Doc Martian's Lounge: March 2012

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Proustiana

Finished Proust's The Prisoner. Man. Total understatement there. OK. I've got to go on for a minute. "Whereas the sonata opened upon a lily-white pastoral dawn, dividing its fragile purity only to hover in the delicate yet compact entanglement of a rustic bower of honeysuckle against white geraniums, it was upon flat, unbroken surfaces like those of the sea on a morning that threatens storm, in the mist of an eerie silence, in an infinite void, that this new work began, and it was drawn from the silence and the night to build up gradually before me." That there's some sweeeet synesthesia. :)

2 more sections to go. The denouement. The Fugitive/The Sweet Cheat Gone and Time Regained. I've been reading the work off and on since 2007... drifting to it... drifting away... like the segues of memory as they appear in life. I may not get to read them all at once... Proust works good that way... but I kinda hope so, I'm totally hooked at this point. All the trappings of 19th century parlor dramatics have faded away... now they are people, wrapped in their agonies and joys. Although there was definitely a while where it was another party with people i don't know in an era that hasn't stood out among the greater eras. Still, it remains the stage upon which the modern era was set and arguably is the source of most modern literature.