Ahead of her 92U course on Swann’s Way, the first volume in Marcel Proust’s monumental In Search of Lost Time, we sat down with award-winning literary critic and novelist Lila Azam Zanganeh to discuss her love of fairy tales, the connection between the essence of existence and cookies, her favorite contemporary writers, and much more.
* * * * *
You’ve written and thought extensively about lots of different writers, particularly Nabokov. You’ve also written a novel of your own, forthcoming next year. You could have chosen to teach a class on any number of books or aspects of writing, and you chose Swann’s Way. Why? What is it about Proust?
Nabokov was once asked what the great masterpieces of the 20th century were. His response was James Joyce’s Ulysses, Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, and “the first half of Proust’s fairy tale.” That’s remained with me. Nabokov believed that the greatest works of literature were fairy tales, and there is a fairy tale quality to Proust’s Search — in the highest sense possible. It sparkles with magic in every corner. How could one not want to live in that enchanted world while also attending to the mysteries of the here and now? There’s a transformational quality to great literature, and as readers we become co-creators of that magic. There’s something extremely exciting about being steeped in the world of Proust, because when we come back to our own lives, we see the world through him. And we cannot unsee it. Proust transforms our consciousness.
Swann’s Way is often thought of as a book about memory and childhood. It’s also a love story, and of course the nature of time threads it all together. What might you add to this list?
It might be less about adding to that list than discovering how deeply interconnected these matters are. The philosopher and literary theorist Gilles Deleuze talks about the fact that Proust’s writing is about signs. All life, all forms of life, are sequences of signs. What makes the power of social life? It’s a certain way of speaking, a certain glance, a taste — these small signs will transform whoever is receiving them. When it comes to love, this becomes even more charged. What is completely fascinating to me is when signs like these, a lover’s equivocal gaze, a madeleine dipped in tea, become a complete exploration of the entire human experience. In the world of Proust there’s enchantment on many levels. All these signs create webs of sense that he allows us to examine and ultimately taste, in a sense. Swann’s Way lets us explore the connections between the deepest essences of life — time, passion, the nature of existence — and the most superficial. When Proust remembers a childhood cookie, it’s not just because he loves the cookie — it gives him access to the absolute essence of memory itself. Sentence by sentence, his writing lets us partake in that revelation.
Your course invites participants to read any translation that they have available. This is relatively unusual — often an instructor in a class like this will ask students to read the same English text. Why is that unnecessary here?
I just want students to choose whichever they love more. It’s very difficult to recreate the shimmer of the original in any translation — I want students to go with their hearts and follow the text that gives them a tingle in the spine.
What else have you read lately that’s stuck with you? Are there contemporary writers who you see as carrying the Proustian torch?
I actually have one friend who I think is carrying the torch. He’s one of the brightest people I’ve ever known. We went to school together. He’s only published one short story, but he has another one coming out soon in the Spanish version of Granta, and he’s writing a book right now — sentence after sentence, like we were talking about before, it has that depth. I think some parts of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient do that, and some of Anne Carson’s writing does that, but they don’t have that quality of every single sentence revealing itself, which is essentially Proustian. Every sentence is a pathway to the revelation of a metaphysical secret in my friend’s writing. His name is Andreas Guest.
What do you hope participants will take away with them after this class is over?
I feel deeply infatuated with several books, though not a huge number, and I think once you take the time with a text — to think down to the texture of its sentences — it enters your bloodstream and your heart. It transforms not just the way you look at the world, but the way you feel and breathe. I hope this infatuation is contagious. If students come into the class being merely interested, I want them to leave lovestruck. You cannot leave Proust’s world the same way that you entered it.
Reading Proust’s Swann’s Way with Lila Azam Zanganeh begins Thu, Nov 18. Sign up today.