Bibliography

For reasons which will become clear in due course, I have been taking a look at reference 1, a book which I have owned for a long time, but in which I had not previously got further than dipping. 

A translation of a theoretical book from France, from the days when structuralism ruled the world, certainly the French world, built around a close reading of ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ of reference 2. A close reading which is complicated by Proust’s massive program of amendments and his death in harness.

A book which analyses narrative in terms of order, duration, frequency, mood and voice. Concepts which Genette goes to some trouble to try to define, to pin down.

Over the past few days, I have been trying to do a bit more than dip and so far, I have learned something about the complicated mapping between various time zones: that of the real world (as it were), that of the narrator and that of the narrative. Roughly the order, duration and frequency just mentioned. Are things presented in the narrative in the right order? Are they given space in the narrative which corresponds to their importance? How often do they appear in the narrative?

A book which refers to that text a great deal, with help for the reader provided by references both to the Pléiade version current at the time of the translation in 1980 (P I, P II and P III) and to the Random House version of 1932/1934 (RH I and RH II). This last snapped today from the website of a secondhand book seller. About 1,100 pages in each of the two volumes. Followed by the bottom of a sample page from reference 1, complete with all its references. Sometimes, but by no means always, the text includes the bits of the text in question.

These references are those supplied by Gennette’s 1980 translator, Jane Lewin.

It so happens, that many years ago I bought a copy of the first and rather fewer years ago I picked up a copy of the second from one of the bookstalls then by the river, under the arches of Waterloo Bridge.

First try

On this first try, I tried checking some of Genette’s references to RH and failed to get any of them to work, from volume 1 or volume 2.

Gemini

I then started to wonder about editions and whether I actually did have the right ones. Search with Bing and Google failed to turn up anything very helpful, so I turned to Gemini. He was quite helpful, providing some useful general background to the Random House translation and to its various printings.

Maybe best not to rely on the details, but I thought he gave the flavour of the business quite well – with books from the US in the 1930s not necessarily carrying much information about dates, editions or impressions. Just a copyright notice, probably necessary for copyright purposes. And, in this case, very little about the provenance of the text as printed, never mind the full-on treatment in a Pléiade.

Second try

On this second try, most references from both RH and P worked. But later references, probably from the later version of RH with a new translator for volume 7 (Mayor) failed, with the target text being a few pages adrift of the reference.

Clearly the first try was too early in the morning, before the brain was properly online.

Incidental

First, Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’, a painting which comes up in these pages from time to time. We are treated by Proust to the dying Bergotte’s visit to this painting where he is obsessed with a little patch of yellow wall, a patch involving a little roof, or something of the sort (‘auvent’). I would not have thought that Proust made this up, but I have not been able to identify the bit of wall in question to my satisfaction.

Second, someone called Delaunay gets a walk-on part. Checking, I find a painter who is roughly Proust’s contemporary and a boiler & car engineer from a bit earlier. I picked up on this as we are to visit the restaurant in the Aldwych of this name tomorrow, presumably named for one of them. Will any of the front-of-house team have a clue as to which of these two Delaunays the place is named for? Assuming, that is, that it is one of them.

Conclusions

Having some prior knowledge of reference 2 is very helpful making much of reference 1. And having access to print copies of references 3 and 4 is a big help too – so I am lucky in that regard. I dare say access to a searchable pdf copy would be helpful too, but I have not looked into that. Not yet, anyway.

I have been reminded what a fine writer Proust was and how much his interest in the workings of memory relates to my own present interest in same. I wonder, by no means for the first time, what on earth I could have made of this book when I read it when in my mid-twenties. Maybe I was more taken with the society and romantic goings-on which provide the material for the musings on memory than with the musings themselves.

But it is a big book. Am I going to find the time and energy to have another go?

References

Reference 1: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method – Gérard Genette – 1972, 1980.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time. 

Reference 3: Remembrance of things past – Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Frederick A. Blossom – 1934 or so. A two volume, hardback edition from Random House of New York. ‘RH’ above.

Reference 4: À la recherche du temps perdu – Marcel Proust – 1912-1920. Three volumes. Gallimard : Pléiade 1954. The next edition, snapped above, did not appear until the late 1980s. ‘P’ above.