In Search of Lost Time, Volume I

by Marcel Proust

  How horrible! I exclaimed to myself. Can anyone find these motor-cars as elegant as the old carriage-and-pair? I dare say I am too old now—but I was not intended for a world in which women shackle themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth. To what purpose shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of the assembly that used to gather beneath this delicate tracery of reddening leaves, if vulgarity and folly have supplanted the exquisite thing that their branches once framed. How horrible! My consolation is to think of the women whom I knew in the past, now that there is no elegance left. But how could the people who watch these dreadful creatures hobble by beneath hats on which have been heaped the spoils of aviary or kitchen-garden, how could they even imagine the charm that there was in the sight of Mme Swann in a simple mauve bonnet or a little hat with a single iris sticking up out of it? Could I even have made them understand the emotion that I used to feel on winter mornings, when I met Mme Swann on foot, in an otter-skin coat, with a woollen cap from which stuck out two blade-like partridge-feathers, but enveloped also in the artificial warmth of her own house, which was suggested by nothing more than the bunch of violets crushed into her bosom, whose flowering, vivid and blue against the grey sky, the freezing air, the naked boughs, had the same charming effect of using the season and the weather merely as a setting, and of living actually in a human atmosphere, in the atmosphere of this woman, as had, in the vases and jardinières of her drawing-room, beside the blazing fire, in front of the silk-covered settee, the flowers that looked out through closed windows at the falling snow? But it would not have sufficed me that the costumes alone should still have been the same as those in distant years. Because of the solidarity that binds together the different parts of a general impression that our memory keeps in a balanced whole of which we are not permitted to subtract or to decline any fraction, I should have liked to be able to pass the rest of the day with one of those women, over a cup of tea, in an apartment with dark-painted walls (as Mme Swann’s were still in the year after that in which the first part of this story ends) against which would glow the orange flame, the red combustion, the pink and white flickering of her chrysanthemums in the twilight of a November evening, in moments similar to those in which (as we shall see) I had not managed to discover the pleasures for which I longed. But now, even though they had led to nothing, those moments struck me as having been charming enough in themselves. I wanted to find them again as I remembered them. Alas! there was nothing now but flats decorated in the Louis XVI style, all white, with a sprinkling of blue hydrangeas. Moreover, people did not return to Paris, now, until much later. Mme Swann would have written to me from a country house to say that she would not be in town before February, long after the chrysanthemum season, had I asked her to reconstruct for me the elements of that memory which I felt to belong to a particular distant year, a particular vintage towards which it was forbidden me to ascend again the fatal slope, the elements of that longing which had itself become as inaccessible as the pleasure that it had once vainly pursued. And I should have required also that they should be the same women, those whose costume interested me because, at the time when I still had faith, my imagination had individualised them and had provided each of them with a legend. Alas! in the acacia-avenue—the myrtle-alley—I did see some of them again, grown old, no more now than grim spectres of what they had once been, wandering, desperately searching for heaven knew what, through the Virgilian groves. They had long since fled, and still I stood vainly questioning the deserted paths. The sun had gone. Nature was resuming its reign over the Bois, from which had vanished all trace of the idea that it was the Elysian Garden of Woman; above the gimcrack windmill the real sky was grey; the wind wrinkled the surface of the Grand Lac in little wavelets, like a real lake; large birds flew swiftly over the Bois, as over a real wood, and with shrill cries perched, one after another, on the great oaks which, beneath their Druidical crown, and with Dodonian majesty, seemed to proclaim the inhuman emptiness of this deconsecrated forest, and helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one’s memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed. It sufficed that Mme Swann did not appear, in the same attire and at the same moment, for the whole avenue to be altered. The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

  NOTES • SYNOPSIS

  Notes

  1 Bressant: a well-known actor (1815–1886) who introduced a new hair-style which involved wearing the hair short in front and fairly long behind.

  2 O ciel, que de vertus vous nous faites haïr. From Corneille’s Mort de Pompée.

  3 à contre-coeur: reluctantly.

  4 Le Miracle de Théophile: verse play by the thirteenth-century troubadour, Rutebeuf. Les quatres fils Aymon or Renaud de Montauban: twelfth-century chanson de geste.

