The Evolution of Proust’s «Combray»: A Genetic Study 1789977851, 9781789977851

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The Evolution of Proust’s ‘Combray’

Modern French Identities Edited by Jean Khalfa Volume 138

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Maureen A. Ramsden

The Evolution of Proust’s ‘Combray’  A Genetic Study

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://​dnb.d-​nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Ramsden, Maureen A., author. Title: The Evolution of Proust's 'Combray' : A Genetic Study /​Maureen A. Ramsden. Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2020] | Series: Modern French Identities v.138 | Includes bibliographical references. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020010406 (print) | LCCN 2020010407 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789977851 (paperback) | ISBN 9781789977868 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789977875 (epub) | ISBN 9781789977882 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Proust, Marcel, 1871-​1922. Du côté de chez Swann. Classification: LCC PQ2631.R63 A8673 2020 (print) | LCC PQ2631. R63 (ebook) | DDC 843/​.912-​-​dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020010406 LC ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020010407 Cover images: Portrait of Marcel Proust. Photo by Paul Nadar. 24 March 1887. Bibliothèque nationale de France. In the public domain. Thai Water Lily. Photo by Theerawat Sangprakarn. Wikimedia Commons, CC license 3.0. Hawthorn blossoms in Judea. Photo by Davidbena. Wikimedia Commons, CC license 4.0. Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd. ISSN 1422-​9005 ISBN 978-​1-​78997-​785-​1 (print) • ISBN 978-​1-​78997-​786-​8 (ePDF) ISBN 978-​1-​78997-​787-​5 (ePub) • ISBN 978-​1-​78997-​788-​2  (mobi) © Peter Lang Group AG 2020 Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom [email protected], www.peterlang.com Maureen A. Ramsden has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work. All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

This book is for my siblings, Joan and David

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Introduction1 Chapter 1

An Overview of the Genesis of ‘Combray’

7

Chapter 2

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte: A Case for the Extension of the Term?

15

Chapter 3

‘Combray, de loin …’: Changing Perspectives in ‘Combray’ and its avant-texte39 Chapter 4

Another Glance through the Window of Proust’s tante Léonie in À la recherche du temps perdu: A Genetic Study

47

Chapter 5

Reading, Writing and Literature and their Evolution in ‘Combray’ and the avant-texte55 Chapter 6

The ‘deux côtés’ of Combray in their Genetic Context

75

viii

Contents

Chapter 7

Innovation in Narration, the Role of the Narrator and of the Reader, in Proust’s Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’

91

Bibliography145 Index151

Acknowledgements

This work, like that of Proust’s novel, was a long time in the making, but has finally come to fruition. I would like to thank Adam Watt, for his advice, particularly in tracking down old sources. I am very grateful to Toby Garfitt, who, as ever, has been very supportive, as has also Ann Miller. I would finally like to thank Marion Schmid, for her support, and whose work has greatly informed my own. I would also like to thank the editor of Dalhousie French Studies, Professor Vittorio Frigerio, for allowing me to use articles published in this journal and which, with additions and modifications, now form chapters in this monograph. They are: ‘Another Glance through the Window of Proust’s tante Léonie in Combray: A Genetic Study,’ Dalhousie French Studies, 94, Spring, 2011: 165–170. ‘Jean Santeuil: the Case for a Redefinition of the avant-texte?,’ Dalhousie French Studies, Spring, 2002, 58: 39–53. I am also grateful to Professor J.J. Houpermanns, editor of Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui, for the use of the article below, now modified: ‘The “deux côtés” of Combray in their Genetic Context,’ Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui, October 2007, 5: 53–69. Finally I would like to thank the editors of French Studies Bulletin, for the inclusion of an article, also with changes: ‘“Combray de loin…,” Changing Perspectives in “À la recherche du temps perdu,”’ French Studies Bulletin, Winter, 1999, 7: 10–14.

Introduction

Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu was a long time in the making.1 What this study expects to bring, above all, to Proustian studies is a close examination of Jean Santeuil, Proust’s first, incomplete, and in his lifetime, unpublished novel, which has a very important role in the development of À la recherche.2 To date, this early novel (written between 1896 and 1900) has received little attention from the critics. Apart from the early work of Mireille Marc-Lipiansky, it is usually studied alongside other texts.3 Given the length of the final novel, this study will focus on ‘Combray’, the beginning of the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann, published in 1913.4 There has in fact been more interest in Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve as a primary, genetic source for Proust’s novel.5 In this work of literary criticism, Proust argues against the famous French critic, Sainte-Beuve, who believed that the reader must be well acquainted with the author’s life story in order to have a better understanding of the work. However, it was while Proust was writing Contre Sainte-Beuve that it appeared to evolve into the 1 2 3

4 5

Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, edition of Jean-Yves Tadié, 4 vols (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1987–9). Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil, preceded by Les Plaisirs et les jours, edited by Pierre Clarac, with the collaboration of Yves Sandre (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1971). There is the very early work of Mireille Marc-Lipiansky, La Naissance du monde proustien dans ‘Jean Santeuil’ (Paris:  Librairie Nizet, 1974). A  wider view of the avant-texte for À la recherche is taken by Thanh-Vân Ton-That, in her work, Proust avant ‘La Recherche’: jeunesse et genèse d’une écriture au tournant du siècle (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012). Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, vol. I, edition of Jean-Yves Tadié (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1987). Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve, preceded by Pastiches et mélanges and followed by Essais et articles, edited and with a preface by Bernard de Fallois (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).

2

Introduction

novel we know, À la recherche, but little of the material used actually originated in Contre Sainte-Beuve. It is often stated that all of Proust’s previous work contributed to À la recherche, and in terms of material, this would seem to be the case. Proust’s published works include his earliest study, Les Plaisirs et les jours (originally published, 1896), a collection of prose poems and early articles, often published by Proust in Le Figaro newspaper.6 Here, especially in the section entitled ‘Les Regrets, rêveries couleur du temps’, there are episodes and themes which a reader of À la recherche would recognise, such as the family gathered in the garden in harmony, in the piece entitled ‘Famille écoutant la musique (108–9)’. In another piece, ‘Tuileries’, there is a mention of lilacs, which are amongst the hero’s favourite flowers, in Jean Santeuil, and also roses are compared to young girls, similar to the comparison of the hawthorns, found in À la recherche (104). The same similarity of theme and objects appears in the preface Proust wrote for his translation of John Ruskin’s work of literary criticism, Sesame and Lilies, 1865.7 This is now published as a separate slim volume, Sur la lecture.8 Proust shows, in his earliest work, such as Pastiches et mélanges, his ability to highlight the traits of a person’s character in short verbal sketches.9 He also shows how a character deals with a very difficult situation, such as a lesbian act by a daughter, which kills the mother, when she learns of it. This appears in Les Plaisirs et les jours in the section entitled ‘La Confession d’une jeune fille’.10 The unpublished works consist of the famous cahiers, or exercise books, several carnets or notebooks (the most famous of which is number one, 1908), as well as single pages often attached to a number of other papers, which might record an incident or sketch a character.11 Jean-Yves Tadié 6 7 8 9 10 11

Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les jours, edited by Pierre Clarac, in collaboration with Yves Sandre (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1971), pp. 3–178. Marcel Proust, Sésame et les Lys (Paris:  Mercure, 1906). A  translation of John Ruskin’s, Sesame and Lilies, 1865. Marcel Proust, Sur la lecture (Paris: Éditions Sillage, 2011). Pastiches et mélanges (Paris: NRF, 1919). Les Plaisirs et les jours (85–96). Cahier de 1908, ed. Philip Kolb (Paris: Gallimard, 1976).

Introduction

3

has emphasised their importance in the development of the final novel.12 In fact, much of the avant-texte consists of draft versions, rough outlines or ‘esquisses’. This word is used in the novel, in relation to the work of the narrator, in Le Temps retrouvé and also by Jean-Yves Tadié in his edition of À la recherche. Tadié gives the following definition: ‘L’esquisse […] désignera ici les versions des cahiers qui préparent le texte final, ou s’en distinguent’ (alrtp, general introduction, I, cvii). Tadié goes on to describe Proust’s methods of writing and assembling his novel in the drafts as follows: ‘… d’un côté, le refus, la rature, l’inachèvement; de l’autre, le recommencement, la reprise à un niveau supérieur, l’addition; et, lorsqu’on croyait tout fini, le montage, le démontage, le remontage, des pages, des épisodes, des personnages’ (alrtp, general introduction, I, x). This description of Proust’s method of writing can also be said to apply to all the different forms of the avant-texte. In this genetic study, different aspects of ‘Combray’ are traced through from the avant-texte, including a character, a place or an episode, and also the narrative voice, the role of the reader and the material used. Unlike other genetic studies on À la recherche, the author of this study looks at all the changes, not just the omissions or additions, between the avant-texte and the final version. Technical language is not used, nor tables, making this monograph more approachable to the general reader of Proust’s novel. These changes in the avant-texte are those which the author of this genetic study considers to be the most important, in presenting a wider interpretation of the final work. The author also uses close textual readings, which include the very important additional layer of the avant-texte, as it evolves to the final work. This aspect of the work makes possible a more in-depth study of this rich and complex novel. The same approach could be used to illuminate other parts of the novel. The study of the avant-texte also allows the reader to follow the development (or sometimes the disappearance) of a character, a theme, a place or an episode and their role from Jean Santeuil to the final novel.13 12 13

Jean-Yves Tadié, Proust et le roman: Essai sur les formes et techniques du roman dans ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). The earlier version of Jean Santeuil, edited by Bernard de Fallois in 1954, was very fragmentary. New material by Kolb and Price has been added to Pierre Clarac and

4

Introduction

With the one exception of Jean Santeuil, all the early works are in different genres, from Les Plaisirs et les jours, Sur la lecture, Pastiches et mélanges and Contre Sainte-Beuve, which was not completed. Proust wrote several hundred pages of his novel Jean Santeuil, and the author of this genetic work would argue that it is in this novel that the reader can find the greatest similarities to the final novel in themes, characters and episodes. However, even though much of the material of the avant-texte of ‘Combray’ appears in the final work, it is presented in a very different form. Proust experimented with many different forms, from his pastiches, on ‘L’Affaire Lemoine’, collected, with others, in Pastiches et mélanges, 1919, to prose poems and sketches, in Les Plaisirs et les jours, translations and works of literary criticism. In the writing of Contre Sainte-Beuve, Proust again hesitated as to which form to adopt. He had considered introducing his argument in the form of a dialogue with his mother, or in the form of an essay. Thus, what primarily prevented Proust from completing the novel, though he may not even have realised this himself, was his failure to find a satisfactory form or even an appropriate genre. In the aborted introduction to Jean Santeuil, he declares: ‘Puis-je appeler ce livre un roman?’ (js: 181). Therefore, neither of the proposed forms for Contre Sainte-Beuve resembled the technique of the novel it is often said to have become. This, together with the fact that Contre Sainte-Beuve was not rich in the very early narrative material, contained in Proust’s first and second novels, appears to make this work an unlikely main source for one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Thus, in the course of writing Contre Sainte-Beuve, while still struggling with form, Proust the narrator had a large amount of material on which to draw. Therefore, it could be said that the resulting novel, À la recherche, drew loosely on the semi-autobiographical work, Jean Santeuil, for its broader structure of a life story, and that Proust, the narrator, already had a large number of characters, themes and episodes available and, as demonstrated by this study, sometimes appearing also in earlier works, such as Yves Sandre’s edition of 1971, which is referred to in this chapter and it is also nearer to the text Proust left. The details are: Jean Santeuil (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1971).

Introduction

5

the village and its church, found in both novels, as well as tante Léonie, known as Mme Sureau, in Jean Santeuil. Proust developed the narrative parts of Contre Sainte-Beuve and then further reworked them, sometimes using a certain methodology, as in the notebook of 1908 and sometimes working on a character or an episode, without yet knowing where it might be placed. As Philippe Willemart has pointed out, this material was considered important by Proust and, if and where, it appeared in the final work was far from being arbitrary: Cette quête vers la cohérence, vers une identité ou vers une stabilité, la recherche “d’une unité qui s’ignorait” implique que Proust n’écrivait pas n’importe comment, ou mieux, que le scripteur proustien … couchait ses mots sur le papier dans un dessein précis, bien que souvent insu, mais non par hasard comme une première lecture pourrait le faire penser.14

Finally, one could argue that the practice of putting together fragments, from his various early works, perhaps led Proust to discover that this technique of fragmentation was the most relevant to the ideas he was to express in À la recherche. This was especially the case with the involuntary memory, which can only intermittently bring to the surface of the mind some deep-seated sensation or impression, often linked to an episode or a character (alrtp, I: 42–7). Jean Santeuil contains the greatest amount of material found in ‘Combray’. This additional and very important layer of the avant-texte, or what Proust referred to as the ‘palimpseste’ effect, is also used in this study to further elucidate the meaning of this rich and complex novel, and especially ‘Combray’. The narrative in Jean Santeuil is also loosely autobiographical, so not in line with Proust’s thinking about the critic Sainte-Beuve. Thus, this first novel was also instrumental in Proust’s unconscious rejection of a nineteenth-century tradition of writing novels. Therefore the material in Jean Santeuil and other avant-texte was reproduced in different forms and using different techniques in À la recherche. This involved moving away from a reasonably clear narrative voice, to the art of suggestion, 14

Philippe Willemart, L’Écriture à l’ère de l’indétermination:  Études sur la critique génétique, la psychanalyse et la littérature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019), 18.

