Combray

Swann in Love

Place-Names

Dreams of Place-Names

In the Champs-Elysses

The Bois Garden of Woman

• A little girl with red hair; the name Gilberte (560)
• Game’s of prisoner’s base (562)
• What will the weather be like? (563)
• Snow in the Champs-Elysees (564)
• The reader of the Debats (Mme Blatin) (565)
• Marks of friendship: the agate marble, the Bergotte booklet, “You may call me Gilberte” (573)
• why they fail to bring me the expected happiness (574)
• A spring day in winter: joy and disappointment (575)
• The Swann of Combray has become a different person: Gilberte’s father (578)
• Gilberte tells me with cruel delight that she will not be returning to the Champs-Elysees before the New Year (580)
• “In my friendship with Gilberte, it was I alone who loved” (585)
• The name Swann (586)
• Swann meets my mother in the Trois Quartiers (588)
• Pilgrimage with Francoise to the Swann’s house near the Bois (591)

Summary

We see how the author and Swann’s daughter first meet in Paris. There are phrases that indicate that Swann’s wife is in fact Odette, so there is much to learn about how this came to be.

Quotations

“For in order to distinquish in everything that surrounded Gilberte an indefinable quality analogous in the world of emotions to what in the world of colours is called infra-red, my parents would have needed that supplementary sense with which love had temporarily endowed me.” [591]

Comment

The author is incredibly sensitive - and I am not sure this is meant as a compliment.