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Place-names: The Name
And now we return to our narrator, Marcel, who is keen on visiting either the storm tossed shore at Balbec or else the cities of northern Italy.
P298 “...even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our life the days are not equal. To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different ‘speeds.’ There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go full tilt singing as one goes. During this month -- in which I went laboriously over, as though over a tune... these visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been love, love for another person -- I never ceased to believe that they corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by my senses at all...”
Young Marcel then gets so worked up at the realization that he is actually going to Italy that,
P299 “I could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent that the doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to Florence and Venice was absolutely out o the question, but warned them that, even when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a year, give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was liable to excite me.
P300 “And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go to the theater, to hear Berma... My parents had to be content with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elysees, in the custody of a person who would see that I did not tire myself; this person was none other than Francoise, who had entered our service after the death of my aunt Leonie. Going to the Champs-Elysees I found unendurable. If only Bergotte had described the place in one of his books, I should, no doubt, have longed to see and to know it... but in this public garden there was nothing that attached itself to my dreams.”
Before we get to Gilberte, I went to Google Map to see where the Champs-Élysées is and found some things of interest for this section about names. A few things Proust would not have remembered: Avenue du General Eisenhower, Avenue Winston Churchill, Voie Georges Pompidou, Avenue FDR, and running through the middle of the formal gardens, Allee Marcel Proust. There are also statues of Clemenceau and of de Gaul.
When I visited Paris I recall spending a fair amount of time in the Tuileries Garden but I don’t know that I ever made it across Place de la Concorde to these gardens. I don’t think I had read Proust at that point.
While this is hardly a surprise, it is still shocking to scroll around Paris in Google Map and see “Temporarily closed” next to almost everything.
I had forgotten that we immediately go to Marcel singing Swann’s tune in his own, much younger voice. Marcel runs into Gilberte while both are playing in the Champs-Élysées and soon his life revolves around her.
P305 “...although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the Champs-Élysées; when one is in love one has not love left for anyone), yet those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited with so much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered with excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the world, were by no means happy moments... I could not discover in them one atom of pleasure. All the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see her... But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves...
...
“Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in classic drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet in which Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print...that evening I had sent her a little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte Swann, which I had so often traced in my exercise-books. Next day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which she had managed to find... But in the address on the pneumatic message -- which, only yesterday, was nothing, was merely a ‘little blue’ that I had written, and, after a messenger had delivered it to Gilberte’s porter and a servant had taken it to her in her room, had become a thing without value or distinction, one of the ‘little blues’ that she had received in the course of the day -- I had difficulty in recognizing the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the circles stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil by a postman, signs of effectual realization, seals of the external world, violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my dream. ”
Doing a little research on ‘little blues’ I found THIS.
Young Marcel is now torn between his need to declare his love for Gilberte and to hear her say she loves him. I’m guessing they are about nine. I would laugh, but if I were to have a “Madeleine” moment, what I wouldn’t want would be for it to take me back to Valentine’s Day when I was in elementary school. I don’t recall the details now, but there was always some girl or other I had a crush on and I struggled with how much to say. This was especially fraught as this was likely the only day of the year she might be aware of my existence. And nothing ever came of it. Every few years some little girl would feel the need to kiss me, but they were never the girls I was interested in. I did eventually learn to kiss in this manner, but it never led to romance.
We are now at the point where M. Swann is reintroduced to the story after a long interval, measured primarily by the age of Gilberte.
P 310 “He [Swann] responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte’s companions, even to mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family, but without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but kept out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had become pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann; as the ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different from the ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which I utilized not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had become a new, another person; still I attached him by an artificial thread, secondary and transversal, to our former guest...)
“On one of these sunny days which had not realized my hopes, I had not the courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
“‘I had ever so many things to ask you,’ I said to her; ‘I thought that today was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have you come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can talk to you.’
“Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: ‘To-morrow you may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha’n’t come! First of all I’ve a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I am going to a friend’s house to see King Theodosious arrive from her windows; won’t that be splendid? -- and then, next day, I’m going to Michel Strogoff, and after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New Year holidays! Perhaps they’ll take me south, to the Riviera; won’t that be nice?... if I do stay in Paris, I sha’n’t be coming here, because I shall be out paying calls with Mamma. Good-bye -- there’s Papa calling me.’”