6

Introduction

through symbols and metaphors, repeated objects and motifs and a fragmented approach. The author of this monograph would therefore argue that the first novel was instrumental, along with other less important works, in Proust’s discovery of the particular modernist technique he adopted in À la recherche. This is a much more challenging narrative for the reader, as in some aspects, it even foretells the nouveau roman.

Chapter 1

An Overview of the Genesis of ‘Combray’

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the development of ‘Combray’ from the earliest writings, including work published by Proust, such as Les Plaisirs et les jours, Pastiches et mélanges, and his translations of Ruskin with the unpublished prologue, Journées de lecture, and in published form, Sur la lecture, to letters and works published after his death, and not intended by Proust to be published, including Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve. It will also include the various cahiers and separate papers written during or after the composition of the Contre Sainte-Beuve. Proust used small notebooks or carnets mainly for note taking, separate sheets to add or develop his ideas and exercise books called cahiers which are by far the most numerous and in which he developed pieces of narrative. Some themes, such as that of childhood, are common to most of his works. Many of the themes of À la recherche are to be found in the early work, Les Plaisirs et les jours, written between 1892 and 1894 and published in 1896. It depicts high society at the end of the nineteenth century. Similarities in detail include the scene of the family garden (108) and the child’s sorrow at being separated from his mother, particularly at night, which are sketched out, including the child’s lack of willpower (89). There are also several familiar landscapes, the child’s love of nature (104) and some of the psychological truths which are an important part of À la recherche. Jean Santeuil, although often neglected as an early unfinished work, also plays an important role in the development of À la recherche. A first edition was published by Robert de Fallois in 1954. Mireille Marc-Lipiansky points out the advantages of the second edition of 1971 by Pierre Clarac, used by the author of this monograph, as well as the value of a genetic study: Cette réédition de Jean Santeuil ne remet pas fondamentalement en cause la précédente. Elle n’en est pas moins précieuse, dans la mesure où elle constitue une

8

Chapter 1 édition critique, scrupuleusement fidèle au texte du manuscrit de Proust, dont elle n’hésite pas à reproduire les lacunes, les incohérences, les hésitations et les maladresses. Ce roman de jeunesse n’en perd pas pour autant de son intérêt: dans sa version originale, il permet mieux d’appréhender la genèse de la grande œuvre de Proust et la formation de son génie.1

The novel was begun in September/October 1895 and Proust remarks in a letter to his mother in September 1896 that he is working on the novel which, however, he never finished.2 Proust was however still working on Jean Santeuil in 1899. He states this in a letter of December 1899 to Marie Nordlinger: ‘Je travaille depuis très longtemps à un ouvrage de très longue haleine, mais sans rien achever.’3 Jean Santeuil, as Mireille Marc-Lipiansky points out, has been organised by the editor according to theme and the age of the hero. The text remains very fragmentary and few corrections were made. Names of characters and places change and there are often blanks. But there are numerous similarities with À la recherche. Indeed, as Henri Bonnet sums it up: ‘avec Jean Santeuil tout est préparé, mais aussi tout reste à faire et à refaire’ (Marc-Lipiansky, preface by Bonnet: 8). At this point, much of the material found in Jean Santeuil is also present in À la recherche, but the development from the first novel to the final work will depend even more on the discovery of a suitable form. Numerous people and places found in Jean Santeuil reappear in ‘Combray’. Places such as the village of Éteuilles which becomes ‘Combray’ and names of characters such as Félicité/Ernestine, the servant who becomes Françoise, and also Mme Servan, who becomes tante Léonie, reappear in ‘Combray’. Although the mother figure is very important in both novels, the grandmother has a very special role in À la recherche, but not in Jean Santeuil. The same can be said for numerous episodes and themes. The ‘drame du coucher’and the magic lantern scene are present in Jean Santeuil. The rudiments of the two walks are also present such as the river, the plains and the garden, which will become Swann’s park and the flowers in which the child senses a deeper meaning. (The development of 1 2 3

Mireille Marc-Lipianski, 15. Marcel Proust, Correspondance de Marcel Proust, edited by Philip Kolb, 21 vols (Paris: Plon, 1970–93), September, 1896, vol. II: 123. Correspondance, II: 377.

An Overview of the Genesis of ‘Combray’

9

the two walks is discussed in Chapter 6.) These same privileged moments reappear in ‘Combray’. However, the apple blossom in the first novel is more important than the hawthorn in ‘Combray’. As Clarac points out, Proust cannot really be said to have abandoned the novel because much of the material was used in À la recherche: Il n’y a pas à se demander pourquoi il a abandonné Jean Santeuil. Il ne l’a pas abandonné. Tous les thèmes qu’il portait en lui et autour desquels s’organisera son œuvre maîtresse y sont déjà posés, moins objectivement qu’ils ne le seront dans La Recherche, plus étroitement rattachés au détail et aux hasards de sa propre vie. C’est de Jean Santeuil (et non de Contre Sainte-Beuve!) que la Recherche est sortie … (Clarac’s introduction to Jean Santeuil: 983).

Important changes, therefore, had to be made before À la recherche could emerge. Bonnet has observed, in the introduction, Marc-Lipiansky’s belief that Proust must transcend the autobiographical and transpose his material (Marc-Lipiansky, preface: 6–7). In addition, the hero must also learn that the truth he is seeking is not to be found in material things, but in his inner being: Cette communication profonde avec la nature, cette jouissance physique de tous les spectacles, cette ardeur à vivre, il fallait que Proust y renonçât pour que naisse son œuvre. Il découvrira la vanité de chercher à atteindre dans la réalité ce qui était au fond de lui-même, l’impuissance à se réaliser dans la jouissance matérielle (MarcLipiansky, preface: 6).

In 1900 Proust begins to translate John Ruskin, an English art critic, who wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including literature and science. Proust wrote a preface to his translation of Ruskin’s work entitled Sésame et les lys, published in 1906. It concerns the theme of reading, which is part of Ruskin’s study and is also one of the principal themes of À la recherche. The evocations of the child reading found in the preface recall similar situations in ‘Combray’. For example, the child enjoys reading during the holidays in his bedroom or in the dining room, while the rest of the family have gone for a walk. In fact, the location of the dining room where the child reads is even more evocative of an episode in Jean Santeuil. Like the hero of ‘Combray’ the child mentioned in the preface of Sésame et les lys

10

Chapter 1

is more interested in the asides, in which the author of his book gives his opinion, than in the actual narrative. The house in Sésame et les lys is close to the church and the child can hear the church bells. It recalls the house of tante Léonie in ‘Combray’. The child even remembers his uncle mixing his favourite dessert – strawberries and cream cheese – which is mentioned as a favourite of the hero of ‘Combray’. Even the family garden, at a short distance from the house, as in Jean Santeuil, is mentioned. This garden becomes Swann’s park in ‘Combray’. Through the park flows a river, with fish and swans on it, which recalls the Vivonne in ‘Combray’. Outside the garden, there are buttercups and hawthorn, found in the final version on different sides of the two walks. In the fields beyond there are also cornflowers and poppies, as in the plains near Swann’s park in ‘Combray’. There is an allusion to the church and to people from the congregation buying cakes after the service. Such Sunday morning practices are also depicted in ‘Combray’. In 1908 Proust was hesitating about what he should write – a novel on Paris, an essay on Sainte-Beuve or an essay on homosexuality. Having decided on a work dealing with the critic Sainte-Beuve’s literary theories, Proust wrote various notes on the subject in a carnet known as Carnet 1 or the Carnet of 1908. For Proust, art had its source in an inner life, not in the autobiographical details of the author of the work, as Sainte-Beuve believed. The carnet contains a list of six episodes which will later appear in À la recherche and points to much of the material which will later form ‘Combray’. One of these episodes, ‘Robert et le chevreau. Maman part en voyage’, will appear in Contre Sainte-Beuve, and later in a different form, when the hero of ‘Combray’ says goodbye to the hawthorns. Other episodes include ‘Le côté de Villebon et le côté de Méséglise’, ‘Ma grand-mère au jardin’, ‘Le dîner de M. Brettevelle, je monte’, ‘le visage de Maman alors et depuis dans mes rêves’, ‘je ne peux m’endormir, concessions, etc.’ and ‘Ce que m’ont appris le côté de Villebon et le côté de Méséglise’. (Le Carnet de 1908: 56). The sheets on which the episodes were written – seventyfive large sheets – have been lost. The main work on Contre Sainte-Beuve, though some of this was later included in ‘Combray’, is contained in ten cahiers, though the narrative units do not always follow the numerical

An Overview of the Genesis of ‘Combray’

11

order of the notebooks.4 Ninety-five further cahiers contain the material which became À la recherche. Proust’s main problem in writing was to decide on the form of his work. He hesitated between an essay form and an anecdotal form: ‘Faut-il en faire un roman, une étude philosophique, suis-je romancier?’ (Carnet I: 60–1). In the essay form, he would simply put forward his criticism of Sainte-Beuve’s ideas, with illustrations, while the other form would be closer to a narrative, containing a conversation between himself and his mother on the same subject. Anthony Pugh argues that for a time Proust developed both these approaches together.5 Fallois, in his edition of Contre Sainte-Beuve, drew from both the polemic and the anecdotal sources. Clarac, in his edition of 1971, used only the critical material. In the Contre Sainte-Beuve, as a whole, there are more changes and corrections in the narratological developments in the cahiers than in Jean Santeuil, as Proust begins to see the true direction of his work. In the narrative part of Contre Sainte-Beuve there are episodes which resemble those in ‘Combray’, including some of the six episodes noted in Carnet 1. The episode of the madeleine, for example, appears in a modified form. The maid serves the hero a cup of tea with some toast. The first scene is set in the morning as the hero is waking – an echo of the beginning of ‘Combray’. These episodes at the beginning of Contre Sainte-Beuve were developed by Proust into part of his novel. When Proust writes À la recherche he transfers the blocks of criticism to the voices of various characters such as Bloch, Norpois and Françoise and to the final volume, Le Temps retrouvé. As noted above, the numerical order of the cahiers does not always follow the narratological order. In cahier 3, we see the hero in the morning as he prepares for bed and his mother brings him the Figaro, which contains one of his own articles. Proust tries out different versions of the opening section of Contre Sainte-Beuve, which do not hang together. There is the older man who sleeps during the day and the younger man who wakes in 4 5

Marion A.  Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation:  Flaubert and Proust (Legenda: Oxford, 1995) and the section of her work entitled ‘The Cahiers Contre Sainte-Beuve’, which begins on page 131. Anthony R.  Pugh, The Birth of ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum Publishers, 1987), 38.

12

Chapter 1

the night. It is only in 1912 that the final version of the first sentence is to be found for the first time. In cahier 2, the hero has his idea about a work on Sainte-Beuve and puts it together in his head. The two walks develop in cahier 4, including a passage on falling asleep. The two things which prevent the child from enjoying the comfort of his mother’s kiss are the late walks and the visitor who sometimes comes in the evening. In cahier 6, there are many different textual units and ‘Combray’, the seaside and Paris are all mentioned. Proust works on his description of the church and of the magic lantern. In cahier 7, we see the importance of the Combray church tower to the grandmother, the aunt and the priest. As Pugh points out (58), it is while Proust is dealing with his childhood rather than the present that he appears to see the true direction of his novel. In the spring and summer of 1909, Proust in effect began to write À la recherche, as he developed the narrative sections of Contre Sainte-Beuve and also called on the material in earlier works. In effect, he writes both the beginning and the end of his great novel at this time. Certain cahiers, such as cahiers 5 and 2, expand with the emphasis on the narratological level. In cahier 5, there is a well-developed portrait of Françoise, showing the two sides of her character – cruelty and kindness – but the problem of a clear distinction between fiction and autobiography, as Schmid points out (137–8), has not been resolved. More importantly, as emphasised by Schmid: Cahier 5 must be considered as a turning point for the development of the avanttexte. Through the expansion of fictional characters, and the introduction of the Guermantes in particular, the Sainte-Beuve narrative which was planned in the form of a dialogue with the mother is slowly transformed and, although no plot outline is fixed for the moment, approaches a genre closer to the novel (140).

As Schmid observes, different writers on the work of Proust have seen the changeover from the narrative present in Sainte-Beuve to a novel as arising in different cahiers. Claudine Quémar in ‘Autour de trois avanttextes’ sees it as occurring in cahier 1, on the level of structure, which will make it possible for Proust to base his novel on the involuntary memory.6 6 Claudine Quémar, ‘Autour de trois avant-textes de l’Ouverture de la Recherche:  Nouvelles approches des problèmes du Contre Sainte-Beuve’, Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 3 (1976), 7–39.

