Lights: Marcel Proust
Fredosor.com
In search of times past
Below you will find some stimulating thoughts I have taken out of Marcel Proust's monumental work on "Remembrance of things past". I have started by giving the thought in French, and then produced it in English. A more thorough version, with explanatory texts in addition, is given in my book on the same subject which you can find free of charge on the site www.fredosor.org .
Drops of remembrance
· L’impuissance où on est de trouver du plaisir quand on se contente de le chercher.
« The pursuit of happiness » is seen as a fundamental right for all individuals. However, paradoxically, those who search for happiness will never find it. The reason is simple. You cannot define happiness in an operative way.
Happiness is something you find when you are looking for other things. The more important these things you are looking for are to you, the happier you will be when you find them.
· Les durs sont des faibles dont on a pas voulu, et les forts – se souciant peu qu’on veuille où non d’eux – ont seuls cette douceur que le vulgaire prend pour de la faiblesse.
A tough-minded person is a weak person who seeks comfort within a hard shell, because of an accumulated deficiency of attention, affection and love from parents, family and friends. A strong person, having no such feeling of deficiency, has these soft and friendly manners that vulgar people mistake for weakness.
· apprenant à chercher notre plaisir ailleurs que dans les satisfactions du bien-être et de la vanité
Material well-being and self-esteem is comfortable, up to a certain point. When material well-being passes the point of sufficiency, it gives way to a number of mixed feelings. Many properties bring along the need to spend time using them, maintaining them and managing them. They also increase the need to protect them and raise the fear of losing them.
When self-esteem tips over into vanity, it creates a distance to other people and human relations are reduced in quality and quantity.
In this situation, quality of life is increased through other aims than increasing material well-being and inflating self-esteem.
The real value of material sufficiency is that it produces freedom. If you use your wealth to accumulate property, you reduce your freedom proportionately.
Self-esteem is another form of self-respect. This is necessary for your personal well-being. It gives you peace of mind. You do not feel that you have prove anything to justify your existence or to receive the respect of other people. You become less dependent on what other people think of you, because you know who you are and you alone decide whether that is good enough or not. If you are not satisfied with your situation, you will produce ambitions to correct the situation – but these ambitions then stem from your own will – and not from pressure from other people. If you feel insecure about your own worth, you will either produce an excess of self-esteem (vanity) as an act of compensation or a depreciation of your own self (inferiority complexes) because you compare yourself to other people who you think are more successful than you in some areas of life that you attach importance to.
Whereas vanity produces a distance between you and those you meet, inferiority complexes reduce the value other people attach to you and thereby also reduce the potential for good social relations.
· Je m’imaginais, comme tout le monde, que le cerveau des autres était un receptacle inerte et docile, sans pouvoir de reaction spécifique sur ce qu’on y introduisait
A lack of empathy tends to give the impression that other people’s brains are static and docile containers where you can unload any kind of behavior without causing reactions of any kind. Although it may be problematic to try to guess people’s reactions to everything you say and do, it is important to be aware that what you say and do has an effect on those you meet. This does not mean that you should worry about what other people think about you, as long as you reflect on what you do and act according to your convictions. It does mean, however, that the quality of your communication and your human relations get better if you maintain that awareness.
· mon repos qui….supportait, pareil au repos d’une main immobile au milieu d’une eau courante, le choc et l’animation d’un torrent d’activité
If you think that you can maintain a stable, unchanging situation for yourself by being motionless or non-active – this is an illusion. Circumstances around you change all the time, and if you do not face those changes in a conscious way, you will be driven here and there – like a leaf in a stream. If you are in a given situation, and wish to stay in that situation, you need to be conscious of the forces acting on that situation, how they can change your situation – and how you need to act to keep the stability of your situation. The most obvious example is if you are the head of a large company and wish to stay on as that.
· l’ingéniosité du premier romancier consista à comprendre que dans l’appareil de nos emotions, l’image étant le seul element essentiel, la simplification qui consisterait à supprimer purement et simplement les personages reels serait un perfectionnement decisif
The creativity of the first novelist was to understand that in the moving of our emotions the images that are created in our minds are the essence. Whether you use real or invented persons to create these images is irrelevant. The strength of the effect of these images on us will of course depend on the extent to which they are relevant to the questions we ask ourselves in our daily lives. In that respect we need to feel that the images are real, in order to be of concern to us. The novelist must therefore be able to create real life in those persons he uses in his novels, be they imaginary or not.
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· On cherche à retrouver dans les choses, devenues par là précieuses, le reflet que notre âme a projeté sur elles
The things that move us derive an increased emotional value from the reflection of our soul that has been projected in them. Images we carry in our heads have been created in a given context. The whole context has received that magic reflection. When we re-visit a place or an object, the context may no longer be the same – and the magic may be gone.
· je fus frappé pour la première fois de ce désaccord entre nos impressions et leur expression habituelle
There is a distance between our impressions and the words we use to express them. This distance becomes even greater when we wish to convey these impressions to other persons, who may not associate the same things we do with the words we use. We thus face two hurdles when we wish to convey a feeling to another person. First, we need to find those words that – according to ourselves – express the feeling in the best possible way. Secondly, we need to think about whether those words will convey the same feeling to the other person we communicate with. Most probably, that other person will not associate the same feelings with those words we use – because their experience and the associations of experience with the content of words will not be the same. Therefore, images may be more efficient than words in many situations where feelings are to be conveyed.
· et mon imagination reprenant des forces au contact de ma sensualité, ma sensualité se répandant dans tous les domaines de mon imagination, mon désir n’avait plus de limites
My Imagination gathered strength by its contact with my Sensuality. As my Sensuality spread out to all parts of my Imagination, my Desire was now without limits. By allowing sensuality and imagination to interact with each other, various degrees of desire are produced.
· la position mondaine où ils vivent cantonnés jusqu’à leur mort, se contentant de finir par appeler plaisirs, faute de mieux, une fois qu’ils sont parvenus à s’y habituer, les divertissements médiocres ou les supportables ennuis qu’elle renferme
We are born into a given context, raised with a number of rules of behavior, and expected to contribute in society with certain types of work or activities. Some people passively accept these contexts, rules and expectations as the framework within which they are going to live, and live their lives accordingly – with few surprises and challenges, and little excitement. Others actively reflect on their situation and decide on the degree to which they wish to lead that life. Some find peace and pleasure in going down that road, while others feel that this is not what they want – and make large or small breaks with the expectations they are met with. It is up to each person to define what they want in life, but it is necessary to reflect on the context you are in and the choices you make – whether you make them actively on your own initiative or passively by accepting what others have decided for you.
· Leur amabilité, séparé de tout snobisme et de la peur de paraitre trop aimable, devenue indépendante, a cette aisance, cette grâce de mouvements de ceux dont les membres assouplis exécutent exactement ce qu’ils veulent, sans participation indiscrète et maladroite du reste du corps
Their friendliness, void of any kind of snobbery or fear of appearing too kind – and thereby independent, has this ease and grace of those whose bodily parts do exactly what they want, without the indiscrete and clumsy involuntary participation of the rest of their body.
If you are not yourself, but try to be someone you are not, your body language is going to let you down at some stage. The higher the tension between the person you are and the person you are trying to be, the more frequently and more violently your body language is going to react adversely to the things you do and say – in this way showing people your fear and hypocrisy, and belying your words and actions.
· comme on voit les gens incertains si le spectacle de la mer et le bruit de ses vagues sont délicieux, s’en convaincre ainsi que de la rare qualité de leur gouts désintéressés, en louant cent francs par jour la chambre d’hôtels qui leur permet de les goûter
Even if they are uncertain about whether the sight of the sea and the sound of the waves are nice or not, the price they pay per night at the hotel convinces them that it must be nice – and they also get the feeling that they have a refined taste for the immaterial values.
The deceptiveness of the market, in assigning values to things and activities, consists in telling us what things are worth – even if we do not at the outset see any need for those things. By assigning values in the way it does, the market induces us to like, and maybe to want, things we did not think we needed. In this way, the market may also replace our own independent judgment if we do not reflect actively on our own preferences. This in turn will lead us into choices that the market tells us to make, instead of making our own conscious choices. The most evident example is when you buy clothes on sale because the price is very much lower than its “ordinary” price, while at the same time not asking yourself whether you are going to wear it.
· Ce n’est pas pour rien, se disait-il maintenant, que depuis que les gens jugent leur prochain, c’est sur ses actes. Il n’y a que cela qui signifie quelque chose, et nullement ce que nous disons, ce que nous pensons. (cf. aussi Malraux)
The existentialists, with Jean Paul Sartre as the main intellectual leader, contended that life confronted the individual with a series of choices to be made. The essence of life is the necessity to make choices and to live with the choices you make. Whether you take an active stand and make your choices as a result of your own initiatives, or stay passive and allow circumstances to make the choices for you, you are confronted with the consequences of your choices. You cannot escape these consequences, and you have to accept them squarely as part of what your life is all about.
André Malraux, in line with this, said that man is to be judged by his acts. What he thinks and what he says is of no consequence. It is only his acts that count. As Ibsen also said: “To think it, yes. To want it, yes. But to do it? That is another matter!!” If Marcel Proust had not written down his thoughts, we would never had known them – and he would not have existed in our minds.
· dans la confusion de l’existence, il est rare qu’un bonheur vienne justement se poser sur le désir qui l’avait réclamé.
In the confusion of existence, it is rare that a Happiness comes to place itself on the Desire that corresponds to it.
A stroke of luck, if it happens, seldom comes at the moment when you would wish it to come. A stroke of luck may not seem as such, if it comes unexpectedly. An occasion may have to be perceived as such, and seized quickly when it occurs. To have an open mind, with the capacity to seize the stroke of luck when it is occurring, is essential. Very often we do not perceive an event as a stroke of luck until it is too late. The moment when this occurrence could be acted upon, has passed. Either we reacted too late, or we did not at that moment see the event in the appropriate light or context.
