By chapter 4 of part 2 of Sodom and Gomorrah, Proust’s narrator has all but given up on his relationship with Albertine. He’s decided that it would be madness to marry her, a sentiment that gratifies his mother, and he’s set his sights on Andreé, dreaming up a scheme to win her love. All that’s left is to cut off things with Albertine. She and the narrator are on a train coming back from La Raspelière discussing their dinner with the Verdurins (as the narrator has decided to put off breaking up and the serious conversation involved) when he mentions, in regard to the composer, the name Vinteuil.
The passage starts here:

“We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us for ever.” (p.701)

What is the “truth”? The narrator circulates thoughts and anxieties about Albertine’s character and sexuality throughout this volume. In Swann’s Way, Vinteuil’s sonata serves as a leitmotif for the relationship between Swann and Odette–a relationship tinged with promiscuity, deception, and lesbianism. In the same volume, in the narrator’s childhood, while at Montjouvain, the narrator observed Mlle Vinteuil and her mistress in the act of hooking up (and the act of sadism). In fact, as it turns out, Albertine is on extremely close terms with both Mlle Vinteuil and her lover (“oh! not at all the type of woman you might suppose!”, p.701) and is about to set out on a cruise with the latter (“it sounds a bit weird, but you know how I love the sea”, p.701). It seems like Albertine is going out of her way to vouch for the virtue of these women, even though she doesn’t know about the scene of sadism witnessed by the narrator. In fact, the mention of Mlle Vinteuil and her mistress triggers an involuntary memory of the episode for the narrator:

“At the sound of these words, … an image stirred in my heart, an image which I had kept in reserve for so many years that even if I had been able to guess, when I stored it up long ago, that it had a noxious power, I should have supposed that in the course of time it had entirely lost it; preserved alive in the depths of my being–like Orestes whose death the gods had prevented that, on the appointed day, he might return to his native land to avenge the murder of Agamemnon” (p.702)

In this section, we are shown that involuntary memory isn’t always pleasant. The memory of the scene is compared to the mythological figure of Orestes, who, along with his sister Electra, avenged the murder of his father Agamemnon at the hands of his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. The narrator wonders what he’s done to deserve the psychological slaying delivered unto him by the knowledge of Albertine’s connection to a “practicing and professional Sapphist” (p.703)–is it retribution for allowing his grandmother to die? Or maybe for viewing the scene way back at Montjouvain in the first place, “to make dazzlingly clear to my eyes the fatal consequences which evil actions eternally engender, not only for those who have committed them but for those who have done no more, or thought they were doing no more, than look on at a curious and entertaining spectacle” (p.702). The narrator still gets a little kick of pride and joy from achieving involuntary recollection and finding some lost time, because that’s the point of the book.
The narrator compares the gravity of this realization in relation to his previous doubts to the gap between early unimpressive telephone prototypes and the ultimate interconnection of cities and countries by miles of sweeping wire. The truth (or at any rate, the possibility of truth) behind Albertine’s relationships with women dwarfs the uneasy feelings, thoughts, and doubts that have plagued the narrator up to this point when he sees Albertine’s interactions with her friends, although it continues along the same lines–”this deluge of reality that engulfs us, however enormous it may be compared with our timid and microscopic suppositions, has always been foreshadowed by them” (p.703). The idea presented here is that the human mind can catch glimpses of hidden truths through guesses or suspicions that precede reality–which often dwarfs first impressions, just as many visitors to the 1889 Exhibition who could imagine sound transmitted across the length of a house couldn’t have imagined the to-be ubiquity of the telephone.
Proust writes that “[it] is often simple from lack of creative imagination that we do not go far enough in suffering” (p.703). Remember the story of Swann and Odette’s courtship, when Swann received the anonymous letter detailing Odette’s sexual past and was more upset that someone he knew would send him an anonymous letter, because he couldn’t find verisimilitude in the accusations–he couldn’t imagine any of the listed trysts. To finish the passage:

“And the most terrible reality brings us, at the same time as suffering, the joy of a great discovery, because it merely gives a new and clear form to what we have long been ruminating without suspecting it” (p.703).

Proust is talking about what I would call closure. It’s harrowing to ruminate for ages on the possibility of some horrible truth without getting any closer to it, so to finally learn even an awful fact is relieving, and even joyful, since it’s a discovery of something one might’ve known all along. For the narrator, the discovery of Albertine’s potential lesbianism is one he’s been postponing for most of the volume, and apparently provides him with so much joy and closure that he ends up deciding that he absolutely must marry her. Whatever, Marcel, it’s your life, write it whichever way you like.

Stephanie Zavas

In Search of Lost Time

04 May 2015

On Madame de Villeparisis and Aristocratic Women (244-249)

Mme de Villeparisis in this selection serves as a stark comparison to Guermantes, who holds and maintains a higher position in the French aristocracy but lives in constant anxiety over the conducting herself properly within her position.  Women it seems, if they address their individuality publicly, are much more likely to be caste-down (I’m imagining the scene earlier in the book where Mme Guermantes is acting like a silly servant girl inside her house, but wouldn’t deign to exhibit that character anywhere in the eyes of society, however, as the narrator exhibits, she is always under watch by someone else, like everyone, even if it’s a boy looking outside his window).

