In Search of Lost Time, Volume II (79 page)

After the concert I went round to congratulate him, and recognised him without difficulty, not from the face I remembered, since there is always a certain discrepancy, a certain displacement in the memory, but because his appearance accorded with the impression he had made on me in Paris and which I had forgotten. He was doing his military service near Balbec, and he too had immediately recognised me. We had nothing in common save a few mental images, and the memory of the things we had said to one another during the short visit he had paid to me, and which were of little moment. But it would seem that faces are fairly individual, and moreover that the memory is a pretty faithful organ, since we had remembered each other and our meeting.

Santois was presently joined by his colleagues, the other players, for each of whom, as an aeroplane adds wings to an aviator, his instrument was as it were the beak and the throat of a melodious song-bird; a twittering troupe that had gathered for the summer season at this resort and would shortly, with the first frosts, take off elsewhere. I left Santois with his friends, but when I got back to the hotel I regretted not having asked him who the mountaineering paralytic was who had scaled the heights of the organ so many times, and also whether Santois, his father, had ever told him how my uncle had come to have the portrait of Mme Swann by Elstir. I resolved not to forget to ask him these two questions if I saw him again.

Synopsis

MADAME SWANN AT HOME

A new Swann: Odette’s husband (1; cf. 112 sqq.). A new Cottard: Professor Cottard (3).

Norpois (5); the “governmental mind” (6); an ambassador’s conversation (8). “ ‘Although’ is always an unrecognised ‘because” ’ (10). Norpois advises my father to let me follow a literary career (13).

My first experience of Berma (15). My high expectations of her—as of Balbee and Venice (17). A great disappointment (20). Françoise and Michelangelo (21). The auditorium and the stage (24; cf.
I
100).

Norpois dines at our house (29). His notions about literature (31); financial investments (33); Berma (37); Françoise’s spiced beef (39); King Theodosius’ visit to Paris (41); Balbec church (48); Mme Swann (49); Odette and the Comte de Paris (58); Bergotte (60); my prose poem (62; cf. 35); Gilberte (65). Gestures which we believe have gone unnoticed (67). Why M. de Norpois would not speak to Mme Swann about me (70).

How I came to say of Berma: “What a great artist!” (72). The laws of Time (74). Effect produced by Norpois on my parents (75), on Françoise (76); the latter’s views on Parisian restaurants (78).

New Year’s Day visits (79). I propose to Gilberte that we should rebuild our friendship on a new basis (80); but that same evening I realise that New Year’s Day is not the first day of a new world (81). Berma and love (83). Gabriel’s palaces (84). I can no longer recall Gilberte’s face (84). She returns to the Champs-Elysées (85). “They can’t stand you!” (86) I write to Swann (86). Reawakening, thanks to involuntary memory, in the little pavilion in the Champs-Elysées, of the impressions experienced in Uncle Adolphe’s sanctum at Combray (89, 91; cf.
I
99). Amorous wrestle with Gilberte (89). I fall ill (91). Cottard’s diagnoses (96).

A letter from Gilberte (98). Love’s miracles, happy and unhappy (99). Change of attitude towards me of Gilberte’s parents, unwillingly brought about by Bloch and Cottard (102). The Swann apartment; the concierge; the windows (103; cf.
I
500). Gilberte’s writing-paper (104). The Henri II staircase (106). The chocolate cake (107). Mme Swann’s praise of Françoise: “your old nurse” (110). The heart of the Sanctuary: Swann’s library (111); his wife’s bedroom (113). Odette’s “at home” (114). The “famous Albertine,” niece of Mme Bontemps (116). The evolution of society (117). Swann’s “amusing sociological experiments” (128). Swann’s old jealousy (131) and new love (133).

Outings with the Swanns (134). Lunch with them (135). Odette plays Vinteuil’s sonata to me (140). A work of genius creates its own posterity (143). What the little phrase now means to Swann (145). “Me nigger; you old cow!” (149). Consistent charm of Mme Swann’s heterogeneous drawing-room (153). Princess Mathilde (157). Gilberte’s unexpected behaviour (161).

