Sunday Morning: “Swann’s Way/ Swann in Love” by Marcel Proust (Pt 2)
[Note: I’ve been blogging Proust: entries 1 and 2 here.]
There is a passage towards the end of “Swann in Love,” the second section of “Swann’s Way” (often published as a standalone work), in which a lady of high society comments on the absurdity that someone as refined and intelligent as Charles Swann could ever have allowed himself to fall in love with a woman as vulgar and uninteresting as the erstwhile courtesan Odette. Proust calls this logic the thinking of people who, not being in love themselves, think a clever man should only fall in love with someone who is worth his effort, “which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.”
I’ll admit, dear reader, I laughed out loud at that line. And many others. As Charles Power wrote in the Guardian:
Leaving preconceptions aside, here’s something I was totally unaware of and that newcomers should know: Proust is funny. Modernism isn’t an artistic tendency particularly known for its rib-tickling qualities, Joyce and early Eliot aside. Proust, however, can crack wise…”
Proust makes me laugh often and this particular line struck home because one of my best friends for the last 30 years recently commented to a new lady friend about an ex of mine that she was not quite the brightest bulb in the box. But, we love who we love and its sometimes a mystery how and why. If it was rational, it might never happen.
Much of what Swann does is a mystery. He is one of the most compelling characters in the epic novel (and literature) because he seems so often to follow a logic not meant for mortals. He is somewhat ethereal, a bit removed from his fellow men, without being exactly aloof or arrogant. It’s still a bit of a puzzle to me, upon my third reading, exactly why he falls in love with Odette.
Not entirely though.
A few things we need to understand from the outset about Swann: first, he really is of a nobler nature than the other characters. Partly, this is just because he moves in the highest circles of society without most of them realizing it. Proust comments early that “Our social personality is a creation in the minds of others,” and so it is with Swann; he keeps Kings and Princesses as close friends and dines in bourgeois homes in the province without name-dropping or condescending to the vulgar hosts. A key to his character is that Swann is simply not a snob. Most of the characters are, but, since Swann really is of a higher nature, he really has no need for snobbery.
He is also of a nobler nature in terms of sensibility; Proust’s real heroes are like finely-tuned instruments reading the smallest changes in their own inner states with perfect clarity. The part of Swann, that inner core of selfhood, that responds to art and music and beauty, and even pain, with acute pleasure, is not so different from the part of the narrator that responds to certain writers and actresses in the same way. Swann has an exquisite sensitivity, which allows the narrator to imaginatively understand him and recreate the mismatched love affair that took place before he was born. It’s a somewhat odd narrative choice in a great epic novel of memory, but it will pay off later.
The great incident of Swann’s sensitivity, and one of the greatest descriptions of artistic appreciation in literature, is the scene in which Swann first hears the “petite phrase” in a sonata by the composer Vinteuil, played at a party, and it “opened and expanded his soul, as the fragrance of certain roses, on the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating one’s nostrils.” The five-note phrase:
led him first this way, then that, towards a state of happiness that was noble, intelligible, and yet precise. And then suddenly, having reached a certain point from which he was preparing to follow it, after a momentary pause, abruptly it changed direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, fragile, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards new vistas. Then it vanished.
The sonata affects a change in him: before hearing it, Swann was floating through life from one ephemeral pleasure to another with nothing taking root; but the power of Vinteuil’s music put him
“in the presence of one of those invisible realities in which he had ceased to believe and, to which, as thought the music had had upon the moral barrenness from which he was suffering, a sort of recreative influence, he was once again conscious of the desire and almost the strength to consecrate his life.”
The full passage is a perfect description of how music can turn the tides of the soul; naturally, many have tried to solve the mystery of what violin sonata Proust might have had in mind. Here is one filmic interpretation:
Allow me to blaspheme and say that this is the piece of music (a cover of the Otis Redding/Allen Toussaint original) that always stops me in my tracks, brings up the hairs on the back of my neck and tears to my eyes, and reminds me that there are things so beautiful in this world that they must surely have come from far beyond it. I like to think Swann might have understood.
And then, finally, we need to understand early on that Swann is a Jew, albeit from parents who converted. This is mentioned once or twice in the first book, but will become much more important in later volumes with the Dreyfus Affair, the primary political event to be mentioned in Proust and probably the only event to puncture the bubble of his fictionalized social milieu. Swann is often taken as Proust’s double, and, like the writer himself, the character becomes more intensely aware of his Jewishness when antisemitism roils French society at the turn of the century. And I think it’s necessary to understand that Swann and Proust are both such expert observers of the social world because they stand slightly askew and askance from its center.
And then, Swann is utterly transformed by Odette de Crécy; a slightly vulgar young femme he meets through the Verdurin set, one of the first little salons in the novel. Sealed off like a terrarium, the “little sect” produces its own heat, but allows in less light than its members realize. Swann is a bit of a rare animal in this cenacle; he flits a little above it, a natural dilettante, but they don’t quite appreciate what they have in him. Part of the humor of the novel comes from the fact that they’re nouveau riche snobs- the Verdurins are somewhat buffoonish, while convinced of their deep superiority. No doubt they would own a gold toilet if they could.
Botticelli’s Zipporah (detail)
Odette never really gets Swann either. His artistic dilettantism perplexes her; she learns about the great painters mostly through him and associates figures like Rembrandt with things he likes. At first, she is fairly devoted to Swann as a sort of fascinating rare specimen, but she soon cools to him, perhaps because he is aloof. And, as happens so very often in love, once he senses that Odette has cooled to him, Swann starts to yearn for her:
Seeing the room bare of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that certainty of finding it whenever he would.
If Swann can’t be intimate with her at any time, there must be times in which, perhaps, others can… He starts to obsess about the part of her life that will always be a secret. The rest of the story is about how deeply he falls in love for this woman. She is not exactly beautiful- Swann compares her to Botticelli’s painting of Zipporah, the snide comment of an art collector. She is not very interesting, and she is in no sense faithful to him. And so, gradually, his love becomes obsessive and jealous; he catches wind of Odette’s infidelities and past dalliances with men and women. He tries to sniff out the truth; he attempts to surprise her by showing up unexpectedly and reads her mail; he even questions a prostitute about what she might have done with other women. In short, he makes a fool of himself in the eyes of society and of Odette. He debases himself for a misalliance. Let anyone who has never lowered themselves for a mismatched love cast the first snark. We’re waiting…
From Volker Schlöndorff’s 1984 film adaptation.
In the end, Swann and Odette might as well be from different continents. One of the fascinating things about Proust’s world is we realize from the outside how absurd its pretensions and snobbisms and social barriers are; and yet, Swann really is superior to his love-object. As he comes to realize this, and his love and jealousy both fade, it’s as if he’s losing another version of himself that had more mobility than the one he was born with. He’s trapped and cannot break free of himself. And all of this is merely an echo of the narrator’s obsessive need for mama’s goodnight kiss; it’s also a prelude to his own obsessive jealous love which will occupy later volumes. But, for Swann, the death of jealousy is like when a person grows numb prior to death.
Naturally, he will marry Odette.
And so, what are YOU reading, watching, pondering, playing, or obsessing over this weekend?
