Through Sunday, 10 Feb.: Swann's Way

[Ian]

Mari wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Mari wrote: "Two thoughts: It is interesting (at least to me) that, so far, except for Ian, only women are commenting on this part of the novel. ..."

Ha, Aloha, you are right. C'mon, guys, show us what you've got. We promise to be gentle. :)

Also, Ian is a poet. Gotta love a poet that reads Proust. "

I had never written a poem before I joined GR, and I still wouldn't regard myself as a poet. I know too little about the discipline of poetry.

However, for some reason, I have found that poetry is just the right vehicle to write about the women in my life, now or in the past, online or in real life. I think I just stumble upon poetry in women.

Poetry is my attempt to capture the mystery of women in words, at least for a moment (in love), for if you truly capture it, you might kill it.

This is part of the reason I am perplexed by Proust's treatment of Odette.

Odette remains inscrutable, despite her prominence in the novel.

The action happens around her and in a sense is about her, but I'm still mystified.

This type of woman would be very bad for my blood pressure.

Of course, that wouldn't deter me.

[Ian]

I love the fact that Proust seemed to be an amazing flirt, at least when he was young and before his health declined.

Odette said some amazingly flirtatious things early in the relationship, things that would have had me eating out of her hand.

I still wonder whether Odette is a projection of Proust, and a vehicle for him to have a relationship with Swann.

However, he had to adopt the persona of a woman to explore, ironically, not Odette's love, but Swann's love.

Odette could almost be the narrator revealing nothing about herself.

[Denise]

Ian wrote: "This type of woman would be very bad for my blood pressure.

Of course, that wouldn't deter me."

I would persuade you to avoid her. Pursuing her would result in your having to opt to treat your blood pressure or your nerves.

[Denise]

Ian wrote: "I love the fact that Proust seemed to be an amazing flirt, at least when he was young and before his health declined.

Odette said some amazingly flirtatious things early in the relationship, thing..."
That's an interesting spin. Fascinating!

[Fionnuala]

Denise wrote: "....The prose, the imagery, the provoked emotion are all wonderful.. ."

That describes my experience perfectly too, Denise.

[Ian]

Denise wrote: "I would persuade you to avoid her. Pursuing her would result in your having to opt to treat your blood pressure or your nerves. "

Haha. Tell me about it.

[Ian]

The thing that attracted Swann to Odette in the first place was that she was supposed to be "difficult".

[Fionnuala]

Ian wrote: "The thing that attracted Swann to Odette in the first place was that she was supposed to be "difficult"."

That's not how I read it, Ian. His friend, who introduced them, implied she was difficult in order to impress Swann but he was impressed neither by Odette herself nor her 'difficult' reputation. It was she who sought him out later and made their relationship happen.
What is interesting is that Proust creates this tangle for Swann, and why.

[Ian]

I haven't got my copy here, but I thought the whole point of emphasising her difficulty was to get his interest in someone he might not have been attracted to.

I saw Odette as the female equivalent of his philandering side. Unlike his normal partners, she wasn't young and naive and manipulable.

He mightn't have had to exert himself to get her, but he did, to keep her.

It's like reading a difficult novel. Anyone can start one, but can you finish it.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "Perhaps we haven't paid enough attention to light and illumination."

Apropos, "light" seems to be the dominant theme in this section, revolving around Swann's guessing whether Odette was having an affair on him based on her light. This is the beginning of the long, beautiful paragraph around the theme of light, the illusion, the deception, the torturous light. If I didn't indicate the translation in the quote, it's the quote from the LD translation.

"Elle le pria d’éteindre la lumière avant de s’en aller, il referma lui-même les rideaux du lit et partit. Mais quand il fut rentré chez lui, l’idée lui vint brusquement que peut-être Odette attendait quelqu’un ce soir,..."

"She asked him to put out the light before he went, he himself closed the curtains of the bed and left. But when he was back at home, the idea came to him abruptly that perhaps Odette had been waiting for someone else that night..." LD

"She asked him to put out the light before he went; he drew the curtains round her bed and left. But, when he was back in his own house, the idea suddenly struck him that perhaps Odette was expecting someone else that evening,...ML"

And a few pages over, another beautiful large paragraph played with the light metaphor, lamplight, shadow, artificial, cardboard, dreams, supernatural and the orangeade:

"Alors à ces moments-là, pendant qu’elle leur faisait de l’orangeade, tout d’un coup, comme quand un réflecteur mal réglé d’abord promène autour d’un objet, sur la muraille, de grandes ombres fantastiques,..."

