Of course I know about Proust's Questionnaire since I was 14 years old, I just did not know it's associated with him.
There were some memories albums (read: notebooks) we used to circulate in our 8th grade to all our classmates. Kids would answer a number of questions, some stolen from bellow, I assume, some added as per our personal interests. The most fun section, since we were all kids facing the scary prospect of adolescence, feeling the first unquestionably romantic heartbeats, writing the first (bad) poems (mine were not love sonnets, but hate rhymes: I hate you for this and that, and I hope you will die, or I will die, or somebody will die...), were the last ones. In order.
One question per page:
1. Hi (following by a list of hi-backs)
2. Your name:
3. Your age: ....
from here on, you had to follow a specific hand writing associated with a number in the list, the source of your interest, and see what he/she is like. Obviously nobody cared what's the girl with big glasses or the boy with freckles favorite anything.
...
4. Favorite flower
5. Favorite car...
blah blah blah...
Painful exercise of replying to questions about shoes, style, actress, movies, books, writers, poets, foods, a dissection of your preferences, written in color pencils, in pink, in blue, in black, underlined, embellished, big, small, cursive, detailed, in a hurry, bored, in iambic verse, using your creativity to stand out, until the last and most important pages:
....
569. Are you in love?
570. With whom? (the really smart-asses would say: "yes, with a girl/boy", not dignifying your genuine curiosity with a straight-foreword answer; or, if you wanted to make an impression: "with somebody from college" - that would be smart+bad-ass. The courageous ones will get almost too adventurous: George (Maria) from 8A (8th grade, class A.) And then poor George(Maria) will pay for the creepy honesty of answerer #27 until the last day of his/her class, being mocked and pocked by their intellectually and emotionally underdeveloped peers.
Everyone had one page at the end of the notebook to write whatever they had in mind, usually something translatable in "Roses are red, Violets are ...well...violet", Picassonian drawings, quotes and references, and the mandatory secret (usually a girl exclusive exercise) in the lower-right corner, carefully sealed with duck-tape or hot pink wax, something dumb, sometimes not even a mystery, other times just a not-so-shy lips stamp wearing the color of mom's lipstick. Guys would not mess up with the corners, for having secrets was seen very unmanly.
I don't know if this was exclusively Romanian, but if that's so, I can make the following claim:
We invented Facebook. Period.
But, outside the Facebook age, we were not the only one filling out "My fav X" type of questionnaires, and seeing Proust's amused my Friday afternoon, reason for which I share:
(1)Cristina and
(2)Proust
Confessions questions
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PProust's answers 1890
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Your
favorite virtue
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integrity
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The need
to be loved; more precisely, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more
than the need to be admired
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Your
favorite qualities in a man.
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courage +
number 1
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Feminine
charms.
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Your
favorite qualities in a woman.
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courage +
number 1
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Manly
virtues, and frankness in friendship.
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Your chief
characteristic
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impatience
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What you
appreciate the most in your friends
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unconditional
love
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To have
tenderness for me, if their personage is exquisite enough to render quite
high the price of their tenderness
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Your main
fault
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laziness
and impatience
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Not
knowing, not being able to "want".
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Your
favourite occupation.
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listening
to interesting people
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Loving.
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Your idea
of happiness
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love and
be loved
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I am
afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroying
it by speaking it.
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Your idea
of misery.
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being sick/my
friends or family being sick
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Not to
have known my mother or my grandmother.
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If not
yourself, who would you be?
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The cat in
the image, because that’s the only way you can get away with doing evil
things
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Myself, as
the people whom I admire would like me to be.
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Where
would you like to live?
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in the
present or the wonderland
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A country
where certain things that I should like would come true as though by magic,
and where tenderness would always be reciprocated
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the
million grays in a black and white photo
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The beauty
is not in the colours, but in their harmony.
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Your
favorite prose authors.
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Proust, Bernard
Shaw(for plays), Twain and Jules Verne from childhood, Woolf, Dostoevsky, Barthes’
critiques
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Your
favorite poets.
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Sappho, Neruda
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Your
favorite heroes in fiction.
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Dostoevsky's
mind
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Your
favorite heroines in fiction.
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Medea
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Your
favorite painters and composers.
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The 3 B’s:
Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz
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----
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Van Gogh,
Renoir, Rembrandt,
Goya's Black Paintings
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Your
heroes in real life.
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Mr. Darlu,
Mr. Boutroux.
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Your
favorite heroines in real life.
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----
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What
characters in history do you most dislike.
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dysfunctional,
hungry, dictators
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----
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Your
heroines in World history
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Helen of
Troy-ancient civilization, de Beauvoir-for standing up, Curie for dedication
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Your
favorite food and drink.
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raw fish,
white rice, wine
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----
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Your
favorite names.
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have no
idea. Something with R's and S?
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I only
have one at a time.
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What I
hate the most.
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careless
people
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What is
bad about me.
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World
history characters I hate the most
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self-centered
dictators
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I am not
educated enough.
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The
military event I admire the most
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none
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My
military service!
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----
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The
natural talent I'd like to be gifted with
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visionary
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Will-power,
and seductiveness.
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How I wish
to die
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in my
sleep, of old age, sudden
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Improved—and
loved.
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What is
your present state of mind.
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anxious
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Boredom
from having thought about myself to answer all these questions.
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For what
fault have you most toleration?
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various
weaknesses deriving people's childhoods
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Those that
I understand.
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Your
favorite motto.
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What is allowed us is disagreeable, what is denied us
causes us intense desire. (Read: Ovid, Metamorphoses)
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I should
be too afraid that it bring me misfortune.
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