Swann in Love, pp.341-355: Vulgar Odette, and social commentary

Beginning with "Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase..."

A closer look at Odette. She does not understand Swann—he is so far superior to her intellectually that she can't see the forest for the trees and instead believes him "inferior, intellectually, to what she had supposed." At the same time "she was more impressed by his indifference to money, by his kindness to everyone, by his courtesy and tact," (p.342) which makes sense, if she is basically a courtesan.

Odette apparently also has her own sense of fashion which deviates from the classic definition of the word as given by Swann, saying that

"it emanates from a comparatively small number of individuals, who project it to a considerable distance—more and more faintly the further one is from their intimate centre—within the circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names form a sort of tabulated index." (p.343)

Odette longs to be in fashion, but her fashion plight may be similar to her social plight, when she refuses Swann's invitations to take her into society, and that of the Verdurins, who declaim all the most popular salons to be boring, perhaps as a means of protecting themselves from the disappointment of social shunning.

She doesn't find Swann to be as in fashion as she would like. She is displeased with his choice of abode, as she believes the Quai d'Orleans to be "unworthy of him." Interestingly, the Quai d'Orleans was (and is) an established part of town, apparently called home by many artists and writers during the late 19th century. Odette's real beef with the place seems to be its age. She has more respect for the "sham-antique" and would not have him living "among a lot of broken-down chairs and threadbare carpets." She does greatly respect those who enjoyed "picking up antiques, who liked poetry, despised sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour and love," but believes "there was no need actually to have those tastes, as long as one proclaimed them." (p.247) So again we see Odette as duplicitous vulgar: not only does she fail to see established value, but again her speech is peppered with English phrases, like "rummaging," "bric-a-brac," and especially "smart," which implies she has traded French tradition for the vulgarity of contemporary English or even American.

Swann is in love with being in love, and he will do anything to keep that feeling alive, and to keep Odette in love with him, right down to lowering himself.

"But, now that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share in her sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit, was a task so attractive that he tried to find enjoyment in the things that she liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in imitating her habits but in adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those habits and opinions had no roots in his own intelligence, they reminded him only of his love," (p.349)

He is seriously love sick, and Proust writes his plight very naturally and deeply. The mental journey makes me think of a D. H. Lawrence character or two.

But oh the social commentary. Odette is not really a likeable person. She is a twit at best, short of intelligence and identifiable values would seem a satire of the lower classes doing their best to move their way up—the proverbial social climber—but then Swann assigns no more value than Odette to the social establishment, and he is far more likeable and no less of a social climber, having once been more middle class along with M's family and now moving in the upper most social circles.

"the objects we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of period and class, is no more than a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most refined." (of Swann's opinion, p.350)

The late 19th century was a time of social mobility, and these are Proust's sketches of the times, but I'd like to read more about his position on the situation.

There are a lot of cool references in this section that I didn't research this time. Some of that information has been informative, and all of it has been fun, but I do want to finish this book during my lifetime.

Swann in Love, pp.320-341: Odette, Swann, and blinding art

Beginning with "Thus the simple and regular manifestations of this social organism, the 'little clan,' automatically provided Swann with a daily rendezvous with Odette..."

Proust and character writing, delving right into Swann's psyche. The onset or growth of Swann's feelings for Odette, which are ultimately his downfall, is like an internal battle to which we have a first seat row. In fact we seem to have a better handle on what's happening to him than he does, and so do his friends and acquaintances, who felt that "indeed Swann was no longer the same man" (p.333). Even the Verdurins have decided "the man must be a prize idiot" (p.322)

Swann is too busy making love out of nothing at all. He recognizes that his recent behavior is "foreign to his nature" (p.323) but he imagines himself in love. He goes so far as to "cease to be able to even think of her, so busy would he be in the search for pretexts which would enable him not to leave her immediately" (p.324). He turns her into what he considers a classic beauty by continuing to imagine her as Botticelli's Zipporah, and when it comes to the final moment of consummation, he begs her not to speak but to give only signs, perhaps because her voice will give her away for what she is...not much different from the shadowy figures of women who approached him in the dark on the same street where later he finds her, Odette. Even the act itself is disguised as something else when they persist in referring to it (sex) as doing a cattleya (p.331). By giving it a different name he is convincing himself that this is a "pleasure which had never before existed" but it's also a pleasure which has to "create" (p.332).