The capacity to see the potential an event carries with it, is unevenly distributed. Some people look for the possibilities in all situations, take initiatives and find solutions. Others only see problems and hopelessness.
· Les princes se savent princes, ne sont pas snobs et se croient d’ailleurs tellement au-dessus de ce qui n’est pas leur sang que grands seigneurs et bourgeois leur apparaissent, au-dessous d’eux, presque au meme niveau.
Princes know that they are princes. They are not snobs, and they believe that they are in a social sphere so much above those who are not of their blood, that upper class and lower class bourgeoisie seem – from their perspective – almost at the same level.
Social stratification is something almost everybody is engaged in, either consciously or unconsciously. The closer you come to your own social sphere, the more nuanced you become in classifying people. The further away from your own sphere or stratum you move, the less difference you perceive between people of those remote strata.
· comme les nouveaux décorés qui, dés qu’ils le sont, voudraient voir se fermer aussitôt le robinet des croix, Mme Bontemps eût souhaité qu’après elle personne de son monde à elle ne fût présenté à la princesse
People who have just been decorated would, afterwards, like to see as few people as possible decorated with the same order. The desire to be exclusive brings on all sorts of funny attitudes and behaviours.
· Mais on ne trouve jamais aussi hauts qu’on les avait éspérés, une cathédrale, une vague dans la tempête, le bond d’un danseur
Your expectations, when you are going to see them in reality, are always higher than your experience of the actual cathedral, the wave in the storm or the jump of the ballet dancer.
· les propos que nous avons entendus, sont là qui obstruent l’entrée de notre conscience, et commandent beaucoup plus les issues de notre mémoire que celles de notre imagination, ils rétroagissent d’avantage sur notre passé que nous ne sommes plus maîtres de voir sans tenir compte d’eux, que sur la forme, restée libre, de notre avenir (cf.aussi Bachelard, L’Intuition de l’instant)
What people say about events in the past come in as obstructions to our own thoughts and imagination of that same past. Their words shape our perception of our past. Proust says that this is less the case as regards the future, where our imagination is more free. Is that true? I am not so sure. Many people talk about the future, and their thoughts act similarly on the selection process of our imagination, as their thoughts on the past act on the selection process of our memory.
Bachelard (when dividing time in three: past, present, and future) talks about the ghosts of the past and the illusions on the future. In his words, only the present is real. Our notions of the past are full of ghosts consisting of our own obsessions, as well as other people’s contentions and ways of thinking. Our ideas about the future are heavily influenced by our desires and fears, which float freely in our imagination in the form of illusions.
· · Mes parents cependant auraient souhaité que l’intelligence que Bergotte m’avait reconnue se manifestât par quelque travail remarquable
His parents had hoped that the intelligence he possessed would have led to some remarkable work or other.
The possession of intelligence says nothing about how you convert that intelligence into action and results. Acting on an idea is an entirely different thing than having the idea. Acting requires initiative, a quality of a different kind than the capacity to think. The act requires decisions on a range of factors: What kind of action are you thinking about? Expressing the idea in writing? What kind of writing? In what kind of media? Launching of a product? Who do you expect to be interested in your product? Who will produce it? With what resources?
· ce genre de plaisir tout passif que trouve à rester tranquille quelqu’un qui est alourdi par une mauvaise digestion
The pleasure of staying passive and remaining immobile when you are incapacitated by a bad digestion.
· ce qu’on a obtenu n’est jamais qu’un nouveau point de départ pour desirer d’avantage
What you have obtained is the starting point for desiring something more. Your imagination is always on its way to the future, it never stays calmly on the spot. And the future builds on the building blocks of the present. A total break from the present is never possible, because even a break from the present will need to define itself in relation to the accumulation of the characteristics that define the present.
· En réalité, dans l’amour il y a une souffrance permanente, que la joie neutralize, rend virtuelle, ajourne, mais qui peut à tout moment devenir ce qu’elle serait depuis longtemps si l’on avait pas obtenu ce qu’on souhaitait, atroce
Love is a permanent suffering which is neutralized temporarily by joy, but which can at any moment become - what it would have been if we had not obtained what we desired – atrocious.
· C’est alors à la dernière seconde que la possession du Bonheur nous est enlevée, ou plutôt c’est cette possession meme que par une ruse diabolique la nature détruit. Ayant échoué dans tout ce qui était du domaine des faits et de la vie, c’est une impossibilité dernière, l’impossibilité psychologique du Bonheur que la nature crée
At the precise moment when we obtain Happiness, it is – by a devilish twist of nature – taken away from us. It seems impossible to hold on to it, it slides out of our hands. Having failed in everything related to acts and life, it is this last impossibility that nature has created for us – the impossibility of holding on to Happiness.
· Chaque jour depuis des années je calquais tant bien que mal mon état d’âme sur celui de la veille
Every day for years I had, to the best of my capacity, placed my state of mind up in comparison to the one of the day before.
· A un moment où je dénombrais les pensées qui avaient rempli mon esprit pendant les minutes precedentes
At one moment, I counted the thoughts that had filled my mind in the minutes preceding…
· Mais par ce matin de voyage l’interruption de la routine de mon existence, le changement de lieu et d’heure avaient rendu leur présence indispensable (merknad: la présence des facultés). Mon habitude qui était sédentaire et n’était pas matinale faisait défaut, et toutes mes facultes étaient accourues pour la remplacer, rivalisant entre elles de zèle – s’élevant toutes, comme des vagues, à un meme niveau inaccoutumé – de la plus basse à la plus noble, de la respiration, de l’appétit, et de la circulation sanguine à la sensibilité et à l’imagination
In this morning of travel, the interruption of the routinely chores of my existence called for the indispensable presence of all my faculties. My habits could not be called on, since they were out of their normal context. In their place, all my faculties jumped to the occasion and with great eagerness competed for my attention – rising up as waves at an unexpected level. They were there, from the lowliest to the noblest, the breath, the appetite, the blood circulation, the sensibility and the imagination…
· je cherchais à imaginer le directeur de l’hotel de Balbec pour qui j’étais, en ce moment inexistant, et j’aurais voulu me presenter à lui dans une compagnie plus préstigieuse que celle de ma grand’mère qui allait certainement lui demander des rabais. Il m’apparaissait comme empreint d’une morgue certaine, mais très vague de contours
I tried to imagine what the director of the hotel would look like, and I would have liked to present myself to him in a more prestigious company than my grandmother, who would most certainly ask for a reduced rate for the hotel rooms. He appeared to my mind with vague contours, but with an air of dignity.
· les boutons extirpés dans la figure du directeur cosmopolite (en réalité naturalisé Monégasque, bien qu’il fût – comme il disait parce qu’il employait toujours des expressions qu’il croyait distinguées, sans s’apercevoir qu’elles étaient vicieuses – “d’originalité roumaine”)
The acné in the face of the cosmopolitan director (who in reality was a naturalized citizen of Monaco, although he was, as he said - because he always used words which he thought were distinguished, without realizing that they were treacherous – “of Romanian originality”)…
· Je n’étais pas encore assez âgé et j’étais resté trop sensible pour avoir renoncé au désir de plaire aux êtres et de les posséder
I was not old enough, and I had remained too sensitive, to renounce the desire to please other people and to possess them
· et c’est la suppression de tout désir, de la curiosité pour les formes de la vie qu’on ne connait pas, de l’espoir de plaire à de nouveaux êtres, remplacés chez ces femmes par un dédain simulé, par une allègresse factice, qui avait l’inconvénient de leur faire mettre du déplaisir sous l’étiquette de contentement et se mentir perpétuellement à elle-mêmes, deux conditions pour qu’elles fussent malheureuses
The suppression of all desires, of the curiosity for the forms of life we do not know about, of the hope to please new acquaintances, were replaced in these women by a simulated disdain, by an artificial vitality that had the inconvenience of introducing displeasure disguised as satisfaction and of generating perpetual self-deception – two conditions that made them unhappy. (on the social conduct of upper class women in the Parisian society)
This description still holds for social conduct today. People who are preoccupied by social classes, and who have aspirations to rise to higher social strata – or who demonstrably want to show that they do not care – generally invent for themselves a role that they want to play and advertise. This role that they define for themselves almost never coincides with their actual social position nor does it coincide with their actual personality traits. From this point on, their life becomes a constant stress caused by the difference between the image of themselves that they want to project and their natural self.
· la garden-party hebdomadaire que sa femme et lui donnanient, dépeuplait l’hôtel d’une grande partie de ses habitants parce qu’un ou deux d’entre eux étaient invites à ces fêtes, et parce que les autres, pour ne pas avoir l’air de ne pas l’être, choissisaient ce jour-là pour faire une excursion éloignée
The weekly Garden Party that he and his wife gave, led to an almost total exodus from the hotel on that day. One or two of the guests because they were invited to the party, and the others – not wanting to show that they were not invited – chose that day to embark on an extensive excursion. (on life in a posh vacation hotel)
· comment aurais-je pu croire à une communauté d’origine entre deux noms qui étaient entrés en moi l’un par la porte basse et honteuse de l’expérience, l’autre par la porte d’or de l’imagination?
How could I have imagined that those two names had a common social origin, one having come into my mind through the low and shameful door of experience and the other having come through the golden door of my imagination?
With close acquaintances you acquire knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. They are human. People you only observe at a distance tend to be mysterious and glorified, especially if they are in a family with an important past.
· Alors il voulut s’excuser mais selon le mode qui est justement celui de l’homme mal élevé, lequel est trop heureux en revenant sur ses paroles de trouver une occasion de les aggraver
Having made a stupid remark that you would wish you had not made, it is generally a bad idea to try to “repair” it. Most attempts at such “repairs” end up with you digging your hole even deeper.
