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Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust Books

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Combray

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La fugitiva

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Swan's Way

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“It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the manner - at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly unalterable - which she now adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that a day might come when she would make avowal of her passion, by which hope alone he had become and would remain her lover.”

LoveIndifferenceLover
Book:Swann’s Way
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“I learned that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.”

FriendshipDifferencesFriendsConversationFriendDifferenceDifference Of Opinion
Book:Swann’s Way
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“زنی که این اندازه رنجش می‌داد نه تنها کمتر که برعکس، هرچه بیشتر برایش عزیز می‌شد، انگار که همراه با هرچه بالاتر گرفتن درد، ارزش نوشدارو، ارزش داروی آرام‌بخشی هم که تنها در دست اودت بود فزونی می‌یافت. سوان می‌خواست بیشتر تیمارش کند، آن گونه که برای بیماری‌ای که ناگهان دریابی از آنچه بوده وخیم‌تر است.”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsHeartbreakEmotionsعشقرابطهجداییاحساساتشکست
Book:Swann’s Way
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“اگر هم بتوانیم آرزو کنیم کارهای کسی که تاکنون رنجمان داده است از تهِ دل نبوده باشد، [...] باید بپرسیم که کردار فردای آن کس چه خواهد بود؟ این گفته‌های تازه به گوش عشق من می‌رسید؛ به او می‌باورانید که فردا فرقی با روزهای گذشته نخواهد داشت و احساس ژیلبرت به من کهنه‌تر از آن است که تغییر کند، احساس بی‌اعتنایی است، و در دوستی من و ژیلبرت تنها منم که عشق می‌ورزم! و عشقم در پاسخ می‌گفت: «درست است، دیگر با این دوستی هیچ کاری نمی‌شود کرد، دگرگون نخواهد شد.»”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsHeartbreakEmotionsعشقرابطهجداییاحساساتشکست
Book:Swann’s Way
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“آن شب مادام دلوم به شوهرش گفت: «طفلک سوان ... فکر می‌کنم مسخره باشد که مردی به این فهمیدگی برای همچو زنی رنج بکشد که حتی زن جالبی هم نیست، چون می‌گویند خیلی احمق است.» این را با خردمندی آدم‌های عاشق نشده گفت که معتقدند یک مرد فهمیده باید تنها به خاطر کسی غصه بخورد که لیاقتش را داشته باشد؛ و این کمابیش به آن می‌ماند که کسی تعجب کند چرا آدم به خاطر چیزی به کوچکی یک باسیل ناقابل دچار وبا می‌شود!”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsHeartbreakEmotionsعشقرابطهجداییاحساساتشکست
Book:Swan's Way
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“[سوان] به خود می‌گفت: «واقعا پیشرفت محسوس است؛ خوب که به قضیه دقیق می‌شوم، می‌بینم که دیروز از بودن با او تقریبا هیچ لذت نمی‌بردم: عجیب است که حتی به نظرم زشت می‌رسید.» و البته راست می‌گفت، اما عشقش از محدوده‌ی تمنای بدنی بسیار فراتر می‌رفت. دیگر خود وجود اودت در آن چندان جایی نداشت.”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsHeartbreakEmotionsعشقرابطهجداییاحساساتشکست
Book:Swann’s Way
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“فردای آن روز [سوان] به خود می‌گفت: «واقعا پیشرفت محسوس است؛ خوب که به قضیه دقیق می‌شوم، می‌بینم که دیروز از بودن با او تقریبا هیچ لذت نمی‌بردم: عجیب است که حتی به نظرم زشت می‌رسید.» و البته راست می‌گفت، اما عشقش از محدوده‌ی تمنای بدنی بسیار فراتر می‌رفت. دیگر خود وجود اودت در آن چندان جایی نداشت.”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsHeartbreakEmotionsعشقرابطهجداییاحساساتشکست
Book:Swann’s Way
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“He could see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which - while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the evenings when he came to dine with us at Combray - seemed illimitable to him since he had not been able to see their end.”

LovePleasureLonelinessSuspicion
Book:Swann’s Way
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“... since I was still, and must for long remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness which, in anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does one think of oneself, but only how to escape from oneself.”

RomanceWomenPleasureSensualityAnticipationEscape
Book:Swann’s Way
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“In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would appear - since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure - that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we recall and recreate the rest.”

