For a lack of better introduction, this week’s reading reminded me of one solitary thing; the concept of deja-vu. I found that with the beginning of the chapter, the vivid imagery persisted and felt so increasingly reminiscent that I could no longer decipher whether the character was asleep or awake. I found myself making sense of the specific descriptions by applying them to my own childhood room. I began with the four walls, the window, the placing of the bed. I even went as far as imagining the mother as my own, entering my room to give me a goodnight kiss. The trail to the downstairs living room where my disgruntled father sits waiting for my mother to return to him, frustrated by the pause in his ranting. The great-aunt as my own, or rather a collection of the judgemental aunts waiting for me back home. The rapid dynamics and how one’s own narrative and the power they have can deconstruct and reconstruct an entire scene and how the on-looker interprets it. Was the great aunt truly judgemental and bitter or was she just insecure and begging to insert herself into the story, resulting from a lack of attention in her earlier years? Would I have imagined a different scene or mood had I not set my internal narration of this book to a British accent? So many little tweaks and adjustments could make for an utterly different reflection of the chapter let alone the book. I began reading solely thinking about what I would take away from it rather than what I could contribute. As I read fellow classmates’ blog posts, I take away from your own contributions as an enhancement of mine. How would you answer the questions I have in bold? Would you agree or disagree that our power over our own spaces exists in our mental mapping of fictional spaces? Are we constantly dreaming or are we waiting, gathering material to eventually dream? More than anything, I have almost answered my question from the previous blog post, what does one earn citizenship into the Romance World? Speaking in completely theoretical terms, we earn our place in the Romance World and anywhere by proving ourselves worthy of being there. Asserting our place by deeming our thoughts, reflections, and opinions as worthy of taking place in that space is equivalent to gaining a role in any society. Proust’s text went from confusing, to repetitive, to familiar simply because I used mental mapping and my own experiences to make the complex and peculiar, mundane and familiar.
Hey there! I loved reading your blog post because I found it super fascinating. The other blog posts I have read talk mainly about the scenery and the dynamic of the relationships. I loved how you thought about how our own personal minds can affect how we interpret fictional spaces. I pictured myself in the bed, watching the day turn to night. It brought back many memories from my own childhood home and the feelings it came with. I agree that our own power over our own personal spaces is present when we map out a fictional space. We try to understand it by connecting it to something familiar for ourselves so that it is more transparent and leaves us more intrigued (usually) in the book.
Hi! Great blog post! You bring up some interesting ideas regarding the perception of space. The author put a lot of effort into describing the spaces that we as a reader start empathizing with the character in the story. There was so much description in the book about the layout I couldn’t relate it much with the layouts I have seen in my own life. There is a video on the website showing Marcel Proust’s childhood home and it was shocking to me how much the text drew from his own house. Watching the video along with reading the text certainly did in some ways give me material to draw on when visualizing!
Hello and great post. You raised an interesting question concerning what I believe to be the uniting factor of the story, perspective. What story is Proust trying to tell, and in what tone? It depends on whether one reads in the voice of the child or the adult, linked as they are. Your other point concerning spaces is equally fascinating. As humans, we have a tendency to insert ourselves into every surrounding, and so it is no wonder setting so often bleeds into character. I would have to agree with the assessment that our surroundings, while not created by the mind, are nonetheless far from static in the context of human emotion–they can also be influenced depending on one’s perspective.
Hi! I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I find it really cool how you put the situation into your own perspective to better understand the text! I also found it hard to tell if the narrator was awake or not and I think that if I used this perspective it would have been a lot easier for me to understand the tect!
Hi, nice blog post! I liked how from reading Proust’s story you were reminded of your own childhood just like himself in the story. You also raise a very good point about Auntie Leonie, that her bitterness and judgmental nature could be the result of the insecurity she felt from her early years. His texts were definitely confusing to read in the beginning, but just like you I also got used to his writing style as I read more. The mental mapping method you used is for sure a good method to relate the elements of the stories to our own lives for a better understanding of the behaviours within the historical context.
I also felt reading Proust that his sense of imagination overpowers his reality, which is often disappointing, but then manages to subsume that disappointing reality into his imagination which results into something more favorable. The way he navigates spaces and reality is the same way he navigates the stories he reads where he often reflects himself in everything in order to find himself and the re-create himself into something different. I was recently reading a study that the human brain adapts into a blink to compensate for missing information. It is quite fascinating–when part of a person’s vision is disrupted, they start seeing the world differently within seconds and researchers believe this may be proof that the brain reroutes crucial information rather than builds new pathways. As for Proust’s aunt, I would say neither. I would argue that this stems from the grief of losing her husband and the fragility that comes with age. I’ve seen the same behavior in my female relatives and knowing the hardships they’ve endured, I see myself excusing their behavior rather than judging them and often find them comical.