{"id":439,"date":"2015-04-08T19:40:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T02:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.evergreen.edu\/losttimejeremy\/?p=69"},"modified":"2015-04-08T19:40:37","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T02:40:37","slug":"madeleines-ears-week-two-close-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/madeleines-ears-week-two-close-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Madeleine\u2019s Ears \u2013 Week Two Close Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe little phrase continued to be associated in Swann\u2019s mind with his love for Odette.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A year before Swann\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019s recognition that Odette resembles Zipporah (2), a figure from a Botticelli painting, that he comes to see beauty in her, which \u201csatisfied his most refined predilections in matters of art.\u201d (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\u2019s both living the mind of an artist who has spiritual disinterestedness and as an art collector. From these beginning impressions of Swann\u2019s love for Odette, and the narrator\u2019s hints of Swann\u2019s failed relationship, we begin to see how this love is doomed to fail, since he\u2019s not really falling in love with the<\/em> Odette. This type of behavior resembles the fl\u00e2neur 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019t necessarily vile, but it is an important aside on the progression toward to this love\u2019s dissolution.<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here we see an acknowledgement from Swann of this illusionary love, which is only rekindled through the musical phrase. A lot of Swann\u2019s original character becomes transformed through this experience and infatuation with Odette.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in so far as Odette\u2019s 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)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I think this is one of the key fragments as to why Swann\u2019s love fails with Odette. This slight hint as to Odette\u2019s 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\u2019t immediately transparent, but which plays an important part in Swann\u2019s Way. The narrator of Combray is deeply interested in an idealist notion that the world is a creation of the mind, and through Swann\u2019s denial of Odette\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s love affair, and we\u2019re able to realize the reconstruction Swann is performing, hinting at the possibility of M\u2019s narrations being different from reality. The question then lies on whether what really happens matters, or whether how we constructed it matters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

1.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 294. Print.<\/p>\n

2.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 316. Print.<\/p>\n

3.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 317. Print.<\/p>\n

4.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 335-356. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}