Vii- The cities of the Plain (aka Sodom and Gomorrah), Part 1, Trans CK Scott Moncrieff, Chatto & Windus, London 1924, 1957
1 "Introducing the men-women, descendants of those of the inhabitants of Sodom who were spared by the fire from heaven".
La femme aura Gomorrhe aura Sodome
Alfred de Vigny
Context: Whist waiting for the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes to return "at the hour immediately following luncheon" to verify his invitation to the Princesse de Guermantes' party, the Narrator bears witness to an encounter of a sexual nature between “the plump, (pursy form) of the middle aged” Baron de Charlus, “his hair visibly grey” and the ex-tailor Jupien who is in his shop. He witnesses the coquetry and overtures beforehand, and hears all the inarticulate sounds associated with the encounter (p 12). The narrative appears in the context of a lengthy elaboration on the subject of homosexuality in general and sodomy in particular, against a backdrop of bees fertilising flowers, notwithstanding that “in the physical sense, the union of male with male is and must be sterile” (p 38).
In due course, the Narrator is welcomed at the Princess’s party, where the fall out over the Dreyfus affair continues, with a variety of different views and perspectives on the subject being aired. He decides to return to Balbec where he spends time with Albertine.
La femme aura Gomorrhe aura Sodome
Alfred de Vigny
Context: Whist waiting for the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes to return "at the hour immediately following luncheon" to verify his invitation to the Princesse de Guermantes' party, the Narrator bears witness to an encounter of a sexual nature between “the plump, (pursy form) of the middle aged” Baron de Charlus, “his hair visibly grey” and the ex-tailor Jupien who is in his shop. He witnesses the coquetry and overtures beforehand, and hears all the inarticulate sounds associated with the encounter (p 12). The narrative appears in the context of a lengthy elaboration on the subject of homosexuality in general and sodomy in particular, against a backdrop of bees fertilising flowers, notwithstanding that “in the physical sense, the union of male with male is and must be sterile” (p 38).
In due course, the Narrator is welcomed at the Princess’s party, where the fall out over the Dreyfus affair continues, with a variety of different views and perspectives on the subject being aired. He decides to return to Balbec where he spends time with Albertine.
The Princess de Guermantes' party
The moon's commanding presence
47 Albeit it was after nine o'clock, it was still the light of day that on the Place de la Concorde was giving the Luxor obelisk the appearance of being made of pink nougat. Then it diluted the tint and changed the surface to a metallic substance, so that the obelisk not only became more precious but seemed to have grown more slender and almost flexible. You imagined that you might have twisted it in your fingers, had perhaps already slightly distorted its outline. The moon was now in the sky like a section of orange delicately peeled although slightly bruised. But presently she was to be fashioned of the most enduring gold. Sheltering alone behind her, a poor little star was to serve as sole companion to the lonely moon, while she, keeping her friend protected, but bolder and striding ahead would brandish like an irresistible weapon, like an Oriental symbol, her broad and marvellous crescent of gold.
54-5 One could hear, above all the din of conversation, the interminable chatter of M. de Charlus, talking to H. E. the Duke of Sidonia, whose acquaintance he had just made. Members of the same profession find one another out, and so it is with a common vice. M. de Charlus and M. de Sidonia had each of them immediately detected the other's vice, which was in both cases that of soliloquizing in society, to the extent of not being able to stand any interruption. Having decided at once that, in the words of a famous sonnet, there was "no help", they had made up their minds not to be silent but each to go on talking without any regard to what the other might say. This had resulted in the confused babble produced in Molière's comedies by a number of people saying different things simultaneously.
57-9 Medicine is not an exact science Thus it was that Professor E--- learned or recalled the death of my grandmother, and (I must say this to his credit, which is that of the medical profession as a whole), without displaying, without perhaps feeling any satisfaction. The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to treatment, or pessimism as to the outcome... Disorders that are grave but purely functional are at once ascribed to an imaginary cancer. It is useless to continue visits which are powerless to eradicate an incurable malady. Let the patient, left to his own devices, thereupon subject himself to an implacable regime, and in time recover, or merely survive, and the doctor, to whom he touches his hat in the Avenue de 1'Opera, when he supposed him to have long been lying in Père Lachaise, will interpret the gesture as an act of insolent defiance. An innocent stroll, taken beneath his nose and venerable beard, would arouse no greater wrath in the Assize Judge who, two years earlier, had sentenced the rascal, now passing him with apparent impunity, to death. Doctors (we do not here include them all, of course, and make a mental reservation of certain admirable exceptions), are in general more displeased, more irritated by the quashing of their sentence than pleased by its execution. ... The fact is that medicine has made some slight advance in knowledge since Molière's days, but none in its vocabulary. My companion went on: "The great thing is to avoid the sudations that are caused by weather like this, especially in superheated rooms. You can remedy them, when you go home and feel thirsty, by the. application of heat" (by which he apparently meant hot drinks).
Owing to the circumstances of my grandmother's death, the subject interested me, and I had recently read in a book by a great specialist that perspiration was injurious to the kidneys, by making moisture pass through the skin when its proper outlet was elsewhere. I thought with regret of those dog-days at the time of my grand-mother's death, and was inclined to blame them for it. I did not mention this to Dr. E-, but of his own accord he said to me: "The advantage of this very hot weather in which perspiration is abundant is that the kidney is correspondingly relieved." Medicine is not an exact science.