Lunch at the Swanns’ with Bergotte (164). The gentle white-haired bard and the man with the snail-shell nose and black goatee (165). A writer’s voice and his style (168). Bergotte and his imitators (169). Unforeseeable beauty of the sentences of a great writer (170). Reflecting power of genius (174). Vices of the man and morality of the writer (181). Bergotte and Berma (183). “A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it” (186). A remark of Swann’s, prelude to the theme of
The Captive
(188). Gilberte’s characteristics inherited from both parents (190). Swann’s confidence in his daughter (193). Are my pleasures those of the intelligence? (195). Why Swann, according to Bergotte, needs a good doctor (199). Combray society and the social world (199). My parents’ change of mind about Bergotte and Gilberte; a problem of etiquette (203).

Revelations about love (205; cf.
I
129); Bloch takes me to a second-rate house of assignation (205). “Rachel when from the Lord” (207). Aunt Léonie’s furniture in the brothel (208). Amatory initiation at Combray on Aunt Léonie’s sofa (208). Work projects constantly postponed (210). Impossibility of happiness in love (214). My last visit to Gilberte (214). I decide not to see her again (217. Unjust fury with the Swanns’ butler (222). Waiting for a letter (222). I renounce Gilberte for ever (224); but the hope of a reconciliation is superimposed on my resolve (226). Intermittency, law of the human soul (227).

Odette’s “winter-garden” (228): splendour of the chrysanthemums and poverty of the conversation: Mme Cottard (234); Mme Bontemps (234); effrontery of her niece Albertine (237); the Prince d’Agrigente (239); Mme Verdurin (239). Painful New Year’s Day (251). “suicide of that self which loved Gilberte” (255). Clumsy interventions (256). Letters to Gilberte: “one speaks for oneself alone” (259). Odette’s drawing-room: retreat of the Far East and invasion of the eighteenth century (261). New hair-styles and silhouettes (265; cf.
I
278).

A sudden impulse interrupts the cure of detachment (271); Aunt Léonie’s Chinese vase (272). Two walkers in the Elysian twilight (273). Impossibility of happiness (274). The opposing forces of memory and imagination (276). Because of Gilberte, I decline an invitation to a dinner-party where I would have met Albertine (277). Cruel memories (278). Gilberte’s strange laugh, evoked in a dream (281; cf. 217). Fewer visits to Mme Swann (283). Exchange of tender letters and progress of indifference (286). Approach of spring: Mme Swann’s ermine and the guelder-roses in her drawing-room; nostalgia for Combray (288). Odette and the “Down-and-outs Club” (290). An intermediate social class (295).

PLACE-NAMES · THE PLACE

Departure for Balbec (299). Subjectiveness of love (300). Contradictory effects of habit (301). Railway stations (303). Françoise’s simple and infallible taste (309). Alcoholic euphoria (312). Mme de Sévigné and Dostoievsky (315). Sunrise from the train (316); the milk-girl (317). Balbec church (322). “The tyranny of the Particular” (324). Place-names on the way to Balbec-Plage (326).

Arrival at Balbec-Plage (327). The manager of the Grand Hotel (327, 332). My room at the top of the hotel (333; cf.
I
8). Attention and habit (333, 339). My grandmother’s kindness (334). The sea in the morning (341). Balbec tourists (345). Balbec and Rivebelle (346). Mme de Villeparisis (349). M. and Mlle de Stermaria (351). An actress and three friends (352). The weekly Cambremer garden-party (355). Resemblances (358). Poetic visions of Mlle de Stermaria (364). The general manager (367). Françoise’s Grand Hotel connections (369). Meeting of Mme de Villeparisis and my grandmother (371). The “sordid moment” at the end of meals (372; cf. 613). The Princesse de Luxembourg (377). Mme de Villeparisis, M. de Norpois and my father (381). The bourgeoisie and the Faubourg Saint-Germain (384).

Different seas (387). Drives with Mme de Villeparisis (387). The ivy-covered church (391). Mme de Villeparisis’s conversation (394, 408). Norman girls (396). The handsome fishergirl (402). The three trees of Hudimesnil (404; cf.
I
254). The fat Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld (416). My grandmother and I: intimations of death (419).

