Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

 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...

Interwoven in the telling of Swann and Odette's romantic entanglement are three important factors in its development: the Verdurins' group which starts by bringing them together and ends by coming between them; Swann's consequent exile from high society; and the importance of music, in particular Vinteuil's sonata, in their relationship. In relation to the first two of those themes, Proust's skills as a portraitist and as an observer of subtle class distinctions are illustrated in his sketches of the attendees of both the Verdurins' bourgeois and the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's upper-class salons; while, in relation to the third theme, his profound appreciation of music is demonstrated by his thoughts on the sonata which is heard in both salons. The Verdurins' circle Proust commences Swann in Love with a description of the “little clan” who attend the Verdurins' salon. Immediately, with just one quote, he renders the personality of the group...

 In the second chapter of Combray (or the only chapter called Combray in the Scott Moncrieff (SM) and Kilmartin (TK) editions, their having called the first chapter Overture instead), we are introduced to a number of  characters, mainly local and of varying degrees of importance such as Aunt Léonie, M. Legrandin, Uncle Adolphe, the Lady in Pink, Bloch, M. Vinteuil, Gilberte, and Mme de Guermantes, and also to places and things which figure largely in Marcel's mind such as the church of Saint Hilaire, Swann's Way (also referred to as the Méséglise Way), the Guermantes Way and hawthorn blossom. Proust animates each brilliantly by a variety of techniques. Even buildings such as the church spring to life: "the worn old stones of [its spire] the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight and were softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly far higher, to have become truly remot...