A few people to dinner

For a long time I’ve been curious about a dinner party in Paris on 18 May 1922. Now all has been revealed in Stephen Klaidman’s new book*, a biography of the hosts that evening, Sydney and Violet Schiff.

The Schiffs were committed patrons of (and friends with) artists, writers and musicians, and Sydney himself wrote autobiographical novels under the pseudonym Stephen Hudson.

It was a late dinner in an upstairs room at the Hotel Majestic, following the first night of Stravinsky’s new burlesque-ballet at the Opéra, Le Renard, which was given by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, the same group who had shocked Paris with The Rite of Spring. Diaghilev and several of his dancers came to the dinner, as did the designer of the new production, one Pablo Picasso.

But not content with having the leading composer, artist and impresario of the day (and maybe of the century) at their dinner, the Schiffs had also invited two writers, arguably the greatest literary innovators of the twentieth century: Marcel Proust and James Joyce.

Proust arrived around midnight and proceeded to make conversation with Stravinsky, saying how much he loved the late quartets of Beethoven and comparing Stravinsky with Beethoven. Sensing that this was Proust trying to show off his connoisseurship in music, Stravinsky took offence: “I detest Beethoven,” he announced.

Joyce arrived around 2:30am, shabby and drunk. Proust had not read any of Joyce’s work ‒ Ulysses was causing a great stir at the time, but not with Proust. And Joyce had read just a few pages of Proust’s magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time, and disclosed to a friend some time later that “I cannot see any special talent but I am a bad critic.” They found little to say to each other, these two titans of literature.

At the end of the “evening” they shared a taxi together with the Schiffs. Joyce lit a cigarette, but was silent. Proust talked incessantly – but not to Joyce.

And so finished the starriest dinner party of all time.

*Stephen Klaidman, Sydney and Violet: Their Life with TS Eliot, Proust, Joyce and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis, Nan A Talese / Doubleday

Madeleines and sense memory

A friend came to tea with her daughters, bringing a bowlful of cake-mix which was swiftly turned into madeleines.

In the first book, Swann’s Way, of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (as it’s now usually called in English), the narrator goes home to visit his mother, who:

“… seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing that I did not ordinarily take… She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines’, which look as though they have been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing tomorrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin…”

Marcel explores within himself this new sensation:

“Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, is trying to follow it into my conscious mind… And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray… when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give to me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.”

Thus, the source of what is now known as “sense memory”.

(By the way, it’s really useful as an excursion technique in brainstorming.)