With the end of the Swann in Love section comes a revisitation to the narrator’s account of his own memories. The topic of memory association is brought back, this time less specific to the person and the place but of the mental stimulation behind a name of a place. The power that a name holds is entirely subjective to one’s person’s imagination and perception according to Proust. Not only that, but it’s possible to recreate the sensation from being in a place from simply thinking about the name of place and the meaning one attaches to it.

Proust goes into the separation between the reality of a place and the fantasy the mind creates writing, “But if these names absorbed forever the image I had of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subjecting it’s reappearance in me to their own laws; consequence of this they made it more beautiful, but also more different from what the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could be in reality, and, by increasing the arbitrary joys of my imagination, aggravated the future disappointment of my travels.” (p. 403) He’s saying that mental experience and physical experience are not one in the same and have the potential to destroy your perceived reality. When one recalls a place in their mental sphere they have the ability to manipulate the details, but in reality the luxury of romanticization is lost. The thin line between imagined reality and factual reality has been crossed continuously throughout Swann’s Way. Everything from Swann’s love of Odette to the narrator’s fear of being kicked out of his house for wanting a kiss goodnight makes the reader anxious and uncomfortable because it isn’t apparent what should be taken literally. Even when a narrator is reliable and is doing their best to be factual, Proust is saying again that the truth is subject to one’s interpretation.

The importance of words and names in memory is discussed further. He says, “How much more individuality still did they assume from being designated by names, names that were theirs alone. Words present us with little pictures of things, clear and familiar, like those that are hung on the walls of schools to give children an example of what a workbench is, a bird, an anthill, things conceived of as similar to all others of the same sort.” (p. 403) Proust begins by saying that there is a benefit of a thing having a name, that the name brings to us the mental image of an object. However from what he was saying earlier, this image doesn’t necessarily do one justice when trying to recall something when the mind distorts and skews the actuality of an object or event.

He goes on to write, “But names present a confused image of people – and of towns, which they accustom us to believe are individual, unique like people- an image which derives from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the color with which it is painted uniformly, like one of those posters, entirely red, in which, because of the limitations of the process used or by a whim of the designer, not only the sky and the sea are blue or red, but the boats, the church, the people in the streets.” (p. 404) People and places become exceptions to the clarity which a name provides and instead they have the opposite effect on the mind than an object does. There are too many variables in humans and cities to be able to manifest a clear vision of the person or place; it’s up to imagination to fill in the parts of a memory which are too vague to bring the comfort the narrator wants from his memories. Things which are not definitive, memories that aren’t conscious, those are what the imagination amplify and adjust.

Further explanation comes from his example of Parma, “Because the name of Parma, one of the towns I had most wanted to visit ever since I had read La Chartreuse, seemed to me compact, mauve, and soft, if anyone mentioned a certain house in Parma in which I would be staying, he gave me the pleasure of thinking I would be living in a house that was smooth, compact, mauve, and soft, that bore no relation to the houses of any real town in Italy, since I had composed it in my imagination with the help only of that heavy syllable, Parme, in which no air circulates, and of all that I had made it absorb of Stendhalian softness and the tint of violets.” (p. 404) Creating a life in one’s mind for a word or a place is a recurring theme in Swann’s Way. Swann created a reality for himself around an idea of a person – Odette – who he only knew well enough to fantasize about. He adored her because he had associated every part of her with some joy he derived from the alternate reality of being in love with her. What happened with Odette is the same thing which happens when one visits a town which they have dreamt about: the reality does not live up the expectation and disappointment triumphs.

The narrator is attempting to describe the heaviness of Balbec, the place recalled which was so much grander in his mind than in reality. He knows that the dramatization happening is simply that, yet there’s a solace in Balbec being part fiction for him, as there was in Combray. He writes of Balbec in the same idealized way, “As for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on a piece of old Norman pottery that retains the color of the earth from which it was taken, one can still see depicted the representation of some outmoded custom, of some feudal right, of some locality in an earlier condition, of an abandoned habit of pronunciation which has formed it’s  heteroclite syllables…” (p. 404) Here he is comparing the comfort he finds in Balbec to a tribal language which is lost to the world, something instinctual, something which is unexplainable and yet automatic. It speaks to the natural quality of memory and association.

Swann’s Way has taken a look into the memory of a particular man and two specific places in a way which can be described by the selected section. Everything from Combray and his mother’s kiss to Swann and Odette have specific associations to the narrator and within those things are elements which have been emphasized and minimized in order to fit a certain perspective.

A Swan Song?

Close Read 490-493

Stacey’s Seminar

As we approach the end of this portion of In Search of Lost Time vol. 1, there is one thing that is apparent; Swann is obsessed with Odette. He pines and broods when he does not hear from her and constantly awaits the return of the jealousy that taunts him – Swann is exhausted, as is Odette, but in her case it is from the constant lying and scheming she must do, perhaps an expected hardship for a “kept-woman”[1]. Proust has touched again on involuntary memory triggered by the senses, not unlike the consumption of the madeleine (taste), but this time with the sonata (sound) that Swann hears on several occasions throughout Swann in Love but in this particular passage the song no longer evokes the feeling of love in the present time but rather the idea of the love that is now lost.

But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition was so agonizingly painful that his hand clutched at his heart.[2]

At this point in the story, it is hard to have any pity for this man, and it is sometimes hard to know what the intention of the narrator is. But Swann is a man whom, after being intentionally uninvited from the Verdurin’s romp at the Chatou, and consequently being barred from taking Odette home, chooses to walk through the Bois and essentially throw a temper-tantrum.[3] The beginning of this passage is the same, melodramatic mannerisms that seem to be commonplace for Swann, intentionally placed by Proust or our narrator? Or is Swann in fact now in so much pain that he cannot help but clutch at his heart? But here we having the song playing at a concert at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s, and upon hearing just a few notes, Swann is yet again thrust into an emotion state, this time involving shock, suffering, and unhappiness.

