In the latest issue of Vanity Fair Bill Moyers answers the Proust Questionnaire, I can't imagine a better set of replies than his, and manages to be thoughtful and oh so right! (yes, I love him!)
One of his questions is:
If you could change one thing about your family what would it be?
his answer: I wish we weren't always in such a hurry.
Isn't this the truth and it speaks volumes. It makes me think of our own lives (ha! isn't that what a Proust Questionnaire is supposed to do...) and how much we rush from one moment to the other and with kids I find myself trying to figure out what we are going to do with our time. Our best moments together are really when we just sit and do nothing! That's when we hold each other, that's when we listen to each other and best of all, that's when we just sit and stare at each other (well maybe it's more of me just dreamily watching them).
When you work at home as both my husband and myself do, you almost tend to work in every moment you can get, and you forget to shut off. It's times like these when I read something like this that I re-evaluate my life and figure out how to slow things down and keep my mind separate kids vs. work. I think that many of us are under a tremendous amount of pressure these days, to make it work. Make our jobs work and make our life with our family work, and with the pressure of the economy it's just another variable that keeps our minds away from the kids. Well, at least this is the way it's been in our family... maybe you can relate and this will help you to find the time, to keep your mind clear and just BE with your kids.
And just in case you are interested, when I was researching to write this blog I came upon the REAL Proust Questionnaire, you know there is a real one... (I didn't know it) it's actually where the Vanity Fair one came from, his answers to these similar questions posed to him at age 13 and then again at age 20, the answers are thoughtful and beautiful. ENJOY! (I found this online, it's kind of a weird link but - here is the link)
Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
- To be separated from Mama
- Where would you like to live?
- In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
- What is your idea of earthly happiness?
- To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
- To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
- To a life deprived of the works of genius
- Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
- Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
- Who are your favorite characters in history?
- A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
- Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
- A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
- Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
- Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
- Your favorite painter?
- Meissonier
- Your favorite musician?
- Mozart
- The quality you most admire in a man?
- Intelligence, moral sense
- The quality you most admire in a woman?
- Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
- Your favorite virtue?
- All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
- Your favorite occupation?
- Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
- Who would you have liked to be?
- Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.
What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:
- Your most marked characteristic?
- A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired
- The quality you most like in a man?
- Feminine charm
- The quality you most like in a woman?
- A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship
- What do you most value in your friends?
- Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having
- What is your principle defect?
- Lack of understanding; weakness of will
- What is your favorite occupation?
- Loving
- What is your dream of happiness?
- Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.
- What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
- Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
- What would you like to be?
- Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be
- In what country would you like to live?
- One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]
- What is your favorite color?
- Beauty lies not in colors but in their harmony
- What is your favorite flower?
- Hers - but apart from that, all
- What is your favorite bird?
- The swallow
- Who are your favorite prose writers?
- At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
- Who are your favorite poets?
- Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
- Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
- Hamlet
- Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
- Phedre (crossed out) Berenice
- Who are your favorite composers?
- Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann
- Who are your favorite painters?
- Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt
- Who are your heroes in real life?
- Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
- Who are your favorite heroines of history?
- Cleopatra
- What are your favorite names?
- I only have one at a time
- What is it you most dislike?
- My own worst qualities
- What historical figures do you most despise?
- I am not sufficiently educated to say
- What event in military history do you most admire?
- My own enlistment as a volunteer!
- What reform do you most admire?
- (no response)
- What natural gift would you most like to possess?
- Will power and irresistible charm
- How would you like to die?
- A better man than I am, and much beloved
- What is your present state of mind?
- Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions
- To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
- Those that I understand
- What is your motto?
- I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.
click here to read the full Proust Questionnaire with Bill Moyers
