But Is It Good Art?... With Proust

Joana P. R. Neves: a man sensing that his health ⁓ is deteriorating, enclosed ⁓ in his room the night ⁓ the chores and obligations ⁓ of the day muted ⁓ and his could be fully immersed in his project until death ⁓ caught with him the wise age of 51. and welcome to Exhibitionistas - on ⁓ your wonderment podcast. I am your host, Joana P. Neves ⁓ and this is the podcast where we explore through histories, philosophies, exhibitions, biographies, And through that I try to as best as I can. ⁓ asking simple yet very common question, which is, how I ⁓ if the art I'm enjoying is any good? Which to how do we recognize greatness? And is this really the way ⁓ to define it. So the tools that we have to perceive singular, unique works of art are probably the ones that we have developed across a lifetime. So how do we know whether we have the tools that fit the unique shape of something that presents to us as completely and utterly new? The man who cut himself off from the world in the last period of his life asks precisely that question in his oeuvre of a lifetime. I'm talking about the French author Marcel Proust, born in 1871 and who died in 1922 way too early. His father was an epidemiologist from a prosperous Jewish family. She had an artistic flair that she imbued in her very frail child. He indeed found the right format for his work. which became seven volumes of an oeuvre that explores sexuality, desire, art, and the mundane and the spiritual and how they are entangled kaleidoscopic web. I'm talking about a series of books that have two titles in English, actually. The first one is... Remembrance of Things Past. was a translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. And I have to say that Marcel Proust hated this title. The current one comes from a translation that was heralded by D.J. Enfield, is a literal transcription or a literal translation from the French title, A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. And it is very simply In Search of Lost Time. you think my would come from the last translation and the most current one, ⁓ but because I, sweet listeners, in French, ⁓ I had to purchase a version in English ⁓ and the one that I my claws on was precisely remembrance of things past. ⁓ It cost less than a So ⁓ there it is. ⁓ Most of the excerpts that I'm going to read come from the first part of this seven volume monument of a work. those seven volumes follow the narrator from childhood into adulthood. ⁓ And excerpt that I'm about to read and that introduces the question that we have in common with Marcel ⁓ is a moment of reckoning ⁓ in this particular passage ⁓ regarding and the way the adults around him talk about it ⁓ and it. The author they're mentioning here is Bergotte, who was the favorite writer of the narrator. And side note, notice how Proust's names are ⁓ so They're alliterative, like Vinteuil Verdurin, respectively, ⁓ a composer a that is going to be important across of the books. ⁓ but they also work like a sort of a distorted memory. So Bergotte me at least, speaks of 'bergamotte' or reminds me of bergamotte, bergamot, which is a condiment used in Earl Grey tea. And Marcel Proust was very incredibly fond of the writings by the British critic John Ruskin. His mother had ⁓ told him about the writer and critic Proust was absolutely devoted his writings to the where he translated So his English was a bit patchy, it was by ⁓ no means ⁓ any good, ⁓ but he did say that ⁓ even if didn't speak he did ⁓ Ruskin. So in my Bergotte and Bergamotte words echoing other might be ⁓ sort of an homage to one of his favorite writers. ⁓ But we know that Bergotte, the character, the writer, was also inspired by Anatole France, who was a great writer of the time, quite revered, ⁓ and who, at least the beginning of his life, really enjoyed as well. So who knows? But the reality is that there is a game of mirrors when you're creating. And here Marcel Proust tried to create a huge distance between himself by introducing a narrator that remains nameless until the end of the book, and also a time that is always very imprecise and that you have to weave yourself as a reader. in regards to the events that are mentioned and that are historical events. But it is also a peculiar and quite accurate vision of childhood, and teenagehood, whereby there is moments of immense maturity and moments also of ⁓ the fact that we never quite know age of the narrator makes for a really ⁓ impressionistic and much more complex view of that particular period of our lives, where we are so many mixed things, we're so ignorant and at the same time, so wise and so absorbent that we have the information at the tip of our tongue and also straight into our brains and allows us or allowed us when we were younger to produce such accurate thoughts. So bear in mind that here in this excerpt, The narrator is probably a teenager, ⁓ But ⁓ the pertinent view that he has on the notion of talent is interesting and very to the question that we're asking ourselves today. So here we go, on to the excerpt. he a charming mind, so individual. He has a way of his own of saying things, which is a little far-fetched, but so pleasant. You never need to look for his name on the title page. You can tell his work at once. But none of them had yet gone so far as to say, he is a great writer. He has great talent. ⁓ They did not even credit him with talent at all. They did not speak because they were not aware of it. We are very slow in recognizing in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer, the type which is labeled great talent in our Museum of General Ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and strange, We say rather originality, charm, delicacy, strength. And then one day we add up the sum of these and find that it amounts simply to talent. ⁓ One of the things that is characteristic of Marcel Proust's writing is his very, very, very long sentences. They can be much more than a page long. They also work a little bit like Matrioshkas. So they open up to an illustration, but that illustration needs to be explained and contextualized. And therefore, we have an explanation of an explanation of an explanation that goes back to the beginning of the argument by Marcel Proust. So that makes for a challenging read. in some ways it can be seen as a sort of an asthmatic way of writing he seems to be catching his breath or maybe to say as many things as can before he needs to catch his breath or maybe is just a way of making us read ⁓ in stream of consciousness that he is trying to replicate. by this character of the narrator where we seem to live, but who at the same time is quite philosophical. So one of the things that I really appreciate in Proust is that he very often uses the word perhaps. He is observing, he is looking around, he is trying to find the values or the rules that he can apply to life in order to understand it. And therefore, his ⁓ thinking is highly hypothetical. He is not always this affirmative. And that's why it is so easy to read this text, because you are watching and you are seeing what the narrator is seeing. You're experiencing what he's experiencing and you are trying to accompany him and to understand what he perceives as being the truth behind. the events that he is watching, that he is listening to and hearing and learning from others or experiencing himself. here in this particular passage, it is quite interesting to see that he is shocked by the way ⁓ the adults around him talk about Bergotte, who he finds ⁓ to be an absolute genius. they never talk him as having conquered the place in the pantheon of great writers. They find other adjectives for him. ⁓ And this is interesting because it going to be very useful later on ⁓ because the way we about talent as important ⁓ as having a notion that we are precisely that kind of of depth, talent, ⁓ also ⁓ talks about the experience ⁓ novelty. ⁓ the word experience is very, very interesting here. So the empirical encounter through an embodied experience, either of a text, but also of a performance, as we will see later on, or a painting or any other form of art. ⁓ the word experience has my favorite prefix, which is 'ex-' ⁓ 'ex-' is an interesting prefix that comes from Latin and even way before that. And it is a prefix that talks about time and that talks about space. It is a movement from within to outside, to an outer realm. It also is a movement from within the community to the borders of that community. ⁓ also talks about something that was formerly in a certain state or of a certain status, as when we say my ex-partner, for example. And so 'ex-' is a really beautiful little word that has a sort of a movement that is either in space or in time. And then you have the words 'peritus', which is a word that in conjunction with 'ex-', does make the word experience that comes also from Latin. And 'peritus' is a word that exists in Portuguese, 'perito', which means expertise. But before meaning expertise, it means to risk by repetition, to risk going into a certain realm of experience, certain experimentation. It also means knowledge by repetition. And therefore the word experience comes from this idea of a movement towards from an inner state to an outwardly state. Whereas when we talk about experience, we imagine receiving an information. We are facing novelty and we are ⁓ open to whatever comes from the outside. But here the word and the roots of the word experience can actually mean both directions from the outside to an inner state and from an inner availability or ⁓ faculty to an outside ⁓ experience or perception. ⁓ It also means taking risk. And I want you to keep this idea of risk, to follow the narrator's experience in what is going to a challenge ⁓ to this very pertinent ⁓ reckoning that he has in this passage here, which is that ⁓ there is no taking by the adults this of risk taking is really important, but the narrator himself is going and this position that he has, this very pertinent ⁓ awareness that he comes to is going to be challenged. by a character called ⁓ Berma. Berma is the greatest ⁓ of the time, of the ⁓ And of course, Proust, and you hear it ⁓ in the sound of the name got his inspiration straight from the great actress of the turn of the 20th century, Sarah Bernhardt. She was ⁓ character. She was an incredible actress ⁓ from the accounts of the time. And one of the things that she was the most famous for was her acting in Racine's very famous play, the Phèdre just need to know that the character who is speaking is Swann, who gives the first part ⁓ of ⁓ the seven volumes its title, Swann's Way. ⁓ Swann was a of narrator's family. He was an urban, wealthy, character and a reserved man who in This moment of the narrative had fallen in love with what was called a 'cocotte' So a woman who traded her favors for money. He ended up marrying her and therefore he couldn't visit the narrator's family with his own family. excerpt you're about to listen to is the moment when the Berma character starts infiltrating the protagonist's mind and weaving itself into his impressions and reflections about art. When we could say he starts gathering his tools ⁓ to have his relationship with aesthetic experiences. So let's go. Let's move on to the next excerpt. the narrator asks Swann ⁓ what Bergotte considers to be favourite actor. And Swann replies. Actor? ⁓ No, I can't say, but I do know ⁓ There's not a man on the stage whom he thinks equal Berma He puts her above everyone. Have you seen her? No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theater. That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in Phèdre, in the Cid Well, she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't believe very much in the hierarchy of the arts. As he spoke, I noticed what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother's sisters. that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it. As who should say, The hierarchy, don't you know, as silly people call it. But then, if it was so absurd, why did he say the hierarchy? A moment later, he went on, Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art in the world as, ⁓ I don't know. And he began to laugh. Shall we say the Queens of Chartres? Until then, I had supposed that his horror of having to give a serious opinion was something Parisian and refined dogmatism of my grandmother's sisters. And I had also that it was characteristic of the mental attitude towards life of the circle in which Swann moved, where By a natural reaction from the lyrical enthusiasms of earlier generations, an excessive importance was given to small and precise facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of phrase-making was banned. But now I found myself slightly shocked by his attitude, which one invariably adopted when face-to-face with generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even having an opinion. and to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy, some precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing, he