An Overview of the Genesis of ‘Combray’

13

Brun, in his ‘Le Dormeur éveillé’ agrees with Quémar.7 Bardèche sees the change as taking place in cahier 4.8 However, Proust still referred to his work as the Contre Sainte-Beuve until the end of 1909. In July 1909 he wrote in a letter to Robert de Montesquieu: ‘Je me débats sans avancer, les jours où je ne souffre pas trop, dans un roman qui vous donnera peut-être un peu plus d’estime pour moi si vous avez la patience de le lire.’9 Proust therefore now sees his work as a novel. The development of the Contre Sainte-Beuve cahiers occurred between the summer of 1909 and the summer of 1911. It mainly concerns the largescale development of parts of Contre Sainte-Beuve into the emerging novel form. As Schmid noted, Proust developed themes in his cahiers de montage or cahier-canevas and he also developed his different narrative pieces into textual units.10 From drafts and compacts in the early cahiers, Proust moved to other writing forms, such as mises au net and the typescript. Schmid quotes the Équipe Proust as follows: Il (Proust) travaille par thèmes (idées, paysages, lieux), puis à partir d’un certain degré d’élaboration, il travaille à la fois sur les thèmes (morceaux, ajoutages, variantes) et sur l’organisation du récit […] Cahiers-canevas et Cahiers de notes forment ainsi deux groupes bien définis, mais toujours en étroite correlation (49–50).

The mise au net for ‘Combray’ is to be found in cahiers 8 and 12. In June 1909 in cahier 8 and the first part of cahier 12, Proust assembled textual units from Contre Sainte-Beuve, which related only to ‘Combray’, including the episode concerning the hero who is unable to sleep, tante Léonie, the ‘biscotte’ given by the servant, the magic lantern and the ‘drame du coucher’. In the summer of 1909 ‘Combray’ was contained in cahiers 8, 12, 26 and 32. As it was being made ready for publication it was moved to cahiers 9, 10 and 63 and various changes were made. In 1913, the first volume called du côté de chez Swann was published by Grasset and paid for by Proust, and this was the end of the first phase of the novel. 7 8 9 10

Bernard Brun, ‘ “Le Dormeur éveillé”: genèse d’un roman de la mémoire’, Cahiers Marcel Proust Nouvelle Série/Études proustiennes, 2, IV (1982), 241–316. Maurice Bardèche, Marcel Proust: Romancier, 2 vols (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1971). Correspondance, November 1909, ix: 214. Marion Schmid, ‘Notes sur les inventaires des cahiers Combray’, Bulletin des informations proustiennes, 13 (1982), 93–4.

14

Chapter 1

Proust reads the first 200 pages to Reynaldo Hahn in October 1909. In a letter to Valette, publisher of the Mercure de France, he writes: ‘Je termine un livre qui malgré son titre provisoire: Contre Sainte-Beuve, Souvenir d’une Matinée, est un véritable roman et un roman extrêmement impudique en certaines parties.’11 Thus, Jean Santeuil can be seen as a more important avant-texte than many critics would allow. A large number of episodes, characters and themes from Jean Santeuil reappear in À la recherche, as the following chapters will demonstrate. However, it is mainly the autobiographical slant to Jean Santeuil which sets it apart from other works, including À la recherche, though the author of this study would argue that this autobiographical aspect of the first novel has been transformed in À la recherche, which records and presents similar episodes in a very new modernist and fragmented manner. This will be discussed, in greater detail further in this study. On a more general level, this chapter, on the genetic development of ‘Combray’ shows clearly that Proust used material from almost all his previous projects to fashion his great work. A study of his corpus reveals a continuous thread of narratological material and experiments in technique for À la recherche running through it, and a use of many different genres, until the final work emerged in the form of a novel. As Jean-Yves Tadié states, in his introduction to the first volume of Proust’s novel, Proust called on the great novelists of the past and other writers from a wide context: À la recherche du temps perdu est la somme de ses états successifs, versions primitives, brouillons, notes éparses, livres sous le livre; l’ouvrage récapitule aussi la tradition antérieure, de la Bible à Flaubert et à Tolstoï, et tous les genres littéraires (alrtp, I, x).

11

Correspondance, August 1909, ix: 155.

Chapter 2

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte: A Case for an Extension of the Term?

[S]‌il est facile de décrire négativement les brouillons par ce qu’ils ne sont pas, il est beaucoup plus difficile de définir leur véritable spécificité … (Lebrave).1 [L]‌a genèse d’un poème ou d’un roman n’obéit pas entièrement à un programme préexistant, et n’est régie ni par un processus unique, ni par un finalisme simple, ni même par le développement harmonieux d’un modèle; la perte, la dérive, l’imprévu ont une fréquence hautement plus probable que l’économie, la linéarité assurée, le prévisible. Genèse non pas organique, mais relevant plutôt de la combinatoire, d’une logique autre que celle du déterminisme de cause à effet (Levaillant).2

The definition of an avant-texte has undergone numerous changes on the way to what continues to be, in the case of some critics, a rather reluctant acceptance of the term and its import in literary criticism. The main debates have centred around the documents to be included in the term avant-texte, the relation of the avant-texte to the finished work or texte, the definition of the term texte, and the general purpose and validity of this branch of literary criticism. The aim in this discussion is twofold: to suggest, given the unstable boundaries dividing the texte from the avanttexte, a wider definition of the term avant-texte and to examine, in the light of this discussion, the special case represented by Proust’s corpus, and in particular his early novel Jean Santeuil which, it will be argued, had an important role in the macrogenesis of À la recherche du temps perdu. The liberation of the texte from it structuralist isolation led to a tacit acknowledgement of the possible value of sources outside the texte in 1 2

Jean-Louis Lebrave, ‘Lectures et analyses des brouillons’, Langages, 69 (March, 1983), 11–23, 11. Jean Levaillant, ed., ‘Introduction’, Écriture et génétique textuelle (Lille:  Presses universitaires de Lille, 1982), 11–24, 13.

16

Chapter 2

elucidating its full significance. This meant that the texte could be viewed in a wider context – its historical, cultural, literary, linguistic and finally, genetic perspective. The term avant-texte, coined by Jean Bellemin-Noël, appeared both to free the new area of genetic studies from its early association with the work on ancient manuscripts, and to establish the purpose and perimeters of this field of study. He defined the avant-texte as: ‘l’ensemble constitué par les brouillons, les manuscrits, les épreuves, les “variants”, vu sous I’angle de ce qui précède matériellement un ouvrage, quand celui-ci est traité comme un texte, et qui peut faire système avec lui’.3 Although the term was taken up by most critics, there has been no consensus as to its exact meaning; the various assumptions it makes can be challenged. For example, the definition of a texte, in reference to which an avant-texte is usually defined, is itself problematic.4 Bellemin-Noël distinguishes between le texte, defined as ‘le texte “définitif ”, ou plus exactement le dernier état d’une élaboration, signé par l’écrivain and l’ouvrage’, defined as ‘un écrit particulier publié sous la signature de quelqu’un; les dimensions n’importent pas: livre, article, poème isolé – pourvu qu’il y ait un titre et un point final’ (17 and 14). However, difficulties over definitions immediately arise. At what point can a work, published or unpublished, finished or unfinished, be accepted as a texte? The texte has, for example, been seen as a chance occurrence, as simply the end, one possible end, of a series of avant-textes.5 This is doubly the case when a work has not been given the final imprimatur by its author. An author can even move between different brouillons, back and forth, until one version is designated (by him/her or an editor) as texte. There are cases of changes in later editions and in the typed copies and the proofs. Baudelaire, for example, was forced by censorship to produce a very different second edition of Les Fleurs du mal from the one he originally published, 3 4 5

Jean Bellemin-Noël, Le texte et l’avant-texte:  les brouillons d’un poème de Milosz (Paris: Larousse, 1972), 15. In this discussion, a looser, working definition of a texte will be used as a starting point – that of the completed or nearly completed work which, if not published, was at least intended for publication by its author. Robert Melançon, ‘Le statut de l’œuvre:  sur une limite de la génétique’, Études françaises, 28 (autumn 1992), 49–65, 53.

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte

17

and the edition which is published today, with the ‘condemned’ poems appearing in appendices, was not sanctioned by Baudelaire.6 The distinction made between a public (published) texte versus a private (unpublished) texte is equally problematic.7 Pascal’s Pensées are an obvious, much-quoted case. Despite their original form as avant-texte, an unfinished work, they are now a much published, public texte and have acquired the status of a canonical work. What then of Bellemin-Noël’s idea that a finished, published work should be signed by its author (or given the final imprimatur) (17)? The definition of a texte becomes increasingly problematic, leading Jacques Petit to state that ‘[l]‌e texte n’existe pas’.8 Rather than simply suggesting a closed and rather narrow definition of a texte, Marion Schmid has discussed different factors which are brought into play when an avant-texte is finally published and accepted as a canonical texte. They include the style of a particular writer and the point at which he decides on publication. They can also involve the important role of an editor, who decides to present unfinished work for publication, and his involvement in its general presentation: ‘What we consider to be a text depends, first, on the literary æsthetics of individual authors (and, by extension, on which documents they have decided to release to the public) and, second, on what has been established and presented as a text by publishers and editors.’9 Louis Hay cites four commonly received factors in the acceptance of a texte: ‘auteur, œuvre, lecteur, société’.10 He thus adds the dimension of the acceptance of the reading public, with its particular literary and cultural 6

7 8 9 10

The first edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, consisting of 100 poems and five sections, appeared in 1857. The second edition of 1861 contained 126 poems in all, and six divisions, including a new section ‘Tableaux parisiens’. However, several poems from the first edition, censored by the courts, were omitted. They have, however, been included in some posthumous editions. Almuth Grésillon, Éléments de critique génétique:  lire les documents modernes (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1994), 5–10, 17. Jacques Petit in Les Manuscrits, quoted by Hay, 147. Marion Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation:  Flaubert and Proust (Oxford: Legenda, 1998), 20. Louis Hay, ‘ “Le Texte n’existe pas”: réflexions sur la critique génétique’, Poétique, 63 (1985), 146–58, 153.

18

Chapter 2

norms, to the factors already cited by Schmid. Another useful approach to the problem is offered by Thanh-Vân Ton-That, in her discussion of Jean Santeuil.11 She suggests that the means of defining a work as a texte lies in the degree of completion at what she terms the external and internal level of the work: l’inachèvement peut être externe, lorsque l’œuvre développée et bien construite semble brusquement interrompue, comme privée de sa fin attendue; ou bien l’inachèvement est interne et touche des unités plus réduites, non pas le texte dans sa globalité, mais un chapitre, une phrase, voire un mot, d’où l’impression d’éclatement et d’instabilité.

Thus, the external level appears to relate to the overall plan and structure of the work, essential to its overall understanding, while the internal level concerns smaller units of the work – a level on which some incompletion does not upset the transmission of the essential meaning of the work. The definition of texte therefore seems to rely on a dynamic interplay concerning a combination of factors whose relative importance might change with the work of individual writers. The definition of an avant-texte is equally problematic. The avant-texte can appear in different guises. The material form which the avant-texte commonly takes – the plans, brouillons, ébauches – depends, as Schmid has pointed out, on the particular writer and his style of writing. Most nineteenth-century writers such as Zola and Flaubert, known as ‘programmatic’ writers, planned their work ahead in great detail, leaving large numbers of plans, scénarios, brouillons, mises au net and also notes on historical events (Schmid: xv, and also 43–4, where she notes the importance of Louis Hay’s work in this area). Here the approach reflects a particular aim and genre. Writers such as Proust and Joyce, known as ‘immanent’ writers (their method being described also as écriture à processus), seldom used written plans, but would allow their work to develop in the act of writing (Schmid: xv and 43–4). Their avant-texte therefore mainly consists of brouillons. 11

Thanh-Vân Ton-That looks at different levels of incompletion in Proust’s first novel, Jean Santeuil, including whether the incompletion is internal or external, in Proust avant La Recherche: Jeunesse et genèse d’une écriture au tournant du siècle (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), 76.

