Letters...and Email
For your efforts to set evolution back on track, thank you! What a refreshing change from the proliferation of inane junk being spewed from the processors of electronic prophets in the name of freedom of speech! As a white-skinned native of that Dark Continent called Africa, I am doing time here for the sins and missionary zeal of the fathers. (Needless to say, the Proust Support Group has proved itself invaluable in keeping the old humors from running totally amok during this time!) I can think of no better way of regaining lost time than spreading the word via PST that all has not been in vain. To which effect: Please let me know how much it will cost to send a portfolio of all the hitherto published editions of PST to each of three of my soul friends in exile: In the UK, in Chicago and in South Africa. And how payment should be made -- if and when my debtors decide to pay me for a change!
Charlette du Toit
South Africa
The latest edition that I am able to find is #5. Please say that there have been more issues since and that I am just having difficulty with my search. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Nicole DuCharme
I've been hearing all about your homepage and I just had to check it out. I surely wasn't disapointed!!!
Corey Higgins
While I surf the internet almost everyday, your site is one of the very few where I have read almost every page in its entirety. I am now looking forward to your next issue. In response to Robert Homes' comment about the Moncrieff v. Kilmartin translation I would like to point out that In Search of Time Lost is actually a literal translation of the French title A la Recherche du Temps Perdu and Moncrieff was the one to take liberties with the translation of the title. For those who prefer the original Moncrieff translation, it can be found used at www.bibliofind.com.
S. Cornet
Dear Mr. Segal, and all the members of the Marcel Proust Support Group,
I'm delighted to have stumbled across your site. As I had entered into a period of my life in which I was given to reflecting at length on my own reactions, intellectual and emotional, the two being as hard to consider separately as the physical phenomenon of the sound of a friend or loved one's voice and the mental image that voice immediately conjures up, should we hear it at long distance, over the telephone for example, of the speaker's posture, facial expression, the size of his or her torso and the relative vitality of his or her spirit at that moment, to the curious interaction, defiant of the laws of time and space, that occur in our spirit between persons, events and situations, some of which long past, but still visible in the mind's eye constantly beneath the busy surface of quotidian affairs, others filling the daily sphere of present occurrences, still others perhaps to come, fantasms the stuff of which is necessarily a composite of all that has come before, animated by the newest forces of desire, will and recent habit, but which, once they or what arrive, to our surprise, in their stead have come to pass, are wholly different, having the odor, weight, momentum and strangeness of real life, and relegate our plans to the realm of dreams whose value slowly erodes as the passage of time diminishes their size in our memory, looking back, as a landmark is reduced in our field of vision as the carriage-and-pair passes it on the road and continues until it vanishes altogether, the memory of "Remembrance of Things Past" came again and again to the front of my consciousness; for, years before, I had read "Swann's Way," and, years after that, had read it again, continuing on to "The Guermantes Way" and then "Cities of the Plain," before stopping, my attention unavoidably drawn to other readings and other pastimes which more insistently clamored for me to occupy myself with them, but always its inimitable style and wisdom stayed with me, to such an extent that whenever I encountered other writers with a similar method of analysis or description, even without the uniquely elaborate sentences that Proust favored, a whole world of memory and sensation came flooding back, not unlike Proust's narrator's experience with the madeleine; and so, not content with merely starting again at the beginning of his oeuvre, I also began to search out other references around and about Proust, and came to your web site.
I'm actually kind of jealous of you guys for already having finished. Then again, I can still look forward to the pleasure of finding out what finally happens!
There's a great book, which I haven't finished reading because I'm back into the story of Swann and Odette, so it'll have to wait, called "How Proust Can Change Your Life," by one Alain de Botton, who is English despite the French name. I'm reading it in the French translation and it's marvelous--on one level, a spoof of self-help books, on another quite serious. I don't have it with me right now, so I'm not sure who publishes it, but I'll let you know if you haven't already discovered it.
Verbosely yours,
Tom Storer
I've recently discovered your Proust newsletter. What a treat: It's admirable and needs to continue.
Richard French
Great Proust website! Maybe you or your friends/readers can help me with something that's been bugging me for years. In A LA RECHERCHE... Proust talks about the wonderful smell of the hawthorns (aub pines) that grew in Illiers-Combray. I'm trying to find out what type of hawthorns they were, and how I can get them. I once called the French embassy, and they told me not even to bother, because even if I got the right one, which they didn't know, it would not be the same because I don't have "french sun, french rain, and french soil!" That being the case, undoubtedly, I'm still searching for the hawthorn! I understand, or at least someone told me, that the hawthorns in I-C were long ago replaced by eglentine (sp?) roses, but in all that's been written about MP, someone should know, shouldn't they? Any help if greatly appreciated.
