I find it fascinating how he places so much emphasis on the fear he experiences at being discovered awake, of disrupting his parents’ routine/expectations, and yet when he ultimately exposes himself, he encounters understanding and kindness (albeit with hesitation from his mother.) It’s revealing that he gets what he wanted/needed emotionally, but in his recollection, he sees this as a painful moment:
“I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first step down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first time she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten...[T]his evening opened a new era, must remain a black date in the calendar.”
He narrates as if he had these thoughts in the moment, but surely a child wouldn’t have this kind of insight. Nor would he have known it was a step down, let alone the first step. We can only identify steps and results in retrospect. Yet he wants the reader to place these thoughts with his younger self. At the same time, he frames this as what he believes to be his mother’s thoughts, when in reality they are a backwards projection of his own perspective on his relationship with his mother in total. It’s impossible for Proust or his reader to know how his mother perceived this in the moment or in retrospect.
Not entirely sure what to make of this or if there’s a conclusion to pull from it. But it was an interesting moment where the larger project’s emphasis on types of memory grows complicated (surely not for the last time!)
Regarding the end note, it has always been a complication of War & Peace how extensively French was used, and Tolstoy did his own translations, though things about it varied through editions. The translation I have translates his translation from Russia in the footnote, instead of actually originally translating the French (despite that both translators are fluent French speakers.)
Anyway, you are doing much better than I at getting something from this novel. I am about to start book 3 and have little to say about it, though despite In Search of Lost Time being one of the most gratuitously self-indulgent things I've ever read I have somehow grown attached.
I find it fascinating how he places so much emphasis on the fear he experiences at being discovered awake, of disrupting his parents’ routine/expectations, and yet when he ultimately exposes himself, he encounters understanding and kindness (albeit with hesitation from his mother.) It’s revealing that he gets what he wanted/needed emotionally, but in his recollection, he sees this as a painful moment:
“I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first step down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first time she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten...[T]his evening opened a new era, must remain a black date in the calendar.”
He narrates as if he had these thoughts in the moment, but surely a child wouldn’t have this kind of insight. Nor would he have known it was a step down, let alone the first step. We can only identify steps and results in retrospect. Yet he wants the reader to place these thoughts with his younger self. At the same time, he frames this as what he believes to be his mother’s thoughts, when in reality they are a backwards projection of his own perspective on his relationship with his mother in total. It’s impossible for Proust or his reader to know how his mother perceived this in the moment or in retrospect.
Not entirely sure what to make of this or if there’s a conclusion to pull from it. But it was an interesting moment where the larger project’s emphasis on types of memory grows complicated (surely not for the last time!)
Regarding the end note, it has always been a complication of War & Peace how extensively French was used, and Tolstoy did his own translations, though things about it varied through editions. The translation I have translates his translation from Russia in the footnote, instead of actually originally translating the French (despite that both translators are fluent French speakers.)
Anyway, you are doing much better than I at getting something from this novel. I am about to start book 3 and have little to say about it, though despite In Search of Lost Time being one of the most gratuitously self-indulgent things I've ever read I have somehow grown attached.