· Il vivait dans le monde des à peu près, où l’on salue dans le vide, où l’on juge dans le faux. L’inexactitude, l’incompétence, n’y diminue pas l’assurance, au contraire
He lived in the world of approximations, throwing his salutations into empty space and making false judgments. Lack of precision and incompetence did not reduce his self-assurance – on the contrary. Stupidity and self-satisfaction often go hand in hand.
· Même dans les cas où la multiplication des faibles avantages personnels par l’amour propre ne suffirait pas à assurer à chacun la dose de bonheur, supérieure à celle accordé aux autres, qui lui est nécessaire, l’envie est la pour combler la difference. Il est vrai que si l’envie s’exprime en phrases dédaigneuses, il faut traduire: “Je ne veux pas le connaître” par “je ne peux pas le connaître »
Even if the sum of personal advantages would not be sufficient to ensure, with the help of his personal pride, the dose of happiness exceeding that of other people which would be necessary for him, his feeling of envy would be there to make up for the difference. Envy is expressed through disdain, and when he says “I don’t wish to know them” it can be translated as “I am not in a position to get to know them”.
The need to feel socially superior to others leads to all sorts of false behavior, with disdain, envy, flattery and posing being the most frequent. All forms of social competition lead to psychological distortions.
· Si un peu de rêve est dangereux, ce qui en guérit, ce n’est pas moins de rêve, mais plus de rêve, mais tout le rêve. Il importe qu’on connaisse entièrement ses rêves pour n’en plus souffrir
If a little dreaming may be dangerous, what cures it is not less dreaming, but more dreaming – the whole dream. It is important to know the whole dream, in its entirety, in order not to suffer from it.
Vague dreams are psychologically dangerous, because they lead to vague desires for a different life than the one you lead. This in turn gives you a feeling of missing out on something important, even though you do not know what it is. You need to know the dream in its entirety, in order to judge whether that dream is worth following. You cannot make choices unless the alternatives you see for your life are properly and precisely outlined.
Dreams are necessary to nourish your imagination and ambitions, but they must not be allowed to stay vague for too long.
· Au fur et à mesure qu’on descend dans l’échelle sociale, le snobisme s’accroche à des riens qui ne sont peut-être pas plus nuls que les distinctions de l’aristocratie, mais qui plus obscurs, plus particuliers à chacun, surprennent d’avantage
As you move down the social ladder, snobbism ties itself up to insignificant things that may not be more ridiculous or insignificant than those distinctions aristocrats make, but they are often more obscure, more particular to each individual – and therefore more surprising.
· Mon intelligence jugeait ce plaisir fort peu précieux, depuis qu’il était assuré. Mais en moi la volonté ne partagea pas un instant cette illusion, la volonté qui est le serviteur, persévérant et immuable, de nos personnalités successives, cachée dans l’ombre, dédaignée, inlassablement fidèle, travaillant sans cesse, et sans se soucier de variations de notre moi, à ce qu’il ne manque jamais du nécessaire. Pendant qu’au moment où va se réaliser un voyage desiré, l’intelligence et la sensibilité commencent à se demander s’il vaut vraiment la peine d’être entrepris, la volonté qui sait que ces maîtres oisifs recommenceraient immédiatement à trouver merveilleux ce voyage, si celui ci ne pouvait avoir lieu, la volonté les laisse disserter devant la gare, multiplier les hesitations; mais elle s’occupe de prendre les billets et de nous mettre en wagon pour l’heure du depart. Elle est aussi invariable que l’intelligence et la sensibilité sont changeantes
My intelligence felt that this pleasure was of limited interest, since I had already obtained it. My will, however, was not sharing this illusion. My will is a stable and reliable servant, working constantly and not letting itself be influenced by the instability of my sensibility and my intelligence. My intelligence and sensibility keep wanting things that I don’t have, but lose interest when I am about to obtain what they have up to then wanted.
· il ne pouvait jamais “rester sans rien faire” quoiqu’il ne fît d’ailleurs jamais rien
He could never stay “without doing anything”, even though he never actually did anything.
· nous ne sommes pas comme des bâtiments à qui on peut ajouter des pierres du dehors, mais comme des arbres qui tirent de leur propre sève le noeud suivant de leur tige, l’étage supérieur de leur frondaison
We are not buildings which you can add building blocks to, but more like trees that develop branches from the juices drawn from their roots.
If we add competence or responsibilities to ourselves, these will be shaped by our personality and our experiences, and take on forms that may be very different from the effects of adding the same competences or responsibilities to another person.
· Et comme une idée, continuai-je, est quelque chose qui ne peut participer aux intérêts humains et ne pourrait jouir de leurs avantages, les hommes d’une idée ne sont pas influencés par l’intérêt
An idea is something that is not interested in human endeavours and interests. It has nothing to gain in the form of human advantages. Similarly, men who are absorbed by an idea are not influenced by human interests.
This is a good way to express the nature of idealists. If you pursue an idea for its own sake, all other interests are relegated to the background.
· C’est que, ce que nous éprouvons, comme nous sommes décidés à toujours le cacher, nous n’avons jamais pensé à la facon dont nous l’exprimerions
Our innermost thoughts and feelings, those that we are determined not to divulge, are the hardest to express – since we have never thought about how we would express them.
This is why, if we are taken by surprise and asked about precisely these thoughts and feelings, we generally are pretty clumsy in expressing ourselves in such situations – unless we are able to remain firm and abstain from talking in these cases.
· Me le présenter! Mais il faut que vous ayez bien peu le sentiment des valeurs! On ne me connaît pas si facilement que ca. Dans le cas actuel l’inconvenance serait double à cause de la juvénilité du présentateur et de l’indignité du présenté
To present him to me! You really have a limited sense of values! I am not as easily accessible as that. In this particular case the error of judgment would be two-fold: firstly because of the youthfulness of the person who presents me, and secondly because of the unsuitability of the person to be presented to me.
The unwritten rules of the nobility and the bourgeoisie are many and complicated to grasp for those who look for the simplicity in life.
· situé à l’entrée obscure de la région où les Guermantes jugeaient, ce génie vigilant empêchait les Guermantes de trouver l’homme intelligent ou de trouver la femme charmante s’ils n’avaient pas de valeur mondaine, actuelle ou future
In the obscure region of the mind where the Guermantes were judging people, there was this vigilant guard which made it impossible for the Guermantes to find man or a woman intelligent or charming if they had no social value (in the sense of “social ranking”) – in the present or anticipated for the future.
In certain social classes there are criteria by which people are judged, very severe criteria which completely obstruct the social vision of the members of these classes – in such a way that they are unable to see the qualities of people who do not fulfill these criteria, and correspondingly blinded by people who exceed the critical values of these criteria (be they income, degree of blue blood, degree of credentials related to rurality, culture, proletariat, urbanity, etc).
· de sorte que la pureté même du langage de la duchesse était un signe de limitation, et qu’en elle et l’intelligence et la sensibilité étaient restées fermées à toutes les nouveautés
The purity of the duchess’ language was a sign of limitation, a sign that her intelligence and her sensibility had stayed closed to all types of new impulses.
An interesting analogy to this is what we find in dog-breeding circles, where the obsession for purity and nobility in race is such that it leads to more and more in-breeding – followed by more and more degenerated animals. The purity of the language, closed for all new vocabulary, becomes stale, stiff and invalid – if no new words are allowed in as society evolves.
· cette séduisante vigeur des corps souples qu’aucune épuisante réflexion, nul souci moral ou trouble nerveux n’ont altérée
This seductive vigor of smooth bodies that no exhausting reflexion, no moral worry or no nervous trouble have altered.
A life where no sort of challenge has taken place, leaves the body untouched. Over time, aging shows no particularities and leads to a completely bland and expressionless physiognomy – void of traces of life and personality.
· Chacun des convives du dîner, affublant le nom mystérieux sous lequel je l’avais seulement connu et rêvé à distance, d’un corps et d’une intelligence pareils ou inférieurs à ceux de toutes les personnes que je connaissais, m’avait donné l’impression de plate vulgarité que peut donner l’entrée dans le port danois d’Elseneur à tout lecteur enfiévré d’Hamlet
The guests at the dinner, with illustrious names that I had hitherto only known and dreamt about from a distance, with bodies and intelligence equal or inferior to all the persons I knew, had given me the impression of flat vulgarity that you might get if – as a feverish reader of Hamlet – you entered the port of Elsinor.
Your imagination will always lead you astray if you judge people from a distance, and especially if you do so for any given person for a longer period of time. You end up producing myths, good or bad, about people. This is a typical feature of the celebrity media, making gods out of people when they are in fashion and demons when they are out of fashion. Reality, in contrast, may seem flat and bland – but generally more nuanced and interesting.
· les fêtes de ce genre sont en général anticipées. Elle n’ont guère de réalité que le lendemain, où elles occupent l’attention des personnes qui n’ont pas été invitées
Parties of that kind contain much anticipation. They hardly have any reality before the next day, when people talk about who was invited and who was not invited.
The general preoccupation with being “in” or “out” generates much attention to networks and the social ranking of different networks. Great, publicly known parties generate interest because of the guest list and what that might tell about people’s social ranking and networks. What actually happens in these parties is not considered very interesting, and generally is not very interesting.
· Depuis qu’il existe des chemins de fer, la nécessité de ne pas manquer le train nous a appris à tenir compte des minutes
After the invention of the railroads, it has been necessary to keep track of time – in order not to miss the train.
· Elle avait pris depuis de longues années, par peur de rebuffades, l’habitude de se tenir à sa place, de rester dans son coin, dans la vie comme dans le train, et d’attendre pour donner la main qu’on lui eût dit bonjour
She had taken - since many years, from fear of being reprimanded - the habit of staying in place, in her corner, in life as in the train, and to wait for people to say hello before she would stretch out her hand.
Taking initiative – or waiting for others to take it – that is the question!