72 A little insomnia is not without value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. A memory without fault is not a very powerful incentive to studying the phenomena of memory.
The moon's commanding presence
47 Albeit it was after nine o'clock, it was still the light of day that on the Place de la Concorde was giving the Luxor obelisk the appearance of being made of pink nougat. Then it diluted the tint and changed the surface to a metallic substance, so that the obelisk not only became more precious but seemed to have grown more slender and almost flexible. You imagined that you might have twisted it in your fingers, had perhaps already slightly distorted its outline. The moon was now in the sky like a section of orange delicately peeled although slightly bruised. But presently she was to be fashioned of the most enduring gold. Sheltering alone behind her, a poor little star was to serve as sole companion to the lonely moon, while she, keeping her friend protected, but bolder and striding ahead would brandish like an irresistible weapon, like an Oriental symbol, her broad and marvellous crescent of gold.
54-5 One could hear, above all the din of conversation, the interminable chatter of M. de Charlus, talking to H. E. the Duke of Sidonia, whose acquaintance he had just made. Members of the same profession find one another out, and so it is with a common vice. M. de Charlus and M. de Sidonia had each of them immediately detected the other's vice, which was in both cases that of soliloquizing in society, to the extent of not being able to stand any interruption. Having decided at once that, in the words of a famous sonnet, there was "no help", they had made up their minds not to be silent but each to go on talking without any regard to what the other might say. This had resulted in the confused babble produced in Molière's comedies by a number of people saying different things simultaneously.
57-9 Medicine is not an exact science Thus it was that Professor E--- learned or recalled the death of my grandmother, and (I must say this to his credit, which is that of the medical profession as a whole), without displaying, without perhaps feeling any satisfaction. The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to treatment, or pessimism as to the outcome... Disorders that are grave but purely functional are at once ascribed to an imaginary cancer. It is useless to continue visits which are powerless to eradicate an incurable malady. Let the patient, left to his own devices, thereupon subject himself to an implacable regime, and in time recover, or merely survive, and the doctor, to whom he touches his hat in the Avenue de 1'Opera, when he supposed him to have long been lying in Père Lachaise, will interpret the gesture as an act of insolent defiance. An innocent stroll, taken beneath his nose and venerable beard, would arouse no greater wrath in the Assize Judge who, two years earlier, had sentenced the rascal, now passing him with apparent impunity, to death. Doctors (we do not here include them all, of course, and make a mental reservation of certain admirable exceptions), are in general more displeased, more irritated by the quashing of their sentence than pleased by its execution. ... The fact is that medicine has made some slight advance in knowledge since Molière's days, but none in its vocabulary. My companion went on: "The great thing is to avoid the sudations that are caused by weather like this, especially in superheated rooms. You can remedy them, when you go home and feel thirsty, by the. application of heat" (by which he apparently meant hot drinks).
Owing to the circumstances of my grandmother's death, the subject interested me, and I had recently read in a book by a great specialist that perspiration was injurious to the kidneys, by making moisture pass through the skin when its proper outlet was elsewhere. I thought with regret of those dog-days at the time of my grand-mother's death, and was inclined to blame them for it. I did not mention this to Dr. E-, but of his own accord he said to me: "The advantage of this very hot weather in which perspiration is abundant is that the kidney is correspondingly relieved." Medicine is not an exact science.
72 A little insomnia is not without value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. A memory without fault is not a very powerful incentive to studying the phenomena of memory.
78-79 Hubert Robert's "The Fountain", c 1775 In a clearing surrounded by fine trees several of which were as old as itself, set in a place apart, one could see it in the distance, slender, immobile, stiffened, allowing the breeze to stir only the lighter fall of its pale and quivering plume. The eighteenth century had refined the elegance of its lines, but, by fixing the style of the jet, seemed to have arrested its life; at this distance one had the impression of a work of art rather than the sensation of water. The moist cloud itself that was perpetually gathering at its crest preserved the character of the period like those that in the sky assemble round the palaces of Versailles. But from a closer view one realised that, while it respected, like the stones of an ancient palace, the design traced for it beforehand, it was a constantly changing stream of water that, springing upwards and seeking to obey the architect's traditional orders, performed them to the letter only by seeming to infringe them, its thousand separate bursts succeeding only at a distance in giving the impression of a single flow. This was in reality as often interrupted as the scattering of the fall, whereas from a distance it had appeared to me unyielding, solid, unbroken in its continuity. From a little nearer, one saw that this continuity, apparently complete, was assured, at every point in the ascent of the jet, wherever it must otherwise have been broken, by the entering into line, by the lateral incorporation of a parallel jet which mounted higher than the first and was itself, at an altitude greater but already a strain upon its endurance, relieved by a third. Seen close at hand, drops without strength fell back from the column of water crossing on their way their climbing sisters and, at times, torn, caught in an eddy of the night air, disturbed by this ceaseless flow, floated awhile before being drowned in the basin. They teased with their hesitations, with their passage in the opposite direction, and blurred with their soft vapour the vertical tension of that stem, bearing aloft an oblong cloud composed of a thousand tiny drops, but apparently painted in an unchanging, golden brown which rose, unbreakable, constant, urgent, swift, to mingle with the clouds in the sky. Unfortunately, a gust of wind was enough to scatter it obliquely on the ground; at times indeed a single jet disobeying its orders, swerved and, had they not kept a respectful distance, would have drenched to their skins the incautious crowd of gazers.
