by Marcel Proust; D. J. Enright; Joanna Kilmartin; Andreas Mayor; Terence Kilmartin
SAINT-MARS-LE-VIEUX (f). Station on the little local railway: II 326; IV 393. M drives there: 538, 558.
SAINT-MARTIN-DU-CHÊHNE (f). Charlus takes a house near there: IV 449. Brichot gives the etymology of the name: 451. Charlus takes the train there: 599.
SAINT-PIERRE-DES-IFS (f). One of the stations on the little local railway. Glorious girl with a cigarette gets into the train there: IV 381. Charlus takes a house near there: 449; the name associated with him: 692–93.
SICILY. Charlus’s ancestors Princes of Sicily: II 448. The Guermantes plan to go there: III 813. Prince Foggi has an estate there: V 862. (See also Agrigento.)
SIENA. “Seductive charms” of: II 206. Balbec “as beautiful as Siena” (Swann): 324. M has not yet been there: IV 659.
SOGNE, La (f), near Balbec. Albertine goes to the races there: II 623. M sends the lift-boy to find Albertine there: IV 256. Stop on the little railway; Brichot gives the etymology of the name: 397. The Cambremers’ station: 512.
SPAIN. Norpois plans to take M’s father there: II 48 (cf. 304, 381; III 244). Spain “all the rage” (Cottard): 96.
SUSA, capital of ancient Elam (now part of W. Iran) and residence of Darius and later Kings of Persia. Nissim Bernard like a figure from Susa restored by Mme Dieulafoy: II 483. Bloch’s appearance likewise evokes reflexions on monuments from Susa: III 254. The throne-room at Susa: IV 87.
TANGIER. Saint-Loup meets Mme de Stermaria there: III 475.
TANSONVILLE (f), the Swanns’ place near Combray. M remembers his stay there with Mme de Saint-Loup (Gilberte): I 6 (cf. VI 307 et sqq.). Description of Swann’s park; the white fence; the lilacs, the ornamental pond and the water plants; the hawthorns: 190–7, 201–4, 215, 218. Swann yearns after it in the spring in Paris: 325; II 288, 289. Remembered by Françoise: III 23. The Saint-Loups settle in there: V 917–18. M goes to stay: 921; VI 308 the house and park: 9–10. Tansonville during the war (Gilberte’s letters): 88, 93–96.
TARN. Correct way of pronouncing: V 35.
THIBERZY (f), near Combray. M’s cousins come over from Thiberzy for lunch on Sundays: I 88. Etymology: 146. Françoise goes there to fetch a midwife: 151.
TOURAINE. Mme Bontemps has a house there: V 482. M hopes that Albertine has gone there: 580. Saint-Loup sent down to find her: 587, 636–41. Albertine’s death: 642–44. M sends Aimé there to investigate: 706; his report on Albertine and the laundry-girl: 706–8.
TOURS. Minced pork (rillettes) of Tours: III 627. Horror of the name for M: V 729.
TRIESTE. Albertine has spent “the happiest years of my life” there with Mile Vinteuil’s friend: IV 701. It becomes, for M, no longer “a delightful place” but “an accursed city”: 707–11.
TROCADÉRO, Paris. M finds more style in it than in Gabriel’s palaces: II 83–84. The Trocadéro museum: 322–23. M persuades Albertine to go to a gala matinée there instead of calling on the Verdurins: V 134, 151. Lea due to appear there: 185. M sends Françoise to recall Albertine: 196–203. M and Albertine discuss its architecture: 217–18. The towers of the Trocadéro: VI 309.
TWICKENHAM, London. Residence of the exiled Comte de Paris. Swann invited there: I 23; II 2 (cf. VI 310).