did not take into account that even here he was giving an opinion, holding a brief, as they say, for something, that the accuracy of his details had an importance of its own. I thought again of the dinner that night, when I had been so unhappy because Mama would not be coming up to my room. and when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de Léon as being of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he was devoting his life. For what other kind of existence did he reserve the duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought about things, of formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas? would he cease to give himself up to occupations, of which at the same time he made out that they were absurd? Notice that this really interesting excerpt, narrator ⁓ is Swann, character who he admired greatly, and finding out that this affectation was an and this artifice seem to have taken the place of his real character. So the narrator here interweaves a relationship to art and a relationship to truth, even in behaviours in life. So the question that is very deeply felt by the character and here I think this is really also characteristic of our teenage years is this sort of disappointment with realization that perhaps ⁓ who he admired so much, ⁓ in touch with his own subjectivity. And the notion of risk, the of empyrea, of empirical relationship with things, with experience, was saying something life and vice versa. The quest for truth is not, ⁓ at least in Marcel work, In Search of Lost Time, ⁓ only directed towards art. is not something in this book that tells us truths ⁓ that we cannot perceive life. It is actually the entanglement, the interweaving of awarenesses, of moments of reckoning in real life, but also in aesthetic experience that actually provide a deeper truth that is somewhat the encounter between all of those kaleidoscopic, ⁓ multifaceted relationships that we have across our lives. and in which art is but one of them. It also in this passage that ⁓ the character, la bermar, is introduced. ⁓ And she introduced in a very subtle way as... being cut away from the possibilities of experiences for the narrator. And the reason why he is not allowed to go to the theater is because of his ill health. So the narrator wants to be a writer and his family is firmly against it. But through meeting an ambassador called Monsieur de Norpois, his father changes his mind progressively. Monsieur de Norpois is the one who convinces the narrator's father that this can be ⁓ a occupation for a grown-up. also the father to allow him to go to the theatre. And so the perspective ⁓ of finally going ⁓ experiencing the greatness Berma is starting to take shape ⁓ in the narrator's mind. happens ⁓ an challenge for the narrator and that brings about ⁓ a lot of questions in regards ⁓ his vocation and his desire to a writer and also ⁓ in ⁓ the self-evaluation of himself of own talent. So the intricacies of this experience are quite ⁓ varied, they are quite dense and complex and they slowly start to build a new relationship to art making, to experiencing art and to how we talk about and reference and judge ultimately art the tells ⁓ the narrator that he should write to Monsieur de Norpoix ⁓ a note ⁓ and is faced suddenly with his own inability of writing under the pressure of having to produce a piece of literature, ⁓ as ⁓ evidently this to be, for someone who actually supported his vocation. ⁓ And he's intensely, immensely, incredibly frustrated with his own perceived lack of talent. So this is next for you to understand the process that he undergoes actually going to the theatre and being ⁓ in the very heart ⁓ of experience of a work of art. ⁓ pages, weariness made the pen drop from my fingers. I cried with anger at the thought that I should never have any talent, that I was not gifted, that I could not even take advantage of the chance that Monsieur de Norpois' coming visit was to offer me of spending the rest of my life in Paris. The recollection that I was to be taken to hear Berma alone, distracted me from my grief. But just as I did not wish to see any storms except on those coasts where they raged with most violence. So I should not have cared to hear the great actress except in one of those classic parts in which Swann had told me that she touched the sublime. For when it is in the hope of making a priceless discovery, that we desire to receive certain impressions from nature or from works of art, we have certain scruples about allowing our soul to gather instead of these other inferior impressions which are liable to make us form a false estimate of the value of beauty. Berma in Andromaque, in Les Caprices de Marianne, in Phèdre, was one of those famous spectacles which my imagination had so long desired. I should enjoy the same rapture as on the day when in a gondola I glided to the foot of the Titian of the Frari or the Carpaccios of San Giorgio Schiavonni ⁓ I ever to hear Berma repeat the beginning, ⁓ I was familiar with them from the simple reproduction in black and white, which was given of them upon the printed page. But my heart beat furiously at the thought, as of the realization of a long planned voyage, that I should at length behold them, bathed and brought to life in the atmosphere and sunshine of the voice of gold. A carpaccio in Venice, Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of pictorial or dramatic art which the glamour, the dignity, watch attaching to them, made so living to me, that is to say, so indivisible, that if I had been taken to see carpaccios in one of the galleries of the Louvre, or Berma some piece of which I had never heard, I should not have experienced the same delicious amazement at finding myself at length, with wide open eyes, before the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousand dreams. Then, while I waited, expecting to derive from Berma's playing the revelation of certain aspects of nobility and tragic grief, it would seem to me that whatever greatness, whatever truth there might be in her playing, if the actress imposed it upon a work of real value, instead of what would, after all, be but embroidering a pattern of truth and beauty upon a commonplace and vulgar web. Finally, if I went to hear Berma in a new piece, it would not be easy for me to judge of her art, of her diction, since I should not be able to differentiate between a text which was not already familiar and what she added to it by her intonations and gestures, in addition, which