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LocusAmoenus

Locus Amoenus: All By My Shelf

Watch the amazing Locus juggle several books at once, and try not to drop any! Free admission.

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Currently reading

One Corpse Too Many (The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael Book 2)
Ellis Peters
Progress: 20%
Shameless: A Sexual Reformation
Nadia Bolz-Weber
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski

Final Thoughts: Lost Time

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp  - Józef Czapski, Eric Karpeles

"THIS ESSAY on Proust was dictated in the winter of 1940–41 in the cold refectory of an abandoned convent that served as the mess hall of our prison camp at Gryazovets in the Soviet Union."

 

At Gryazovets, Czapski and a group of fellow Polish officers were being imprisoned and forced into hard labor. This, in itself, was remarkable, since most of their fellow officers had been executed outright. Only this small group survived.

 

The officers decided to continue with a project that had begun in one of the camps they had transferred from. In order to keep their minds occupied and temporarily escape the despair of their current existence, each officer would prepare lectures on a topic they remembered well and were passionate about: travel, history, music... This was a highly educated group of officers, and the topics were varied and erudite.

 

Czapski himself was a painter, but during the span of a few years he had lived in Paris, and become immersed in Proust's work. The author had only recently died, and Czapski was able to meet people who had known him, and who made his reading of Proust's multivolume novel a more enriching experience.

 

So he chose this work, a novel about forgetting and remembering, as his way to communicate with his comrades in the prison camp:

 

"Initially taking up À la recherche du temps perdu on the basis of aesthetic inquiry, Czapski soon recognized its value as a practical template for survival. The lectures offered a viable counterpoint to the repeated interrogations the men were forced to endure. His lectures were an act of resistance, stimulating the recovery and retention of personal memories that could protect and defend his colleagues from the attempt to deprive each of them of a sense of self."

 

Czapski managed to dictate his lectures, and was later able to save the notes when he left the camp. The final version collates two dictations, and moves fluidly from one topic to the other. Several times, Czapski points out that he's not quoting accurately or that he's forgotten certain details; and it's only then that the reader is brought back into the reality of the context of the lectures. The result is a truly moving testimony to the power of the human mind:

 

"involuntary memory is in itself a kind of resurrection, bringing the past back to life, 'taking on form and solidity.'"