Thursday, August 18, 2011

A visit to Proust's cork-lined room

Here it is, where genius labored, where the magic of the final parts of In Search of Lost Time was conjured, unless you are a heretic like me who finds that novel uneven and feels that the best parts had been written earlier:


Is this what you were expecting?  It threw me a little.  Seems a bit cramped, no?  A little more context might help:


I was in the Museé Carnavalet, a Paris museum on the subject of Paris, examining the reconstructions of writer’s rooms (the other writers airing the contents of their bedrooms are Anna de Noailles and Paul Léautaud, writers with no English reputation who I assume, bitterly, are as good as Proust).  The shell of the space is a replica but the contents are authentic, if I understand this text, which I doubt.  Follow that link to examine Proust’s furniture more closely, particularly that portrait.  I assume the storage closet-like dimensions are a liberty of the curators.

The Museé Carnavalet was itself once, surprise, surprise, a writer’s house, a residence of Madame de Sévigné, the favorite writer of the grandmother of Proust’s mirror-image narrator.  The pleasure and insight a visitor will receive from the museum will depend heavily on his taste for French furniture and curtains, but the building is a beauty, the collection of second-rate paintings take on greater meaning because of their common Paris theme, the old Paris shop signs are a delight, and then there’s this:


Why it is Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, the French Poe!  Imagine the set of steps, the human effort, that was required to bring this magnificently insane artifact into existence.

The Museé Carnavalet is just a few steps away from the Place des Vosges and the Maison de Victor Hugo;  in between is this artistic wonder:


That is a crumble d’agneau, or lamb crumble, obtainable, along with many other pleasant things, at Chez Janou.  I certainly did not go to France to look at writer’s houses and 18th century furniture, but one has to do something between meals.

16 comments:

  1. I started reading the description of the bedroom, but stopped when I felt that it would be better just to go back to Proust's work instead!

    I agree that the lamb looks like the highlight of the day ;)

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  2. Hope you don't mind, but I re-blogged your post by providing a link back here. I guess I was expecting the cork to be more, um, wine-bottle-y.

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  3. I'm with the crowd here: not at all what I expected. I had pictured cork-board, like the sort you'd poke drawing pins into. Interesting.

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  4. Mind! That sort of linkage is just the sort of thing I need so this popular blog can start making money. Ha ha ha ha ha! I will always find that funny.

    Every person to whom I have shown the cork-lined photos has responded with some variation of "Really? That's how it looked?"

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  5. Excellent. I've never been to this museum. You just gave me a new idea. I had already in mind to visit la Maison de Balzac and la Maison de Victor Hugo.

    PS: love the food photo. We spent 3 weeks in America last year and we never really felt compelled to photograph our plates... Sorry.

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  6. I'm mildly jealous. At least I get to see pictures of them. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing

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  7. For some reason, I imagined darker cork. I don't know why. According to the link, it's not a reconstitution of his room, but an exhibit that permits us to "imagine" his room, with some facsimiles and some objects he actually owned. I think it looks cozy.

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  8. The Museé Carnavalet fits in well with the Hugo house, and is also near the Picasso museum, which I believe is currently closed for renovation. Balzac's house is over by La Defense or something like that, so I had no room for it this time. Next trip, next trip!

    Doug, isn't "cozy" real estate-ese for "small"?

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  9. Daring move to match those blue satin sheets with blue satin curtains! Though overall the furniture looks blander than I expected.

    I assume Proust himself would agree with you re: the relative merits of the first and last parts of the novel, since he never got the chance to revise the last few books.

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  10. oh dear to put it in a shell like this is a disgrace and sacrilege... but still nice to have seen it....

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  11. That's how I felt - a fundamentally silly idea, to package those rooms in the museum, yet I was delighted to see it and to spend some time inspecting it.

    I should clarify my Proust-bashing - the very end of Time Regained, how many pages I mean I am not sure, is extraordinarily good, comparable to the early "Cambrai" section in its own way. My understanding is that the end, or a version of it, actually dates back to the initial writing of the novel, that Proust had the end "done" before he began publishing and revising, and that "revising," to Proust, was synonymous with "adding."

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  12. i do agree, the last volume is very good, my favourite one.

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  13. and that "revising," to Proust, was synonymous with "adding.

    Haha, probably for the most part, although I like to think he would have removed those references to people who had previously been declared dead, popping up at dinner parties in evening dress.

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  14. I agree with the previous comments about Proust. I remember I struggled with La Prisonnière and Albertine Disparue and loved Le Temps Retrouvé.
    I'm currently re-reading In Search of Lost Time, I'm curious to see how I'll respond to these two ones.

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  15. What wonderful comments. Time Regained is actually up next for me, whenever "next" is, on my second, more sensibly paced reading of In Search of Lost Time. Y'all are getting me jazzed up for it.

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