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:

A few thoughts on John Ruskin

Proust greatly admired John Ruskin, and spent about 10 years, from about 1895 to 1905, studying and translating some of his works, publishing a French translation of Ruskin's "The Bible of Amiens", which is a very detailed description of the Cathedral of Amiens of decorated gothic style.

Proust also claimed to know Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture" by heart, a work that was about the philosophy of architecture as well as its physical study. From Wikipedia, Ruskin's seven "lamps" (or principles) of architecture are:

1. Sacrifice – dedication of man's craft to God, as visible proofs of man's love and obedience
2. Truth – handcrafted and honest display of materials and structure.
   
3. Power – buildings should be thought of in terms of their massing and reach towards the sublimity of nature by the action of the human mind upon them and the organization of physical effort in constructing buildings.
4. Beauty – aspiration towards God expressed in ornamentation drawn from nature, his creation
5. Life – buildings should be made by human hands, so that the joy of masons and stonecarvers is associated with the expressive freedom given them
6. Memory – buildings should respect the culture from which they have developed
7. Obedience – no originality for its own sake, but conforming to the finest among existing English values, in particular expressed through the "English Early Decorated" Gothic as the safest choice of style.

And Proust was heavily influenced by the philosophies and writings of Ruskin, so if we look at the descriptions of the Combray church again...

No. 4 Beauty—the church is given human traits time and time again, bringing to mind the idea that man is created in God's image, so likening the church to man certainly seems like "drawing ornamentation...from his creation".

No. 6 Memory—the church not only respects the culture from which it has developed, it is inextricably linked to it, at least in our narrator's mind. Biblical culture (Esther), French historical culture (Merovingian), Combray culture (Guermantes), and the culture of the masses (the peasant class) are all part the building itself, if not in the images on the windows, then in the erosion of the flooring.

No. 7 Obedience—the church conforms by being defined by history, and by being susceptible to erosion at the hand of habit. It is also described frequently as Gothic.

The church at Combray (pp.80-91)

In the second section of Swann's Way we arrive in Combray, described for us as "no more than a church epitomizing the town, representing it, speaking of it and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about its long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as a shepherdess gathers her sheep, the woolly grey backs of its huddled houses, which the remains of its mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and there, in an outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town in a primitive painting." (p.65)

The church dominates Proust's memory of Combray, and 11 pages of Combray II (pp.80-91) are dedicated to its detailed description. The first five pages to the church itself, the next six to just the steeple. The careful attention given to the church makes it a self-contained example of themes found elsewhere in the work.

Time/history/past
The church seems to belong to all eras, and a lot of time setting words are used to describe it: "primitve," "age-long repetition," "mediaeval style," "silver antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries," and "Merovingian darkness," and reference is made to people and legends from the past, like the King Charles VI cards, Esther, Saint Eloi, and Sigebert. An historical figure or aspect is assigned to every part of the church.

"all this made of the church for me something entirely different from the rest of the town: an edifice occupying, so to speak, a four-dimensional space—the name of the fourth being Time—extending through the centuries its ancient nave, which, bay after bay, chapel, seemed to stretch across and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive epoch from which it emerged triumphant..." (p.83)

In "Romancing the Cathedral", Elizabeth Nicole Emery explains this as the narrator's or, as she calls him, the hero's appreciation for the church only through its connection to history and people from history. This reminds me of his grandmother's attraction to antiques over contemporary, useful items. And in fact, his grandmother turns out to be a fan of the church and its steeple in ways that the other characters are not (p.87)

Class
As I noted before, the church seems to be a unifier of class as well as time. It is visited for ages by peasant-women, houses the "noble dust of the Abbots of Combray," and the narrator and his family are middle class, (pp.80-81).

Art in life
The church personified. I remember that later in Swann's Way people are often given the qualities of art, but here the art, or architecture, is being given many human qualities:
• The dust of the long dead noble Abbots is related to the flooring (p.80)
• Proust tells us that at moments the church is "more human somehow" (p.81)
• One window "had taken on the shimmering of a peacock's tail, then quivered and rippled in a flaming and fantastic shower that streamed from the groin of the dark and stony vault down the moist walls, as though it were along the bed of some grotto glowing with sinuous stalactites..." (pp.81-82).
• It is equated to "coquettish" "grown-up sisters" and a "peevish and ill-dressed younger brother" (p.83)
• It is "...raising up into the sky above the square a tower which had looked down upon Saint Louis, and seemed to see him still; and thrusting down with its crypt..." and "guiding us with groping finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault" (pp.83-84)
• "The church! Homely and familiar, cheek by jowl in the Rue Saint-Hilaire...a simple citizen of Combray.." (p.85)
• The tower windows are placed symmetrically "with that right and original proportion in their spacing which gives beauty and dignity not only to human faces..." (p.86)
• It is "like a solid body" while "the apse, crouched muscularly..."

Habit
Church is, of course, a regular habit for those who take part. Its sessions help define Leonie's days, and the narrator's, really much of the town's. Its visibility creates additional habits as well, such as looking for the steeple when traversing the town, or upon arriving.

"The old porch....was worn out of shape and deeply furrowed at the sides...just as if the gentle friction of the cloaks of peasant-women coming into church, and of their fingers dipping into the holy water, had managed by age-long repetition to acquire a destructive force..." (p.80)

Habit has previously been portrayed as a destructive force in its breaking, such as the disruption in the narrator's habitual night-time rituals bringing him grief.

Interesting links
Someone's pictures of the church at Illiers-Combray.

More Info
Ashlar (p.83) is stonework prepared for masonry.

Lethe (p.91) was one of the rivers of Hades.