Painter on Proust

This afternoon, while waiting in the front room for the second rise of batch No.742, I chanced to read the preface of the first volume of the biography at reference 1.

Much was made of the more or less theological debate, presumably very much alive in 1961, about whether a work of art, of the imagination, in this case a book - above and reference 2 - should stand alone or whether it needed to be propped up with supporting material, in particular biographical material about the artist. 

I think Painter's point was that more or less everything of importance in this book could be traced back, linked back, to people and events in the life. It was therefore appropriate to set down that life in as much detail as was available and sensible - and to make those links visible. That it was wrong to speculate, to write about the book and what it was really saying without taking into account the facts of the life. One might easily get led up the garden path, as it were.

This set me to thinking, so much so that, after putting the bread in the oven, I fell asleep and failed to wake to the buzzer which told me that No.742 was cooked, with the result that it was cooked for a little more than an hour rather than the usual 45 minutes. However, while the bread was a little darker on top than usual, it was short of black and I was not much worried. Something of the sort had happened before and the bread was fine inside. And so it proved today: a bit later on, the bread was really very good. So, apart from continuing to be puzzled by how well my bread stands the vagaries of my baking, maybe I would do well to increase the baking time to 55 minutes? There being two loaves of a little under 3lbs each before baking and the temperature being 225°C.

Odds and end from later on

Painter's point is a serious one, which has bothered me off and on a fair bit over the years. And which I know bothers at least some creatives, who would prefer their work to stand unsupported and for interested parties not to go burrowing around in their private affairs - either while they are still around or afterwards. Some, I believe, go to some trouble to collect up their papers and destroy them. While others go to some trouble to collect them up and arrange for some university library in the US to take them on.

I have much sympathy with the first group. The work of art is what it is, not where it came from. The whole point - maybe - is that the work transcends where it came from. Or from another perspective, a more or less vain attempt to make static what is dynamic. And the fact that it has been projected into the world, does not give the world the right to poke about in where it came from.

That said, it is also true that most imaginative work, often called creative, is very much a product of its time. It can be pigeon-holed, irritating though that might be for the creator.

And that, if the world, the public, has given the creator a lot of money for the work, the public does have rights over the creator. At least, that is, if he or she wants the public to carry on coughing up.

And then, time of creation might be well past. Without support, no-one is going to make much sense of the work in question. Most people would not spend quality time with Shakespeare without the sort of support offered by the Arden edition. Many books, even if they were written in English of a sort, are mostly going to be read in a modern translation. Do many French people read Rabelais in the original, ancient French? Do we read the Bible in whatever language it was first written down in?

Do we get more value out of, say Conrad, by having a Leavis to hold our hand, to show us the way? Or some reviewer in the Guardian? I associate to my father, who once explained to me that the proper function of a reviewer was not to grand-stand on his own account, which is what a lot of them do, rather to tell him enough about the subject of the review that he could decide, more or less for himself, whether or not he wanted to consume whatever it was for himself. Which seems fair enough.

And then, Conrad and Leavis apart, it seems a bit over the top to give a chap like Simenon, who mostly wrote detective stories, the full Pléiade. There is something a bit odd about reading a book that started life as pulp fiction on a railway station bookstall in a fancy edition.

While Richard Church, last noticed in these pages at reference 5, includes both autobiography and autobiographical novels in his work, which positively invite speculation about those parts of his life that he chooses not to write about. The possibly tumultuous life of more or less anonymous cutter of a splendid diamond does not invite in quite the same way. To which Benvenuto Cellini, the Renaissance goldsmith who wrote a famous autobiography, is something of a counterexample.

There is a different kind of problem in that not all creation is as neat, tidy, closed and complete in the way of a cut diamond. Simenon might have been quite a tidy author, with his bundling up and sending off his manuscript being more or less the end of the matter. While other authors, notoriously Proust, fiddled with their text endlessly, in what were supposed to be the final stages of publication. He died, as it were, in flagrente, in a great sea of manuscripts and corrections, leaving his executors to sort it all out. An open invitation to the French editions of Leavis to get stuck in.

Then while Simenon might have been neat and tidy about his novels, he also wanted to control his afterlife, leaving behind a great sea of not always honest autobiographical material; his life as a performance.

Maybe it is all down to consent. When a creative is known to want his or her privacy, maybe we should just try to respect that desire.

I dare say this field has been well plowed over by others. But I shall try to give it a bit more thought over the days to come. Get beyond the dream that it provoked last night.

The snap

I think the books snapped were expensive, although I could not make much sense of their puff, which follows:

'Nrf first edition for the first volume; Original edition current paper containing a false statement fifth edition of the second volume, first editions numbered on pure wire only major paper with reimposed the following volumes. Back slightly past volumes 2, 3 and 4, some minor foxing affecting only the margins of the third volume, a few freckles on volume 4 This comprehensive collection of "In Search of Lost Time" includes the following titles:. "From Swann's Way, "" In the shadow of young girls in flowers "," The Guermantes Way "(2 volumes)," Sodom and Gomorrah "(3 volumes)," Prisoner "(2 volumes)," Albertine disappeared "(2 volumes) and" Time Regained "(2 volumes). Rare and nice together'.

References

Reference 1: Marcel Proust: a biography - George D. Painter - 1961.

Reference 2: À la recherche du temps perdu - Marcel Proust - 1913-1027.

Reference 3: https://www.edition-originale.com/fr/litterature/editions-originales/proust-a-la-recherche-du-temps-perdu-1913-52756?id_recherche=570ba8adf118d. The source of the snap above.

Reference 4: https://www.la-pleiade.fr/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/church-three.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Leavis. A big deal when I was young.