In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

by Marcel Proust

  73. Peter Schlemihl: the central character in the novel Peter Schlemihls wunder-same Geschichte (= The Marvellous Story of Peter Schlemihl, 1814) by Adalbert von Chamisso de Boncourt (1781–1838), in which the hero sells his shadow to the devil.

  74. Mme Dieulafoy: Aline Dieulafoy (1851–1916) was a French archaeologist, notable especially for the reconstruction of Mesopotamian friezes held by the Louvre.

  75. Sardou … Augier: well-known writers of light comedies of the second half of the nineteenth century. Labiche: see note 41 to Part II.

  76. Menander, Kalidasa: Menander was an Athenian comic writer, 4th century BC, later adapted by Plautus; Kalidasa was a Sanskrit poet of the 4th-5th centuries BC, whose drama Sakuntala was translated into French in 1803.

  77. agrégation: a public examination, a qualification for teaching in secondary and higher education.

  78. Journal officiel: the government gazette.

  79. Ancilla Domini: Proust may have in mind Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), though many religious paintings, from the Middle Ages onwards, bore the words spoken by the Virgin Mary to the angel announcing her divine pregnancy: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’ (Luke, I: 38).

  80. the little gang: the expression la petite bande, handed down from the sixteenth century, originally meant François I’s seraglio of mistresses.

  81. Peri: Proust may have in mind a poem by Victor Hugo or La Péri by Paul Dukas, danced in Paris by the Russian ballet in 1912: the Péri, an evil fairy in Iranian folklore, disappears back to paradise, having seduced Prince Iskander, who had stolen her lotus flower with its power to bestow immortality.

  82. Pisanello … Gallé: Antonio Pisano (1395?–1455?), a painter and engraver, some of whose bird sketches can be seen in the Louvre. Émile Gallé (1846–1904), a French artist in stained glass and wood.

  83. Harmony in Grey and Pink after Whistler: Proust may have in mind Whistler’s portrait of Lady Meux, also known as Harmony in Pink and Grey, shown in Paris in 1892 and now in the Frick Collection, New York.

  84. Dreyfus was guilty, totally and utterly: between late October 1897 and the summer of 1898, one of the Dreyfus Affair’s most eventful phases, there took place the court martial and acquittal of Esterhazy, the publication of Émile Zola’s open letter J’accuse …, the trial and exile of Zola and the suicide of Colonel Henry.

  85. Pauillac lamb: renowned for its red wines, Pauillac, a small town on the Gironde estuary, also grows fine lamb from salt-meadows.

  86. the builder in the fable: Amphion’s lyre moved stones which Zethus then built into walls. In Ruskin, Proust found several allusions to this legend, recorded in the Odyssey (XI, 260–265) and in Horace (Ars poetica, 394–397).

  87. King Mark … Forest of Broceliande: in the legend of Tristan and Yseult, King Mark is the husband intended for the latter. The Forest of Broceliande appears in the legends of the knights of King Arthur.

  88. Redon: Odilon Redon (1840–1916), a sculptor and painter, of sometimes Symbolist sympathies. Elstir’s reference may be to the set of lithographs L’Apocalypse de saint Jean (1899).

  89. Sacripant: deriving from the character Sacripante in Orlando innamorato, a poem by Boiardo (1441–94), the word sacripant had taken on a sense close to ‘naughty boy’ or ‘rascal’. See also note 90 below.

  90. Sacripant: the title of a comic opera by Gille and Duprato (1866). The hero appears disguised as a woman (and the part of the hero was acted by a woman). Works by Renoir, Whistler and Manet have been suggested as possible sources for Elstir’s water-colour of ‘Miss Sacripant’. See also note 89 above.

  91 …. something which surpasses them: here Proust noted on his manuscript: ‘This is all badly written; perhaps I’ve put it better elsewhere.’

  92. Arvède Barine: the pen-name of Louise-Cécile Vincens (1840–1908), who was instrumental in introducing Ibsen, Spencer and Tolstoy to a French readership.

  93. a goddess, a table or a bowl: Proust here adapts a line from La Fontaine’s fable Le statuaire et la statue de Jupiter (Book IX, 6), in which a sculptor wonders whether his chisel will transform a block of marble into dieu, table ou cuvette (= ‘god, table or bowl’).

  94. Apprends que mon devoir … le mien: Bloch combines pedantry and ignorance by ascribing to Voltaire (‘Master Arouet’) a couplet deriving from Corneille (Polyeucte, III, ii): ‘My duty on his shall never depend; I must, unlike him, be true to my friend.’

