Yes, an uneven affair but with some wonderful moments. The merging of the novel with Proust’s own last days in his cork-lined room was strangely effective. John Malkovich as Baron Charlus was an unexpected choice, but one gets used to his strange accent.
I thought it was better than just an uneven affair. Apparently, Malkovich is a big favorite of Portuguese directors. He Played the Duke of Wellington in a fascinating film directed by Ruiz's widow.
Malkovich does a fine job but he has the odd distinction of being a good Charlus, yet not as good as Alain Delon and a good Tom Ripley, yet not as good as Alain Delon. It’s very hard to understand how this happened, but the evidence seems to show that John Malkovich is the poor man’s Alain Delon.
This is wonderful. Your essays on writers and literature are my favourite things you write because of how passionate they are. Would love to see some on Borges, Schulz, or the Mahabharata in the future.
That's in part because it's something of a willful ''reconstruction." Unlike the poetic or prose Edda, say, or the Nibelungenlied or Völsung saga, it was an invented national epic, composed at a time when the popularity of "national literatures" was at its zenith. Of course, it wasn't simply produced out of whole cloth, like the songs of Ossian. Lönnrot gathered together a great many very old ballads and legends and wove them together into a continuous text. Thus his Lemminkäinen, for instance, is actually a composite of various heroes from Finnish folklore. Still, it's wonderful stuff. I will always recommend cranking up the Sibelius and spending an afternoon in a lawn-chair with the Kalevala. But just remember that it's as much fabrication as scholarship.
thank you David, that's a great point about the Kalevala being a 19th century reconstruction compared to the Edda's and other ancient or medieval national epics... although about the Prose Edda? do we know how much of it is authentic and how much of it was Snorri's creation. Obviously you get the Christian elements from Snorri in the sense from the prologue where he talks about the Aesir gods being from Troy and Thor being the son of King Memnon of Ethiopia. and also the story of Ask and Embla etc.
Well, Snorri’s Edda is a textbook that happens to be a digest of myth. Most scholars would regard it as a faithful record, Christianized in good Mediaeval fashion. The Kalevala really is a synthetic recasting of the myths. Still, you’re right.
I have long admired your many writings, but when I saw that you'd published an essay on Proust, I knew I had to subscribe immediately. As it happens I've read only the first thirty pages or so of In Search of Lost Time (I learned very quickly in my search for a good translation that 'Remembrance of Things Past' was one of Moncrieff's many small but significant blunders); but I found those first thirty pages so deliciously tantalising (and a welcome break from the beige, staccato, periodic sentences of so much contemporary fiction) that I ordered the full box set (Kilmartin revision) for my upcoming birthday.
I was going to spend the summer reading Moby-Dick. It occured to me, however, that some novels demand to be read in certain seasons, and Moby-Dick seems to me a winter novel. I hope that Proust gives me as much pleasure this summer as he clearly gave you. Many thanks!
I apologize for the following post—it’s fulsome and probably cringey, but I can’t help it. Thank you--especially for the closing meditation, which creates a kind of polyphonic effect for me when I think of one of my favorite moments early in volume I. The narrator wants to learn Bergotte's view on every possible subject: "I had no doubt that [Bergotte's opinion] would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be beautiful and right… [In such moments] it was suddenly revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.” In these and other passages I have often felt that I was encountering the richest vision of a participatory metaphysics—something akin to but maybe even better than Phaedrus, Symposium, or Ion. To find my suspicions confirmed here—by you—is to feel something of the very same elation the narrator describes in the passage I quote. Like I said, sorry for the cloying praise… I’ll just go back to weeping on my iPad now as if I am in the arms of a long-lost father.
That passage, of course--les clochers de Martinville--has been an object of countless scholarly and critical treatments. It's a perfect example of Proust's ability to evoke a sense of mystery and even epiphany out of what would normally seem on ordinary experience.
Beautiful! I love Proust, he is a portal into the real humanities
This is a wonderful essay. Have you seen Ruiz's excellent, if not great, film, Time Regained?
Yes, an uneven affair but with some wonderful moments. The merging of the novel with Proust’s own last days in his cork-lined room was strangely effective. John Malkovich as Baron Charlus was an unexpected choice, but one gets used to his strange accent.
