The BBC have been doing an immensely ambitious project over the holiday week-end. They have been doing a radio version of all of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Time Past. Of course it has been necessary to condense it heavily, but they have had the courage to devote about twelve hours to the broadcast. With Derek Jacobi as the old Marcel, and Simon Russell Beale as M. Charlus you can guess that the quality has been pretty good.
I have to admit (unfashionably) that I am quite a fan of Proust. We have in common an obsessive interest in time and the difference between experienced time and “clock” time. I think it is an interest we share with T.S. Eliot, with his observation that time past and time future are both contained in time present.* Reflecting on the drama as it unfolded I had the startling thought that what Proust is offering us is actually “Marcel’s” Twitter-feed. I don’t use Twitter, but I gather that it generally consists of a stream of unreflected observations about one’s current experience that might also relate (on a rather random basis) both/either to past experience or the expected future. I rather like that idea. The author is often thought of as a bit old-fashioned, but clearly he is right in the moment. I have always thought so.
I would not be surprised if I come back to this theme again in the near future, but I will limit myself to one reflection tonight. As an artist I was struck by Proust’s observation (despite the fact that his central character “Marcel” has experienced such difficulty in getting down to write) that the work is “already in us”. He likens the process of creative writing to that of “translating”, and as I become engaged with another picture I have to ask myself how this might relate also to the visual arts. Over the last two days I have planned and sketched the last of my projected “Creation” series, and it has been interesting to notice that my original idea will not quite “work” as a visual composition. It needs to be somehow adapted before it will work at that level. Translation is a nice metaphor.
At another level of seriousness altogether: my wife and I enjoy a regular game of Scrabble, and this seems to be quite an important part of our companionship. I can’t help asking whether “Marcel’s” succession of disastrous relations with women might have been ameliorated considerably had they played Scrabble. It’s a thought!
*Or words to that effect. I have not had the opportunity to check the original quotation from Four Quartets.