| Swann's Way |
Swann in Love
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The Verdurins and their "Little
Clan"
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Swann in Love
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The Verdurins and their “Little Clan” |
Summary This lengthy section describes the beginning, and the beginning of the end, of Swann’s affair with Odette. Quotations “... so many people, who either from lack of energy or else from a resigned sense of their obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur to remain moored like houseboats to a particular point on the shore of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them outside the wordly situation in which they remain confined until the day of their death.” [270] “... he belonged to that class of intelligent men who have led a life of idleness, and who seek a consolation and perhaps an excuse in the notion that their idleness offers to their intelligence objects as worthy of interest as any that might be offered by art or learning... “ [272] “Here’s Swann asking for something. On guard!” [273] “... love may come into being, love of the most physical kind, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life one has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves by itself, ... We come to its aid, we falsify it by memory and by suggestion. Recognizing one of its symptoms, we remember and re-create the rest.” [277] “On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to be permissible, the doctor was unsparing in his endeavors to cultivate the wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and to perfect his education.” [282] “He’s a scholar who lives in a world of his own; he has no idea what things are worth, and he accepts everything that we say as gospel.” [284] “Then he asked for information about this Vinteuil: what else had he done, at what period in his life he had composed the sonata, and what meaning the little phrase could have had for him - that was what Swann wanted most to know. But none of these people who professed to admire this musician ... seemed ever to have asked himself these questions, for none of them was able to answer them.” [300] “... the objects we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of period and class, is no more than a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most refined.” [350] “ ‘Forgive me,’ said Swann with polite irony, ‘but I must confess that my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces.’ “ [365] “... so that her silence should have the appearance not of consent but of the unconscious silence of inanimate objects,” [367] “There are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least outspokenness is thought shocking because they have not begun by flattering the tastes of the public and serving up to it the commonplaces to which it is accustomed.” [377] “... as one sees people who are doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are really enjoyable and become convinced that they are - and convinced also of the rare quality and absolute detachment of their own taste - when they have agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in a hotel from which that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.” [379] “But now and then his thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it forward into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, deep-rooted pain.” [391] “Swann had reached an age whose philosophy - encouraged, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as well as by that of the circle in which he had spent much of his life, ... where it was agreed that intelligence was in direct ratio to the degree of skepticism and nothing was considered real and incontestable except the individual tastes of each person - is no longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the philosophy of men who ... extract from the accumulation of the years already spent a fixed residue of habits and passions which they can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with which they will deliberately arrange ... that the kind o f existence they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious.” [397] “... he cried out: ‘Heaven help me!’ as people, after lashing themselves into an intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the problem of the reality of the external world or the immortality of the soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning act of faith.” [420]
Comment This section describes the cliqueishness of upper-middle class French society in the early 1900’s. It is petty and full of jealousy. There is something wrong with this entire section: it is based on the stories about Swann that occurred before the author was born, yet the level of detail and the verbatim dialogues are totally unrealistic given that the author was not actually present. |