That great game of hide and seek which is played in our memory when we seek to recapture a name does not entail a series of gradual approximations. We see nothing, then suddenly the correct name appears and is very different from what we were trying to guess.
I underlined it back when so maybe it had the same reference in my mind then as now. But I don't think so or I would have noted it, "Structure." Today, twenty years later and just a few days after posting on Kuhn and Bailyn and Rorty--"suddenly"--in a flash the connection was established: That is precisely how Thomas Kuhn describes "revolutionary science" occurring in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. What is Remembrance of Things Past about? Memory.
Volume II, Cities of the Plain, Part Two: Chapter One contains some of Marcel Proust's wittiest writing. I bracketed and then margin-noted a smiley face on the whole beginning of the two-page paragraph immediately before the Chinese artist-painting section sentence. On the facing page, right under the memory Sentence above-quoted I noted twenty years ago "This is cool", down a few sentences "Very Playful" with a down arrow to the end of the page. Continuing on the next page until the end of the paragraph a bracket with "!" in the margin.
A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep.
That is not another The Sentence. It is, and appeals to my own affinity for the counter-intuitive, like "air conditioning makes you hot."
Proust also steps out of character here and addresses himself directly to his readers, "let me go on with my story." It is playful. Further down that page (676) and immediately before the subtle, hilarious "only a tailor's eye could have picked out" another 20 year-old smiley face cum "!"
...Mme d'Arpajon was extremely nettled [for on the balcony stood] the magnificent Duchesse de Surgis-le-Duc, who had recently succeeded Mme d'Arpajon in the affections of Basin de Guermantes. Beneath the flimsy white tulle which protected her from the cool night air, one saw the supple form of a winged victory.
Twenty year-old blue underlining with a contemporary black "LOL !" in the margin at the punch-line, a passage that begins with a female cousin of Proust's comedic foil, Baron de Charlus, introducing her twenty-something male nephew to the plump fifty-something with the "big bum":
" Good evening, Madame de Gallardon"...and he added, without so much as a glance at the young man: "Good evening, sir," with a truculent air and in a tone so violently discourteous that everyone in the room was stunned.
Proust then examines the possibilities from all angles. Perhaps M. de Charlus...perhaps he did not consider...
perhaps, desirous of making his mark later with so attractive a cousin, he wished to give himself the advantage of a pre-emptive attack, like those sovereigns who, before engaging upon diplomatic action, reinforce it with an act of war.
A delicious counter-intuitive.
On the next page, twenty years ago, "Proust is having fun writing this [section symbol]
Two pages later:
I caught sight of Swann...but at that moment I saw that the Prince de Guermantes, instead of waiting where he was to receive the greeting of Odette's husband, had immediately carried him off, with the force of a suction pump...in order, some people said, "to show him the door."
"Fun" in blue in margin. Proust was having fun. That is uncommon with serious writers, at least the ones I have read. Tolstoy a laugh-a-minute? Not hardly. Papa Hemingway a side-splitter? Uh, no. Proust's readers have fun with him. :)