Swann fights with himself. He knows in his mind that Odette is nothing special, that her "qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company" (p.335) but we see him losing the battle, and the first hints of jealousy when he thinks of her existing outside of the time they have together. He already recognizes, and we are warned, that this love is sinking like the moon (p.338), the only problem, which we find soon enough, is that he goes down with it.

Art and life: In a way Swann ruins his life because he isn't actually living it. Instead he is living in a reproduction of the art he loves so much. He has ceased to see the world at all for what it really is. This may be the exact opposite of art being a means of saving history, or moments in time, and of providing a more pure form of experiencing existence, now art is getting in the way of experiencing life as it really is.

Cool stuff

I love that, different from Combray, Paris being a real place Proust has peppered the text with references to real locations.
The Café Anglais, and the Maison Dorée and Tortoni's on the Boulevard des Italiens (p.327) where Swann searches for Odette


"and the life of Odette at all other times...appeared to him, with its neutral and colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Wateau" (p.340)

Swann in Love, pp. 281-304: Swann at the Verdurins, the satire of the salons

Beginning with "Dr. Cottard was never quite certain..."

More on the Verdurins' "little group".

Dr. Cottard is a hilarious caricature, completely lacking grace and confidence in any social setting ("he was no more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the street, or indeed in life generally, than he was in a drawing-room" p.282), which is almost the opposite of Swann, who is comfortable everywhere.

Saniette has lost favor with the group and is soon to be booted, most likely because he is too deep and has too much of a soul, and thus does not fit in. He "burbles" his speech in a "delightful" way, which is the opposite of the pianist's aunt (the "concierge") who slurs her speech to hide the fact that she knows nothing.

Mme. Verdurin seems to feel more loyalty to (from?) the gifts in her home that came from the "faithful" members of her group. I can only assume that she has some gifts that are from "faithfuls" she has dropped or been dropped by. She even seems to have some sort of a love affair with the fruit carved on one of the chairs. The language is so sensual at that moment that there may be something I'm missing, or we may just be seeing a character trait of Mme. Verdurin. She can have more control over inanimate objects and without risking rejection?

Then Swann and the Sonata in F. Swann has become lazy in life: he refrains from forming opinions or taking part in society and has ceased to have any goal. On p.298 he is described as "morally barren", and he is not even working anymore, as he long ago gave up writing his paper on Vermeer. Now the Sonata in F has given him back some life, "indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, for a time, to open up before Swann the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation" (p.296), somewhat like the effect that viewing the three steeples has on young M and his struggle with writer's block.

The Sonata also serves well as an analogy for life and involuntary memory: difficult to assess the first time through, the impressions come on faster than they can be discovered, it leaves the listener the "architecture" by which it can be assessed on a second listen. Much like a second look at life through our memories, and Swann's immediate recollection of the strains in the Sonata bring to mind M's sudden flush of memory upon tasting the Madeleine cake.

"But the notes themselves have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion under those which the succeeding or even simultaneous notes have already begun to awaken in us."
•••
"And so scarcely had the exquisite sensation which Swann had experienced died away, beofre his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript, sketchy, it is true, and provisional, which he had been able to glance at while the piece continued, so that, when teh same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer impossible to grasp." (p.295)

But while the "little clan" can tell him the name of the work and the composer, they are unable to discuss it beyond that. In reality the composer and piece are fictional, but there has been some discussion about their models.

Swann seems to have passed the test and been accepted into the little clan, although the Verdurins completely miss his character, believing him to be lacking depth. Mme. Verdurin does tell Odette that she may bring friends like that any time she wishes, though, implying a lack of respect for fidelity, an odd trait for a woman who demands complete loyalty from her "subjects" as she does now from Swann ("provided he doesn't fail us at the last moment." p.304), but this is not the first time we've seen her as the hypocrite.

