Why We Explain Jokes

[Jeff Grossman]

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
-Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

 

[Tristan Welles]

Thanks Jeff, an interesting way to start the day. Marcel certainly considered la souffrance from many angles.

I wonder if that is the Scott Moncrieff translation? For once I wouldn't find much to gripe about. And I am one who complains about subtitles eliding past conditionals, 'Er sagt "möglichkeit!"' 'Probablement, the word was probablement!'

"On ne guérit d’une souffrance qu’à condition de l’éprouver pleinement.” Which, I believe, in the English translations comes at the hinge of where volumes 6 and 7 are combined.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

"A suffering" is weirdly literal and "expressing" weirdly unliteral. I would translate as "We are healed of a pain only by experiencing it to the full."

 

[Keith Levenberg]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
"A suffering" is weirdly literal and "expressing" weirdly unliteral. I would translate as "We are healed of a pain only by experiencing it to the full."

But if that's what it's supposed to mean, the quote is stupid

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
"A suffering" is weirdly literal and "expressing" weirdly unliteral. I would translate as "We are healed of a pain only by experiencing it to the full."

But if that's what it's supposed to mean, the quote is stupid

Don't read Proust, or, for that matter, Blake: the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

Tho Proust's view jives with contemporary treatment for trauma (per Bessel Van Der Kolk), in which talk therapy is valued for its contribution to integrating previously excerpted, traumatic experiences into the general narrative flow of one's understanding of his/her/their own life. If I've understood him (Van Der Kolk) aright, that is.