De Villeparisis is characterized by the narrator’s postulations on how she came to meet her defamation.  What secret scandals, now hidden from the children of her once-peers (even the word peer would suggest observation and not so much camaraderie) was she involved in?  What mal-temperament, misconduct, social no-no did she commit to lose her place in society?  Marcel talks about her sharp-tongue, which, though her conduct now does not exemplify, may have been a cause.  In writing her memoir she may have taken on those airs of kindness and charm which she was not bestowed with in her natural character, that women were more well-received by adhering to a strict form, something rather than someone, which lent itself to the foundation of those fancy people’s existence.

I found this passage to be, probably appropriately for its time, markedly sexist.  Of de Villeparisis’ character the narrator writes:

Instead of the character which it possessed [referring to the character of de Villeparisis’ generation of aristocratic women], one finds a sensibility, an intelligence which are not conducive to action…(245) it was this intelligence, resembling rather that of a writer of the second rank than that of a woman of position…that was undoubtedly the cause of her social decline. (246)

This, among several other statements in the passage (there is one about her lacking the ability to comprehend the genius of certain artists, the discourse later when Marcel equates de Villeparisis’ memoir to work of frivolity because it is not academic; he calls her a bluestocking woman which implies this attempt at an equality with men’s conduct within her role as an aristocratic woman)serves to emphasize that a fancy lady’s role in that world is to do what is proper, with little merit for their actual personality if it shies away from what is typical or trivial too much.

Moreover, this passage is a depiction of the importance and delicacy of social functions in the aristocracy, as when the narrator hypothesizes that it may be (or in addition to her taunting less educated guests) that because she disregards the class distinction and favors individuality more (inviting the handsome man, or the funny guy, or the way too-cool one), eschewing the tenet of exclusivity as a measure of success, that is her downfall.  This is critical because it makes me wonder more about Odette and Madame Verduran’s success at navigating this social construct.  What fortitude and reservations did they develop and overcome to be the stock people they are?  And Guermantes, she who’s secretly afraid of being this marvelous title, how does she compare?  One thing I know I got out of reading this passage is that de Villeparisis, for all her individuality, was unsuccessful in society because she wanted to be a person and not a host (and I mean that in a parasitic weird sort of way).

Aidan McNellis

pages 444-446

This section begins with the narrator reflecting over the visits which Bergotte had been so inclined to taking recently in the book in the pretext of his grandmother’s illness, with thoughts which were to me rather surprising.

“The visits which he now began to pay us came for me several years too late, for I no longer had the same admiration for him as of old.”

What so surprised me here was that Bergotte, whom the narrator had at one time been so obsessed with to the point of what seemed like him constantly reading and re-reading his novels, has fallen out of the narrator’s favor. This is not due to the author’s rise to renown, as the narrator himself clearly states, but rather due to something I feel has to do with what is high art and what is not, and how it’s completely relative to the time in which one lives and the ideas that also lived within that time. The narrator didn’t enjoy Bergotte less due to the writer’s works being any less than they once were, but due to them ceasing to convey a new and fresh way of seeing the world that any art ascending to that which I think can be called “high art” is necessarily needed to do. To explain what I see as being high art, I’ll use Kandinsky’s metaphor of the triangle. Imagine a triangle, in the very top of the triangle is the one or few artists whose vision exceeds the current capacities of others, and they are often hailed as mad before they are hailed as genius. In every other segment of the triangle are artists also, whichever ones being able to see and understand the segment above them being prophetic and helping the whole to move along. The higher, and smaller, sections are the avant garde. The larger the segment of triangle, or lower on the triangle the segment is, the more people understand the artist’s vision. This triangle is constantly moving upwards, being pulled along by those who can see ahead.

“And I was led to wonder whether there was any truth in the distinction which we are always making between art, which is no more advanced now than in Homer’s day, and science with its continuous progress. Perhaps, on the contrary, art was in this respect like science; each new original writer seemed to me to have advanced beyond the stage of his immediate predecessor; and who was to say whether in twenty years’ time, when I should be able to accompany without strain or effort the newcomer of today, another might not emerge in the face of whom the present one would go the way of Bergotte?”

I agree with the narrator in that art is not at all stagnant, it clearly advances. Paradigms shift in science just as they do in art, and they are both always moving forward. The narrator realizes that what good artists and writers are doing is not copying what good artists have done before them, but rather continuing the conversation with them, progressing it forward. Every new art piece or literary work is in conversation with everything that has come before it, the narrator sees how new original writers build upon their predecessors work while being able to see farther ahead than they did.

The way that I see high art, but by no means is the definitive answer as to what high art is, is that which facilitates us in seeing the world in a new way, corresponding to the changing times we live in, good artists noticing the changes before we do ourselves and reacting to these said changes through their art. Artists see more clearly the state of society, how different modern ideas and technologies of their times are affecting life. When they discard forms and conventions that are seen as indispensable to art of the time, it is not because they do not know very well these forms, but rather because the discarding of them is exactly what is needed for art to progress. Once the public’s view has caught up to that of the artist, is when he starts to be of renown and seen as prophetic.