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte

19

The definition of the avant-texte has also depended on its relation to the finished work or texte. As mentioned above, an avant-texte, for long not considered as published material, is often viewed essentially as a private texte, as opposed to the public nature of the published texte (Grésillon, 16). The private texte can also be seen as inferior to the public texte. When the texte is considered to be the perfected version at the end of a period of trial and error, the brouillons are, by definition, the imperfect version in this process. The avant-texte is therefore seen as unfinished, unclear and therefore not worthy of publication. As Bellemin-Noël expresses it ‘[les brouillons] portent témoignage d’un labeur et du passage de l’imperfection à la perfection’.12 In addition, the avant-texte can be seen as part of a teleological process, as necessary workings and reworkings – recognisable different stages in the evolution of the final texte. Acknowledging the fact that the later brouillons are often potential units of texte, and can even change status several times in the course of revisions, corrections and editions, Bellemin-Noël has seen the avant-texte as being defined in retrospect – when the finished work has been established (6). Furthermore, the public texte itself can be reclaimed by the writer as he makes changes in later editions and thus the first published texte can be said to revert to the status of an avant-texte. However, a narrow definition of avant-texte, seen from a teleological perspective, can also bring about the exclusion of large amounts of material which can appear to represent very different departures from the material admitted in the final texte, and of seemingly little relevance in the development of the texte. Nevertheless, the material which was rejected by the writer in the development of his final texte is important for the ideas, themes and stylistic methods he chose to leave aside when he embarked on new directions, and must therefore be included in the term avant-texte and given equal importance. As Grésillon remarks: Les manuscrits littéraires nous confrontent en effet bien souvent à cette image des sentiers qui bifurquent, indéfiniment, créant des réseaux et des trames, embrassant toutes les possibilités, toutes les virtualités, tous les excès jubilatoires qui ont existé 12

Jean Bellemin-Noël, ‘Reproduire le Manuscrit, présenter les brouillons, établir un avant-texte’, Littérature, 28 (1977), 5.

20

Chapter 2 pendant le temps de l’écriture et qui auraient pu, n’eût été la funeste biffure, devenir texte (12).

A further problem relating to the definition of the avant-texte, which is not often considered, is that of the relation of earlier works of the writer to a later texte. Intertextual references and echoes are commonly studied, but are there any circumstances in which the earlier works of a writer should be included in the avant-texte of a later work? If the earlier works of a writer have been published with his/her consent, we would argue that they must be considered as discrete textes, with their own individual significance, rather than as avant-textes for a later work. However, although Flaubert wrote several such discrete works, which were published before L’Éducation sentimentale in 1869, he also wrote an earlier work which was also called L’Éducation sentimentale, in 1845, which he did not publish. He comments as follows on this work, written in his youth: ‘Novembre suivra le chemin de L’Éducation sentimentale, et restera avec elle dans mon carton indéfiniment. Ah! Quel nez fin j’ai eu dans ma jeunesse de ne pas le publier! Comme j’en rougirais maintenant!’13 Flaubert thus points out the lack of maturity in his early work, but can it be said that the first Éducation sentimentale acted as an avant-texte for the later work? The question of this particular case cannot be answered in this discussion, but Bellemin-Noël suggests general criteria which might be adopted when analysing such cases. His definition of avant-texte, which includes material which can be seen to ‘faire système’ with the finished texte, could encompass earlier unfinished works.14 Although Bellemin-Noël’s definition is somewhat broad here, the questions it raises will be analysed later in the discussion, as the need to examine closely, and even to question past definitions of the term avant-texte, is of particular importance in a study of the avant-texte in Proust’s corpus.

13 14

Preface to his first L’Éducation sentimentale of 1845 (see Flaubert, 19). The later ­edition has been published more recently: L’Éducation sentimentale (Paris: GarnierFlammarion, 1980). Jean Bellemin-Noël, Le Texte et l’avant-texte: les brouillons d’un poème de Milosz, 15.

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte

21

Finally, a further important shift in critical thought meant that the avant-texte itself came to be viewed as an autonomous work by critics, a view which seemed to be strengthened by the publication of many avanttextes in recent years. Raymonde Debray-Genette, for example, describes this trend as follows: [S]‌i l’on a pensé jusqu’ici la génétique en termes d’évolution, le plus souvent même en termes de progrès, il semble qu’il faudrait incliner à la penser en termes de différence, lui accorder un fonctionnement plus autonome, lui accorder sa propre poétique.15

Thus the avant-texte appears as an important public texte in its own right, and even threatens to invade the literary space of the texte. In 1971, Ponge, for example, published the avant-texte of his own poem Le Pré (poem of 1964), together with the poem itself in La Fabrique du pré.16 As Grésillon and Lebrave express it, ‘Ponge … annule la frontière entre avanttexte et texte en publiant à côté le texte et son brouillon’.17 Thus when is a work a texte and when is it an avant-texte? There appear to be no very clear-cut distinctions between them. Not only are the frontiers continually changing, even the question of their literary hierarchy can be called into question. The finished texte can be said to mark out what is finally excluded as avant-texte.18 Equally, it can be stated that it is the avant-texte which has, by a process of evolution, given rise to the texte. Once we move away from the isolated, structuralist notion of texte, the borders between texte and avant-texte become much less clearly defined:

15 16 17

18

Raymonde Debray-Genette, Métamorphoses du récit:  autour de Flaubert (Paris: Seuil, 1988), 19. Francis Ponge, La Fabrique du pré (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1971). Almuth Grésillon and Jean-Louis Lebrave, ‘Avant-Propos,’ Languages, 69 (March, 1983), 9. There is a reference here to an article by J. Anis, ‘Préparatifs d’un texte: La Fabrique du pré de F. Ponge’, Languages, 69 (March 1983), 73–83. Proust also allowed publication of a page of his original manuscript in a volume of his work, published as a special edition; he refers to it in a letter. Philip Kolb, ed., Correspondance de Marcel Proust, 21 vols (Paris: Plon, 1970–93; 1981), 295. Jean Bellemin-Noel, ‘Reproduire le manuscrit, présenter les brouillons, établir un avant-texte’, Littérature 3–18, 6.

22

Chapter 2 Sorti de sa clôture et de sa fixité de son unicité et de la nécessité du ne varietur, le texte s’ouvrait sur l’ensemble mouvant et fragile des ‘avant-textes,’ sur la multiplicité des états possibles in statu nascendi.19

The problem of the boundaries between texte and avant-texte is particularly pertinent in Proust’s case, and a wider definition of the term avanttexte (and also of the term texte) would seem to be called for. As mentioned above, rather than drawing up detailed scénarios or plans (as in the case of Flaubert), Proust used mainly brouillons, many of which were very close to the ‘final’ texte (Schmid:  xv and 44). In addition, the canonical work, À la recherche, was not finished when he died. There are also difficulties in establishing boundaries due to the particular temperament and health problems of the writer (one wonders whether he would ever have finally completed his opus), the method he used in writing and also the nature of À la recherche – a modern work which has the potential to expand infinitely on an internal level. As Jean-Yves Tadié expresses it, ‘seule la mort l’a empêché de tout refaire, de tout métamorphoser – de ce qui n’était pas encore publié’.20 However Proust, in a letter to Paul Souday in 1919, stated firmly that he would finish his work: ‘Je veux tout de même … vous donner l’assurance qu’il n’y a pas besoin de ma mort, comme voulait bien le dire un critique, pour que je cesse d’écrire À la recherche du temps perdu.’21 Proust, who preserved a large quantity of the manuscripts of both his finished and unfinished works, was very aware of the importance the avant-texte might come to assume in the eyes of critics and he was wary of misinterpretations. In his correspondence Proust, alluding to his manuscripts, voices this concern: ‘Or la pensée ne m’est pas très agréable que n’importe qui (si l’on se soucie encore de mes livres) sera admis à compulser mes manuscrits, à les comparer au texte définitif, à en induire des suppositions qui seront toujours fausses sur la manière de travailler, sur l’évolution Almuth Grésillon, Proust à la lettre: Les intermittences de l’écriture (Charente: Du Lérot, 1990), 18. 20 Jean-Yves Tadié, ‘Proust et l’inachèvement’ in Le Manuscrit inachevé. Écriture, création, communication (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1986), 84. 2 1 Letter from Proust to Paul Souday, Kolb, Correspondance (1981: 536). 19

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte

23

de ma pensée …’22 It can be argued that such misunderstandings have indeed taken place concerning the status of Proust’s early works, and that the term avant-texte has been given too narrow a definition in regard to these works, and in particular Jean Santeuil, the first unfinished novel, which preceded À la recherche. Proust’s work as a whole is commonly divided by the critics into the early works, Contre Sainte-Beuve, which is situated at the mid-point and is seen as a turning point in the work as a whole, and the final, public texte, À la recherche du temps perdu. The early works include various articles, Les Plaisirs et les jours (published 1896), Jean Santeuil (written between 1896 and 1900) and Pastiches et mélanges (published 1919). Les Plaisirs et les jours is usually dismissed as a dilettante work, whereas Jean Santeuil, though unfinished, is generally accepted as a texte, but one which is of little importance in comparison with À la recherche, and even Contre Sainte-Beuve, an unfinished work, is also often seen as a public texte. Considering first of all the three major works as textes, Jean Santeuil has twice been published as a novel (1952, 1971), and Contre Sainte-Beuve has been published twice as a work in its own right, with a different emphasis between the narrative and critical strands in each edition (1954, 1971). For any reader who has no knowledge of the background to the publication of À la recherche, the work might be seen as a finished texte, with some obvious errata and omissions. Given this situation, is it possible to challenge the status of Jean Santeuil, Contre Sainte-Beuve and even À la recherche as textes? Is it also possible to class both earlier unfinished works, Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve, as avant-textes for the ‘unfinished’ À la recherche? Looking at the claims of À la recherche to be a canonical work, the most compelling argument for considering the published novel as a texte is the fact that Proust himself intended to publish this last work, and publication was already well advanced when he died in 1922. As Louis Hay expresses it ‘[la décision de l’auteur] tranche le cordon ombilical de la genèse et fait basculer l’avant-texte dans le texte’ (154). Thus, the large amount of avanttexte which existed for the volumes published during Proust’s lifetime was 22

Letter (1922) to M. and Mme Schiff (1993), 372–73, no. 259.

24

Chapter 2

excluded from the final texte, so creating the boundaries between texte and avant-texte. However, the imprimatur had not been given to the last volumes of À la recherche, from La Prisonnière to Le Temps retrouvé, when Proust died. Thus, although Proust’s intention to publish the final volumes of À la recherche was clear, the later volumes contained much material about which Proust had not always made a clear decision regarding publication, and much work was left for the editors before the texte could be presented to the public. Given the personality of the writer and the modernist cultural climate, Proust might indeed have continued to expand his novel. The final sentence of Le Temps retrouvé, as Tadié has pointed out, was reworked several times and the word fin appears in an earlier version, before the fourth and final version of the sentence, so that it does not appear, physically, at the end of the manuscript (84). As Gérard Genette comments, ‘[j]‌amais [Proust] n’aura connu l’authentique achèvement de cette œuvre, qu’il crut achevée en 1913, qui ne l’était plus en 1914, qui ne l’était pas encore en 1922, et qui ne le sera jamais’.23 On the other hand, a certain degree of incompletion does not mean that a work must be rejected as a texte. As Ton-That has pointed out, an important element in examining incompletion in a work is the level on which it is found – internal or external. However, the status of À la recherche as a texte can also be challenged on the level of the amount of intervention of the editors. The NRF completed publication of the posthumous works, having taken over responsibility for the whole work in 1919, when they published À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. The first editors, with the help of Proust’s brother, simply acted as intermediaries in an attempt to be true to Proust’s intentions. Pierre Clarac and André Ferré, in the Pléiade edition of 1954 (3 vols), and later Jean-Yves Tadié, in the Pléiade edition published between 1987 and 1989 (4 vols), used the NRF edition for the work published during Proust’s lifetime. However, they differed in the text they presented for the unfinished volumes. Tadié points out that all the latest corrections were not available to the editors in 1954: ‘Nous avons pu améliorer le texte posthume, en rétablissant des corrections voulues par Proust, en insérant des passages 23

Gérard Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 9.

Jean Santeuil and the Notion of avant-texte

25

laissés en notes par nos prédécesseurs …’ (alrtp, I: c1xxii). Speaking of Tadié’s edition, Schmid has remarked that ‘most critics agree that the new Pléiade provides the most authoritative text of À la recherche du temps perdu to date’.24 The published texte had thus, on the whole, been considerably improved at the internal level. Therefore, on the level of the near completion of the external structure (and to a lesser extent the internal structure), as well as the work’s acceptance by the public, there is considerable justification for calling À la recherche a texte. The overall shape and thrust of the novel had been clear from the first drafts and facilitated the editor’s work. As Proust himself explained ‘[l]‌e dernier chapitre du dernier volume a été écrit tout de suite après le premier chapitre du premier volume. Tout l’ “entre-deux” a été écrit ensuite’.25 The strength and clarity of the novel’s external structure was largely in place when Proust died. As concerns the internal structure, in relation particularly to the unfinished volumes, the amount of material Proust might finally have included and any further additions he might have made cannot be known. The method of his writing, as described by Bernard Brun, shows a ‘stellar approach’ (‘écriture en étoile’).26 This was reproduced in the structure of the novel so that any set of units or echoes could be added to in order to produce further links and echoes. The absence through incompletion of several links in the narrative, or some slight confusion regarding names and characters, is of little importance given the novel’s overall richness and coherence. As Bellemin-Noël expresses it, ‘[le texte] nous est offert comme un tout fixé dans son destin’.27 Finally, the idea of the acceptance of a texte by the reader and the public is particularly helpful when considering À la recherche. Though at first it was misunderstood, even by the well-known publishing house NRF, the novel was finally published, and both the finished and unfinished 24 Marion Schmid, ‘Teleology and Textual Misrepresentation:  The New Pléiade Edition’, French Studies Bulletin (autumn 1995), 15–17. 25 Letter (1919) to Paul Souday (Proust 1981: 536). 26 Bernard Brun, ‘Avant-Propos’, Bulletin d’informations proustianennes 21 (1990), 3–5.5. 27 Bellemin-Noël, ‘Lecture psychanalytique d’un brouillon de poème: Été de Valéry’, Essais de critique génétique (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 103–49, 116.