VENICE. Remembered by M: I 9. M’s first idea of Venice gleaned from a reproduction of a Titian drawing with the lagoon in the background: 54. The “Staircase of the Giants” in the Doges’ Palace: 461. Potency of the name: 550. Plan for a spring holiday there; the Venice of M’s imagination: 554–59 (cf. II 161, 287–88). The Frari Titian and the Carpaccios of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni: II 14. Bloch’s pronunciation of the name in English (Ruskin’s Stones of Venice): 436. Mentioned in a quotation from Musset: 475. The Venice of Carpaccio and Veronese evoked by Elstir: 652–53. M’s dream of Venice: III 191–92 (cf. V 237). Blend of softness and brittleness of Venetian glass: 474. Perspectives in Venice: 498–99. Its poor quarters resemble those of Paris: 784. Mme de Cambremer-Legrandin detests the Grand Canal: IV 286–87. M’s persistent longing for Venice: V 27, 137, 220–22, 229. Albertine’s Fortuny gowns conjure up the Venice of the Doges: 497–98, and seem to be the “tempting phantoms” of the invisible Venice M has dreamed of for so long: 531, 538. Evocation of Venice in the spring: 555–59. M visits Venice with his mother: 844–88, impressions of the city: 844–50; M’s solitary excursions; Venetian women: 848–50, 879–84; its social life:852–53; the baptistery of St Mark’s: 877–79; Carpaccio: 876–77. Evening in Venice: 881–82. O sole mio; the vision crumbles: 883–87. Mme Verdurin visits Venice during the war: VI 311. M’s unsatisfactory “snapshots” of Venice: 253–56. The uneven paving-stones; resuscitation of his real memory of Venice: 257, 260–61, 264, 270.
VERSAILLES. Swann’s liking for it; Odette finds it boring: I 350. M crosses the Bois de Boulogne on his way to Trianon: 598; its chestnut-trees and lilacs: 602. Rachel takes a little house in the neighbourhood: III 160. The view from the terrace of the palace: 527. The Princess de Guermantes’s garden, with its Hubert Robert fountain, is “Versailles in Paris”: 801; IV 75. Doncières has a spurious look of Versailles: 681. Albertine visits Versailles with the chauffeur: V 168–74. M takes Albertine there: 545–47. Nude statues of goddesses among its groves and fountains: 711–12.
VICHY. Bloch thinks of taking a cure there: III 296. Mme Cottard declines to go there on the grounds that “it’s too stuffy”: IV 495. Albertine once knew a woman of ill repute there: 677–78. Albertine on the subject of Vichy water: V 166.
VIEUXVICQ (f), near Combray. Relationship of its steeple to the twin steeples of Martinville: I 254–56.
VITRÉ. One of the stops on the 1.22 train: I 548–49. What its name evokes: 553.
VIVONNE (f). River near Combray. Its water-lilies recalled with the rest of Combray and its surroundings by the taste of the madeleine dipped in tea: I 64. The apse of Saint-Hilaire seen from its banks: 90. Its course visible from the top of the steeple: 147. Meeting with Legrandin on its banks: 182. Runs along the “Guermantes way;” description of its course: 235–38. Its unattainable source: 241–42. M’s dreams of a life of pleasure by the Vivonne; its association with Guermantes: 257, 260 (cf. III 7, 13, 28). Seeing it again, M finds it “narrow and ugly”: VI 312; he discovers its source: 3.
VOISENON (f). The Prince de Guermantes’s country seat: V 785.
Index of Themes
AEROPLANES. Freemasonry of aviation enthusiasts: III 548 (cf. V 132–33). M sees an aeroplane for the first time: IV 582 (cf. V 209–10). M and Albertine visit aerodromes: V 132–33. “One of those 120 horse-power machines—the Mystère model”: 209–10. An aeroplane high in the sky above Versailles—beauty of the sound of “that little insect throbbing up there”: 547–48. Albertine’s lie about a visit to an aerodrome with Andrée: 828. Flying angels in Giotto’s Padua frescoes reminiscent of airmen looping the loop: 878–79. Aeroplanes at evening over war-time Paris: VI 313. Saint-Loup’s opinion of aeroplanes in war: 82; his discussion with M about the beauty of war-planes at night: 98–100. Air raids: 161–62, 207–10.