would seem to me to be embodied in the play itself. Whereas the old plays, the classics which I knew by heart, presented themselves to me as vast and empty walls, reserved and made ready for my inspection, on which I should be able to appreciate without restriction the devices by which Berma would cover them, as with frescoes, with the perpetually fresh treasures of her inspiration. Unfortunately, for some years now, since she had retired from great theatres to make the fortune of one on the boulevards where she was the star, she had ceased to appear in classic parts and in vain. that I scanned the hoardings. They never advertised any but the newest pieces written specially for her by authors in fashion at the moment. When ⁓ one morning as I stood searching the column of announcements. ⁓ to find the afternoon performances for the week of the New Year holidays. I saw there for the first time at the foot of the bill, after some probably insignificant curtain raiser, whose title was opaque to me because it had latent in it all the details of an action of which was ignorant, to act a Phèdre with Madame Berma. And on the following afternoons, Le Demi Monde, Les Caprices de Marianne, names which, that of Phèdre, were for me transparent, filled with light only, so familiar with those works to me, illuminated to their very the revealing smile of art. They seemed to me to invest with the fresh Madame Berma herself, ⁓ when I read in the newspapers, after the program of these performances, herself once more to the public in some of early creations. She was conscious then that certain stage parts have an interest which survives the novelty of their production or the success of a revival. She regarded them, when interpreted by herself, as museum pieces, which it might be instructive to set before the eyes of the generation. which had admired her in them long ago, which had never yet seen her in in the middle of a column of intended only to while away an evening, this Phèdre a title no longer than any of the rest, nor set in different type. She added something indescribable as though a hostess introducing you before you all go into dinner to her other guests, were to mention casually the string of names which are names of guests and nothing more, and without any change of tone. Monsieur Anatole France. in real life, Sarah Bernhardt's ⁓ ⁓ revered, ⁓ the most famous play she ever played was precisely She apparently was exquisite in it. it in history as one of the most acclaimed performances on stage. ⁓ Therefore, in the fictional ⁓ Sarah the Phèdre is also the object of desire for the narrator. ⁓ And think it is of note also, now that talking about ⁓ the new of technology and therefore ⁓ of performative forms. on stage, also on film, on TV, that the way we saw theatre was very much an impersonation, a characterisation of very well-known texts. And the notion of repetition is really important here. So the text that is said and performed by the actors is repeated. In the philosophical sense of the word, Kierkegaard has a whole book about the notion of repetition. The notion of reproducing something means to create an experience that is repeated, but which will never be exactly the same. And the art, so the creation by the actress, Berma slash Sarah Bernhardt is going to be that differentiating element that is the impossibility of precisely repeating an experience. It's that unique moment and that unique aesthetic quintessential experience that is the work of art or that is or where it where lies the talent of the artist. And this is a very different relationship that we have with art nowadays. We are constantly in such a novelty, contrary to the narrator, and repeating, rewatching is something that is almost seen as a quirk in people who love... ⁓ the Lord of the Rings or who love a particular piece of music. So keep that in mind again, experience, risk, expertise, knowledge through repetition, and also this way of experiencing deep talent. And the question is going to be, how will the narrator experience finally the acting of Berma, the text of Phèdre, and will he take away from it? How will he assess ⁓ ability of finally being in front of what was ⁓ perceived as ⁓ of the greatest artists of time? And what going to be his from it? So is the next excerpt. that I'm going to read. ⁓ The last moments of my pleasure were during the opening scenes of Phèdre. The heroine herself does not appear in these first scenes of the second act, and yet, as soon as the curtain rose, and another curtain, of red velvet this time, was parted in the middle, a curtain which was used to halve the depth of the stage in all the plays in which the star appeared, an actress entered from the back. who had the face and voice which, I had been told, were those of Berma. The cast must therefore have been changed. All the trouble that I had taken in studying the part of the wife of Theseus was wasted. But the second actress now responded to the first. I must then have been mistaken in supposing that the first was Berma, for the second even more closely resembled her, and more than the other, had her diction. Both of them, moreover, enriched their parts with noble gestures, which I could vividly distinguish and could appreciate in their relation to the texts while they raised and let fall the lovely folds of their tunics, and also with skillful changes of tone, now passionate, now ironical, which made me realize the significance of lines that I had read to myself at home without paying sufficient attention to what they really meant. but all of a sudden, in the cleft of the red curtain that veiled her sanctuary, as in the frame, appeared a woman, and simultaneously, with a fear that seized me, far more vexing than Berma's fear could be, lest someone should upset her by opening a window, or drown one of her lines by rustling a program, or annoy her by applauding the others, and by not applauding her enough, in my own fashion, still more absolute than Berma's. of considering from that moment theatre, audience, play and my own body only as an acoustic medium of no importance save in the degree to which it was favourable to the inflections of that voice. I realised that the two actresses had been for some minutes admiring bore not the least resemblance to her whom I had come to hear. But at the same time all my pleasure had ceased. In vain might I strain towards Berme's eyes, ears, mind, so as not to let one morsel escape me of the reasons which she would furnish for my admiring her, I did not