Satire of the salon. Proust is poking fun at the Salon lifestyle in which he actually took part himself. The the members of the little clan can barely talk to each other, what with the aunt and Saniette mumbling, Mme Verdurin using one figure of speech after another while Cottard does not understand them in the least and misuses them on his own, and Odette sprinkling her speech with English. They neither understand nor care to understand art and music, even if they have their own artist and pianist among them. Since Salons were gatherings intended to inspire artistic endeavors and the exchange of knowledge, the Verdurins make a great satire.

Cool stuff:

Sarah Bernhardt was a French actress from the 19th century on into the 20th.

Swann in Love, pp.265-282: Swann, Odette, and the Verdurins

Beginning with the first sentence of Part Two, Swann in Love

I want to love everything about this work, but with this section I am at a loss. Since all the rest of the work so far feels justified, based on the truth of memories and the seeking of them, the transition to this section, which is the retelling of a story once told to our narrator, feels rather awkward to me. The story within a story has never been one of my favorite literary styles or tools, and I can only hope that the remainder of the work does not feel this clumsy.

The Verdurins and their friends are described a little later as being "among the riff-raff of Bohemia" (p.281), which is fitting with their patronage of the artist and pianist, with their acceptance of the "demi-monde" and the supposed "concierge", and with their disdain for the more conservative lifestyle of the upper class. Proust describes them as "the 'little nucleus' or 'little group' or 'little clan'," and they do make up their own society, with their own set of rules and hierarchy, and it's a group that would not be allowed to join the larger salons of higher French society. Disdain=jealousy?

Pages 265-269 are a richly comedic and ironic introduction to the "little set" of the Verdurins. Mme Verdurin declares that all other houses (salons) are boring, but at her own she keeps a tight reign over even what music can be played, evening dress is not allowed, and there "was never any programme for the evening's entertainment" (p.266). But for claiming so blasé an attitude, really Mme Verdurin is afraid of losing her "faithfuls" and this drives her to extremes. If I knew more about French society I might say that the Verdurin set was a caricature of the larger salons.

In a bit of foreshadowing, we are told that outsiders were allowed in only after being given a sort of test, and that "if he failed to pass, the faithful one who had introduced him would be taken on one side, and would be tactfully assisted to break with the friend or lover or mistress" (p.268)

We learn a lot more of Swann's character, mainly that he frequents, or at least is welcome in, the high society of the Faubourge Saint-Germain to which none of the Verdurin clan would be admitted, and that he is attracted to lower class women. Swann himself seems to be a dichotomy of good manners and vulgarity, since he is loved by so many and has been adopted by the nobility, yet is drawn to the lower classes, has no respect for class divisions, and has no scruples about asking for indecent favors from decent people.

Swann's taste in women appears to be exactly opposite his taste in art, "for the physical qualities which he instinctively sought were the direct opposite of those he admired in the women painted or sculpted by his favourite masters" (p.271). Again with the time, memory, art, and perception; a real person brings with them additional assaults on the senses and will alter perception even of physical beauty ("even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone" [p.23], see notes p.35-58), something which is illustrated well with Odette.

Odette, as we've already heard, is one step away from being a demi-monde. She is well dressed and lives life as she wishes, she is a faithful in the bohemian circle of the Verdurins. According to the notes in my book her speech in the original is peppered with phrases written in English, such as "fishing for compliments" on p.269, and when she refers to Swann as "smart" and mentions his "home" on p.276. In my printing these phrases are in italics.

When Swann meets Odette he does not immediately find her attractive, so for someone who picks his mistresses based entirely on their looks she is an odd choice. This brings to mind the discussion of reading versus living, and the stages of removal from the senses in order to achieve ideal perception versus perception of the truth (pp.110-121). Something is always in the way of our knowing the truth about anything—ourselves.

M blames Swann's odd choice on his stage of life at the moment of meeting Odette, a "time of life, tinged already with disenchantment" (p.277), because at this stage, in looking for love, "we come to its aid, we falsify it by memory and by suggestion. Recognising one of its symptoms, we remember and re-create the rest." (p.277). He is creating his own reality, and that give credence to Proust's search for lost time, because if we are different at different stages, then looking back at any moment in life our memories will be tainted by our current person and the effects that person has on our perceptions of those moments from our past. To really remember them we must go back and recapture them as they were.

