Squids, Neuroscientists and Proust

You may be wondering what Marcel has to do with squids and neuroscientists.  As far as I know, Proust never had an encounter with a squid while on the coast at Cabourg, and probably not in Paris either.  And even though Proust was diagnosed with neuresthenia, I don’t think there were neuroscientists around in his lifetime.  Not that either of those things have anything to do with each other.  Or squids, either.

So when I saw the titles of two books that came out this past year, Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf, and Proust was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer, my interest was piqued and I checked them out of the library.  The sub-title of the squid book is The Story and Science of the Reading Brain; this gives us a clue as to why Proust is featured in the title of this book.  And with a squid.

You see, once there was this squid that wanted to learn how to read; specifically, he wanted to read In Search of Lost Time…no, not really.  Here’s the real story: Once there was an author named Maryanne Wolf and she wanted to write a book about how the human brain developed the skill of reading and the changes that being able to read make in the brain.  She says:

“In this book I use the celebrated French novelist Marcel Proust as metaphor and the largely underappreciated squid as analogy for two very different aspects of reading.  Proust saw reading as a kind of intellectual ’sanctuary’ where human beings have access to thousands of different realities they might never encounter or understand otherwise…The study of what the human brain has to do to read, and of its clever ways of adapting when things go wrong, is analagous to the study of the squid in earlier neuroscience.”

Clever, n’est-ce pas?  Actually, I think the author was probably looking for a title that was more alluring than her sub-title, one that would arouse people’s interest and cause them to run to their library to check this book out just to see what connection Proust had with squids- it hooked me, didn’t it?  Proust, squids-I’m all over that like a cheap suit.

So there really isn’t that much about Proust in this book, but there are some good quotes from him.  Here are two:

“I believe that reading, in its original essence, [is] that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”

“We feel quite truly that our wisdom begins where that of the author ends, and we would like to have him give us answers, while all he can do is give us desires.  But by…a law which perhaps signifies that we can receive the truth from nobody, and that we must create it ourselves, that which is the end of their wisdom appears to us as but the beginning of ours.”

Notice that the quote from Maryanne Wolf ends with the word neuroscience.  Here’s a definition of that word from the Free Dictionary: Any of the sciences, such as neuroanatomy and neurobiology, that deal with the nervous system.  And a neuroscientist is a neurobiologist who specializes in the study of the brain.  Our second book is entitled Proust was a Neuroscientist.  See how it all ties together? 

Jonah Lehrer, the author, does not really mean to say that Proust was a neuroscientist, his premise is that “…when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first” and so …”[he] shows how each [artist] discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering” (from the book jacket). 

Marcel Proust, bien sur, is the artist that got to some ideas about memory and our senses role in memory that scientists are now finding a biological basis for, in our tongues and noses and brains.  Here’s a quote from Proust that Lehrer uses:

“When from a long distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinching, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

Jonah Lehrer writes:  “Neuroscience now knows that Proust was right…This is because smell and taste are the only senses that connect directly to the hippocampus, the center of the brain’s long-term memory…All our other senses (sight, touch, and hearing) are first processed by the thalamus, the source of language and the front door to consciousness.  As a result, these senses are much less efficient at summoning up our past…Proust intuited this anatomy”.

Well, but did we really need science to validate this for us?  Isn’t the fact that we all can recognize the truth of what Proust says, in this and in all that he reveals about us and to us in his work, to the point that we elevate this work to classic status and continue to refer to it and to its author long past it’s milieu?  (For more on this book, go here.)

One thing is obvious.  Both of these authors chose Proust’s name to feature in their books’ titles because the name draws attention; it also announces that the author has read Proust, sees things in Proust’s work that apply to today’s concern’s and science’s findings, and also that the author understands that people will want to read a book that has Proust’s name in the title.

Which leads me to reveal the title of a work I have in mind:

Proust was a Locavore. 

The Death of Marcel

Today, November 18th, is the anniversary of Proust’s death in 1922.  He was born on July 10, 1871 and so was 51 years old when he died.  Not a very long life, but it lasted as long as he wanted it to- until he finished his work.  He’s buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France and when Proustians make their pilgrimage there, they leave madeleines, lilies and stones.  Why stones? Because Proust’s mother was Jewish.  His father was Catholic, though, and Proust himself never really embraced any religion.  Writing was his life and his religion.

In the summer of 1922, the Paris newspaper “L’Intransigeant” published a questionnaire that included this question:

“An American scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people.  If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm?  Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?”

Marcel answered.  He had answered a couple of these questionnaires when he was younger as well, at parties where this was done as part of the festivities, and Marcel apparently enjoyed answering them.  Anyhow, Marcel answered and the paper printed his answer:

“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say.  Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it- our life- hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible  for ever, how beautiful it would become again!  Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire.  And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today.  It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.”

Marcel did not die that evening.  But not long after, he “took a chill” and it became pnuemonia, followed by secondary infections, then an abcess in his lung which became septicaemia.  This took place over several weeks, during which time Marcel exhausted himself editing and correcting his manuscripts.  Earlier, in the spring of 1922, he’d announced to Celeste Albaret, his housekeeper and confidant for ten years, that he’d finished his work, that during the night he’d written ”The End”.  To which he then added, “Now I can die”.

Four months after answering the L’Intransigeant questionnaire, Marcel died.  His brother, Robert, had to finish editing the final manuscripts for In Search of Lost Time.  But Proust was already gaining fame and a reputation after the publications of Swann’s Way (1913), In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), and The Guermantes Way (1920-21) and so he died knowing that he’d accomplished what he set out to do.  Two days after his death, the photographer Man Ray came to take his death portrait. 

A poignant confession from Celeste stays with me in relation to Proust’s death.  Sometime before he dies, Marcel said to Celeste, “…it is awful to think doctors can torture a sick person by injecting serums.  And for what?  To give his patient ten more minutes, twelve more hours perhaps, of a wretched life?  Celeste, promise me you won’t ever let them give me an injection.”  She promised.

Fast forward to the day it is obvious that Marcel is going to die.  Against Proust’s wishes, she calls his doctor and begs him to give Marcel an injection, something to give him strength, to save him.  When the doctor does so, Proust reaches out and grabs Celeste’s wrist, pinches it and says, “Oh, Celeste…oh, Celeste!”

Celeste writes that this is impressed on her forever, and that even if she wanted to, she could never drive that final cry of his out of her ears.