· Les plaisirs qu’on a dans le sommeil, on ne les fait pas figurer dans le compte des plaisirs éprouvés au cours de l’existence
The pleasures we have in sleep are not counted by us among the pleasures of life.
It seems like a paradox that sleep, which has such an important role in determining our quality of life, does not enter into our “accounting” of what we value in life.
· un peu vielli par les excés de champagne et voyant venir l’heure nécessaire de l’eau de Contrexéville
.having grown older from excesses of champagne, and seeing in the horizon the unavoidable hour of Contrexeville water…
· ils me rappelaient que mon sort était de ne poursuivre que des fantômes, des êtres dont la réalité, pour une bonne part, était dans mon imagination; il y a des êtres en effet – et c’avait été dés la jeunesse, mon cas – pour qui tout ce qui a une valeur fixe, constatable par d’autres, la fortune, le succès, les hautes situations, ne comptent pas; ce qu’il leur faut, ce sont des fantômes
They reminded me that my fate was to pursue ghosts, beings that – for a large part – were in my imagination. There are beings for whom, in effect, everything that has a fixed, tangible value – which others can ascertain – fortune, success, high positions, do not count. What they need are ghosts.
Donatello: “Speak to me!” (to his statue, upon its completion); Michelangelo: ideas and feelings were more real to him than the material objects. ; Kittelsen: “Han som aldri har sett et troll!”
· Il y a une chose plus difficile encore que de s’astreindre à un régime, c’est de ne pas l’imposer aux autres
There is one thing that is harder than imposing a diet on yourself, and that is to refrain from imposing it on others.
· J’avais promis à Albertine que, si je ne sortais pas avec elle, je me mettrais au travail: mais le lendemain, comme si, profitant de nos sommeils, la maison avait miraculeusement voyagé, je m’éveillais par un temps different, sous un autre climat. On ne travaille pas au moment où on débarque dans un pays nouveau, aux conditions duquel il faut s’adapter. Or, chaque jour était pour moi un pays différent. Ma paresse elle-même, sous les formes nouvelles qu’elle revêtait, comment l’eussé-je reconnue?
I had promised that I would start my work. However, the next day – as if it had taken advantage of my sleep – my house had changed character, it had travelled to a different time, to another climate. You don’t work when you come to a different place, where you have to adapt; and each day was for me a new country. How could I recognize my own laziness, when it took on different forms from day to day?
· On se rappelle la vérité parce qu’elle a un nom, des racines anciennes; mais un mensonge improvisé s’oublie vite
You remember the truth, because it has a name, and it has old roots. An improvised lie is quickly forgotten. When you stick to the truth, you will seldom contradict yourself.
· Y avait-il dans l’art une réalité plus profonde où notre personnalité véritable trouve une expression que ne lui donnent pas les actions de la vie ? Chaque grand artiste semble, en effet, si différent des autres, et nous donne tant cette sensation de l’individualité que nous cherchons en vain dans l’existence quotidienne
Is there in art a reality more profound where our real personality finds an expression that daily acts of life do not generate? Every great artist seems in effect so different from the others, and gives us so strongly this feeling of individuality that we look for in vain in daily life.
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· le mensonge est si peu exigeant, a besoin de si peu de chose pour se manifester
The lie is so undemanding. It requires so little to show itself.
Life is so complicated that many people feel the necessity to resort to lies, big or small, to get out of situations they feel that they don’t master.
· Mme Verdurin, quand elle se sentait devoir à quelqu’un une reconnaissance qui allait lui peser, et ne pouvait le tuer pour la peine, lui découvrait un défaut grave qui dispensait honnêtement de la lui témoigner
When Mrs.Verdurin felt that she was in debt to another person in such a way that it would bother her, and since she could not materially kill that person, she would find a serious fault with that person – effectively dispensing her from the need to deal with that debt.
· J’ai même diné chez lui, dans sa nouvelle demeure, où on s’assomme autant, au milieu du plus grand luxe, qu’on s’amusait jadis quand, tirant le diable par la queue, il assemblait la meilleure compagnie dans un petit grenier
I have even dined with him, in his new home, where we bored ourselves as utterly surrounded by great luxury, as we had fun in great poverty when, in a little attic, he had assembled the greatest of company.
As long as you have covered your basic needs, it is your family and friends that make up your real life, not you material possessions.
· Pour se représenter une situation inconnue l’imagination emprunte des éléments connus et à cause de cela ne se la représente pas
When facing an unknown situation, our imagination seeks the help of known elements, thereby being unable to see the novelty of the situation.
Using known elements to form analogies when facing a new, unknown situation, is an efficient way of dealing with the situation when time is scarce. However, it may also cause us to oversee the truly new elements that this situation offers us. We may therefore be well advised to go, analytically, back to the situation afterwards, in order to examine carefully whether the new elements contained important new information.
· Soulevant un coin du voile lourd de l’habitude (l’habitude abêtissante qui pendant tout le cours de notre vie nous cache à peu près tout l’univers, et, dans une nuit profonde, sous leur étiquette inchangée, substitue aux poisons les plus dangereux ou les plus enivrants de la vie quelque chose d’anodin qui ne procure pas de délices)
Habit is a heavy, thick curtain which hides most of the universe – this universe which is in constant motion – shielding us from the dangers and joys of new impulses.
· depuis la faveur dont jouissent les exercises physiques, l’oisiveté à pris une forme sportive, même en dehors des heures de sport et qui se traduit par une vivacité fébrile qui croit ne pas laisser à l’ennui le temps ni la place de se développer
Now that physical exercise has become so popular, spare time has taken on an active, sporty form which creates a frenetic vivacity that leaves boredom neither the time nor the place to develop.
The idea that time has to be spent efficiently, without waste, is stimulating stress and social competitiveness – and in the process, leaving less time for introspection and the search for mental balance.
· Les classes d’esprit n’ont pas égard à la naissance
Spirit does not occupy itself with classes of birth
· Tant de fois, au cours de ma vie, la réalité m’avait décu parce que, au moment où je la percevais, mon imagination, qui était mon seul organe pour jouir de la beauté, ne pouvait s’appliquer à elle, en vertu de la loi inévitable qui veut qu’on ne puisse imaginer que ce qui est absent
So often, during the course of my life, I had been disappointed by reality, because at the very moment I perceived it, my imagination – which is my only organ for enjoyment of beauty – could not apply itself to it, since you can only imagine what is absent.
Reality will very rarely be in a position to compete with imagination, especially when imagination has been given time to work on a subject which will later be visited. Imagination leaves out everything that is unwanted and magnifies everything that is desired – be it in a positive or a negative vein.
· Une heure n’est pas qu’une heure, c’est un vase rempli de parfums, de sons, de projets et de climats. Ce que nous appelons la réalité est un certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs qui nous entourent simultanément
An hour is not only an hour, it is a vase filled with perfumes, sounds, projects and climates. What we call reality is a certain relation between these sensations and the memories which surround us at that time.
· le seul livre vrai, un grand écrivain n’a pas, dans le sens courant, à l’inventer puisqu’il existe déja en chacun de nous, mais à le traduire. Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur
The only true book needs not to be invented by the writer. It already exists in each and every one of us, and the real task is to translate it. The writer’s task is that of a translator.
The strongest books are those where the writer manages to transpose his or her inner feelings and experiences in an authentic way, making these feelings and experiences seem so real that they touch the reader’s own feelings and experiences.
· Le rêve était encore un de ces faits de ma vie qui m’avait toujours le plus frappé, qui avait dû le plus servir à me convaincre du caractère purement mental de la réalité, et dont je ne dédaignerais pas l’aide dans la composition de mon oeuvre
The dream was one of those facts of life that had been striking me the most, and had convinced me of the purely mental character of reality. I would make sure to make use of the help of dreams in the making of my work.
· seule la perception grossière et erronnée place tout dans l’objet quand tout, au contraire, est dans l’esprit
Only a gross and erroneous perception places everything in the object, when – on the contrary – everything is in the spirit.
· le Temps qui d’habitude n’est pas visible, qui pour le devenir cherche des corps et, partout où il les rencontre, s’en empare pour montrer sur eux sa lanterne magique
Time, which in itself is not visible, takes place in bodies and objects and – through them – shows its existence and magic powers.
· L’intérêt de ne pas s’être trompé quand on a émis un prognostic faux abrège la durée du souveninr de ce prognostic et permet d’affirmer très vite qu’on ne l’a pas émis
When you have made a projection and wish to be proven right, you tend to forget very quickly that you actually made that projection if it turns out to be wrong.
· Mais ma mère, au contraire, se faisait à elle-même l’effet de l’avoir emporté dans un concours sur des concurrents de marque, chaque fois qu’une personne de son âge « disparaissait ». Leur mort était la seule manière dont elle prît encore agréablement conscience de sa propre vie.
My mother felt that she was winning a contest against important competitors every time a person among her acquaintances “disappeared”. Their death represented the only way in which she still felt that she was pleasantly alive.
· Beckett sur Proust: les textes de Proust tournent autour d’un Janus à trois faces – le temps – l’habitude – la mémoire. Ces trois élements emprisonnent l’être mentalement. La seule évasion miraculeuse que tolère Sa tyrannie et Sa vigilance, est fournie par la mémoire involontaire (par laquelle surgit les moments magiques du passé).
Beckett has written an essay on Proust, where he points out that Proust’s writing turns around a Janus with three faces: time – habit – memory. These three elements imprison the being’s mental state. The only miraculous evasion tolerated by this Tyranny and this Vigilance is provided by the involontary memory (through which magic moments of the past can filter into the being’s consciousness).
· Ce qui est commun à la fois au présent et au passé est plus essentiel que chacun de ces deux termes pris séparément. (Beckett, op.cit.)
What is common to the present and the past is more essential than each of these terms seen separately.
