I keep hearing the adjective ‘Proustian’, and I don’t really know what it means.
The informative definition of the dictionary is “In the style of Marcel Proust”, which doesn’t really help me since I don’t know his style or what attributes of his style to which it refers.
Based on a google and a search, there might be several meanings.
In this thread the OP uses “Proustian” to imply a lengthy and cumbersome paragraph.
In this threadRoger Mexico describes a sentence of Thomas Jefferson’s as being Proustian which seems neither particularly lengthy nor cumbersome.
Other places seem to imply that it has something to do with memory triggers… a sensory stimulus that creates a very strong flashback to a previous time and place.
Help me, Doper-Wan-Kenobis, you’re my only hope.
It’s both of what you said - something written in a lengthy and cumbersome (in some people’s opinions) manner; and related to an action that triggers a memory.
If you read In Search of Lost Time, you will see that Proust wrote in very long sentences. With lots of commas. Much like that paragraph of Thomas Jefferson’s, which I find extremely “Proustian.”) As for the memory trigger, the whole premise of ISoLT is that Proust is eating a madeleine (a type of cookie), which triggers a memory from his childhood, which starts the story of how he went from Marcel Proust, sickly child, to Marcel Proust, writer of a huge novel - the novel that you are right now reading.
Er, well, Swann, Swann, there’s this house, there’s this house, and er, it’s in the morning, it’s in the morning - no, it’s the evening, in the evening and er, there’s a garden and er, this bloke comes in - bloke comes in - what’s his name - what’s his name, er just said it - big bloke - Swarm, Swarm
‘Proustian’ is usually used to indicate one of three things.
A kind of reverie, recollection or memory triggered by something in the present. Sometimes, the broader point is that the item triggering the recollection may not seem, on the surface, to have much to do with the memories conjured up. Hence you might have ‘a Proustian memory…’ of something, or discover that something holds, for you, a ‘Proustian association’ or ‘Proustian connection’ with times past.
Writing in a way that many might think long-winded, indulgent, even a little rambling… but which would more charitably be seen as the kind of writing which is unhurried and patient, that has time for details and digressions, and that is characteristic of a more relaxed and literate era.
It can be used perjoratively, to convey negative connotations of being arty, highbrow, supposely intellectual but actually rather tedious, e.g. ‘He bored us all to tears, wittering on in his usual Proustian way…’
It also has a somewhat narrower connotation that 1. below would indicate, I think - a memory triggered by a particular taste or smell. A la rechereche du temps perdu (I tried once to read it & failed) begins with Swann eating madeleines, a flavor that brings a flood of memories back (enough to fill several thousand pages).
I had a truly Proustian experience when I was about 12 - my grandmother baked cinnamon cookies, commenting that my mother used to make them. My mother died when I was five, and I had never in my memory actually seen these cookies before - but the smell brought a profound sense of my mother to me, as nothing since her death has ever done.
It’s actually The Narrator/Marcel, rather than Swann, who has the experience with the madeleines. Also the memory triggered by the taste isn’t that extensive: this is just the first of several such episodes that eventually allows him to access his memories of “lost time” and write the book.
[/Proustian nitpick]
The above is, I suppose, an example of “Proustian” being used as a noun.
I had a roomie at university who’d read Proust as a bit of light bedtime reading. Six or seven volumes the size of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volume…! I admired her gumption, but never got into it myself.
Those of you who’ve gotten through Proust, what’s a good translation? I speak decent French, and I’ve told myself not to read it until I feel comfortable reading it in the French, but it’s been thirty years since I made that decision and it doesnt really look like I’m going to to do it any time soon, so…
There are basically two groups of complete translations of the whole thing into English. The first version, started in Proust’s lifetime, was mainly by CK Scott Moncrieff, though he died without quite finishing. Various people then completed his translation. A revised version of this by Terence Kilmartin was published in 1981 to reflect the changes that had been made to the later standard edition in French. Moncrieff’s prose style hadn’t dated well and so Kilmartin also toned down some of his excesses. That process was continued about a decade or so ago when DJ Enright published a version that was basically the Moncrieff-Kilmartin version with the prose further revised.
Then just a few years back Penguin published a new translation done entirely from scratch, with different translators tackling the different volumes. This has been generally well received.
Both the Penguin and Enright versions are in print in paperback. If you pick up a secondhand set, it’ll almost certainly be some edition in the Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright tradition.
It’s often argued that ianzin’s sense 3 of “Proustian” derives as much from Moncrieff as from Proust himself.
I don’t think you’ve successfully encapsulated the intricacies of Proust’s masterwork, so we’re going to award the prize to the girl with the biggest tits.
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wrote about
He wrote about
wrote about
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wrote about
He wrote about the…