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volumes were accepted by the reading public. The first volume, Du côté de chez Swann, was published by Grasset in 1913 and the NRF finally agreed to publish all of Proust’s novel to date in 1919. À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919. At the literary and cultural level, the special qualities of this modernist novel, which itself embraced incompleteness, were thus recognised by the editors and the reading public. The case of Contre Sainte-Beuve is more complex. Though Proust had intended to have the work published, he seemed unable to decide between writing a more formal essay of literary criticism and presenting his ideas in the form of a narrative piece, woven around the ideas of the literary critic, Sainte-Beuve, and it remained an unfinished project in Proust’s lifetime.28 Proust shows his hesitation over form in a letter to a friend, Madame de Noailles, in 1908: La première [étude] est l’essai classique, l’Essai de Taine en mille fois moins bien … La deuxième commence par un récit du matin, du réveil. Maman vient me voir près de mon lit, je lui dis que j’ai l’idée d’une étude sur Sainte-Beuve, je la lui soumets et la lui développe.29

Proust did not resolve this problem for Contre Sainte-Beuve; he effectively abandoned the work and both unfinished versions were left in manuscript form. Despite its unfinished state, Contre Sainte-Beuve was finally published in 1954, edited and with a preface by Bernard de Fallois, and also in 1971, by Pierre Clarac, with the collaboration of Yves Sandre. The editors of these editions played a much bigger role in presenting the unfinished material than did the editors of À la recherche. Bernard de Fallois, for example, even assigned a title to the work and to the different sections of it, and where there were several versions of a passage, he selected one for publication.30 He also brought together, in his edition, the parts of Contre Sainte-Beuve which existed in the form of an essay, and those which had the form of a narrative. In the 1971 edition, Pierre Clarac retained both the title and the 28 29 30

Marion Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation … Part II, c­ hapter 2. Correspondance (1981), 321, no. 171. Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954), 27.

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27

general arrangement of the fragments of text of the first edition. However, Clarac and Sandre focus on the manuscripts relating to the critic SainteBeuve, omitting the narrative elements of the manuscripts.31 However, the status of Contre Sainte-Beuve as texte might be challenged in relation to both editions. It can be argued that the work, in its original state, especially at the external level (the arrangement of the nucleus of the principal ideas), was not sufficiently advanced to categorise Contre SainteBeuve as a texte. In addition, the question of the form the work was to take had not been resolved. De Fallois, in his introduction to the texte, himself concludes that ‘Contre Sainte-Beuve au fond n’est pas un livre: c’est le rêve d’un livre, c’est une idée de livre’.32 Tadié argues against both editions, seeing the first as being representative of Proust’s aims, but too selective, while the second presents only the argument against Sainte-Beuve’s method of criticism and neglects the narrative elements of the work. In Tadié’s view, it was Proust’s attempt to bring together such an abundance of material, while at the same time attempting to reconcile two very different stylistic approaches, which led him to abandon his original idea. Forme and fond were seemingly irreconcilable, with the result that ‘[c]‌e livre inachevé explosait sous l’effet des tensions internes’.33 However, rather than setting all the material aside, Proust began to develop the narrative side of Contre Sainte-Beuve and parts of it reappear, often somewhat changed, in different episodes and parts of À la recherche. Maurice Bardèche describes the turning point as follows: ‘[Proust a essayé] d’illustrer en quelque sorte la théorie qu’il professait en en montrant des applications. Mais en montrant ces applications, c’était son roman que Proust écrivait sans le savoir très clairement peut-être.’34 De Fallois cites six episodes found among the feuillets intended for Contre Sainte-Beuve which reappear in À la recherche: ‘la description de Venise’, ‘le séjour à Balbec’, ‘la rencontre des jeunes filles’, ‘le coucher de Combray’, ‘la poésie des noms’ et ‘les “deux côtés” ’ (11). 31 32 33 34

Contre Sainte-Beuve (1971), 829. Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954), 26. Jean-Yves Tadié, ‘Proust et l’inachèvement …’, 1986, 79. Maurice Bardèche, Marcel Proust Romancier (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1971), 168.

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Thus Contre Sainte-Beuve assumes a rather schizophrenic existence. Parts of the work, presented in two very different editions, were published and given textual status, and parts of it have been claimed as avant-texte for À la recherche.35 However, it can be argued that these ‘textes’ should have been published as avant-textes, both because Proust did not intend them to be published as textes and because they remained incomplete on both the internal and the external level. Finally, and somewhat paradoxically, Contre Sainte-Beuve can also be considered to have been finished, rather than abandoned, because it becomes the novel À la recherche.36 What then of the status of the early ‘novel’ Jean Santeuil, begun in 1896 and abandoned in 1900? Both the number of years that separate the writing of Jean Santeuil from that of À la recherche and the very different reading experiences they provide mean that, to date, little work has been done on establishing links between À la recherche and Jean Santeuil, though there has been a lot of discussion concerning the links between Proust’s final novel and Contre Sainte-Beuve.37 Proust had intended to write a novel, but left the work unfinished and, more importantly, unpublished. It might therefore, as a private piece of writing and as an unfinished manuscript, appear to bear some of the important characteristics of an avant-texte. Tadié describes the original manuscripts as ‘mille pages, réparties en chapitres inachevées, non classées, et finalement abandonées par l’auteur’.38 However, the manuscript was published posthumously in the guise of a novel, first edited by Bernard de Fallois in 1952 and then by Pierre Clarac, with the collaboration of Yves Sandre, in 1971, as mentioned above. As in the case of Contre Sainte-Beuve, it was the first editor who gave the overall title of Jean Santeuil to the work, as well as subtitles to the many short sections in this confused mass of manuscripts. He also organised the work by reference to the finished novel À la recherche39. Thus the canonical, finished work was, paradoxically, made to serve as an avant-texte to the earlier unfinished work. Clarac describes De Fallois’ approach as follows: 35 Jean-Yves Tadié, Proust, le dossier (Paris: Belfond, 1983), 19. 36 Jean-Yves Tadié, ‘Proust et l’inachèvement …’ 1986, 83. 37 Many such studies have appeared in the Cahiers Marcel Proust and the Bulletin d’informations proustiennes. 38 Jean-Yves Tadié, ‘Proust et l’inachèvement …’ 1986, 15. 3 9 Tadié, Proust, le dossier (1983), 123, 129.

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29

Il a rassemblé ces pages détachées en chapitres suivis qu’il a groupés eux-mêmes en dix parties. Pour donner à l’ouvrage ainsi agencé une cohésion apparente, il a dû procéder à des interventions et à des suppressions, amalgamer des développements distincts, modifier parfois les noms propres.40

The 1971 edition is more faithful to the unfinished original, leading Clarac to express his reservations about the approach adopted as follows: ‘… ce n’est pas sans scrupule que nous livrons au public une œuvre que son auteur a gardée pour lui-même et n’a pas achevée.’41 There are numerous examples of unfinished sections and sentences and unfinished or missing words.42 Consequently, many of the different sections end abruptly and appear unfinished. In the section to which Clarac has given the title ‘[le “parc” au petit jour]’ not only is the last word incomplete, but the full meaning of the long sentence which attempts to express Jean’s impression of the effect of the weak sunlight in an overcast sky, both on himself and on his surroundings, is also unfinished: Il faisait lourd. Mais Jean avait beau se plaindre de ce temps: le long du chemin plutôt brillant qu’ensoleillé, dans les champs au bout desquels la présence du soleil se trahissait par un vague rayonnement …, et dans les iris pendant quelques instants éclairés de plus en plus jusqu’à étinceler, puis replongés dans l’ombre, il se sentait vivre à la fois dans cette journée et dans des journées pareilles d’autrefois; il avait le sentiment d … ( js: 296–7).43

Titles have been suggested by the editor for the many sections and subsections of the novel to which Proust had not given a title or chapter heading. However, unlike the practice of the earlier edition, the titles 0 Pierre Clarac, Introduction to Jean Santeuil, 1971: 981. 4 41 Pierrre Clarac, Introduction to Jean Santeuil. Here he refers to André Ferré with the later collaboration of Yves Sandre, who had worked with Clarac, but died before the publication of the work, 986. 42 Proust had however numbered some parts of the work, including ­chapter 1, inserted as a prologue in the Pléiade edition. The page sequence, numbered by Proust in the manuscript, starts at page 1 and finishes at page 105 (numbered pp. 20–87 in the manuscript), or pp. 202–42 in Clarac’s edition. See Clarac on Proust (1971), 990. 43 For other examples, see the end of the section entitled ‘[Matinée au jardin]’ (Jean Santeuil, 1971:  300). The sentence could be considered finished, but not the idea, which is only broached. On p.  245, at the end of the section entitled ‘[M. Sandré]’, the sentence is barely begun before it is broken off.

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invented by the editors are placed in square brackets, which once again highlights the incompletion of the text. For example, the first ‘chapter’, as marked by Proust, becomes the prologue in the 1971 edition, and the unfinished introduction, consisting of no more than about twenty lines of text, is placed before the prologue.44 The first section is named ‘[enfance et adolescence]’ (202), with subsections such as ‘[le baiser du soir]’ (202), ‘[“jean aimera la poÉsie”]’ (211), ‘[le collÈge]’ (230). The general rule used by Clarac in organising the material was a mixture of chronology and associated themes ( js: 982). However, some episodes do not have any clear point of insertion in the work, and these are presented in a separate section of ‘fragments’ at the end of the 1971 edition (880–98). Proust’s manuscript was not only incomplete, much of it had not been put in any order. As Clarac points out ‘Dans la première phase de son travail Proust lui-même ignorait quelle place il assignerait aux diverses idées qui traversaient son esprit’ ( js: 982, n. 2). More importantly, Proust reveals in his correspondence that, although he had written many pages of his first novel, it was not near completion because he had not discovered the overall ‘message’ which he wished to convey. Thus in September 1896, in a letter to his mother, Proust wrote: ‘… si je ne peux pas dire que j’aie encore travaillé à mon roman dans le sens d’être absorbé par lui, de le concevoir d’ensemble …, le cahier que j’ai acheté et qui ne représente pas tout ce que j’ai fait, puisque avant je travaillais sur des feuilles volantes – ce cahier est fini et il a 110 pages grandes.’45 The result of the unfinished nature of the manuscripts and of the different editing styles is that the reader is presented with two rather different ‘textes’ in the 1952 and 1971 editions. De Fallois and Clarac do not always agree on what material should be included or completed in their editions, or on the order and general mode of presentation of the material to be adopted. In the 1952 edition, the text is divided both into parts, which are numbered, and also into named chapters within the parts. There are in addition unnamed sections where a break in the text appears within a 44 Tadié, Proust, le dossier …(1983), 123. 45 Correspondance, ed. Kolb, vol. II (Paris: Plon, 1976), no. 65, 124.

