As for the other vices mentioned by M. de Norpois, the semi-incestuous affair, allegedly further complicated by some indelicacy about money, though they did flagrantly contradict the tendency of his latest novels (which were marked by such a painfully scrupulous care for all that is good that their heroes’ slightest joys were poisoned by it, and that even the reader got from it an anguished feeling which made the easiest life seem hard to bear), they did not prove, even if they could be said to be well founded, that his works were a tissue of falsehoods and his great sensitivity mere play-acting. In pathology, certain states of similar appearance may have different causes, some being due to high blood-pressure and others to low, some to an excess of secretion, others to not enough; and in the same way, a single vice can derive either from hypersensivity or from a deficient sensitivity. It may only be in a life deeply steeped in its vice that the moral question can arise with the full power of its anxiety. This question the artist answers not on the plane of his individual life, but in that mode of existence which represents his true life; and there the answer given is a literary one, of general application. Just as the Fathers of the Church, good as they were, first had to practise the sins of all men, through which they found their own sanctity, so great artists, immoral as they are, often derive from their own vices a definition of the moral rule that applies to us all. It is usually on paper that writers inveigh against the vices (or just the foibles and follies) of their own small world, the prattle or scandalous frivolity of their daughters, the treachery of their wives, or even their own failings, while doing nothing to reform these regrettable or unseemly features of their family life. This disparity was once less noticeable than in Bergotte’s day, partly because the drift of society towards its own corruption was matched by a growing refinement of moral ideas, and partly because the reading public had become better informed than before about the private lives of writers; and on certain evenings at the theatre, people would point out the author whom I had so admired in Combray days, sitting back in a box with people whose company, in relation to the idea he had advocated in his latest book, was tantamount to a flippant disclaimer, a singularly derisive or abject disparagement. His goodness or wickedness was never much clarified for me by any of the informants who spoke to me of the man himself. Someone who knew him well would attest to how harsh he could be; someone else would give an instance (touching, because clearly designed to remain a secret) of his deeply sympathetic nature. He had treated his wife callously. But then in a country inn where he was spending the night, he had stayed on so as to look after a poor woman who had tried to drown herself; and when he could stay no longer, he had left a large sum of money so that the landlord would not turn her out, but take care of her. The more the great writer grew in Bergotte at the expense of the man with the goatee, the more his individual life was taken over by all the other lives he imagined, which seemed to relieve him of the obligation of performing real duties, replacing it with the duty of imagining those other lives. But at the same time, because he imagined the feelings of others as vividly as if they had been his own, when circumstances brought him into at least temporary contact with someone much less fortunate than himself, rather than adopt his own point of view, he always put himself in the position of the person who was suffering; and this was a position in which he would have been horrified by the language of people who, when faced with the distress of others, go on being engrossed in their own petty concerns. In this way, he gave grounds for many a justified grudge and for enduring gratitude.
Most importantly, Bergotte was a man who took his greatest pleasure in certain images, in composing and painting them in words, like a miniature in the bottom of a casket. In response to some trifling gift, if it afforded him the opportunity of devising some of these images, he would be lavish in expressing his appreciation, though he might well have nothing to say in return for an expensive present. If he had ever been on trial in a court of law, despite himself he would have chosen his words not for the effect they might have on the judge, but for the sake of imagery which the judge would not even have noticed.
On that occasion when I first met Bergotte at the house of Gilberte’s parents, I told him I had recently been to see La Berma in Phèdre, to which he replied that in the scene where she stood with one arm outstretched at shoulder-height – one of the scenes which the audience had acclaimed – the nobility of her acting had managed to call to mind masterpieces which she might actually never have seen, a Hesperid making that very gesture on a metope at Olympia and the beautiful maidens from the older Erechtheum.
‘It may be a sort of second sight on her part. Though I suspect she frequents museums. That would be an interesting thing to educe, wouldn’t it? (“Educe” was one of those words Bergotte was always using; and it had been taken up by certain young men who, though they had never met him, spoke like him as though under the influence of remote hypnotism.)
– Do you mean the Caryatids? Swann asked.