ALCOHOL. M’s doctor prescribes alcohol for his suffocations, to the distress of his grandmother, who sees him “dying a drunkard’s death”: II 93. M’s drunken euphoria on the train to Balbec: 311–14. His sensations after drinking too much champagne and port at Rivebelle: 531–35. Charm that alcohol gives to the present moment; inebriation brings about for a while “a state of subjective idealism, pure phenomenalism”: 538–41 (cf. VI 314). Alcoholic slumbers: 544–47. M gets drunk in Aimé’s restaurant; different kinds of intoxication; he sees himself in a mirror: III 227. M drinks seven or eight glasses of port to overcome his diffidence with girls: IV 321–22. Effect of cider on Albertine: 562–63. At Rivebelle again; M’s solitary drinking; the pattern on the wall: 565.
AMERICANS. Swann’s liaison with an American: I 275. American lady and her daughter at Balbec: II 726. American lady whose only book is a copy of Parny’s poems: III 617. American multi-millionairess married to a French prince: 734. American lady bursts into M’s room at the Gran
d Hotel: IV 260. An American called Charles Crecy marries a niece of Mme de Guermantes: 661. American Jewesses in their night-dresses in Paris hotels during air-raids: VI 315. Charlus on the Americans during the war: 153. American hostesses: 242, 246. Bloch’s American friend in the new context of Parisian society: 396–403.
ANTI-SEMITISM. See Dreyfus Case; Jews.
APPLE-TREES. On the “Méséglise way”—their circular shadows on the sunlit ground: I 205. Seen from the road near Balbec: II 390. M’s night-long contemplation of a branch of apple blossom: 390–91 (cf. 582). Mme de Villeparisis’s painting of apple blossom: III 286–88. “Dazzling spectacle” of apple-trees in spring: IV 244–45. Compared to hawthorns: 250–51 (cf. 740).
AQUARIUM. M. de Palancy’s monocle a “symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium”: I 465 (cf. III 48). Berma in Phèdre like a branch of coral in an aquarium: II 185. Dining-room in the Grand Hotel, Balbec “an immense and wonderful aquarium” at night: 353 (cf. V 702–3). Garden of the Rivebelle restaurant like “an aquarium of gigantic size lit by a supernatural light”: 536. Subaqueous domain of the Princesse de Guermantes’s box at the Opéra: III 41–49. The lover separated from the outside world as though he were in an aquarium: 383. Charlus lives like a fish in an aquarium, unaware of his own visibility: IV 609–10.
ARABIAN NIGHTS. Swann’s secret life as mysterious as Ali Baba’s: I 21–22. Aunt Léonie’s Arabian Nights plates: 77, 96; II 660–61. Jews at Balbec suggest illustrations to the Arabian Nights: 435. Quoted apropos of a Paris restaurant proprietor: III 557. Oriane de Guermantes pictured as someone more wonderful than Princess Bedr-el-Budur: 613. M’s mother gives him both French translations, Galland and Mardrus: IV 318–19. M obliged to show the ingenuity of a Shéhérazade to keep Albertine amused: V 167. Mendacious but none the less charming tales: 187–88. M imagines himself a character in the Arabian Nights: 331 (cf. VI 316). Purlieus of Venice like a city in the Arabian Nights: 849, 881. War-time Paris reminds M of the Arabian Nights: VI 317. M compares the scene in Jupien’s brothel to one of the tales: 206. The name Basra recalls Bassorah and Sinbad the Sailor: 430–31. M’s book the Arabian Nights of another age?: 524–25.
ART. See Literature; Music; Painting.
ASPARAGUS. Discussed by Aunt Léonie and Françoise: I 74–75. M enraptured by their iridescent colours: 168–69. The kitchen-maid allergic to their smell: 173. Elstir’s Bundle of Asparagus: III 686. The Duc de Guermantes on green asparagus; E. de Clermont-Tonnerre (q.v.) quoted on the subject: 690.
BALLET. Bakst’s decors for the Russian Ballet: II 718 (cf. V 3). Dancer admired by Rachel: III 235–36. The impact of the Russian Ballet: IV 193–94 (cf. V 314–15). Charlus’s influence on Morel as an artist compared to Diaghilev’s: 420–21. Mme Verdurin “an aged Fairy Godmother” to the Russian dancers: V 313–15. Theatrical designs of Sert, Bakst and Benois: 497–98. Reference to the “dazzling” Legend of Joseph by Sert, Strauss and Kessler: 876–77.