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31

chapter. ‘Headings’ or loose indications of the content of a part are given at the beginning of each new section of the text. Some of these headings are the same as the chapter titles. In part I of the 1952 edition (61–131), the first four titles are ‘Les soirées de Saint-Germain’, ‘Les soirées de Dieppe’, ‘M. Sandré’ and ‘Marie Kossichef ’. Three of these titles belong to a chapter but the exception, ‘M. Sandré, belongs to a section within a chapter (probably in ‘Les soirées de Dieppe’, though M. Sandré is also mentioned in the chapter headed ‘Marie Kossichef ’). The 1971 edition is divided into named parts and subsections (often in square brackets, showing that they are the work of the editor). There are no obvious divisions into chapters. The titles and content of these subsections do not always correspond with the divisions in the 1952 edition. However, the second part or section of the novel (concerning the Santeuil family’s stay with relatives in the country), begins in the same way in both editions: ‘Quelquefois à Pâques, quand M. [Sandré] Santeuil n’avait pas trop à faire …’ (1952: 135, 1971: 277). The first chapter of Part II of the 1952 edition is entitled ‘Éteuilles’ and the second chapter is named ‘Journées de vacances’ (135, 143). The material found in the first four divisions of the second part or section of the 1952 edition is given the titles ‘La Maison d’ Éteuilles’, ‘Lilas et Pommiers’, ‘Les Rues’, ‘Ernestine’, etc. (the titles being given at the beginning of the second section, 133). In the 1971 edition, the second section has the overall title of ‘[À illiers]’ and covers much of the same material as the earlier edition. The first five divisions or subsections, given in square brackets and thus added by the editor, are as follows: ‘[arrivÉe]’, ‘[lilas et pommiers]’, ‘[lilas et aubÉpines]’, ‘[petite ville dÉvote]’ and ‘[ernestine]’ (1971: 277, 278, 280, 281). However, the divisions into subsections within each part of the 1971 edition are much more numerous than in the 1952 edition; some sections only consist of half a page of material. Looking more closely at the placement of the material within the different sections, it is evident, as stated above, that the content and the order of the material, as well as the means of dividing it into chapters, parts and sections, differ in the two editions. An example of the different ordering of material in the two editions concerns the descriptions of the family gathering for lunch while staying at Éteuilles or Illiers, the changing position

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of the dining-room chairs before and during meals and the description of the family’s leisurely digestion. In the 1952 edition, in Part II, c­ hapter 2, entitled ‘Journées de vacances’, there is a reference to the fact that Jean often returns home for lunch to find the chairs already around the dining-room table (154). This is followed by a reference to the days when he spends much of the morning reading in front of the dining-room fire and the chairs, at this early hour, are still aligned against the wall (154). The description of the family enjoying a leisurely digestion follows this account without any obvious link (155–8). In the 1971 edition, the order appears even less logical. The reference to the leisurely digestion comes immediately after the return of Jean and his grandfather from the park, just before the meal begins (Part II, ‘À illiers’, section entitled ‘[farniente aprÈs le repas]’ [1971: 286–9]), while the descriptions of the chairs, set either around the table, or against the wall in the dining room, appear several sections later (in the section entitled ‘[Avant le dÉjeuner]’ [304–5]). Such differences in the text of the two editions of Jean Santeuil are largely due to the unfinished nature of the work which, as in the case of Contre Sainte-Beuve, was published posthumously, and which also owed much to the intervention of the different editors, who undertook to present the works in a readable form. However, it is questionable whether Proust’s intentions concerning this work were clear enough to warrant their publication as textes. More importantly, the texte lacks closure because Proust himself had not discovered any satisfactory overall plan for his novel. When Proust appears to abandon a project, as in the case of both Contre SainteBeuve and Jean Santeuil, it is not to begin something new, but to present the same nucleus of inspiration in a different way in an effort to translate his vision. Is it not therefore possible to argue that Proust later reworked the material of Jean Santeuil in À la recherche to the extent that it became an avant-texte of the canonical work? In fact Proust drew widely from the material of his first novel as he did from Contre Sainte-Beuve. However Jean Santeuil reveals more echoes of À la recherche and could be said to pave the way for the later novel. As Clarac observes: Il n’y a pas à se demander pourquoi il a abandonné Jean Santeuil. Il ne l’a pas abandonné. Tous les thèmes qu’il portait en lui et autour desquels s’organisera son œuvre maîtresse y sont déjà posés, moins objectivement qu’ils ne le seront dans la

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33

Recherche, plus étroitement rattachés au détail et aux hasards de sa propre vie. C’est de Jean Santeuil (et non de Contre Sainte-Beuve!) que la Recherche est sortie … ( js, 1971: 983).

Clarac might appear to be overstating the case here in seeing Jean Santeuil as a more important source for À la recherche than Contre Sainte-Beuve. However, many episodes and characters, as well as the method of their presentation, found in À la recherche, were prefigured in Jean Santeuil. Therefore, using the criteria discussed above, Jean Santeuil can be usefully analysed as an important avant-texte for À la recherche. Looking first of all at the material of Jean Santeuil in comparison with that of À la recherche, it is evident that Proust reworked not only the characters and episodes of his early work, but also the themes.46 Thus many of the headings, which have been added by the editor to the different episodes in Jean Santeuil, find their echo in the résumé of the latest Pléiade edition of the novel (alrtp: I, 1523–6), although there are changes in both the names of the characters and of places. Many of the characters of À la recherche, particularly those found in ‘Combray’, were first introduced in Jean Santeuil. These include members of the child’s close family, such as his parents (the rather authoritarian, but unpredictably kind father and the much-loved mother from whom the child can hardly bear to be separated, particularly at night) and the great aunt (Madame Servan or Sureau in Jean Santeuil and tante Léonie in À la recherche). Many episodes and themes found in À la recherche are also prefigured in Jean Santeuil. Episodes which occur in both novels include the ‘drame du coucher’ (sometimes referred to as ‘le baiser du soir’) and the description of wealthy arriviste social circles, such as the Cresmeyer family, which resembles, in its obsession with social prestige, the Verdurin clan in À la recherche. On the level of themes, many of the experiences in love described in À la recherche are prefigured in Jean Santeuil. These include the young hero’s visits to the Champs-Elysées, where he develops an obsession for a playmate (Marie Kossichef in Jean Santeuil and Gilberte Swann in À la recherche), who does not form part of his social circle. Thus both young heroes experience the way in which separation increases and even creates their feelings for the loved 46 See other examples in greater detail in Mireille Marc-Lipiansky, 227–39.

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one. In terms of an artistic vocation, the hero’s poetic sensibility is already apparent, to a limited extent, in Jean Santeuil as shown, for example, by the way in which Jean shares the hero’s love for the hawthorns, particularly the pink variety (1971: 330–3). Although there are some allusions in Jean Santeuil to the hero’s desire to write, they are much less numerous and less emphasis is placed on them than in À la recherche (for example, 1971: 211–15). There are, of course, obvious differences between Jean Santeuil and À la recherche. In Jean Santeuil there is a much larger amount of autobiographical detail. There is also greater interaction between the hero and his family, including their often violent disagreements. In addition, in the early work we learn more of the hero’s days at the lycée, including Jean’s experiences in M. Beulier’s ‘classe de philosophie’, while there are few references to the young hero’s school days in À la recherche. Memory, one of the corner stones of À la recherche, is treated only briefly in Jean Santeuil (for example, 1971: 247–8 and 880–98) in the [fragments divers], as are the generalisations, in the form of maxims, which are a more important part of À la recherche. An example in the earlier novel would be the comment on the lack of harmony in the feelings which people experience towards each other at different times: ‘Hélas! Les heures n’apportent pas à chacun les mêmes pensées’ (1971: 412). There are also some similarities and differences in the two novels on the level of technique. The early novel was a product of Proust’s youth when he was still searching for his material and, more importantly, for a means of expressing it. The structure of the early novel follows, to some extent, the chronological order of Jean’s life. In À la recherche, on the other hand, the hero’s love of literature and his slow discovery of his artistic vocation are a more important part of the basic structure of the novel. One of Proust’s greatest difficulties in Jean Santeuil was to transform the particular experiences of life into the more widely familiar and useful material of fiction. In the quotation placed by the editors just before the opening of Jean Santeuil, Proust points out his difficulties over form: ‘Puis-je appeler ce livre un roman? C’est moins peut-être et bien plus, l’essence même de ma vie recueillie sans y rien mêler, dans ces heures de déchirure où elle découle. Ce livre n’a jamais été fait, il a été récolté.’47 47 This fragment is used as a prefatory note in the printed texte in the 1952 and the 1971 editions (1971), 181.

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35

Jean Santeuil is written in the third person, rather than the first person found in À la recherche. This point of view appears to distance the reader from the experiences of Jean, the central character. The preface (originally chapter one of the work) has a similar aim. In addition, some of the episodes are grouped, as in À la recherche, by association, in a stellar structure (Bernard Brun, in ‘Avant-Propos’, 1990, p. 5).48 The many abrupt endings to the different sections can be seen as pointing to a structure designed by means of association. Tadié even suggests that this technique was not simply a manner of working, but points to an integral part of Proust’s style.49 Such techniques are characteristic of a modernist work such as À la recherche. It is therefore possible to state that Jean Santeuil fulfils a very important criterion of an avant-texte – that of being part of the developmental process (or ‘système’, to use Bellemin-Noël’s term) which gave rise to À la recherche.50 Not only are there similarities and differences between the two works on the level of both content and technique, but the differences can be seen as part of an overall development which made the later novel possible. In conclusion, therefore, the status of Proust’s major works, both as textes and as avant-textes, can be challenged. Both Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve have been published and largely accepted as textes, though this status, given their state of incompletion on the external as well as the internal level, is questionable. Both works were left mainly in the form of notes and brouillons by Proust, who did not intend to publish them. Their appearance as finished textes is mainly the work of editors. On the other hand, À la recherche can be accepted as a texte because it shows completion on the external, if not the internal level, and was intended for publication by Proust. The fact that Proust incorporated large parts of Contre SainteBeuve into À la recherche means that Contre Sainte-Beuve has quite rightly been considered as an avant-texte. Contre Sainte-Beuve was not completed or published mainly because Proust failed to find a suitable form for his material. He had experimented with both a narrative form and a dialogue, 8 Bernard Brun, ‘Avant-Propos,’ Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 21 (1990), 5. 4 49 Jean-Yves Tadié, ‘Proust et l’inachèvement …’ (1986), 76. 50 ‘Le Texte et l’avant texte’ (1972), 15.

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but continued to pose the question: ‘Faut-il faire un roman, une étude philosophique? Suis-je romancier’ (Carnet I, fol. 2). Given these circumstances, the important links between Jean Santeuil and À la recherche have been neglected for too long. Proust constantly drew on this earlier material on the level of both fond and forme. In Jean Santeuil it can be argued that Proust experimented with different forms, as in the pastiches, but failed to develop a suitable technique for presenting his ideas. At the same time, he was impelled to move in yet another direction, to depart from the familiar chronological and casual structure of nineteenth-century realist fiction and experiment with a more modern fragmented, or even a ‘stellar’ structure, in which groups of episodes develop out of one another by association. The fact that the experience of reading Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve is so different from that of reading À la recherche, can be explained by the fact that, though Proust often worked and reworked the same material, his use of the material in terms of his style and vision changed quite radically. Therefore in Proust’s work, the term avant-texte has a much wider definition than is commonly the case. It includes not only the carnets, the cahiers and separate sheets of brouillons, but also an unfinished earlier work, Contre Sainte-Beuve, which evolved into the later novel before its own form had been finally established. More importantly, the avant-texte must include the early unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil, whose contribution, both in terms of content and the working out of a final form for À la recherche, is too often overlooked. À la recherche du temps perdu, which grew out of this material, is a narrative work underpinned by Proust’s theory of art. It is a work that broke away from the realist work Jean Santeuil, in which the subject matter includes the process of writing. The more didactic Contre Sainte-Beuve which, in manuscript form, is both a discussion about Proust’s ideas on art and a narrative, can be seen as a crossroads. À la recherche is a modernist work which demonstrates its own æsthetic, rather than simply stating it as in Contre Sainte-Beuve. Bardèche’s description of the role of the different avant-textes for À la recherche can be applied both to Contre Sainte-Beuve and to Jean Santeuil: Etait-il vraiment indifférent d’apprendre, en étudiant ces manuscrits, que Proust avait écrit la Recherche du Temps perdu pendant toute sa vie …, et fallait-il négliger la

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constatation qu’on pouvait faire alors, que Proust avait construit son œuvre avec une certaine quantité d’éléments préfabriqués dont un grand nombre étaient déjà ‘fondus’ et prêts dès les années de jeunesse de l’écrivain, qu’il essaya ensuite de combiner et de ‘monter’ selon différentes formules et dont l’assemblage ne donna finalement un chef-d’œuvre que lorsque Proust eût découvert le ‘rythme’ selon lequel ils allaient pouvoir s’ordonner? (12–13).51

Closer inspection also shows that the whole corpus of Proust’s work, and especially Jean Santeuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve, is a continual reworking of one novel, which itself barely emerges in canonical form from the mass of avant-textes. As Ton-That expresses it, ‘… toute l’œuvre de Proust pourrait être placée sous le signe de l’inachèvement’ (26).52 Contre Sainte-Beuve is a work of criticism which is turned in upon itself. It becomes self-reflexive; it contains the germ of explicit auto-criticism, which enables Proust to move on to the final phase in his writing. Both Contre Sainte-Beuve and also the early ‘novel’, Jean Santeuil, were instrumental in fashioning the final work, both by what they contributed, in reworked form, and by what they withheld, so that new routes could be pursued. This led to the emergence of a modern novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, part of which remained unfinished at the internal, but not at the external level, and which is itself a texte, characterised by its potential for the endless reworking of its boundaries.

51 52

Maurice Bardèche, Marcel Proust, romancier (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1971). Thanh-Vân Ton-That, ‘L’inachèvement dans Jean Santeuil,’ Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 25(1994), 26.

Chapter 3

‘Combray, de loin …’: Changing Perspectives in ‘Combray’ and its avant-texte1

J’avais cessé de me sentir médiocre, contingent, mortel … Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul …, toutes les fleurs de notre jardin et celles du parc de M. Swann, et les nymphéas de la Vivonne, et les bonnes gens du village et leurs petits logis et l’église et tout Combray et ses environs, tout cela qui prend forme et solidité, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de thé (alrtp, I: 44 & 47).

