Observations on Writing and Art

As I mentioned earlier, one of our reading group reduced Marcel's thoughts on writing and art to one-sentence summaries. Below is her list, in the order they occur as Marcel waits to enter the Guermantes salon in Time Regained.

1. Memory of madeleines, Balbec…render death unimportant.
2. Memory frees us from the order of Time.
3. Impressions have spiritual equivalents.
4. Genius = instinct; importance of spontaneity
5. The artist “discovers” reality.
6. Naturalism is not art.
7. Rejects literary theories
8. Artists submit to reality within different selves over time.
9. Relationship of reading and memory: reading substitutes another memory for original memory
10. Artist fears to lose first impressions.
11. Truth = extracting common essence and reuniting in metaphor
12. The writer translates essences for the reader.
13. Reality is a private experience, in rather than outside the mind.
14. Art lovers remain ignorant of the essence of the work.
15. Discerning reader adds nothing to literature.
16. Value of literature: lays bare and illuminates real life immanent in all men
17. Art makes us known to ourselves and others.
18. Work of artist is to render our “essences” whole.
19. Value of suffering: Illumination of things hidden from us
20. Reality is outside of habit. Habit obscures essences.
21. Truth derived from intellect has no depth; it is merely an outline.
22. Suffering leads to divine form reflected in others (Platonic Ideal)
23. Material of work of art is the artist’s experiences.
24. All experience nourishes writing.
25. Experience is stored in his memory.
26. Writer remembers “general” which is common to many people.
27. Therefore, artist MUST suffer.
28. Writing is cleansing for the writer.
29. Book = cemetery
30. People and relationships = “models’
31. Writers life = writer’s work
32. Value of unhappiness: transforming idea through grief
33. Necessity of happiness and unhappiness
34. Literature is a composite of writer’s experience.
35. Literary criticism is futile.
36. Only ideas exist.
37. Grief is multiple.
38. Writing = encounters with suffering
39. Sorrow leads us to truth and death.
40. Thought grafts memory onto anything.
41. Reader reads himself.
42. Dreams = mode of recovering Lost Time
43. Everything is in the mind.
44. Dreams are second muse.
45. Experience becomes literature.
46. Solitude not a prerequisite to writing.