...
P312 “Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter [from Gilberte explaining her seeming indifference and how she actually loved him], believing that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn. Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realized that, if I were to receive a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since it was I myself who had just composed it... I would strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I should be excluding just these identical words... from the field of possible events...
...
“As for Bergotte, that infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom I had first, before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte’s sake, chiefly, that I still loved him...”
P316 [His mother reports on running into Swann while shopping] “‘...He asked after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter --’ my mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my existence in Swann’s mind...”
...
P318 “But most of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I had heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the Allee des Acacias, round the big lake, and in the Allee de la Reine Marguerite, I would guide Francoise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne.”
The book ends with much more about Mme. Swann cruising the Bois and with the narrator’s return many years later when the coaches have been replaced by motor-cars and the women’s hats have grown ridiculous. Even the residential neighborhood has gone to pot. Change is never agreeable to the people who came of age in a different era. Of course what older people of today mean by “the good old days” followed this sad decline by at least a generation. We do love to complain.
And now, on to Some Do Not.
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The Last of Swann In Love
Well, I spoke a little too soon. We are still deep in Swann's affair with Odette. There’s an Odette passage here I can’t ignore. This is while Swann is giving Odette an ultimatum about not going to the theater with the Verdurins and staying with him instead.
P223 “Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty. Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost tranquility had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if he went on speaking for any length of time she would ‘never’ as she had told him with a fond smile... ‘get there in time for the Overture.’”
Day 65 of Pandemic Shelter in Place. By my count. Every day there seem to be even more bees in the bush out my kitchen window. The bush overhangs our deck and I’ve wanted to trim it back for months, but I remembered how the bees love it, so I’m waiting until it stops flowering. The problem is that when the tiny flowers have done their job they fall apart and the debris falls on the deck where it doesn’t do anyone any good.
We’ve been having some May rain. Unusual but it does happen. It’s good in that it pushes our fire season back a few weeks, but otherwise doesn’t amount to much.
Now that we’re past mid-May and the COVID-19 curve is flattened and the numbers in some cases are coming down, people are starting to open up the economy again. I think this is inevitable. Already the damage done to San Francisco alone is almost unfathomable. I will have to be more careful as the city around me gets less careful, but taking a year off from business would just be too costly. San Francisco is stuck at 36 known COVID-19 related fatalities, which is about as good as we could have hoped for back in March. I’ve already decided that once things start to open up a bit, I will give in and join Amazon Prime so I can shop Whole Foods online and have it delivered. It’s been interesting eating what I can eat at my local markets, and I like supporting them, but I’m not eating as well, and I think shopping at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s will soon be more dangerous than it is now. Now I just need to find a supply of better face mask/respirators.
Day 68 - As I walked my steep hike today I was doing a little corporate archaeology. Most of the telephone utility covers in the sidewalks were branded Pacific Bell, but I also found a more recent AT&T and a single SBC. The remaining covers were the even older Bell System survivors.
P236 “...his love extended a long way beyond the province of physical desire. Odette’s person, indeed, no longer held any great place in it... And this malady, which was Swann’s love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past operation.”
Love is a malady to Swann and Marcel. You can’t really envy them the success they have in love as it seems to take them over like a cancer. And since we are graced with an omniscient narrator here and get Odette’s perspective as well as Swann’s, The object of Swann’s affection is not really all that impressed with his love. It is certainly good for business, but, this reading, I’m finding it hard to disagree with Swann’s middle class neighbors back in Cambray. It is indeed an unfortunate marriage, or will be.
P237 “...Once when, because it was the birthday of the Princesse de Parme... he had decided to send her a basket of fruit, and was not quite sure where or how to order it, he had entrusted the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written to him laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose specialty they were, the strawberries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always had the best, and soon, ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself.’ And in the sequel, by the cordiality with which the Princess thanked him, he was able to judge of the flavor of the strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most of all, that ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself’ had brought balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which he rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich and respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from generation to generation the knowledge of the ‘right places’ and the art of ordering things from shops.”