Quotes
"If he was not going to play they talked, and one of the friends—usually the painter who was in favour there that year—would 'spin,' as M. Verdurin put it, ' a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter,' and especially Mme Verdurin, who had such an inveterate habit of taking literally the figurative descriptions of her emotions that Dr. Cottard (then a promising young practitioner) had once had to reset her jaw, which she has dislocated from laughing too much." (pp.266-267) Bring on the hilarity.

Cool stuff:
Vermeer of Delft, or Joannes Vermeer, was a 17th century Dutch painter who focused on domestic scenes from the middle class. No wonder, then, that he was a focus of Swann the art critic.

Swann's Way, Combray II, pp.204-211: M. Vinteuil and homosexuality

Beginning with: "Once in the fields, we never left them again during the rest of our Méséglise walk."

M. Vinteuil, whose daughter is a lesbian, has a house along the Méséglise Way. Proust himself was a closeted homosexual, but he has written his narrator as heterosexual, an arrangement that will allow Proust to explore the place of homosexuality in a wider social context.

Here the reference to homosexuality is with regards to parental shame, ruin, and death. But while society blamed the daughter for her father's death (due, they said, to a broken heart), they also admitted that M. Venteuil continued to love his daughter very much, even allowing her supposed lover to live in their home. This would seem to make society, and its harsh judgement, actually to blame for Venteuil's demise.

"And yet however much M. Vinteuil may have known of his daughter's conduct it did not follow that his adoration of her grew any less." (pp.208-209)

"But when M. Vinteuil thought of his daughter and himself from the point of view of society, fromt he point of view of their reputation, when he attempted to place himself by her side in the rank which they occupied in the general estimation of their neighbours, when he was bound to give judgment, to utter his own and her social condemnation in precisely the same terms as the most hostile inhabitant of Combary; he saw himself and his daughter in the lowest depths, and his manners had of late been tinged with that humility, that respect for persons who ranked above him and to whom he now looked up" (p.209)

There may also be a comparison drawn here between the fall of M. Vinteuil, due to his daughter being a lesbian, and the fall of Swann, due to his chosen wife being of dubious morals. Both have been cast out by a judgmental society.

Notable passages:
"On my right I could see across the cornfields the two chiselled rustic spires of Saint-André-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, chequered, honeycombed, yellowing and friable as two ears of wheat." (p.205) This makes me think of Proust's love for Ruskin, and Ruskin's fourth tenet, the one regarding beauty which says that architecture should draw from or reflect nature (post).

Cool stuff:
Xavier Boniface Saintine (p.206) was an 19th century French writer.

Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre (p.206) was a Swiss artist who spent much of his life in France. The piece to which M refers is probably Lost Illusions, with the moon "silhouetted against the sky in the form of a silver sickle."

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.186-195: The two ways

Beginning with "We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt Léonie a visit before dinner" (after a break in the text).

Proust's descriptive language, drawing the picture of the setting sun, is remarkable.

The two ways to walk, the Guermantes Way and the Méséglise Way (Swann's Way), M says are "diametrically opposed" and are irreconcilable.

"But above all I set between them, far more than the mere distance in miles that separated one from the other, the distance that there was between the two parts of my brain in which I used to think of them, one of those distances of the mind which not only keep things apart, but cut them off from one another and put them on different planes." (p.189)

M sees them as ideals of their types (Méséglise as a plain view, Guermantes as river), and refers to them as sacred soil. They are also the namesakes of two volumes of the work, so I am looking to them as major symbols.

Guermantes way is the longer of the two walks, and Guermantes is also the old noble of the area. It is the walk they took the least. To M Guermantes "meant no more than the ultimate goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way,' a sort of abstract geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator or the Orient." And if the Guermantes way is intended as an ideal, perhaps a class ideal, then we get a bit of foreshadowing when M tells us "I was to know it well enough one day, but that day was still to come" (p.188)

Méséglise way, or "Swann's way," is a shorter walk that goes in the direction of Méséglise-la-Vineuse, and along which they pass by Swann's estate. It may be a commonly traveled road because M mentions seeing people in Combray whom they assume have come from Méséglise-la-Vineuse. Taking the Méséglise way is a relaxed walk, and they talk to people and tradesmen along the way.