BEAUTY. Element of novelty essential to beauty: II 318. “The complementary part that is added to a fragmentary and fugitive stranger by our imagination, over-stimulated by regret;” “a sequence of hypotheses which ugliness cuts short”: 398–99. Youth in pursuit of Beauty: 502. “Fluid, collective and mobile beauty” of the girls of the “little band;” “noble and calm models of human beauty”: 505–6. Elstir’s ideal of beauty: 586–88. Beauty is “ordered complexity”: III 61. “True beauty is so individual, so novel always, that one does not recognise it as beauty”: 341. “The mysterious differences from which beauty derives”: V 157. Perverse notion that true beauty is represented by a railway carriage rather than Siena, Venice or Granada: 173–74. “The possibility of pleasure may be a beginning of beauty”: 180. The identity of the woman we love is far more important than her beauty: 593–94.
BELIEF. Our beliefs are neither engendered nor destroyed by facts: I 208–9. A fetishistic attachment to things survives the disappearance of our belief in them: 603. The part played by belief in the image we form of a person: II 595–96. Our beliefs of more importance to our happiness than the person we see, since it is through them that we can see the person: 720. Only imagination and belief can “create an atmosphere”: III 32. “Irreducible essence” which, when we are young, our beliefs confer on a woman’s clothes: 528–29. Invisible and variable atmosphere created around us by our beliefs: V 191. “Invisible belief that sustains the edifice of our sensory world”: 600. Belief engendered by desire: 690–92, 692–94, 823–25. Dubious belief which leaves room for the possibility of what we wish to be true: 792. A large part of what we believe “springs from an original mistake in our premises”: 890.
BICYCLES. Albertine pushing a bicycle: II 509; “spinning through the showers”: 645 (cf. V 658–59). The lift-boy on his bicycle: IV 344. “Winged messengers of variegated hue”—hotel messengers on bicycles: V 175. “Fabulous coursers”—girls and their bicycles in the Bois de Boulogne: 220; “half-human, half-winged, angel or peri”—another girl cyclist: 224. Albertine at the pianola revives M’s memories of her cycling at Balbec: 515, 518; speeding through Balbec bent over her “mythological wheel”: 658–59.
BIRDS. M’s bedroom in winter—building a nest like a sea-swallow: I 7. Pigeons in the Champs-Elysées—“the lilacs of the feathered kingdom”: 575, 579. Birdsong in the forests near Balbec, to which M listens like Prometheus to the Oceanides: II 408 (cf. IV 535). The “little band” at Balbec like “a flock of gulls”: 503; “an assembly of birds before taking flight”: 508 (cf. V 225). Cooing of pigeons: III 186–87 (cf. V 539–40). Blue-tits in the blossoming apple-trees near Balbec: IV 244. Gulls on the sea at Balbec—like water-lilies: 280, 284; admired by Albertine: 289, 308, 311. Unknown bird chanting matins in the Lydian mode: V 522. “Melancholy refrain” of the pigeons: 539–40.
BODY. The body’s memory more enduring than the mind’s: I 5–6 (cf. VI 318). We localise in a person’s body all the potentialities of his or her life: III 38. Touching prescience of women for what will give pleasure to the male body: 221. Illness makes us aware of that unknown being, our body: 404. Albertine’s naked body: V 97–98 (cf. 710–12). The body’s “terrible capacity for registering things”: 571. “Possession of a body … the great danger to the mind”: VI 319.
BRITISH. See English.
BROTHELS. Odette’s dealings with procuresses: I 525–26. Swann’s visits to brothels; the girl with the blue eyes: 530–31. Bloch takes M to a house of assignation; “Rachel when from the Lord”: II 205–8. Uninterestingness of women met in brothels: III 209, 496 (cf. V 181–83, 222–23). Saint-Loup’s enthusiasm for brothels; Mme Putbus’s maid and Mlle d’Orgeville: IV 127. Luxury brothel at Maineville: 250; mistaken for a grand hotel: 647–48; the Prince de Guermantes’s assignation with Morel, and the experiences of Charlus and Jupien with Mile Noémie: 650–56. Women of the “closed houses”: V 181–83, 222–23. M and two laundry-girls in a house of assignation: 741. Morel, Albertine and a fisher-girl in a brothel at Couliville: 810–11. Social gossip in the Maineville brothel: 899–900. Jupien’s brothel in war-time Paris: VI 320. The Métro in war-time like a Pompeian brothel: 208–9.
