Proust_Combray

I would like to share my feelings after reading Combray! 

I found it hard to read. It is like I know most of the words, but when words come together, I could not understand them anymore. 

As Professor Beasley-Murray mentions in the lecture video, "Modernist, such as Combray: texts remind us that literature is never simply a transparent window onto the world: we need to learn to see the window itself, and its framing, to recognize how it shapes what and how we see". I totally agree because most of the time of reading Combray, I am always trying to think about what Proust is trying to say and what he means by saying that. 

                               Image by Gravel Suzanne via Pinterest – La madeleine de Proust (pinterest.com)

This book is hard but indeed interesting for me, mainly because those books I read before usually have main characters and tell stories, which are really clear and easy to follow! However, Proust does not focus on describing each character, nor does not trying to tell stories clearly one by one. His focus on his feelings, his time, present or past. This is really cool! Here, I said he focuses on the “time”, which means that his current feeling now makes him go back to the feeling he had in the past! For example, the scallop-shell shaped dessert - petite madeleine crumbs with tea. That suddenly gave him an exquisite pleasure, made him stand still and bring out memory. This tea with dessert he drinking now calls his memory of the lime-flower tea madeleine that he drank in Combray. This is what I mean. He tells stories in a way of linking present to the past with feelings at the moment. 

He made me realize that some of my memories might not be called anymore, even once, but having these sudden, unplanned stimuli on feelings can help me to recall, even have visual images in my mind. I do remember I had this feeling once. When I was at my friend’s house, we were walking downstairs, and I suddenly smelled the air there. It is exactly like the smell of basement parking lot of my first home place! I lived there with parents, and that time, I was 6 years old maybe. In my mind, I can see the parking lot, and my mom and dad holding my hand, walking to the “Xiao Bai", my parents' first car. That car is a really cute Toyota but they have sold it many years ago. I am really sad about that. And I miss my parents in China. I wish they can hold my hands right now. Those were my feelings after I smelled the air in my friend's basement. 

I wonder, if Proust's unclear way of telling stories actually matches more with how we actually think and experience? Is this actually how our brain works?