The violin had risen to a series of high notes on which it rested as though awaiting something, holding on to them in a prolonged expectancy, in the exaltation of already seeing the object of its expectation approaching, and with a desperate effort to last out until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expiring, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength, so that the stranger might pass, as one holds a door open that would otherwise automatically close.[4]

Again, we have Swann waiting for the phrase in the sonata, waiting for the notes, hovering with anticipation, unable to move or sway in stance, harboring the distress that would soon come, breathing in and out knowing the blow is inevitable, his heart would burst, the tears would fall, the violist would play, the notes would crush his eardrums, and this sentence, would, continue on; forever… These types of sentences run rampant throughout the text. Long, breathy sentences, wordy sentences, which pause, and move in such a way to make the reader, pause, and move. This sentence is particularly delightful as it does just what one can imagine the high notes that are described are doing. The sentence continues down, holding the reader, pausing the reader, making them wait, just as the high notes held Swann. A remarkable feat for a sentence; a remarkable feat for a song.

But it is too late, the song crashes down and Swann does not have time to flee from the impending doom that lingers in each note. It is a reminder of Odette and he must again wade through the memory of his memory of the last time he heard the song. And again, we are going in and out of memory: a memory when first recalled begets happiness which is then transferred onto Odette but now that that love has soured in Swann’s eyes, the memory is torture as it reminds him of the love they once shared, which he believes that she no longer feels.

…he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the specific, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all: the snowy, curled petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed after him into his carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips…[5]

Throughout the book, flowers seems to be a recurring theme, and in regards to Swann in Love, the chrysanthemum seems to symbolize the love between Swann and Odette, at least to Swann. After bringing Odette home in his carriage in the beginning of their affair, Odette plucks the last chrysanthemum from her garden, and hands it to Swann before he drives away. Swann then presses it to his lips and once it begins to wither, places it in his desk.[6] It is later mentioned that Swann finds these flowers “irritated” Swann, “…but it had pleased him, on this occasion…”.[7]

Another striking feature of this quote is the wording that is used. Swann recalls her tossing the chrysanthemum to him whereas when she gave it to him she handed it to him. This entire passage is an alteration of the happy memories that he once had with Odette which is triggered by the sonata; the idea of a flower being tossed to the recipient, instead of being handed, implies that the giver of the gift felt little for the gesture, the choice words alter the sentiment but this seems consistent with the state of self-pity that Swann has seemed to be in for some time now.

And Swann could distinguish, standing motionless before that scene of remembered happiness, a wretched figure who filled him with such pity, because he did not at first recognize who it was, that he had to lower his eyes lest anyone should observe that they were filled with tears. It was himself. When he realized this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that other self whom she had loved…[8]

Wrought with emotion, Swann finds himself brought to tears when thinking back on the love that once was. So much of Swann’s pain seems self-inflicted. He over analyses things to the point that the memories shift to become conducive to his self-torment, so much so that he is brought back to his jealous tendencies when thinking about not only the potential other lovers that Odette may have but the love that she once had for him.

The memory that Swann has of this sonata has changed throughout the progression of this story – something that once brought him great joy now brings him excruciating pain, so much so that he feels the need to clutch his chest when he hears it. One cannot help but wonder if perhaps he enjoys the pain, a cure for the boredom that seems to plague the wealthy or if Swann – or perhaps our narrator or Proust – just simply has a taste for the melodramatic.

[1] Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 446. Print.

[2] Ibid. 490.

[3] ibid. 404-407.

[4] Ibid. 490.

[5] Ibid. 491.

[6] Ibid. 311.

[7] Ibid. 312.

[8] Ibid. 493.

[Note as of 4/14: I posted this to my blog on Weds 4/8 for seminar on 4/9, but it never seems to have posted to the main site, so I am reposting in hopes it will show up this time]

This passage of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way describes the habitual events of the evenings Swann and Odette spent together in the early part of their love affair. Particularly, it focuses on the “little phrase” of the Vinteuil sonata that Swann found so enchanting and evasive some time before meeting Odette, which became “the national anthem of their love” (308). The passage highlights the relationship between the individual, emotional pleasure of Swann’s love for Odette and the shared sensory pleasure of the musical phrase. It details his experience listening to Odette play the phrase over and over, and the changes it provokes in his mind, body, and soul. Over the page and a half from “The little phrase continued to be associated in Swann’s mind with his love for Odette” to “He would make Odette play it over to him again and again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, as she did so, she must never stop kissing him,” Proust takes up several major themes of the book and issues of contemporary French life and culture.

One of the major questions we have encountered in this novel and in lectures and historical texts so far is that of the role of reason in modern life. The concept of the ability of individual human beings to use reason was one of the most important results of the Enlightenment, and reason maintained its position as one of our most important capacities until the rise of Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. Romanticism prized emotion and our relation to the natural world over reason, and it questioned the universality of Enlightenment concepts. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, proposed the idea of subjectivity of experience, the possibility that not everyone experiences the world in the same way. Though Proust was not born for a century after the Critique‘s publication, In Search of Lost Time continues to engage with questions of the role of reason, as opposed to the role of sensory perception or the role of emotion. It also engages with another major cultural concern of the Enlightenment still current in nineteenth century France: the relation of the individual to the collective, especially in the newly modernized Paris of Haussman and the Second Empire. In this passage, these questions are drawn to the forefront.

Near the beginning of the passage, the narrator notes that “when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged in his mind” (335) Swann can easily see himself abandoning his love for Odette and his evenings spent hearing the “little phrase” over and over. But the moment he hears the sonata, he abandons his reason instead. The sensory trigger bypasses his rational mind and goes straight into his emotional soul, overriding logic and even “those human considerations which affect all men alike,” ranging perhaps from the need for food and water to the need to protect his social standing and reputation. Indeed, Swann knows that loving Odette is not reasonable: “he realized that Odette’s qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company” (335). He is aware that Odette is not particularly intelligent (341), that she has vulgar taste (342), that her reputation is questionable and her status markedly lower than his (342-3). But when she plays the “little phrase,” he is “deprived of his logical faculty” and becomes a creature only of sensory perception and bare emotive soul (336). Interestingly, the narrator refers to reason as “the whole armour” of the “innermost soul” (336), implying that reason is less natural, inherent, and integral to humanity than is the soul, home of pleasure, sorrow, and love.

