After the death of the writer Bergotte, a simple, solemn memorial.
Marcel Proust, The Prisoner, trans. Carol Clark (London: Penguin, 2003).
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All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, March 25, 2021
“In the lighted bookshop windows”
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comments: 3
Oh, the best. Thank you.
The passage about him dying while regretting he didn't write like Vermeer painted is painful...
But also, that's a weirdly complex thing to think in the throes of death.
What was he dying of, that his brain was so alert?
Perhaps he was run over by a horse cab?
It’s a stroke that does it.
The death of Bergotte comes out of nowhere — part if what makes it an extraordinary scene, totally shifting away from the narrator’s endless examination of jealousy and obsession.
If the lighted bookstores and book displays for a dead writer are a French tradition, I wasn’t able to find any evidence of it with a quick search.
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