Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

  Finally in the Combray section (which consists almost entirely of the remembrance of his youth in that Norman village by an older Marcel while lying in bed somewhere else unspecified), we come to the Guermantes way. This is a longer walk than Swann's way (aka the M éséglise way) and so the family only embark on it when the weather is fine ( p.227 Scott Moncrieff, p.180 Kilmartin ). The route runs alongside the Vivonne river where, on each stroll, Marcel observes a single lily “which the current, across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it would drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally repeating its double journey.” The lily's plight is first compared to that of neurasthenics such as his Aunt L é onie and then to the never-ending repetitions of the inhabitants of the Inferno, to whom Dante would like to have talked for longer had he not been whisked away by h...