The Guermantes Way: Chapter Two (21st post)

 When Marcel is not attending society parties, a number of important events take place in his life. We have already dealt with the death of his grandmother, which occurs after Mme de Villeparisis's party, but other developments include the return of Albertine, a strange meeting with the Baron de Charlus, a possibly bogus invitation to the Princesse de Guermantes's ball, Swann's sad news and an insight into the Duc and Duchesse of Guermantes's real character.

Albertine

It is the period between the Marquise de Villeparisis's tea-party and the Duchesse de Guermantes's dinner-party. We find Marcel home alone on a Sunday afternoon in the autumn following the death of his grandmother. Robert Saint-Loup has written to him to say he had bumped into Mme de Stermaria (she was Mlle de Stermaria when we first met her at the Grand Hotel but has since married and divorced) and had asked her to meet Marcel. Robert's note suggests that he will be on to a sure thing (pp.51-55 VI Scott Moncrieff, pp.360-362 II Kilmartin). 

When a kiss was just a kiss (and
you could still use baiser as a verb) ...
Aubrey Beardsley's J'ai baisé ta bouche

While Marcel is planning to meet his latest flame, Albertine pays an unexpected visit. She has changed: she is prettier, is more intelligent and possesses an improved vocabulary. Although Marcel is certain not only that he is “not in the least in love with Albertine” but also that she is indifferent to him, he desires physical intimacy with her, which appears to be about to come to pass … until Françoise suddenly enters the room with a lamp (pp.56-66 VI SM, pp.363-371 II TK). After Françoise leaves, Albertine indicates that she would not have been averse to his kissing her. So now Marcel is “going to learn the fragrance of the secret rose that blooms in Albertine's cheeks” but first he digresses on one of the physical drawbacks of such an act: “I had never stopped to think that man, a creature obviously less rudimentary in structure than the sea-urchin or even the whale, is nevertheless still unprovided with a certain number of essential organs, and notably possesses none that will serve for kissing. The place of this absent organ he supplies with his lips, and thereby arrives perhaps at a slightly more satisfying result than if he were reduced to caressing the beloved with a horny tusk. But a pair of lips, designed to convey to the palate the taste of whatever whets the appetite, must be content, without ever realising their mistake or admitting their disappointment, with roaming over the surface and with coming to a halt at the barrier of the impenetrable but irresistible cheek” (pp.70-75 VI SM, pp.374-378 II TK).

There then follows an anatomy of the kiss: “As my mouth began gradually to approach the cheeks which my eyes had suggested to it that it should kiss, my eyes, changing their position, saw a different pair of cheeks; the throat, studied at closer range and as though through a magnifying glass showed in its coarse grain a robustness which modified the character of the face.” Albertine's face undergoes a series of changes as Marcel draws closer: “In this brief passage of my lips towards her cheek it was ten Albertines that I saw; this single girl being like a goddess with several heads, that which I had last seen, if I tried to approach it, gave place to another. At least so long as I had not touched it, that head, I could still see it, a faint perfume reached me from it. But alas–for in this matter of kissing our nostrils and eyes are as ill placed as our lips are shaped–suddenly my eyes ceased to see; next, my nose, crushed by the collision, no longer perceived any fragrance, and, without thereby gaining any clearer idea of the taste of the rose of my desire, I learned, from these unpleasant signs, that at last I was in the act of kissing Albertine’s cheek” (pp.76-77 VI SM, pp.378-379 II TK).

And as for Mme Stermaria – she cancels their planned meeting at the last minute (p.114 VI SM, p.406 II TK).

Charlus

Following the Guermantes' dinner (see my 20th post here), Marcel goes on to visit Charlus, as they had previously arranged. Suddenly, the writing comes alive after close to 200 pages of tedium. Charlus's behaviour is eccentric and unpredictable, putting the reader on edge.

Charlus keeps Marcel waiting before the latter is finally ushered in. “I supposed that M de Charlus would rise to greet me. Without moving a muscle he fixed on me a pair of implacable eyes. I went towards him, I said good evening; he did not hold out his hand, made no reply, did not ask me to take a chair. After a moment’s silence I asked him, as one would ask an ill-mannered doctor, whether it was necessary for me to remain standing. I said this without any evil intention, but my words seemed only to intensify the cold fury on M de Charlus’s face.” When Charlus responds, even this simple act takes an unpleasant turn: “'Put yourself in the Louis XIV seat,' he answered me with an imperious air, as though rather to force me to move away farther from himself than to invite me to be seated. I took an armchair which was comparatively near. 'Ah! so that is what you call a Louis XIV seat, is it? I can see you have been well educated,' he cried in derision. I was so much taken aback that I did not move, either to leave the house, as I ought to have done, or to change my seat, as he wished. 'Sir,' he next said to me, weighing each of his words, to the more impertinent of which he prefixed a double yoke of consonants, 'the interview which I have condescended to grant you at the request of a person who desires to be nameless, will mark the final point in our relations. I shall not conceal from you that I had hoped for better things! I should perhaps be forcing the sense of the words a little, which one ought not to do, even with people who are ignorant of their value, simply out of the respect due to oneself, were I to tell you that I had felt a certain attraction towards you. I think, however, that benevolence, in its most actively protecting sense, would exceed neither what I felt nor what I was proposing to display. I had, immediately on my return to Paris, given you to understand, while you were still at Balbec, that you could count upon me.' I who remembered with what a torrent of abuse M de Charlus had parted from me at Balbec made an instinctive gesture of contradiction. 'What!' he cried with fury, and indeed his face, convulsed and white, differed as much from his ordinary face as does the sea when on a morning of storm one finds instead of its customary smiling surface a thousand serpents writhing in spray and foam” (pp.334-337 VI SM, pp.573-576 II TK).

