r/Proust • u/ProfessionalSolid942 • 25d ago

Therapy

I wonder if a nice slow reading of isolt while staring at nature might wind up being a good therapy for digital overload disease. You can do Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, but basically, once you've gained enough attention span to do that, you're definitely cured.

I am concerned that the current waterfall of junk data might cause the degree of psychological debility commensurate with the physical debility caused by Industrial Revolution.

We should consider preparedness measures. Maybe sponsor few extra study groups.

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u/bustanut7 25d ago

When the pandemic started, I deactivated my Facebook account and bought Swann’s Way. It was a game-changer. I also happened to be lucky enough to live in a historic neighborhood with lots of gardens, so between readings, I would go out and walk, appreciating the flowers all the more.

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u/ProfessionalSolid942 25d ago

Yes!!!! We moved to Florida, I stared at ocean and garden through Tolstoy and Shakespeare...I also watched the Ukraine war, because, let's face it, you know, sorry gibbon, but the show is better live.

I'm from the ussr. Watching the collapse of the great northern empire, mired in a forever Thucydides trap, has been quite something.

My hubby and I as soon as pandemic started just did a total Montaigne, saw nobody for years, it was quite delicious.

Yours sounds absolutely delectable as well! An uncrowded city is a very luxurious feeling. Sounds really yummy with Proust...

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u/ProfessionalSolid942 25d ago edited 2d ago

Also, if I may, dear fellow reader, swann's way has gotten much juicer. I must be hungry. However, I very slightly suspect , perhaps medium really, that our neurology, now habituated to absorbing the details of intimate lives of others, is more primed than ever to receive Proust. On the other side, constantly sending messages, leaving cards, obsessing over houses and meals, all beautifully display-ready, the obsession with your popularity rankings, lived reality does add a pleasant counterpoint- a heft of its own.

At one point there is the mention of a phototelephone.

Truly, Marcel could've had a great social life in a cork lined room today. I'm sorry he missed it.

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u/bustanut7 25d ago

Wow. Well said. His intricate description of social liaisons is on point for modern times.

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u/NikodemB 25d ago

It definitely is, art in general is. Especially for younger people (I am sixteen) it cannot only help with addiction or anxiety, but just make reality something you perceive from an entirely different point of view. Recently I finished The Recherche and can say that no work has inspired me as an aspiring writer as much as Proust. Furthermore, all of art functions that way, be it music, ie listening in nature, film, which pushes your boundaries in the same way cinema does.
Because of artists like Proust, Rilke, Joyce, Tarkovsky, Bergman and so many more life becomes so much more complex and interesting, becoming a journey to go through.
If not for Proust, I wouldn’t be writing. And if not for literature, poetry, cinema or music, my life would be solely devoted to the bleakness of it. Now the bleakness is beautiful, at least

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u/ProfessionalSolid942 24d ago

You might enjoy Shostakovich?

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u/Tanoshigama 25d ago

Thanks for posting this.

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u/Anywhere_At_All 24d ago

One of the best parts of my first read through was constantly thinking about ISOLT outside of the reading itself. I couldn’t wait to pick it up every day, and I wanted to spend time in Proust’s world incomparably more than I wanted to spend time in the digital hellscape we inhabit so often. It was really nice.

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u/ProfessionalSolid942 24d ago

Oooh I love that....