“A man’s work seldom becomes completely understood and successful before that of another writer, still obscure, has begun, among a few more exigent spirits, to substitute a fresh cult for the one that has almost ceased to command observance.”

When an original artist first puts his works out, the language he uses (not necessarily literal language, art is comprised of aesthetic and symbolic languages in itself) is too different from their current known languages to understand it. It is only once other art has gradually caught up to that art which was at one time not understood at all, that it is finally understood and enjoyed, that it’s language can be appreciated. In talking about the new writer that has replaced Bergotte in the narrator’s mind,

“Only I felt that it was not the sentence that was badly constructed but I myself that lacked the strength and agility necessary to reach the end.”

The narrator doesn’t fully understand the author or the language, or to be more precisely the associations, he is using; but instead of crying out that it was a badly constructed book or bad author as many would be wont of doing at this point, he instead places the blame of not understanding on himself, and from there striving to understand the structures of understanding and new way of seeing the writer had, which I found interesting. It was the same sort of feeling I myself had when I encountered Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and even though I understood the individual words perfectly well, I did not understand very well at all the way in which the words were put together and spent hours trying to make sense of them, to some success.

New forms, in writing or in art, have to be explored to better show ideas of their times. Different mediums are better able to portray different types, or patterns, of thoughts or ideas. The form shapes the content as much as the content chooses the form. The impressionist styles of the time the narrator is then living through, was brought about the altered ideas of time and space that came about with new technologies then. With the train, and along with it global standardized time, so too came altered ways of seeing. Things seemed blurrier, less distinct line wise, so it made sense that artists were focusing more on the impression gotten from things, what with the tempo of people’s lives starting to speed up then, you just had enough time or attention to get the impressions of things. Also, since the advent of photography, it made sense to move away from more realistic art, since photography could take clear depictions of things, for painting to remain so valued it almost had to go beyond what photography could do, and one way it did this was in portraying not just a scene or person but an impression of that scene or person, to a quite beautiful effect.

“I reflected that it was not so many years since a renewal of the world similar to that which I now expected his successor to produce had been wrought for me by Bergotte himself.”

The narrator, parallel to the culture in which he lives, in getting older, has perhaps progressed beyond the form in which the ideas of his yesteryears were so well suited. He seems to see farther ahead and be higher up the triangle than the general people in that they are only coming to this point where they are fascinated by Bergotte now, while he has already gone past it and is looking ahead. He acknowledges that although he likes this author now, there will doubtlessly be a successor to him that will propel writing even farther ahead which will make him abandon this current author of his.

Simone Blakeslee-Smith

May 3

In Search of Lost Time

The Guermantes Way (pp. 244-250)

The section from pages 244-255 starts with the narrator attending one of the salons hosted by Mme. de Villeparisis. It illustrates the ways in which she is different than that of Mme. de Guermante and how she has deviated from the normal behavior and personality of society people. These passages are important because they give the reader a greater understanding of the workings of this society and demonstrate a common human behavior of rebellion and redemption.

“Mme de Villeparisis was one of those women who, born of an illustrious house, entering by marriage into another no less illustrious house, do not for all that enjoy any great position in the social world…” (p.244)

Despite having the family and marital background to have a strong societal standing, she is still not enjoying that kind of life. Her salons consist of people who may be of a high social position, but are family or are attained by family connections, or that of “third-rate people.” This is evidence for the shift in how one’s class was determined; social position no longer depended as much on what family one was a part of, but instead on the opinions of other people. This section again makes me question the place of the narrator’s family?

“But this wit and grace, in the degree to which they were developed in her, became themselves- on another plane, and even though they were employed to belittle the noblest masterpieces- true artistic qualities” (p.246).

Mme de Villeparisis does not understand great art, but the way in which she makes light of this is in itself an artistic expression. Normally, things gain beauty and importance when the narrator can compare them to some painting or sculpture, but here he allows character to be art. Is this his way of maintaining respect for her?

“Now the effect of such qualities on any social position is a morbid activity of the kind which doctors call elective, and so disintegrating that the most firmly established can hardly resist it for any length of time. What artists call intelligence seems pure presumption to the fashionable world which, incapable of adopting the angle of vision from which they, the artists, judge things, incapable of understanding that particular attraction to which they yield when they choose an expression or draw a parallel, feel in their company an exhaustion, an irritation, from which antipathy rapidly springs” (p.246).

I take this as meaning that the qualities of wit and grace that Villeparisis exhibits, and the narrator calls artistic, are so strong that they push her out of what society deems “normal.” This further demonstrates the power of the crowd’s opinion. If they deem that someone is not one of them, for whatever trivial reason, then they are quickly downgraded no matter the firmness of their families historical social standing. There is also a distinction made between what artists call intelligence and what the society people deem acceptable and appropriate. What they cannot wrap their minds around, they develop strong dislike for. Through the narrator’s comparison of the qualities of Villeparisis and art, he puts her in this category of “unable to understand,” and therefore, in the fashionables world’s distaste.

