Through Sunday, 9 June: The Guermantes Way

[Marcelita]

Ce Ce wrote: "Eugene wrote: "I'm dim on the grandfather since Combray when the great aunt called "Bathilde, come in and stop your husband drinking brandy," as grandmoth..."

When I read of the grandfather as the...
"... who died years ago"

The grandfather was definitely at the deathbed of his wife...wiping his eyes and telling the cousin how "fond" she was of her two sisters, who were "stark mad."

In the opening pages, the narrator seems to be flashing back on his life...past the death of his grandfather "who had died years ago," to even an earlier time when he was a child.

[Ce Ce]

Marcelita wrote: The grandfather was definitely at the deathbed of his wife...wiping his eyes and telling the cousin how "fond" she was of her two sisters, who were "stark mad."

In the opening pages, the narrator seems to be flashing back on his life...past the death of his grandfather "who had died years ago," to even an earlier time when he was a child. "

I think Elizabeth posted about this too.

Damn. I prefer the grandfather as spirit...arriving at his wife's deathbed to guide her!

I'll have to go back and re-read more carefully...the beginning pages...AND the grandmother's death.

[Ce Ce]

Marcelita and Elizabeth, You are right...the grandfather is very much alive at his wife's (the Narrator's grandmother) death.

I looked back at the description of the Narrator waking in a room in his grandfather's (who had been many years dead) home. Many many pages before that he begins that section with: "When a man is asleep, he has in a circle around him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly bodies." location #365 kindle

And then snippets: but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks...the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space. Currently visiting Mme Saint-Loup…indicating he is older...that in addition to stating when a 'man' awakes. Eventually he wakes in a room that he recognizes as his bedroom when he is clearly more mature.

The Death of the Grandmother: For several nights now my father, grandfather and one of our cousins had been keeping vigil and no longer left the house. The grandfather had grown rather deaf. The telegram from the sisters...Beethoven...the grandfather wiping a tear because his wife was so fond of her sisters. Stark mad...both of them. Protecting his wife’s oxygen when the doctor came in.

I had forgotten how beautiful that magic carpet ride was through the waking and sleeping hours breathing life into a lifetime of beds and bedrooms. I had also forgotten how confusing the age of the narrator was...shifting...always shifting. I think I've grown accustomed to going along for the Narrator's ride. In fact looking back at this passage I was struck with the difference between reading ISOLT now and the beginning just a little over 7 months ago.

I think also it was the grandfather's disappearance. He was a tangible presence in Combray. Then the Narrator and his mother go off for months to Balbec with narry a word of the grandfather. I assumed the grandmother was widowed. And then voila! he is at her side when she is dying.

Last but not least, I had this fascinating conversation with some friends about the time I read of the grandmother's death in ISOLT. Their parents are mostly in their late 80's or 90's or have passed. Some of them reported their parents dreaming about their husbands or wives, long since deceased, starting to visit them in their dreams. Shortly after their parent would then pass away. A few whose parents were still living reported that their parents had talked of similar dreams. We talked of the mystical, mysterious, spiritual and reassuring nature of visits from loved ones at such a time. I think I brought that perspective to the passing of the Narrator's dearly beloved grandmother.

[Marcelita]

Thinking more about the telegram the sisters sent...Beethoven...and the reference to framing. I looked back to this passage,

"Informed by telegram, her sisters declined to leave Combray. They had discovered a musician there who gave them excellent chamber recitals, in listening to which they felt they could enjoy better than by the invalid's bedside a contemplative melancholy, a sorrowful exaltation, the form of which was, to say the least of it, unusual." MP (GW p.442)

It was only after remembering another earlier passage (below and unrelated to the sisters), did I begin to believe that the sisters, in their own "stark mad" fashion, chose to begin grieving their sister's coming death...through music.

"... humming to themselves, for instance, a phrase of Beethoven the melancholy of which they compare with what they have been trying to express in their prose,..." MP (WBG p.71)

Could it be that Proust found a spiritual connection through Beethoven, especially the late quartets, and was attempting to find a place to "express" this experience?