“Young Girls”
by Marcel Proust (1908)
translated from the French by Deborah Treisman
from the July 12 & 19, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
It’s a bit later than usual, but it has arrived: the 2021 New Yorker summer fiction issue! This year we have fiction from Rebecca Curtis, Sally Rooney, and — surprisingly — Marcel Proust!
I missed the news, but this short piece of fiction from Proust comes from a 1908 manuscript (Swann’s Way would be published in 1913) that was recently found and published in France . . . here is how The New Yorker introduces it:
In April, the French publisher Éditions Gallimard released “Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets et Autres Manuscrits Inédits,” by Marcel Proust. The volume contains a seventy-five-page manuscript from 1908, long rumored to exist but discovered only recently, in the private files of the publisher Bernard de Fallois. In those pages — which include the following passage — Proust sketched out many of the themes and scenes he would eventually draw on for his masterpiece, “In Search of Lost Time.”
Presumably more of this will be make its way to us in English, though I’m not sure when. This particular passage was translated by none other than New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman. I think she does a great job! Here is a sample of the first paragraph. It feels suitably Proustian (says the guy who only just started reading Swann’s Way last month):
One day on the beach, I spotted, walking solemnly along the sand, like two seabirds ready to take flight, two young girls, two young women, really, whom, because of their unfamiliar appearance and style, their haughty and deliberate gait, I took for two foreigners I’d never see again; they weren’t looking at anyone and didn’t notice me. I didn’t see them again in the next few days, which confirmed my sense that they were only passing through our little seaside town, where everyone knew everyone else, where everyone led the same life and met up four times a day to play the same innocent beach games. But several days later I saw five or six girls of the same type gathered around a splendid carriage that had stopped beside the beach; the ones in the carriage were saying goodbye to the others, who hurried over to their horses, which were tied up alongside and on which they rode off. I believed that I recognized one of the two girls I’d seen walking on the sand, though I wasn’t sure, but the girl who really stood out for me this time had red hair, light-colored, superior eyes that rested on me, nostrils that quivered in the wind, and a hat that resembled the open wings of a seagull flying in the wind that was ruffling her red curls. They left.
So, this is a nice piece to have in the summer fiction issue! Let me know your thoughts below!
Has anyone read “A la Recherche”? Is this short ;piece representative of that long work?
William (and everyone):
This is a very interesting excerpt because some of the themes that will be present (and much more lengthily developed in far more complex sentences and with a more difficult, elaborate style) in the complete work are here: the distinctions between the aristocracy/old money and the nouveau riche and the narrator’s fascination with girls who he, at first, glimpses at a distance in a natural setting and about whom he will obsessively ruminate and towards whom he tailors his self-presentation and public image as best he can.
This is almost like notes, written much more simply, for what I consider about the greatest book ever written.
It is is great to see this short Proust fragment in English translation in the New Yorker because it is such a gem. And even if it is not the quality of the later masterpiece, there is a richness and sensitivity that has largely gone missing from most short stories today. I wonder if the writing of today has become more dull or paltry in terms of characterization or if the people on whom writers base their characters seem more numb and emotionally insensitive to everything except their deepest most primitive motivations. Higher sensibility seems have disappeared. Then, one wonders if that is part of the overall evolutionary arc or the specific particular sequence of incitement seen in particular environmental or emotional events or just an existential emptiness that has emerged supplanting the more simplistic highs and lows in the battle between good and evil as it becomes harder to tell who or what is truly evil or truly good.
Larry —
Interesting thoughts. I don’t have an opinion about the comments on literary quality. They’re too big for me to grasp.,
However, I think you go too far in your assertion that “existential emptiness” has supplanted morality or ethics. Sartre’s existentialism is indeed empty, but Victor Frankl’s version is not. And only one of them was in the camps. The other lived a relatively comfortable (and amoral) wartime life in Paris.
As far as discriminating between good and evil, I have no problem with that. If you are confused about any person or activity, send me your dilemmas and I will resolve them for you.
William,
Literary quality is so subjective. What is considered the best writing and even identifying the most excellent characteristics or aspects changes quite a lot over time. Proust or Virginia Woolf are considered masters by some readers and really boring by others. It can boil down to what a reader thinks is most important enough to be written about in life. And after they’ve read their ideas of the masters, they usually don’t want to be continually rereading them as they grow old being stuck in moments that passed by long ago.