MenLoveLifePleasureBeautyMemory
Book:Swann’s Way
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“Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's honour. One lies all one's life long, even, especially, perhaps only, to those who love one. For they alone make us fear for our pleasure and desire their esteem.”

LyingPleasureLiesEsteemHonour
Book:The Captive / The Fugitive
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“Among all the modes by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as this gust of feverish agitation that sweeps over us from time to time. For then the die is cast, the person whose company we enjoy at that moment is the person we shall henceforward love. It is not even necessary for that person to have attracted us, up till then, more than or even as much as others. All that was needed was that our predilection should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled when — in this moment of deprivation — the quest for the pleasures we enjoyed in his or her company is suddenly replaced by an anxious, torturing need, whose object is the person alone, an absurd, irrational need which the laws of this world make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage — the insensate, agonising need to possess exclusively.”

LovePleasurePossessionAttraction
Book:Swann’s Way
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“Sadists of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, the prerogative of the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to impersonate, to identify with, the wicked, and to make their partners do likewise, in order to gain the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure.”

PleasureSadismSadists
Book:Swann’s Way
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“Udajac, że jestem zajęty czymś innym niż nia i że muszę ja zostawić dla innych przyjemności, myślałem wyłacznie o niej. Często nie docierałem dalej, niż równina ciagnaca się nad Gourville, a ponieważ przypomina ona nieco tę, która zaczyna się powyżej Combray, w kierunku Meseglise, nawet tak oddalony od Albertyny cieszyłem się myśla, że choć mój wzrok nie może jej objać, to sięgajaca dalej niż on, owiewajaca mnie silna i ciepła morska bryza musi, niezatrzymywana przez nic aż do Quetteeholme, zakołysać w końcu gałęziami drzew spowijajacych Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise swoim listowiem, pieszczac twarz mojej przyjaciółki, i przerzucić podwójny węzeł między nami w tym niezwykle rozległym, lecz bezpiecznym ustroniu, jak podczas owych zabaw, kiedy to dwoje dzieci znajduja sie na chwilami poza zasięgiem swojego głosu i wzroku, lecz pomimo tego oddalenia, wciaż jest ze soba. Wracałem drogami, z których widać morze i gdzie kiedyś, jeszcze zanim woda pojawiła się w prześwicie wśród gałęzi, zamykałem oczy z myśla, że tym co zobaczę, będzie jękliwa prababka ziemi, trwajaca, jak w czasach, gdy nie było jeszcze żywych istot, w swojej obłakańczej i niepamiętnej krzataninie. Teraz te drogi były dla mnie tylko trasa wiodaca ku Albertynie; kiedy odnajdowałem je w niezmienionej postaci, wiedzac, dokad suna prosto, a gdzie zakreca, przypominałem sobie, że jechałem nimi, myślac o pannie de Stermaria, jak również to, że w podobnym pośpiechu jak do Albertyny mknałem po paryskich ulicach śladami pani de Guermantes; nabierały dla mnie głębokiej monotonii, moralnego znaczenia wykresu, którymi podażała moja natura. Było to czymś naturalnym, ale przecież nie obojętnym; drogi te przypominały mi, że moim losem jest gonitwa za widmami, za istotami, które w dużej części istnieja tylko w mojej wyobraźni; sa bowiem ludzie - tak było od dziedziństwa ze mna - dla których wszystko, co ma ustalona wartość, jak majatek, kariera czy pozycja społeczna, zupełnie się nie liczy; tym, czego ludzie ci potrzebuja, sa cienie. Poświęcaja dla nich cała resztę, zrobia wszystko, porusza niebo i ziemię, aby tylko spotkać się z danym cieniem. Ten jednak szybko znika; biegnie się wówczas za kolejnym, by potem wrócić, być może, do poprzedniego. Nie był to pierwszy raz, gdy poszukiwałem Albertyny, dziewczyny ujrzanej pierwszego roku na tle morza. To prawda, inne kobiety znalazły miejsce między pokochana pierwszym razem Albertyna a ta, której obecnie nie opuszczałem; inne kobiety, chociażby diuszesa de Guermantes. Po co jednak, mógłby ktoś zapytać, tak troszczyłem się o Gilbertę, zadawałem sobie tyle trudu dla pani de Guermantes, skoro stałem się jej przyjacielem po to tylko, aby nie myśleć już o niej, lecz wyłacznie o Albertynie? Mógłby na to odpowiedzieć, zanim umarł, Swann, wielki miłośnik cieni. Drogi wokół Balbec pełne były tych poszukiwanych cieni, zapominanych i znowu tropionych, niekiedy tylko dla jednego spotkania, aby otrzeć się o urojone życie, które natychmiast znikało. Na myśl o tym, że tamtejsze drzewa, grusze, jabłonie i tamaryszki mnie przeżyja, słyszałem od nich jak gdyby radę, bym zasiadł wreszcie do pracy, skoro nie wybiła jeszcze godzina wiecznego odpoczynku.”

