Józef Czapski wrote on Proust in 1941 when he was a polish war prisoner of the USSR, in a monastery in Gryazovets in the winter 1940-41. The prisoners had to do forced labour, yet due to illness Czapski was exempted and had to do only lighter work which allowed him to prepare lectures on Proust.
For his notes used the technic of mindmaps of which some are reprinted in his book. They are quite interesting, but in Polish. The prisoners were allowed to give lectures to themselves. Czapski did not have an edition of Proust's work with him, but prepared his lectures solely out of memory. His book shows very solid backgroundknowledge of french culture.
He starts with a scetch of the cultural background of Proust’s time in which he embeds Proust's biography. Interesting here is the focus on Degas and how Czapski connects him with Mallarmé, how Czapski points out the critical potential – critical of society - of the paintings of Degas of whom he says that he has a cruel, precise eye which is often also said about Proust too.
Czapski calls Proust’s oeuvre as a ‘Summa’, intersting association to Thomas of Aquinas, Summa... Summa seems to be the perfect name to signify Proust’s book. Then, very interesting, the reference to Curtius and that Proust’s style is Germanic because of those long sentences. – and Curtius emphasized those Germanic elements. And then, this is not only a reference to a Germanic style but also to a French style of the 16th century who himself was linked to a latin style. Czapski emphasizes that Proust’s book is not about the facts of life but about the thoughts that arise out of the shocks of facts. Here one can find also a very good defension against those who see him as snob. Proust’s longing to look beyond the facts and what rules life, to find out about these invisible laws of being.
In this book one can also find a good & of course very obvious refutation of the snob-prejudice: Proust describes everything with same scrutiny. He has also written some letter to a Lady sometime who called him a snob and in which he explained why he is none, but alas, the Lady has thrown the letter away. Other things in this book discussed are the connection Proust-Pascal, the questions of vanity and love and Czapski continually and comparatively explains Proust's book in contrast to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
This should merely serve as a simple introduction, passages of this book are being examined later more thoroughly.
His book is available in French and German:
Czapski; Proust contre la déchéance, Paris 1987
Czapski; Proust - Vorträge im Lager Grjasowez, Berlin 2006
3 comments:
I remember you had mentioned him on your old blog too. Sadly that remains my only introduction to him so far.
The long sentence one is interesting. I get into this discussion often with people who complain about the difficulty of reading long sentences (not just with Proust but other writers who have similar style also). they don't realize that he is not just recording the facts of the external world which could be perfectly captured in a simple declarative sentence and neither is he stating some laws of nature which could be written as a series of simple and unqualified assertions. The language itself is a tool of discovery and a way of representing the "process" of thinking, that's the reason why the sentences are so long and they have so many clauses and qualifications.
I know I am belaboring the obvious here. But I just had the same discussion with a friend yesterday who was citing Orwell's essay about plain english and politics and was arguing that all writers should follow the same principle.
also interesting is that long style is considered part of a distinctive "Germanic style".. Is it because it is much more introspective tradition, less interested in the facts of external world and more in the internal thought processes? My (admittedly limited) exposure to Germanic writers does seem to prove this thesis.
ah! last paragraph should read, "long sentence is considered"...
also here's Orwell's classic essay.
thank you a. will have a look at it and then reply decently.
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