Offence taken
84 There was no reason why the Turkish Ambassadress should be in any way better qualified than myself to judge of the worth of the Duchesse de Guermantes. .... The defects of a mere acquaintance, and even of a friend, are to us real poisons against which we are fortunately 'mithridated'. Mithridate: a semi-mythical remedy with as many as 65 ingredients, used as an antidote for poisoning, and said to be created by Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus in the 1st century BC. 85 In the ordinary course of life, the eyes of the Duchess de Guermantes were absent and slightly melancholy, she made them sparkle with a flame of wit only when she had to say how-d' ye-do to a friend; precisely as though the said friend had been some witty remark, some charming touch, some titbit for delicate palates, the savour of which has set on the face of the connoisseur an expression of refined joy. But upon big evenings, as she had too many greetings to bestow, she decided that it would be tiring to have to switch off the light after each. Just as an ardent reader, when he goes to the theatre to see a new piece by one of the masters of the stage, testifies to his certainty that he is not going to spend a dull evening by having, while he hands his hat and coat to the attendant, his lip adjusted in readiness for a sapient smile, his eye kindled for a sardonic approval; similarly it was at the moment of her arrival that the Duchess lighted up for the whole evening. And while she was handing over her evening cloak, of a magnificent Tiepolo red, exposing a huge collar of rubies round her neck, having cast over her gown that final rapid, minute and exhaustive dressmaker's glance which is also that of a woman of the world, Oriane made sure that her eyes, just as much as her other jewels, were sparkling. 93 How people in society view authors "I have a present for you, my dear," (this little dark lady, extremely pretty) went on, returning to the Duchess, " which I should not dream of giving to anyone but you. The manuscripts of three of Ibsen's plays, which he sent to me by his old attendant. I shall keep one and give you the other two." The Duc de Guermantes was not overpleased by these offers. Uncertain whether Ibsen and D'Annunzio were dead or alive, he could see in his mind's eye a tribe of authors, playwrights, coming to call upon his wife and putting her in their works. People in society are too apt to think of a book as a sort of cube one side of which has been removed, so that the author can at once "put in" the people he meets. This is obviously disloyal, and authors are a pretty low class. Certainly, it would not be a bad thing to meet them once in a way, for thanks to them, when one reads a book or an article, one can "read between the lines," "unmask" the characters. After all, though, the wisest thing is to stick to dead authors. M. de Guermantes considered "quite all right" only the gentleman who did the funeral notices in the Gaulois. He, at any rate, confined himself to including M. de Guermantes among the people "conspicuous by their presence" at funerals at which the Duke had given his name. When he preferred that his name should not appear, instead of giving it, he sent a letter of condolence to the relatives of the deceased, assuring, them of his deep and heartfelt sympathy. If, then, the family sent to the paper "among the letters received, we may mention one from the Duc de Guermantes," etc., this was the fault not of the ink-slinger but of the son, brother, father of the deceased whom the Duke thereupon described as upstarts. 100 Snobbery A duchess of swarthy complexion went past, whom her ugliness and stupidity, and certain irregularities of behaviour had exiled not from society as a whole but from certain small and fashionable circles. "Ah ! " murmured Mme. de Guermantes, with the sharp, unerring glance of the connoisseur who is shewn a false jewel, "So they have that sort here?" By the mere sight of this semi-tarnished lady, whose face was burdened with a surfeit of moles from which black hairs sprouted, Mme de Guermantes gauged the mediocre importance of this party. They had been brought up together, but she had severed all relations with the lady; and responded to her greeting only with the curtest little nod… But, in many cases, it was from timidity, fear of a scene with her husband, who did not like her to entertain artists and such like (MarIe-Gilbert took a kindly interest in dozens of them, you had to take care not to be accosted by some illustrious German diva), from some misgivings, too, with regard to Nationalist feeling, which, inasmuch as she was endowed, like M. de Charlus, with the wit of the Guermantes, she despised from the social point of view (people were now, for the greater glory of the General Staff, sending a plebeian general in to dinner before certain dukes), ... "by an excess of politeness" 103 M de Vaugoubert, after hovering about us (by an excess of politeness which he maintained even when playing tennis when, by dint of asking of the eminent personages present before hitting the ball, he invariably lost the game for his partner),... |
107-111 Dreyfus revisited with a vengeance "I shall not discuss politics with you, Froberville", said M de Guermantes, "but so far as Swann is concerned, 1 can tell you frankly that his conduct towards ourselves has been beyond words. Introduced into society, in the past, by ourselves, by the Duc de Chartres, they tell me now that he is openly a Dreyfusard. 1 should never have believed it of him, an epicure, a man of practical judgment, a collector, who goes in for old books, a member of the Jockey, a man who enjoys the respect of all that know him, who knows all the good addresses, and used to send us the best port wine you could wish to drink, a dilettante, the father of a family.. if only for Oriane's sake, he ought to have openly disavowed the Jews and the partisans of Dreyfus".