DesireExistentialismSamsaraInsatiability
Book:Sodom and Gomorrah
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“...to seek happiness in the satisfaction of a desire of the mind was as naive as to attempt to reach the horizon by walking straight ahead. The further the desire advances, the further does real possession recede. So that if happiness, or at least the absence of suffering, can be found, it is not the satisfaction, but the gradual reduction and eventual extinction of desire that one should seek.”

HappinessJoyDesireSufferingBalancePossession
Book:The Captive / The Fugitive
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“A real person, profoundly as we may sympathize with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, remains opaque, presents a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either.”

EmotionFeelingProustIn Search Of Lost TimeSwann S Way
Book:Swann’s Way
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“The sea refreshes our imagination because it does not make us think of human life; yet it rejoices the soul, because, like the soul, it is an infinite and impotent striving, a strength that is ceaselessly broken by falls, an eternal and exquisite lament. The sea thus enchants us like music, which, unlike language, never bears the traces of things, never tells us anything about human beings, but imitates the stirrings of the soul. Sweeping up with the waves of those movements, plunging back with them, the heart thus forgets its own failures and finds solace in an intimate harmony between its own sadness and the sea’s sadness, which merges the sea’s destiny with the destinies of all things.”

ImaginationSea
Book:The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust
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“The impression given us by a person or a work (or an interpretation of a work) of marked individuality is peculiar to that person or work. We have brought with us the ideas of “beauty,” “breadth of style,” “pathos” and so forth which we might at a pinch have the illusion of recognising in the banality of a conventional face or talent, but our critical spirit has before it the insistent challenge of a form of which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, in which it must disengage the unknown element. It hears a sharp sound, an oddly interrogative inflexion. It asks itself: “Is that good? Is what I am feeling now admiration? Is that what is meant by richness of colouring, nobility, strength?” And what answers it again is a sharp voice, a curiously questioning tone, the despotic impression, wholly material, caused by a person whom one does not know, in which no scope is left for “breadth of interpretation.” And for this reason it is the really beautiful works that, if we listen to them with sincerity, must disappoint us most keenly, because in the storehouse of our ideas there is none that responds to an individual impression.”

ArtBeautyTalentStyleCriticismExperienceIndividualityPathosProustAppreciation Of Art
Book:The Guermantes Way
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“We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remorse expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death---or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again---may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose timetable, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.”

LifeDeathDyingLivingExpectations
Book:The Guermantes Way
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“همه‌ی این جدایی‌ها مرا ناخواسته به فکر آنچه جبران‌ناپذیر بود و روزی فرامی‌رسید می‌انداخت، هرچند که آن زمان هرگز جدی به امکان زنده‌ماندنِ خودم پس از مرگ مادرم فکر نکرده‌بودم. عزمم این بود که یک دقیقه از مرگ مادرم نگذشته خودم را بکشم. بعداً، غیبت مادرم چیزهایی از این تلخ‌تر به من آموخت، آموخت که آدم به غیبت عادت می‌کند، بزرگ‌ترین نقصانِ خویشتن و بزرگ‌ترین رنج این است که حس کنی از غیبت رنج نمی‌کشی.”

PainDeathSadness
Author:Marcel Proust
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“When Jean and his mother left Etreuilles, Monsieur Sureau had gathered for them great boxfuls of hawthorn and of snowballs which Madame Santeuil had not the courage to refuse. But, as soon as Jean's uncle had gone home, she threw them away, saying that they already had more than enough in the way of luggage. And then Jean cried because he had been separated from the darling creatures which he would have liked to take with him to Paris, and because of his mother's naughtiness.”

LoveSadnessLongingHawthorn Blossom
Book:Jean Santeuil
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