Pilgrims, Plays & Proust

Hello! Now that I finally wrote about Virginia Woolf's The Waves, I can tell you guys about some other book-stuff, like what I'll be reading this semester, about Proust, and some other miscellaneous book talk. 

I'm taking all literature classes again: one on Sylvia Plath's and Campbell McGrath's Poetry; one on experimental drama with Yeats, William, and Stoppard; Shakespeare's comedies; an Ethics class; and a Restoration and 18th Century Literature class. They are all awesome, except for that I'd have preferred Shakespeare's tragedies. The main texts these classes are making me read right now can be seen (right above the posts) on my Now Reading widget. First is Twelfth Night, which will soon going to move onto Much Ado About Nothing. I have already read Twelfth Night but when I was way younger; this time, I have a sweet complete collection of Shakespeare's work my dad bought as a graduation present for my eldest sister to read out off. This class is going to be really fun because it looks also at modern remakes or extensions of the works we read (hopefully She's the Man will be talked about!). 

My other drama class, Experimental Drama, hasn't gotten too much into any one play. We read Cathleen Ni Houlihan by W.B. Yeats as an introduction to the first part of the course, and we are now looking at Yeats' Noh-style plays, like The Dreaming of the Bones, which is cool because last year I learned a lot about Noh history in my Japanese Literature and Film class. I love when my classes connect and the knowledge I acquire in one setting becomes applicable to multiple. 

I'm also reading, for Restoration Lit., John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress. I love it!! I honestly was dreading this read, it seemed so boring, but something about the melodic language and rthyme really makes for smooth reading. Though we are not focusing on the book as a religious text, and are looking more at the ways in which  Pilgrim's Progress fights to present itself as an allegory versus as a narrative, it also speaks to me a lot about faith. I find my professor'a lectures surprisingly helpful and engaging, something I wouldn't expect even though I enjoy the book. Next, we'll be reading Robinson Crusoe. 

My Ethics class is reading only a philosophical text book, but it is perhaps my most literary class, in that it is constantly reminding me of different books. We so far have been talking about different moral systems, like Deontology, Consequentialists, and Ethical Egoism. Discussion on that last one sparked in my mind two literary memories: the first was a general recall of Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's ethical egoism which she calls Objectivism. There are differences between actual Ethical Egoism and her particular philosophy, mainly that the first value system proposes that morality is essentially in an individual's choice, what is beneficent to them, whereas Rand states values are objective and exist outside our consciousness and in reality. A bit complicated. I was in a bar with my boyfriend yesterday that had books for customers to read, and seeing Atlas Shrugged, I took it to our table. That's a book I can read over and over, and it was great to pick it up again after thinking about it a lot this week. 

The second memory was that of a conversation in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Two characters, Steeply and Marathe, are discussing the individualistic ethos of Americans. What happens, asks Marathe, if there are two people who both want soup really badly, but there is only one can? It is a passage I have since been trying to find and read in light of ethical egois, but searching through IJ is no easy task. When I find it, I'll share it here. 

Well, I find myself again reading Marcel Proust, this time Vol. 4, Sodom and Gomorrah. So far, I find it almost like a blend of all three books, in that it has a little of what made each previous volume wonderful. The philosophical musings that characterize the first part of Swann's Way; the analysis of romance and jealousy in the second half of Swann's Way and in In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower; even the lengthy observations on society found in The Guermantes Way-- all this makes up Sodom and Gomorrah, along with the humor and irony found throughout the whole novel (whether intentional or not). This volume, as one can tell by the title, takes a devious turn from the other subject matters, focusing on the homosexuality in society. The book started off hilariously, with the narrator spying M. de Charlus, an aggravating, creepy character who had previously and discreetly been alluded to as gay, making love to a young shopkeeper in the narrator's building. The narrator then goes to explain some characteristics of what he calls "inverts" (a term I think sounds more deragatory than he intends it to be), a race unto themselves. He often compares, in these pages, gays with Jews, paralleling a history of being shunned, disliked, etc. that has shaped the group to share qualities and fears. His musings here, though sometimes oversimplified, seem to be written mostly in a spirit of camaraderie, with tenderness and sympathy for the plight of this "race":