The idea that the soul is more essentially human than reason reverberates throughout the passage and its cultural context. The soul is where Swann holds his love for Odette, a love that he notes “[does] not correspond to anything outside itself, verifiable by others” (335) and is instead unique and individual to him. Swann is alienated by the individuality of his love for Odette, separated from the collective by the subjectivity of his experience. He recognizes, however, that the pleasure of listening to the sonata is not individual, that it is one of Kant’s moments of shared subjectivity in the face of a beautiful piece of art. Kant’s idea was that in sharing that experience of beauty, we can briefly understand other people as equally active subjects in this world, rather than the objects we regard them as the rest of the time. The connection to the collective produced by the sonata, however, is also inverted, when the music makes Swann into “a creature estranged from humanity” (336). Both the love he feels in his soul and the beauty he perceives with his senses can make Swann feel alienated. If the soul is the essential part of a person, and it is individual rather than universal in its experience, what does that say about the role of the individual in modern France?

This tension between sources of alienation is representative of the tension between reason and emotion, soul and body, Enlightenment ideals and Romantic ideals, historic and modern, that haunts the novel as a whole. This tension also exists in the relationship between the sonata and Swann’s love for Odette: in some ways it is pleasurable, pure, basic, natural; in others it is artificial, strained, isolating. There is no shared subjectivity in Swann’s love for Odette, which is reinforced by the frequent use of the word “possession” to describe their relationship, particularly its sexual elements. Swann regards her as an object to be possessed, a view of women the narrator also seems to hold, as evidenced by certain passages in “Combray” (the desire for a peasant-girl, 219-221). This pleasure in “possessing” Odette is closely related to the pleasure of the sonata, and the pleasure of love overall: the pleasures housed in the soul. The soul has an intimate connection with the body and its sensory capacities, as well as its sexual drives: the sonata deprives Swann of reason, of the ability to do anything but experience the sounds and the emotions they provoke, and kiss Odette. What implications does that special connection have about Romantic versus Enlightenment priorities of natural sensation and reason respectively, especially in relation to the changing role of the individual?

Though this passage raises these questions, it provides no answers. Its tone does not obviously praise or condemn Swann’s experience or choices. Though Proust frequently and generously uses adjectives and adverbs throughout the text, there are few descriptive turns from the narrator in this passage. Those that are present are brief and describe Swann’s experience of a situation, rather than the situation itself: “Odette’s affection might seem a little abrupt and disappointing,” the phrase’s “mysterious essence,” the “strange frenzy of intoxication” induced by the sonata (336). The only descriptive phrase that seems to originate from the narrator, rather than from Swann, describes what Swann becomes upon listening to the sonata: “a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature” (336). The word “fantastic” currently has a very positive connotation, but it can also mean simply “based on fantasy, not real” (Merriam-Webster). Thus it seems that the narrator takes no strong position on Swann’s actions or experiences with Odette and the sonata in this passage, or on the questions about individuality that these actions raise.

The question of whose perspective is embodied in the narration is omnipresent in “Swann in Love” and some sections of “Combray.” Though much of “Combray” is presented in first-person recollections, the narrator of those recollections is not present for all of the events discussed, and the events of “Swann in Love” occur before his birth or in his early childhood. This shift in ownership of the story is not easily resolved, and will probably be an ongoing issue over the course of the novel, like the tensions between historic and modern ideas and those among body, mind, and soul. This brief passage exemplifies the mastery and complexity of the novel as a whole: in just six hundred words, there is an incredible range of meaning expressed.

As we continue on in Swann’s Way, we find Swann falling more obsessively in love with Odette, a woman of questionable reputation he met at the nightly salons hosted by the Verdurins. Beginning on page 376, we find that though the Verdurins and their “faithful” have become tired of Swann and say unkind things behind his back. Perhaps this has something to do with the new “friendship” Odette has struck up with Forcheville. Swann, consciously or not, has chosen to ignore these murmurings, continuing to “regard all their absurdities in a rosy light, through the admiring eyes of love” (378).

Is Swann’s love for Odette causing him to see the world through some kind of filter, or is it completely blinding him? He adheres to their traditional meeting schedule, seeing each other only at night. He would be pleased to see her at any hour but sticks to this schedule because he fears she will tire of him. Losing Odette’s affection is Swann’s single greatest insecurity and it is beginning to consume him. He remains mostly unaware of what she does during the day. Because he cannot see her during the day he keeps himself occupied thinking of other ways to please her. Each time he sees a flower or jewel he thinks she would like he immediately considers sending it to her, imagining that she would share the thrill he feels when seeing it (subjective moment of connection, anyone?) and the joy of the gift would make her love him more. Swann wishes to be in Odette’s life at all times and these gifts give him the illusion that, when she receives them, “he might somehow feel himself transported into her presence” (378). To be with her whenever possible, even if he is not there physically, is his highest priority.

When Swann sends these gifts he hopes that they arrive to her before she goes out for the night. He hopes that, if he has so recently bestowed something lovely onto her, she will act more kindly toward him when he arrives to the Verdurins to meet her. Even better, perhaps she would write a note or even drop by his place before she went out to thank him. He is testing her reactions to his generosity, “to elicit from her intimate scraps of feeling which she had not yet revealed to him” (378).