With regards to Swann's estate: "My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the appearance of the place was still the same,, an dhow far it had altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann on the day of his wife's death" (p.191)
On their first walk by the land in some time because they refuse to go near it when the young Swann's wife might be present (because of the bad marriage) M might mean a comparison here between the old regime, when the decidedly middle class elder Swann was respected and devoted to his wife, and the new regime, when the younger Swann has risen in status, but has married beneath him, making both a socially bad and an unhappy match. Each generation sees a dying off of their parents' morals, and this was a time of class mobility for the French.

Notable passages:

"Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood close around it, an ornamental pond had been dug by Swann's parents; but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain places persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own special sovereignty, and will flaunt their immemorial insignia in the middle of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference," (pp.191-192)
Man vs. nature?

Swann's Way, Combray II, pp.151-165: habit, hawthorns, M. Venteuil

Habits/routines. The household at Combray lives by strict routine, the breaking of which leads Léonie to become very upset. In the situation of the kitchen maid's confinement, her crying out during the night disrupted Léonie's rest and led to nightmares that terrified her. The household is so dependent on routine that neighbors ask before they do things that will break in on it.

The Combray routines are so intricate as to have regular variations that become part of a "uniform pattern upon the great uniformity of [Léonie's] life." (p.153). Saturdays are an example of this because, being a market day, lunch is served an hour earlier. The family is dependent upon the routine which is not just lived, but greeted and discussed like an active presence in their lives, and even has the ability to seemingly alter time:

"The very face of the sky appeared to undergo a change. After lunch the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith, and when someone, thinking that we were late in starting for our walk, said, 'What, only two o'clock!' on registering the passage of the twin strokes from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire...the whole family would respond in chorus: 'Why, you're forgetting we had lunch an hour earlier; you know very well it's Saturday.'" (p.154)

The Saturday change in routine has the effect of uniting the family against outsiders who know nothing of it. They refer to outsiders as "barbarians," speak to them with ridicule, make fun of them between themselves. This gives the characteristics of a group mentality, like a clique.

But there's a softer side of habit that makes it attractive. M defines this for us, humanizing it further, upon returning home from a long walk with his family:

"And from that instant I did not have to take another step; the ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where for so long my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my will. Habit had come to take me in her arms and carry me all the way up to my bed like a little child." (p.160)

And still it is as though Léonie wishes to be rid of her need for habit. Every week she longs for the variety that Saturday brings, and even more than that M implies that she has "exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is" (p.161) even though she does not have the energy to bring it about. She is a slave to her habits. In fact, it is her habit of illness that is weakening her:

"And I have no doubt that then...she would extract from the accumulation of these monotonous days which she treasured so much a keen expectation of some domestic cataclysm, momentary in its duration but violent enough to compel her to put into effect, once for all, one of those changes which she knew would be beneficial to her health but to which she could never make up her mind without some such stimulus." (p.161)

Hawthorns. MP falls in love with them at the Month of Mary (May) devotions, when they are used to decorate the church. This, and their white color, gives them almost a holy meaning, but MP also recognizes their origin in nature:

"I could sense that this formal scheme was composed of living things, and that it was Nature herself who, by trimming the shape of the foliage, and by adding the crowning ornament of those snowy buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at once a public rejoicing and a solemn mystery." (p.156)

And also sees in them "a swift and thoughtless movement of the head, with a provocative glance from her contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, insouciant and vivacious."
(p.156) a vision that, having read the volume once, I can say is foreshadowing of another young girl amongst the hawthorns.

M. Venteuil and daughter at church. M. Vinteuil is a piano teacher whose wife is now dead. He will not socialize with Swann because of Swann's "most unsuitable marriage" (p.156). His daughter is described as "boyish" and "robust" with a "mannish face" (p.156-157)

On their way home MP's father takes them on a detour. MP's mother has no sense of direction and relies entirely on his father to get them home. We have seen this before, her deference to his "superior mind" (on p.12).

On their walk M compares the gardens to the art of Hubert Robert (p.159). Perhaps I should have labeled this art and nature, but I'll file it under art in life.

