piony ([info]piony) wrote,
@ 2008-07-10 10:53:00
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 Marcel Proust  was born today in 1871 in Paris.

 " I think that life will suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say.Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it–our life–hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly. 
   But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.
   The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.” 1927

 

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Reading Proust
[info]meirbg
2008-07-10 05:38 pm UTC (link)
And so, in my daily reading of Proust today, I have

DU CÔTÉ DE CHEZ SWANN - DEUXIÈME PARTIE - UN AMOUR DE SWANN (SUITE)

Et lui, s'apercevant pour la première fois que Forcheville qu'il connaissait depuis longtemps pouvait plaire à une femme et était assez bel homme, avait répondu: «Immonde!» Certes, il n'avait pas l'idée d'être jaloux d'Odette,

and since Swan was jealous of Odette, then it seems that throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X and making a trip to India are mutually contradictory. For Hindus would undoubtedly recommend removing oneself from the passions of this world, because the total sum of pleasures and misfortunes is always on the negative side.

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Re: Reading Proust
[info]piony
2008-07-11 03:27 pm UTC (link)
meirbg, you are right, the two seem self contradictory. Or at least, they do so at first glance. But in Proust's mind, which sees the totality of facts, they can be true together. The easiest is to say that they can both be true at different times. But you, meirbg, with your philosophical mind, will enjoy meditating on how they can be true at the same time. How to be both involved and not involved simultaneously?

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[info]crivelli
2008-07-10 07:09 pm UTC (link)
А Вам нравится книга Де Боттона, Лена?

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[info]piony
2008-07-10 07:15 pm UTC (link)
Я прочла её 10 лет назад с удовольствием :-)

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