"And so at these moments, while she was making orangeade for them, suddenly, as when a poorly adjusted reflector at first casts on the wall around an object large fantastic shadows..." LD

"At such moments as these, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as when an ill-adjusted reflector begins by casting huge, fantastic shadows on an object on the wall..." ML

When Swann was contemplating about Odette being a "kept woman", he couldn't think because he had "extinguish all light in his intelligence, as abruptly as...when electric lighting (was)...cut off..."

This idea of the electric light also echoes the artificiality of electric light, more of the idea of illusion and delusion.

Then there's the light as a reflection from Odette on Swann:

"If, ever since he had fallen in love, things had regained for him a little of the delightful interest they had once had for him, but only insofar as they were illuminated by the memory of Odette,...but for a truth that was likewise interposed between him and his mistress, taking its light only from her,..."

Light reflecting differently on varying surfaces, with varying glow, when Swann was figuring out how to talk about Odette to uncle Adolphe, "Not everyone sees Odette in the same light as you and I..."

Then there's the real light of the "...light from the moon. He was greeted by the little phrase from the sonata played in the garden on the restaurant piano..."

The real light of the sunlight shining on Odette, "...good feeling...would spring from her eyes like a beam of yellow sunlight..."

Which brings us to the "Moonlight Sonata". The following expression from the painter reminds me of what is going on with Swann, playing in the dark. "There must be no lights on and he must play the 'Moonlight Sonata' in the dark so we can watch how things become illuminated." LD

Finally, in that section, Swann went to bed with a "light heart", but the moment he "put out his light", started sobbing.

[Aloha]

I moved over the Moonlight Sonata quote from last week's. My mistake.

More of Swann's self-torture:
“He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and the grimaces of Mme Verdurin in terrified anticipation of the wrecking of her nerves by Beethoven’s music. “Idiot, liar!” he shouted, “and a creature like that imagines that she loves Art!”

Moonlight Sonata:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qqib2...

[Ian]

Haha, Aloha, you made light work of that.

I was thinking of light from the point of view of light and shade, but as you point out, the source of light is important too.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "It's like reading a difficult novel. Anyone can start one, but can you finish it. "

I did. On the most difficult list, too. Just so I can brag. :o) Actually, I love them.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "Haha, Aloha, you made light work of that.

I was thinking of light from the point of view of light and shade, but as you point out, the source of light is important too."

It seems to me Odette is somewhat of a flame to Swann.

[Ian]

Swann just can't work out who put the light out on their relationship, or why?

[Aloha]

The two large paragraphs playing on the theme of light is amazing. I would read both translations of it, and the French if you can.

[Ian]

Aloha wrote: ".It seems to me Odette is somewhat of a flame to Swann. "

I can't hold a candle to you, Alightha.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "Aloha wrote: ".It seems to me Odette is somewhat of a flame to Swann. "

I can't hold a candle to you, Alightha."

Don't get burned from the hot stuff! :o)

[Ian]

Aloha wrote: "Ian wrote: "It's like reading a difficult novel. Anyone can start one, but can you finish it. "

I did. On the most difficult list, too. Just so I can brag. :o) Actually, I love them."

Practice for when you encounter a difficult man?

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "Practice for when you encounter a difficult man? "

I'm a mosquito zapper. Ah-hem, back to the topic of Proust. The beginning of this section had Swann comparing Odette, the "kept woman" as "an iridescent amalgam of unfamiliar and diabolical elements, set, like some apparition by Gustave Moreau,..." Geesh, he really has some problem with Odette. :oD Here's a Gustave Moreau:

[Ian]

Aloha wrote: "Ian wrote: "Practice for when you encounter a difficult man? "

I'm a mosquito zapper."

Well, at least, that's fair warning and anybody would go in with their eyes open. I suppose that makes you a frank zapper.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "I suppose that makes you a frank zapper. "

LMAO! Good one, Ian.

[Kris]

Aloha, brilliant reading of Proust's use of light throughout this week's section.

[Aloha]

Thanks! Now I have to read Benjamin's Illuminations, seeing how brilliantly Proust played with light.

[Aloha]

Odette "...was good, desirous of pleasing him, and often sad when she had vexed him,....She reminded him even more than usual, when she looked this way, of the faces of the women portrayed by the painter of the Primavera." LD

[Aloha]

Swann's continued commentary on his perception of Odette's fake sadness at not being able to spend time with him:

"...She had at this moment their downcast and heartbroken expression which seems to be succumbing beneath the weight of a grief too heavy for them, when they are merely letting the child Jesus play with a pomegranate or watching Moses pour water into a trough...."