· L’oeuvre d’art n’est ni crée ni choisie, mais découverte, dévoilée, tiré des obscurités intérieures où elle préexiste chez l’artiste. (Beckett, op.cit.)
The work of art is neither created nor chosen, but discovered, unveiled, drawn from the interior obscurities, where they exist within the artist.
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« The pursuit of happiness » is seen as a fundamental right for all individuals. However, paradoxically, those who search for happiness will never find it. The reason is simple. You cannot define happiness in an operative way.
Happiness is something you find when you are looking for other things. The more important these things you are looking for are to you, the happier you will be when you find them.
· Les durs sont des faibles dont on a pas voulu, et les forts – se souciant peu qu’on veuille où non d’eux – ont seuls cette douceur que le vulgaire prend pour de la faiblesse.
A tough-minded person is a weak person who seeks comfort within a hard shell, because of an accumulated deficiency of attention, affection and love from parents, family and friends. A strong person, having no such feeling of deficiency, has these soft and friendly manners that vulgar people mistake for weakness.
· apprenant à chercher notre plaisir ailleurs que dans les satisfactions du bien-être et de la vanité
Material well-being and self-esteem is comfortable, up to a certain point. When material well-being passes the point of sufficiency, it gives way to a number of mixed feelings. Many properties bring along the need to spend time using them, maintaining them and managing them. They also increase the need to protect them and raise the fear of losing them.
When self-esteem tips over into vanity, it creates a distance to other people and human relations are reduced in quality and quantity.
In this situation, quality of life is increased through other aims than increasing material well-being and inflating self-esteem.
The real value of material sufficiency is that it produces freedom. If you use your wealth to accumulate property, you reduce your freedom proportionately.
Self-esteem is another form of self-respect. This is necessary for your personal well-being. It gives you peace of mind. You do not feel that you have prove anything to justify your existence or to receive the respect of other people. You become less dependent on what other people think of you, because you know who you are and you alone decide whether that is good enough or not. If you are not satisfied with your situation, you will produce ambitions to correct the situation – but these ambitions then stem from your own will – and not from pressure from other people. If you feel insecure about your own worth, you will either produce an excess of self-esteem (vanity) as an act of compensation or a depreciation of your own self (inferiority complexes) because you compare yourself to other people who you think are more successful than you in some areas of life that you attach importance to.
Whereas vanity produces a distance between you and those you meet, inferiority complexes reduce the value other people attach to you and thereby also reduce the potential for good social relations.
· Je m’imaginais, comme tout le monde, que le cerveau des autres était un receptacle inerte et docile, sans pouvoir de reaction spécifique sur ce qu’on y introduisait
A lack of empathy tends to give the impression that other people’s brains are static and docile containers where you can unload any kind of behavior without causing reactions of any kind. Although it may be problematic to try to guess people’s reactions to everything you say and do, it is important to be aware that what you say and do has an effect on those you meet. This does not mean that you should worry about what other people think about you, as long as you reflect on what you do and act according to your convictions. It does mean, however, that the quality of your communication and your human relations get better if you maintain that awareness.
· mon repos qui….supportait, pareil au repos d’une main immobile au milieu d’une eau courante, le choc et l’animation d’un torrent d’activité
If you think that you can maintain a stable, unchanging situation for yourself by being motionless or non-active – this is an illusion. Circumstances around you change all the time, and if you do not face those changes in a conscious way, you will be driven here and there – like a leaf in a stream. If you are in a given situation, and wish to stay in that situation, you need to be conscious of the forces acting on that situation, how they can change your situation – and how you need to act to keep the stability of your situation. The most obvious example is if you are the head of a large company and wish to stay on as that.
· l’ingéniosité du premier romancier consista à comprendre que dans l’appareil de nos emotions, l’image étant le seul element essentiel, la simplification qui consisterait à supprimer purement et simplement les personages reels serait un perfectionnement decisif
The creativity of the first novelist was to understand that in the moving of our emotions the images that are created in our minds are the essence. Whether you use real or invented persons to create these images is irrelevant. The strength of the effect of these images on us will of course depend on the extent to which they are relevant to the questions we ask ourselves in our daily lives. In that respect we need to feel that the images are real, in order to be of concern to us. The novelist must therefore be able to create real life in those persons he uses in his novels, be they imaginary or not.
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· On cherche à retrouver dans les choses, devenues par là précieuses, le reflet que notre âme a projeté sur elles
The things that move us derive an increased emotional value from the reflection of our soul that has been projected in them. Images we carry in our heads have been created in a given context. The whole context has received that magic reflection. When we re-visit a place or an object, the context may no longer be the same – and the magic may be gone.
· je fus frappé pour la première fois de ce désaccord entre nos impressions et leur expression habituelle
There is a distance between our impressions and the words we use to express them. This distance becomes even greater when we wish to convey these impressions to other persons, who may not associate the same things we do with the words we use. We thus face two hurdles when we wish to convey a feeling to another person. First, we need to find those words that – according to ourselves – express the feeling in the best possible way. Secondly, we need to think about whether those words will convey the same feeling to the other person we communicate with. Most probably, that other person will not associate the same feelings with those words we use – because their experience and the associations of experience with the content of words will not be the same. Therefore, images may be more efficient than words in many situations where feelings are to be conveyed.
· et mon imagination reprenant des forces au contact de ma sensualité, ma sensualité se répandant dans tous les domaines de mon imagination, mon désir n’avait plus de limites
My Imagination gathered strength by its contact with my Sensuality. As my Sensuality spread out to all parts of my Imagination, my Desire was now without limits. By allowing sensuality and imagination to interact with each other, various degrees of desire are produced.
· la position mondaine où ils vivent cantonnés jusqu’à leur mort, se contentant de finir par appeler plaisirs, faute de mieux, une fois qu’ils sont parvenus à s’y habituer, les divertissements médiocres ou les supportables ennuis qu’elle renferme
We are born into a given context, raised with a number of rules of behavior, and expected to contribute in society with certain types of work or activities. Some people passively accept these contexts, rules and expectations as the framework within which they are going to live, and live their lives accordingly – with few surprises and challenges, and little excitement. Others actively reflect on their situation and decide on the degree to which they wish to lead that life. Some find peace and pleasure in going down that road, while others feel that this is not what they want – and make large or small breaks with the expectations they are met with. It is up to each person to define what they want in life, but it is necessary to reflect on the context you are in and the choices you make – whether you make them actively on your own initiative or passively by accepting what others have decided for you.
· Leur amabilité, séparé de tout snobisme et de la peur de paraitre trop aimable, devenue indépendante, a cette aisance, cette grâce de mouvements de ceux dont les membres assouplis exécutent exactement ce qu’ils veulent, sans participation indiscrète et maladroite du reste du corps
Their friendliness, void of any kind of snobbery or fear of appearing too kind – and thereby independent, has this ease and grace of those whose bodily parts do exactly what they want, without the indiscrete and clumsy involuntary participation of the rest of their body.
If you are not yourself, but try to be someone you are not, your body language is going to let you down at some stage. The higher the tension between the person you are and the person you are trying to be, the more frequently and more violently your body language is going to react adversely to the things you do and say – in this way showing people your fear and hypocrisy, and belying your words and actions.
· comme on voit les gens incertains si le spectacle de la mer et le bruit de ses vagues sont délicieux, s’en convaincre ainsi que de la rare qualité de leur gouts désintéressés, en louant cent francs par jour la chambre d’hôtels qui leur permet de les goûter
Even if they are uncertain about whether the sight of the sea and the sound of the waves are nice or not, the price they pay per night at the hotel convinces them that it must be nice – and they also get the feeling that they have a refined taste for the immaterial values.
The deceptiveness of the market, in assigning values to things and activities, consists in telling us what things are worth – even if we do not at the outset see any need for those things. By assigning values in the way it does, the market induces us to like, and maybe to want, things we did not think we needed. In this way, the market may also replace our own independent judgment if we do not reflect actively on our own preferences. This in turn will lead us into choices that the market tells us to make, instead of making our own conscious choices. The most evident example is when you buy clothes on sale because the price is very much lower than its “ordinary” price, while at the same time not asking yourself whether you are going to wear it.
· Ce n’est pas pour rien, se disait-il maintenant, que depuis que les gens jugent leur prochain, c’est sur ses actes. Il n’y a que cela qui signifie quelque chose, et nullement ce que nous disons, ce que nous pensons. (cf. aussi Malraux)
The existentialists, with Jean Paul Sartre as the main intellectual leader, contended that life confronted the individual with a series of choices to be made. The essence of life is the necessity to make choices and to live with the choices you make. Whether you take an active stand and make your choices as a result of your own initiatives, or stay passive and allow circumstances to make the choices for you, you are confronted with the consequences of your choices. You cannot escape these consequences, and you have to accept them squarely as part of what your life is all about.
André Malraux, in line with this, said that man is to be judged by his acts. What he thinks and what he says is of no consequence. It is only his acts that count. As Ibsen also said: “To think it, yes. To want it, yes. But to do it? That is another matter!!” If Marcel Proust had not written down his thoughts, we would never had known them – and he would not have existed in our minds.
· dans la confusion de l’existence, il est rare qu’un bonheur vienne justement se poser sur le désir qui l’avait réclamé.
In the confusion of existence, it is rare that a Happiness comes to place itself on the Desire that corresponds to it.
A stroke of luck, if it happens, seldom comes at the moment when you would wish it to come. A stroke of luck may not seem as such, if it comes unexpectedly. An occasion may have to be perceived as such, and seized quickly when it occurs. To have an open mind, with the capacity to seize the stroke of luck when it is occurring, is essential. Very often we do not perceive an event as a stroke of luck until it is too late. The moment when this occurrence could be acted upon, has passed. Either we reacted too late, or we did not at that moment see the event in the appropriate light or context.
The capacity to see the potential an event carries with it, is unevenly distributed. Some people look for the possibilities in all situations, take initiatives and find solutions. Others only see problems and hopelessness.