– No, I don’t mean that, Bergotte replied. Or rather, yes, but only in the scene where she confesses her love to Oenone, gesturing with exactly the hand movement of Hegeso on the stele in the Ceramicus. No, usually she brings back to life a form of art that’s much more ancient. I was referring to the Korai from the old Erechtheum – and I fully accept that it’s a form of art which is the antithesis of Racine. But then, there are so many things in Phèdre that one extra … Even so, I must agree, that pretty little Phèdre straight out of the sixth century BC is very nice, the perpendicularity of the arm, the curl of hair looking like marble, there’s no doubt about it, it all adds up to a real brain-wave. There’s much more antiquity in it than in many of this year’s books about so-called antiquity.’
As one of Bergotte’s books contained a celebrated address to these archaic statues, his words were full of interest for me, as well as giving me a further reason for my interest in La Berma as an actress. I tried hard to remember what she had looked like in that scene where she raised her arm to shoulder-height; and I assured myself, ‘It’s the Hesperid from Olympia! It’s the sister of one of those admirable praying figures on the Acropolis! What a noble art-form!’ The trouble was, though, that these assurances could have convinced me of the beauty of La Berma’s gesture only if Bergotte had primed me with them before the performance. Then, while the actress’s posture was in actual existence before my eyes, during that instant when a thing taking place is still pregnant with reality, I could have attempted to draw a notion of archaic sculpture from it. But the memory I had kept of La Berma in that scene was by now indelible, an image as thin as any that lacks those depths full of present time which one can plumb, in which something genuinely new can be found, an image on which I could impose no retrospective interpretation verifiable by comparison with its objective counterpart. Mme Swann, wishing to be part of the conversation, asked me whether Gilberte had ever remembered to let me have Bergotte’s piece on Phèdre, adding, ‘That daughter of mine, you know, she’s such a scatter-brain!’ Bergotte gave his modest smile and said it was just a little thing of no consequence. ‘No, no! It’s such a delightful little piece! Your little screed,’ Mme Swann insisted, to show she was the perfect hostess, and hinting that she had read the little essay, so as to enjoy not just complimenting Bergotte but discriminating among the things he had written, and being an intellectual influence on him. The fact is she did inspire him, but not in the way she thought. Between the elegance that was once the salon of Mme Swann and a whole aspect of the work of Bergotte, there are connections which make it possible, for men who are now grown old, to read each of them in terms of the other.
I was glad to tell Bergotte of my impressions of La Berma. Though he thought many of them were not quite sound, he let me speak. I told him how much I had liked the greenish lighting effect at the moment when Phèdre held out her arm. ‘Well now! The designer, who is a great artist in his own right, would be delighted to know that. I’ll certainly tell him, because he’s very proud of that lightin
g effect. Mind you, I must say I don’t fancy it very much myself. It floods everything with a sort of glaucous glow and makes poor little Phèdre look rather too much like a bit of coral decorating an aquarium. I know what you’re going to say: that it brings out the cosmic aspect of the drama being played out – and I agree, it does. But it would still be preferable in a play set in Neptune’s realm. Of course, Phèdre does have something to do with Neptune’s vengeance. Goodness knows, I’m not one to say that Port-Royal with its Jansenism is the be-all and end-all of Racine. But I mean, Racine’s play isn’t about the love of a couple of sea-urchins, is it? However, that lighting effect was exactly what my friend was aiming at, it’s really first-rate, and one can’t deny it’s quite pretty. So, yes, you liked it, you saw the point of it, and when all’s said and done we think alike, you and I. His idea was just a little daft, wouldn’t you say, but really very clever.’ When Bergotte’s view on something differed in this way from my own, it never reduced me to silence, or deprived me of a possible rejoinder, as M. de Norpois’s opinion would have done. Not that Bergotte’s opinions were any less valid than the former ambassador’s. The fact is that a sound idea transmits some of its force even to its contradictor. With its share of the universal value of all mind, it takes root among other adjacent ideas, growing like a graft even in the mind of someone whose own idea it rebuts; and this latter person, drawing some advantage from the new juxtaposition, may round the idea out or adapt it, so that the final judgment on a matter is in some measure the work of the two people who were in disagreement. But the ideas which leave no possibility of a rejoinder are those which are not properly speaking ideas, those which, by being supported by nothing, find nothing to attach to in the other’s mind: on one side, no brotherly branch is held out, and on the other, there is nothing but a vacuum. The arguments advanced by M. de Norpois (on questions of art) were indisputable because they were devoid of reality.