This arrangement works well for Odette. She’s not financially stable and often turns to Swann for money. Swann doesn’t mind this. He’s happy to do anything “that might impress Odette by his love for her” (379), whether it be money, gifts or social influence. One might surmise that Odette is a bit of a gold digger. Her expressions of love for him seem to have cooled down quite a bit since the night in the carriage. “If anyone had said to him at the beginning ‘It’s your position that attracts her’ or or at this stage, ‘It’s your money she’s really in love with’ he probably would not have believed the suggestion” (379). Swann is not open to the idea that Odette may be using him. But it’s not only that Swann would not have believed any of these accusations toward Odette, he feels that it wouldn’t be so horrible if she was mainly interested in his money or social standing. Even if her greatest motivation in being with Swann is what the Narrator refers to as “self interest”, Swann could be okay with that. As long as he continues to have things to offer her, and she continues to need him, she will continue to be bound to him. If no one else can give her all that he can, she will remain his. Good enough.

This ties into the interesting contrast between his relationship with Odette and his previous affairs. Generally Swann is noted to mostly seduce working women of lower classes- cooks and seamstresses, for example. His dalliances with them are never described as “love”, but seem to be motivated mostly by sex. Because of his wealth, social standing and the idea that, in relationships, “the person who cares the least has the most power”, it would appear that Swann has always had the upper hand with women in his past. This is not the case with Odette, who has incredible power over him whether he realizes it or not. This is a drastic change from what he is used to and could be what is feeding into his fixation and motivating his obsessive love, his need to be with her no matter what, at any price.

Swann relies on these gifts and favors because they have nothing to do with his charm, looks or intelligence. They are “advantages extraneous to his person” and “a relief from the endless, killing effort to make himself attractive to her” (379). He is now “living by love alone”, and when he sometimes doubts that this is indeed love he reminds himself how much he’s paying for it, “convinced by the rare quality and and absolute detachment of (his) own taste” (379). Swann has now come to terms, consciously or not, with the fact that he is buying Odette’s love. He decides that keeping her affections through material objects is acceptable because he has made the conscious, informed decision to do so. And because he cannot live without her love.

This realization leads him to one day recall that Odette was once referred to by someone as a “kept woman”. He finds his idea of a kept woman, a combination of mystery and evil, “poison dripping flowers interwoven with precious jewels” (380) in total opposition to his vision of Odette. She is a person able to feel emotions, capable of empathy, more in line with his mother and his friends than with a witch or some kind of evil temptress. After all, Odette shows interest in him, talks to him about his his home, his collections, his banker… which reminds him, he needs to call that banker to withdraw some funds. More money for Odette. This is almost funny, the fact that though “keeping” Odette is exactly what Swann is doing yet his image of a “kept woman” is something subhuman, dark and whorish. The opposite of how he views his love.

Swann has convinced himself that if he gives her any less than he already is, if he denies her the material things she longs for, she’s going to stop loving him. Her affections will wane because slowing or ending this generosity will make her think that he no longer loves her. But wait… isn’t that what “keeping a woman” actually is? Can you “keep a woman” without it being gross and shameful? Can the exchange of money and favors just be normal, an expression of love? Can she technically be a kept woman and still remain someone worthy of being respected, thought of as virtuous and deserving? There’s no way, he thinks, she’s accepted generosity of this caliber from any other man. He’s not keeping her. They just have a unique arrangement. More proof she loves him, surely.

It exhausts him to think too long about this quandary and his mind rejects it, seemingly shutting out the thought completely. He performs the habit inherited from his father, running his hand across his eyes. When he is able to think again, he is met with only one idea: this month he is going to send Odette even more money than usual.

The power dynamic between Swann and Odette is of particular interest in Swann in Love.  From the beginning the reader is told that Odette is a sort of call-girl (pg 366), much like the woman who visits the narrator’s uncle in Combray, the type of woman who makes an art of turning men’s words “into a jewel, a work of art, into something “exquisitely charming” (pg 107).  When the two first meet Swann finds Odette unintelligent and lacking in the beauty he so often desires, but in her willful attention towards him he begins to fall for her (pg 277).  In likening her to the paintings he admires he is finally able to see her as beautiful, but more than that, as a piece of art to collect (pg 318).

As their relationship develops more the language to describe Swann’s love for Odette is clearly about having power over her.  The narrator describes Swann’s feelings of wanting to ‘possess’ her, the ‘object’ which he has ‘mastery’ over.  Swann even uses manipulation tactics to gain her attention and submission as he writes letters specifically to rile up her emotions of insecurity and passion (pg 319).  But slowly a transition begins to occur in Swann’s behavior towards Odette.

There is an arc to Swann’s behavior in regard to Odette.  When their relationship begins he cares little for her passions or interests, and pushes his own interests on to her.  As evidenced with her piano music, he cares nothing for the piece she loves, but has her constantly play the one he enjoys (pg 355).  Swann often views her as lacking the ability to see or understand what he sees in certain works of art, and views her interests in certain plays as lowly.  The way she spends her days when not with him are even inconceivable, describing her daytime activities as “a life almost non-existent, since it was invisible to him” (pg 341).

Then a shift begins to occur.  Swann starts paying more attention to Odette’s life, and who she spends it with.  He throws himself wholly into whatever she thinks and enjoys, abandoning his own passions, in order to be closer to her (pg 349).  He even abandons certain friends and activities he enjoys more in favor of socializing with the Verdurin’s simply because they are an avenue for him to spend more time with Odette (pg 352).  He is investing more into her, no longer putting on his aloof mask or feigning indifference to attract her.

This role reversal of who is in power culminates at dinner with the Verdurin’s when Odette announces “Yes, I know you have your banquet tomorrow; I shan’t see you, then, till I get home; don’t be too late” (pg 385).  With that simple phrase Odette has made clear to everyone at the Verdurin’s the nature of her and Swann’s relationship.  The following paragraph has Swann reflecting on how superior he is to Odette, juxtaposed with his anxiety and insecurities about their relationship.  He continues to look down on her, saying that she is so far beneath him it isn’t even impressive to have conquered her.  This brings to mind the image of a large man bullying a small man with glasses; there is nothing heroic in his victory over someone who poses no challenge.  Yet, even in his victory Swann is not “secure” in his “absolute mastery” over Odette (pg 385).  He has begun to see that others want her, and his feigned indifference could cause her to leave him for those who show their love for her.  In the final lines of the paragraph he thanks her for “the pleasures which it was in her power to bestow on him,” and that “so long as his love should last and he remain vulnerable” it is in her power to protect him from these feelings of insecurity and jealousy(pg 385).

