PART II: Place-names: the Place
Two years later, my grandmother and I leave for Balbec; almost complete indifference towards Gilberte (221). Our love revives and offers itself to another woman (221). Habit weakens all things; memory’s bright light fades the past, which becomes irrecoverable (222). Things which remind us of a person are those we have forgotten: memory exists outside us, away from our mind’s eye (222). Railway stations: tragic places, depriving us of the familiar; the Gare Saint-Lazare (224). My body’s objection to this journey (224). Mama’s avoidance of the sorrow of leave-taking (227). Françoise’s hat and coat; her dog-like eyes (228–9). Alcohol-induced ‘euphoria’: gazing at a holland blind (231). The letters of Mme de Sévigné (232). Sunrise seen from the train (233). The beauty of a milk-maid (234). The surprise of real beauty and happiness incarnated in an individual, contradicting abstract images (235).
The name of Balbec; the church at Balbec (237). The tyranny of the Particular: the Virgin of Balbec is a little old woman in stone (239). Balbec’s name now empty of poetry, refilled with trite realities (239).
The names of halts on the Balbec line wound my homesick heart (240). The pain of arrival: the Grand-Hôtel, its staircase, its manager, my grandmother’s haggling with him (241). Lack of habit made more agonizing by the sight of people in their element (242). ‘Lift’ (243). ‘My’ unbearable room, unfurnished by habit (245). Rescued by my grandmother (246). Knocks on the wall (247). The analgesia of habit; the death of a former self (250).
The sight of the sea, the starched towel (251). Variations in lighting alter the outlook of a place; the hours’ changing landscape, the strangers (252–3). My grandmother lets in the breeze: contempt, outrage and dishevelment (253). Eminent provincial personalities (253). Aimé the head waiter (255). The King of the South Seas and his mistress (255). An old lady in a black dress and bonnet, her carriage-exercise, her servants (256). M. and Mlle de Stermaria, their arrogance (258). An actress and her friends (259). Obscure onlookers gloating from the outer dark (260). Legrandin’s brother-in-law’s wife’s garden-party (261). I wish not to be ignored, anxious for the esteem of all these personages of local importance (262). Mlle de Stermaria, the more desirable for being possibly unattainable (262). The Marquise de Villeparisis (263). My grandmother’s principle: on holiday you sever relations with people (264). M. de Cambremer and the eminent provincials (265). I watch Mlle de Stermaria (267). The visit of the managing director (269). Françoise’s contacts (271).
My grandmother and Mme de Villeparisis meet at last (273). Françoise forgives Mme de Villeparisis for being a marquise (275). Mme de Villeparisis’s kindness (275). My indignation at my grandmother’s notion that Mme de Villeparisis might be a Guermantes (277). The Princess of Luxembourg (277): her Second Empire gait (278); her loaf of rye-bread (278). Mme de Villeparisis’s surprising knowledge of my father’s journey (280). The eminent provincials and the Princess of Luxembourg (281). Middle-class misconceptions about aristocrats (282).
Daily seascapes from my window (284). Outings in Mme de Villeparisis’s carriage (284). Mme de Villeparisis’s familiarity with the arts; her water-colours of flowers; her advanced opinions (287–8); her family memories of writers (289). Glimpses of girls from Mme de Villeparisis’s carriage: desire for something we cannot possess (290). A disappointment: a letter from Bergotte rather than from a milk-maid (293). The church at Carqueville; I attempt to impress a village girl (294–5). Three trees near Hudimesnil: an unsolved mystery of memory (296). The old back road to Balbec, in reality and in memory (299). Mme de Villeparisis on Chateaubriand, Vigny, Hugo and Balzac (300); her excess of politeness, her professional mannerism (303); her anecdotes about the simplicity of the great (304). A conversation on life and death with my grandmother (307).
Mme de Villeparisis’s nephew, the Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray (308). I imagine being his best friend (309). My first impression of him: insolence and callousness (310). His apparent unfriendliness (310); his handshake like a challenge to a duel (311); his tastes in art and ideas (312); his father (313). My grandmother’s liking for Saint-Loup (314). Misgivings about the virtues of friendship (315). I enjoy viewing Saint-Loup as a work of art (317).
An anti-Semite bemoans the presence of Jews in Balbec: Bloch (317). Bloch’s mispronunciations of English (318). Balbec’s Jewish colony (319). Bloch on my ‘snobbery’ (320). Our friends are inseparable from their faults (321). Bloch’s apology: that of the ill-mannered man (324). Bloch speaks ill of me to Saint-Loup and of Saint-Loup to me (325). Bloch’s ‘Jewish streak’ (327). A first glimpse of Bloch senior (328). M. Bloch and the stereoscope (328).