Robert de Saint-Loup (421). My friendship with him (430), but real happiness requires solitude (431; cf. 664). Saint-Loup as a work of art: the “nobleman” (432). A Jewish colony (432). Variety of human failings and similarity of virtues (436). Bloch’s bad manners (442). Bloch and his father (443; cf. 476). The stereoscope (447).

M. de Charlus’s strange behaviour (455). Mme de Villeparisis is a Guermantes (456). I recognise him as the man in the grounds of Tansonville (458; cf.
I
199). Further weird behaviour (463). Mme de Sévigné, La Fontaine and Racine (467). Charlus comes to my room (471).

Dinner at the Blochs’ with Saint-Loup (474). To know “without knowing” (477). Bloch’s sisters (477). The elegance of “Uncle Solomon” (481). Nissim Bernard (482); his lies (485). Bloch and Mme Swann in the train (489). Françoise’s view of Bloch and Saint-Loup (490). Saint-Loup and his mistress (490). My grandmother’s inexplicable behaviour (500).

The blossoming girls (503). “Oh, the poor old boy . . .” (508). The dark-haired cyclist: Albertine (510). The name Simonet (519, 528, 578). Rest before dinner: different aspects of the sea (523). Dinners at Rivebelle (529). The astral tables (533). Euphoria induced by alcohol and music (534). Meeting with Elstir (553). A new aspect of Albertine (558).

Elstir’s studio (564); his seascapes (566); the painter’s “metaphors” (567). Elstir explains to me the beauty of Balbec church (573). Albertine passes by (578). The portrait of
Miss Sacripant
(585). “My beautiful Gabrielle!” (586). Age and the artist (588). Elstir and the little band (593). Nullity of love (596). Miss Sacripant was Mme Swann (600) and M. Biche Elstir! (604). One must discover wisdom for oneself (605). My grandmother and Saint-Loup (608). Saint-Loup and Bloch (609). Still lifes (613; cf. 373). Afternoon party at Elstir’s (615). Yet another Albertine: a well-brought-up girl (619). Albertine on the esplanade: once more a member of the little band (623). Octave, the gigolo (625). Albertine’s antipathy for Bloch (627). Saint-Loup engaged to a Mlle d’Ambresac? (634). Albertine’s intelligence and taste (635). Andrée (636). Gisèle (637).

Days with the girls (643). Françoise’s bad temper (649). Balbec through Elstir’s eyes (651). Fortuny (653). A sketch of the Creuniers (656). The mobile beauty of youth (662). Friendship: and abdication of oneself (664; cf. 430). Twittering of the girls (666). Letter from Sophocles to Racine (671). A love divided among several girls (676). Albertine is to spend a night at the Grand Hotel (695). The rejected kiss (701). The attraction of Albertine (702). The multiple utilisation of a single action (707). Straying in the budding grove (716). The different Albertines (718).

End of the season (724). Departure (728).

Contributors

Daniel J. Boorstin

·

Christopher Cerf

·

Shelby Foote

·

Vartan Gregorian

·

Larry McMurtry

·

Edmund Morris

·

John Richardson

·

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

·

Susan Sontag

·

William Styron

·

Gore Vidal

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The principal text of this Modern Library edition was composed in a digitized version of Horley Old Style, a typeface issued by the English type foundry Monotype in 1925. It has such distinctive features as lightly cupped serifs and an oblique horizontal bar on the lowercase “e.”

1992 Modern Library Edition

Copyright © 1992 by Random House, Inc.
Copyright © 1981 by Chatto & Windus
and Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Random House, Inc., New York.

This 1992 edition was published in Great Britain by
Chatto & Windus.

This translation is a revised edition of the 1981 translation of
Within
a Budding Grove
by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin,
published in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in
Great Britain by Chatto & Windus. Revisions by D. J. Enright.

Within a Budding Grove
first appeared in
The Modern Library in 1930.

Jacket portrait courtesy of Archive Photos.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Number: 92-50224

© Copyright 2000 Versaware Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Versaware, Versabook, Library Builder, My Library, eBookCity and Stosh are all trademarks of Versaware Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

eISBN: 978-0-679-64179-7

v3.0