· Les princes se savent princes, ne sont pas snobs et se croient d’ailleurs tellement au-dessus de ce qui n’est pas leur sang que grands seigneurs et bourgeois leur apparaissent, au-dessous d’eux, presque au meme niveau.
Princes know that they are princes. They are not snobs, and they believe that they are in a social sphere so much above those who are not of their blood, that upper class and lower class bourgeoisie seem – from their perspective – almost at the same level.
Social stratification is something almost everybody is engaged in, either consciously or unconsciously. The closer you come to your own social sphere, the more nuanced you become in classifying people. The further away from your own sphere or stratum you move, the less difference you perceive between people of those remote strata.
· comme les nouveaux décorés qui, dés qu’ils le sont, voudraient voir se fermer aussitôt le robinet des croix, Mme Bontemps eût souhaité qu’après elle personne de son monde à elle ne fût présenté à la princesse
People who have just been decorated would, afterwards, like to see as few people as possible decorated with the same order. The desire to be exclusive brings on all sorts of funny attitudes and behaviours.
· Mais on ne trouve jamais aussi hauts qu’on les avait éspérés, une cathédrale, une vague dans la tempête, le bond d’un danseur
Your expectations, when you are going to see them in reality, are always higher than your experience of the actual cathedral, the wave in the storm or the jump of the ballet dancer.
· les propos que nous avons entendus, sont là qui obstruent l’entrée de notre conscience, et commandent beaucoup plus les issues de notre mémoire que celles de notre imagination, ils rétroagissent d’avantage sur notre passé que nous ne sommes plus maîtres de voir sans tenir compte d’eux, que sur la forme, restée libre, de notre avenir (cf.aussi Bachelard, L’Intuition de l’instant)
What people say about events in the past come in as obstructions to our own thoughts and imagination of that same past. Their words shape our perception of our past. Proust says that this is less the case as regards the future, where our imagination is more free. Is that true? I am not so sure. Many people talk about the future, and their thoughts act similarly on the selection process of our imagination, as their thoughts on the past act on the selection process of our memory.
Bachelard (when dividing time in three: past, present, and future) talks about the ghosts of the past and the illusions on the future. In his words, only the present is real. Our notions of the past are full of ghosts consisting of our own obsessions, as well as other people’s contentions and ways of thinking. Our ideas about the future are heavily influenced by our desires and fears, which float freely in our imagination in the form of illusions.
· · Mes parents cependant auraient souhaité que l’intelligence que Bergotte m’avait reconnue se manifestât par quelque travail remarquable
His parents had hoped that the intelligence he possessed would have led to some remarkable work or other.
The possession of intelligence says nothing about how you convert that intelligence into action and results. Acting on an idea is an entirely different thing than having the idea. Acting requires initiative, a quality of a different kind than the capacity to think. The act requires decisions on a range of factors: What kind of action are you thinking about? Expressing the idea in writing? What kind of writing? In what kind of media? Launching of a product? Who do you expect to be interested in your product? Who will produce it? With what resources?
· ce genre de plaisir tout passif que trouve à rester tranquille quelqu’un qui est alourdi par une mauvaise digestion
The pleasure of staying passive and remaining immobile when you are incapacitated by a bad digestion.
· ce qu’on a obtenu n’est jamais qu’un nouveau point de départ pour desirer d’avantage
What you have obtained is the starting point for desiring something more. Your imagination is always on its way to the future, it never stays calmly on the spot. And the future builds on the building blocks of the present. A total break from the present is never possible, because even a break from the present will need to define itself in relation to the accumulation of the characteristics that define the present.
· En réalité, dans l’amour il y a une souffrance permanente, que la joie neutralize, rend virtuelle, ajourne, mais qui peut à tout moment devenir ce qu’elle serait depuis longtemps si l’on avait pas obtenu ce qu’on souhaitait, atroce
Love is a permanent suffering which is neutralized temporarily by joy, but which can at any moment become - what it would have been if we had not obtained what we desired – atrocious.
· C’est alors à la dernière seconde que la possession du Bonheur nous est enlevée, ou plutôt c’est cette possession meme que par une ruse diabolique la nature détruit. Ayant échoué dans tout ce qui était du domaine des faits et de la vie, c’est une impossibilité dernière, l’impossibilité psychologique du Bonheur que la nature crée
At the precise moment when we obtain Happiness, it is – by a devilish twist of nature – taken away from us. It seems impossible to hold on to it, it slides out of our hands. Having failed in everything related to acts and life, it is this last impossibility that nature has created for us – the impossibility of holding on to Happiness.
· Chaque jour depuis des années je calquais tant bien que mal mon état d’âme sur celui de la veille
Every day for years I had, to the best of my capacity, placed my state of mind up in comparison to the one of the day before.
· A un moment où je dénombrais les pensées qui avaient rempli mon esprit pendant les minutes precedentes
At one moment, I counted the thoughts that had filled my mind in the minutes preceding…
· Mais par ce matin de voyage l’interruption de la routine de mon existence, le changement de lieu et d’heure avaient rendu leur présence indispensable (merknad: la présence des facultés). Mon habitude qui était sédentaire et n’était pas matinale faisait défaut, et toutes mes facultes étaient accourues pour la remplacer, rivalisant entre elles de zèle – s’élevant toutes, comme des vagues, à un meme niveau inaccoutumé – de la plus basse à la plus noble, de la respiration, de l’appétit, et de la circulation sanguine à la sensibilité et à l’imagination
In this morning of travel, the interruption of the routinely chores of my existence called for the indispensable presence of all my faculties. My habits could not be called on, since they were out of their normal context. In their place, all my faculties jumped to the occasion and with great eagerness competed for my attention – rising up as waves at an unexpected level. They were there, from the lowliest to the noblest, the breath, the appetite, the blood circulation, the sensibility and the imagination…
· je cherchais à imaginer le directeur de l’hotel de Balbec pour qui j’étais, en ce moment inexistant, et j’aurais voulu me presenter à lui dans une compagnie plus préstigieuse que celle de ma grand’mère qui allait certainement lui demander des rabais. Il m’apparaissait comme empreint d’une morgue certaine, mais très vague de contours
I tried to imagine what the director of the hotel would look like, and I would have liked to present myself to him in a more prestigious company than my grandmother, who would most certainly ask for a reduced rate for the hotel rooms. He appeared to my mind with vague contours, but with an air of dignity.
· les boutons extirpés dans la figure du directeur cosmopolite (en réalité naturalisé Monégasque, bien qu’il fût – comme il disait parce qu’il employait toujours des expressions qu’il croyait distinguées, sans s’apercevoir qu’elles étaient vicieuses – “d’originalité roumaine”)
The acné in the face of the cosmopolitan director (who in reality was a naturalized citizen of Monaco, although he was, as he said - because he always used words which he thought were distinguished, without realizing that they were treacherous – “of Romanian originality”)…
· Je n’étais pas encore assez âgé et j’étais resté trop sensible pour avoir renoncé au désir de plaire aux êtres et de les posséder
I was not old enough, and I had remained too sensitive, to renounce the desire to please other people and to possess them
· et c’est la suppression de tout désir, de la curiosité pour les formes de la vie qu’on ne connait pas, de l’espoir de plaire à de nouveaux êtres, remplacés chez ces femmes par un dédain simulé, par une allègresse factice, qui avait l’inconvénient de leur faire mettre du déplaisir sous l’étiquette de contentement et se mentir perpétuellement à elle-mêmes, deux conditions pour qu’elles fussent malheureuses
The suppression of all desires, of the curiosity for the forms of life we do not know about, of the hope to please new acquaintances, were replaced in these women by a simulated disdain, by an artificial vitality that had the inconvenience of introducing displeasure disguised as satisfaction and of generating perpetual self-deception – two conditions that made them unhappy. (on the social conduct of upper class women in the Parisian society)
This description still holds for social conduct today. People who are preoccupied by social classes, and who have aspirations to rise to higher social strata – or who demonstrably want to show that they do not care – generally invent for themselves a role that they want to play and advertise. This role that they define for themselves almost never coincides with their actual social position nor does it coincide with their actual personality traits. From this point on, their life becomes a constant stress caused by the difference between the image of themselves that they want to project and their natural self.
· la garden-party hebdomadaire que sa femme et lui donnanient, dépeuplait l’hôtel d’une grande partie de ses habitants parce qu’un ou deux d’entre eux étaient invites à ces fêtes, et parce que les autres, pour ne pas avoir l’air de ne pas l’être, choissisaient ce jour-là pour faire une excursion éloignée
The weekly Garden Party that he and his wife gave, led to an almost total exodus from the hotel on that day. One or two of the guests because they were invited to the party, and the others – not wanting to show that they were not invited – chose that day to embark on an extensive excursion. (on life in a posh vacation hotel)
· comment aurais-je pu croire à une communauté d’origine entre deux noms qui étaient entrés en moi l’un par la porte basse et honteuse de l’expérience, l’autre par la porte d’or de l’imagination?
How could I have imagined that those two names had a common social origin, one having come into my mind through the low and shameful door of experience and the other having come through the golden door of my imagination?
With close acquaintances you acquire knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. They are human. People you only observe at a distance tend to be mysterious and glorified, especially if they are in a family with an important past.
· Alors il voulut s’excuser mais selon le mode qui est justement celui de l’homme mal élevé, lequel est trop heureux en revenant sur ses paroles de trouver une occasion de les aggraver
Having made a stupid remark that you would wish you had not made, it is generally a bad idea to try to “repair” it. Most attempts at such “repairs” end up with you digging your hole even deeper.
· Il vivait dans le monde des à peu près, où l’on salue dans le vide, où l’on juge dans le faux. L’inexactitude, l’incompétence, n’y diminue pas l’assurance, au contraire
He lived in the world of approximations, throwing his salutations into empty space and making false judgments. Lack of precision and incompetence did not reduce his self-assurance – on the contrary. Stupidity and self-satisfaction often go hand in hand.
