Swann's Way: Combray Chapter 2 (6th post)

The narrative so far has mainly concentrated on Combray and its inhabitants. It is now time to take a look at its immediate surroundings.

When Marcel's family go for a walk, they can take one of two routes: one which they call “Swann's way”, which is the route to the nearby village of Méséglise that goes past Swann's country residence; or one which they call the “Guermantes way”, which goes to the seat of the aristocratic Guermantes family (p.183 Scott Moncrieff, p.146 Kilmartin).

We are introduced first to Swann's way. During the family's walk along it, Marcel hopes to catch sight for the first time of the young Mlle Swann, with whom he already imagines himself in love after he discovered from her father that the distinguished novelist Bergotte is a frequent visitor and her “greatest friend” (p.133 SM, p.107 TK). As they pass by the grounds of Swann's house, “an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly” (p.187 SM, p.150 TK). Marcel senses that, contrary to what his grandfather had said about Mme and Mlle Swann being away, they might actually be there. He lingers before the hawthorn-blossom (p.188ff SM, p.151ff TK) until he realises that he is being observed by “a little girl, with fair, reddish hair” (p.192 SM, p.153 TK). As often when Marcel meets someone who is going to be important in his life, he is mistaken about some aspect of that person (cf his meeting Robert Saint-Loup for the first time at Balbec in A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs or Within a budding grove). On this occasion, the girl's black eyes gleam so much that thereafter Marcel always remembers them as of a vivid blue. This ambiguity continues as Marcel tries to interpret her reactions: when she turns away, he thinks she does so “with an indifferent and contemptuous air”, but he also observes her “half-hidden smile”, albeit he believes this to be “a mark of infinite disgust”. She makes an indelicate hand gesture which he understands to be “a deliberate insult”. He finds her “inscrutable and sly”.

Jeanne Pouquet
(model for Gilberte)

But then something makes him fall in love with her. Her mother calls her name. “And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality whereas, a moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came to me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and cool as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating and irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which it set apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of their familiarity—so exquisitely painful to myself—with her and with all that unknown world of her existence, into which I should never penetrate.” (p.194 SM, p.154 TK).

In that particular – and for him, special – environment of pink hawthorn-blossom, he has been charmed by her name, more than by Gilberte herself. And, as we shall also see in the case of Swann himself, and later with Marcel too, he yearns to learn of that part of her life which is hidden from him. These unlikely catalysts (hawthorn-blossom, Gilberte's name and her unknown world) are sufficient to generate the sort of obsessive passion from which Proust's characters often suffer when they believe themselves to be in love.

Having had such an unlikely genesis, it is not a surprise that Marcel should sustain his love by the equally odd means of trying to entice his family into speaking of Gilberte's parents and grandparents. “I would grow sick with longing to hear them utter” the name of Swann, and if they did “I would feel myself not too remotely banished from her company” (p.197 SM, p.157 TK). He would also imagine when walking on Swann's way, that the breeze around him had, before crossing the intervening fields, previously passed by Gilberte and contained “some message from her in what it was whispering to me … and I would catch and kiss it as it passed” (p.199 SM, p.159 TK).

And there we must leave Marcel's nascent love until the final part of Swann's Way (the volume not the route).

On a subsequent walk along Swann's way, Marcel's family is forced to take shelter from the rain in a church porch, where figures carved in stone can be observed. Marcel sees a similarity between the figures and a young shop assistant from Combray. He says that this Théodore “had the same air of pre-raphaelite simpicity and zeal which the little angels in the bas-reliefs wear … as though those carved faces of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter, were, like them, asleep only, storing up life and waiting to flower again in countless plebeian faces, revered and cunning as the face of Théodore, and glowing with the ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.” (p.207 SM, p.165 TK).

This is a complex sentence of multiple similes and another example of what I previously referred to as Proust tying a bow, in that the similes loop back on each other: in the first simile, he observes that Théodore's face is like those of the stone figures (most authors would stop there); in a second simile, he suggests that the figures look like dormant trees in winter; Proust then ties the two similes together with the observation that, despite being respectively made of stone and dormant, the figures and trees have in common the attribute of potential life, the statues come to life in the faces of locals such as Théodore, while the trees flower and yield fruit; and finally Proust produces a third simile to finish off with a bow – the ruddy faces of the locals glow like ripe apples. The loop is as follows: locals' faces – stone figures' faces – trees in winter – apples – locals' faces.

This triple simile is followed on the next page by a marginally less complex double comparison: Marcel sees another similarity this time between a free-standing statue of a saint and “the country-women of those parts”. He says this similarity was confirmed when a farm lass entered and he was able to view the statue and the girl together, “as when the leaves of a climbing plant have grown up beside leaves carved in stone” - ie he is comparing his comparison to another comparison! (p.208 SM, p.165 TK).

Another couple of similes round out the journey. The rain stops and they emerge from the church. In the distance they can see the village of Roussainville, which was either “still being chastised, like a village in the Old Testament, by all the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm … or else had already received the forgiveness of the Almighty, Who had restored to it the light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of uneven length, likes the rays of a monstrance upon an altar.” (p.208 SM, p.166 TK).

Sometimes the summer rain prevented the family from going for a walk along Swann's way. Proust captures the the magical world and thoughts of a child such as Marcel: “I might hear the water dripping from our chestnut-trees, but I would know the shower would only glaze and brighten the greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and that they themselves had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of summer, all through the rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's continuing” (p.209 SM, p.166 TK).

This post has become rather lengthy and so we will postpone our stroll along the Guermantes way until next time.