"Perhaps even the example if the Jews, of a different colony, is not strong enough to explain how weak a hold upbringing has over them, and with what artistry they succeed in reverting, not perhaps to something as simply atrocious as suicide (to which, whatever precautions we may take, madmen revert, and, having been rescued from the river into which they had thrown themselves, take poison, procure a revolver, and so on), but to a life not only that the men of the other race cannot understand or imagine, loathing it's necessary pleasures, but whose frequent danger and permanent shame would fill them with horror." 25

"...(and here the word 'fertilization' must be taken in its moral sense, since in the physical sense the union of male with male is sterile, but it matters that an individual should be able to meet with the one pleasure he is capable of enjoying, and that 'here below every soul' can give someone 'it's music, it's flame, or its fragrance)..." 28

"For men like M. de Charlus...a mutual love adds to the very great, at times insurmountable, difficulties it encounters among the common run of individuals, ones of its own so particular that what is always very rare for anyone at all becomes in their case almost impossible, and, should a truly happy encounter transpire, or one that nature makes to seem so, their happiness, far more even than that of the normal lover, has something extraordinary, something selective, something profoundly necessary about it. The hatred if the Montagues and Capulets was as nothing compared with the impediments of every kind that have been ovecome, the special eliminations to which nature must have subjected the already far-from-common chances that lead on to love, before a former maker of waistcoats, who had been been anticipating setting of quietly for his officer should reel about, bedazzled, in front of a fifth-year-old man with a potbelly." 29

So, after all this I was a little surprised when, going back to the Introduction, I found that Proust is not popular amongst the gay community, thanks to some negative depictions. Then, I reached the end of these initial musings, where the narrator suddenly accedes that they were only his initial reaction and that a "more thorough picture of them will emerge in the course of the ensuing pages," a picture I fear is not as generous (33). 

The novel then moves to a party, where Narrator is able to continue his observations of Charlus, seeing more indications of his prediliction throughout the night. After that party, the text moves to focus on Albertine, a girl Narrator met and fell in love with way back in Vol. 2. By this time, he is no longer in love with here, but they do have a sensual relationship (nothing is ever explicit, but kisses and petting seem to be the norm). Then, when in Balbec for th second time in the novel, the first being when he met Albertine, Narrator becomes privvy to a rumor (or to the fact) that Alebrtine and her friend have lesbian relationships when they are seen dancing with their boobs touching! It is actually a funny scene, and it drives Narrator wild with jealousy throughout the rest of his stay in Balbec, until he even tells her about his fears, which she denies. 

This is when the novel gets interesting. In Swann's Way, Swann's love affair to Oddette becomes a mess of passion and jealousy, especially considering Oddette's history as a whore and as a lover of women. When Swann asks Oddette about similar rumors that Narrator had to deal with, she, unlike Albertinr, does not deny anything and admits to a few liaisons, later revealed to be more than a few. With the conversation between Narrator and Albertine, the novel has come around full circle. In my earlier posts, I discussed the similarities between Swann and Narrator, but now their histories are even more similar: the reader has seen two almost identical situations occur for both characters, and the inclusion of Swann's history in Swann's Way, slightly random and out-of-place when one has only read the first and second volumes, makes a lot of sense. 

Before I go, I want to tell you all what I think is an awesome story. When in Paris, I was staying at the Place Vendom, just a few blocks away from the Place de la Concorde. One day, while still in Paris, I read this passage: 

"Although it was after nine o'clock, it was still the daylight that,non the Place de la Concorde, had given the Luxor obelisk an appearance of pink nougat. Then it modified the tint and turned it into a metallic substance with the result that the obelisk did not merely become more precious, but seemed thinner and more flexible. You fancied you might be able to twist i, that this jewel had already been bent slightly out of true perhaps." 37 

Now that made me happy to have read the book in Paris. Also, on the train back from Versailles I was reading a part where Narrator was at the opening party and there was a fountain in the party designed by the man who designed the Versailles fountains!! I loved these coincidences. On that same train ride another cool one happened, but for that I'll post a picture! 

Till then, guys.