· Même dans les cas où la multiplication des faibles avantages personnels par l’amour propre ne suffirait pas à assurer à chacun la dose de bonheur, supérieure à celle accordé aux autres, qui lui est nécessaire, l’envie est la pour combler la difference. Il est vrai que si l’envie s’exprime en phrases dédaigneuses, il faut traduire: “Je ne veux pas le connaître” par “je ne peux pas le connaître »
Even if the sum of personal advantages would not be sufficient to ensure, with the help of his personal pride, the dose of happiness exceeding that of other people which would be necessary for him, his feeling of envy would be there to make up for the difference. Envy is expressed through disdain, and when he says “I don’t wish to know them” it can be translated as “I am not in a position to get to know them”.
The need to feel socially superior to others leads to all sorts of false behavior, with disdain, envy, flattery and posing being the most frequent. All forms of social competition lead to psychological distortions.
· Si un peu de rêve est dangereux, ce qui en guérit, ce n’est pas moins de rêve, mais plus de rêve, mais tout le rêve. Il importe qu’on connaisse entièrement ses rêves pour n’en plus souffrir
If a little dreaming may be dangerous, what cures it is not less dreaming, but more dreaming – the whole dream. It is important to know the whole dream, in its entirety, in order not to suffer from it.
Vague dreams are psychologically dangerous, because they lead to vague desires for a different life than the one you lead. This in turn gives you a feeling of missing out on something important, even though you do not know what it is. You need to know the dream in its entirety, in order to judge whether that dream is worth following. You cannot make choices unless the alternatives you see for your life are properly and precisely outlined.
Dreams are necessary to nourish your imagination and ambitions, but they must not be allowed to stay vague for too long.
· Au fur et à mesure qu’on descend dans l’échelle sociale, le snobisme s’accroche à des riens qui ne sont peut-être pas plus nuls que les distinctions de l’aristocratie, mais qui plus obscurs, plus particuliers à chacun, surprennent d’avantage
As you move down the social ladder, snobbism ties itself up to insignificant things that may not be more ridiculous or insignificant than those distinctions aristocrats make, but they are often more obscure, more particular to each individual – and therefore more surprising.
· Mon intelligence jugeait ce plaisir fort peu précieux, depuis qu’il était assuré. Mais en moi la volonté ne partagea pas un instant cette illusion, la volonté qui est le serviteur, persévérant et immuable, de nos personnalités successives, cachée dans l’ombre, dédaignée, inlassablement fidèle, travaillant sans cesse, et sans se soucier de variations de notre moi, à ce qu’il ne manque jamais du nécessaire. Pendant qu’au moment où va se réaliser un voyage desiré, l’intelligence et la sensibilité commencent à se demander s’il vaut vraiment la peine d’être entrepris, la volonté qui sait que ces maîtres oisifs recommenceraient immédiatement à trouver merveilleux ce voyage, si celui ci ne pouvait avoir lieu, la volonté les laisse disserter devant la gare, multiplier les hesitations; mais elle s’occupe de prendre les billets et de nous mettre en wagon pour l’heure du depart. Elle est aussi invariable que l’intelligence et la sensibilité sont changeantes
My intelligence felt that this pleasure was of limited interest, since I had already obtained it. My will, however, was not sharing this illusion. My will is a stable and reliable servant, working constantly and not letting itself be influenced by the instability of my sensibility and my intelligence. My intelligence and sensibility keep wanting things that I don’t have, but lose interest when I am about to obtain what they have up to then wanted.
· il ne pouvait jamais “rester sans rien faire” quoiqu’il ne fît d’ailleurs jamais rien
He could never stay “without doing anything”, even though he never actually did anything.
· nous ne sommes pas comme des bâtiments à qui on peut ajouter des pierres du dehors, mais comme des arbres qui tirent de leur propre sève le noeud suivant de leur tige, l’étage supérieur de leur frondaison
We are not buildings which you can add building blocks to, but more like trees that develop branches from the juices drawn from their roots.
If we add competence or responsibilities to ourselves, these will be shaped by our personality and our experiences, and take on forms that may be very different from the effects of adding the same competences or responsibilities to another person.
· Et comme une idée, continuai-je, est quelque chose qui ne peut participer aux intérêts humains et ne pourrait jouir de leurs avantages, les hommes d’une idée ne sont pas influencés par l’intérêt
An idea is something that is not interested in human endeavours and interests. It has nothing to gain in the form of human advantages. Similarly, men who are absorbed by an idea are not influenced by human interests.
This is a good way to express the nature of idealists. If you pursue an idea for its own sake, all other interests are relegated to the background.
· C’est que, ce que nous éprouvons, comme nous sommes décidés à toujours le cacher, nous n’avons jamais pensé à la facon dont nous l’exprimerions
Our innermost thoughts and feelings, those that we are determined not to divulge, are the hardest to express – since we have never thought about how we would express them.
This is why, if we are taken by surprise and asked about precisely these thoughts and feelings, we generally are pretty clumsy in expressing ourselves in such situations – unless we are able to remain firm and abstain from talking in these cases.
· Me le présenter! Mais il faut que vous ayez bien peu le sentiment des valeurs! On ne me connaît pas si facilement que ca. Dans le cas actuel l’inconvenance serait double à cause de la juvénilité du présentateur et de l’indignité du présenté
To present him to me! You really have a limited sense of values! I am not as easily accessible as that. In this particular case the error of judgment would be two-fold: firstly because of the youthfulness of the person who presents me, and secondly because of the unsuitability of the person to be presented to me.
The unwritten rules of the nobility and the bourgeoisie are many and complicated to grasp for those who look for the simplicity in life.
· situé à l’entrée obscure de la région où les Guermantes jugeaient, ce génie vigilant empêchait les Guermantes de trouver l’homme intelligent ou de trouver la femme charmante s’ils n’avaient pas de valeur mondaine, actuelle ou future
In the obscure region of the mind where the Guermantes were judging people, there was this vigilant guard which made it impossible for the Guermantes to find man or a woman intelligent or charming if they had no social value (in the sense of “social ranking”) – in the present or anticipated for the future.
In certain social classes there are criteria by which people are judged, very severe criteria which completely obstruct the social vision of the members of these classes – in such a way that they are unable to see the qualities of people who do not fulfill these criteria, and correspondingly blinded by people who exceed the critical values of these criteria (be they income, degree of blue blood, degree of credentials related to rurality, culture, proletariat, urbanity, etc).
· de sorte que la pureté même du langage de la duchesse était un signe de limitation, et qu’en elle et l’intelligence et la sensibilité étaient restées fermées à toutes les nouveautés
The purity of the duchess’ language was a sign of limitation, a sign that her intelligence and her sensibility had stayed closed to all types of new impulses.
An interesting analogy to this is what we find in dog-breeding circles, where the obsession for purity and nobility in race is such that it leads to more and more in-breeding – followed by more and more degenerated animals. The purity of the language, closed for all new vocabulary, becomes stale, stiff and invalid – if no new words are allowed in as society evolves.
· cette séduisante vigeur des corps souples qu’aucune épuisante réflexion, nul souci moral ou trouble nerveux n’ont altérée
This seductive vigor of smooth bodies that no exhausting reflexion, no moral worry or no nervous trouble have altered.
A life where no sort of challenge has taken place, leaves the body untouched. Over time, aging shows no particularities and leads to a completely bland and expressionless physiognomy – void of traces of life and personality.
· Chacun des convives du dîner, affublant le nom mystérieux sous lequel je l’avais seulement connu et rêvé à distance, d’un corps et d’une intelligence pareils ou inférieurs à ceux de toutes les personnes que je connaissais, m’avait donné l’impression de plate vulgarité que peut donner l’entrée dans le port danois d’Elseneur à tout lecteur enfiévré d’Hamlet
The guests at the dinner, with illustrious names that I had hitherto only known and dreamt about from a distance, with bodies and intelligence equal or inferior to all the persons I knew, had given me the impression of flat vulgarity that you might get if – as a feverish reader of Hamlet – you entered the port of Elsinor.
Your imagination will always lead you astray if you judge people from a distance, and especially if you do so for any given person for a longer period of time. You end up producing myths, good or bad, about people. This is a typical feature of the celebrity media, making gods out of people when they are in fashion and demons when they are out of fashion. Reality, in contrast, may seem flat and bland – but generally more nuanced and interesting.
· les fêtes de ce genre sont en général anticipées. Elle n’ont guère de réalité que le lendemain, où elles occupent l’attention des personnes qui n’ont pas été invitées
Parties of that kind contain much anticipation. They hardly have any reality before the next day, when people talk about who was invited and who was not invited.
The general preoccupation with being “in” or “out” generates much attention to networks and the social ranking of different networks. Great, publicly known parties generate interest because of the guest list and what that might tell about people’s social ranking and networks. What actually happens in these parties is not considered very interesting, and generally is not very interesting.
· Depuis qu’il existe des chemins de fer, la nécessité de ne pas manquer le train nous a appris à tenir compte des minutes
After the invention of the railroads, it has been necessary to keep track of time – in order not to miss the train.
· Elle avait pris depuis de longues années, par peur de rebuffades, l’habitude de se tenir à sa place, de rester dans son coin, dans la vie comme dans le train, et d’attendre pour donner la main qu’on lui eût dit bonjour
She had taken - since many years, from fear of being reprimanded - the habit of staying in place, in her corner, in life as in the train, and to wait for people to say hello before she would stretch out her hand.
Taking initiative – or waiting for others to take it – that is the question!
· Les plaisirs qu’on a dans le sommeil, on ne les fait pas figurer dans le compte des plaisirs éprouvés au cours de l’existence
The pleasures we have in sleep are not counted by us among the pleasures of life.