As Bergotte had not dismissed my objections, I went on to tell him of the disdain with which M. de Norpois had treated them. ‘Look, he’s just an old parrot, Bergotte said; he took a peck at you because he always thinks whatever’s under his nose is bird-seed or a cuttle-bone. – What’s that? Swann asked me. You know Norpois? – Oh, isn’t he a dreadful old bore!’ Mme Swann said. She had great faith in Bergotte’s judgment and was probably anxious in case M. de Norpois had said something to her detriment. ‘I tried to have a conversation with him after dinner and, possibly because of his age, or perhaps poor digestion, I thought the man was quite, quite inane. One had the impression that he had been drugged to the eyeballs! – True, true, Bergotte said, he is obliged to observe frequent silences, so as to reach the end of the evening without using up the supply of starchy stupidities that keep his white waistcoat stiff. – I do think Bergotte and my dear wife are being rather hard on M. de Norpois,’ said Swann, whose job at home was to be the man of sound common sense. ‘I can appreciate that one may not think he’s all that interesting, but from another point of view’ (Swann being something of a ‘collector’ of life’s little curios) ‘he really is rather a noteworthy man. Noteworthy in his capacity as great lover, I mean.’ He added, with a glance to make sure that Gilberte could not hear him, ‘In the days when he was an attaché at the embassy in Rome, he had left behind in Paris a mistress whom he adored to distraction. So, twice a week, he would find a pretext to dash back and see her for a couple of hours. Mind you, she was a very clever and beautiful woman at that time. A dowager nowadays, of course. And he’s had plenty more since then. I must say that if it had been me, obliged to live in Rome while the woman I loved had to stay in Paris, it would have driven me mad. Highly strung people should always choose objects of their affections who are “beneath them”, as the saying goes, so that the self-interest of the woman one loves ensures that she will always be available.’ At that moment, Swann realized the connection I might make between this verity and his own love for Odette. This gave him a great fit of pique against me, for even the high-minded, at moments when one seems to be sharing in their higher things, are still capable of the pettiness of self-esteem. This grudge of Swann’s was apparent only in an uneasy look in his eye; and he said nothing about it at that moment. Not that there is anything very surprising in that – a story, which is apocryphal, but which is re-enacted every day of the week in Paris, has it that when Racine spoke the name of Scarron in the presence of Louis XIV, the most powerful monarch on earth said nothing about it to his poet at the time; and he did not fall from favour until the following day.53
However, any theory likes to be fully expounded; and so Swann, after his momentary irritation, wiped the lens of his monocle and rounded off his idea in words which I later came to remember as a prophecy, a warning which I would be unable to heed: ‘But the danger of such liaisons is that, though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding. He reaches the point of treating his mistress like one of those prisoners who are so closely guarded that the light in their cell is never turned off. The sort of thing that usually ends in alarums and excursions.’
I reverted to M. de Norpois. ‘I wouldn’t trust him – he’s always saying things behind people’s backs,’ Mme Swann said in a way which, partly because Swann gave her a quick glance of disapproval, as though to warn her against saying anything more, made me suspect that M. de Norpois must have had something to say behind hers.