This role reversal continues to be more evident as Swann in Love continues and we see even more how Swann bends to Odette’s will.  Suddenly now it is her that is too busy to see him, where previously she was always free for him. In order to remain secure in his position with Odette he sends her more money each month to ensure that she knows he loves her.  Throughout this time Swann still is of the mindset that it is he who has power over who Odette throws parties with, and what events she can receive invitations to.  Ultimately though, she has succeeded in getting him to willingly fund her lifestyle.  They have shifted roles.  It is now Odette who is aloof and towards Swann; it is Odette who determines where Swann is and isn’t allowed when she is out in public.  In an attempt to gain power over Odette, Swann has given her power over himself.

Work referenced

In Search of Lost Time, Vol 1; Swann’s Way.  Marcel Proust.

“The little phrase continued to be associated in Swann’s mind with his love for Odette.

A year before Swann’s introduction to Odette and the Verdurin nucleus, he hears a musical phrase (1) from a piano which enraptures him, transcending him in those short seconds it is played, opening his imagination, and leaving him with an impression longing to be relived and revived. This musical phrase is to become one of the key elements involved with Swann’s idealized love of Odette. Not unlike the narrator of Combray, who recollects his younger days at Combray, particularly of his Aunt Leonie, through the combination of a Madeleine and Tea, Swann in Love reminisces of this phrase’s initial feelings and transposes them toward Odette. These two scenarios bring about two distinct types of memory: involuntary and voluntary. The narrator of Combray is struck by his reminiscence, recalling those days as an unconscious result from the Madeleine and Tea, whereas Swann is an active participant in shaping his response to this musical phrase, continually revising and attempting to relive this memory and feeling through Odette.

He was well aware that his love was something that did not correspond to anything outside itself, verifiable by others besides him; he realized that Odette’s qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company.

Looking at how Swann falls in love with Odette seems strange at first, but gives us a great example of some of the modern ideas floating around this changing Paris. It is through Swann’s recognition that Odette resembles Zipporah (2), a figure from a Botticelli painting, that he comes to see beauty in her, which “satisfied his most refined predilections in matters of art.” (3) In continually performing this juxtaposition, he can see Odette in a new light, which reassures himself of having fine aesthetic taste. It is in this reasoning that he finds justice in spending so much time diverted toward Odette, he’s both living the mind of an artist who has spiritual disinterestedness and as an art collector. From these beginning impressions of Swann’s love for Odette, and the narrator’s hints of Swann’s failed relationship, we begin to see how this love is doomed to fail, since he’s not really falling in love with the Odette. This type of behavior resembles the flâneur of the time, somewhat paradoxically, people of leisure who wasted time and observed their surroundings and the city, instead of being an active participant in it. Again, like the narrator M, who at one point is struggling with artistic creation, and finds inspiration through Guermantes, Swann finds a sort of artistic aptitude through Odette and something interesting and different to pursue.

Another point worth mentioning, is that Swann generally puts down Odette, and dismisses her as generally less intelligent and less keen on society and art. This doesn’t fit with our contemporary views on how love is perceived-something which contains mutual respect and appreciation. Not only is Swann seeing a seamstress on the side, but he wants Odette to be aware that he has better occupations to do than spent time with her, thus making her want to pine for his attention. This flirtatious mechanic isn’t necessarily vile, but it is an important aside on the progression toward to this love’s dissolution.

And often, when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged in his mind, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure.

Here we see an acknowledgement from Swann of this illusionary love, which is only rekindled through the musical phrase. A lot of Swann’s original character becomes transformed through this experience and infatuation with Odette.

But the little phrase, as soon as sit struck his ear, had the power to liberate in him the space that was needed to contain it; the proportions of Swann’s soul were altered; a margin was left for an enjoyment that corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external object and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely individual, but assumed for him a sort of reality superior to that of concrete things. This thirst for an unknown delight was awakened in him by the little phrase, but without bringing him any precise gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts of Swann’s soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all concern for material interests, those human considerations which affect all men alike, were left vacant by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to inscribe the name of Odette.

Swann has become intoxicated by this remembrance of the phrase of the past, and in this transcendent, unattainable space, has placed Odette as an anchor, a concrete object. There is an allusion toward consumerism and fetishism pointed out in this section of the passage, which when acknowledged and denied, creates an empty space where desire lies and needs fulfillment, and we see Swann deciding to place Odette into.

Moreover, in so far as Odette’s affection might seem a little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would come to supplement it, to blend with it its own mysterious essence.” (4)

I think this is one of the key fragments as to why Swann’s love fails with Odette. This slight hint as to Odette’s non-mutual affection is quickly swept away and blatantly denied by Swann in favor for the momentary pleasure of which the musical piece affords him. The reconstruction of reality is a philosophical motif that isn’t immediately transparent, but which plays an important part in Swann’s Way. The narrator of Combray is deeply interested in an idealist notion that the world is a creation of the mind, and through Swann’s denial of Odette’s waning love, we see him attempt to reconstruct the world to fit in a more ideal setting. Memory has a lot to say about this, because what we actively choose to deny and recreate, becomes ingrained in that moment, and is remembered as such, so that we may in fact forget that denial and what you remember as happening is susceptible to falsehood. This conscious recreation can ignore the present completely, and in Swann’s desire to remember the past, he is akin to a blind man in seeing Odette. What we are seeing from the third person in Swann In Love, is an objective retelling of Swann’s love affair, and we’re able to realize the reconstruction Swann is performing, hinting at the possibility of M’s narrations being different from reality. The question then lies on whether what really happens matters, or whether how we constructed it matters.