And I see that Léonie is fueling the fire between Françoise and Eulalie by feeding each of them false fears about the other, which in turn goes to convince even her of Françoise's unfaithfulness. Although it would seem that it is all untrue, and that Léonie as a character is just full of a morbid quality that makes her imagine the death of her family so that she can morn them, and makes her imagine infidelity in her servants so that she can be cruel to them.

Cool stuff:
Hawthorn in flower (photo by David Hawgood on Geograph)


Hubert Robert (p.159) was an 18th century French artist. He painted "fashionably dilapidated gardens" for clients.

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:

Swann's Way, Combray II, pp.110-121

Proust (or our narrator) meditates here on symbolism and allegory in the Seven Vices of Giotto de Bondone with reference to the pregnant kitchen maid, who Swann compares to Giotto's Charity. This is another example of art in life (a comparison drawn by Swann). She may also be a symbol in the discussion of class, but Proust is writing out the allegory for us here. The images painted by Giotto to display the seven vices are entirely ignorant of what they symbolize, making them pure in the task. The kitchen maid is likewise unaware of being a symbol of charity, or of the lower classes. And much, much more.

On reading, also a form of art in life. Proust tells us a book can be internalized, while the physical world can only be sensed: "When I saw an external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it..." (p.115), and with regard to people "A real person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, remains opaque, presents a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift." (p.117). And yet he seeks the truth as imposed by the real world, only to be disillusioned (p.119).
This sends me back to the description of the grandmother's assignment of value to art. The more removed from the original, the greater value she gave it. In giving the narrator pictures of famous architecture she sought to "introduce, as it were, several 'thicknesses' of art: instead of photographs...she would inquire of Swann whether some great painter had not depicted them" and sought photos of the art depicting the actual architecture. (pp.53-54)

Reference is made to "the dream of a woman who would enrich me with her love" (p.118) which makes me think of the woman invading his dreams in the very beginning ("Sometimes, too, as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, a woman would be born during my sleep from some misplacing of my thigh." [p.3]), but might actually reference his mother, since we know Proust believed his mother and grandmother to have been great source of support and enrichment in his life.

An ode to Sunday afternoons at Combray.

Cool stuff:

(p.110) Giotto's Charity, by Giotto de Bondone, part of the Seven Vices

Swann's Way, Combray I, pp.35-58

At a dinner party our young narrator is sent to bed without being able to say goodnight to his mother. Swann is the dinner guest, and we meet Francoise, a house maid, who is described as uncompromising and ancient and devoted to the family.

A connection made between narrator and Swann: "As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as he ;" (p.39) Foreshadowing/social triangulation

Our narrator has a nervous nature. This is played out in his waiting anxiously for his mother to come to bed so he can ambush her, on the stairway outside his door, into kissing him goodnight, even at the risk of angering both her and his father. Here, as he waits in the hall, memory is linked with sense of smell, and again with the inflexibility of place—the staircase as a horrible location because it signified the separation from his mother.

When he meets his mother his father arrives soon after, but gives him no punishment. In general the narrator believed his father to be hasty or unfair, which left him somewhat afraid of his father, or uncertain ("Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this crowning mercy, my father's behaviour towards me still retained that arbitrary and unwarranted quality which was so characteristic of him..." [p.49-50]), but he does not doubt that his father loves him.

He is reunited with his mother, who spends the night reading (George Sand novels) to him in his room, but his victory at this moment is actually a loss of innocence, which he writes "brought me of a sudden to a sort of puberty of sorrow, a manumission of tears. I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first abdication on her part from the ideal she had formed for me..." (p.51)

In regard to the books we learn more about the grandmother, who is strongly connected to the past, to the old, to the un-useful.
She "could never permit herself to buy anything from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, above all the profit which fine things afford us by teaching us to seek our pleasures elsewhere than n the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth." (p.53) And when forced to buy something "useful" "would choose antiques, as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own." (p.53)
She prefers the antique to something more conventional and useful. Even in books she has chosen for him George Sand novels which he accuses of being "regular lumber-rooms full of expressions that have fallen out of use and become quaint and picturesque..", and she prefers ancient depictions of place as well, avoiding photographs in favor of prints (or photographs of prints) or artists' renderings.

