which he cannot achieve\u2014and Proust describes it very sensitively, making it highly comprehensible.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In another chapter Proust describes how he coped with the grief over his grandmother. It\u2019s about how she concealed her illness from him for as long as possible to spare him, and overall the chapter is simply an episode of self-pity, without my finding much in the sentences themselves. And so it often happened that his thoughts and feelings didn\u2019t quite reach me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In his texts Proust offers a very detailed look at particulars, at often seemingly banal details and at momentary moods, with the unimportant and the significant mingling, which makes the scenes very slow. It quickly becomes apparent that he was very sensitive and had a very delicate perception of light and feeling. Besides time\u2014which, like remembering, recurs again and again\u2014the precise gaze at emotional subtleties and the portrayal of his rich inner life are especially characteristic. In doing so, Proust uses artful, long, nested sentences with a fine linguistic melody\u2014sometimes distinguished, empathetic, sometimes presenting the banal in long, word-rich sentences.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

“The time we have at our disposal every day is elastic; our own passions expand it, the passions others feel for us contract it, and habit fills it up.” (p. 223)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

He proves his wonderful ability to portray sublime emotions in a chapter in which he describes his infatuation with a woman, how it remains unfulfilled, and how it slowly dies out. It reminded me very much of Henry James, in how he disentangles his feelings and thoughts in a highly nuanced way and describes\u2014and re-describes\u2014them with much psychological finesse, again in long and nested sentences.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The individual chapters often have no clear line: they describe something\u2014very precisely, very minutely\u2014only to turn to another topic, which is then likewise examined very closely with regard to particular aspects. The episodes have no punchline, no suspenseful plot; the book flows along, Proust loses himself in contemplating details, especially of an emotional nature, and that is sometimes very beautiful to read because it repeatedly reminded me of my own thinking\u2014of how one often perceives one\u2019s surroundings, with impressions of mostly insignificant details. At the same time, I found the book to be rather unfocused; it lacks a tangible narrative thread, which meant it couldn\u2019t build real depth for me. Long, convoluted sentences don\u2019t help there either; they make the reading needlessly complicated and very often add little value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It is often, of course, masterful\u2014how he formulates his thoughts, how he perceives nuances. For example, he describes his grandmother\u2019s death and focuses on people\u2019s reactions\u2014how they deal with the event. Proust is, then, a very good observer. Nevertheless, I often felt that he remained on the surface: when he considers whether someone is sufficiently distinguished; when he asks himself whether an environment and current circumstances are to his liking; or how his view of a woman changes so that he finds her attractive. Proust comes across as arrogant, conceited, egocentric, and snobbish. Although he writes a lot about feelings, impressions, and very personal thoughts, I felt a certain emotional coldness while reading. Warmth and passion are missing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Indeed, that was one of the main problems I had with these texts. The protagonist himself is very much at the center, and I simply noticed that there is far too great a distance between Proust the man, with his way of thinking, and me as a reader. Proust is a shrinking violet\u2014very wealthy and privileged\u2014and he makes a highly dependent impression. It was often hard to bear when he writes how he has to cry constantly, or how he complains when he gets a drafty table near the door in a caf\u00e9. Proust is the opposite of Mark Twain or B. Traven. Traven, in particular, worked as a stoker on a ship like a drudge under the harshest conditions and still cracked his shaggy jokes. A single week in Traven\u2019s life would probably have finished Proust off. He is blas\u00e9 and condescending\u2014such as when he becomes intimate with a young woman and then treats her from above in the rest of the story. Or in another chapter he writes that he takes pleasure in \u201cplaying with young girls,\u201d while at the same time airing his disdain for friendships. The way he schemes and deliberately lies to women is likewise unflattering and attests to a very calculating nature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