Works Cited

1.)    Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 294. Print.

2.)    Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 316. Print.

3.)    Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 317. Print.

4.)    Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 335-356. Print.

This passage of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way describes the habitual events of the evenings Swann and Odette spent together in the early part of their love affair. Particularly, it focuses on the “little phrase” of the Vinteuil sonata that Swann found so enchanting and evasive some time before meeting Odette, which became “the national anthem of their love” (308). The passage highlights the relationship between the individual, emotional pleasure of Swann’s love for Odette and the shared sensory pleasure of the musical phrase. It details his experience listening to Odette play the phrase over and over, and the changes it provokes in his mind, body, and soul. Over the page and a half from “The little phrase continued to be associated in Swann’s mind with his love for Odette” to “He would make Odette play it over to him again and again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, as she did so, she must never stop kissing him,” Proust takes up several major themes of the book and issues of contemporary French life and culture.

One of the major questions we have encountered in this novel and in lectures and historical texts so far is that of the role of reason in modern life. The concept of the ability of individual human beings to use reason was one of the most important results of the Enlightenment, and reason maintained its position as one of our most important capacities until the rise of Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. Romanticism prized emotion and our relation to the natural world over reason, and it questioned the universality of Enlightenment concepts. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, proposed the idea of subjectivity of experience, the possibility that not everyone experiences the world in the same way. Though Proust was not born for a century after the Critique‘s publication, In Search of Lost Time continues to engage with questions of the role of reason, as opposed to the role of sensory perception or the role of emotion. It also engages with another major cultural concern of the Enlightenment still current in nineteenth century France: the relation of the individual to the collective, especially in the newly modernized Paris of Haussman and the Second Empire. In this passage, these questions are drawn to the forefront.

Near the beginning of the passage, the narrator notes that “when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged in his mind” (335) Swann can easily see himself abandoning his love for Odette and his evenings spent hearing the “little phrase” over and over. But the moment he hears the sonata, he abandons his reason instead. The sensory trigger bypasses his rational mind and goes straight into his emotional soul, overriding logic and even “those human considerations which affect all men alike,” ranging perhaps from the need for food and water to the need to protect his social standing and reputation. Indeed, Swann knows that loving Odette is not reasonable: “he realized that Odette’s qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company” (335). He is aware that Odette is not particularly intelligent (341), that she has vulgar taste (342), that her reputation is questionable and her status markedly lower than his (342-3). But when she plays the “little phrase,” he is “deprived of his logical faculty” and becomes a creature only of sensory perception and bare emotive soul (336). Interestingly, the narrator refers to reason as “the whole armour” of the “innermost soul” (336), implying that reason is less natural, inherent, and integral to humanity than is the soul, home of pleasure, sorrow, and love.

The idea that the soul is more essentially human than reason reverberates throughout the passage and its cultural context. The soul is where Swann holds his love for Odette, a love that he notes “[does] not correspond to anything outside itself, verifiable by others” (335) and is instead unique and individual to him. Swann is alienated by the individuality of his love for Odette, separated from the collective by the subjectivity of his experience. He recognizes, however, that the pleasure of listening to the sonata is not individual, that it is one of Kant’s moments of shared subjectivity in the face of a beautiful piece of art. Kant’s idea was that in sharing that experience of beauty, we can briefly understand other people as equally active subjects in this world, rather than the objects we regard them as the rest of the time. The connection to the collective produced by the sonata, however, is also inverted, when the music makes Swann into “a creature estranged from humanity” (336). Both the love he feels in his soul and the beauty he perceives with his senses can make Swann feel alienated. If the soul is the essential part of a person, and it is individual rather than universal in its experience, what does that say about the role of the individual in modern France?

This tension between sources of alienation is representative of the tension between reason and emotion, soul and body, Enlightenment ideals and Romantic ideals, historic and modern, that haunts the novel as a whole. This tension also exists in the relationship between the sonata and Swann’s love for Odette: in some ways it is pleasurable, pure, basic, natural; in others it is artificial, strained, isolating. There is no shared subjectivity in Swann’s love for Odette, which is reinforced by the frequent use of the word “possession” to describe their relationship, particularly its sexual elements. Swann regards her as an object to be possessed, a view of women the narrator also seems to hold, as evidenced by certain passages in “Combray” (the desire for a peasant-girl, 219-221). This pleasure in “possessing” Odette is closely related to the pleasure of the sonata, and the pleasure of love overall: the pleasures housed in the soul. The soul has an intimate connection with the body and its sensory capacities, as well as its sexual drives: the sonata deprives Swann of reason, of the ability to do anything but experience the sounds and the emotions they provoke, and kiss Odette. What implications does that special connection have about Romantic versus Enlightenment priorities of natural sensation and reason respectively, especially in relation to the changing role of the individual?

Though this passage raises these questions, it provides no answers. Its tone does not obviously praise or condemn Swann’s experience or choices. Though Proust frequently and generously uses adjectives and adverbs throughout the text, there are few descriptive turns from the narrator in this passage. Those that are present are brief and describe Swann’s experience of a situation, rather than the situation itself: “Odette’s affection might seem a little abrupt and disappointing,” the phrase’s “mysterious essence,” the “strange frenzy of intoxication” induced by the sonata (336). The only descriptive phrase that seems to originate from the narrator, rather than from Swann, describes what Swann becomes upon listening to the sonata: “a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature” (336). The word “fantastic” currently has a very positive connotation, but it can also mean simply “based on fantasy, not real” (Merriam-Webster). Thus it seems that the narrator takes no strong position on Swann’s actions or experiences with Odette and the sonata in this passage, or on the questions about individuality that these actions raise.