succeed in gathering a single one. I could not even, as I could with her companions, distinguish in her diction and in her playing intelligent intonations beautiful gestures. I listened to her as though I were reading Phèdre or as though Phaedra herself had at that moment uttered the words that I was hearing without it appearing that Berma's talent had added anything at all to them. I could have wished so as to be able to explore them fully, so as to attempt to discover what it was in them that was beautiful, to arrest, to immobilise for a time before my senses every intonation of the artist's voice, every expression of her features. At least I did attempt. by dint of my mental agility in having, before a line came, my attention ready and tuned to catch it, not to waste upon preparations any morsel of the precious time that each word, each gesture occupied, and thanks to the intensity of my observation, to manage to penetrate as far into them as if I had had whole hours to spend upon them by myself. But how short their duration was. Scarcely had the sound been received by my ear than it was displaced there by another. In one scene, where Berma stands motionless for a moment, her arm raised to the level of a face bathed by some piece of stagecraft in the greenish light before a back cloth painted to represent the sea, the whole house broke out in applause. But already the actress had moved, and the picture that I should have liked to study existed no longer. I told my grandmother that I could not see very well. She handed me her glasses. Only when one believes in the reality of a thing, making it visible by artificial means not quite the same as feeling that it is close at hand. I thought now that it was no longer Berma at whom I was looking, but her image in a magnifying glass. I put the glasses down, but then possibly the image that my eye received of her diminished by distance. was no more exact. Which of the two Bermas was the real? As for her speech to had counted enormously upon that, since to judge by the ingenious significance which her companions were disclosing to me every moment in less beautiful parts, she would certainly render it, with intonations more surprising than any, which, when reading the play at home, I had contrived to imagine. But she did not attain to the heights which Enon and Arisie would naturally have reached. planned into a uniform flow of melody the whole of a passage in which they were mingled together, contradictions so striking that the least intelligent of tragic actresses, even the pupils of an academy, could not have missed their effect. Besides which, She ran through the speech so rapidly that it was only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware of the deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout. Then at last, a sense of admiration did possess me, provoked by the frenzied applause of the audience. I mingled own with theirs, endeavoring to prolong the general sound so that Berma, in her gratitude, should surpass herself and I'd be certain of having heard her. her great days. curious thing, by the way, was that the moment when this storm of public enthusiasm broke loose was, as I afterwards learned, that in which Berma reveals one of her richest treasures, it would appear that certain transcendent realities emit all around them a radiance to which the crowd is sensitive. So it is when any great event occurs, When on a distant frontier an army is in jeopardy or defeated or victorious, the vague and conflicting reports which we receive, from which an educated man can derive little enlightenment, stimulate in the crowd an emotion by which that man is surprised and in which, expert criticism has informed him of the actual military situation, he recognizes the popular perception of that aura which surrounds momentous happenings and which may be visible hundreds of miles away. either after the war is over or at once from the hilarious joy of one's whole porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma's acting a week after one has heard her in the criticism of some review or else on the spot From the thundering acclamation of the stores. But this immediate recognition by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others, all quite erroneous. The applause came most often at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone before. Just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell, even after the wind has begun to subside. No matter. The more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me. Did Berma act? I say, came from a woman sitting near me of no great social pretensions. She fairly gives it to you, she does. You think she'd do herself an injury the way she runs about. I call that acting, don't you? And happy to find these reasons for Berma's superiority, though not without a suspicion... that they no more accounted for it than would for that of the Gioconda or of Benvenuto's Perseus, a peasant's gaping. That's a good bit of work. It's all gold. Look, fine, ain't it? I greedily imbibed the strong wine of this popular enthusiasm. I felt all the same when the curtain had fallen the last time, disappointed that the pleasure for which I had so longed had been no greater, but at the same time, I felt the need to prolong it, not to depart forever. will noticed ⁓ the narrator recognize or rather identifies with the actresses that play Phèdre he's very disappointed to see that Berma is not playing the main character until finally she arrives ⁓ and he is flabbergasted. She not act ⁓ in the exquisite way. the other minor actresses do. She is monotonous and she is quick. She moves about. He is unable to isolate the moments that he wanted to study. I love about this excerpt is that the narrator wants to isolate and to freeze the moments ⁓ ⁓ perceives as being ⁓ interesting ⁓ those really important moments in the text. But the acting is unstoppable. It is happening in time. It's a duration that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And that frustrates him. It with a work of for first time. There's also the context, which is the people around him that represent society and society's evaluation of quality. He judges that the applause comes at the wrong moments. And he also is ⁓ enthralled by the applause, the experience ⁓ of applauding is a of a coded relationship with the actress. And he hypothesizes that perhaps these applauses are contributing to the exceptional performance as it progresses or to the betterment or the improvement of