Botticelli's Madonna della Melagrana:




Botticelli's The Trials of Moses:

[Kris]

Aloha wrote: "Swann's continued commentary on his perception of Odette's fake sadness at not being able to spend time with him:

"...She had at this moment their downcast and heartbroken expression which seems t..."

I thought that description was perfect.

[Aloha]

Kris wrote: "I thought that description was perfect. "

I think we can agree that Proust has a knack for perfect descriptions.

[Aloha]

Swann wants to know more about Odette's shady past in Baden or Nice, to help "him understand something of Odette's smile or the look in her eyes...(like an) aesthete...to penetrate further into the soul of Botticelli's Primavera, bella Vanna, or Venus." LD

[Aloha]

"He told himself that the charm of springtime which he could not go down to enjoy at Combray he could at least find on the Île des Cygnes or at Saint-Cloud. But since he could think only about Odette, he did not even know if he had detected the smell of the leaves,..." LD




Alfred Sisley: La Seine à Saint Cloud

[Aloha]

"As they were preparing to leave, he noticed some confabulations between Mme. Verdurin and several of the guests and thought he heard them reminding the pianist to come to a party at Chatou the next day; yet, he, Swann, had not been invited." LD

Renoir's Le Pont de Chatou (The Bridge at Chatou):

[Aloha]

...the Verdurins were taking her to the Opéra-Comique, to see Une Nuit de Cléopâtre, and Swann could read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go,...

“Yet it’s not really anger,” he assured himself, “that I feel when I see how she longs to go and scratch around in that dunghill of music. It’s disappointment, not of course for myself but for her; I’m disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in daily contact with me, she hasn’t changed enough to be able spontaneously to reject Victor Massé” ML

Victor Massé operatic composition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v7Lng...

[Aloha]

"...the Verdurins would take (Odette) to see the tombs at Dreux, or, on the advice of the painter, to Compiègne to admire sunsets as viewed from inside a forest, and then they would push on as far as the Château of Pierrefond." LD

The tombs at Dreux:



Forest of Compiègne:




Château of Pierrefonds:

[Aloha]

When Odette went to the Château of Pierrefonds with the Verdurins, he was grumbling:

“To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who have spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly bombarded by people who really count to take them to Beauvais or Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of that she trundles off with the most abject brutes to go into ecstasies over the excrements of Louis-Philippe and Viollet-le-Duc! One hardly needs much knowledge of art, I should say, to do that; surely, even without a particularly refined sense of smell, one doesn’t deliberately choose to spend a holiday in the latrines so as to be within range of their fragrant exhalations.”


Cathedral of Saint-Pierre de Beauvais:




Saint-Loup-de-Naud church:

[Jason]

Hot damn, is this really the thread for next week? I came here to post an observation—there are already 90 posts!!

I was just going to say something stupid, like, hey isn't that description of Swann anxiously awaiting the return of Odette from her trip with the Verdurins (will she come to his house? will she not?), isn't that anxiety so utterly reminiscent of the narrator at Combray anxiously awaiting the arrival of his mother to give him a good-night kiss? Anyway, it struck me as such.

Carry on. No need to respond, either. I'll never see it.

[Aloha]

In order to keep to Odette's wish that he not show up wherever she is, he ends up staying home, "bent over a map of the Compiègne forest as if it were the Map of Love, and surrounded himself with photographs of the Château at Pierrefonds." LD

Map of Love is "an allegorical map devised by the novelist Madeleine de Scudéry in her novel Clélie (1654-60) (that showed) three different roads leading to true love." LD

Map of Love

[Aloha]

Jason wrote: "Hot damn, is this really the thread for next week? I came here to post an observation—there are already 90 posts!!

I was just going to say something stupid, like, hey isn't that description of Swa..."

Ha! I think we already discussed that. LOL.

[Jason]

I'm sure you did!

[Aloha]

Swann was feeling sad about doing things without Odette, "...like the initials of Philibert le Beau, which, in the church at Brou, because of the longing she felt for him, Margaret of Austria intertwined everywhere with her own...." LD

[Aloha]

Swann's got it bad! He goes to a restaurant because it "bore the same name as the street in which Odette lived: Lapérouse

[Aloha]

Odette, you need to treat Swann better. Talk about great dates!

