The Captive: Chapter II (26th post)

 The Verdurins, who figured largely in Swann in Love and then reappeared at la Raspelière near Balbec in Cities of the Plain (see my 23^rd post), are once more central to the narrative in this chapter. Marcel is visiting their Parisian salon in the Quai Conti and is longing to see the room where Swann used to meet Odette. His wish is disappointed when, on the way there, he learns from Brichot that the couple had frequented the salon when it was at the Verdurins' former home in the rue Montalivet, before it was partially destroyed by fire. Marcel now reveals that Swann's death, which had been briefly mentioned in passing in Cities of the Plain, had been a “crushing blow” to him and he quotes a newspaper obituary before reflecting that, as a result of his “remarkable personality in both the intellectual and the artistic worlds”, his name could survive for a while after his death.

Le Cercle de la rue Royale by James Tissot.
Charles Haas is furthest right.

There follows a strange apostrophe which reads thus: “My dear Charles—–, whom I used to know when I was still so young and you were nearing your grave, it is because he whom you must have regarded as a little fool has made you the hero of one of his volumes that people are beginning to speak of you again and that your name will perhaps live. If in Tissot’s picture representing the balcony of the Rue Royale club, where you figure with Galliffet, Edmond Polignac and Saint-Maurice, people are always drawing attention to yourself, it is because they know that there are some traces of you in the character of Swann” (pp.269-270 IX Scott Moncrieff, p.199 III Kilmartin). In the original French and in DJ Enright's translation this is rendered, respectively: “Cher Charles Swann” and “My dear Charles Swann”. Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin's version must be read as Proust addressing Charles Haas, his main model for Swann and makes sense because it is Haas who is standing on the far right of Tissot's painting Cercle de la rue Royale and there are “traces of [him] in the character of Swann”. Proust and Enright's version must be read as Marcel addressing Charles Swann, which makes little sense because Swann is not in Tissot's picture and cannot be said to have traces of himself in the character Swann. On the other hand, the suggestion that his name “will perhaps live” does connect with Marcel's preceding reflection on the survival of Swann's name. I believe this is one of those author/narrator conundrums which is not resolved at the end of the novel. (A further oddity is that in the original French, Charles is said to be “between Galliffet, Edmond de Polignac and Saint-Maurice” in the painting, whereas the figures are, left to right, Saint-Maurice, Polignac, Gallifet and Haas.)

Outside the Verdurins', Marcel sees Charlus from a new perspective “steering towards us the bulk of his huge body […] contrasting so markedly with the haughty stranger of my first visit to Balbec, with his stern aspect, his affectation of virility” (pp.274-275 IX SM, pp.202-203 III TK). Marcel learns from Charlus that Mlle Vinteuil and her friend are expected to attend that evening's soirée (p.22 X SM, p.223 III TK). This adds grist to Marcel's mill: previously, when Albertine had expressed a desire to attend this function at the Verdurins', he had suspected that she intended to meet someone there, his suspicion having been based entirely on the casual way she had expressed the desire (see my 25^th post); now he has further evidence to support his theory. However, unlike the probative evidence of Albertine's lie about meeting Bergotte on the day he died, this evidence is circumstantial and Marcel's inference from it is not conclusive.

The evening, to which Charlus had invited guests from society who would not usually attend Mme Verdurin's functions, is to be a musical one. Morel is to be one of the musicians and they will play a piece by Vinteuil. Mme Verdurin acknowledged that although he was the greatest composer of the age, she could not listen to his music without weeping all the time. Marcel comments: “She did not apply any pathos to the word 'weeping', she would have used precisely the same tone for 'sleeping'; certain slandermongers used indeed to insist that the latter verb would have been more applicable, though no one could ever be certain, for she listened to the music with her face buried in her hands, and certain snoring sounds might after all have been sobs” (p.47 X SM, p.242 III TK).

The piece by Vinteuil is not the sonata which had been Swann's favourite, but his septet. While listening to it, Marcel realises that art alone can reveal those elements of an individual's soul that cannot otherwise be communicated. When a friend talks to a friend, or a lover to his mistress, there is always a residuum that cannot be conveyed by speech, and the speaker has to omit it and limit himself to external points common to all, but of no interest; whereas art makes the artist's otherwise unknowable inner world apparent. Even if we were to visit other worlds, we would discover little because they would be revealed to us by the same senses as we perceive the earth; to make a real voyage of discovery we would need to “possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is; and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star”. During a break in the music, the talk of the audience bores Marcel. “But what were their words, which like every human and external word, left me so indifferent, compared with the heavenly phrase of music with which I had just been engaged? I was indeed like an angel who, fallen from the inebriating bliss of paradise, subsides into the most humdrum reality. And, just as certain creatures are the last surviving testimony to a form of life which nature has discarded, I asked myself if music were not the unique example of what might have been–if there had not come the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas–the means of communication between one spirit and another. It is like a possibility which has ended in nothing; humanity has developed along other lines, those of spoken and written language” (pp.70-71 X SM, p.260 III TK).

Now the Verdurins take centre stage as Charlus' triumphant evening turns to disaster. All but one of his society friends whom he had invited to Mme Verdurin's concert had ignored her and acted as though it was his soirée, at the end giving him all the credit for the success of the occasion (pp.53, 81, 90 X SM, pp.246, 267, 275 III TK). As Charlus boasts to her at length about what he has just achieved, Mme Verdurin's simmering anger begins to ignite (p.97 X SM, p.280 III TK). For this slight and for fear of Charlus taking Morel off into society, the Verdurins plan to have their revenge by turning the violinist against his protector. Mme Verdurin has her husband take Morel aside and enlighten him as to Charlus' character. When they return, Mme Verdurin, who has in the meantime got into a passion, ignores their plan to pretend she knows nothing of what Morel and her husband have just discussed and bursts out: “I feel that you ought not to endure any longer this degrading promiscuity with a tainted person whom nobody will have in her house” before continuing: “Another month of this life and your artistic future is shattered, whereas, without Charlus, you ought to be making at least a hundred thousand francs a year”. Emboldened by Morel's evident shock, she becomes more inventive, saying of Charlus: “He is a gentleman with a vile reputation and the most shocking stories are told about him. I know that the police are watching him and that is perhaps the best thing for him if he is not to end like all those men, murdered by hooligans […] Anyhow, even financially, he can be of no use to you, he is completely ruined since he has become the prey of people who are blackmailing him, and who can’t even make him fork out the price of the tune they call, still less can he pay you for your playing, for it is all heavily mortgaged, town house, country house, everything" (pp.140-142 X SM, pp.313-315 III TK). The Verdurins add some revelations about what Charlus has said of Morel's family and their plan succeeds. Morel thanks them for their kindness in exposing Charlus as a “scoundrel” and a “traitor”. At this point, Charlus returns to the room and approaches Morel, who shouts at him: “Leave me alone, I forbid you to come near me.” Instead of reacting with his habitual fury, Charlus is left “dumb, stupefied, measuring the depths of his misery without understanding its cause, finding not a word to utter” (pp.149-151 X SM, pp.320-321 III TK).

But after this ruthless, poisonous act, the Verdurins are shown also to be unostentatiously generous after they learn that one of the little clan, Saniette, has got into serious financial difficulties and they agree to give him an allowance, while telling him that the money has been left to him by Princess Sherbatoff, another member of the clan who has recently died. They hit upon the idea of getting Cottard to act as an intermediary and tell Saniette that the princess had appointed him as her agent. It is later through Cottard that Marcel learns of this secret benevolence and is forced to re-evaluate his impression of the Verdurins (pp.162-166 X SM, pp.329-332 III TK).