the performance, because ⁓ the actress, Berma, will receive that enthusiasm and that energy. of the pleasure of the audience will infuse an even more inspired interpretation of the text by her. So this excerpt is incredibly complex. It has so much information about so many aspects of the experience of a work of art, of novelty, but also of engagement. There's so much talk about audience engagement nowadays. And this passage is particularly juicy when it comes to that, because it does talk about the taking into account the fact that at least during a performance, the performer is in direct contact with the audience, despite having trained before, despite having ⁓ had lots and lots of moments to study the text. and the repetitions of the performance alone or in rehearsals. But that moment in time where there's a real encounter and it's, I think, no coincidence that this reflection happens in a particular, very specific kind of artistic work, which is duration in time. that we recognise the role that we play in the making of an exquisite moment in time, but also in the making of talent. There is a participatory quality in the engagement with a piece of art, any piece of art. There is also this idea that it is a subjective experience. one of the things that happens is that in the passage, the narrator has a clear sense of the envelope that he inhabits, that is his body. And he connects that body with the audience's body, but also with an inner state that is completely turned outwards, that is absorbing everything that is happening. But one of the things that he relates before this passage, before finally getting to the theatre experience, is the anxiety that he is in. And you will have noticed as well that one of the characteristics of the notion of art by Proust, there is absolutely a philosophical take that is very much his and very specific to him, is that art is everywhere. It is in cathedrals, for example, you know, he considers Gothic cathedrals to be the highlight of French artistry. It is in ⁓ interpreting a text, in acting. Acting is a work of art. It is an artistic, deep, deep artistic experience. And in anything around you that is the outcome of a creative impulse. And therefore, he often compares pieces of literature here ⁓ interpreting texts, so a physical performance, ⁓ a choreographed performance, ⁓ museum ⁓ So ⁓ way Swann falls in love is when finally he identifies Odette de Cucotte, who ends up marrying, with one of ⁓ painted by Botticelli. And in the same way, when the narrator is anticipating this theatre experience, he talks about nature as he ends up talking about museum masterpieces. So there's a real entanglement of experience, not only of art, but also of love. And the notion of love, I think, is really important if you decide to read in search of lost time, or if you're reading it, or if you have read it, you can go back to the experience of that particular oeuvre and you can apply to the experiences related in time and space by the books to this notion of love. There is something called, I mean, called that I would call social love. There are these infatuations with things, with contexts, and also with the community of people that are attached to that aesthetic experience. So here, what I really love about this failed experience is that everything is taken into account. The place where it happens, the body that is receiving that information, that is experiencing that encounter, that aesthetic experience, is also associated with the people around it. And so the narrator is experiencing a huge obsessive infatuation with Swann's daughter, who's called Gilbert. And all across the ⁓ narration that leads to this moment, the character of Gilbert is deeply woven into the narrator's reflections. And so there's really no separating experiences of art and realizations and truth nuggets that we can derive from artistic prowesses ⁓ to those or from those of real life infatuations, ⁓ real life feelings and emotions. that are deeply entangled with desires, vocations and ⁓ mundane social encounters. Everything is woven together. In the first excerpt that I read is the question of the hierarchy. The notion of hierarchy ⁓ was ⁓ the one that Swann able to embrace and it was the one that helped the narrator to perceive that ⁓ Swann wasn't able to experience his own subjectivity. ⁓ I would be tempted to say that Poust obviously ⁓ wanted to be a writer as a person in his own life, and the narrator wanted to be a writer as well. There is a vocation and a reverence in regards to art and writing in general, but there is also a deep interest in desire, in lust, in love, and there isn't really a hierarchy when the narrator, and ultimately, puts himself as the author, when there is an exploration of something that maybe is the heart of all these things, ⁓ including art, which might be the truth, which might be touching some form of meaning, but that meaning is not deeply hidden. below the layers of experience, the meaning is interwoven in that experience. And perhaps even it might just be the experience itself. And what is that experience? So we're going to go into this notion of experience ⁓ and try to learn a bit more about what Berma has taught the narrator in this first part. of In Search of Lost Time. So ⁓ let's move on to the next excerpt. And then, ⁓ the miracle, like those lessons which we labored in vain to learn overnight and find intact, got by heart on waking up next morning, like to those faces of dead friends which the impassioned efforts of our memory pursue without recapturing them and which, when we are no longer thinking of them, are there before our eyes, just as they were in life. The talent of Berma, which had evaded me when I sought so greedily to seize its essential quality, now, after these years of oblivion, in this hour of indifference, imposed itself with all the force of a thing directly seen on my admiration. Formerly, in my attempts to isolate the talent, I deducted, so to speak, ⁓ I heard the part itself, a part common to all the actresses who appeared as Phèdre, which I had myself studied beforehand so that I might be capable of subtracting it, of receiving in the strained residue only the talent of Madame Berma. But this talent, which I sought to discover outside the part itself, was indissolubly with it. So with the great musician, it appears that this was the case with Vinteuil when he played the piano. His playing is that of so fine a pianist that one cannot even be certain whether the performer is a pianist at