The description of the village of Éteuilles in Jean Santeuil, which will later appear in greater detail in ‘Combray’, manifests, in its early form, several of the same characteristics. The description is to be found in the section of Jean Santeuil entitled [petite ville dÉvote], 281. The church dominates the village as in ‘Combray’ and those who serve the church – the priest, the sacristan and the nuns – live near it. However, there is no feeling that the church is a place of refuge, or that it conveys its truths to the surrounding community as in ‘Combray’. The two main aspects of the town are already in place in Jean Santeuil. There are the fairly joyful religious processions and the sound of the church bells on a Sunday. However, the church bells often toll for the dead. The names of the streets are mainly called after saints, which give them a rather sombre air. They are cold, dark and dispiriting and a wind often whips through them. Unlike in the final version, the inhabitants appear and are described. The old have their health problems and even the young appear sickly and their speech is slow. It is only the presence of the pigeons which seems to add some animation to the village ( js: 281). The description of Combray which forms the opening of ‘Combray II’, in À la recherche du temps perdu, has received little critical attention. In fact, 1

The passage under discussion begins with ‘Combray, de loin …’ I: 47 and ends with ‘… causer avec Geneviève de Brabant’ (alrtp, I: 48).

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most critics have concentrated on the different descriptions of the church, rather than the broader picture of the first description of the village of Combray.2 Placed, in the final version, between the madeleine episode and the first episode relating to tante Léonie, the description appears to be based on the involuntary memory and thus to offer an introduction to a fairly full picture of Combray.3 It is seen by critics as a contrast to the truncated account in ‘Combray I’, which is a product of the voluntary memory and consists of: ‘cette sorte de pan lumineux, découpé au milieu d’indistinctes ténèbres …, toujours vu à la même heure, isolé de tout ce qu’il pouvait y avoir autour, se détachant seul sur l’obscurité, le décor strictement nécessaire …, au drame de mon déshabillage …’ (alrtp, I: 43). Germaine Brée sees these two distinct versions as panels ‘separating night and day, anguish and delight’.4 The main characteristics of ‘Combray II’, as suggested in the episode of the madeleine, quoted in part above, would appear to be solidity, completeness, shared religious values, light, colour and joy. However, close analysis of the opening description of the village in ‘Combray II’, elucidated by the avant-texte, reveals a more complex situation. The description in the final version is in fact composed of two strongly contrasting parts. The first part beginning with the luminal quotation and the second with the line ‘… et ces rues de Combray existent dans une partie de ma mémoire si reculée …’ (alrtp, I: 48). In addition, not only is there a notable absence, or even a reversal of some of the above characteristics, but those which are introduced are also presented as somewhat problematic. The first part of the description of Combray, as viewed from the railway carriage, does indeed appear to be one of fullness: ‘Combray, de loin, à dix lieues à la ronde, vu du chemin de fer quand nous y arrivions la dernière 2

3 4

They include: C. Quémar, ‘L’Église de Combray, son curé et le narrateur’, in Cahiers M.  Proust, Nouvelle Série/Études Proustiennes, 6, no  I (1973), 277–42, and Uri Eisenzweig, who draws parallels between the church and tante Léonie’s house, in ‘La Recherche du référent: l’église de Combray’, in Littérature, 20 (1975), 7–31. The Madeleine incident is found in À la recherche, I: 43–7. This episode relating to tante Léonie begins on page 48. Germaine Brée, The World of Marcel Proust (London:  Chatto and Windus, 1967), 137.

‘Combray, de loin …’

41

semaine avant Pâques …’ (alrtp, I: 47). Solidity and a general sense of reassurance are suggested by the dominant presence of the church. With its physical strength and timeless ritual, it is a source of protection, on both a worldly and a spiritual plain, as shown vividly by the biblical image of the shepherdess protecting her sheep from the elements. This comfort and protection are also to be found in the ritual and codes of the church. The ancient ramparts, which encircle the town, seem to offer this community further protection and cohesion. The circle is a common leitmotif in À la recherche and suggests, as in the image of the family grouped around the garden table at Combray, a close-knit group sharing the same values and interests (alrtp, I: 13–4). The circle is also important on the level of structure and on the philosophical level, particularly in relation to time, as seen in the opening of the novel, suggesting that the past is still within reach, as shown later in the novel with the experience of the involuntary memory: ‘Un homme qui dort, tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes’ (alrtp: I, 5). The reference to ‘nous’, in the first view of the village, points to a shared viewpoint which is moral and social, as well as spatial. However, certain elements of the description emphasise the narrow, restrictive nature of this seemingly stable, secure world. The ramparts which enclose the town, though breached in part, are both inclusive and exclusive. The pervasive influence of the church is emphasised by its dominant physical position and by the streets with their ‘graves noms de saints’ (alrtp, I: 48). There is the suggestion of a rather isolated community, with a strict adherence to the shared values and rituals of the group, both social and religious. The idea of timelessness and ritual is emphasised in the description of ‘Combray’ by the linking of the street names with the ancient lineage of Combray’s aristocracy (alrtp, I: 48). The exclusiveness of the social circle is seen later in À la recherche, in the case of the Verdurin’s ‘petit clan’ with their Credo and general intolerance towards any intrus (alrtp, I: 185). It is analogous with Proust’s negative view of habit which, though comforting, ‘pendant tout le cours de notre vie nous cache à peu près tout l’univers’ (Alrtp, IV: 124). In cahier 29, Proust refers to the dark colours which are appropriate to his depiction of Combray: ‘Si je veux peindre Combray c’est avec les couleurs grises, cette odeur de poulet et de confiture

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… qu’il faudrait que je le peigne’ (cahier 29, fo 20r). The general geography of the village with its dark, narrow streets; the architecture of the houses with their dark-coloured stone and overhanging gables; and the references to the wind further suggest gloom, discomfort and constraint. This appears to give rise to the general air of sadness which pervades the streets – a mood accentuated by images such as that of the ‘haute mante sombre’ of the ‘pastoure’, a shepherdess (Alrtp, I: 47). Finally, this ‘full’ view of Combray is described as ‘un tableau de primitif ’, suggesting a childlike vision – untutored and lacking in perspective (alrtp, I: 47). It is echoed in the view of Combray from the train which, though described at two points, from afar and close up, is presented as if the viewers themselves were stationary. This contrasts with the child’s later experiences, for example his view of the three church spires, seen, from a moving horse-drawn carriage, when the spires appear to engage in the movements of a dance (alrtp, I: 177–80). The brouillons, mise au net and dactylogrammes of the avant-texte help to elucidate some of these points. They contain, for example, references to the inhabitants of Combray, whereas, in the final version they are not seen and there is no direct allusion to them. In the first brouillon, found in cahier 8, the adjective ‘malingres’ is used to describe the unhealthy physical appearance of the young people. The speech of the inhabitants is described as ‘traînard, mélancolique et doux’.5 Such characteristics, found in all the avant-texte, would seem to be the result of the inhabitants’ narrow, rather confined lives. In all the avant-texte studied, apart from the first brouillon of cahier 8, the inhabitants’ speech is punctuated by frequent allusions to the rigours of the elements. This further suggests the need for shelter and protection (to be found, by extension, in shared values, especially those of the church, and its rituals). The mood of sadness is further emphasised by the ever-present sense of mortality, arising from the sound of the tolling of the church bell and the frequent sight of funeral processions passing through the streets: ‘on entendait souvent sonner pour une mort: les enterrements se déroulaient en procession dans la ville avec les prêtres en surplus, les enfants de chœur et le Saint-Sacrement.’ The constraining influence of 5

Cahier 8, fo10 r. The reference to speech is found in a marginal addition.

‘Combray, de loin …’

43

(church) ritual in the lives of the inhabitants of Combray is suggested by the obsessional behaviour of the ‘dame en noir’, seen visiting the church at all hours of the day. This character appears in all the avant-texte, but not in the final version of the description. Therefore in the first part of the passage, as emphasised in the avant-texte, Combray is largely seen from a negative, rather than a joyful perspective. However, the description of Combray, in the second half of the final version, shows a very marked change of perspective, both visual and conceptual. In dactylogramme 2, fo 90 (in a marginal addition), and the final version, the names of the streets are linked with characters who form part of the history and legend of Combray. In the final version, only the references to the ‘Au-Delà’ are linked to the memory, as well as to time, and thus form part of a far more complex temporal perspective. The suggested link between smell (the appetising smells from the inn) and the involuntary memory, are evident in Proust’s early ideas for Combray, quoted above. Combray is now viewed not from a distance in space, as from the train, but from a distance in time. Its most obvious signalling in the text is the change from the collective ‘nous’ to the individual viewpoint. However, even when giving a first-person viewpoint, Proust, as narrator, uses the object pronoun ‘me’ rather than the more direct subject pronoun ‘je’. The description of Combray as a fairy tale place, ‘une entrée en contact avec l’Au-delà’, seems to undermine the solidity and objectivity of the initial description (alrtp, I: 48). The temporal interval is taken up by the period of the hero’s literary and philosophical apprenticeship. Many of his discoveries, relating to art and to the meaning of ‘la vraie vie’, centre around the church and the village of Combray. The church is seen here as a rather anonymous mass. An allusion to the ‘clocher’ was added in the avant-texte (cahier 8, fo 47v), but it was crossed out. Details of the architecture of the church are used later in the novel as a focus for several of the hero’s discoveries. Such examples include the building’s extension in time, as well as in space, so that it takes on a fourth dimension (alrtp, I: 60). The material, visual experience of time, in the present, is seen in the wearing away of the church’s stone porchway (ALRTP, I: 58); and the relativity of time and space is revealed by the view from the ‘clocher’ (alrtp, I: 104–5). The hero moves away from the viewpoint he

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initially shares with his family and the villagers, gradually adopting the narrator’s radically new perspective of Combray, which is both subjective and relativistic and, above all, founded on memory and metaphor as his work moves towards the final modernist novel, À la recherche. Analysis of the avant-texte points to another change in perspective – at the level of style. In the brouillons and dactylogramme D 2, additions are made both to the descriptions of the inhabitants of Combray and also to that of their homes. There are references to the young and the elderly, the ‘dame en noir’ and also the religious processions through the streets, inhabited by tante Léonie. In cahier 10, fo 47v, the detail of the darkness of the houses is introduced. Thus, a balance is maintained between our knowledge of both the people and their environment. By contrast, in the final version, the inhabitants mentioned above are absent – Combray is an empty space. Even the pigeons, mentioned in all the avant-texte, have disappeared. However, a brief reference is made at this point in the final text to the dark streets, including ‘rue Saint-Jacques où était la maison de ma tante, rue Sainte-Hildegarde, où donnait la grille, et rue Saint-Esprit sur laquelle s’ouvrait la petite porte latérale de son jardin …’ (Alrtp, I: 48). Up to this point in the avant-texte Léonie has not been mentioned in the initial description of Combray. The description of the aunt builds, beginning with an addition to dactylogramme D 2, fo 90, where tante Léonie’s home is first mentioned in connection with the three streets which it overlooks. In the first brouillon of cahier 8, fo 10r, there is a very brief description of tante Léonie following the introduction to ‘Combray II’: Nous habitions chez une vieille cousine de mon père, dont la fille, ma tante Léonie, n’avait plus depuis la mort de son mari quitté d’abord Combray et bientôt sa chambre, ne descendant plus, presque toujours couchée, dans un état incertain de débilité maladive, de tristresse, d’idée fixe et de dévotion (cahier 10 fos 21 and 22).

This description brings together the above-mentioned characteristics of the other inhabitants of Combray in the avant-texte: the suggested preoccupation or obsession with religious ritual, their ill-health, general sadness and discomfort felt in the outdoors.

‘Combray, de loin …’

45

In the final text, and for the first time in cahier 10, fos 21 and 22, the long more detailed description of tante Léonie, following that of ‘Combray’, appears for the first time. It is now juxtaposed with the description of Combray. The above-mentioned characteristics of Léonie are encapsulated in parodic form, set against the backdrop of Combray. Léonie can thus be seen as the personification of all the negative characteristics of Combray. Thus, the introduction to ‘Combray II’ does not present a snapshot of the fuller world, seemingly promised by the madeleine incident. Rather it gives a static, primitive outline of the village with few details and no depths. The primitive circle formed by the ramparts, which characterise the village, is repeated in the structure of the passage, with its overview of the child’s experiences in Combray. It encapsulates the distance the hero travels, on his temporal and mental journey, and his changing perspectives as he frees himself from the shared values and narrow viewpoint of Combray, the enchanted circle. The description also shows how the text becomes depersonalised, so that the reader must work much harder to really grasp the meaning of this deceptively complex text. The changing emphasis in the description of place and people, seen between the brouillons, dactylogramme 2 and the final version, indicate a changing technique in the novel as a whole. The explanatory detail in the description of Combray gives way to an early exercise in the technique of presenting meaning by suggestion, using symbols, imagery and careful juxtaposition, and thus the association of episodes, which become the main source of meaning for the reader. There is also repetition, running through the whole work, including textual echoes, such as repeated motifs and linguistic phrases, which are of prime importance in the internal structure of the final novel.6 Therefore, analysis of both the final text and the avanttexte, reveals that the opening description of ‘Combray II’ is based on a play of changing perspectives – personal, visual, conceptual and stylistic.