  95. restful: editors disagree on whether Proust wrote reposant (‘restful’) or passionnant (‘exciting’).

  96. the First President: on pages 372–3, it was ‘an old banker’ who was subjected to this indignity.

  97. Conseil général: the elective governing body of a département, roughly ‘County Council’.

  98. Cavalleria Rusticana: Mascagni’s one-acter dates from the early 1890s.

  99. They’ve gone and taken down the crucifix: the symbolic removal of a crucifix from a public building is a symptom of the anti-clericalism of the Third Republic and of the growing divorce between Church and State, to be consummated in 1905.

  100. Alceste or Philinte: men characters in Le Misanthrope, a comedy by Molière (1666).

  101. Le Gaulois: an anti-Republican newspaper of the moneyed Right, much read by the well-bred and fashionable (1868–1928). In younger days, Proust had contributed gossipy pieces to its social column.

  102 Fortuny: Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871–1949), a painter and designer of Spanish origin. During the Great War, Proust became interested in designs of Fortuny’s modelled on paintings by Carpaccio. If this first Balbec episode is set in the late 1890s, Elstir’s reference is anachronistic.

  103. Callot … Doucet, Cheruit … Paquin: couturiers of the Belle époque, mostly established at fashionable addresses in or near the rue de la Paix or the place Vendôme.

  104. Saint-Augustin: a large church, imitative of Italian Renaissance and Byzantine styles, built just off the boulevard Malesherbes by Baltard during the 1860s.

  105. Les Creuniers: Proust borrows this place-name from cliffs near Trouville in Normandy.

  106. Ils sont partis … l’héroïque Hellas: from Leconte de Lisle’s Les Érynnies, after Aeschylus: ‘Gone are the Kings on their beakéd ships/Bearing o’er the storm-tossed seas, alas, / Those shaggy warriors of heroic Hellas.’ See also p. 287 and note 28 to Part II.

  107. Combray-in-Champagne: Combray was originally not in Champagne, east of Paris, but to the south-west, near Chartres. Proust later relocated it, with Roussainville and Méséglise, to Champagne, so as to place them in the battlefields of the Great War.

  108. Bellini’s musical cherubs’: Proust saw cherubs by Gentile Bellini (1429–1507) in the church of Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice.

  109. De cette passion … route la plus sûre: the couplet ‘’Tis this passion which through the poet’s art/Best makes a pathway to the reader’s heart’ is from Boileau’s L’art poétique (1674), canto III (on tragedy), lines 95–6.

  110. Robert Gamier … Antoine de Montchrestien: Gamier (1544–90) was a poet and dramatist, the most important playwright of his day. Montchrestien (1575–1621) was a minor poet and playwright.

  111. ‘not just the masterpiece … whole human spirit’: Voltaire, without apparent irony, more than once expressed this view of Racine’s Athalie.

  112. Merlet …Deltour … Gasc-Desfossés: in the second half of the nineteenth century, all three wrote schoolbooks on literature. Proust may have borrowed some of Andrée’s words from Gasc-Desfossés.

  113. Trianon: see note 65 to Part II.

  114. Laura Dianti’s … Eleanor of Aquitaine’s … Chateaubriand’s sweetheart: Laura Dianti (1476–1534) was Titian’s likely model for Flora (Uffizi, Florence) and Girl with Mirror (Louvre), paintings showing a figure with long hair. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204) was Queen of England and mother of Richard the Lionheart; she was celebrated for her long hair. Chateaubriand’s sweetheart was Delphine de Sabran (1770–1826), a descendan
t not of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but of Marguerite de Provence.

  115. those figures by Michelangelo … whirlwind: the reference is to the figures representing Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  116. Panama Affair: a political and financial scandal revealed in 1891, marked by ruin for many thousands of investors and corruption among politicians, much exploited by anti-parliamentarians and anti-Semites.

  117. Leucothea: a goddess of spindrift, mentioned as Ino in the Aeneid (V, 823).

  118. Jules Ferry: a politician (1832–93), best known for educational reforms in the 1880s. Perhaps the narrator has confused him with Gabriel Ferry, a very minor playwright?

  119. Spinario: a Roman bronze of a man pulling a thorn out of his foot (Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori).

  120. The First President from Rennes: hitherto, the First President was from Caen, the bâtonnier from Cherbourg.

  Synopsis

  PART I: At Mme Swann’s

  New versions of Swann: Odette’s husband, ‘a vulgar swank’, and of Cottard: eminent man of science (6–7). The Marquis de Norpois: his career (8), conversation and manners (11).

