Landy: Philsophy as Fiction [6: Martinville]
see Landy on 53 as to purpose/significance of Martinville steeples, but here, broadly:
• “insights into constraints placed on our acquaintance with external objects”
• roles of intuition, intellect, and primacy of self-knowledge
• what kind of distortion Marcel’s individual perspective imposes on the world before his eyes
• conc: is the key that unlocks the epistemology of the Recherche
Landy has a rather ridiculous comparison of the prose poem and the narrative version, where he says that if we subtract the prose (narrative) from the prose poem, we should be left with the poetry.
though the steeples do not really move, there is a certain truth (common to all or most humans) to Marcel’s perception of them: they do indeed ‘appear to do so, just as the sun “comes up” and “goes down”. (57)
detaching the (apparent) movement of the steeples from its cause (the movement of the carriage) in the prose poem as compared to the narrative description, Marcel is able to bring to life (describe) his actual experience for the reader. This parallels interestingly with the notion of artists detaching things from their cause which he talks about elsewhere. We might suggest that one of the underlying maxims is that humans to do not experience the world in a wholly causal manner, or at least, the causal connections they experience are not always to be found in the objective world, and in turn, the objective causes of phenomena are not always found to form part of our experience. [these ideas use Landy’s analysis of the narrative/prose poem distinction as a starting point, but they are, so far as I aware, my own]
• on the next page, Landy cites (58) one of the Elstir passages I was just thinking of.
summary of first section: “The new truth is in fact a truth about the human mind, not about the steeples: it is about the primacy of intuition, and the qualitative difference between the pictures it offers (delineated in the prose poem) and the corrected pictures subsequently generated by the intellect.” (59)
Landy’s answer for what the steeples signifiy to us of Marcel’s inner reality is rather unsatisfactory. He argues, that steeples, like girls and flowers, excite Marcel. Granted, Landy’s language is much more complex, obfuscating the banal simplicity of his insight, “what the Martinville prose poem has to teach us, then, is that Marcel subliminally associates steeples with girls and with flowers as possessors of a feature which, within his idiosyncratic conceptual universe, comes to the fore in each, setting it apart from most of the other constituents of the visible world. And that feature, we may speculate, is its ability to call to him in a particular way, to set him dreaming, to invest him with belief, to promise him the object of his deepest desire.” (66)
• that criticism aside, Landy begins the next paragraph with a rather spot on assessment, “The grail in question is not, as the novel’s somewhat misleading title seems to suggest, “lost time.” For it is not the past that its protagonist is pursuing across three thousand pages of peregrinations, but instead and enrichment of experience, an additional dimension, something more than he can readily perceive (under a limited definition, we might call this a desire for transcendence). To be sure, memory (of the involuntary kind) will ultimately prove one means to such enrichment.
• Despite the my initial reservations, I am much in agreement with Landy’s subsequent summary of his argument, “Artworks, flowers, and young women have alike the power to summon a conviction on his part that they are home to a mystery he can share, residents of unknown worlds to which he may travel.” (67) Yet, there is something fundamentally different about the three categories, and in particular something which sets art apart. My thesis should explicate what this is. I am incline to say it comes down to artworks being accessible (first) and then personally defineable, that is, we may form an understanding (apprehension) of them that is our own, and yet they may still force and expansion of our worldview. It is not clear that this is true of girls and flowers.
• “insights into constraints placed on our acquaintance with external objects”
• roles of intuition, intellect, and primacy of self-knowledge
• what kind of distortion Marcel’s individual perspective imposes on the world before his eyes
• conc: is the key that unlocks the epistemology of the Recherche
Landy has a rather ridiculous comparison of the prose poem and the narrative version, where he says that if we subtract the prose (narrative) from the prose poem, we should be left with the poetry.
though the steeples do not really move, there is a certain truth (common to all or most humans) to Marcel’s perception of them: they do indeed ‘appear to do so, just as the sun “comes up” and “goes down”. (57)
detaching the (apparent) movement of the steeples from its cause (the movement of the carriage) in the prose poem as compared to the narrative description, Marcel is able to bring to life (describe) his actual experience for the reader. This parallels interestingly with the notion of artists detaching things from their cause which he talks about elsewhere. We might suggest that one of the underlying maxims is that humans to do not experience the world in a wholly causal manner, or at least, the causal connections they experience are not always to be found in the objective world, and in turn, the objective causes of phenomena are not always found to form part of our experience. [these ideas use Landy’s analysis of the narrative/prose poem distinction as a starting point, but they are, so far as I aware, my own]
• on the next page, Landy cites (58) one of the Elstir passages I was just thinking of.
summary of first section: “The new truth is in fact a truth about the human mind, not about the steeples: it is about the primacy of intuition, and the qualitative difference between the pictures it offers (delineated in the prose poem) and the corrected pictures subsequently generated by the intellect.” (59)
Landy’s answer for what the steeples signifiy to us of Marcel’s inner reality is rather unsatisfactory. He argues, that steeples, like girls and flowers, excite Marcel. Granted, Landy’s language is much more complex, obfuscating the banal simplicity of his insight, “what the Martinville prose poem has to teach us, then, is that Marcel subliminally associates steeples with girls and with flowers as possessors of a feature which, within his idiosyncratic conceptual universe, comes to the fore in each, setting it apart from most of the other constituents of the visible world. And that feature, we may speculate, is its ability to call to him in a particular way, to set him dreaming, to invest him with belief, to promise him the object of his deepest desire.” (66)
• that criticism aside, Landy begins the next paragraph with a rather spot on assessment, “The grail in question is not, as the novel’s somewhat misleading title seems to suggest, “lost time.” For it is not the past that its protagonist is pursuing across three thousand pages of peregrinations, but instead and enrichment of experience, an additional dimension, something more than he can readily perceive (under a limited definition, we might call this a desire for transcendence). To be sure, memory (of the involuntary kind) will ultimately prove one means to such enrichment.
• Despite the my initial reservations, I am much in agreement with Landy’s subsequent summary of his argument, “Artworks, flowers, and young women have alike the power to summon a conviction on his part that they are home to a mystery he can share, residents of unknown worlds to which he may travel.” (67) Yet, there is something fundamentally different about the three categories, and in particular something which sets art apart. My thesis should explicate what this is. I am incline to say it comes down to artworks being accessible (first) and then personally defineable, that is, we may form an understanding (apprehension) of them that is our own, and yet they may still force and expansion of our worldview. It is not clear that this is true of girls and flowers.
posted by E at 2:31 PM
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