Swann: "...To think that only yesterday, when she said she wanted to attend the season at Bayreuth, I was stupid enough to propose renting for the two of us one of the King of Bavaria's pretty castles in the vicinity. And anyway she did not seem all that delighted,..." LD


Bayreuth Theatre:

[image error]

Neuschwanstein Castle, one of the King of Bavaria's five castles:

[Kris]

I again was struck by Proust's brilliance in describing how people (in a sense) create others, a process shaped by memories and hopes:

"She [Odette] would sit there, often tired, her face momentarily drained of that eager, febrile preoccupation with the unknown things that made Swann suffer; she would push back her hair with both hands, and her forehead, her whole face, would seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some kindly sentiment such as are to be found in all individuals when, in a moment of rest or reclusion, they are free to express their true selves, would flash from her eyes like a ray of gold. And immediately the whole of her face would light up like a grey landscape swathed in clouds which are suddenly swept aside, leaving it transfigured by the setting sun. The life which occupied Odette at such times, even the future which she seemed to be dreamily contemplating, Swann could have shared with her; no evil disturbance seemed to have left its residue there. Rare though they became, those moments did not occur in vain. By the process of memory, Swann joined the fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity, for whom (as we shall see in the second part of this story) he was later to make sacrifices which the other Odette would never have won from him." (ML 446-447)

Also once more this idea of a true self being covered up by social conventions, cares, etc -- but still existing behind a mask.

[Aloha]

Kris wrote: "I again was struck by Proust's brilliance in describing how people (in a sense) create others, a process shaped by memories and hopes:

"She [Odette] would sit there, often tired, her face momentar..."

I love that section, especially after the artifice (and Swann's neuroticism and worry) of electric light.

[Aloha]

I think it's very effective the fact that the POV is Swann's trying to figure out the mystery of the flame that is Odette, and making us trying to figure out the mystery of Odette and their relationship.

[Ian]

Aloha wrote: "Odette, you need to treat Swann better. Talk about great dates!

Swann: "...To think that only yesterday, when she said she wanted to attend the season at Bayreuth, I was stupid enough to propose..."

I assume that everybody realises the "schwan" in Neuschwanstein" means swan.

[Aloha]

Ian wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Odette, you need to treat Swann better. Talk about great dates!

Swann: "...To think that only yesterday, when she said she wanted to attend the season at Bayreuth, I was stupid eno..."

That's funny! I love the details Proust gives us. What a delight when we find them.

[Ian]

Aloha wrote: "Swann wants to know more about Odette's shady past in Baden or Nice, to help "him understand something of Odette's smile or the look in her eyes...(like an) aesthete...to penetrate further into the..."

I'm interstate at the moment and have limits on what I can research, but I wonder whether Alohaness could investigate the similarity in the models for The Trials of Moses and Primavera above, to see whether they are the same, and in both cases, possibly Simonetta Vespucci, wife of Marco Vespucci and perhaps the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici

[Ian]

Re Kris' post #96 and masks, has Camille Paglia written about Proust and sexual personae? I assume she is a pretty big Proust fan?

[Aloha]

Ian, looks like we've got another case of suffering from love. According to Wiki:

"The popular view is that (Botticelli) suffered from an unrequited love for Simonetta Vespucci, a married noblewoman. According to popular belief, she had served as the model for The Birth of Venus and recurs throughout his paintings, despite the fact that she had died years earlier, in 1476. Botticelli asked that when he died, he be buried at her feet in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence. His wish was carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510."

[Fionnuala]

Karen wrote: "Replying to my own message 12: I suppose now in the clear light of morning that Forcheville was still in the house when Swann came back an hour later, having heard movement and steps the first time..."

I've just read this part, Karen and it is very confusing for many reasons: while I think it was Swann who took the letters and offered to post them rather than Odette giving them to him to post, my question concerns when she would have had time to write that letter to Forcheville since he had been with her all afternoon until she left him to 'open' the door to her 'uncle' (Swann), and since she had been in Swann's presence, it is implied, until Swann's own departure, delayed on purpose by Odette until she had heard Foucheville leave (and who cleverly rang the bell on his way out).
So how could she have found time to write that letter?
I'm sure as usual, Proust knew what he was doing here, so I'm probably wrong to focus on such a little detail...
And what about that name, Forcheville, fort cheville, strong ankle? Achilles' opposite so is Swann Achilles?
A cheville is also a dowel or a rawlplug but I don't know if those terms were current in Proust's time. They do have an odd connotation when used here in relation to Odette's possible lover.