  5 bleu: express letter transmitted by pneumatic tube (in Paris).

  6 The first edition of Du côté de chez Swann had “pour Chartres” instead of “pour Reims.” Proust moved Combray (which as we know was modelled on Illiers, near Chartres) to the fighting zone between Laon and Rheims when he decided to incorporate the 1914–1918 war into his book.

  7 Indirect quotation from Racine’s Phèdre, Act I, Scene 3:

  Que ces vains ornements, que ces voiles me pèsent!

  Quelle importune main en formant tous ces noeuds

  A pris soin sur mon front d’assembler mes cheveux?

  8 In English in the original. Odette’s speech is peppered with English expressions.

  9 “Home” is in English in the original, as is “smart” on this page.

  10 La Reine Topaze: a light opera by Victor Massé presented at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1856.

  11 Serge Panine: play by Georges Ohnet (1848–1918), adapted from a novel of the same name, which had a great success in 1881 in spite of its mediocre literary qualities.

  Olivier Métra: composer of such popular works as La Valse des Roses and a famous lancers quadrille, and conductor at the Opéra-Comique.

  12 Serpent à sonnettes means rattlesnake.

  13 Pays du Tendre (or, more correctly, Pays de Tendre): the country of the sentiments, the tender emotions, mapped (the carte de Tendre) by Mlle de Scudéry in her novel, Clélie (1654–1670).

  14 The rather forced joke on the name Cambremer conceives of it as being made up of abbreviations of Cambronne and merde (shit). Le mot de Cambronne (said to have been flung defiantly at the enemy by a general at Waterloo) is the traditional euphemism for merde.

  15 Pneumatique or petit bleu: see note to this page above.

  Synopsis

  COMBRAY

  Awakenings (1). Bedrooms of the past, at Combray (4), at Tansonville (6), at Balbec (8; cf. II 333). Habit (8).

  Bedtime at Combray (cf. 57). The magic lantern; Geneviève de Brabant (9). Family evenings (11). The little closet smelling of orris-root (14; cf. 222). The good-night kiss (15 cf. 29, 35–58). Visits from Swann (16); his father (17); his unsuspected social life (18). “Our social personality is a creation of other people’s thoughts” (23). Mme de Villeparisis’s house in Paris; “the tailor and his daughter” (25). Aunts Céline and Flora (27). Françoise’s code (38). Swann and I (40; cf. 419). My upbringing: “principles” of my grandmother (cf. 12, 13) and my mother; arbitrary behaviour of my father (48). My grandmother’s presents; her ideas about books (52). A reading of George Sand (55).

  Resurrection of Combray through involuntary memory. The madeleine dipped in a cup of tea (60).

  Combray. Aunt Léonie’s two rooms (66); her lime-tea (69). Françoise (71). The church (80). M.
Legrandin (91). Eulalie (93). Sunday lunches (97). Uncle Adolphe’s sanctum (99). Love of the theatre: titles on posters (100). Meeting with “the lady in pink” (104). My family quarrel with Uncle Adolphe (109). The kitchen-maid: Giotto’s “Charity” (110). Reading in the garden (115). The gardener’s daughter and the passing cavalry (121). Bloch and Bergotte (124). Bloch and my family (125). Reading Bergotte (129). Swann’s friendship with Bergotte (135). Berma (135). Swann’s mannerisms of speech and attitudes of mind (135). Prestige of Mlle Swann as a friend of Bergotte’s (138; cf. 582). The Curé’s visits to Aunt Léonie (142). Eulalie and Françoise (148). The kitchen-maid’s confinement (151). Aunt Léonie’s nightmare (152). Saturday lunches (154). The hawthorns on the altar in Combray church (155). M. Vinteuil (155). His “boyish”-looking daughter (157). Walks round Combray by moonlight (159). Aunt Léonie and Louis XIV (165). Strange behaviour of M. Legrandin (166–186). Plan for a holiday at Balbec (182). Swann’s (or the Méséglise) way and the Guermantes way (188).