I thought it was better than just an uneven affair. Apparently, Malkovich is a big favorite of Portuguese directors. He Played the Duke of Wellington in a fascinating film directed by Ruiz's widow.
Malkovich does a fine job but he has the odd distinction of being a good Charlus, yet not as good as Alain Delon and a good Tom Ripley, yet not as good as Alain Delon. It’s very hard to understand how this happened, but the evidence seems to show that John Malkovich is the poor man’s Alain Delon.
This is wonderful. Your essays on writers and literature are my favourite things you write because of how passionate they are. Would love to see some on Borges, Schulz, or the Mahabharata in the future.
Three very plausible suggestions.
speaking of epics i like to see you do a review of the Kalevala, which sadly seems to be less known then Scandinavian/Germanic mythology
That's in part because it's something of a willful ''reconstruction." Unlike the poetic or prose Edda, say, or the Nibelungenlied or Völsung saga, it was an invented national epic, composed at a time when the popularity of "national literatures" was at its zenith. Of course, it wasn't simply produced out of whole cloth, like the songs of Ossian. Lönnrot gathered together a great many very old ballads and legends and wove them together into a continuous text. Thus his Lemminkäinen, for instance, is actually a composite of various heroes from Finnish folklore. Still, it's wonderful stuff. I will always recommend cranking up the Sibelius and spending an afternoon in a lawn-chair with the Kalevala. But just remember that it's as much fabrication as scholarship.
thank you David, that's a great point about the Kalevala being a 19th century reconstruction compared to the Edda's and other ancient or medieval national epics... although about the Prose Edda? do we know how much of it is authentic and how much of it was Snorri's creation. Obviously you get the Christian elements from Snorri in the sense from the prologue where he talks about the Aesir gods being from Troy and Thor being the son of King Memnon of Ethiopia. and also the story of Ask and Embla etc.
Well, Snorri’s Edda is a textbook that happens to be a digest of myth. Most scholars would regard it as a faithful record, Christianized in good Mediaeval fashion. The Kalevala really is a synthetic recasting of the myths. Still, you’re right.
Are you familiar with Andrew Lang’s Letters to Dead Authors? Perhaps it’s a
genre worthy of revival as a regular feature of the sub stack.
Yes and perhaps.
Dear Mr. Hart,
I have long admired your many writings, but when I saw that you'd published an essay on Proust, I knew I had to subscribe immediately. As it happens I've read only the first thirty pages or so of In Search of Lost Time (I learned very quickly in my search for a good translation that 'Remembrance of Things Past' was one of Moncrieff's many small but significant blunders); but I found those first thirty pages so deliciously tantalising (and a welcome break from the beige, staccato, periodic sentences of so much contemporary fiction) that I ordered the full box set (Kilmartin revision) for my upcoming birthday.
I was going to spend the summer reading Moby-Dick. It occured to me, however, that some novels demand to be read in certain seasons, and Moby-Dick seems to me a winter novel. I hope that Proust gives me as much pleasure this summer as he clearly gave you. Many thanks!
A little musical accompaniment for your Proust reading. I especially love the Reynaldo Hahn piece, À Chloris.
It appears there are several releases now available of Proust’s “salon music!”
https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-concert-at-the-time-of-proust/1555027266
I apologize for the following post—it’s fulsome and probably cringey, but I can’t help it. Thank you--especially for the closing meditation, which creates a kind of polyphonic effect for me when I think of one of my favorite moments early in volume I. The narrator wants to learn Bergotte's view on every possible subject: "I had no doubt that [Bergotte's opinion] would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be beautiful and right… [In such moments] it was suddenly revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.” In these and other passages I have often felt that I was encountering the richest vision of a participatory metaphysics—something akin to but maybe even better than Phaedrus, Symposium, or Ion. To find my suspicions confirmed here—by you—is to feel something of the very same elation the narrator describes in the passage I quote. Like I said, sorry for the cloying praise… I’ll just go back to weeping on my iPad now as if I am in the arms of a long-lost father.
That passage, of course--les clochers de Martinville--has been an object of countless scholarly and critical treatments. It's a perfect example of Proust's ability to evoke a sense of mystery and even epiphany out of what would normally seem on ordinary experience.
Who's the Italian translator, by the way?