Many people have been put off reading Marcel Proust because they thought he was impenetrable. Well, I’ve just been reading a no-holds-barred biography of him, and I can assure you that that was far from the case.

While I was working my way through the Scott Moncrieff translation I made notes of several agreeable passages which I shared with Yvonne. She had had difficulty sleeping, but not after that. However I was pleased to see that a fair number of the passages I particularly admired featured in the Painter biography of Proust.

So stand by your pillows; here come three Proustian gems to enthral you. And more will follow at (reasonably) regular intervals.

“One hungry man has no need of another to keep him company.” — The Guermantes Way, part II

(The writer Bergotte looking at Vermeer’s painting of a street in Delft)
“—a little patch of yellow wall was so well painted that if looked at by itself it was like some priceless specimen of Chinese art or of a beauty that was sufficient in itself. “That is how I ought to have written,” he said. “My last books were too dry, I ought to have gone over them with several coats of paint; it would have made my language exquisite in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall.” — The Captive, part I

“Mme. de Villeparisis preserved, for some minutes, the silence of an old woman who in the exhaustion of age finds it difficult to rise from memories of the past to consideration of the present.” —The Sweet Cheat Gone

I rather like the concept of Proust Lite. I bet I could render Du côté de chez Swann in fewer than 1000 words.

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