Day 69 - I managed to get one of the things I most crave during Shelter In Place, a good San Francisco burrito. Weeks ago I rejected the idea of walking down into the Tenderloin to my usual favorite taqueria, but today there was a taqueria food truck parked a block away so I jumped at the opportunity. This has the potential to be a protracted Good luck, Bad luck, Who knows? Series, but it is at least starting off well.
The plumber, who I had reservations about calling for a very minor problem, was running late so I decided to take my walk at an unusual time, the Noon hour. While walking I noticed the food truck parked in front of a large apartment building a block away from me. I had to go home to get money, but I returned and ordered my burrito. It was good and big. Not as good as Cancun, but it answered my craving.
Of course if I get sick in around a week, I will have to wonder if this is the reason why. But then again, catching COVID-19 could itself be either a good or bad thing. Worst case I die in a very San Francisco way. Recently I’ve been rating San Francisco deaths and 1. Is being hit by cable car; 2. Is dying as a result of climbing a hill -- as the Emperor Norton died; and 3. Could be as a result of eating a classic SF burrito. Dying in an earthquake may trump all of these, but that’s not something that can happen very often.
We’ve finally made it to the “evening” at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s, when we are first introduced to Paris society. If I started quoting here it would be hard to stop, so I’m going to skip even our introduction to Oriane, at this point still the Princesse des Laumes -- not counting that mention of her earlier in the section -- and go to where the evening returns to Swann’s story.
P264 “...Swann saw that he could now not go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love... they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone...
“But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore him with such an anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate effort it continued until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had time to understand what was happening, to think: ‘It is the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. I mustn’t listen!’, all his memories of the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned again, but awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present isolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.
P265 “In place of the abstract expressions ‘the time when I was happy,’ ‘the time when I was loved,’ which he had often used until then, and without much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all... At that time he had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who live for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also...
P267 “He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she [the little phrase], who addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette... in that distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken to him then... it seemed to say to him... ‘What does all that matter; it is all nothing.’ And Swann’s thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, toward that unknown, exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
“...But ever since, more than a year before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one form another... Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dreams of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.”
...
P270 “From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realized now...”
P272 “Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident... And Swann felt a very cordial sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who, on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of himself, and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette’s very life.”
I had forgotten about this. We shall learn in time that even her death wouldn’t really have helped much. And now we are at the end. Marked by Swann pursuing Mme. de Cambremer to Combray. But before we move on we get one last memorable line,
P292 “‘To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!’”
I rather suspect that this is not at all unusual. My parting thought about Swann is, "What did he understand courtesans to do?" His naiveté about Odette is rather puzzling.
Day 71 - On my off-day hike today I was thinking about what has surprised me about this period in quarantine. I knew I would miss my favorite cafes, in the last week or so before we went into lockdown I tried to hit as many of them as I could. But what I wouldn’t have predicted is that I haven’t had a drop of either alcohol or iced tea for over 70 days. Also fewer cookies and sweets, though that is mostly because there isn’t much available to me where I’m shopping.
That makes it sounds like I’m eating better, but I don’t think that is true. Normally I eat a lot of salad and I’ve been reluctant to order salad these days. I think I’ve had a total of six salads where I would normally have three or so a week. I’ve been eating more frozen dinners -- but veggie and often organic ones. Not terrible but not the best thing to eat. And a lot more bread than I usually consume. And cheese.
This is also the Memorial Day weekend. There are never any greening events on Memorial Day, I think because so many people are usually out of town. Not this year. And the weather couldn’t be better. As luck would have it, we are just about to go over 100,000 COVID-19 related known deaths. It would be too perfect if we hit that milestone on Memorial Day. Though the numbers are almost certainly too low, so the reality is that we are already way over 100,000 deaths compared with the same period of 2019. If we continue at this rate, which seems reasonable to assume, then we could have another 150,000 deaths by the end of October. Sadly, what people seem to be more concerned with just now is a shortage of hamburger and bacon since slaughterhouses turn out to be good places for a virus to spread. Not one of my concerns.
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It is now day 53 of Shelter In Place. I have a satisfactory routine. I’m still having to do HOA things, with another intense round of documents needing to go out as soon as I can get a signed copy returned to me. I still have a couple things to do around the house, but I’m mostly caught up. Of the things I’ve yet to do, many are in that class of things I would previously have done at a cafe table with a glass of iced tea at my side. Sitting down and doing them at home is doubly tedious.
