The Blue Hour in Marcel Proust

(22.6.2022) Experiences with Proust. While reading in one volume of the Recherche, an insect (fly?) enters the room through the open balcony door. My attention is drawn to the noises this insect is producing (by colliding with things in the room; also its own noises, produced by its wings; is ›buzzing‹ the correct word?). And I am realizing that my attention is torn between reading Proust and the noises produced by this particular insect (a day fly?).

(Picture: GDJ)

And to be honest – I have my problems staying with Proust for a longer period (is the insect meant to enhance that inclination?). But to be fair: staying with Proust can be rewarding, is rewarding. But I have to overcome my inclination not to like endless, endless celebrations of one’s jealousy, or endless, endless monomaniacal musing on one’s own past, feelings, perceptions, and, in one word, on oneself in everything. That self, to me, seems too demanding.
Of course Marcel Proust is also inhabiting the blue hour. And Proust has also studied dusk and dawn from all perspectives. Endless memories, associated with one love lost, become a problem, because now everything seems poisened and unbearable (and also endless evenings). Proust, or the narrator of the Recherche, tends to be impatient with dusk, expecting rather the night to come and to resolve (or to cover?) the problems of the day. Evenings tend to be long in Proust (one nice example is the dusk at Place de la Concorde, with the obelisk from Luxor in metamorphosis (in: Sodom and Gomorra I, first chapter). Night is awaited, dusk is being observed, but by someone impatiently awaiting, for once, time to pass, and not to be regained.

(Picture: Edgar Degas, Place de la Concorde)

The one blue hour in Proust – yes, it is just one blue hour –, is to be found in volume 12 of the Recherche (German edition in 13 volumes), or in volume 7 of the French editions (Albertine disparue). This is the passage with the flock of sheep, appearing like a triangle in motion at dusk, and, yes, these sheep appear blueish. Proust is using the French word for ›bluish‹, an English Proust translation has translated it as ›blue-grey‹. Be it as it may, but sheep do not tend to be blue, and this is the one blue hour in Marcel Proust (the obelisk, by the way, is turning into a nougat-like thing, after which it is turning into a metallic thing, jewel-like and so on).
And the flock of sheep is seen, because the narrator is taking a walk. And embarking on that walk the narrator is at dusk. Dinner is served in two hours, and this rhythm, of course, would not have been possible 1000 years earlier, or during the Middle Ages. This is an upper-class 20th century rhythm. Still it is working also in the countryside. And the flock of sheep, a triangle in motion, a blue-greyish triangle in motion, is attesting to that rhythm.
Reading Proust, no doubt about it, does sharpen our discernment. – Reading Proust can be rewarding, is rewarding.

(Picture: DS)

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