"Yes, after the friendship my wife has always shewn him", went on the Duke, who evidently considered that to denounce Dreyfus as guilty of high treason, whatever opinion one might hold in one's own conscience as to his guilt, constituted a sort of thank-offering for the manner in which one had been received in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. "He ought to have disassociated himself'... "And after that, he carries his ingratitude to the point of being a Dreyfusard". "Talking of Dreyfusards," I said, "it appears, Prince Von is one." "Ah, 1 am glad you reminded me of him," exclaimed M de Guermantes, I was forgetting that he had asked me to dine with him on Monday. But whether he is a Dreyfusard or not is entirely immaterial, since he is a foreigner. 1 don't give two straws for his opinion. With a Frenchman, it is another matter. It is true that Swann is a Jew. But, until today..., 1 have always been foolish enough to believe that a Jew can be a Frenchman, that is to say, an honourable Jew, a man of the world. Now, Swann was that in every sense of the word. Ah, well! He forces me to admit that I have been mistaken, since he has taken the side of this Dreyfus (who, guilty or not, never moved in his world, he cannot ever have met him) against a society that had adopted him, had treated as one of ourselves. It goes without saying, we were all of us prepared to vouch for Swann. I would have answered for his patriotism as for my own. Ah! He is rewarding us very badly: 1 must confess that I should never have expected such a thing From him. I thought better of him. He was a man of intelligence (in his own line, of course). 1 know that he had already made that insane, disgraceful marriage. By which token, shall I tell you some one who was really hurt by Swann's marriage: my wife. Oriane often has what I might call an affectation of sensibility. But at heart she feels things with extra-ordinary keenness." Mme. de Guermantes, delighted by this analysis of her character, listened to it with a modest air but did not utter a word, from a scrupulous reluctance to acquiesce in it, but principally from fear of cutting it short. It is true that M. de Guermantes had not displayed so profound and pained an astonishment when he learned that Saint Loup was Dreyfusard. But, for one thing, he regarded his nephew as a young man gone astray, as to whom nothing, until he began to mend his ways, could be surprising, whereas Swann was what M de Guermantes called "a man. of weight, a man occupying a position in the front rank." Moreover and above all, a considerable interval of time had elapsed during which, if, from the historical point of view, events had, to some extent, seemed to justify the Dreyfusard argument, the anti-Dreyfusard opposition had doubled its violence, and, from being purely political, had become social. It was now a question of militarism, and patriotism and the waves of anger that had been stirred up in society had from time to time to gather the force which they never have at the beginning of a storm. "Don't you see," M. de Guermantes went on, "even from the point of view of his beloved Jews, since he is absolutely determined to stand by them, Swann has made a blunder of an incalculable magnitude. He has shewn that they are to some extent forced to give their support to anyone of their own race, even if they do not know him personally. It is a public danger. We have evidently been too easy going, and the mistake Swann is making will create all the more stir since he was respected, not to say received, and was almost the only Jew that anyone knew. People will say: Ab uno disce omnes. " (His satisfaction at having hit, at the right moment, in his memory, upon so apt a quotation alone brightened with a proud smile the melancholy of the great noble of betrayal.) 113 A false smile "Oriane, Mme de Lambresac is bowing to you". And indeed, one saw at certain moments form and fade like a shooting star a faint smile directed by the Duchesse de Lambresac at somebody whom she had recognised. But this smile, instead of taking definite shape in an active affirmation, in a language mute but clear, was drowned almost immediately in a sort of ideal ecstasy which expressed nothing, while her head drooped in a gesture of blissful benediction, recalling the inclination towards the crowd of communicants of the head of a somewhat senile prelate. There was not the least trace of senility about Mme de Lambresac. At Combray and in Paris, all my grandmother's friends were in the habit of greeting one another at a social gathering with as seraphic an air as if they had caught sight of some one of their acquaintance in church, at the moment of the Elevation of during a funeral, and were casting him a gentle "Good morning" which ended in prayer. |
113-4 Manners through the generations The similarity between the evanescent greetings of the Duchesse de Lambresac and those of my grand-mother's friends had first aroused my interest by shewing me how in all narrow and exclusive societies, be they those of the minor gentry or of the great nobility, the old manners persist, allowing us to recapture, like an archaeologist, what might have been the standard of upbringing, and the side of life which it reflects, in the days of the Vicomte d' Arlincourt and Louisa Puget. . .. Reminding me of what had already struck me so forcibly when I had seen Daint-Loup's mayernal grandfather, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in a daguerreotype in which he was exactly similar, in dress, air and manner to my great-uncle, that social, and even individual differences are merged when seen from a distance in the uniformity of an epoch… The truth is that the similarity of dress, and also the reflection from a person's face, of the spirit of his age occupy so much more space than his caste, which bulks largely only in his own self-esteem and the imagination of other people, that in order to discover that a great nobleman of the time of Louis Philippe differs less from a citizen of the time of Louis Philippe than from a great nobleman of the time of Louis XV, it is not necessary to visit the galleries of the Louvre.