The question of whose perspective is embodied in the narration is omnipresent in “Swann in Love” and some sections of “Combray.” Though much of “Combray” is presented in first-person recollections, the narrator of those recollections is not present for all of the events discussed, and the events of “Swann in Love” occur before his birth or in his early childhood. This shift in ownership of the story is not easily resolved, and will probably be an ongoing issue over the course of the novel, like the tensions between historic and modern ideas and those among body, mind, and soul. This brief passage exemplifies the mastery and complexity of the novel as a whole: in just six hundred words, there is an incredible range of meaning expressed.

Proust’s novel Swann’s Way is rife with philosophical ponderings, which he portrays through a variety of vivid descriptions and complex characters. His philosophy ranges across many themes, but he focuses heavily on the pursuit of happiness and love in a world filled with unspoken rules of conduct, and  class, or more importantly, how one’s perceived class can be the determinant of your access to happiness and love. These same themes have come up in lectures and films in the In Search of Lost Time program. A section of  Swann’s Way which is ripe with the aforementioned concepts can be found on pages 270, starting at the beginning of the last paragraph of the page, to page 272. First this paper will highlight the manner in which the themes of happiness/love and class are expressed in the passage, and how they are used to express the idea that the drive to find love and joy in life is powerful, but the power of class can limit one’s access to such prizes, leaving only the privileged class to take or leave their position in life as it suits them. Secondly, to illustrate the thematic nature of the topics of pleasure and class, the passage will be tied to a previous portion of the novel. Lastly, the manner in which the passage relates to the program over all will be explored.

The passage starts by contrasting the character Swann to most other people who who have a “sense of obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur” to confine themselves to a particular portion of life. Right away the author is touching on the topic of class and how it can confine people. Using a beautiful simile he likens it to being a “moored house-boat.” He goes on to say that this manner of existing causes them to “abstain from the pleasures” which exist outside their station. They “remain confined” resigning themselves to “mediocre distractions.”In other words, the structure of class often keeps people from accessing that which would make them truly happy, and believing they can’t overcome their class, they settle for less.

In contrast, specifically in the case of romance, Swann does not force himself to enjoy what he already has before him, but seeks out that which he already enjoys naturally: “Swann did not make an effort to find attractive the women with whom he spent his time, but sought to spend his time with women he already found attractive.” So for swan, love, or at least lust and the pursuit of his desires, transcended class. The manner in which Swann approaches the issue of intimate relations was described as being rather shallow in contrast to how he approached  his appraisal of intellectual matters such as art. “Depth of character-would freeze his senses, which were aroused at the sight of abundant, rosy flesh.”

The succeeding paragraph continues with the theme of class, saying that if Swann happened upon a family which it would be inappropriate for him to associate with, or  “cultivate,” that the sight of a woman with a “special charm” would override such codes of conduct. It is made clear that Swann sees class as something of an obstruction to his desires. To him, to stay on his “high horse”, that is to turn up his nose because of being of a higher station, rather than engaging in an available pleasure, would be “cowardly”. To use the word cowardly in this context implies that Swann sees his romantic exploits as a sort of adventure, as if trying to cross the imaginary lines of class was a daring and  noble feet.  Yet Swann’s pursuits seem to fall some what short of noble, because it is pleasure rather than love which seems to be his true obsession.  As someone with a lofty class standing he may harvest the attention and affections of women from any station he so chooses without fear of repercussion, at least not to the degree that a subordinate male may. So though he may at times resent how his privileged status creates some difficulty in obtaining the objects of his desire, he has the freedom to take or leave it at will. A clever metaphor is used at the bottom of page 271 to express this; Swann’s class is described as a collapsible tent and “any part of it which could not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would have given away for nothing.”

Swann’s class can even be used to his advantage in many cases, for instance he may use the social credit he has with a duchess, due to her infatuation with him, to get close to the daughter of someone who works for her. He is likened to a “starving man bartering a diamond for a crust of bread.” In this way Swann manipulates others with his class, using it when it is convenient for him and abandoning it when it isn’t. Ironically, he is casting aside that which gives him the freedom to do so.

Due in part to Swanns uncommon disregard for his class, It is almost humorous how important the matter is to other characters, especially the narrator’s family. Throughout the beginning of the novel, the family of Combray believes that he is of equal status to them, but that he is associating with those of a lower class, when he has in fact risen above their station. The family is described as having an “utter ignorance of the brilliant social life which Swann led(19).” The family is correct in some respects, for Swann’s friendship with them, in addition to many of his affairs, could be described as “slumming it “ with those below his station. The family also passes judgement on Swann’s romantic as well as social life, affirming the the passages claim that social class played a pivotal role in determining whom one could fall in love with. Swann’s wife, who they have never in fact met, is assumed to be of such low social standing that they liken her to a “prostitute(26).”

The passage at hand relates to many of the topics which we have been discussing in other parts of the program. For instance, this passage not only plays with the themes of the pursuit of pleasure and classes role in that, but how arbitrary class really is if one can only allow their mind to let go of what society has taught you about it’s importance. It is the mind which creates the imposing reality of class. Such an idea can be tied to the philosophy of Descartes and his pondering of weather it was ones own mind which created the physical world. This idea which we discussed in lecture is in a sense true when it comes to the limitations that we participating in helping setup, such as class.

During lecture the rise of the middle class in Europe was covered as well, and how determining one’s social status became about expressing your standing through material possessions, your occupation, and your income, more than through title alone. We discussed how succeeding in those areas was believed then, and now, to be the path to happiness. So class is really just as important today as it was in the time of M. Swann.

The film Boyhood, which we viewed in class, also focuses on the belief that class predicts happiness. The protagonist’s mother works tirelessly through the first half of the film to get a better job, make more money, buy a big house, and find love. Yet, towards the end, she laments that rather than making her happy, that materials which she has acquired to lift her status, now makes her feel bogged down.

The imaginative writing style of Proust allows him to make remarks on the matters of pleasure seeking and class in a number of ways. He presents a scenario in which it is easy for the reader, with some thought, to formulate an idea of how important the matter of class was back in 18th century France, and how it still may affect how we approach life, and what desires we deem to be within our grasp. The same themes, have also been key points of interest through out other aspects of the In search of Lost time Program, making Swann’s Way a sort of philosophical companion to the course.