Proust does not seek to paint Charlus just by means of the baron's own wild speech, he also shows him by means of Marcel's dismayed reaction: “I looked at M de Charlus. Undoubtedly his magnificent head, though repellent, yet far surpassed that of any of his relatives; you would have called him an Apollo grown old; but an olive-hued, bilious juice seemed ready to start from the corners of his evil mouth; as for intellect, one could not deny that his, over a vast compass, had taken in many things which must always remain unknown to his brother Guermantes. But whatever the fine words with which he coloured all his hatreds, one felt that, even if there was now an offended pride, now a disappointment in love, or a rancour, or sadism, a love of teasing, a fixed obsession, this man was capable of doing murder, and of proving by force of logic that he had been right in doing it and was still superior by a hundred cubits in moral stature to his brother, his sister-in-law, or any of the rest” (pp.338-339 VI SM, pp.576-577 II TK).

Charlus continues to verbally abuse Marcel until at last the reason for his anger is revealed when he announces: “'I intend to hear nothing more of your calumnious fabrications.' So far, I had never dreamed that M de Charlus’s rage could have been caused by an unflattering remark which had been repeated to him; I searched my memory; I had not spoken about him to anyone. Some evil-doer had invented the whole thing.” Charlus accuses Marcel of not having given him a response to his earlier proposal and so now he withdraws the rather cryptic proposal and offer of protection. Marcel denies having ever said anything that could insult Charlus. This denial is not met favourably: “'And who says that I am insulted?' he cried with fury, flinging himself into an erect posture on the seat on which hitherto he had been reclining motionless, while, as the pale frothing serpents stiffened in his face, his voice became alternately shrill and grave, like the deafening onrush of a storm. (The force with which he habitually spoke, which used to make strangers turn round in the street, was multiplied an hundredfold, as is a musical forte if, instead of being played on the piano, it is played by an orchestra, and changed into a fortissimo as well. M de Charlus roared.) 'Do you suppose that it is within your power to insult me? You evidently are not aware to whom you are speaking? Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?'” (pp.339-342 VI SM, pp.577-580 II TK).

At this point, Marcel becomes so annoyed that “I flung myself upon the Baron’s new silk hat, dashed it to the ground, trampled upon it, began blindly pulling it to pieces, wrenched off the brim, tore the crown in two, without heeding the vociferations of M de Charlus, which continued to sound, and, crossing the room to leave it, opened the door.” Charlus runs after him and makes him return, only to tell Marcel that his affection for him is “quite dead” as a result of being told that Marcel had spoken ill of him and – whether or not the report is true or false – “the remark has done its work” (pp.343-345 VI SM, pp.580-582 II TK).

The Guermantes and Swann

When a card is delivered to Marcel requesting his presence at a party of the Princesse de Guermantes (p.355 VI SM, p.590 II TK), he fears it is a hoax and later goes to check with the Duchess of Guermantes whether it is genuine. There he learns that the Duke's cousin is critically ill and that the Princesses's party will be preceded that night by a dinner given by the Marquise de Saint-Euverte and followed by a costume ball, at which the Duke has arranged to meet his new mistress. He is desperate not to miss these three events and so after a servant comes with news that his cousin is still alive, but only just, he forbids any more enquiries until the next day lest the cousin die that evening, forcing the Duke to go into mourning and not attend them (pp.365-383 VI SM, pp.597-611 II TK).

As if this display of egocentrism is not bad enough, the depth of the Duke and Duchesses' selfishness is further plumbed after Swann arrives and reveals that he only has three or four months to live. As they have to go out for the dinner at Mme de Saint-Euverte's, the Duchess pretends to disbelieve him while the Duke makes a big fuss about being late. “Placed for the first time in her life between two duties as incompatible as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing pity for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the right line to follow, and, not knowing which to choose, felt it better to make a show of not believing that the latter alternative need be seriously considered, so as to follow the first, which demanded of her at the moment less effort, and thought that the best way of settling the conflict would be to deny that any existed. 'You’re joking,' she said to Swann. 'It would be a joke in charming taste,' replied he ironically.” The Duke then adds: “'It's ten minutes to eight already. Oriane is always late, and it will take us more than five minutes to get to old Saint-Euverte's.'” Their insensitivity is amplified even more when, on entering their carriage, the Duke sees the Duchess is wearing the wrong coloured shoes and sends her back to the house to change them, saying that they have “plenty of time”. Finally, their choice of language is equally thoughtless: the Duke tells Swann that if his wife continues talking to him “she'll reach the dinner-table quite dead” and that he himself is “dying of hunger” (pp.392-395 VI SM, pp.618-620 II TK).