Art in life
"...[I] would so prepare my thoughts as to be able, thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would grant me to the sensation of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's absence." (p.35)

Art imitating life is not always accurate, as images of paintings of locations (Venice) do not always portray them accurately.

Time and memory
Perception is a part of reality. Is it immovable? Movement through the class system, for instance, breaks the concept of immobility in reality, but perception of class is maintained, as when we meet Francoise:
"refinements of etiquette which nothing in Francoise's background or in her career as a servant in a village household could have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble and little understood, as is in those manufacturing towns where old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of Theophilus or The Quatre Fils Aymon." (p.37-38)
Francoise may in reality have changed class status, but yet she holds onto her original status as immoveable. This way she is a blend of past and present.
The Miracle of Theophilus and the Quatre Fils Aymon are both French textual works from the middle ages, another blending of time periods like the references to Golo and Genevieve de Brabant.

And in reference to Swann, immobility of perception:
"said my great-aunt, 'what a change I find in Swann. He is quite antiquated!' She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him." (p.45)

Compare this to the immobility of perception of a person's character or physical appearance mentioned on p.23 (always the same for one, never the same for any two people), and of physical space on p.5: "perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them."

And the difference between the physical state of something, and its state in our memory is revisited often, like here in the staircase as he stands with his mother before his father arrives:
"Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long ago demolished...It is a long time, too, since my father has been able to tell mamma to 'Go along with the child.' Never again will such moments be possible for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to control in my father's presence, and which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. In reality their echo has never ceased;" (p.49)

Love as pain
Our narrator loves his mother so much that he suffers for the emotion. We spend the latter part of this section mired in his anguish over a missed goodnight kiss, and then suffer with him a loss of innocence even after he receives it. Love is pain and suffering, because even when achieved it cannot atone for the struggle, or it cannot live up to the desire.

Then Swann is "much less unhappy of late" because "he no longer loves that [his wife]." (p.45)

And the role of the social triangle:
"Alas! Swann had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are powerless to influence a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again alone." (p.41)

Vocabulary, etc.:
viaticum (p.36, noun) 1. Communion as given to a dying person, 2. provisions for travel

desuetude (p.53, noun) 1. The state of being no longer used or practiced

Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from the 15th century, but I was unable to find an image of the print or painting mentioned (of Abraham and Sarah, p.49)

Swann's Way, Combray I, pp.15-35

Ah, holiday weekend, you sucked away the extra time I usually get when I'm not the only adult in the house. Thankfully beach time, fireworks, and good beer were worth it. But I'd wanted to read 100 pages over the weekend and I only squeezed in 10 before the work week returned.

Class issues
We meet the eponymous Swann. The narrator and his family appear to belong to the middle class, and while Swann used to belong to this set as well, he appears to have risen a half class or more in popularity. We are told that this elevation of his position escapes the family's knowledge because "middle class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied..." (p.19) and we are also given distinct examples of how this was untrue in a reality where class was more fluid. Swann is the obvious example, but then the narrator's great aunt provides a second: she is described as being "the only member of our family who could be described as a trifle 'common,'" (p.21). And later, the grandmother is said to feel that "distinction was a thing wholly independent of social position," that a tailor was "the best and most distinguished man she had ever seen" while "a nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house [was] 'so common!'" (p.25)

A comment about titles: "[my great-aunt] had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer of our acquaintance because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom, we are told, queens have sometimes shown their favours." (p.26-27)

Some philosophy
Swann's place in society sets up a narration on class but also on the nature of self and perception. The narrator reflects on our being seen as different to each person of our acquaintance, that "even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people." (p.23)

And referring not only to this philosophy, but the concept of memory and fluid time, the existence not of a Swann who was different, but of a different Swann, and also a reference to art as life: "this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my youth, and who in fact is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a picture gallery in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the similar tonality—this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon." (p.24)

A bit of humor
As the dinner party gets underway, the party that will separate the narrator from his mother earlier than he would like and will deny him that goodnight kiss in his bed, we are introduced to the grandmother's sisters, who are perfect caricatures of old biddies from earlier novels. Their attempts to thank Swann for a gift of wine and to mention his having been written up in a recent newspaper article suffer from such "a wealth of ingenious circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to whom it was addressed" (pp.29). And their meaning may be subtle, but their method is not, so we are treated to a scene of satirical humor, while Swann is left "in some bewilderment." (p.33)

About Swann
Swann is purported to have been fashioned at least in part after Charles Ephrussi, a Jewish art historian and collector

I admit to being disappointed that he wears his hair in the Bressant style (p.17), better known today as a mullet. But I also wonder if this isn't part of his characterization (by which I mean as a patron of nineteenth century pop-culture—theater, art, politics—not as a hillbilly).