The student scheduled to post a close reading for Monday’s seminar is unable to post. So, here’s the new plan: To start off our discussion, I’ll guide the seminar through a close reading of the segments on M. and Mlle. Vinteuil. The first is pp. 208-211 (from “Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil at that time…”, to “when M. Vinteuil should appear with his daughter at Tansonville”). The second is pp. 224-233 (“It is perhaps from another impression which I received…” to the break in the text). Please give these passages an additional reading, so we can examine them together.

On page 245, of Swann’s Way, we are introduced to the Duchesse/Mme de Guermantes, a member of French royalty and future love interest of Marcel. Immediately preceding her entrance into the novel, the narrator has been constructing elaborate romantic fantasies of Mme de Guermantes based upon her royal pedigree, which can be traced back to the semi-mythical Genevieve de Brabant, various works of art (including the ‘magic lantern’ of his childhood), and the natural beauty of the Guermantes way. The intensity of these fantasies quickly overwhelm the young narrator and he must turn to his father’s perceived ability to “transgress laws… more ineluctable than the laws of life and death” for comfort.  Failing at that, he falls into a morbid depression stemming from his inability to accept his own mortality which we can assume is narcissistic at its core because of the narrators ability to take impersonal encounters with death in stride, most recently, Aunt Leonie’s, which he dealt with by teasing the grieving Francoise and enjoying long walks in the country.

The first enocunter with Mme de Guermantes:

　          Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the verger, by moving to one side, enabled me to see in one of the chapels a fair-haired lady with a large nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy and new and bright, and a little pimple at the corner of her nose. And because on the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had been very hot, I could discern, diluted and barely perceptible, fragments of resemblance with the portrait that had been shown to me; because, more especially, the particular features which I remarked in this lady, if I attempted to catalogue them formulated themselves in precisely the same terms–a large nose, blue eyes–as Dr. Percepied had used when describing in my presence the Duchesse de Guermantes,

This is a strictly physical description in which the reader is given no sense of the grandeur and romance that has already been invested into this character. The pimple on her nose is an unattractive detail that strips Mme de Guermantes of her superidealized perfection. Then the narrator says to himself, “This lady is like the Duchesse de Guermante.” He is, at this first instant, incapable of accepting a reality that disagrees with his fantasy.

Now the chapel from which she was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath the flat tombstones of which, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb, rested the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having heard it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family, whenever any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there was, indeed, but one woman resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there, could be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was immense.

Mme de Guermantes is literally couched in the physical representation of her royal heritage in a spot reserved for her personage and the narrator still has to take a beat and go through this deductive process in order to accept the fact of her identity. Now struggling to reconcile this reality with his idealizations, the narrator realizes that he had, in his minds eye, stripped Mme de Guermantes of her humanity and elevated (it may be argued reduced) her into a work of art. The idolatry of art, otherwise the valuation of art and aesthetics as ‘greater than’ reality, is a central theme in Swann’s Way. Often we will find a character will be unsympathetic towards another character until such time as they can read into the other’s plight an artistic/historic allusion. From these recurrences, we infer a key motif in the work: Reality is valued in aesthetic terms.

To the previous point, we have now met Mme de Guermantes unmediated by the powerful associations of her name and for an instant we see her as an ordinary character. The narrator must now resolve the discrepancy between Mme de Guermnates as a fluid and compliant emblem for eternal romance and beauty and Mme de Guermantes as just another mortal under “subjection to the laws of life.” He fails utterly and is completely unrepentant about this fundamental flaw in his perception of reality. Instead, we are treated to a lengthy passage in which the narrator indulgently details an entirely new elaborate romantic fantasy in which Mme de Guermantes falls in love with him for no discernable reason. We follow the thread of this fantasy to a reflection on his ambition to become a great writer, which predictably leads him to another morbid depression.

But even if the narrator is blinded by his delusion, the text reveals the hypocrisy inherent in the narrator’s paradoxical understanding of the world around him. The narrator treasures his obsessive fantasies, these romantic artifices, consciously constructed delusions, above all else, refusing to relinquish them even when squarely confronted with contrary evidence. Yet, if one follows the trajectory of these fantasies, they always lead to some melancholy pit and the remedies always come about absent of any self-conscious impetus. Proust ties spontaneous or unwilled memories or experiences with his deepest feelings of joy or enchantment. The things that give him true joy come unbidden and are usually banal or natural (the madeleine, the Hawthorne).

These themes prefigure the novel’s central investigation: the search for/creation of one’s true identity. Who am I? How can one even begin to recognize ‘I’? etc. Proust attempts to answer these questions by exploring the nature of memory, which he (we can confidently assume) believes crucial to the nature of identity. But in this exploration, we see that memory is very rarely honest. Furthermore, it is not even benign. Memory is outright seditious, undermining our attempts to know other people, places, and ourselves by superimposing the colors of our own secret (even to us) desires upon every image that we see. This brings the validity of the entire Combray section of the novel into question as it composed largely of personal recollections of Marcel, as opposed to ‘Swann in Love’ in which the narrator seems to switch into an omniscient third-person. Marcel’s memories are simply not reliable. He plays with temporal relationships the same way that the Impressionists would play with relationships of light and color in order to achieve an image more accurate to his feelings than to objective reality. The final question we arrive at from this is: Does that matter? That is to say, does it matter as to the construction of an individual’s identity whether or not that individual has knowledge outside of the sphere in which his identity colors and alters all information? Proust has demonstrated that perception is suspect to a myriad of foibles and follies and that everything we know must first be mediated by that flawed perceptive organ and therefore is suspect of all the same foibles and follies.

Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing someone we know” is to some extent an intellectual process… (Pg. 23)

…like every attitude or action which reveals a man’s underlying character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit’s own testimony, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not been the victims of hallucination… (Pg. 177)