all since not interposing all the mechanism of muscular effort, crowned here and there with brilliant effects. All that spattering shower of notes in which at least the listener who does not quite know where he thinks that he can discern talent in its material, tangible objectivity, his playing is become so transparent, so full of what he is interpreting that himself one no longer sees and he is nothing now but a window opening upon a great work of art. So I'm skipping a paragraph here. So here is the rest of the excerpt. So Berma's interpretation was around Racine's work, a second work quickened also by the breath of genius. My own impression to tell the truth, though more pleasant than on the earlier occasion, was not really different. Only I no longer put it to the test of a pre-existent abstract and false idea of dramatic genius, and I understood now that dramatic genius was precisely this. It had just occurred to me that if I had not derived any pleasure from my first hearing of Berma, it was because, as early as still when I used to meet Gilbert in the Champs-Elysées, I had come to her with too strong a desire. Between my two disappointments, there was perhaps not only this resemblance, but another more profound. The impression given us by a person or a work, or a rendering for that matter, of marked individuality is peculiar to that person or work. We have brought to it the ideas of beauty, breadth of style, pathos and so forth, which we might, failing anything better, have had the illusion of discovering in the commonplace show of a correct face or talent. But our critical spirit has before it the insistent challenge of a form of which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, in which it must detect and isolate the unknown element. It hears a shrill sound, an oddly interrogative intonation. It asks itself, is that good? Is what I'm feeling just now admiration? Is that richness of colouring, nobility, strength? And what answers it again? is a shrill voice, a curiously questioning tone, the despotic impression caused by a person whom one does not know, holy material in which there is no room left for breath of interpretation. And for this reason, it is the really beautiful works that, if we listen to them with sincerity, must disappoint us most keenly, because in the storehouse of our ideas, there is none. that corresponds to an individual impression. This was precisely what Berma's acting showed me. This was what was meant by nobility, by intelligence of diction. Now I could appreciate the worth of a broad, poetical, powerful interpretation, or rather, it was to this that those epithets were conventionally applied, but only as we give the names of Mars, Venus, Saturn, to planets which have no place in classical mythology. We feel in one world, we think, we give names to things in another. Between the two, we can establish a certain correspondence, but not bridge the interval. It was quite narrow, this interval, this fault that I had had to cross when, that afternoon on which I went first to hear Berma having strained my ears to catch every word, I had found some difficulty in correlating my ideas of nobility of interpretation, of originality, and had broken out in applause only after a moment of unconsciousness, and as if my applause sprang not from my actual impression, but was connected in some way with my preconceived ideas, with the pleasure that I found in saying to myself, at last I'm listening to Berma. And the difference that there is between a person or a work of art which is markedly individual and the idea of beauty exists just as much between what they make us feel idea of love ⁓ or admiration, wherefore we fail to recognize them. I had found no pleasure in listening to Bermas more than earlier in seeing Gilbert. I had said to myself, well, I do not admire this, but then I was thinking only of mastering the secret of Berma's acting. I was preoccupied with that alone. I was trying to open my mind as wide as possible to receive all that her acting contained. amounted to nothing more nor less than admiration. So this moment happens years after the first experience for the narrator to listen to and to watch her acting. ⁓ here, he didn't expect anything. ⁓ that's one of the things that is characteristic of moments before the narrator encounters theatre and Berma for the first time, which is the anxious state. in which he is and how he tries to prepare the experience by thinking of other masterpieces and going into his imaginary museum all the time and trying to define what that experience is going to be by defining in general what an aesthetic experience is. And even in that moment when he was so adamant in criticizing the adults around him, The fact that they didn't talk about great talent and they prefer to detail the impressions they had of Bergotte is quite interesting because now he detaches notions of beauty as the planets that we call ⁓ Greek names to are detached from mythology. Art is in a completely unknowable realm. It is perhaps even a real encounter with the unknown. It is an experience of openness that cannot be ⁓ held or weighed ⁓ by too much of a desire. Our desire to encounter great art cannot or can overpower that moment of sheer experience. And here I ask a question to you, dear listeners. Wasn't it important the narrator to have had that experience first, that failed encounter with Berma to then be able to appreciate a second experience of her acting? Isn't repetition something that is important and that was understood at the time when you went to theatre? You already knew the text, even in those new plays. The play was read, the play was known. The authors were contemporary authors that were revered, well, at least enough to be played by Sarah Bernhardt herself. So the parallels between Berma and Sarah Bernhardt, by the way, are very, very accurate. Bernhardt did at a certain point stop playing the classics and then went back to them. So here my question is, isn't really this moment of reckoning, the real moment of reckoning, and there will be others, you know, later on. This is not where the adventure stops with art, but it is the moment where art and love are placed more or less not at the same as an equivalence, but they are side by side. They're associated here. But the fact that Swann the narrator didn't identify the women they fell in love with immediately as being as post rights, their type, ⁓ inverted commas. Isn't that the fact that perhaps it might be impossible for a singularity to