The Syllables of Time

Proust and the History of Reading

Teresa Whitington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351540124
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This study reveals reading to be one of the main activities to occupy the inhabitants of the world of Marcel Prousts novel A la recherche du temps perdu. Characters do not just read books but have access to the journals and newspapers of a rapidly expanding print industry. They receive letters and postcards from family and friends. The posters of a nascent advertising industry tempt them to spend an evening at the theatre or a holiday by the sea, and new forms of communication, such as telegraphy, enter their lives and require new strategies of deciphering. All human activity is glossed by means of a series of metaphors of reading, extending the readers domain beyond the written text. Through a series of illuminating analyses, Teresa Whitington shows how this web of references builds into a specifically Proustian account of both the outer, social context of reading and the inner, psychological world of the reader. Proust offers a contribution to the history of reading in the France of his own lifetime and suggests that reading is the very condition of the writing of his fiction.

1
Reading in Bed

The Opening of the Novel

Why does Proust, in the opening paragraph of À la recherche, depict his narrator in bed and reading? We hear the Narrator, caught between sleeping and waking, reflect: ‘je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumière’ (S, I. 3). Proust’s use of the imperfect tense, together with the diversity of topics on which the Narrator is reading, make this paragraph an account, not of one specific event in the past, but of a scene habitually repeated. The Narrator might be reading about ‘une église’ or ‘un quatuor’ or ‘la rivalité de François Ier et de Charles Quint’ (S, I. 3).

One suggestion, when we analyze the opening paragraph, is that Proust is laying down certain guidelines for us as readers of his novel. The impression we are given of the Narrator is that he is a habitual and serious reader of non-fiction texts. He might be reading about church architecture, about music theory, about history. He reads for information, for knowledge. Perhaps Proust, in mentioning these topics, is highlighting the fact that fiction is a creative synthesis of material which also enables the reader to increase his knowledge of both his inner life and the social context in which this life is lived.

The editors of the 1987 Pléiade edition also notice the references to the three reading topics, and suggest that they are linked to ‘des modes de composition (architectural, musical, historique) tous applicables à À la recherche du temps perdu (I, 1086). So through the references Proust is indicating ways in which he has organized the material of his text. And again perhaps he is guiding us as to our reading of his text. An appreciation of the architecture of the novel, for example, would be facilitated by an ‘associative’ as well as a linear, sequential reading. By associative reading, I mean a reading which follows up given themes in the novel by linking details selected from the text relating to these themes. The editors’ point is confirmed in relation to an architectural ‘mode de composition’ by the Narrator’s statement in Le Temps retrouvé that he will construct his book ‘comme une église’ (TR, IV. 610).

The decision by Proust to begin with this depiction of a man reading in bed is further clarified when we look at the genesis of the opening paragraph, as the editors of the 1987 Pléiade edition allow us to do. It becomes clear that his choice has a function in terms of narrative technique. The editors focus on cahier 3 as containing ‘le vrai germe de l’ ‘ouverture’ du roman’ (I, 633). They reprint nine of the sixteen versions of the opening paragraph, under the overall title of ‘Esquisse I’ (I, 633-39). In the first of these versions (I,i), the emphasis is on the Narrator as writer rather than reader: ‘Je pensais à un article que j’avais envoyé il y avait longtemps déjà au Figaro, j’avais même corrigé les épreuves’ (I, 634). This is the article which the Narrator’s mother shows him in published form in Contre Sainte-Beuve, an event taken up and developed in Albertine disparue. We do glimpse the Narrator as reader in this draft (I,i), with the mention of the ‘premier courrier’ after which he has taken the habit of going to bed and sleeping through the day (I, 635). But he is not depicted in the act of reading. In ‘Esquisse II’ (composed of three reprinted fragments from Cahier 5) Proust introduces the depiction of his narrator falling asleep while reading. But here the Narrator is not reading a book:

Aussi quand ensuite je m’éveillais, je ne savais pas que je m’éveillais, instinctivement je cherchais le journal que je me croyais en train de lire pour le jeter et éteindre la lampe afin de m’endormir.