120 Mother reflected in the eyes of her 2 sons We passed two young men whose great and dissimilar beauty took its origin from one and the same woman. They were the two sons of Mme. de Surgis, the latest mistress of the Due de Guermantes. Both were resplendent with their mother's perfections, but each in his own way. To one had passed, rippling through a virile body, the royal presence of Mme. de Surgis and the same pallor, ardent, flushed and sacred, flooded the marble cheeks of mother and son; but his brother had received the Grecian brow, the perfect nose, the statuesque throat, the eyes of infinite depth; composed thus of separate gifts, which the goddess had shared between them, their twofold beauty offered one the abstract pleasure of thinking that the cause of that beauty was something outside themselves; one would have said that the two principal attributes of their mother were incarnate in two different bodies; that one of the young men was his mother's stature and her complexion, the other her gaze, like those divine beings who were no more than the strength and beauty of Jupiter or Minerva....
(124) .. and what added to the Baron's enthusiasm was the discovery that the 2 sons of Mme de Surgis-le-Duc were sons not only of the same mother but of the same father. The children of Jupiter are dissimilar, but that is because he married first Metis, whose destiny it was to bring into the world wise children, then Themis, and after her Eurynome, and Mnemosyne, and Leto, and only as a last resort Juno. But to a single father Mme de Surgis had borne these two sons who had each received beauty from her but in a different way.
132 "Really, there are enough women in the world without his having to go and sprawl over that one," he went on; like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages. .
136 "By Balzac, yes", replied the elder Surgis; who had never read a line of that novelist's work, but to whom his tutor had remarked, a few days earlier, upon the similarity of his Christian name and d'Esgrignon's. .
120 Mother reflected in the eyes of her 2 sons We passed two young men whose great and dissimilar beauty took its origin from one and the same woman. They were the two sons of Mme. de Surgis, the latest mistress of the Due de Guermantes. Both were resplendent with their mother's perfections, but each in his own way. To one had passed, rippling through a virile body, the royal presence of Mme. de Surgis and the same pallor, ardent, flushed and sacred, flooded the marble cheeks of mother and son; but his brother had received the Grecian brow, the perfect nose, the statuesque throat, the eyes of infinite depth; composed thus of separate gifts, which the goddess had shared between them, their twofold beauty offered one the abstract pleasure of thinking that the cause of that beauty was something outside themselves; one would have said that the two principal attributes of their mother were incarnate in two different bodies; that one of the young men was his mother's stature and her complexion, the other her gaze, like those divine beings who were no more than the strength and beauty of Jupiter or Minerva....
(124) .. and what added to the Baron's enthusiasm was the discovery that the 2 sons of Mme de Surgis-le-Duc were sons not only of the same mother but of the same father. The children of Jupiter are dissimilar, but that is because he married first Metis, whose destiny it was to bring into the world wise children, then Themis, and after her Eurynome, and Mnemosyne, and Leto, and only as a last resort Juno. But to a single father Mme de Surgis had borne these two sons who had each received beauty from her but in a different way.
132 "Really, there are enough women in the world without his having to go and sprawl over that one," he went on; like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages. .
136 "By Balzac, yes", replied the elder Surgis; who had never read a line of that novelist's work, but to whom his tutor had remarked, a few days earlier, upon the similarity of his Christian name and d'Esgrignon's. .
136 The Dreyfus grand debate continues "It appears that (President) Loubet is entirely on our side, I have it from an absolutely trustworthy source", Swann informed Saint-Loup, but this time in a lower tone so as not to be overheard by the General. Swann had begun to find his wife's republican connections more interesting now that the Dreyfus case had become his chief preoccupation. .
138 He (Swann) had arrived at that stage of exhaustion in which a sick man's body becomes a mere retort in which we study chemical reactions. His face was mottled with tiny spots of Prussian blue, which seemed not to belong to the world of living things, and emitted the sort of odour which, at school, after the "experiments", makes it so unpleasant to have to remain in a "science" classroom. 145-6 ..., Swann could not resist fastening upon the lady's bosom the slow expansive concupiscent gaze of a connoisseur. He put up his monocle for a better view, and, while he talked to me, kept glancing: in the direction of the lady. 150-1 Dreyfus again Swann: Well, the Prince de Guermantes went on to say: "I don’t mind telling you that this idea of a possible illegality in the procedure of the trial was extremely painful to me, because I have always, as you know worshipped the army; I discussed the matter again with the General, and, alas, there could be no two ways of looking at it. I don't mind telling you frankly that, all this time, the idea that an innocent man might be undergoing the most degrading punishment had never even entered my mind. But, starting from this idea of illegality, I began to study what I had always declined to read, and then the possibility not, this time, of illegal procedure but of the prisoner's innocence began to haunt me. I did not feel that I could talk about it to the Princess. Heaven knows that she has become just as French as myself. You may say what you like, from the day of our marriage, I took such pride in shewing her our country in all its beauty, and what to me is the most splendid thing in it, our Army, that it would have been too painful to me to tell her of my suspicions, which involved, it is true, a few officers only. But I come of a family of soldiers, I did not like to think that officers could be mistaken. I discussed the case again with Beaucerfeuil, he admitted that there had been culpable intrigues, that the bordereau was possibly not in Dreyfus's writing, but that an overwhelming proof of his guilt did exist. This was the Henry document. And, a few days later, we learned that it was a forgery. After that, without letting the Princesse see me, I began to read the Siecle and the Aurore every day; soon I had no doubt left, it kept me awake all night. I confided my distress to our friend, the abbé Poiré who, I was astonished to find, held the same conviction, and I got him to say masses for the intentions of Dreyfus, his unfortunate wife and children. 