Kylog

After reading “Combray” and now diving into the first hundred pages or so of “Swann in Love,” I’m struck by a number of differences between the two sections. First, the narrator truly vanishes (with a minor exception on page 211, Proust would be nothing if he were consistent or ideological): this is a straight (hee hee), non-memoir-ish, 3rd person narrative. Yes, there are still the characteristic Proustian digressions and wise words (”as we all know whenever we …” kind of stuff), but it’s not about Proust/Marcel. Shocking really. Related to this is the linearity of the narrative, again in marked contrast to “Combray,” where the reader is frequently disoriented as to the orientation in time as the narrator dips in and out of various memories from his childhood (and adulthood even).

But despite these developments, the Proustian ethos is unmistakable and unstoppable — little details like the narrative voice or the structure of the narrative are trifling. Except. Except, yes the Proust machines marches on, but I’m seeing new sides to Proust. I was so struck reading “Combray” by the narrator’s kind heart. He’s a satirist but always affable, poking fun at everyone including himself, but in an affectionately ribbing way. Even the exploration of sadism and cruelty toward the end of “Combray” and the confession of the narrator’s cruel words to Francoise re the death of Aunt Leonie are balanced by his confessional attitude and clear affection for all parties.

This is not the narrator of “Swann in Love.” May I introduce the jaded Proust, he of the wicked tongue, painting a world where everyone is shallow, redeeming qualities are few and far between, the laughter is harsh, and our sympathies can find no possible home, except Swann, who is alternately a cynical womanizer and a pathetic pushover. Ouch. The narrator’s one venture into the first person comes (p 211) when he says a) Swann and I share personality, b) my grandparents would have nothing to do with him.

The Verdurins’ circle is a collection of embarassments: besides the Verdurins themselves (total caricatures and shells of human beings who one night “resembled two masks in a theatre each representing Comedy in a different way” (286)), there is Cottard who plays the classical role of the Fool to perfection, always saying the wrong thing to people and grinning nervously. But Swann goes and then is cruel to the people, as when Mme Cottard tries to bond with him over theatre, mentioning two new plays, and he responds icily: “I must confess my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those two masterpieces.” (281). But lest we think ill of Swann the narrator reassures us: “In reality there was not one of the ‘faithful’ who was not infinitely more malicious than Swann” (290).

So, my my. What can have brought on such a spiteful, venomous creation such as this? What happened to the affable Proust of the idyllic Combray? Read the title: Swann in Love. It appears that there is a subject which brings out the Dark Side and, yes, it’s a four-letter word.

Swann’s relationship with Odette is unpleasant from the get go. A friend introduces them with some CYA: he “had made her out to be harder of conquest than she actually was in order to appear to have done [Swann] a bigger favour by the introduction”. But Swann’s “indifferent” to her looks (and apparently enjoys the easy conquest, anyway, thank you very much). Next, his love for her seems to based on her sitting next to him on the couch when he happens to hear a favorite piece of music (someone online suggested that she set this up knowing his fondness for the piece: what did I miss?), coupled with her passing familiarity to Zipporah, a homely shepherd’s daughter, in a Botticelli painting. And now (the section I’m just at) we get to her fooling around and Swann’s all-consuming jealousy. Niiice.

As a first time reader of Proust, I’m sometimes surprised by the Dickensian naming of people and places: Legrandin, of the big ass, comes to mind. I’m sure there are more, but after enjoying 150 pages of Marcel’s Combray reminiscences, I was eager to get to the “two ways,” and then surprised to find out that it’s not Swann’s way so much as the Meseglise way, the way of, well, my church. Mind you, there’s nothing particularly church-y about this section (but wait for the Guermantes way), rather I read it as an homage to all that is sacred and an emblem of all that is to come. If memories of Combray start with its church (”Combray at a distance … was no more that a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it and for it”), then memories of the Meseglise way start with a vintage Proustian discursus on sundry pleasures, a theme I suspect he’ll be returning to often.

