In 15 minutes, I have my final exam for my Proust class.

Which obviously means that it is time for “Quotes from my notes on Proust II.”  (See part I, the midterm edition, here.) After all that happy love on here over the past couple days, it’s time for a Proust smack down on all that is lovely in the world.

• “We never know how to live out love.”
• “We can’t really understand what the narrator is feeling here because we are normal.”
• “It’s almost like Hitler designed this guy.”
• “… and what if Truth is found outside of our years, of our age?”
• “Truly, this is Proust’s message: we learn nothing. Nothing but art can justify human existence.”
• “Without art, life is total nothingness.”
• “Really, the base of the book is comic… and grotesque.”
• “She is a prostitute… or a lesbian… or both?”
• “What is love? It is the desire for desire.”
• “The whole book is mad solitude – desire.”
• “This then is Proust’s thesis: What are we? We are beings who desire…. Beings who desire desire. “
• “There is no ideal beauty.”
• “You have to forget everything before you can remember it.”
• “Women/tea/submission/NO.”
• “The world is cruel.”
• “This then is Proust’s thesis: The reigning force in the world is meanness.”
• “He says it, without saying it, in saying it.”
• “Night is a disease that kills.”
• “Lots of masculine/feminine ambiguity up in here.”
• “This then is Proust’s thesis: Jealousy determines all human relations.”
•  “Art means taking the bull by the horns.”
• “He says ‘Here is nothing… and from that I will create a masterpiece.’”
• “Truth/ beauty–> art –> looking at it –> MAKING IT – yay!!!!”
• “Truth/ beauty–> life –> deception”
• “He just can’t get past the great wedding night of art.”
• “Why isn’t he Jewish when his dopplegangers are?”
• “Nothing in society is solid.”
• “What we don’t know: Man? Woman? What we do know: sad lesbian.”*
• “Where does art come from? From suffering.”
• “No one is totally good… but no one is totally bad either.”
• “With the war, Proust will now destroy his own book.”

And my personal favorite…

“THERE IS A GRANDMOTHER… and then there is nothingness.”

(* Technically, this one is from Kristen‘s notes… and had a drawing to accompany it, but time is short, so you will have to miss out on her amazing ambiguous stick figure with long hair and a mustache. )