(I, 642)

Instead of this newspaper it is, as we have seen, books that are referred to in the final version, with no mention of the Narrator as writer. The function of the details regarding reading chosen for the final version become clear if we think of the Narrator as a character depicted as engaged in what proust elsewhere calls ‘l’acte psychologique original appelé Lecture’.¹ By depicting his narrator in the act of reading, proust opens the consciousness of the Narrator to the reader of the novel, and gains a vantage point from which to display this consciousness. In this way he engages the reader of the novel and gives him a foothold in the Narrator’s mind.

But the details concerning reading in the first paragraph of À la recherche also, and importantly for the present study, sensitize us to the possibilities offered by a treatment in fiction of both the inner, phenomenological experiences of readers and the context (physical, technological, social, historical), in which reading takes place.

The opening paragraph informs us of the physical circumstances of the Narrator, and the social background to this act of reading. It also conveys the ‘hidden processes’ of reading.² As regards the social context, a background of bourgeois privacy and comfort is evoked through the depiction of the Narrator in a bed of his own in a bedroom of his own. The middle-class nature of such privacy and comfort is underlined if we look at an account of the use of domestic space and the availability of beds in a working-class context. In the second chapter of Zola’s Germinal, first published in serial form in 1884, we have a description of the domestic interior of a family of miners. In the room described, there are three beds set together, each shared by two children. The children’s parents sleep in a fourth bed in the corridor of the small dwelling. Working-class domestic life is thus characterized in terms of very restricted domestic space, and beds shared by siblings. In contrast, proust’s narrator benefits from far greater domestic space, including, significantly, private space (his room, his bed).

One of the events that takes place in the mind of the reading narrator, and which is relevant to the depiction of reading from the psychological point of view, is the feeling of having merged with the topic of the book being read following a period of sleepy reflection on that topic:

je n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage.

(S, I. 3)

This suspension of personal identity passes as the Narrator becomes more conscious. He recovers his sense of himself: ‘le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non’ (S, I. 3). Underlying the depiction of this event is the topic of reading and personal identity, a topic emphasized further by the reference to metempsychosis in the next sentence:

Puis elle [i.e., the belief that he had become what he was reading about] commençait à me devenir inintelligible, comme après la métempsychose les pensées d’une existence antérieure.

(S, I. 3)

Proust’s narrator feels he has been overwhelmed, feels that the text has become his identity. He goes on to consider this intense and complex state of mind as a previous existence, an identity from which he has emerged. The topic of reading and identity is an element in Proust’s treatment of reading which will re-emerge in various guises throughout À la recherche.

Two further details which contribute to the psychological perspective on reading in the opening paragraph are found in Proust’s use of the verbs ‘appliquer’ and ‘parler’ in relation to the reading process. First, the verb ‘appliquer’, used, as we have just seen, when the Narrator says that: ‘le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non’. The Collins/Robert dictionary gives ‘consacrer’ as a synonym of ‘appliquer’, and Proust’s choice of a verb with such a connotation indicates a particular attitude to reading on the part of the Narrator. It indicates the degree of attention with which he reads, and reinforces the impression we gained from the topics of his non-fiction texts and his habitual reading in bed that he is a serious and committed reader.

Of equal note is Proust’s use of the verb ‘parler’ in relation to the Narrator’s reading: ‘il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage’. This verb also indicates a particular attitude towards reading. It suggests a feeling of intimacy between reader and book, subtly evoking Proust’s treatment, in Journées de lecture, of the idea that reading is a form of conversation. As I made clear in my introduction, Proust differs from Ruskin, who states in Sesame and Lilies that reading is a process of listening ‘all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men’.³ Proust, in refining Ruskin’s concept, chooses to focus on the act of communication rather than the image of a partner in dialogue, claiming that:

la lecture, au rebours de la conversation, consistant pour chacun de nous à recevoir communication d’une autre pensée, mais tout en restant seul, c’est-à-dire en continuant à jouir de la puissance intellectuelle qu’on a dans la solitude et que la conversation dissipe immédiatement.

(CSB, 174)

And as we have seen, Proust goes on to call reading ‘ce miracle fécond d’une communication au sein de la solitude’ (CSB, 174). When we examine his use of the verb ‘parler’ in the first paragraph of À la recherche then, we can read it as a sign pointing to his refined version of Ruskin’s image. The verb gives us an insight into Proust’s understanding of reading.