“A bluestocking Mme de Villeparisis had perhaps been in her earliest youth, and, intoxicated with her learning, had perhaps been unable to resist applying to people in society, less intelligent and less educated than herself, those cutting taunts which the injured party never forgets” (pp.247-248).

A bluestocking is defined as a literary or intellectual woman. Through the combination of her youth, and therefore, naivety, and the intellect that she had, she made the other society people deem her rude and not appropriate. In this scene it sounds as if she is unaware of her sharpness, but on page 249 the word “deliberate” is used.

“True, if at some point in her youth Mme de Villeparisis, surfeited with the satisfaction of belonging to the flower of the aristocracy, had somehow amused herself by scandalizing the people among whom she lived, and deliberately impairing her own position in society, she had begun to attach importance to the position once she had lost it” (p.249).

In the first part of this sentence, the author illustrates that Villeparisis thought that her family name would bring her security despite her actions, which we know to be untrue. It is a changing time, and her behavior in her youth greatly impacts her social standing. It goes on,

“She had wished to show the dutchesses that she was better than they, by saying things that they dared not say or do” (p.249).

The young Villeparisis is full of intellect, and yet lacks the ability to truly see the consequences of her actions. She is intentionally rebellious and she finds pleasure in shocking the class of people she’s in and disrupting the social fabric…simply because she believes she can. It almost seems as if she thinks she is better than them because she is daring enough to do what they are afraid to do- and in this she finds their disapproval pleasurable instead of negative.

“But now the latter, except for those who were closely related to her, had ceased to call, she felt herself diminished, and sought once more to reign, but with another scepter than that of wit. She would have liked to attract to her house all those whom she had taken such pains to discard” (p.249).

When the people with whom she always found herself start to intentionally distance themselves, she regrets what has happened. This passage combined with the earlier, “she had begun to attach importance to the position once she had lost it,” there is a demonstration of the idea that one can only fully appreciate what one has until one has lost it, and in a bigger sense- people need some kind of distance from their situation to be able to see it clearly.

“That she should have set to work, with a persevering and natural industry, to destroy the social position which she owed to her high birth does not in the least imply that even at that remote period Mme de Villeparisis did not attach great importance to her position” (p.250).

Villeparisis was so caught up in her immediate emotions that, despite the value she attributed to her position, she was not able to have a wide enough reaching perspective. If she would have stepped back and looked at what she was doing, would she have continued in the same vein, to the same degree?

“How many women’s lives, lives of which little enough is known, have been divided thus into contrasting periods, the last being entirely devoted to the reconquest of what in the second has been so light-heartedly flung to the winds!” (p.249)

Maybe, despite her turning back to reclaim what she lost, the rebellious period was a necessary and natural step in her own unfoldment. In a way this passage is reminiscent of the Hero’s Journey. It has a seemingly cyclical nature to it. Starting in one place, in the second phase going away from this, and in the third coming back to the first, but having changed. This is also a tie into the narrator’s use of the word “journey” quite often. The going away from what it familiar is an essential step to be able to see that which one is traveling away from, and oneself, in the clear light of day. Identity is raveled up in the first phase, and it is only after breaking away in the second, that one can know themselves, and, in the case of Villeparisis, what in the end she values most.

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” -Nelson Mandela

In the first pages of the third volume The Guermantes Way, the character Francoise was introduced as being unhappy and depressed after the family moved into a new home, to me it seems as if she misses her title (or I guess I think it was her Seniority and respect among the rest of the staff, She was actually treated like apart of the family) that she had in the old home in Combray too much. The narrator would seem as if he had no problem leaving because it was easy for him to leave the old and also laughed at her with ridicule because he felt that she was being too sensitive about the situation. But the two characters shared this sensitivity after the concierge didn’t give Francoise the respect she thought she deserved and after the narrator’s young footman made him feel the same way he goes to her, probably for sympathy but she wasn’t interested in what he had to say. The narrator then writes, “The alleged ‘sensitivity’ of neurotic people is matched by their egotism; they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an ever increasing attention in themselves.” I think Proust is saying that, what anxious people take sensitively is what they think of themselves, which is why they can’t stand when others flaunt that fact around. When they were already thinking about it themself. When Francoise looked in the other direction while the narrator suffered and vice-versa (when he tried to speak to her about their new house.) I felt that this encounter between the two was significant because in the proceeding pages there are instances where the reoccurring theme of Identity, but Identity through job and feminine titles. Like from pages 21 and 22, ‘“I meant to talk to their butler about it…What is it now they call him?” She broke off as though putting to herself a question of protocol, which she went on to answer with: ‘ Oh, of course, it’s Antoine they call him!’ as though Antoine had been a title. ‘He’s the one could tell me, but he’s quite the gentleman, he is, a great pedant, you’d think they’d cut his tongue out, or that he’d forgotten to learn to speak. He makes no reply when you talk to him,’”(Proust, 21) This is Francoise that said this and it makes me want to recall a time in the past book where she is referred to the title of her job. From my memory she is only called by her name and when she refers to Antonine “as though Antonine had been a title” I think she does this on purpose because she sees this person as a person and not just by his job. She places her views that a person with or with out the title of a “footman” or perhaps a “maid” is still a “footman” or a “maid” but simply identifying them with their real name conveys a sense of humanity and respect for that individual. On the following page, after Francoise talks about how the Duchess is address by her feminine name at the Guermantes Castle, but says its interesting to her that it’s the Duchess who is the Mayoress of those parts and I feel that its implied because it’s not the Duchess who is the mayor, it is only because of her husbands title that she acquires the name, there are those who actually work hard for their title and when individuals who do (such as Francoise, Antoine etc.) they deserves to be identified properly. Rather than those like the Duchess who doesn’t have to do anything. I find this theme of Identity through titles and names corolates with the narrators theme of iden

.