154 - 157 The Dreyfus discussion continues, but with a twist Swann continues his narration of the Duc de Guermantes’ comments: ’No, the abbé informed me’ (I say me to you," Swann explained to me, "because it is the Prince who is speaking, you understand?) 'for I have another mass that I have been asked to say for him to-morrow as well. What, I said to him, is there another Catholic as well as myself who is convinced of his innocence? It appears so. But this other supporter's conviction must be of more recent growth than mine. Maybe, but this other was making me say masses when you still believed Dreyfus guilty. Ah, I can see that it is not anyone in our world. On the contrary! Indeed! There are Dreyfusists among us, are there? You intrigue me; I should like to unbosom myself to this rare bird, if I know him. You do know him. His name? The Princesse de Guermantes. While I was afraid of shocking the Nationalist opinions, the French faith of my dear wife, she had been afraid of alarming my religious opinions, my patriotic sentiments. But privately she had been thinking as I did, though for longer than I had. And what her maid had been hiding as she went into her room, what she went out to buy for her every morning, was the Aurore. ... (cont. next column) |
The more I believe that an error, that crimes even have been committed, the more my heart bleeds for the Army. It had never occurred to me that opinions like mine could possibly cause you similar pain, until I was told the other day that you were emphatically protesting against the insults to the Army and against the Dreyfusists for consenting to ally themselves with those who insulted it. That settled it, I admit that it has been most painful for me to confess to you what I think of certain officers, few in number fortunately, but it is a relief to me not to have to keep at arms length from you any longer, and especially that you should quite understand that if I was able to entertain other sentiments, it was because I had not a shadow of doubt as to the soundness of the verdict. As soon as my doubts began, I could wish for only one thing, that the mistake should be rectified.' I must tell you that this speech of the Prince de Guermantes moved me profoundly. If you knew him as I do, if you could reaIise the distance he has had to traverse in order to reach his present position, you would admire him as he deserves. Not that his opinion surprises me, his is such a straightforward nature!” Swann was forgetting that in the afternoon he had on the contrary told me that people's opinions as to the Dreyfus case were dictated by atavism. At the most he had made an exception in favour of intelligence, because in Saint-Loup it had manage to overcome atavism and had made a Dreyfusard of him. Now he had just seen that this victory had been of short duration and that Saint-Loup had passed into the opposite camp. And so it was to straightforwardness now that he assigned the part which had previously devolved upon intelligence. In reality we always discover afterwards that our adversaries had a reason for being on the side they espoused, which has nothing to do with any element of right that there may be on that side, and that those who think as we do, do so because their intelligence, if their moral nature is too base to be invoked, or their straightforwardness, if their penetration is feeble, has compelled them. Swann now found equally intelligent anybody who was of his opinion, his old friend the Prince de Guermantes and my schoolfellow Bloch, whom previously he had avoided and whom he now invited to luncheon. Swann interested Bloch greatly by telling him that the Prince de Guermantes was a Dreyfusard. "We must ask him to sign our appeal for Picquart; a name like his would have a tremendous effect”. But Swann, blending with his ardent conviction as an Israelite the diplomatic moderation of a man of the world, whose habits he had too thoroughly acquired to be able to shed them at this late hour, refused to allow Bloch to send the Prince a circular to sign, even on his own initiative. "He cannot do such a thing, we must not expect the impossible," Swann repeated. "There you have a charming man who has travelled thousands of miles to come over to our side. He can be very useful to us. If' he were to sign your list, he would simply be. compromising himself with his own people, would be made to suffer on our account', might even repent of his confidences and not confide' in us again." Nor was this all, Swarm refused his own signature. He felt that his name was too Hebraic not to create a bad effect. Besides, even if he approved of all the attempts to secure a fresh trial, he did not wish to be mixed up in any way in the antiimilitarist campaign. ... In short, Swann refused to sign Bloch's circular, with the result that, if he passed in the eyes of many people a fanatical Dreyfusard, my friend found him lukewarm, infected with Nationalism, and a militarist. Swann left me without shaking hands so as not to be forced into a general leave-taking in this room which swarmed with his friends, but said to me: " You ought to come and see your friend Gilberte. She has really grown up now and altered, you would not know her. .She would be so pleased!" I was no longer in love with Gilberte. She was for me like a dead person for whom one has long mourned, then forgetfulness has come, and if she were to be resuscitated, she could no longer find any place in a life which has ceased to be fashioned for her. I had no desire now to see her, not even that desire to shew her that I did not wish to see her. Swann: "I must say that it would be most annoying to die before the end of the Dreyfus case. ... I should like to live long enough to see Dreyfus rehabilitated and Picquart a colonel."
