evelyn_b

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If, by virtue of a family tradition such as makes the daughters of great soldiers preserve a respect for military matters in the midst of their most frivolous distractions, she felt, as the granddaughter of women who had been on terms of friendship with Thiers, Merimee and Augier, that a place must always be kept in her drawing room for men of intellect, she had at the same time derived from the manner, at once condescending and familiar, in which those famous men had been received at Guermantes, the foible of looking on men of talent as family friends whose talent does not dazzle one, to whom one does not speak of their work, and who would not be at all interested if one did. Moreover the type of mind illustrated by Merimee and Melihac and Halevy, which was also hers, led her, by contrast with the verbal sentimentality of an earlier generation, to a style of conversation that rejects everything to do with fine language and the expression of lofty thoughts, so that she made it a sort of point of good breeding when she was with a poet or a musician to talk only of the food they were eating or the game of cards to which they would afterwards sit down. This abstention had, on a third person not conversant with her ways, a disturbing effect which amounted to mystification. Mme de Guermantes having asked him if he would like to be invited with this or that famous poet, devoured by curiosity he arrived at the appointed hour. The Duchess would talk to the poet about the weather. They sat down to lunch. "Do you like this way of doing eggs?" she would ask the poet. [. . .] "Give Monsieur some more eggs," she would tell the butler, while the anxious fellow-guest sat waiting for what must surely have been the object of the occasion, since they had arranged to meet, in spite of every sort of difficulty, before the Duchess, the poet and he himself left Paris. But the meal went on, one after another the courses would be cleared away, not without having provided Mme de Guermantes with opportunities for clever witticisms or well-judged anecdotes. Meanwhile the poet went on eating without either the Duke or the Duchess showing any sign of remembering that he was a poet.

Today I flipped through a book called Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time. I thought about getting it to read along with LT and then didn't, for the very shallow reason that the prose wasn't as interesting as Lost Time's so I didn't feel like letting it hang around. Maybe later! Some context would probably do me good.

I think I need to make a catch-up post of some kind, either when I finish Guermantes or just when I get back to regular internet access in a couple weeks. So much has happened! But this is Proust we're talking about, so by "so much has happened," I mean, M. spent a terribly awkward afternoon watching Saint-Loup fight with his mistress and had a lot of mixed feelings about both of them and then tried to pretend he'd had a good time but couldn't quite stick the landing, and now he's at a party with the elusive Mme de Guermantes and LEGRANDIN is there, busy practicing and disavowing his snobbery (like everyone else, only more so and at greater pains). The scale of events is human and quotidian, and limitlessly expanding the way days do before they close.

SPEAKING OF BOURGIE FRENCH PEOPLE, though, guess what I found at the thrift store, to take with me on my last trip of the summer (along with M. and friends, of course)?

EUGENIE GRANDET

by

HONORE DE BALZAC!

I am excited to finally meet some fiction by BALZAC. If it's even a quarter as entertaining as his biography, it will be one of the highlights of 2016.