Gilberte, who had already been asked twice to go and make her preparations for going out, was still standing there between her parents listening to us, leaning her loving head on her father’s shoulder. At first sight, there could have been no greater contrast between Mme Swann, who was dark, and the golden-skinned girl with the fairish hair. Then one began to recognize in Gilberte many features, such as the nose, neatly shortened by a stroke from the sculptor whose unerring chisel models several generations, the expression of her mother, her ways of moving; or to draw a comparison from another art, Gilberte resembled a portrait of her mother, verging on a good likeness, but done by a fanciful colourist who had made her pose in semi-disguise, dressed for a fancy dress party as a woman of Venice. It was not just the blonde wig she was wearing, but the fact that every last atom of her dark complexion had faded, making it look more naked when stripped of its browner veils, covered only by the glow of an inner sun, as though the make-up was not just superficial but ingrained. Gilberte looked as though she represented some creature out of a fable, or as though she was costumed as a mythological character. Her fair complexion was so clearly her father’s that Nature, in order to create Gilberte, seemed to have been faced with the problem of imitating Mme Swann, while being able to use as its sole material the skin of M. Swann. Nature had solved the problem to perfection, as a master cabinet-maker tries to exploit the visible grain of a wood, even turning to advantage the knots in it. In Gilberte’s face, just to one side of its perfect reproduction of Odette’s nose, the skin rose slightly to show the two moles of M. Swann. In her, as she stood there with her mother, a new variety of Mme Swann had been achieved, like a white lilac growing beside a purple one. The line separating Gilberte’s twin likenesses was not hard and fast, though. Now and then, as she laughed, you suddenly glimpsed the oval of her father’s cheek in her mother’s face, as though they had been put together to see what such a mixture might look like; the oval took firmer shape, after the manner of an embryo forming, lengthened obliquely, swelled, then disappeared almost at once. In her eyes, one could see the frankness of her father’s fine open gaze on the world, the one I had seen there on the day when she gave me the agate marble and said, ‘This is for you, as a memento of our friendship.’ Then, if you inquired about what she had been doing, those same eyes filled with the devious, forlorn embarrassment and perplexity which used to cloud Odette’s as, in answer to a question from Swann about where she had been, she told one of those lies which had once reduced her lover to despair, but which now made her husband, a prudently uninquiring
man, quickly change the subject. In the days when we used to meet at the Champs-Élysées, this expression of Gilberte’s had often worried me. Usually, however, I need not have worried, as that particular look in her eyes was a mere physical inheritance, and had nothing else of Odette left in it. It was when Gilberte had been to her class, or when she had to be back home in time for a lesson, that her eyes went through the motions which Odette’s had once gone through because she feared letting it slip that one of her lovers had visited her during the day, or because she was anxious to be on her way to meet another of them. In this way the two natures of Swann and Mme Swann, each of them predominating by turns, could be seen to ripple and flow across the features of this Mélusine.54
Children do take after their parents, of course. But the rearrangement of the inherited qualities and defects is done so strangely that only one of a pair of qualities which seemed inseparable in a parent may turn up in the child; and it may be blended with one of the defects of the other parent which had once seemed incompatible with it. One of the laws of filial resemblance is that a moral quality will often manifest itself even through a bodily defect which is quite out of keeping with it. One of two sisters will combine the petty-mindedness of her mother with the fine upright stance of the father, while the other one will receive the father’s intelligence, but the mother’s appearance; and so the latter’s big nose, her graceless waistline and even her voice turn into the outer semblance of gifts which one used to meet in a much finer form. It can be rightly said that either of such daughters takes more after either of the parents. Gilberte was, of course, an only child; but there were at least two of her. Her father’s nature and her mother’s did not just mingle in her: it would be truer to say they were in rivalry within her, although even that is an inaccurate description, since it implies there might be a third Gilberte who found it irksome to be the periodic victim of the other two. But Gilberte was alternately one of the two and then the other, and never more than that single self at any given moment: that is, when she was the less good of the two, she was unable to regret it, since the better of the two Gilbertes, being momentarily absent, could have no knowledge of the lapse. Thus the less worthy Gilberte was free to enjoy unworthy pleasures. When it was the better one speaking from her father’s heart, her views were broad, inspiring one to engage with her in some fine uplifting enterprise; but when you had told her this, and it was time to launch into it, you found that her mother’s heart had taken her over and was speaking through her; and a petty remark or a sly little snigger, in which she took pleasure as an expression of who she was at that moment, would disappoint you, irritate you, almost fascinate you, as though you were faced with an impostor. The disparity between these two Gilbertes could be so great that one would wonder, quite fruitlessly, what one had done to her that might explain the change. Not only did she not keep the appointment which she herself had suggested, not only did she not apologize for this, but whatever the reason for her change of heart, her later behaviour was so different that you could almost have believed it was a case of mistaken identity, like the one which shapes the plot of the Menaechmi,55 and that you were no longer dealing with the person who had so demurely asked to see you, were it not that her present bad mood showed that she knew she was at fault, but wanted to avoid having to talk about it.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 18