193.. Those friends of the Duke (de Guermantes), who had seen him, so indifferent at the start, turn into a raving anti-Dreyfusard, were left speechless with amazement when they heard him.. , answer: . "Oh, well, there'll be a fresh trial and he’ll be acquitted, you can't sentence a fellow without any evidence against him" . . . 199-200 The little clan was in fact the active centre of a long political crisis which had reached its maximum of intensity: Dreyfuslsm. But society people were for the most part so violently opposed to the appeal that a Dreyfusiam house seemed to them as inconceivable a thing as, at an earlier period, a Communard house. . . With Mme Swann, on the contrary, the anti-Dreyfusards gave her credit for being "sound", which in a woman married to a Jew, was doubly meritorious. |
The heart’s intermissions - second arrival at Balbec
212 The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as intangible as those which imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourself, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than to those in our dreams. And besides, a fresh reality will perhaps make us forget, detest even, the desires that led us forthwith upon our journey
The narrator decides to repair to Balbec. His memories of his grandmother, with whom he had previously spent such happy times at this venue come flooding back in the context of his grief at her loss. He ruminates upon memory generally in the context of his own experience:
218-9 I had just perceived, in my memory, bending over my weariness, the tender, preoccupied, dejected face of my grandmother, as she had been on that first evening of our arrival, the face not of that grandmother whom I was astonished - and reproached myself - to find that I regretted so little and who was no more of her than just her name, but of my own true grandmother, of whom, for the first time since that afternoon in the Champs-Elysees on which she had had her stroke, I now recaptured by an instinctive and complete act of recollection, the living reality. That reality has no existence for us, so long as it has not been created anew by our mind (otherwise the men who have been engaged in a Titanic conflict would all of them be great epic poets); and so in my insane desire to fling myself into her arms, it was not until this moment, more than a year after her burial, because of that anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from corresponding to that of our feelings, that I became conscious that she was dead. I had often spoken about her in the interval, and thought of her also, but behind my words and thoughts, those of an ungrateful, selfish, cruel youngster, there had never been anything that resembled my grandmother, because, in my frivolity, my love of pleasure, my familiarity with the spectacle of her ill health, I retained only in a potential state the memory of what she had been. At whatever moment we estimate it, the total value of our spiritual state is more or less fictitious, notwithstanding the long inventory of its treasures, for now one, now another of these is unrealizable, whether we are considering actual treasures or those of the imagination. For with the troubles of memory are closely linked the heart's intermissions. It is, no doubt, the existence of our body, which we may compare to a jar containing our spiritual nature, that leads us to suppose that all our inward wealth, our past joys, all our sorrows, are perpetually in our possession... In any case, if they remain within us, it is, for most of the time, in an unknown region where they are of no service to us, and where even the most ordinary are crowded out by memories of a different kind, which preclude any simultaneous occurrence of them in our consciousness. But if the setting of sensations in which they are preserved be recaptured, they acquire in turn the same power of expelling everything that is incompatible with them, of installing alone in us the self that originally lived them.
223-4 .. (The) world of sleep (on whose frontier intellect and will, momentarily paralysed, could no longer strive to rescue me from the cruelty of my real impressions) reflected, retracted the agonising synthesis of survival and annihilation, in the mysteriously lightened darkness of my organs. World of sleep in which our inner consciousness, placed in bondage to the disturbances of our organs, quickens the rhythm of heart or breath because a similar dose of terror, sorrow, remorse acts with a strength magnified an hundredfold if it is thus injected into our veins; as soon as, to traverse the arteries of the subterranean city, we have embarked upon the dark current of our own blood as upon an inward Lethe meandering sixfold, huge solemn forms appear to us, approach and glide away, leaving us in tears. I sought in vain for my grandmother’s form when I had stepped ashore beneath the sombre portals; I knew, indeed, that she did still exist, but with a diminished vitality, as pale as that of memory; the darkness was increasing, and the wind; my father, who was to take me where she was, did not appear. Suddenly my breath failed me, I felt my heart turn to stone; I had just remembered that for week after week I had forgotten to write to my grandmother. What must she be thinking of me? "Great God!" .....
238 Words of solace And everything that was in any way connected with my grandmother was so precious to her (my mother), that she was deeply touched, remembered ever afterwards with gratitude what the chief magistrate had said to her, just as she was hurt and indignant that the barrister's wife had not a word to say in memory of the dead. In reality, the chief magistrate was no more concerned about my grandmother than the barrister's wife. The heartfelt words of the one and the other's silence, for all that my mother imagined so vast a difference between them, were but alternative ways of expressing that indifference which we feel towards the dead.
257 Similarity between sea and countryside The contrast that used then to strike me so forcibly between the country drives that I took with Mme de Villeparisis and this proximitty, fluid, inaccessible, mythological, of the eternal ocean, no longer existed for me. And there were days now when, on the contrary, the sea itself seemed almost rural. On the days, few and far between, of really fine weather, the heat had traced upon the waters, as it might be across country, a dusty white track, at the end of which the pointed mast of a fishing-boat stood up like a village steeple. A tug, of which one could see only the funnel, was smoking in the distance like a factory amid the fields, while alone against the horizon a convex patch of white, sketched there doubtless by a sail, but apparently a solid plastered surface, made one think of the sunlit wall of some isolated building, an hospital or school. And the clouds and the wind on the days when these were added to the sun, completed if not the \error of judgment, at any rate the illusion of the first glance, the suggestion that it aroused in the imagination. For the alternation of sharply defined patches of colour like those produced in the country by the proximity of different crops, the rough, yellow, almost muddy irregularities of the marine surface, the banks, the slopes that hid from sight a vessel upon which a crew of nimble sailors seemed to be reaping a harvest, all this upon stormy days made the ocean a thing as varied, as solid, as broken, as populous, as civilised as the earth with its carriage roads - over which I used to travel, and was soon to be travelling again.