I’m adopting a Stoic approach to the pandemic. This is our new path so we may as well make the most of it. The environmental benefits are worth the personal inconveniences, so far. I now wish I had bought a few of the better respirators back in the fall of 2018, but really I’m fortunate to have any n95s at all. I think having a quality respirator will become increasingly important over the next several months as the disease expands to places, like San Francisco, where it has been mostly blocked so far. Worst case, I may have to switch to delivery rather than pickup for my food and other essential needs. But every month travel is curtailed will be worth the inconvenience.
It struck me just today how curious it is that this Administration, together with a sizable percentage of the populace, is satisfied to have around 2,000 random Americans dying each day. When you consider the comparatively modest pretext for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it makes you think perhaps we could have saved ourselves a lot of money and trouble. Will this serve as a vaccine against future revenge wars? Maybe not since the other thing we’re seeing in abundance is stupidity. Fools can always be played. Something I don’t know if anyone really anticipated is how popular disaster is. The end of the world as we know it is getting great ratings. Everyone wants to watch. Not me, but everyone else seems to be tuning in.
Swann In Love 3
What do I think of Charles Swann? We first saw him from the perspective of Marcel’s parents and grandparents who see him as a respectable middle-class man who has gone astray in his domestic arrangements. Now we are seeing him in the thick of his affair with Odette and also as a not-enthusiastic-enough member of the Verdurins’ “little clan.” We’ve heard hints of his life in society but haven’t seen any of that yet, we haven’t even met the duke.
As memory serves, he will turn out to be as disloyal to his society friends as he is seen to be to his Verdurin friends, and he’s not satisfied to stick with the middle-class society he was born into. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he ends up having to cobble together still another phase of society that is willing to come to his home after his marriage. One wants to like him for his taste and education and for his role as family friend, but with reservations.
Here’s a perfect example of what I find problematic about Swann’s behavior, and since this involves the Princesse des Laumes, it is worth remembering for what comes much later.
P207 “After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so abruptly -- especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the ‘faithful’ before their normal time -- that on one occasion the Princesse des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the Bois) observed:
‘Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us all as a joke.’”
Day 58 of pandemic Shelter-in-Place. And I’ve now missed three of my usual greening events. All four days of Cherry Blossom Festival, Dutch King Day, and the International Book Fair in Berkeley. The Book Fair is a recent addition, taking the place of either the Maker Faire in San Mateo or the Himalayan Fair in Berkeley. Really I’ll do anything to avoid working the Bay 2 Breakers race.
But Dutch King Day is one of our oldest events. We’ve been doing it so long both the gender and the location have changed, but it is still just as orange. Back when it was Dutch Queen Day, it was on the northern side of Golden Gate Park by the other windmill. It moved to the site of the southern windmill after the Netherlands helped to restore it from it’s ruined state. I actually like the new site better, the garden isn’t as pretty, but the site is more compact and easier for us to work. We don’t even use dumpsters for this one, all the trash gets bagged and hauled away in our truck. This also gives us more control over where the compost and recycling goes -- occasionally our carefully sorted trash gets mistakenly treated as landfill. We don’t like to think about that.
I can’t mention Dutch Queen Day without repeating one of my favorite greening-in-Golden-Gate-Park stories. It may have been the first year we worked the event when it was still by the north windmill. We were packing up at the end, loading trash and containers and signs into big trash toters and rolling them back to our truck. To save trips I always over-load my toters so they are nearly impossible to move (I’ve gotten a little better about this in recent years). At one point I left the toter in the middle of the street while I went to collect something else, and the wind was so fierce that it actually started blowing the toter down the street.
Swann first realizes that he has fallen out of favor with the Verdurins,
P220 “ ‘God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has its limits, and mine is at an end,’ he concluded, as though this sacred mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from him.”
...
P221 “In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins’, which he had so often described as ‘genuine,’ seemed to him now the worst possible form of life, and the ‘little nucleus’ the most degraded class of society... ”
...
“...no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the door again, dashed out into the street shouting... ‘I believe I have found a way of getting invited to the diner at Chatou to-morrow!’ But it must have been a bad way, for M. Swann was not invited...”