  Father and grandmother disagree on whether I should go to the theatre (13). Norpois’s first opinion on literature as a career (13). Expectations of a revelation about nobility, grief and Beauty from La Berma (15). La Berma and Phèdre (16–18). A great disappointment: La Berma in Phèdre (18–24). Françoise’s preparations for Norpois coming to dinner: the ‘Nev York ham’ (19).

  I meet Norpois (25). Norpois on literature (26) and investments (27–8); he reads my ‘prose poem’ (29). Norpois on La Berma (31), on Françoise’s cooking (32). Norpois and style (32). Norpois on King Theodosius and ‘affinities’ (34); on Vaugoubert and foreign policy (35); on Balbec and its church (38); on Mme Swann (39); on ‘Svann’ and the Swanns’ marriage (39–41).

  The Swanns’ marriage (41–5). Swann’s day-dreams about his daughter meeting the Duchesse de Guermantes (44).

  Norpois on the Comte de Paris (45); on Odette (46); on Bergotte (47); on my prose poem (48). I know I have no gift for writing (49). Norpois on Bergotte’s ‘ignominy’ and ‘cynicism’ (50); on Gilberte (50–51). Norpois will never mention me to Mme Swann (54).

  A review of La Berma’s performance in Phèdre changes my mind about her (55). Words spoken by my father destroy two illusions: that life ‘was about to start the very next day’; and that I lived outside Time (57).

  My parents on Norpois (57–8). Françoise on Norpois (59); on restaurants (59–60).

  New Year’s Day: family visits and a letter to Gilberte (60–61). A photograph of La Berma and romantic dreams of her (61). I realize New Year’s Day is not the first day of a new life (62); the New Year’s Day of older men, who no longer believe in the New Year (62–3). A joy is seldom paired with the desire for it (63).

  The palaces of Gabriel, my very first glimpse of beauty (64).

  I forget Gilberte’s face (64). My love for her is a new love every day (65). Gilberte tells me of her parents’ adverse view of me: untrustworthy and a bad influence (65). My long letter to M. Swann protesting the innocence of my intentions, my purity of conscience (66). A smell of damp walls in a public lavatory (67). Françoise’s ‘countess’ (67). A tussle with Gilberte: I ‘shed my pleasure’ (68–9). I recognize the remembered smell: that such an insignificant impression should fill me with such bliss confirms my inability to be a serious writer (69).

  Illness (70). My grandmother: alcohol and sympathy (71–2). The physiological realism of my display of symptoms to my grandmother (71). Cottard’s cure: olé! (73). Gilberte’s letter (74–5). Delayed awareness of happiness (75). Our ignorance of the causes of sudden happiness (76). An untruth of Bloch’s about Mme Swann serves me well (77–8).

  The Swanns’ household opens to me (78). Gilberte’s hair (78); her tea-parties, her note-paper (79). My parents and the Swanns’ ‘genuine antique’ staircase (80). Mme Swann’s perfume (81). Destruction of Gilberte’s Ninevite cake-castle (81). Tea makes me tipsy with excitement (82). Mme Swann’s at-homes (82). My ‘nurse’ (83). The Swanns think I am a good influence on Gilberte (84). Swann shows me his treasures (85). Mme Swann’s boudoir, her visitors; ‘Now, that’s a lovely story!’ (85–6). Swann impressed by mediocrities (86). Gilberte mentions ‘that Albertine’ (87). Naïve snobbery of the Guermantes set (89). My mother on Mme Swann’s new acquaintances and on Mme Cottard: ‘Strangers to Speak in Sparta’ (91). Mme Swann shunned by fashionable ladies (91–2). An effect of the Dreyfus Affair on fashionable society (92). Shift in the patterns of the social kaleidoscope (92). Swann’s indifference to Odette’s ignorance and social howlers (94). Swann’s experiments in the sociology of entertainment, at the expense of the Cottards and the Bontemps (96–8). Swann close to indifference towards Odette and his former jealousy, but his curiosity remains (98–9). His jealousy now inseparable from his love for another woman (100). When his love for Odette ended, the desire to show her his love had ended had also disappeared (101).

