Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

 In the first half of Time Regained, as we have just seen, Marcel finds himself in wartime Paris following “long years” in a sanatorium. He then leaves the city and spends “many years” in a second sanatorium before once again returning to Paris in the final part of the novel. The trees no longer speak to Marcel. Pic: Narcisse Virgilio Diaz De La Pena On the journey back to Paris, Marcel's recurring doubts about his literary talent surface once more when the train stops in open countryside. “The sun was shining on a row of trees that followed the railway line, flooding the upper halves of their trunks with light. 'Trees,' I thought, 'you no longer have anything to say to me. My heart has grown cold and no longer hears you' ( Hudson XII p.195, Kilmartin III p.886, Enright VI p.202 ). We have already noted a similarity between Proust's reflections on immortality and Wordsworth's ode on the subject (see my 25 th post), and here again we could compare Marcel...

The death in 1930 of Scott Moncrieff prevented him completing Remembrance of Things Past and it was left to Sydney Schiff, under the pseudonym of Stephen Hudson, to translate the final volume, Time Regained. I find his version awkward to read and will therefore quote instead the translation by Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor, as revised by DJ Enright. For the sake of completeness, I will continue to use page references of both the 12-part Chatto & Windus edition (Scott Moncrieff and Hudson) and the three-part Kilmartin version. For this final volume I will additionally give the page references of the Enright version.  I intend to divide the volume into three sections: Marcel's return to Paris during World War I; his attendance at the new Princess de Guermantes' party; and his resolution to become a writer. That resolution occurs before he enters the party but I am going to deal with it last as it draws together a number of threads in a conclusive way.  * * * * *  ...

 The Verdurins, who figured largely in Swann in Love and then reappeared at la Raspeli è re 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 stran...

   The third chapter of the second part of Cities of the Plain in some ways echoes the second part of Swann's Way and could, for the sake of symmetry, have been called Charlus in Love. As in Swann's affair with Odette (and also Saint-Loup's with Rachel), the relationship is unbalanced: the pursuer's passion is far greater than that of the pursued. Morel, like Odette and Rachel, is inconstant and repeatedly fobs off Charlus, sometimes resorting to fabrication. And Charlus, like Swann, bluffingly responds with pretence as each player struggles for dominance in a game of make-believe. A violinist by Vlaho Bukovac Matters come to a head when Morel tells Charlus that he has an engagement and leaves Charlus alone and disappointed, “the tears trickling down and melting* the paint beneath his eyes”. Charlus, “waddling obesely”, goes to a caf é, where he drinks beer to fortify himself and writes a letter to Morel saying that he is going to fight a duel the next day against some...

  The second chapter of Cities of the Plain sees the development of Marcel's relationship with Albertine, the commencement of the amorous entanglement of Charlus and the fianc é of Jupien's niece, and the reappearance of the Verdurins. We have already observed Marcel's duplicitous approach to relationships when he feigned indifference to Albertine and a preference for Andr é e (see my 17 th  post). Despite his now having grown closer to Albertine, he is still acting in the same manner, and has added suspicion and jealousy to this unhealthy romance. It is hard for the reader to judge the validity of Marcel's suspicions that Albertine is lying and cheating on him because we are only presented with his thought processes, not hers; he is not honest with her and is maybe not being honest in his narration; his distrust is largely the result of inferences rather than direct evidence; and the suspicions are so recurrent as to suggest he is suffering from a paranoid personali...

  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....

How to introduce characters in a novel? Here is some actual advice given to novice writers: “provide a brief description or summary of the character's physical appearance (age, height, hair colour and clothing style), personality (shy and reserved or outgoing and charismatic) and background (occupation, family and past experiences)”.  Yet this is not how the great writers go about it. There are two ways of introducing characters: by having them appear or by referring to them before they appear (Godot being the exception). At one extreme, where introduction and appearance coincide, we can think of literary characters who suddenly and dramatically appear on the scene. In Great Expectations, for example, the young narrator, Pip, has just introduced himself to the reader and is in the churchyard where his father, mother and five brothers are buried. Without any warning, Dickens then introduces the startling character of Abel Magwitch:  “‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, a...