For my close reading, I want to review text from the bottom of page 252 to the end of the first paragraph on page 255 of Guermantes Way. Wherein, our narrator has just come to pay a visit to Mme de Villeparisis.

Our narrator provides a wonderful description of Mme de Villeparisis in her drawing room, which includes her guests, one of which, Bloch, brings out a more serious discussion from our narrator: “It was true that the social kaleidoscope was in the act of turning and that the Dreyfus case was shortly to relegate the Jews to the lowest rung of the social ladder” (252). Our narrator mentions ‘the Jews’ as if he himself were not one, while acknowledging an event that was becoming extremely significant. This is the first passage we have read, in which our narrator seriously tackles reactions to the Dreyfus affair.

He continues “however fiercely the anti-Dreyfus cyclone might be raging, it is not in the first hour of a storm that the waves are at their worst” (253). It seems, Proust is writing with the benefit of hindsight, knowing now, that even though they were in the heat of the Dreyfus affair, things were to become even worse.

After remarking that Mme de Villeparisis had stayed uninvolved with the Dreyfus affair, our narrator says “a young man like Bloch whom no one knew might pass unnoticed, whereas leading Jews who were representative of their side were already threatened” (253). This quite formally acknowledges that even if one were a Jew, that does not mean they would feel the full weight of this case, as Proust explains further down the page “The Romanians, the Egyptians, the Turks may hate the Jews. But in a French drawing-room the differences between those peoples are not so apparent” (253). So, essentially, to the average French person, the Jews appeared so exotic, that they would be seen as just another Romanian, Egyptian or Turk.

Proust continues and his following depiction is vivid, “a Jew making his entry as though he were emerging from the desert, his body crouching like a hyena’s, his neck thrust forward, offering profound ‘salaams’, completely satisfies a certain taste for the orient” (253). Using one of his beloved descriptions Proust both represents the view of the average French person and attacks it. The French have essentially lumped anyone east of Europe into one ball called ‘the orient’ and he sees the average French person as viewing all of these people like animals, ‘hyenas’, separate from a French person and quite exotic, offering their Salaams, the Arabic word for ‘peace’. Jew or Arab or from the Orient, they are all the same to a French person.

With the previous text in mind, I was unprepared for the assault laid on by Proust in the next sentence “Only it is essential that the Jew in question should not be actually ‘in’ society, otherwise he will readily assume the aspect of a lord and his manners become so Gallicised that on his face a refractory nose, growing like a nasturtium in unexpected directions, will be more reminiscent of Moliere’s Mascarille than of Solomon” (253). This sentence is completely amazing and deserves more analysis than I can give it. Though the comment sounds derogatory, I cannot tell whether Proust is defending or attacking ‘the Jew in question’ but he is stating that if a Jew is to be part of society, rather than an exotic hyena, as in the previous sentence, than he will metamorphoses into a French man, Gallicised (as in becoming French) and whose nose will look like the French character Mascarille rather than that of a Jewish, or ‘Solomon’ nose.

Proust continues by disposing of the idea that Jews are taking over everything (a common myth throughout history) in quite a hilarious way “how marvellous the power of the race which from the depths of the ages thrusts forwards even into modern Paris, in the corridors of our theatres, behind the desks of our public offices, at a funeral, in the street, a solid phalanx, setting their mark upon our modern ways of hairdressing, absorbing, making us forget” etc, etc (253-254).

Proust then backpedals a little and attempts to justify the French position “we know from classical paintings the faces of the ancient Greeks, we have seen Assyrians on the walls of a palace at Susa. And so we feel, on encountering in a Paris drawing-room Orientals belonging to such and such a group, that we are in the presence of supernatural creatures whom the forces of necromancy must have called into being. Hitherto we had only a superficial image; suddenly it has acquired depth, it extends into three dimensions, it moves” (254). Alas, the French have only just seen paintings of these wonderful people that come from the East and are so in awe at having met the real thing that they cannot contain themselves. They are so used to viewing these people in paintings (no matter if they are Jew, or Turk, or Greek, etc) that they have transformed into fictional deities in the French mind and have now returned from the dead. In this sentence our narrator justifies the French position, but his scathing criticism of the way Jews are depicted has already been presented.

As Proust further explains “what we seek in vain to embrace in the shy young Greek is the figure admired long ago on the side of a vase” (255). Yet, for all the adoration heaped upon these deities of the past, forever immortalized in the vases and paintings of the French, the Frenchman finds them to be quite different, in fact, human: “where even a man of genius from whom, gathered as though around a table at seance, we expect to learn the secret of the infinite, simply utters these words, which had just issued from the lips of Bloch: take care of my top hat” (255).

