Hello, everyone! Before I get to the May 30th meeting, there are some house-keeping items to take care of. We have our meeting room at the Strathcona branch of the Edmonton Public Library booked for the rest of the year with the exception of August. The meeting room will not be available for that entire month because of the Fringe Festival, which uses library space to mount performances. Therefore, we'll either have to take August off or come up with an alternate meeting place.
Second, I will not be able to attend the next two meetings (June 13 and June 27). There shouldn't be a problem with the meeting space, though. If there is, just explain to the library clerk that we have the space booked for the appropriate time but do not have a contract as the dates were sorted out and booked months in advance.
Ok, as for the meeting. We finished discussing The Guermantes Way, which is longest volume in the novel and thus took us forever to get through. The last section of the volume features a very long dinner party scene which is as exasperating to the narrator as perhaps it is to the reader. Once again, we see that all that glitters is not gold and that the world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ultimately proves dissatisfying and facile to the narrator.
Other topics of discussion revolved around the masterful "red shoes" scene, in which Oriane and Basin downplay the news that Swann is dying so as not to be inconvenienced on their way to a party. For me, the final line in the volume is as devastating as the final line in the "Swann in Love" section of Swann's Way; is this an intentional parallel? Where once Swann was the heartless dismisser of another, now he is being dismissed?
Anyway, time to move on to Sodom and Gomorrah, which we will discuss the beginning of at the next meeting.
My favourite line so far is from the narrator's visit to Charlus in The Guermantes Way:
ReplyDelete"Un de ces jours vous prendrez les genoux de Mme de Villeparisis pour le lavabo, et on ne sait pas ce que vous y ferez."
And the somewhat disappointing Moncrieff Translation (replacing 'seat of the rear' with 'washbasin' restores some of the flavour of the original line):
"One of these days you’ll be mistaking Mme. de Villeparisis’s knees for the seat of the rear, and a fine mess you’ll make of things then."
Haha! Yeah, that's a great one. The line in the new Penguin translation says "One of these days you will mistake Mme de Villeparisis's lap for the seat of a toilet, and one begins to wonder what you'd leave in it."
DeleteLooking forward to making it back! I'm nearly through the Guermantes Way and wil get through as much of the next volume for Wednesday as possible.
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