And so we are at last past the Verdurins... at least for now. And now we move on to the part where, as it were, Swann’s Way and the Guermantes’ Way begin to blend.
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“I dreamed music”
That’s a favorite line from Blade Runner, but I really did just dream music. I’m up in the middle of the night so I don’t lose it (2:40am). It was live and I was there but it wasn’t a normal venue. There were scattered musicians, a few strings and an instrument I couldn’t identify, above me where I could hear but not see them. And they were playing Procol Harum's “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” But not all at once. In bits and pieces. I was trying to get them to quicken the tempo as it was obvious to me that that would sound even better, but they weren’t paying attention. I was also, in my dream, trying to fall asleep, but after the violin did such a beautiful job with it’s part and then the other instrument took over I just thought, “screw falling asleep, this is too good to miss,” and then I woke up.
A couple months ago I ran into a fairly recent, live performance of the song [the Hammond organ really makes this work] by some of the band members and a symphony orchestra. It was surprisingly good, but really just a richer version of the original, and with the same lead vocal. YouTube being what it is, I then searched around and found something similar for “Nights in White Satin.” But in my dream “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was purely instrumental and not at all like the original.
Swann in Love - continued
The plot thickens, or, this is a French novel, after all,
P166 “But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by consenting to meet her only after diner) that there were other pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette’s style of beauty that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with which he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins’. The little girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Remi, his coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins’... [Mme. Verdurin] sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist would play for them -- for their two selves, and for no one else -- that little phrase by Venteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of their love... It passed, with simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware of how vain, how hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace there was, in deed, something definitely achieved, and completed in itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked upon the sonata less in its own light -- as what it might express, had, in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries to come -- than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself -- which bound her to him by a lasting tie... He went further; agonized by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him... that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves...”
Marcel wants to play this his way, but, to be fair to Swann, his time spent with his “little girl” on the side also reduced the time he must pass in the company of the Verdurins’ “little clan.” I would think that in itself would be a powerful incentive.
This affair starts out, if I read the characters correctly, as a business proposition on Odette’s part that meets with only limited success at the beginning. Swann is interested in a way, but not entirely sold on the goods.
P173 “But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark drive together [home with Odette], he had taken his other ‘little girl’ all the way to the Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at the Verdurins’, he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing that he didn’t intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that certainty of finding it whenever he would...”
It’s now day 51 of the pandemic lock-down, by my count, and SF is still stuck on 29 official deaths. Official deaths for the nation are nearing 70,000 but the best guess is that the real total is double that based on excess deaths over last year. This may include people who didn’t have COVID-19 but either couldn’t receive or didn’t even seek proper treatment because of the pandemic, so the virus is at least a contributing cause of their deaths.
I’m now starting to run out of things I thought I was well supplied with, like the infamous TP but also quarters for the laundry. Since I’m now only going to the bathroom at home, I’m using more TP than normal. And my problem is that I don’t have room for the huge packages of TP that seem to be so popular. I only recently bumped up to buying six rolls instead of four. I have nowhere to store twelve rolls. So this week I’m going to have to go to the bank and find a store that sells TP in smaller bundles.
On the other hand, our weather is getting nicer. This week is supposed to be the warmest yet with no more rain even hinted at. We do need the rain, but it’s now so late in the season that we’re not likely to get more than a token amount. May moisture usually comes in the form of heavy mists that thwart even umbrellas. We can’t expect to see actual rain again until the fall. Normally, one would know what to expect from the coming summer and fall, and weather-wise, we still more or less do, but everything else is now in flux. I have no reason to think California will be back to anything like normal when the next rainy season starts. We are truly living in interesting times. I do expect the true COVID death toll to be over 200,000 by that time. And it could be even worse than that.
Since I’ve already begun by talking about TP use, I may as well go on to talk about what else has changed. Over the decades I’ve discovered a lazy-bachelor approach to housekeeping that works for me. I would rinse my dishes as I use them -- to deter insects -- but not actually wash them until I ran out of something important like sharp knives or plates that fit in the microwave. Now I do the dishes daily, or near enough. On the other hand I’m doing my laundry less often as, previously, it was my gym clothes that I would tend to run out of after about seven days. I haven’t touched my gym gear in over 51 days, and I even bought some new underwear online as I was running out of those first, so now I can go over a week before I need to do the laundry.