CLASS. “Hindu” view of society at Combray—a rigid caste system: I 19 (cf. IV 579–80). For M’s grandmother, distinction of manners independent of social position: 25. M’s great-aunt disapproves of Swann for associating with people outside his “proper station”: 26. For Aunt Céline, “one man is as good as the next”: 34. Françoise’s “class” pessimism: II 98. Social mobility of Swann: 118–19. Intermediate class between the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the world of the merely rich: 294–95. Mutual misunderstanding between the aristocracy and the middle classes: 383–85. Distinctions in middle-class life even more stupid than in “society”: 480. Physiognomical variety of the French middle class: 579. Similarities between people of the same generation more evident than those between people of the same class: IV 109–11. M makes no class distinctions: 579, but his mother is imbued with the “Combray spirit” in the
matter of caste: 579–80. “Every social class has its own pathology”: V 11. “The classes of the intellect take no account of birth”: VI 321.
DEATH. Swann père s behaviour on the death of his wife: I 17–18. The Celtic belief in metempsychosis: 59. The “seamy side,” as opposed to the abstract idea, of death: 112–13. Françoise’s reaction to Aunt Léonie’s death: 215–16. Love and death and the mystery of human personality: 438. Our unconscious resistance to the oblivion death will bring: II 338–39. Resurrection of the soul after death perhaps a phenomenon of memory (q.v.): III 111. Unpredictability of the hour of death; the sick person’s first acquaintance with the Stranger that has taken up residence in him: 427–30 (cf. VI 322). M’s grandmother’s death: 470–71. Signs of death on Swann’s face: IV 121–22. “The dead exist only in us”: 214–15. “The dead annex the living;” true and false sense in which we may say that death is not in vain: 228–30. Our indifference towards the dead: 230–31. Diversity of the forms of death: 359 (cf. V 260–61). Mme Verdurin’s reaction to the deaths of the “faithful”: 399–400, 404–7 (cf. V 317–20). “Each alteration of the brain is a partial death;” the phenomena of memory and life after death: 522–23. Imminence of death makes us appreciate life: V 101–2 (cf. 651–52). Bergotte’s death; “Dead forever? Who can say?”: 238–46. Swann’s death; “There are almost as many deaths as there are people”: 260–64. “The death of others is like a journey one might oneself make”: 264. Presentiments of death: 538, 540, 543–44. In good health we imagine we are not afraid of death: 569–70. Albertine’s death: 641–42. “The idea that one will die is more painful than dying, but less painful than the idea that another person is dead”: 686. Our fear of the dead as judges: 689 (cf. 836–37). M’s hopes of being reunited with Albertine in death: 690–92. Our inability to picture the reality of death: 700–1. Death little different from absence; a person may go on living after death as a sort of cutting grafted on to the heart of another: 706. “It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them fades; it is because we ourselves are dying”: 805. “Nobody really believes in a future life”: 836–37. “Death merely acts in the same way as absence”: 872. Death cures us of the desire for immortality: 874. The abyss of death between us and the women we no longer love: VI 323. Saint-Loup’s death: 226. Death subject to certain laws; accidental death may be predetermined: 231–32. Charlus’s roll-call of the dead: 249. Beatific visions of Combray and Venice make death a matter of indifference to M: 254, 262 (cf. 526). Death as a deliverance: 319. Old age is like death, in that some face them both with indifference, not because they have more courage than others but because they have less imagination: 350. Ubiquity and familiarity of death: 422–24. “Every death is for others a simplification of life”: 425. Berma’s dialogue with death: 454. The last and least enviable forms of survival after death: 475. M’s renewed fear of death not for himself but for his book: 514–15. The idea of death takes up permanent residence within him: 523. Men’s works will die as well as men: 524.