Swann's Way, Combray II, pp.192-204: Gilberte and sensuality

Gilberte is the daughter of Swann's his unsatisfactory marriage to Odette, and by all accounts she seems to be taking after her mother (but I didn't think about that that until my second read, actually).

M meets her by accident when his family is walking along "Swann's Way" by her house, but it begins with him practically conjuring her:

"I should have liked to see their reckoning proved false, to see, by a miracle, Mlle Swann appear with her father, so close to us that we should not have time to avoid her, and should therefore be obliged to make her acquaintance" (p.192)

because she was said to be out of town, so this almost makes her like a ghost, or a spirit, or a figment of his imagination.

The meeting of Gilberte is one of my favorite parts of this volume (Swann's Way). It is full of imagery, and a dichotomy of language that is stunning. M's description of the white hawthorns (p.194) draws a comparison with the church of Combray, which I believe we will find is a main point of comparison throughout the work. The terms are architectural, and religious, but become increasingly sensual, a "hedge that resembled a series of chapels," "flowers heaped upon altars," light passing "as through a stained glass window," melds with other references like "the Lady-altar," "glittering stamens," "delicate radiating veins," "fleshy whiteness."

M lingers near the hawthorns, "breathing in their invisible and unchanging odour, trying to fix it in [his] mind (which did not know what to do with it)." He is virginal, or at the very least naive. And the flowers are white and pure, teasing him almost, "offering [him] the same charm in inexhaustible profusion, but without letting [him] delve any more deeply".

But for sensuality that's nothing compared the pink hawthorns he finds, or the reference to pink sugar, or pink cream cheese. If white is the color of purity, and red of passion, then pink is the color of budding sexuality, of pubescence. It hints at the freshness of youth and virility found in rosy cheeks and good health, but also at the beginning of menstruation, or the loss of virginity. Keeping that in mind these pages read almost like a dirty joke.

"the most expensive biscuits were those whose sugar was pink. For my own part, I set a higher value on cream cheese when it was pink, when I had been allowed to tinge it with crushed strawberries." (p.196)

And my favorite, about the pink hawthorns:

"High up on the branches, like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of paper lace, whose slender shafts rose in a forest from the altar on major feast-days, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a bowl of pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the thorn-brush which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could do so in pink alone. Embedded in the hedge, but as different from it as a young girl in festal attire among a crowd of dowdy women..." (p.197)

And the question comes to mind, is this as sensual as it is, the nature as laced with sex as it is, because these are memories, and M has already shown us that no memory is without our own imprint of emotion upon it, and M was, at this time, pubescent himself, his memories from the time all tainted by the first flush of his own sexual awakening?

After standing a while in these sensually pink flowers, he meets, or rather stumbles upon, Gilberte. His memory of her, too, is tainted by his thoughts at the time. She is pink—her hair is pink, her freckles are pink, and he admits he always remembered her blackeyes as bluer because he could not "reduce a strong impression to its objective elements" (p.198).

M is already impressed by Gilberte, and by her mother. He does not understand the social mores that make his family snub her, and he is in love with the idea that Gilberte shares dinner with is favorite author, Bergotte. Seeing her now he takes every movement of hers to be contempt for him and for his family. But Gilberte, by association with the pink Hawthorns, has been drawn as at least subtly sexual, and the "half-hidden smile" she gives him while trying to avoid notice by the adults, and the "indelicate gesture" she sends him may be less contempt, more flirtatious? Gilberte's mother, after all, is behind her on the lawn with her lover, while Swann is away in Paris.

M comes to feel an obsessive reverence for Swann and for Gilberte as for the Hawthorns, an attention that may mimic the obsession Swann feels for Odette (which we learn about later in the volume, but which obviously happened before the birth of either child).

Swann's Way, Combray II, pp.121-139, Bergotte, and Swann and his daughter

This is basically an auto-biography, and because I am tired of writing "our hero" or "our narrator" I am going to refer to the teller of the tale as MP from now.

(p.121) Apparently the arrival of French soldiers marching through on a training exercise can throw the household, or at least the household's servants, into a tizzy. I find it interesting that their movement through the streets is compared to that of a swollen river, as though there is no stopping them, no slowing them, and as though there is no thought, no planning, in their movement.

Bloch is the friend who introduces MP to the (fictional) author Bergotte. He is a bit of a nihilist, having no interest in the quantifiable world and insisting that poetic lines would be "finer if they meant absolutely nothing". He is Jewish, like Swann (and Ephrussi), something of political note in that day thanks to the Dreyfus affair. Bloch is banned from the family home for telling MP that his great-aunt was a kept woman, but not before tells him "(a piece of news which had a great influence on [his] later life, making it happier at one time and then more unhappy) that no woman ever thought of anything but love, and that there was not one of them whose resistance could not be overcome." (p.129) Foreshadow much? Also notable, the "kept" great-aunt was previously mentioned as being bound to duty and convention, and MP insinuates later that Bloch's impression of her was incorrect ("but in the matter of Bergotte he had spoken truly" implying previous falsehood [p,129])

Bergotte is a fictional character, an author. Since names of several real writers are also used I can only imagine that this creation will have some meaning throughout our tale (and perhaps the same goes with the earlier relation of actors). MP is obsessed with Bergotte. He mentions Bergotte's writing about nature, architecture (cathedrals), and literature, holds his opinions as godly, and refers to his writings as "mirrors of truth" (p.133).

"I had no doubt that [his opinion] would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an unknown sphere toward which I was striving to raise myself [and] if I happened to find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own mind, my heart would swell as though some deity had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be beautiful and right." (p.132)

Swann compares Bloch to a "Bellini portrait of Mahomet II" (p.134) (because Swann compares life to art a lot) and tells MP that he knows Bergotte well, that Bergotte's favorite actress is Berma (the one fictional writer loves the one fictional actor mentioned in the book).

More on Swann. He also likes Berma, and Bergotte. MP refers again to Swann's reluctance to express an opinion. I'm seeing this as a major character trait. He qualifies things only through their relation to art pieces. Does this remove him from feeling them? Is it similar to the grandmother's desire to have many layers of art between herself and a physical thing? MP does also imply that his mother and grandmother commit the same error.
Swann's wife is said by some to be having an affair with M. de Charlus. The daughter becomes an object of adoration for MP because she is friendly with Bergotte. Because of this, Swann's daughter becomes the woman in MP's dreams, standing on Cathedral steps, sharing with him his love for architecture and Bergotte.

Passages to remember:

"'Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?' I asked M. Swann.
'I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of print. Still, perhaps there has been a second impression. I'll find out. In fact I can ask Bergotte himself all you want to know next time he comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year's end to another. He's my daughter's greatest friend. They go and look at old towns and cathedrals and castles together.'" (p.137)

Cool stuff:
(p.122) 1870 was the Franco-Prussian War which ended the second empire and led to the third republic.

(p.124) Bergotte is a fictional author, while Alfred de Musset was a real 19th century French author, and Jean Racine was a French playwright from the 17th century. Racine wrote both Athalie and Phédre (p.131)

(p.125) "cher maître" means "dear master".

(p.134) Bellini's portrait of Mahomet II: