Letter (June)

Re-reading Proust, the thousands of squares that comprise his sustained memory play, which we look at with why, wherefore, when, what, who… Sometimes it looks easy. Even one square is at once a matter of wonder and questions. As when Marcel, by surprise, receives a letter from the source of his secret passion, Gilberte: “And thought cannot instantly assimilate a sheet of paper covered in letters.” Like getting text from the very person we would least expect, but delight in. Instead of reading each word like city streets of passing shops, there’s only gorgeous rain filling vision from June skies.

Book (June)

Re-reading Proust we find that a certain woman “keeps spouting books at you” and is, dismissive judgement, therefore tiresome. On the same page someone else is thought a good sort, even though it’s unlikely she’s read all ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’. Between these two criticisms the salon weaves, from expectations of being well-read and those of not advertising the fact. One will be choice in how quotes are quoted, be well-read and informed but wear it lightly. Other expectations are implied: one must be original but not too so, entertaining but not exhausting, slightly mysterious like a June night.

Persistent (May)

Re-reading Proust. Former Macleod resident Gerald Murnane, for whom Macleod’s hillside views are now a memory he may wish to memorialise, once wrote an essay entitled ‘Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs’. Marcel, or Proust, or both, are the author of this line. Much depends on the word ‘persistants’. Most translators say ‘enduring’ lilacs that last for as long as his memory, and the words they honour. But one translator has ‘indestructible’, which is effective, but is it true? When I gaze at Macleod hillsides how can they be less real than my memory of them? For now, my memory is indestructible.

Cruelty (May)

Re-reading Proust. Mademoiselle Vinteuil is cruel to her father, the very one who adores her. Beyond the grave, she and her friend play ritual games that profane his memory. Memory, Marcel’s prime occupation, divides along trauma lines. What’s a novelist, like him, if not a merciless remaker of those he knew, of whom many loved him? Yet time may transform these thoughtless sadistic games, pleasurable at the time, into guilt or remorse or self-reflection. Praise, even. Mademoiselle Vinteuil grows up to be the thankful overseer of her father’s musical estate, archivist of his time-bound creations, protector of his good name.

Gears (May)

Re-reading Proust. “I heard her snoring lightly. I was going to go away quietly, but the noise I had made had probably interfered with her sleep and made it ‘shift gears’, as they say about cars, because the music of her snoring broke off for a second and resumed on a lower note…” She is Marcel’s reclusive aunt, Léonie. Comic anachronism is disarming. The first mention of an automobile reminds us the story opens before their popularisation. Until now things were “reined in”; the coach awaited; people took long walks in May sunshine. Léonie probably never travelled in a car.

Longer (May)

Re-reading Proust. But how? The concept of the longueur became a given of nineteenth-century fiction. Some passages, obviously, were going to take longer to linger through than others. But what to do with a novel that turned into novels, the stylistic foundations of which are longer and longer diversions, each linked or overlapping in some way the narrative, if we may call it a narrative? Within each long aside, or essay, are unexpected details subtly introduced, that lend to our longer understanding extra depth, light, significance, character. Should this be poetry like Scott Moncrieff? Rigour, like Kilmartin? Bluntness, like Grieve?

Fashion (May)

Re-reading Proust. “We would go into what he called his ‘study’, whose walls were hung with some of those engravings depicting… a fleshy pink goddess driving a chariot… which were admired during the Second Empire because they were felt to have a Pompeiian look about them, were then hated, and are beginning to be admired again for one reason and one only, despite the others that are given, and that is that they have a Second-Empire look about them.” For engravings, read posters. For goddess, read King of May. For Second Empire, read The Sixties. For Pompeiian, read San Francisco.

Asparagus (May)

Re-reading Proust. After the madeleine story, he ripples out pictures of childhood Combray, recalls a kitchen discussion about the virtues of asparagus. This unlikely vegetable turns slowly into the perfect mnemonic, proving that anything sensual may serve as a madeleine. I consider how memory is provoked in me. My grandmother’s trays of fruit-mince slice. Her chocolate gingers. Or my mother’s very exotic chow mein, in particular the salty soy sauce. ‘What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?’ asks Lin Yutang. Asparagus was fine soft, but being Australian we called it ‘sparra’s guts’.

Madeleine (May)

Re-reading Proust. His choice of a cake called Magdalene is a risky tribute, a bold connection. The women-filled pages of Combray Chapter One culminate with the eating of food named, indirectly, after the First Witness to the Resurrection. Marcel says this happened on Sunday mornings “because that day I did not go out before it was time for Mass.” Tribute, maybe; connection, surely; and guide to how memory may be both unwilled and then willed. The madeleine, dipped in tea, is discovery and invocation of the Muse; scallop-shelled cakes, reminder of Saint James, that provide one guide to Proust’s procedure.

Personality (May)

 Re-reading Proust. We trust this is all about him, but then we’re told, “Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others.” Each one of us knows we’re not the person others would have us be. We live, certain we are not a type, even when every day we speak and behave true to type. We learn to live with the ideas we have of other people. The personality we have created for each one of them may be, but is not, their true self. We ourselves live with ourselves, a personality no one may imagine, like Marcel.