Swann's Way: Swann in Love (9th post)

 After the momentary respite resulting from having waited outside the wrong bedroom window, Swann's hard time immediately resumes: “his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love” returns, which renews his imaginings of Odette tendering her love to another (p.81 II Scott Moncrieff, p.301 Kilmartin). “A fresh turn was given to the screw” when he remembers a look of admiration in her eye while Forcheville had been making a scene at the Verdurins'. And soon his suspicions are revived after she fails to answer the door one afternoon despite the porter telling him he believed her to be at home. He repeats his earlier behaviour of going round the back of her house, standing beneath her bedroom window and knocking on it. On receiving no answer this time, he later returns to her front door and she lets him in, telling him she had been asleep when he had called earlier. He believes her to be lying and his suspicions are confirmed upon reading a letter which she has given him to post to Forcheville, which reveals that the latter had been with her as Swann was knocking at her door (p.90 II SM, p.308 TK).

Swann's fall from favour at the Verdurins' is by now complete. He views their group as “beneath the lowest rung of the social ladder, the nethermost circle of Dante” (p.97 II SM, p.313 TK), while they consider him to be “too deadly for words, a stupid, ill-bred boor” (p.99 II SM, p.315 TK). “And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together became an obstacle in the way of their meeting”. He is excluded from their supper parties and jaunts, which she continues to attend. When Odette decides to go on one such outing without him, Swann threatens to leave her, but Odette's experience of men allows her to conclude that they only acted like that when they were in love, and once that occurred, “it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on” (p.102 II SM, p.317 TK).
And sure enough, Swann becomes hopelessly in love with her: “her volatile temperament, artful and evasive, was enough to keep Swann seeking, with as much passion as ever, to captivate her” (p.103 II SM, p.318 TK). So not only does Odette go away on trips with the Verdurins and their circle, which includes Forcheville, she also forbids Swann to attempt to contact her. Although this looks like a relationship that is in its death throes, Swann is infatuated and dreams of going to the same place: “what a joy it would be to set foot on that soil where, not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she was to be found, he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility of her suddenly appearing” (p.106 II SM, p.320 TK). However, fearing her reaction, he instead awaits her return to Paris, when he expects her to visit him. He waits up all night for her, but she doesn't come. “As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love” (p.108 II SM, p.322TK). “Painful agitation”: the reader is left in no doubt of the perversity of Swann's love. A few pages later, it is described as “melancholy madness” and a “morbid state”, and if there is ever any brief relief from it, “grief would take hold of him again” (pp.114-115 II SM, p.327 TK). We wonder why he persists with this degree of suffering, without any of the joy, pleasure, empathy, trust, compromise or any other characteristics of what we should ordinarily call love; it has become “this malady, which was Swann's love” (p.126 II SM, p.336 TK). His and Odette's love resembles that described by Blake's pebble, which “Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite”.

Somehow the affair descends even further. Not only does he feel that he is “less welcome to her than anyone” (p.129 II SM, p.338 TK), she refuses to let him be seen with her in public and he worries that he will soon be “altogether forbidden to meet her anywhere” (p.131 II SM, p.339 TK). So when Odette says to him, “Oh, I do wish I could change you”, he replies, “You can if you like”, pathetically reasoning to himself, “If she didn't love me, just a little, she would not wish to have me altered”. He is not only pathetic, but desperate: “She gave him so little [of her love] that he was obliged to regards as proofs of her interest in him the various things which, every now and then, she forbade him to do” (p.143 II SM, p.349 TK). The relationship has deteriorated to the point where Odette is “indifferent, listless, irritable” with Swann (p.144 II SM, p.350 TK). Could it be any worse?

Yes. Eventually Swann realises that “the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realised now” (p.188 II SM, p.384 TK). Then one day, he receives an anonymous letter informing him of Odette's lovers of both sexes (p.192 II SM, p.387 TK). When he asks her whether she has ever been with another woman, she replies: “Perhaps two or three times” (p.202 II SM, p.395 TK). His jealousy and suspicions flare up again. Odette further confesses that on the night when Swann had been desperately searching for her in cafés and restaurants after her early departure from the Verdurins', she had actually been at Forcheville's – “in those months when she had loved him, she was already lying to him!” (p.213 II SM, p.403 TK).

A degree of ambiguity is added when, one day, Swann bumps into a member of the Verdurins' circle, Mme Cottard, who tells him that Odette “adores” him and that he is “the only one” (p.220 II SM, p.409 TK). Finally, however, Swann understands that his love and his desire to remain Odette's lover are now “faint”; his jealousy is now “very slight”; and love is “now utterly remote” (pp.222-223 II SM, pp.410-411 TK).

And there we have to leave this unhappy affair, with Swann's mournful reflection: "To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who wasn't even my type." (p.228 II SM, p.415 TK). How Swann and Odette recover from this nadir and end up marrying, we are not informed. Having written them into this hole, Proust leaves us wondering how they get out of it. There is an unwritten “In one bound, our hero was free!” And yet it is not an unsatisfying ending: a lesser craftsman would not have dared to leave such a large lacuna and, having left our lovers in hell, would have felt duty-bound to give the reader the other two parts of their divine comedy. Personally, I do not regret the loss of any further labouring of their love.

Next time, I propose to look at other aspects of Swann in Love, such as the Verdurins' circle, the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's party and Vinteuil's sonata, which respectively illuminate Proust's accomplishments as a portraitist, sociologist and musicologist.