Because I’m doing more exercises and stretches at home now, and more often as well, I’m also doing a better job of keeping my floors swept. And I’ve gotten much better about not wearing shoes in the house. I should be cleaning the bathroom even more frequently, but I am cleaning it at least once a week, which is more than before. At other times I would be envying Marcel, Hans, and Henry’s access to domestic staff, but now you would have to also think of them as disease vectors.
I’ve been thinking about French toast for about a week now and plan to make some soon. (What is “French toast” called in France? One wonders.) I’ve been eating many more sandwiches and frozen dishes than normal. My justification for this is that it allows me to save my usual soups and things for my emergency reserve -- for if I catch the virus and need to keep myself going with as little trouble as possible. So my usual staples are the things I haven’t touched. Which is odd.
P182 Swann and Odette are finally lovers, “...For Swann was finding in things once more, since he had fallen in love, the charm that he had found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied himself an artist; with this difference, that what charm lay in them now was conferred by Odette alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the inspirations of his boyhood, which had been dissipated among the frivolities of his later life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit, he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.”
Link to Table of Contents
Day 44 of the COVID-19 Shelter-In-Place and I’m still well. So far as I can tell. I’d like to think I’m one of the people who have had it without symptoms, but that seems unlikely. According to the latest figures I’ve seen, there have been fewer than 10 cases in my zipcode (and no deaths) and I’ve been probably 90% as good as I could be at social distancing. It’s only when I feel odd for a moment that I dwell on that 10% where I could have been even stricter, since this doesn’t seem to be a fun disease to get.
I’m going out even less than I was at first and I even have cut back just a little on my outdoor exercise routine. This was the first weekend I haven’t had take-away restaurant food because I had some other menu things going on and would have ended up with stale sourdough bread and other food waste. Still eagerly anticipating my postponed treat. And SF is still only up to 22 known dead. And are those 22 fatalities more tragic in being the few dead of what could have been a much worse butcher’s bill? The odds of dying here are almost lotto bad, but that has never stopped anyone from imagining the worst (or best).
Speaking of the lotto, the reason I used to occasionally play was that I thought it was instructive to consider what you would do differently if you won a big payout. I had various plans depending on the size of the payout. But now, there’s very little winning a bunch of money would help with and in many ways it would only add to your risks. If I still played, I would stop for the moment.
It always amazes me to think how little the best educated person knew about the world at the end of the 19th century. You could have spent your life going from one university to another learning from the most brilliant minds of the time, but when it comes to physics (and consequently chemistry) and astrophysics in particular, your ignorance would have been profound. Most of what you thought you knew about atoms and outer space was simply wrong. The 20th century was when humans finally got a clue about where they were and what they were made of. From our perspective there’s very little difference between the understanding of the most sophisticated Parisian of the 19th century and the most primitive savage at that time. And from our perspective their differences in personal dress and manners would be equally strange.
Today is day 46 of Sheltering In Place which I realized means that I’ve gone without a drop of tea (I don’t drink coffee) or alcohol for that whole time. My last iced tea was at my last breakfast out, the day before we went to SIP. Can’t say I feel that different. I may have more of a tendency to fall asleep during the day, but that could also be because there’s nothing very exciting happening and I’m sitting around the house so much. You’d think stopping something I did on such a regular basis, drinking iced tea, would have had some effect, but I wasn’t really even aware of it until I saw something about a couple who are avoiding caffeine during SIP. They were having more of a problem, but they were also used to a lot more caffeine than I am normally exposed to.
Today was an unusually social day. I had to let a couple contractors into the building and I stayed with them to answer questions as they looked at the work that needs to be done. We were all wearing n95 masks, but it was still the most I’ve been around anyone in 46 days. And then I had to buy a light bulb at the hardware store and was around still more people. And they weren’t wearing masks, though I was. I am tempted to ask people not wearing masks why? I doubt, however, that the young woman behind the counter at the hardware store would say it was because she’s quite pretty and the mask hides some of that, though I think that is at least part of it.