It seems like a paradox that sleep, which has such an important role in determining our quality of life, does not enter into our “accounting” of what we value in life.
· un peu vielli par les excés de champagne et voyant venir l’heure nécessaire de l’eau de Contrexéville
.having grown older from excesses of champagne, and seeing in the horizon the unavoidable hour of Contrexeville water…
· ils me rappelaient que mon sort était de ne poursuivre que des fantômes, des êtres dont la réalité, pour une bonne part, était dans mon imagination; il y a des êtres en effet – et c’avait été dés la jeunesse, mon cas – pour qui tout ce qui a une valeur fixe, constatable par d’autres, la fortune, le succès, les hautes situations, ne comptent pas; ce qu’il leur faut, ce sont des fantômes
They reminded me that my fate was to pursue ghosts, beings that – for a large part – were in my imagination. There are beings for whom, in effect, everything that has a fixed, tangible value – which others can ascertain – fortune, success, high positions, do not count. What they need are ghosts.
Donatello: “Speak to me!” (to his statue, upon its completion); Michelangelo: ideas and feelings were more real to him than the material objects. ; Kittelsen: “Han som aldri har sett et troll!”
· Il y a une chose plus difficile encore que de s’astreindre à un régime, c’est de ne pas l’imposer aux autres
There is one thing that is harder than imposing a diet on yourself, and that is to refrain from imposing it on others.
· J’avais promis à Albertine que, si je ne sortais pas avec elle, je me mettrais au travail: mais le lendemain, comme si, profitant de nos sommeils, la maison avait miraculeusement voyagé, je m’éveillais par un temps different, sous un autre climat. On ne travaille pas au moment où on débarque dans un pays nouveau, aux conditions duquel il faut s’adapter. Or, chaque jour était pour moi un pays différent. Ma paresse elle-même, sous les formes nouvelles qu’elle revêtait, comment l’eussé-je reconnue?
I had promised that I would start my work. However, the next day – as if it had taken advantage of my sleep – my house had changed character, it had travelled to a different time, to another climate. You don’t work when you come to a different place, where you have to adapt; and each day was for me a new country. How could I recognize my own laziness, when it took on different forms from day to day?
· On se rappelle la vérité parce qu’elle a un nom, des racines anciennes; mais un mensonge improvisé s’oublie vite
You remember the truth, because it has a name, and it has old roots. An improvised lie is quickly forgotten. When you stick to the truth, you will seldom contradict yourself.
· Y avait-il dans l’art une réalité plus profonde où notre personnalité véritable trouve une expression que ne lui donnent pas les actions de la vie ? Chaque grand artiste semble, en effet, si différent des autres, et nous donne tant cette sensation de l’individualité que nous cherchons en vain dans l’existence quotidienne
Is there in art a reality more profound where our real personality finds an expression that daily acts of life do not generate? Every great artist seems in effect so different from the others, and gives us so strongly this feeling of individuality that we look for in vain in daily life.
·
· le mensonge est si peu exigeant, a besoin de si peu de chose pour se manifester
The lie is so undemanding. It requires so little to show itself.
Life is so complicated that many people feel the necessity to resort to lies, big or small, to get out of situations they feel that they don’t master.
· Mme Verdurin, quand elle se sentait devoir à quelqu’un une reconnaissance qui allait lui peser, et ne pouvait le tuer pour la peine, lui découvrait un défaut grave qui dispensait honnêtement de la lui témoigner
When Mrs.Verdurin felt that she was in debt to another person in such a way that it would bother her, and since she could not materially kill that person, she would find a serious fault with that person – effectively dispensing her from the need to deal with that debt.
· J’ai même diné chez lui, dans sa nouvelle demeure, où on s’assomme autant, au milieu du plus grand luxe, qu’on s’amusait jadis quand, tirant le diable par la queue, il assemblait la meilleure compagnie dans un petit grenier
I have even dined with him, in his new home, where we bored ourselves as utterly surrounded by great luxury, as we had fun in great poverty when, in a little attic, he had assembled the greatest of company.
As long as you have covered your basic needs, it is your family and friends that make up your real life, not you material possessions.
· Pour se représenter une situation inconnue l’imagination emprunte des éléments connus et à cause de cela ne se la représente pas
When facing an unknown situation, our imagination seeks the help of known elements, thereby being unable to see the novelty of the situation.
Using known elements to form analogies when facing a new, unknown situation, is an efficient way of dealing with the situation when time is scarce. However, it may also cause us to oversee the truly new elements that this situation offers us. We may therefore be well advised to go, analytically, back to the situation afterwards, in order to examine carefully whether the new elements contained important new information.
· Soulevant un coin du voile lourd de l’habitude (l’habitude abêtissante qui pendant tout le cours de notre vie nous cache à peu près tout l’univers, et, dans une nuit profonde, sous leur étiquette inchangée, substitue aux poisons les plus dangereux ou les plus enivrants de la vie quelque chose d’anodin qui ne procure pas de délices)
Habit is a heavy, thick curtain which hides most of the universe – this universe which is in constant motion – shielding us from the dangers and joys of new impulses.
· depuis la faveur dont jouissent les exercises physiques, l’oisiveté à pris une forme sportive, même en dehors des heures de sport et qui se traduit par une vivacité fébrile qui croit ne pas laisser à l’ennui le temps ni la place de se développer
Now that physical exercise has become so popular, spare time has taken on an active, sporty form which creates a frenetic vivacity that leaves boredom neither the time nor the place to develop.
The idea that time has to be spent efficiently, without waste, is stimulating stress and social competitiveness – and in the process, leaving less time for introspection and the search for mental balance.
· Les classes d’esprit n’ont pas égard à la naissance
Spirit does not occupy itself with classes of birth
· Tant de fois, au cours de ma vie, la réalité m’avait décu parce que, au moment où je la percevais, mon imagination, qui était mon seul organe pour jouir de la beauté, ne pouvait s’appliquer à elle, en vertu de la loi inévitable qui veut qu’on ne puisse imaginer que ce qui est absent
So often, during the course of my life, I had been disappointed by reality, because at the very moment I perceived it, my imagination – which is my only organ for enjoyment of beauty – could not apply itself to it, since you can only imagine what is absent.
Reality will very rarely be in a position to compete with imagination, especially when imagination has been given time to work on a subject which will later be visited. Imagination leaves out everything that is unwanted and magnifies everything that is desired – be it in a positive or a negative vein.
· Une heure n’est pas qu’une heure, c’est un vase rempli de parfums, de sons, de projets et de climats. Ce que nous appelons la réalité est un certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs qui nous entourent simultanément
An hour is not only an hour, it is a vase filled with perfumes, sounds, projects and climates. What we call reality is a certain relation between these sensations and the memories which surround us at that time.
· le seul livre vrai, un grand écrivain n’a pas, dans le sens courant, à l’inventer puisqu’il existe déja en chacun de nous, mais à le traduire. Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur
The only true book needs not to be invented by the writer. It already exists in each and every one of us, and the real task is to translate it. The writer’s task is that of a translator.
The strongest books are those where the writer manages to transpose his or her inner feelings and experiences in an authentic way, making these feelings and experiences seem so real that they touch the reader’s own feelings and experiences.
· Le rêve était encore un de ces faits de ma vie qui m’avait toujours le plus frappé, qui avait dû le plus servir à me convaincre du caractère purement mental de la réalité, et dont je ne dédaignerais pas l’aide dans la composition de mon oeuvre
The dream was one of those facts of life that had been striking me the most, and had convinced me of the purely mental character of reality. I would make sure to make use of the help of dreams in the making of my work.
· seule la perception grossière et erronnée place tout dans l’objet quand tout, au contraire, est dans l’esprit
Only a gross and erroneous perception places everything in the object, when – on the contrary – everything is in the spirit.
· le Temps qui d’habitude n’est pas visible, qui pour le devenir cherche des corps et, partout où il les rencontre, s’en empare pour montrer sur eux sa lanterne magique
Time, which in itself is not visible, takes place in bodies and objects and – through them – shows its existence and magic powers.
· L’intérêt de ne pas s’être trompé quand on a émis un prognostic faux abrège la durée du souveninr de ce prognostic et permet d’affirmer très vite qu’on ne l’a pas émis
When you have made a projection and wish to be proven right, you tend to forget very quickly that you actually made that projection if it turns out to be wrong.
· Mais ma mère, au contraire, se faisait à elle-même l’effet de l’avoir emporté dans un concours sur des concurrents de marque, chaque fois qu’une personne de son âge « disparaissait ». Leur mort était la seule manière dont elle prît encore agréablement conscience de sa propre vie.
My mother felt that she was winning a contest against important competitors every time a person among her acquaintances “disappeared”. Their death represented the only way in which she still felt that she was pleasantly alive.
· Beckett sur Proust: les textes de Proust tournent autour d’un Janus à trois faces – le temps – l’habitude – la mémoire. Ces trois élements emprisonnent l’être mentalement. La seule évasion miraculeuse que tolère Sa tyrannie et Sa vigilance, est fournie par la mémoire involontaire (par laquelle surgit les moments magiques du passé).
Beckett has written an essay on Proust, where he points out that Proust’s writing turns around a Janus with three faces: time – habit – memory. These three elements imprison the being’s mental state. The only miraculous evasion tolerated by this Tyranny and this Vigilance is provided by the involontary memory (through which magic moments of the past can filter into the being’s consciousness).
· Ce qui est commun à la fois au présent et au passé est plus essentiel que chacun de ces deux termes pris séparément. (Beckett, op.cit.)
What is common to the present and the past is more essential than each of these terms seen separately.
· L’oeuvre d’art n’est ni crée ni choisie, mais découverte, dévoilée, tiré des obscurités intérieures où elle préexiste chez l’artiste. (Beckett, op.cit.)
The work of art is neither created nor chosen, but discovered, unveiled, drawn from the interior obscurities, where they exist within the artist.
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