On page 593 the narrator is walking with Elstir back to Elstir’s villa when he sees the band of girls he’s been obsessing about in the distance. He immediately concludes that they are judging him and freezes in anxiety when Elstir goes to meet them.
“Suddenly, as it were Mephistopheles springing up before simple objectification, unreal and diabolical, of the temperament diametrically opposed to my own, of the semibarbous and cruel vitality of which I, in my weakness, my excess of tortured sensibility and intellectuality, was so destitute – a few spots of the essence impossible to mistake for anything else, a few spores of the zoophytic band of girls, who looked as though they had not seen me but unquestionably engaged in passing a sarcastic judgment on me.”
Instead of going with Elstir he stays behind and pretends to be intrigued by the antique store window. He then assumes that Elstir will call him over and introduce him and in his imagination starts acting out the entire story of their potential introduction. The reason this particular moment in the book stands out to me is because I believe this scene really portrays a theme of lustful youth, and we really get a clear understanding of how insecure and anxious the narrator is at this point in his life. The narrator is so nervous to talk to these girls that instead of actually going up and talking to them he just gets lost in his own head thinking up different scenarios in which he would interact with them.
He cares so much about what others think that he cannot allow the girls to know that he has any interest in them at all, afraid of embarrassing himself or of being rejected. Instead he acts completely bored and uninterested when they are around.
“I was not sorry to give the appearance of being able to think of something other than these girls, and I was already dimly aware that when Elstir did call me up to introduce me to them I should wear that sort of inquiring expression which betrays not surprise but the wish to look surprised…” Pg.593
Instead of taking the situation into his own hands he almost just depends on the fact that a situational circumstance will bring him together with the girls. He fantasies the whole time on how they would meet, he’s gone over the whole moment so many times that he can perfectly describe each girls individual features. He often even compares the girls to objects.
“I saw Elstir standing a few feet away with the girls, bidding them good-bye. The face of the girl who stood nearest to him, round and plump and glittering with the light in her eyes, reminded me of cake on the top of which a place has been kept for a morsel of blue sky.” Pg.595
He assumes that Elstir will call him over and introduce him, and when he doesn’t and parts ways with the girls the narrator becomes immediately distraught. Instead of blaming himself for not walking up and introducing himself to the girls he instead puts all the blame on Elstir. Dramatically the narrator acts as though this was his only chance as though fate did not want them to meet. He believes that the brief moment of eye contact is all he’ll ever get.
“For a moment her eyes met mine, like those traveling skies on stormy days which approach a slower cloud, touch it, overtake it, pass it. But they do not know one another, and are soon driven far apart. So now are looks were for a moment confronted, each ignorant of what the celestial continent that lay before it held by way of promises or threats for the future. Only at the moment when her gaze was directly coincident with mine, without slackening its pace it clouded over slightly. So on a clear night the wind-swept moon passes behind a cloud and veils its brightness for a moment, but soon reappears. But already Elstir had left the girls without having summoned me. They disappeared down a side street; he came towards me. My whole plan was wrecked.” Pg.595
I think that this illustrates lustful youth because the narrator is completely obsessed with the girls, specifically Albertine, yet has no idea who she really is. He can describe to you in length every detail of her face but cannot muster the courage to talk to her. He claims he is in love with her, but his love is based solely on appearance. He has confused lust for love. He doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that she is actually a person but rather sees her more as an enchanting object, a pure creation from his own mind.
He is primarily seems to only be able to see things from his own perspective or self-interest which is a common behavioral trait for a young adult.

On page 615 the narrator has arrived at a “small party” which he has convinced his friend the painter Elstir to host in order that he might finally meet the allusive quarry he has been insatiably obsessing over for many weeks if not months. Before he arrives at this party, the narrator reflects on the role of willpower versus the fluctuating and often fickle function of the intelligence and sensibility.

My brain assessed this pleasure at a very low value now that it was assured. But, inside my will did not for a moment share this illusion, that will which is the persevering and unfalteringly faithful, toiling incessantly, and with no thought for the variability of the self, to ensure that the self may never lack what is needed (p.614).

As with much of the novel, Proust often investigates the many different facets of the self and how human nature is inundated with multiple natures and identities, sometimes conflicting with one another.  In this section, the narrator acknowledges the danger of succumbing to his intelligence and sensibility, which are lazy task-masters of his subconscious; urging him not to go to the party.

While, at the moment when we are about to start on an eagerly awaited journey, our intelligence and our sensibility begin to ask themselves whether it is really worth the trouble…(p. 614).

However, the narrator’s will is there, behind the scene tirelessly laboring to keep him physically on the path toward the goal. Willpower becomes the influence through which the narrator strives to inflict direction on his actions and control over his vacillating emotions. Proust is highlighting willpower’s ability to control behavior, sometimes passively behind the scenes, in which it becomes an integral and almost foundational part of a person’s personality and motivations.

…but since [willpower] is silent, gives no account of its actions, it seems almost non-existent; it is by its dogged determination that the other constituent parts of our personality are led…(p. 614).

