mercredi 7 février 2007

In Search of Lost Time

The only readable text on the whole Codex are a few words in french on 2 plates in the 6th chapter " human (well.. seraphinian ?) anatomy, ethnology & anthropology "





On the first plate, the text is "fille orgiaq-ue surgie et devinée, le p-remier jour, s-ur la digue d-e Balbec".


A rapid search on a few digital librairies told me this quote comes from a book by the french writer Marcel Proust : "A la recherche du temps perdu : Albertine disparue" ( In Search of Lost Time : Albertine gone). In fact, the scattered words on the ground, also come from the following sentences in the same book, as shown on this image :



Later, I've been told that Cecilia Raba noticed this reference on her weblog ; she made a wonderful analysis on her post : "Una chiave per il Codex Seraphinianus".

In the second plate, the writer have been murdered, and a few other french words can be read on teared sheets of paper :


"statuaire .... liade-souven(ir?)... voici encore :", "...urel (naturel, surnaturel, culturel ?) yeux baissés"
I checked many online french books, but I have not been able to find any exact reference yet.

The whole text for Proust "Albertine disparue" can be found there :
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/pge/pge06/100194/e100194.txt

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