ATDTDA (2): Headwear in ATD? (pp. 1 - 44)

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 00:29 +0000, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
> Thanks for posting this. I was looking for an appropriate example from 
> "The Guermantes Way" (particularly like the one on page 138 "She 
> was wearing lighter, or at least lighter-colored, dresses, and she 
> would come down the street, on which already, as if spring had come---in 
> front of the narrow shops between the broad fronts of the old aristocratic 
> mansions. . . .    " ,) and realized it would take me, like, forever, to type the 
> whole thing up, so, sorry but you know where to look and it's worth it,
> 'cause the passage is like so "out there" the way Pynchon can be so "out there". . . .
> The translation read/cited is Mark Treharne's recent translation.

I believe all parts of Recherche are now on line, though in older
translations. I did remember M's infatuation with Albertine's toque and
veil (which he had bought for her), so I googled Albertine AND toque and
there the passage was, ready to cut and paste.

AtD often reminded me of something in Proust. (lot of other authors also
of course)

In the present connection (women's adornment), I'm pretty sure AtD
mentions (Venetian designer) Fortuny gowns, which played an important
part in M's image of Albertine.  

Both Pynchon and Proust have marvelous surfaces. Tore mentioned the
importance of surface in Pynchon a while back. (with which I strongly
concur)


> 
> 
> On Sat, 2007-02-10 at 11:16 -0500, Monte Davis wrote:
> > Is it legit to look -- as it were -- ahead? 
> > 
> > SPOILERS if it still matters:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> > 
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> > 
> > 347, Dally sees Erlys (maybe) in the atrium at the department store: "There
> > on the other side of that hypnotic Deep and the arpeggiations ascending out
> > of it stood a figure in lady-shopper's streetwear in a violet and gray
> > check, the egret plume on her hat articulating sensitive as a hand, not
> > looking at Dally in particular but somehow demanding her attention."
> > 
> > 
> > 544: "It was still early in the study of these matters, only a few brave
> > pioneers like the Baron von Krafft-Ebing had dared peep into the strange and
> > weirdly twilit country of hat-fetishism-not that Kit noticed stuff like that
> > ordinarily, but it [Pleaide's hat] happened actually to be a gray toque of
> > draped velvet..."
> > 
> > Setting up 589:
> > 
> > "Yashmeen Halfcourt continued to glide, through the Turkish smoke and
> > beer-fumes, 
> > directly toward them... Draped velvet toques had always been Kit's undoing."
> 
> 
> 
> Marcel and Albertine's also it seems . . . 
> 
>  We left the car for a moment to look at it and
> strolled for a little. No less than of her limbs, Albertine was
> directly conscious of her TOQUE of Leghorn straw and of the silken
> veil (which were for her the source of no less satisfaction), and
> derived from them, as we strolled round the church, a different sort
> of impetus, revealed by a contentment which was inert but in which I
> found a certain charm; veil and TOQUE which were but a recent,
> adventitious part of my friend, but a part that was already dear to
> me, as I followed its trail with my eyes, past the cypress in the
> evening air. She herself could not see it, but guessed that the effect
> was pleasing, for she smiled at me, harmonising the poise of her head
> with the headgear that completed it. 
> 
> Sodom et Gemorrhe (emphasis added)