My Moors. My clocktowers. Bells and hammers. Cambrai and Venice. And George Sand.
Of all the authors Marcel Proust could have chosen to use in the pivotal scene in Combray, I love that he chose George Sand with her nom de plume. And of all the Continue reading “Good old George Sand”
He repeated to himself: “Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall.”
What is it about the death of Bergotte, poor Bergotte, that makes me love him so much? Yes, it’s his indigestion, and his silly little mantra about the patch of yellow wall. in Vermeer’s View of Delft. Continue reading “Silly Bergotte and his little patch of yellow wall”
Okay, a word about all the church stuff. Archbishops, saints, churches, resurrection.
I’m not proselytizing here. I’m talking in a fictional sense. And I think the same could be said for Continue reading “Saint Marcel, author of the book”
My son sometimes says something I’ve done is cringe, and I mean no harm to Illiers when I say this (though I hate when he says it to me!) but I do find it a bit that. Of course the town’s the real deal, and yes I’ve been there and it’s charming, but a name… Continue reading “Illiers-Combray lolol”
Le 2 Février 1917
My heart is so heavy my soul cannot bear. That sounds too maudlin for Punscht. But I am no writer. And yet write I must, as I wrestle within for the true answer. He has burned the journals. Fool! The sole remaining Continue reading “A piece of Folly: Punscht”
I didn’t know that a mask like this one was called a ‘loup.’
It took me a while to figure this out. I thought at first that this word Loup had something to do with my shepherds (the Moors on the Torre Del’Orologgio)- i.e. something about a wolf in Continue reading “The masked Saint: Saint Loup”
I figured it would be helpful here to include the first and last paragraphs of ISOLT, both in English and French, since I’m such a sucker for them, and since my whole theory is based on them.
Swann’s Way – English
For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out Continue reading “ISOLT Excerpt: First and Last Paragraphs”
Maggie sat on the front stoop, hothouse flower in her black robe with its exotic summer flowers – red, pink and yellow – vibrant and pulsing against the nondescript doorframe and Continue reading “A piece of Folly: Marketing Marcel”
For there were, in the environs of Combray, two ‘ways’ which we used to take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen: the way towards Méséglise-la-Vineuse, which we called