  Swann’s Way. View over the plain (189). The lilacs of Tansonville (190). The hawthorn lane (193). Apparition of Gilberte (197). The lady in white and the man in white “ducks” (Mme Swann and M. de Charlus) (199). Dawn of love for Gilberte: glamour of the name “Swann” (202; cf. 586). Farewell to the hawthorns (204). Mlle Vinteuil’s friend comes to Montjouvain (206). M. Vinteuil’s sorrow (208). The rain (211). The porch of Saint-André-des-Champs, Françoise and Théodore (211). Death of Aunt Léonie; Françoise’s wild grief (215). Exultation in the solitude of autumn (218). Disharmony between our feelings and their habitual expression (218). “The same emotions do not spring up simultaneously in everyone” (219). Stirrings of desire (219). The little closet smelling of orris-root (222; cf. 14). Scene of sadism at Montjouvain (224).

  The Guermantes Way. River landscape: the Vivonne (235); the water-lilies (238). The Guermantes; Geneviève de Brabant “the ancestress of the Guermantes family” (242). Daydreams and discouragement of a future writer (243). The Duchesse de Guermantes in the chapel of Gilbert the Bad (246). The secrets hidden behind shapes, scents and colours (252). The steeples of Martinville; first joyful experience of literary creation (254). Transition from joy to sadness (257). Does reality take shape in the memory alone? (260).

  Awakenings (262; cf. 1).

  SWANN IN LOVE

  The Verdurins and their “little clan.” The “faithful” (265). Odette mentions Swann to the Verdurins (269). Swann and women (269). Swann’s first meeting with Odette: she is “not his type” (276). How he comes to fall in love with her (277). Dr Cottard (281). The sonata in F sharp (290). The Beauvais settee (292). The little phrase (294). The Vinteuil of the sonata and the Vinteuil of Combray (302). Mme Verdurin finds Swann charming at first (303). But his “powerful friendships” make a bad impression on her (307). The little seamstress; Swann agrees to meet Odette only after dinner (307). Vinteuil’s little phrase, “the national anthem of their love” (308). Tea with Odette; her chrysanthemums (311). Faces of today and portraits of the past: Odette and Botticelli’s Zipporah (314). Odette, a Florentine painting (316). Love letter from Odette written from the Maison Dorée (319). Swann’s arrival at the Verdurins’ one evening after Odette’s departure (320); anguished search in the night (323). The cattleyas (328); she becomes his mistress (331). Odette’s vulgarity (341); her idea of “chic” (344). Swann begins to adopt her tastes (348) and considers the Verdurins “magnanimous people” (352). Why, nevertheless, he is not a true member of the “faithful,” unlike Forcheville (355). A dinner at the Verdurins’: Brichot (356), Cottard (357), the painter (361), Saniette (370). The little phrase (374). Swann’s jealousy: one night, dismissed by Odette at midnight, he returns to her house and knocks at the wrong window (387). Forcheville’s cowardly attack on Saniette, and Odette’s smile of complicity (393). Odette’s door remains closed to Swann one afternoon; her lying explanation (394). Signs of distress that accompany Odette’s lying (398). Swann deciphers a letter from her to Forcheville through the envelope (400). The Verdurins organise an excursion to Chatou without Swann (403). His indignation with them (406). Swann’s exclusion (410). Should he go to Dreux or Pierrefonds to find Odette? (415). Waiting through the night (419). Peaceful evenings at Odette’s with Forcheville (424). Recrudescence of anguish (426). The Bayreuth project (427). Love and death and the mystery of personality (438). Charles Swann and “young Swann” (440). Swann, Odette, Charlus and Uncle Adolphe (442). Longing for death (451).

  An evening at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s. Detached from social life by his love and his jealousy, Swann can observe it as it is in itself (458): the footmen (459); the monocles (463); the Marquise de Cambremer and the Vicomtesse de Franquetot listening to Liszt’s “St Francis” (466); Mme de Gallardon, a despised cousin of the Guermantes (467). Arrival of the Princesse des Laumes (469); her conversation with Swann (483). Swann introduces the young Mme de Cambremer (Mlle Legrandin) to General de Froberville (489). Vinteuil’s little phrase poignantly reminds Swann of the days when Odette loved him (490). The language of music (495). Swann realises that Odette’s love for him will never revive (502).