We can now draw together the themes and ideas which relate to reading in the opening paragraph. We can say that Proust chose to depict his first-person narrator in the act of reading in part because this activity gives the reader of Proust’s novel a foothold in the consciousness of the Narrator. But, apart from the purely narrative function of this activity, we can say that reading is a subject of the opening paragraph in its own right. It promotes reflection on two different styles of reading: the linear and the associative. Moreover, Proust subtly evokes the social context of the Narrator’s reading. He elaborates on the identity of the reading subject as it is affected by the act of reading. He plants in our minds the idea of reading as communication. How will Proust use the theme of reading in bed to further elaborate his discussion of these ideas?

Withdrawal to Bedroom, Bed and Book

As the Narrator recounts his childhood, we find that, when staying in his tante Léonie’s house at Combray, he is in the habit of going up to his bedroom after lunch on Sundays to lie on his bed and read: ‘je me décidais à rentrer et montais directement lire chez moi’ (S, I. 79). This ‘chez moi’ is indicative of the private space at the child’s disposal, and evokes his status as the only child of middle-class parents. The Narrator evokes his past self: ‘je m’étais étendu sur mon lit, un livre à la main, dans ma chambre’ (S, I. 82). There is a series of retreats here: to the bedroom, to the bed, and finally to the book. The sense of withdrawal is highlighted by the details of the brilliant summer afternoon from which the boy is sheltered by the ‘volets presque clos’. In the contrastingly darkened room, there is hardly enough light to read by. As regards the psychological details of the reading act, the child is presented as silently reading while remaining conscious of his surroundings. He is aware, for instance, of the ‘coups frappés dans la rue de la Cure par Camus [...] contre des caisses poussiéreuses’ and of the flies in the room, ‘qui exécutaient devant moi, dans leur petit concert, comme la musique de chambre de l’été’ (S, I. 82). These references to the world of sound illustrate the complexity of the psychological process of silent reading; the way in which the mind can operate on different levels consecutively or at the same time. The child is absorbed by his book, and yet aware of the details of the environment which surrounds him.

It is worth pausing to consider the image of the flies’ buzzing as chamber music from another perspective: that of deictic levels within Proust’s narrative, the spatiotemporal levels elaborated within it. The complex and elegant association of the movements and sounds of the flies with chamber music is, we can say, a product of the Narrator’s mind rather than that of the child protagonist. The Narrator feels free to discuss his childhood experiences in terms of his own cultural experiences since childhood (for instance, his experiences of chamber music). He does not restrict himself to presenting this mise-en-scène of reading through the mind of the child. And the reader of Proust’s novel is thus made aware of two distinct deictic or spatio-temporal levels operating in conjunction with one another: the world of the child protagonist, the subject of the narrative, and the world of the adult narrator, source of the narrative. The point is made by Yvan Bédard in relation to the cluster of reading scenes involving the child in the Combray chapter of the novel: ‘Le segment des plaisirs de la lecture a été fortement pris en charge par le narrateur adulte’.⁴ Another example of the culturally sophisticated adult mind perceiving and exploiting resemblances is found in an image of reading offered to us. The repose of the child reader is likened to the repose of ‘une main immobile au milieu d’une eau courante’ which supports ‘le choc et l’animation d’un torrent d’activité’ (S, I. 82). As we are presented with this image, we are aware of the Narrator’s adult self, inside which is inserted his past, childhood self. The mise-en-scène of reading which we are focusing on here allows us to see this elaboration of deictic levels in action.

The image of the ‘main immobile au milieu d’une eau courante’ is worth examining also for the way in which it characterizes reading. The child reader is depicted as active rather than passive because he is so emotionally stirred up by the adventure stories he is reading. The verb ‘émouvoir’ is used in relation to the child’s repose (repos): ‘grâce aux aventures racontées par mes livres et qui venaient l’émouvoir’ (S, I. 82). Proust’s determin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations Used in The Text
• Introduction
• 1 Reading in Bed
• 2 Of Posters and Presents
• 3 The French Press in À la recherche
• 4 Letters and Telegrams
• 5 Qrality and Textuality in À la recherche
• 6 The Imagery of Reading: Palimpsestes lisibles
• Conclusion
• Bibliography Literary Texts cited
• Index of Themes
• Index of Names and Texts