Ruth
I'm very delighted to see a Proust Web Site on the Internet.Here in my country,Turkey,there are very few Proust fans.And only the first two volumes of Remembrance of Things Past have been published until this year.I haven't read the rest of the novel yet ! I'm 26 years old and I knew Proust since I was a child.He helped me to build my own way of seeing life (although I first read him in my late teens).
I'm very keen on reading your pages.If you have ever heard of another Turk who have written to you please send me his/her address...My address is: swann@turk.net
Sincerely,
Tugrul Ozkaracalar
Turkey
Dear Miss P,
Today I bought the third volume of the "Remembrance..." ! Yes,'Yapi Kredi' published the third volume ! Earlier than I expect.
I suspect you've warned them ! For a long time I've been very busy.So I couldn't read all of the issues of PST.But this week I plan to read every article in every issue. I've had a glance to all of the titles.While doing that,I said to myself "Now Mr.Tugrul,you'll need much time.Really "much" time..."
After my reading, may I disturb you with my questions and comments? I have one already: Did memoirs of Celeste Albaret make an impact on the literature society when it was published about twenty years ago? I've found some striking points there.
Tugrul Ozkaracalar
Much enjoyed your Proust pages. I wanted to let you know that I have written a book on Proust that you might like. It's called How Proust can change your Life, and is published by Pantheon in May 1997.
With best wishes,
Alain de Botton
I've just come across this web site devoted to my all time favourite writer and I must I'm astounded. It seems that the whole world of opportunities is opening in front of my eyes. I really would like to get in contact with Proust devotees. I would appreciate any letters or email from people around the world. I'd love to discuss some of the issues. It could be interesting to see the perception of Proust's work from different nationalities point of view. Please write or email to:
Ireneusz Barczak
Os.Rusa 47/5
61-245 Poznan
Poland
email: irekbae@novci2.ae.poznan.pl
I just discovered the on-line version of *Proust Said That*. I must admit that I was a little amazed by it all. I never imagined that I would find such a thing on the web. It's nice to learn that others are out there trying to win converts to the Proustian cause. I'll soon send the money for a subscription, and I'll tell my students about your site.
Sincerely yours,
Curtis Bowman
Department of Philosophy
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
I thought you might be interested to know that at tiny little Cornell College, in Mt. Vernon, IA there is a senior seminar course devoted solely to Proust and Remembrance of Things Past. The college functions one-course-at-a-time (each course lasting 3 1/2 weeks) and the seminar focused on the first "volume" of the Montcrieff translation. As a veteran of the course, I can assure you of the pressures placed upon students to complete the first 1/3 of the entirety in only 3 1/2 weeks! I found myself struggling with the text, alternately hating and loving Marcel, fighting not to be drawn in to his life. The daily four hour discussions on the novel plagued me. By the third week, I crested, and in a tantrum tore my book in two down the middle, flinging one of the halves to the floor. The other half I kept, and continued to read. At the end of 31/2 weeks I was hooked, so much like opium was the narrative. I voluntarily organized and participated in a second, independant course, in which four hardy souls read and discussed the second "volume." And then I tackled the third on my own. When it was over, I didn't know what to do with myself. Where was I to get my next Proust fix? It came in the form of a lovely, and lengthy, biography. And now I tackle Jean Santeuil. Thank goodness Proust Said That will be there when I finish!
It was a pleasure stumbling upon your newsletter.
Christine Parker
Enclosed please find fifty dollars which I hope makes it through the postal service to you. I'd like to have a copy of the most recent PST and of its five predecessors. As if you don't have enough proust stories by now, here's one more: my wife an I began reading ROTP to each other out loud in early 1995 and now are close to the end, down to the last hundred pages. We began because we each fell asleep when we read it to ourselves. We still occasionally fall asleep while the other is reading, but find it marvelous drifting in and out of sleep while listening to Proust. Please accept the remainder of the cash as a well-earned contribution to your efforts. If you are in Philadelphia, we would be happy to meet you.
Tom Csaszar
Thinking of Proust and modern technology I have to say that it is a good thing that Proust never had a computer and a word processing program. It is well known that he used to rewrite most passages several times, and when Gallimard asked him to proof-read his texts he never corrected errors, but instead used all available space to add new sentences between the old. If he had written his novel with a word processing program he would probably never have gotten beyond the first page (just like me, with my great novel, that is). While on the subject I can also add that we should be thankful that Walter Benjamin (who, by the way, has written an interesting essay on Proust) didn't have a photo copying machine and that August Strindberg didn't have an e-mail account.
Malte Persson
Goteborg, Sweden