264 Melancholy and the piano I went upstairs again to my room, but I was not alone there. I could hear someone softly playing Schumann. No doubt it happens at times that people, even those whom we love best, become saturated with the melancholy or irritation that emanates from us. There is nevertheless an inanimate object which is capable of a power of exasperation to which no human being will ever attain: to wit, a piano., 287-8 The good pleader The gentleman was an eminent lawyer from Paris, of noble family, who had come down to spend a few days with the Cambremers. He was one of those men whom their vast professional experience inclines to look down upon their profession.; and who say, for instance: "I know that I am a good pleader, so it no longer amuses me to plead," or: " I'm no longer interested in operating, I know I'm a good operator". Men of intelligence, artists, they see themselves in their maturity, richly endowed by success, shining with that intellect, that artistic nature which their professional brethren recognise in them and which confer upon them a kind of taste and discernment. They form a passion for the paintings not of a great artist, but of an artist who nevertheless is highly distinguished, and spend upon the purchase of his work the large sums that their career procures for them. Le Sidaner was the artist chosen by the Cambremers' friend, who incidentally was a delightful person. Descriptive passages: 290 Mme de Cambremer carried in her hand, with the handle of a sunshade, a number of embroidered bags, a hold-all, a gold purse from which there dangled strings of garnets, and a lace handkerchief. I could not help thinking that it would be more convenient for her to deposit them on a chair; but I felt that it would be unbecoming and useless to ask her to lay aside the ornaments of her pastoral visitation and her social priesthood. 294 As the sun was beginning to set, the seagulls were now yellow, like the water-lilies on another canvas of that series by Monet. 307-8 The wife (of the lawyer) had a round face like certain flowers of the ranunculus family, and a large vegetable growth at the corner of her eye. And as the generations of mankind preserve their characteristics like a family of plants, just as on the blemished face of his mother, an identical mole, which might have helped one in classifying a variety of the species, protruded below the eye of the son. |
308-9 The wife and son (of the lawyer), blessed with a vegetable nature, listened composedly. One felt that their house in Paris was a sort of temple of Le Sidaner. Temples of this sort are not without their use. When the god has doubts as to his own merits, he can easily stop the cracks in his opinion of himself with the irrefutable testimony of people who have devoted their lives to his work.
313 We took the lift, she (Albertine) remained silent in the boy’s presence. The habit of being obliged to resort to personal observation and deduction in order to find out the business of their masters, those strange beings who converse among themselves and do not speak to them, develops in “employees” (as the lift boy styled servants), a stronger power of divination than the “employer” possesses. Our organs become atrophied or grow stronger or more subtle, accordingly as our need of them increases or diminishes. Since railways came into existence, the necessity of not missing the train has taught us to take account of minutes whereas among the ancient Romans, who not only had a more cursory science of astronomy but led less hurried lives, the notion not of minutes but even of fixed hours barely existed. 314 The lift-boy swore to me with the sincerity of most false witnesses, .. 317-8 .. I escorted her (Albertine) to the door of my room. Opening it, I scattered the roseate light that was flooding the room and turning the white muslin curtains drawn for the night to golden damask. I went across to the window; the gulls had settled again upon the waves; but this time they were pink. 318-20 ..He ruminates upon his relationship with Albertine in the context of his relationship with other women, which appears to have cooled: They know themselves well enough to have observed that in the presence of the most divergent types of woman they felt the same hopes, the same agonies, invented the same romances, uttered the same words, to have deduced therefore that their sentiments, their actions bear no close and necessary relation to the woman they love, but pass by her, spatter her, surround her, like the waves that break round upon the rocks, and their sense of their own instability increases still further their misgivings that this woman, by whom they would so fain be loved, is not in love with them ..... The double rhythm is perceptible in the various periods of a single love affair, in all the corresponding periods of similar love affairs, in all those people whose self-analysis outweighs their self-esteem. 331-2 Desire and action (Port wine) Whenever I saw one of these (girls), I longed to take her away along the Avenue des Tamaris, or among the sandhills, better still upon the cliff. But albeit into desire, as opposed to indifference, there enters already that audacity which is a first stage, if only unilateral, towards realisation, all the same, between my desire and the action that my request to be allowed to kiss her would have been, there was all the indefinite blank of hesitation, of timidity. Then I went into the pastrycook's bar, I drank, one after another, seven or eight glasses of port wine. At once, instead of the impassable gulf between my desire and action, the effect of the alcohol traced a line that joined them together. No longer was there any room for hesitation or fear. It seemed to me that the girl was about to fly into my arms. 1 went up to her, the words came spontaneously to my lips: " I should like to go for a walk with you. You wouldn't care to go along the cliff, we shan't be disturbed behind the little wood that keeps the wind off the wooden bungalow that is empty just now?" All the difficulties of life were smoothed away, there was no longer any obstacle to the conjunction of our two bodies. No obstacle for me, at least. For they had not been volatilised for her, who had not been drinking port wine. Had she done so, had the outer world lost some of its reality in her eyes, the long cherished dream that would then have appeared to her to be suddenly realisable might perhaps have been not at all that of falling into my arms. |