Swann's Way - Swann in Love
While introducing, at greater length, Swann and also Odette de Crecy and the beginning of their affair,
P149 “...Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines... for us to remember all that follows. And if she begins in the middle, where it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.”
I had forgotten that he uses music in this way as well. Though really it’s the same way. And I had forgotten that it was Odette who initiated the relationship.
Reading these opening pages I can certainly see why Charles Haas would have taken exception to being linked to Swann.
Today I read in the newspaper that people of my vintage should plan on hiding indoors for the next year or two until the virus storm abates... or until I catch it. While I try to look at this sentence from Marcel’s perspective (rather than from that of Hans Castorp or Henry Ryecroft) it is still rather daunting. I’m doing a reasonably good job of staying fit and eating well. I’m keeping myself amused. But in your late sixties you have to wonder how many “good” years you have left. To spend so much time in virtual house arrest (with walks) seems like giving up a lot. On the other hand, the accounts I read of people with even a moderate case of COVID-19 does not make me want to gain my freedom that way... and even that freedom is still in question.
Today is day 47 of SIP by my count. The USA has over 60,000 deaths from the virus, but this is probably a massive undercount. According to something I saw in the NYT, NYC alone has experienced 60,000 more deaths this year than last. The ratio is probably not as bad in places that have not been hit as hard, but even we have some deaths that were not diagnosed but are probably COVID-19 related. And now people and governments are starting to cut back on the social distancing.
This is necessary to some extent, but only some curves have flattened and there are still many known and many more unknown active cases walking around. It will be interesting to see what the curves look like a month from now. How many other places will look like the NYC area then?
The problem with living with so many books is that, at times like this when one has some time on one’s hands, it is so tempted to put off what you were going to do and pick up an old friend. My eye happened to fall on Wilt by Sharpe, which always makes me smile. There are some scenes in that novel that always make me laugh no matter how often I read them. Like the exhumation of the anatomically correct doll. And on my shelf it stands only a few volumes away from Anna Karenina, is there any humor in that book? I can’t recall any. If there is any it would involve Anna or her brother early in the book.
I have made it to the scene where Swann discovers, or rediscovers, the “little phrase” on his first visit to the Verdurin’s salon. I really dislike these characters, but there’s some important lines here about art. (It doesn’t help that I remember the cruel twist at the end of the work that requires the death of both M. Verdurin and the Princesse de Guermantes.)
P159 “A year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keep pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony -- he knew not which -- that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils... And so, hardly had the delicious sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript... when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the strength of its expression; he had before him the definite object which was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought, and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he had never dreamed, into which he felt nothing but this phrase could initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and strange desire.
P160 “With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere, towards a state of happiness, noble, unintelligible, yet clearly indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which he was prepared to follow it, after pausing a moment, abruptly it changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform, melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing, that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows nothing of her, not even her name.”
This incident precipitates a sort of mid-life crisis for Swann, but he is not able to track down the piece of music. Until now,
P162 “...scarcely had the little pianist begun to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth -- and recognized, secret, whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved... Finally the phrase withdrew and vanished... But now, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told that it was the andante movement of Vinteuil’s sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its language and acquire its secret.
“...Then he asked for some information about this Vinteuil; what else had he done, and at what period in his life he had composed the sonata; -- what meaning the little phrase could have had for him, that was what Swann most wanted 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 reply...”
And now we stretch beyond music to art in general, and the appreciation of art,
“Inasmuch as the public cannot recognize the charm, the beauty, even the outline of nature save in the stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated, while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil’s sonata or in Biche’s portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in painting. [In a past blog this was described as consonance and contrasted with the dissonance of these artists.] It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colors haphazard upon his canvas...”
P163 “Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil’s sonata had caused a stir among the most advanced school of musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
“‘I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil,’ said Swann, thinking of the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother’s sisters.
“‘Perhaps that’s the man!’ cried Mme. Verdurin.
“‘Oh, no!’ Swann burst out laughing. ‘If you had ever seen him for a moment you wouldn’t put the question.’”
...
P164 “‘But it may well be some relative,’ Swann went on. ‘That would be bad enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn’t have a cousin who is a silly old fool...’”