  Invitations to lunch and outings with the Swanns (101). Deprivation of the feeling of loving in the presence of the beloved (104). Mme Swann plays the phrase from the Vinteuil sonata (105). Music and memory: impressions gradually gather in the mind as recollections (105). Music is carried away by habit out of reach of our sensibility (106). In music, the beauties one discovers soonest are also those which pall soonest (106). The artist, present disfavour and posterity (107). The work of genius creates its own posterity (107). For Swann, Vinteuil’s sonata is full of leaves; it shows him things he once paid no attention to (109). The Swanns banter about Mme de Cambremer (110); their story of Mme Blatin at the Zoo (111); their view of Gilberte’s rare virtues (112). Gilberte’s considerateness and professions of love for her father (112). The Swanns favour me (113). I can never grasp my happiness (114). The former outcast among the emblems of the Swanns’ special existence (115). Mme Swann’s changing style in interior decoration (115); her tea-gowns, our outings (116). Princesse Mathilde (117). Gilberte’s surprising petulance towards her father (120–21).

  Bergotte (123). Bergotte’s appearance obliterates the man I had imagined(123). Names draw poor likenesses (124). Bergotte encumbered by his name (124). Bergotte’s voice (125). The beauty of a stylist’s sentences is unforeseeable (126). Bergotte’s spoken and written styles seem very different (127). Bergotte’s pronunciation (128); his siblings (129); his influence on younger writers (131); his ways of praising and receiving praise (131–2); his moral contradictions (133). The artist’s answer to the moral question (134). Bergotte on La Berma (135); on Norpois (138). Swann’s view that a man should choose a socially inferior woman (139). Contrast of Mme Swann and Gilberte (139–40). Gilberte’s twin likenesses, to her father and mother (140). Two Gilbertes (141). Bergotte’s mistaken view of my pleasure in intellectual things (145). Bergotte on Cottard (146); on Swann, ‘the man who married a trollop’ (147).

  My parents’ view of Bergotte (149). My reluctance to invite Gilberte to tea (150).

  Bloch takes me to a brothel (151). A Jewess: ‘Rachel, when of the Lord’ (152). I give the madam some of my Aunt Léonie’s furniture, ‘dear defenceless things’ (154).

  Flowers for Mme Swann (154). My parents wish I would start becoming a writer; my inability to do so, my resolve, my best intentions, my coming achievement (154–5). Mme Swann’s view of Bergotte: a better writer since he has taken to journalism (157).

  In love, happiness is abnormal; love secretes a permanent pain (157–8). A tiff between Gilberte and me (158). Misunderstanding, a furious letter (160–62). I decide to stay away from Gilberte (164). The daily torment of hope, looking forward to the post (164). I give up Gilberte for ever, condemn myself to separation (165).

  Visits to Mme Swann (166). Her ‘winter garden’; her flowers, her ‘five o’clock tea’, her tea-gowns (168–71). Mme Cottard, Mme Bontemps, the Prince d’Agrigente, Mme Verdurin (172–83). Mme Bontemps mentions her cheeky niece Albertine (
174). The pleasures promised by Mme Swann’s chrysanthemums are not kept (183).

  A painful New Year’s Day (184). No letter from Gilberte (184). Renunciation as seen by those in love (186). Slow suicide of the self which loved Gilberte (187). The temptation to write to her (188). My laborious sacrifice undone by well-meaning or ill-intentioned people (189). Regret, like desire, seeks satisfaction, not self-analysis (190). I foresee my indifference to Gilberte (190).

  Mme Swann’s change of style, the importance of the word ‘sham’ (191); her renown as a high-minded woman (192). She has grown much younger; her face is her own invention: a model of eternal youth (193). Swann still sees her as a Botticelli (193). Young men see her as a period-piece (195). Her ‘afternoon jamborees’ (196).

  I persist in my resistance to Gilberte’s invitations (197). The reposeful promise of my foreshadowed forgetting of her (198). Resignation is a mode of habit (198). I think I see Gilberte with a young man in the twilight (199). The stem of a single event may bear counterbalancing branches (200). The fate of all our joys: happiness can never happen (200). Happiness: a psychological impossibility (201). I decline to attend a function at which Albertine was to be present: the different periods of our life overlap (202). The happiness which comes too late may not be the happiness for which we pined (205). We are no longer our former self (205). A painful dream about Gilberte (205). Calm returns: even grief is incapable of permanence (207).

  I stop visiting Mme Swann (208). Pleasure in the thought of a visit to Florence or Venice (210). Mme Swann: a ‘Symphony in White major’; the Guelder roses (211). Mme Swann’s Sunday morning walk (211). The ‘Hard-up Club’; her suite of retainers (211–12). Noblemen’s and club-men’s homage to a woman their mother or sister could never meet (217). The life-expectancy of memories of poetic sensation: my heartbreak over Gilberte has faded for ever, replaced by Mme Swann’s sunshade (217).