encounter another singularity and enjoy the experience fully? if there isn't a repetition, if there isn't a way to go back to that experience. That is one of the questions that I'm asking you. The second one is a notion of risk. ⁓ So, peritus, ⁓ or the root of that word actually in Latin, implies the notion of risk. And it's so funny that in Portuguese, perit… is someone who's an expert, another X word, which is actually exactly the same composition as the word experience. So there's in the story of this word experience, notions of risk, notions of knowledge. So notions of complete mastering of a skill, a talent, something, a form of art, an art form or some sort of duty or chore to perform. And there's also at the root of it, the notion of repetition and the notion of risk. Maybe philosophically, this means that real experience, real openness, that is not at the height of desire, nor at the height of indifference, but somewhere in between. So this kind of intermediary state, which is the one that we have in our day-to-day lives when we encounter. our environment, ⁓ the people that we work with, that we live with, isn't that state the one that would be the ideal state to encounter a work of art? But also, because we are aware there is a consciousness of moving into a museum, opening the first pages of a book, listening to the first notes of a melody. the ⁓ of art a tiny bit more complex than that? Because you have an awareness that you are encountering something new. There is a moment before where you weren't experiencing the work of art and a moment during where you were in the depths of it. Isn't there a form of anxiety that one must... ⁓ rein in or hone in order to be ready to experience, to ⁓ not to suspend judgment and to really touch the raw state of that singularity or its outcome, as it were, in the shape of a work of art. not that really ⁓ risking something, ⁓ The notion of importance and the notion of hierarchy then comes into play. When we go into a museum, the hierarchy is already established. We already know what others, so the people applauding, have estimated to be works that either withstood the test of time or will withstand the test of time. So we already are in a sort of state of awareness that that has been chosen by someone else and that someone else was a perito an expert. And so when we enter the museum, already ⁓ are establishing a relationship ⁓ with artworks ⁓ that somehow ⁓ are entangled in our own existence or with our own existence. We are already constellating something and they are stars somewhere of that constellation because they are part of our culture or our experience ⁓ and our reality. And so the necessity of maybe having a repeated experience with something that for some reason calls us And sometimes something that has touched us, not in the best or more pleasurable of ways, maybe that's the notion or the feeling that we should be pursuing. I think if you are a regular here in Exhibitionistas, you probably have listened to the episode about the Ed Atkins exhibition that I recorded with my friend Nick. And I told him that ⁓ really did not enjoy the first exhibition I saw of Ed Atkins's work. ⁓ I always, always think ⁓ La Berma when I have a very visceral, negative when I visit an exhibition. I loved this passage Berma when started reading Proust when I was Um, in the last years of teenage hood and this passage here that I wanted to share with you today was so important to me that really marked something in me because it is so true, isn't it? That sometimes we have feelings, we have a visceral or a very, or a profound, wouldn't say dislike, but reaction. we fail to find. words even for it when we encounter a work of art. And that happened to me with Ed Atkins's work. And I remember going back home and thinking about the exhibition. A week passed, another week passed, another week. And I kept thinking about that experience to the point where I started thinking, I actually really like this work. And at the same time, to feel like the narrator did. Is the word like really appropriate? Is the word masterpiece really appropriate to talk about these works? Because the official reverence in regards to certain masterpieces or considered to be masterpieces is a very impure ⁓ reality. They came to us for certain political social reasons. They were revered in their time because some artists, not to name names, Picasso, were great promoters of their art and their talent. Because they were prolific, because they kept showing their work. And the more an artwork is shown, the more that experience of the artwork is repeated. And the more we are tempted to that label on it that is beauty great, ⁓ good, exceptional of art. ⁓ So maybe is worth a lot of artworks revered, not revered ⁓ in the sort of purgatory of contemporary ⁓ and out of any time where we don't quite know where they belong, because there might be someone who, ⁓ through repeated experiences of that work, someday, ⁓ one day, or eventually, perhaps, ⁓ will feel that deep, ⁓ visceral experience of singularity, ⁓ ⁓ recognition and of enhancement. of their own being that is perhaps what could be best described as recognizing here and now, or perhaps four weeks later, that we were in the presence of great talent. So that's it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I just want to add a little parenthesis about Sarah Bernhardt. If you haven't read her biography, I really urge you to, because she was such a peculiar, incredible woman. She did sleep in a coffin because ⁓ it allowed to It allowed her to think about her roles and to I guess. ⁓ Another thing that is worth visiting and I will or revisiting perhaps for some of you and that I will leave you with is her own voice. She was an innovator and therefore she was not afraid of being recorded ⁓ and we have those recordings. So enjoy ⁓ listening. to the sound of her voice and perhaps even recognizing the famous monotonous and quick tone that the narrator Marcel Proust described in one of the excerpts that you've just listened to. All that said, don't forget, ⁓ subscribe, follow, like, leave a comment, suggest books that may want to read. maybe perhaps contemporary books support us, donate if you can, be a good exhibitionist, go see exhibitionista, read books, look around you experience your surroundings like you experience any work of art as a real ongoing encounter that is unable to be frozen. Take care, have a good one. See you or hear you or you hear me and or you see me in two weeks. Take care. Bye bye.