In the end the narrator’s willpower succeeds in overcoming the other aspects of his character in which he calls “lazy”. However we can speculate that other emotions such as fear, anxiety and lack of self-confidence may also be imposing their ambitions upon the narrator, perhaps even mislabeled as “intelligence and sensibility”.

Once the narrator arrives at the party, Proust yet again, dives into the complexity of our cognitive perception, when the narrator is struck by an unfamiliar impression of Albertine.  This visual depiction of a girl supposedly to be Albertine is inconsistent with the image he has so painstakingly constructed in his own mind. Here, Proust demonstrates the ability of our minds to diverge from reality and flavor our perceptions with our own colorful filter. In other words, the narrator has spent weeks constructing and fantasizing about a girl he has only observed from afar, the Albertine he creates is modeled from his own desires and identity. Like everything we encounter, Albertine is an example of how our ego interacts with the external world through perception.

When I arrived at Elstir’s a few minutes later, I thought at first that Mlle Simonet was not in the studio. There was certainly a girl sitting there in a silk frock, bareheaded, but one whose marvelous hair, whose nose, whose complexion, meant nothing to me, in whom I did not recognize the human entity that I has extracted from a young cyclist in a polo-cap strolling past between myself and the sea (p.615).

However this important moment of conflicted internal and external recognition, is immediately dismissed by the narrator as he becomes drawn into the excitement of the social gathering. Proust now abruptly shifts course to feature another example of human nature, as he describes how the narrator, young and impetuous, is immediately caught up in the experience of the party.

On entering any social gathering, when one is young, one loses consciousness of one’s old self, one becomes a different man, every drawing-room being a fresh universe in which, coming under the sway of a new moral perspective, we fasten our attention, as if they were to matter to us for all time, on people, dances, card-tables, all of which we shall have forgotten by the morning(p.615).

The narrator navigates the studio, moving though introductions, consuming strawberry tarts and listening intently to music. All the while avoiding the entire purpose of the gathering: to meet Albertine. Although Proust does not come out and say it, the narrator seems to be, through procrastination, prolonging the meeting.  It seems as though in this moment, he is faced with the inevitable answer to his quest: who is Albertine?

But is it not thus, in the bustle of daily life, with every true happiness, every great sorrow? In a room full of other people we receive from the women we love the answer, auspicious or fatal, which we have been awaiting for the last year. But we must go on talking, ideas come flocking one after another, unfolding a smooth surface which is pricked now and then at the very most by a dull throb from the memory, infinitely more profound but very narrow, that misfortunes has come upon us. If, instead of misfortunes, it is happiness, it may be that not until many years have elapsed will we recall that the most important event in our emotional life occurred without our having time to give it any prolonged attention or even to become aware of it almost, at a social gathering to which we has gone solely in expectation of that event (p. 616).

When the ultimate moment arrives, and Elstir asks the narrator to come with him to meet Albertine, he delays by eating a coffee éclair and talking to a man who he ends up giving the rose from his buttonhole to. (This becomes important later when he is surprised that Albertine recalls these actions from her own memory and perspective) The narrator gives these actions credit by recognizing that pleasure is like photography, and can be captured within one’s own memory filter to relive at a later time.

What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people (p.616).

As the narrator physically advances toward Albertine he mentally approaches her in stages of impression, from the impersonal facts such as her family name and connections, to the physical mole on her check and inflamed temple and finally to her individual character by way of her use of the phrase “perfectly”.  Each stage, of their meeting, bringing the illusionary Albertine closer to clashing with the original. The narrator is struck by a new view both optical and cognitive of Albertine, one that is very different from what he had constructed from his own beliefs.

If this incarnation of ourselves in the person who seemed to differ most from us is what does most to modify the appearance of the person to whom we have just been introduced, the form of that person still remains quite vague; and we may wonder whether it will turn out to be a god, a table or a basin. But, as nimble as the wax-modellers who will fashion a bust before our eyes in five minutes, the few words which the stranger is now going to say to us will substantiate that form and give it something positive and final that will exclude all the hypotheses in which our desire and our imagination has been indulging(p. 617).

The narrator now reflects on these “optical errors” in which invoked the entire formation of his imagined Albertine. He is forced to interlay these new true impressions with the illusionary ones, slowly letting any false assumption fall away. However the narrator recognizes the joy that the false Albertine brought him, and this “movement” toward replacing her with the real one.

And yet, whatever the inevitable disappointments that is must bring in its train, this movement towards what we have only glimpsed, what we have been free to dwell upon and imagine at out leisure, this movement is the only one that is wholesome for the senses, that whets their appetite (p. 620).

When the narrator arrives at home, he reflects on the encounter, using voluntary memory to acknowledging the differences between the real and the false Albertine. He uses the phrase “sleight of hand” to signify this combination of both Albertines in his memory.  Although they are significantly different, he projects the love of the false girl onto the real one so that he can admiring the new qualities that the he has discovered in Albertine that day.

In spite of which, since I had, in my conversations with Elstir, identified her with Albertine, I felt myself in honour bound to fulfil to the real the promises of love made to the imagined Albertine (p. 621).