All the stories take place within Proust\u2019s very wealthy milieu: seaside resorts, his apartment in Paris, or stays in upscale hotels or restaurants. Along the way he repeatedly turns his attention to servants, or describes in detail how the calls of street vendors affect him, while he presumably spent most of his time at home, frequently bedridden and ailing. Apart from writing he didn\u2019t really work, lived in refined spheres, and presumably drifted through his days.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Despite this criticism of him as a person\u2014which may be unfair, since my view is based primarily on his book\u2014I still perceived the texts very much as world literature. You can hear it in those mellifluous sentences, with their extremely nuanced gaze at details; and it was precisely this exaggerated sensitivity in his own life that likely enabled him to write as he did.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\u201cThat is why the best part of our memory lies outside us, in a breath of air scented with rain, in the shut-in smell of a room or the smell of a blazing fire\u2014wherever we find again of ourselves what our intelligence has not used and has rejected: the last reserve of the past, the best, which can still make us weep when all our tears seem dried.\u201d (p. 260)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On the one hand, I found the reading incredibly relaxing. Because of the slow pace and the detailed rendering of his thoughts and feelings, it\u2019s pure deceleration. On the other hand, some passages\u2014due to the long and nested sentence constructions\u2014do demand a good deal of concentration and attention.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I really like this Manesse edition\u2019s presentation. The binding with shimmering golden peacock feathers looks beautiful and simply suits Proust\u2019s rarefied sphere. The printed endpapers have a gorgeous color, and the matching ribbon bookmark fits perfectly. The book also has blue thread stitching, which looks lovely and rounds everything off wonderfully. The only downside is the missing cloth binding, but that seems to be missing from the new Manesse classics in general. Otherwise there\u2019s nothing to complain about\u2014you get an excellent book for the price.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I found the notes very informative and helpful for understanding the text\u2014for example, the Dreyfus Affair is briefly explained. The afterword, by contrast, was lofty waffle without added value and offers very little information.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I love the combination of book and Arte documentary. In fact, I had that again with this book. A while ago Arte had numerous documentaries on great authors available in its media library, including The World of Marcel Proust<\/em>, which I saved at the time and wanted to watch after reading this book. In the meantime the doc has been removed from Arte (greetings from the Stone Age that Germany still seems stuck in), but anyone who wants to see it can currently find it on YouTube<\/a>. I watched it and you learn some really interesting background information, with photographs and film footage from the time. Proust was attracted to both men and women, and I found it fascinating that his character Albertine\u2014who appears both in this book and in In Search of Lost Time<\/em>\u2014was modeled on a man he had fallen in love with. And you learn that my impression from the book didn\u2019t deceive me: the fictional narrator was indeed very close to Proust himself. The documentary definitely complemented the book wonderfully, and overall I gained an excellent insight into Proust\u2019s literary achievement.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Conclusion:<\/strong> Formally speaking, what Proust writes is of the highest quality. Wonderfully long sentences with a clearly perceptible, pleasant linguistic melody; very subtle nuances; the observation of many small details; a portrait of manners of his time with characterizations that testify to keen powers of observation\u2014just as the great authors all had. And yet this book\u2014and Proust\u2019s way of thinking, perceiving the world, and rendering it\u2014didn\u2019t reach or move me. What his long, sonorous sentences express were, for me, observations; it was more like an image, presented with a certain coolness and distance, grasped with a sense of calculation, and so foreign to me in attitude that it didn\u2019t touch me emotionally at all. The chosen subjects\u2014when he writes about his relationships and feelings toward women; when he writes about his impressions of nature, the sea, the hawthorn, the light; or about aristocratic society\u2014simply call for passion, that typical stirring passion so characteristic of French authors and which has so often gripped and moved me with its intensity. Only with Proust I couldn\u2019t find it. Even so, I found the book very much worth reading, precisely because of those often wonderful sentences and the strangeness and, at the same time, familiarity that his thinking held for me. The book is beautiful; the selection is wonderfully suited to sampling Proust\u2019s work, and I can only recommend that every curious reader pick it up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book information:<\/strong> Der gewendete Tag<\/em> \u2022 Marcel Proust \u2022 Manesse Verlag \u2022 699 pages \u2022 ISBN 9783717525301<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time, I\u2019ve wanted to finally devote myself to Marcel Proust, a very famous French writer who entered literary history above all with his extensive novel cycle In Search of Lost Time. I didn\u2019t want to start right away with the multi-thousand-page cycle, though, and when the Manesse publishing house presented the book … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Der gewendete Tag \u2022 Marcel Proust”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Der gewendete Tag \u2022 Marcel Proust - lesestunden","description":"Schon lange wollte ich mich endlich einmal Marcel Proust widmen, einem sehr bekannten franz\u00f6sischen Schriftsteller, der besonders mit seinem umfangreichen Roman"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/der_gewendete_tag_1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}