Pleasures and Regrets
by Marcel Proust
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This was Proust's first published work, appearing when he was only twenty-five, and it consists of stories, sketches and thematic writings on a variety of subjects. The attitudes reflect many of the characteristics of the "fin de siecle," yet Proust illumined them with the unique shafts of observation and gift of analysis that he was later to perfect in "The Remembrance of Things Past." This book is a period piece of intricate delights and subtle flavours that will be relished by the show more author's many admirers show lessTags
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I read somewhere that Proust is great because he's so concise, which sounds silly, considering he wrote one of the all time longest novels. But it's true- he can capture something in a sentence that would take other writers pages. And he does it here a few times, which is nice to see: he's so good at following an emotion out until it's comprehensible. On the other hand, all the bad kind of expansion shows up a lot more here than in A la recherche. I probably wouldn't have finished it if it wasn't by, you know, Proust.
But the real question this book raises: why aren't there more collections published like this? A few stories, a couple poems, some nice essays, a chapter of aphorisms. Variation's a good thing, peoples!
But the real question this book raises: why aren't there more collections published like this? A few stories, a couple poems, some nice essays, a chapter of aphorisms. Variation's a good thing, peoples!
This was Proust’s first published work, appearing when he was only 25, and it consists of stories, sketches, and thematic writings on a variety of subjects. The attitudes reflect many of the characteristics of the fin de siècle, yet Proust illumined them with the unique shafts of observation and gift of analysis that he was later to perfect in The Remembrance of Things Past. This book is a period piece of intricate delights and subtle flavors that will be relished by the author’s many admirers.
Reproduction de l'édition de 1896 avec les illustrations de Madeleine Lemaire en taille réduite par rapport à l'original in quarto. Cela aurait mérité un papier couché.
Lire le chapitre sur le sujet dans "Proust l'art du repeint" qui commente les illustrations et leur place et dont les reproductions rendent mieux justice à leur qualité.
Lire le chapitre sur le sujet dans "Proust l'art du repeint" qui commente les illustrations et leur place et dont les reproductions rendent mieux justice à leur qualité.
Feb 18, 2023 (Edited)French
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Proust is one of the seminal figures in modern literature, matched only in stature by Joyce, Woolf, Mann and Kafka. By the last decade of the 19th century, the charming and ambitious Proust, born into a wealthy bourgeois family, was already a famous Paris socialite who attended the most fashionable salons of the day. The death of his parents in show more the early years of the 20th century, coupled with his own increasingly ill health, made of Proust a recluse who confined himself to his cork-lined bedroom on the Boulevard Haussmann. There he concentrated on the composition of his great masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27). In recent years, it was discovered that he had already prepared a first draft of the work in the 1890s in Jean Santeuil, which was only published posthumously in 1952. Remembrance of Things Past resists summary. Seeming at turns to be fiction, autobiography, and essay, Remembrance is a vast meditation on the relationship between time, memory, and art. In it the narrator, who bears the same first name as the author, attempts to reconstruct his life from early childhood to middle age. In the process, he surveys French society at the turn of the century and describes the eventual decline of the aristocracy in the face of the rising middle class. The process of reconstruction of Marcel's past life is made possible by the psychological device of involuntary memory; according to this theory, all of our past lies hidden within us only to be rediscovered and brought to the surface by some unexpected sense perception. In the final volume of the work, the narrator, who has succeeded in recapturing his past, resolves to preserve it through the Work of Art, his novel. He died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in 1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original title
- Les plaisirs et les jours
- Original publication date
- 1896
- People/Characters
- Baldassare Silvande; Alexis; Violante; Augustin; Françoise de Breyves
- Important places
- Styria; Paris, France
- First words
- Why did he ask me to present his book to curious minds?
The ancient Greeks brought cakes, milk and wine for their dead. Seduced by a more refined illusion, if not by one that is any wiser, we offer them flowers and books. - Quotations
- These examples did nothing to diminish the sudden amazement that his uncle's attitude had aroused in Alexis, but rather gave him a kindred feeling that, gradually spreading, turned into an immense stupefaction at the universa... (show all)l scandal of these existences, his own included, walking backwards into death with their gaze still fixed on life.
But after a while, as his recovery continued to make progress, a persistent note of disquiet started to make itself heard beneath the joy that had already started to fade as he grew used to it. Sheltered from life's storms, ... (show all)in that propitious atmosphere of all-pervasive gentleness, enforced calm and untrammelled meditation, deep within him the seed of an obscure desire for death had started to grow. He was still far from suspecting its existence, and merely felt a vague panic at the thought of having to start living again, having to suffer the blows which he had lost the habit of enduring, and being forced to lose the caresses that had recently enfolded him.
But he had not reckoned on a force which, if it is at first fed by vanity, vanquishes weariness, contempt, and even boredom: the force of habit.
Finally she cursed her powers of thought, in their divinest aspects - thought, the greatest gift ever granted her; thought, which people have called by every name without ever finding the right one; the poet's intuition, the ... (show all)believer's ecstasy, the profound sense for nature and music
Nothing can cure her. If she loved M. de Laleande for his good looks or his wit, we could find some wittier or more handsome young man to take her mind off him. If it were his kindness or his love for her that had bound her... (show all) to him, another man might try to love her with even greater fidelity. But M. de Laleande is neither handsome nor intelligent. He has no opportunity to prove to her whether he is affectionate or hard-hearted, forgetful or faithful. So it must be he whom she loves, and not certain merits or charms that might be found to an equally high degree in others; it must be he whom she loves, for all his imperfections, all his lack of distinction
He had neglected the only feature they all shared, or rather the same collective madness, the same prevalent epidemic by which they were all affected: snobbery. True, this snobbery assumed very different shapes in accordance... (show all) with their very different natures, and there was a world of difference between the imaginative and poetic snobbery of Mme Lenoir and the all-conquering snobbery of Mme de Torreno, who was as avid as a civil servant desperate to reach the highest positions.
We have certain memories that are, as it were, the Dutch paintings of our memory, genre pictures in which the characters are often of the middling sort, taken at a perfectly ordinary moment in their lives, without any solemn ... (show all)events, sometimes without any events at all, in a setting that is in no way extraordinary and quite lacking in grandeur. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And that was the end of his jealousy.
- Original language
- French
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