The narrator then returns to relating memory to photography, explaining how each moment is solidified within our minds separately and without a specific order. This allows for moments to be recalled in any order in which they are triggered, and thus in this case allows for a natural dilution between the false memories of the imaginary Albertine and these recent ones of the real one. This mix creates the impression, and invokes feelings for a new Albertine in which embodies both real and imaginary traits. The narrator, once obsessed with a replica Albertine, forged by his imagination and fueled by the thrilling ambiguity of not knowing the real one, now is confronted with challenge of merging the two. How will the real Albertine live up to the imaginary one, only time will tell.

And then, since memory begins at once to record photographs independent of one another, eliminates every link, any kind of sequence between the scenes portrayed in the collection which it exposes to our view, the most recent does not necessarily destroy or cancel those that came before. Confronted with the common place and touching Albertine to whom I had spoken that afternoon, I still saw the other mysterious Albertine outlines against the sea. These were now memories, that is to say pictures neither of which now seemed to me any truer than the other (p.621).

On pg 578 of Within a Budding Grove, the narrator learns the name of “the young cyclist” is Albertine Simonet. This immediately struck me after Trevor’s lecture and shedding light on Proust lover Albert. The feeling portrayed through this passage is very real and familiar of having the desire to meet someone, but you need a common friend to act as your medium. Was this Proust telling the story of his meeting with Albert? We know he was Proust driver. Was the bicycle metaphoric for Albert’s car? He was clearly passionate when he wrote these pages. Referring to Elstir as “a rainbow bridging a gulf between our terraqueous  world and regions which I had before thought inaccessible”. It seems clear to me that he saw Albert, or our narrator saw Albertine as an unobtainable being, and Elstir was his only hope to make this connection.  As for the rainbow; I’m unclear if he views Elstir as a new vibrant ray of hope connecting him to Albert/Albertine, or is the rainbow symbolic of a bridge physically connecting they’re existence, but in a way that’s intangible. You can see the connection, but remains physically disconnected.  Either way, he’s becoming smitten with the idea of Albert/Albertine, and hopes this meeting will result in Elstir inviting him/her in and break down the “barriers” between’ them. When this doesn’t happen, and Albertine merely says hello while passing by, I can feel his tension go through the roof! There would be a moment of deflation because what he hoped would transpire is now continuing down the rd. On the other hand, he’s now identified a common person to make this connection!

As a teenage boy we are often excited to meet girls, but somewhat terrified because we’re really just learning to approach and talk to those we are attracted to. Just to further this excitement, our narrator also discovers Elstir is friendly with the whole band of guttersnipe! Thanks to a very descriptive memory, he was able to describe each of the girls to Elstir and gather their names too. Could you imagine that you not only have a connection to one beautiful person, but a whole group!

But what of social standing? Where did Albert/Albertine and the band of guttersnipes fall in this food chain? Did Proust have this same confliction with Albert as our narrator does with Albertine, or was this written for the sake of defining middle class? What a foreign concept. This was a time of has or has not, so this confusion is completely understandable. Then when he understands these girls’ social standing, he turns to some bold adjectives describing middle class offspring.  He refers to them as nymphs, and further the “social metamorphosis” of this group he found so desirable. I wouldn’t normally take metamorphosis so poorly if not paired with nymphs. They’ve now been reduced to insects. But then refers to the mistake over classification so harsh that it has the same instantaneousness as a chemical reaction, because he put them in almost a smutty realm of being toys of a racing cyclist, or a prize fighters. In reality though these guttersnipes were the likely daughters of respectable parents such as lawyers. His first impressions were so powerful though that when recalled our narrator cannot fully link the actual Albertine with the first impressions of her because his opinion was so drastically different at each of these time frames.

Now for the time being, Elstir has fallen from the pedestal of divinity the narrator had placed him. He’s suddenly become a pawn in this chess match, and the narrator has plans to use him as such. Only Elstir has unknowingly foiled him by remaining in his groove to complete the piece he’s working before taking this walk. While fuming internally about why this is taking so long he fumbles though some of Elstir’s old sketches until he comes to one of “Miss Sacripant”. It’s captivating, but he doesn’t want to alert Elstir to this because it might very well further delay him meeting with the girls. Still he can’t remove himself from it. When he speaks up about it, Elstir tries to play it off as though it was just some silly thing he did as a young man. Until our narrator asks, “What has become of the model?” Then in an almost flustered moment Elstir insist that nothing was ever there between he and the model, but this should be put away quickly before Gabrielle comes. Before putting it away though, Elstir looks at this sketch a little deeper and criticizes his own work.

Gabrielle has come now, and our narrator is pissed because he knows it’s too late. The girls would be long gone. As he looks at Gabrielle, he thinks she is well past her prime, and just not very good looking to wear a man like Elstir on her arm. But then he looks closer at Elstir’s work, and realizes that she is truly a thing of beauty. This has obviously become a reoccurring theme, but here it is again. This time Elstir even gets into it though by having somewhat of an out of body experience as he realizes she is in all of his work. She is beautiful, and to have her would be comparable to stumbling across a Titan in your local Goodwill. She is his living portrait.