As a rough comparison, a sixties person can’t just continue listening to Beatles hits and James Brown soul hits forever. Despite being really old, they might discover a song like Bruno Mars “Leave the Door Open” which pays homage to old “soul” standards, yet moves them forward. And some Bruno Mars songs are just very very different yet much admired.
The same thing goes on within the New Yorker short story summer fiction issue world in this short fragment from Proust and a Rebecca Curtis story and one from the new short story Rockstar, Sally Rooney. So what is excellent fiction is very subjective and relative in terms of one’s own preferences or likes versus dislikes.
If I were much younger I might not see anything worth liking in Proust.
As far as persons and things right or wrong, I always appreciate your commentary because it is well-reasoned and you consider all the elements. I agree with you on the emptiness of Satre’s “existentialism” but had never heard of Frankl, but there is quite a difference in the enforced “existentialism” of a concentration camp versus living the free bohemian life in occupied Paris during World War II if I have that right.
What I find exasperating and may not have expressed very well, is the intolerance people seemed to have developed towards things in life written about, that they despise for not being what they feel is most important.
Many times I have read short stories that have a large following that I didn’t like at all and I don’t feel like commenting on them because I feel I can’t say anything constructive. But a large minority of readers will pick out something they disapprove of in a story and trash every aspect of the story and the writer so both seem badly beaten up like after a street fight. This is supposedly a great way to easily increase profits in a highly competitive publications/media industry.
So printing a bit of translated Proust gets us back to focus a bit on excellent writing that was different, daring and experimental in its time. Yet it leaves room for considering the new stuff.
Larry —
Victor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist who was in the camps. When he came out, he wrote a famous book called “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Here are two comments on his philosophy:
“Frankl believed that humans are motivated by something called a “will to meaning,” which is the desire to find meaning in life. He argued that life can have meaning even in the most miserable of circumstances and that the motivation for living comes from finding that meaning.”
“One of his favorite metaphors is the existential vacuum. If meaning is what we desire, then meaninglessness is a hole, an emptiness, in our lives. Whenever you have a vacuum, of course, things rush in to fill it. Frankl suggests that one of the most conspicuous signs of existential vacuum in our society is boredom.”
Sounds like Sartre’s “ennui”. But Frankl went one step further to find meaning of a type.
So his ideas don’t apply to an “enforced” existentialism, but to meaning among free people.
As for your dislike of “the intolerance people seemed to have developed towards things in life written about, that they despise for not being what they feel is most important.” Not sure if I understand what that means, but I think I can get behind it.
William,
Thanks for all the interesting details about Victor Frankl and his theory of people having “will to meaning” or that they search for meaning in life no matter what happens. And it possibly probably helps people get through the rough parts of their lives. And that the opposite or the vacuum of no meaning is boredom. Which makes sense like love opposite hate, like like opposite dislike or encouraging opposite discouraging. It follows a natural pattern. Satre’s existentialism seems a disconnect or estrangement from Bergson’s “elan vitale.” Maybe my dislike for intolerance is a little harsh. Most writers get along even if they write from very different viewpoints or hold different concepts about what is most important in life. Readers, with different preferences get along over talking about their favorite books over coffee or at a book club gathering. There are brawls sometimes or fierce arguments. But I don’t think people are intolerant of Proust or readers who think highly of him. I just thought it was great to see Proust’s writing translated alongside in the same issue, newer, popular writers.
Larry
Larry —
“I just thought it was great to see Proust’s writing translated alongside in the same issue, newer, popular writers.”
I can get with that.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been at a book group where there are fierce arguments. Maybe i’ve been hanging out with wussy people.
William,
Good that you haven’t been in a book group with fierce arguments. My friend was on a Zoom book club meeting and they muted a book club member when the person went off on a rant. It never goes anywhere like two characters arguing in a book or a film stopping the action unless there a cheap stereotyped conclusion to the argument and that’s the end of it unless it was worked in to the main plot or a subplot. I realize the Proust was a special feature of the fiction issue, which had room for three short stories. It was a nice surprise.
Larry