Saint-Loup speaks of his uncle Palamède’s infatuation with nobility, liking for the working classes, passion for women (330). I am struck by the behaviour of a stranger: a madman or a spy? (332). The Baron de Charlus, Saint-Loup’s uncle (334). Revelations about the Guermantes family (335). My grandmother delights in Charlus (336). Charlus’s ideals in nobility, art and women (338); his invitation to tea with Mme de Villeparisis; his strange behaviour and penetrating eye (339); his dislike of effeminacy in young men (342); his liking for Mme de Sévigné (342); his voice (344); his anti-Semitism (344). Two strange encounters with Charlus (346–7).
Dinner at Bloch’s (348). M. Bloch senior’s way of knowing people ‘without being acquainted’ (350). Bloch’s sisters (350). M. Bloch on Bergotte (352). M. Bloch ‘the Duc d’Aumale’s double’ (352). M. Nissim Bernard (354). M. Bloch’s ‘champagne’; his ‘Rubens’ (357). Bloch’s remark to Saint-Loup about Charlus (357). Bloch’s ‘nice ride’ with Mme Swann on the suburban line (358). Françoise’s disappointment with ‘M. Bloch’ (359); her admiration of Saint-Loup the ‘hypocrite’ (360). Saint-Loup’s class-consciousness and prejudice against society people (361). Saint-Loup’s mistress, her influence on him (361); her torture of him (363). Saint-Loup’s sacrifices for her (364); her fiasco at the house of Saint-Loup’s aunt (365).
Saint-Loup offers to take a photograph of my grandmother (366). My scorn at this suggestion, and for Françoise’s mode of sensibility (367).
First appearance of the little gang of girls (369). Their scorn for the esplanade walkers (370). Their shared beauty; my inability to single it out (371). One of them jumps over an old man: ‘Oh, wot a poor old bloke!’ (372–3). A girl with a toque; are they the girl-friends of racing cyclists? (373). Intimations of their immorality (374). My desire for them is full of pain, because I sense it is unattainable (375). The bicycling brunette: not the one I like best (375). The alteration in social proportions characteristic of life at the seaside (377). These girls’ fascinating perfection in suggesting the unknown and the desirable (378).
Familiarity of the hotel (379). ‘Lift’ and his conversation (380). First mention of ‘the Simonet girl’ (381). The changing paintings in the window-frame (383). Aimé and ‘the whole truth’ about Dreyfus’s guilt (387). The list of new arrivals: The Simonet family (387).
Dining at Rivebelle with Saint-Loup (388). Beer, champagne, port, rushing waiters (390); the planetary system of the tables (391). The art of cross-sectioning things rids them of their customary appearances, enabling us to see analogies (391). The restaurant full of music, women and their promises of happiness (392). The insignificance of all things in my drunken exhilaration, even Mlle Simonet and her friends (395–6). The women and ‘young’ Saint-Loup (398). The hotel bedroom has stopped being hostile (399). Drunken dreams, sleep’s narcotic, waking (400–401).
Inquiries about the girls (403). A glimpse of their earlier childhood (403). Chance encounters with girls and seeming beauty, illusions of destiny’s purpose (404).
First appearance of Elstir (405). The girl with golf-clubs; her resemblance to the one in the toque but much prettier (408). I assume she is Mlle Simonet (409). The passionate astronomy of my uncertainty about the girls’ lives is enough to make me be in love: the sadness, the feeling of the irreparable, the anguish which accompany the onset of love (411). Loving the
m all, in love with none (412). My reluctant visit to Elstir (413). Elstir’s studio: the laboratory from which would come a new creation of the world (414). Elstir’s metamorphosis of things, analogous to metaphor: removing names, he renews our impressions of things (415). The metaphor of the harbour at Carquethuit (415). Elstir makes himself ignorant so as to paint (419). Elstir on the church of Balbec (419).
Appearance of the young cyclist (423). The beauty spot on her chin (423). Elstir says she is Albertine Simonet (423). The importance of spelling Simonet with one n (424). My later familiarity with her was to prevent me from ever seeing her again as I saw her then (425). The water-colour of Miss Sacripant (427). Mme Elstir’s unobtrusive beauty (429). The attitude to beauty of Swann implicit in the expression ‘the beauty of life’, a phrase almost devoid of meaning (431). Encounter with the girls: I contrive not to be introduced (434). Miss Sacripant: Mme Swann before marriage (439). A painter’s eye dismantles the factitious woman (440). Elstir is ‘Monsieur Biche’ (442). My desire to know the girls can be postponed, now that I know it is a possibility (443).