He frequents the Jockey Club and the Faubourge Saint-Germain, and hangs out with folks like the Comte de Paris and the Prince of Wales, so he is popular with the elite French society, the haute bourgeoisie and the upper class or nobility, such as it is.

He lives on the Quai d'Orléans, and I found a great article about that here which describes this as the "perfect place for Swann, connoisseur, collector, writer marqué who once imagined he would publish a study of Vermeer." (p.19)

He has made a disadvantageous marriage, at least in the minds of the narrator's family, possibly on the grounds of pregnancy, and he has a daughter.

Vocabulary:
Ferruginous (p.16, adj) 1. Containing iron oxides or rust. 2. Reddish brown; rust-colored.

Other passages/quotes worth noting:
p.20 "when challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for some picture, he would remain almost disobligingly silent, and would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been painted." (a character trait to which I think we return later)

Swann's Way, Combray I, pp. 1-15

An hour with the book and my computer and that's all the farther I got before it was time to make dinner.

Overview:
The state of memory, space and time fluidity. Where is the narrator, and when? Is he young? Old? An invalid? Is he remembering his fear of his uncle or is he remembering the instance of that fear? Or are these things the same? (Ahhh...waking up and thinking you are somewhere else. But he describes it so much more eloquently.)

Our narrator (our Proust) is searching for his memories, and the narration seems confused and wild, but it's actually following a very careful order. He begins by reaching wildly and time and space are confused, then he slowly settles on more distinct places, times, and people, and we see him go from vague memories to more specific stories (and finally he tastes the madeleine cakes, which trigger the next set of memories, and so on, but I'm not there yet on this second read).

From within this twilight state he mentions place names and people, possibly in foreshadowing or a roadmap: locations such as Combray and Tansonville, Balbec (Is it a hilarity or a commercial ploy that someone named their anti-aging cream Combray?), and people like Swann.

My own, possibly silly, thoughts:
His grandmother reminds me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that great French philosopher who embraced nature and believed children should be allowed to run around in downpours and go barefooted in winter.

Some things to pay attention to?
Travel or the train station (pp 2, 10)
the mother/son relationship (pp 6, 15)
the magic lantern (pp 9-10)
Genevieve de Brabant and Golo (pp 10-12)
The social triangle

The magic lantern was a new one on me, and so was the story of Genevieve de Brabant and Golo. I don't know if we'll see a return of the lantern later in the book, but I found it interesting as a tool melding the distant past (Merovingian) to the present. And Genevieve is the wife and mother, falsely accused by Golo of infidelity with him against her husband, who is to be put to death but escapes and is aided by a roe deer in caring for her son. Later she is cleared and re-accepted by her husband. There is an obvious link here to the mother/son relationship, and possibly also to that between mother and father/husband and wife, and our first example of the social triangle.

Then there is his grandmother whose sister keeps tempting his grandfather with liqueurs he shouldn't have, thus creating unrest between the husband and wife (p.13-14), another social triangle.

And the narrator's familial relationship, the son insinuating himself between the mother and father, and sometimes additional guests taking a place as well (pp.15+), more social triangles.

Passages/quotes worth noting:
p.1-2 "I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, showed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveler would be hurrying towards the nearby station; and the path he is taking will be engraved in his memory by the excitement induced by strange surroundings, by unaccustomed activities, by the conversation he has had and the farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp that will still echo in his ears amid the silence of the night, and by the happy prospect of being home again."

p.8 "Habit! That skilful but slow-moving arrranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable."

p.12 "...while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb [my father], looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind."

p.15 "Sometimes when, after kissing me, [my mother] opened the door to go, I longed to call her back, to say to her 'Kiss me just once more,' but I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to give me this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd..."