And Marcel’s greatest pleasure seems to be found in flowers: first the lilac, then in rapid fashion, the nasturtiums, the forget-me-nots, the periwinkle, lilac, agrimony, fleurs-de-lis, oh my! But this is all a prologue to the most important flower, the emblem of Gilberte, the pink hawthorn. The pleasures of the hawthorn are notably sensual: “I found the whole path throbbing with the fragrance of hawthorn-blossom.” (150) And it is in this hawthorn chapel, where “a thousand buds were swelling and opening … each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a bowl of pink marble, its blood-red stain” (153), that Marcel espies another vision in pink and red, Gilberte. But of course, he’s powerless, though the narrator damn near comes out of the closet in reflecting on this icon of desire: “I walked away, carrying with me, then and for ever afterwards, as the first illustration of a type of happiness rendered inaccessible to a little boy of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was impossible to transgress, the picture of [Gilberte]” (155). Hmmm, “of my kind,” “certain laws of nature,” what’s he talking about?

Next up on the journey to the church of unfulfilled pleasures: M. Vinteuil and his daughter.

But next pleasure for me is dinner!

Where better to start a Proust blog than with snobs? “Snob blog” even has an odd ring to it. More to the point, the question I threw out in seminar last week was “what is a snob?” I was thinking specifically of the passage where Legrandin is pegged: “In a word, he was a snob.” (140) What intrigues me is that this is coupled with the observation that there are two Legrandin’s: “Legrandin the talker” for whom snobbery is “the unpardonable sin” (141), and “another Legrandin, … whom he could never consciously exhibit, because this other could tell compromising stories about our own Legrandin and his snobbishness” (140).

I find two points of interest in this discussion of Legrandin and his “alter ego.” First, it seems that essential to being a snob is denying being a snob, and in fact if Legrandin is Marcel’s paradigmatic snob, then the more fervently one denies being a snob and even derides snobs, the more likely one is oneself a snob. Taking this a step further, it is apparent that some self-loathing, or at least some unresolved unconscious inner conflicts, are part and parcel of the snob’s way of being. In other words, the snob is the person who looks at another person and sees someone beneath him, and someone he unconsciously fears he might actually be himself.

So it’s interesting that Proust’s family can’t let the subject go: “Mamma was greatly delighted whenver she caught [Legrandin] red-handined in the sin [of] snobbery.” (141) And Mom may chuckle at Legrandin, but Dad is really ticked off: “inquisitive, irritated and cruel” (143) he proceeds to “torture” (144) Legrandin on the Balbec subject every chance he gets. Of course, there’s some irony here to my ear, because Marcel’s family is hardly devoid of airs themselves; in fact, the better part of the first section of Combray details in an affectionate but ribbing fashion to his family silly attitudes about the “Hindu caste system”. Are they not snobs? And are they not somehow quintessentially snobbish when they become so obsessed with Legrandin’s snobbishness? Perhaps they’re a notch less snobbish than Legrandin: for him its “the unpardonable sin,” for Marcel’s family it’s merely a sin, amusing to mother, irritating to father.

But then this just reinforces the theory: like Legrandin, Marcel’s family derides snobbishness, denies their own snobbishness, and delights in finding the fault in others. If Legrandin is the caricature, Marcel’s family is the realistic incarnation. And importantly, like Legrandin, they are unconscious of their snobbishness. In fact, the surest sign of their snobbishness is their interest in the subject. Hmm, which leads us out one more layer of this little finger-pointing game: is the narrator not particularly fascinated with the subject? Can anyone actually say “I am a snob” or is that the Proustian equivalent of the Liar’s Paradox?

Popping out yet one more layer, I was struck when this was discussed in class by a nationalistic/linguistic interpretation: several people seemed to identify snobbism with … the French. “Well, the French are snobs after all.” And this whole obsession with class is characteristically French, apparently; we Americans are all just middle-class egalitarians. Apparently. I’m a bit skeptical actually. I found the discussion to be decidely snobby, and characteristically self-blind, specifically with respect to this connection between the French and snobbism. This nationalistic or linguistic (not quite sure) spin on snobbery adds a new element, but the signature of snobbism is characteristic: deny (one’s own snobbery) and deride (others’).

At the end of the day, the lesson I’m drawing from Legrandin, and from Marcel’s family on Legrandin, and from Marcel on his family, and from a sampling of the Proust-curious in Portland, is that snobbism is rampant. To paraphrase Walt Kelly, “we have met the snob, and he is us.” So the only way for me to end this inaugural blog is with a confession:

I am a snob.