Saint-Loup’s gratitude to my grandmother (444). The ‘little Slowcoach’ (445). Bloch and Saint-Loup’s invitation to Doncières (445). A letter from Saint-Loup (446). Elstir has shown me glimpses of poetry in everyday things (447). At Elstir’s I meet Albertine (449). My acquaintance with her proceeds by subtraction (451). The mediocre and touching Albertine with whom I chat and the mysterious Albertine by the sea (453). The beauty spot on her cheek (453). My difficulty in meeting her friends in the little gang (454). Albertine’s ways of speaking (455); her beauty spot comes to rest for ever on her upper lip (455). Octave, the ‘also-ran’ (456). Albertine thinks Bloch ‘quite handsome’; her anti-Semitism (458). I meet Andrée, the tall one who jumped over the old man (460). The d’Ambresac sisters (461). Elstir’s taste influences Albertine’s (462). Andrée’s lie (463). I meet Gisèle and assume she is in love with me (464). I wonder about the flavour of Albertine’s cheeks (466). I plan elopement with Gisèle (467). I meet all the girls; I spend my days with them (468). Today’s young buds; a glimpse of future ugliness (468); the present delights of them, desire’s artful plundering of their fragrances (470). I neglect Mme de Villeparisis, Saint-Loup and Elstir (469). Wet days in the Casino (470). Andrée’s kindness (471). Albertine’s fascination with outings and parties (471). Our curiosity about the woman we love reaches far beyond her character (472). Andrée’s generosity to Albertine (472). Françoise’s rigmaroles, her thought processes (473). Elstir’s sketches of yachtswomen and race-courses (475); his views on women’s clothes and Mlle Léa’s parasol (476–7); his water-colour of coolness and shadows at Les Creuniers (478). My view of Balbec and the sea is now transformed by Elstir (479). Albertine’s view of Bloch’s sisters and Mlle Léa, an actress whose tastes do not extend to gentlemen (480–81). Picnics on the cliff-top and children’s games (481). The unleavened flesh of young girls (482). For the artist, friendship is a dereliction of duty, but not the fancying of young girls (484). Saint-Loup’s friendship deprives me of the power of self-realization (484). Charm and character in the girls’ ways of speaking (486). Albertine’s note: I like you (488). Gisèle’s composition (488). I simultaneously love several girls (492). The disparate stylizations of the remembered and the real (493). Our slightest impression slides down memory’s slope; what is called remembering is a process of forgetting (493–4). A game of ring-on-a-string in a little wood (495). Andrée’s hands, Albertine’s hands (496). I spoil the game, Albertine says, ‘Next time, we’ll make sure he doesn’t come’ (498). Andrée takes me to Les Creuniers; a childhood memory from a hawthorn (498). Andrée’s indulgence towards Albertine (500). Les Creuniers (501). Knowing I love Albertine, I take precautions to prevent her from knowing it (502). I pretend to prefer Andrée (503). Andrée’s reactions to my professed indifference to Albertine (504). Albertine to spend the night at the Grand-Hôtel (506). Albertine’s cheeks (507). Albertine is doing her hair the way I like it; she suggests I come to her bedside (507). Expectations of happiness (508). I attempt to kiss her; she rings the bell (510).
My dreams forsake Albertine when I lose the hope of possessing her (510). Albertine’s background (511); Andrée’s mother’s attitudes towards Albertine (512). Albertine’s popularity, willingness to please (514). Semblances of selflessness (515). My speculations about her virtue (517). She and I talk about virtue and the attempted kiss (518). My feeling for Albertine lies latent within me, a toothing stone for a future extension (519). Andrée is an inadequate replacement for Albertine (519). Misconceptions, misreading of appearances (520). Incipient love for each or any of the girls (520). My desire drifts from one to the other (521). The girls’ faces, similar yet dissimilar (521). Albertine’s faces (522). My assumptions about the girls’ unchastity are now seen to be completely wrong (525). The girls’ imagined charm is now replaced by the memory of delight in their company (526).
The end of the summer in Balbec; the girls leave (527). Brief friendships in the Grand-Hôtel (528). My resolve to return one day (529).
My lasting memory of Balbec: the morning moments of shade and solitude, imagining the sun, the sea and the presence of the gang of girls (530).
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 69