6

Such echoes and repetitions in À la recherche form the subject of a monograph, now in process, by the author of this genetic study.

Chapter 4

Another Glance through the Window of Proust’s tante Léonie in À la recherche du temps perdu: A Genetic Study

This genetic analysis of the role of tante Léonie examines her appearance in Jean Santeuil – an important avant-texte for ‘Combray’, as seen in preceding chapters, and where only a few pages are devoted to her. After a passing allusion to her in Sur la lecture, the study then looks at several cahiers of the time of Sainte-Beuve, and those which follow this unfinished work, up to the aunt’s final portrayal in ‘Combray’. The chapter seeks to demonstrate how an insignificant, elderly and infirm woman, shown in the early works, subtly takes on, in her various appearances, a seemingly small, but ultimately important role at the beginning of Proust’s novel, À la recherche du temps perdu. In fact, little has been written to date about this character. Thus, the avant-texte has an important role to play in the evolution and elucidation of the part Léonie plays in the final version of ‘Combray’. Her role serves to explain the actions and experiences of the young hero and, as Jacques De Chastonay remarks, in his article, she is not just a portrait, but an important part of the final structure of ‘Combray’.1 The stereotypical image of tante Léonie in ‘Combray’ is that of an elderly, rather eccentric aunt, a probable hypochondriac, who spends her days in bed, gazing through the window as the scenes of daily life in Combray pass before her eyes, as on a stage, their regularity and continuity providing her with a feeling of security. Her days are punctuated by prayers and the taking of a number of medications (alrtp, I: 51). She is shown to be obsessive about these rituals. She would seem to have little in common with the young boy, the hero of the novel, who, although unaware of this before 1

Jacques De Chastonay, ‘Tante Léonie dans “Combray” ’, Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray (1978), 669.

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the end of the novel, is already engaged in gathering the material which will culminate in the writing of his own novel. The aunt’s brief appearance in Jean Santeuil, where she has the name of Mme Servan or Mme Sureau, is the first which encapsulates some of the most recognisable traits of Léonie’s character ( js: 339–42). The following is an extract from the full description: Ne pouvant plus sortir [Mme Servan], passait tout le jour assise sur sa chaise dans l’encoignure de la fenêtre, travaillant un peu à son ouvrage, lisant un instant le journal, mais surtout posant ses lunettes pour voir par le carreau ceux qui semblaient seulement passer, mais qui pour elle, qui les avait déjà aperçus le matin ou qui connaissait assez leurs habitudes pour savoir qu’elle aurait pu les apercevoir, sortaient, rentraient, témoignaient que rien n’était changé dans les habitudes d’Éteuilles ou que quelque événement y était survenu, habitudes qui étaient ses habitudes, événement qui en était un pour elle, enfin cette suite bien liée d’occupations connues où l’imprévu vient mettre quelque piquant, mais dont la monotonie fait la douceur, et qui avaient été pour elle cette chose qui pour chacun de nous est quelque chose de si particulier, la vie ( js: 340).

Here the aunt is not an invalid, but is limited in her activities by old age. She too follows the activities of the village, in which she can no longer engage, through the dining-room window. Although not obsessed by religion or medications, she does have certain eccentricities, such as putting on a coat while remaining inside when the weather turns cold or wet: ‘… immobile à sa fenêtre, rouge s’il devait pleuvoir, son manteau sur ses épaules si le vent se levait, Mme Servan ressemblait à ce capucin qui au coin de la rue marquait le temps chez l’opticien …’ ( js: 341). The aunt’s presence is not given much importance in Jean Santeuil and few pages are devoted to her. The structure of the novel does not establish any special link between the aunt and the young hero because, as André Maurois explains in the introduction to the novel, the story is too close to life to adopt a fictional patterning and significance, aspects of style which will become much more important in the modernist novel À la recherche: Les personnages apparaissent, puis disparaissent, comme il arrive dans la vie où des couches successives d’amis, de familiers, se recouvrent sans se pénétrer, mais comme il n’arrive guère dans le roman où l’artiste maintient toujours quelque unite.2 2

Quoted in the introduction to Jean Santeuil by André Maurois (1952), 13. In this novel, the aunt is described in pages 339–42.

A Genetic Study

49

In this first novel Jean Santeuil, which is very close to an account of Proust’s own life, the aunt simply represents the older generation of the family. The work reads like a fictional autobiography, rather than the story of a vocation. When Proust himself made a critique of Jean Santeuil, he underlined the speed with which he wrote the novel as one of the reasons for its mediocrity: ‘J’écris au galop, j’ai tant à dire.’3 This shows his wish to express his many ideas, while still lacking an appropriate style. The result is a lack of clarity about Proust’s intentions concerning the aunt’s exact role. Neither the points of similarity nor of contrast, so important in ‘Combray’, between Jean and his aunt, are evident. The aunt, sometimes called Mme Octave, Mme Charles or even Bathilde, also appears in the rough drafts and the exercise books which date from the time of Contre Sainte-Beuve, which foreshadows À la recherche. Echoes of this character are even to be found in separate sheets, which were written before Contre Sainte-Beuve. In a reference to Proust’s Sur la lecture (1905), Pierre-Louis Rey and Jo Yoshida, who wrote the ‘notice’ to À la recherche, comment that ‘L’intérieur de la maison de province y annonce déjà celui de la tante Léonie’ (alrtp, notice: 1059). However, the aunt is not mentioned in the list of 75 sheets which, according to Bernard de Fallois, foreshadow ‘Combray’ and which have been lost (carnet 1, 1908). In cahier 7, which dates from the time of Contre Sainte-Beuve, the aunt, Mme Charles, asks the priest why there is a painter in the church and is exhausted by his reply, which includes a long description of the ugly features of his church.4 By contrast, a part of cahier 6 (ffos 3–5 ros) is concerned with the hero’s very positive comments on the church. It constitutes one of the first notable points of contrast between these two characters, although they are present in two different cahiers. In cahier 10, Proust has introduced some details which seem to attenuate, to some extent, the eccentric side of the aunt’s character, but they disappear in the final novel as Proust’s concept of the role of the character changes.5 The narrator tells us, for example, that his aunt has remained in bed since the death of her husband, Octave, whom she loved passionately 3 4 5

Proust, quoted in the introduction to Jean Santeuil, 1952, 12. It includes several versions of this episode. This is a near final draft taken from cahiers 8 and 12.

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(fo 22). She refers to him, when she is a little distracted, saying ‘je ne sais plus ce que j’ai fait de ma tête depuis la mort de mon pauvre Octave’ (fo 32). She also quotes her deceased husband when she says that the days are getting shorter because ‘on a trop oublié le bon Dieu et le bon Dieu se venge’ (fo 54). The same ideas are repeated in dactylogramme 2.6 However, these details shift the focus of the description of the aunt. They give, for example, a possible reason as to why the aunt has taken to her bed and they undermine her eccentricity and the slight mystery surrounding her situation in the final version of the novel. The aunt inhabits a very small space, remaining in bed almost all the time (cahier 8, fo 48 vo). However, in one of the drafts in cahier 4, Proust / the narrator places the aunt at the main door to the house where she awaits the arrival of the family after a walk (cahier 4, fo 35r). In the typed copy D2 (fo 94o) there is an allusion, in a marginal addition, to the time when Léonie used to still visit her mother in Paris. However, these scenes have been eliminated from the final text. A more active aunt would escape tante Léonie’s restricted lifestyle, filled by the monotony of her strange individual rituals and which will prove such a contrast to the behaviour of the young hero. The aunt’s role becomes more and more important in the later drafts of ‘Combray’, in relation to the hero and to the space which the aunt occupies in this part of the novel.7 Tadié sums up her role in cahier 8 as follows: Le troisième tiers du Cahier 8 est consacré à la tante Léonie. L’armature du récit qui lui sera réservé est déjà en place: sa chambre, ses conversations avec Françoise sur de menus événements de Combray, la visite bienfaisante d’Eulalie et celle du curé, qui est fatigante. Ainsi commencent à se nouer des épisodes relatifs à cette vieille tante qui occupera le centre de Combray (ALRTP, notice, 1065).

Thus Tadié sees her life as central in ‘Combray’. It is above all by the new structure, rather than new material that the role of tante Léonie gains importance in À la recherche. The text, which deals with tante Léonie before the final version, is to be found in the cahiers in the form of blocks of material – what Maurice Bardèche calls a 6 7

Ff os 90v, 91r, 98r and 144r. Found in cahiers 8 and 12 after the writings on Sainte-Beuve.

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‘compact’ – with a few additions (229). In the final version of the novel Proust has separated some parts, or blocks, of the text which concern the aunt, by introducing, for the most part, episodes which deal with the hero. These episodes take on considerable importance by their juxtaposition with the scenes which concern tante Léonie. So the question must be raised as to why these changes, often seemingly unimportant, in the writings leading up to the final version of ‘Combray’, enable the aunt to take on a significant role in ‘Combray’? Their main importance, as the juxtaposition of the episodes concerning the aunt and the hero show, is the way they highlight the contrasts and some similarities between the two characters, which will in turn lead the reader to understand the importance of the hero’s actions and experiences in his childhood. As mentioned above, Jacques de Chastonay believes the aunt is important, not because of the portrait painted of her, but because of her role in the structure of ‘Combray’. His argument hinges primarily on the similarity between the two characters, but in fact it is the differences, which the author of this genetic study, believes to be the most noticeable and the most significant. In the final version of the novel, both characters are seen in important scenes which take place while they are lying in bed. At the beginning of À la recherche the hero is much older and lies in bed in a state between waking and sleeping, disorientated by the vivid dreams he has just experienced and the apparent strangeness of the dark world around him. In his dream, he has been transported through time to different places and people he knew earlier in his life. As he emerges from his dream, he is finally able to establish, by his surroundings, his rightful place in both time and space (ALRTP: 3–9). The aunt, on the other hand, often appears to be oblivious to anything which happens outside her two rooms, or the narrow view of the outside world which she has through her bedroom window. In fact, the recurrence of these everyday events, not only give her a sense of security, but are accorded by her an apparently inordinate amount of importance. Any changes in the routines of the villagers cause her great anxiety, though as we all need change in our lives the aunt allows herself to imagine a scenario where there is the drama of a fire which she, although an invalid, manages to escape (ALRTP: 114–15).

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By contrast, the hero is very active in his everyday life and engages with many different people and places, which involve him in a wide range of experiences. He goes on walks with his family which are associated with the ‘deux côtés’ or the two different directions in which the family usually take their walks. One walk leads towards Swann’s estate and the other to the river, where they often picnic, and the Guermantes estate, which they never reach. The aunt remains immobile in her bed most of the time and never leaves her two rooms. If images of the aunt, for example, waiting at the front door or going to visit her mother, found in the drafts, had been included, the contrast between the young hero and his aunt would have been much less striking, or even non-existent. On these walks, the hero learns many lessons and develops his sense of the aesthetic, especially his love of the hawthorns and lilacs ‘du côté de chez Swann’, and the water lilies ‘du côté des Guermantes’. The aunt shows little sense of the aesthetic, but does enjoy looking at the images taken from The Arabian Nights found on the plates from which she eats. In addition, Léonie enjoys the chronique quotidienne, the daily story, of the villagers going about their routine tasks in the manner of Saint-Simon, but the aunt is surveying a much more humble environment.8 The images the hero retains of these walks form a far more important contrast and significance later in the novel when the hero realises the social distinctions between the principal people he meets briefly on these walks or later in life – the upper middle class Swann family and the aristocratic Guermantes family, whose names hold so much magic for the child. However, even in the confines of the aunt’s rooms, where she leads an inactive and rather sterile life, the hero appreciates the richness and the variety of the odours of which he is aware. These are described in great detail, which makes them very evocative, but this is still on a very superficial level, in relation to the hero’s final discovery of his vocation as a writer: … le feu cui[sait] comme une pâte les appétissantes odeurs dont l’air de la chambre était tout grumeleux et qu’avait déjà fait travailler et ‘lever’ la fraîcheur humide et 8

Patrick Labarthe refers to the similarity with Saint-Simon in ‘Le Regard de Léonie’, Le Miroir et le Chemin, l’univers romanesque de Pierre-Louis Rey, Vincent Laisney ed. (Paris: Sorbonne nouvelle, 2006), 217.

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ensoleillée du matin, il les feuilletait, les dorait, les godait, les boursouflait, en faisant un invisible et palpable gâteau provincial, un immense ‘chausson’ où, à peine goûtés les arômes plus croustillants, plus fins, plus réputés, mais plus secs aussi du placard, de la commode, du papier à ramages, je revenais toujours avec une convoitise inavouée m’engluer dans l’odeur médiane, poisseuse, fade, indigeste et fruitée du couvre-lit à fleurs (alrtp, I: 49–50).

For the aunt her rooms represent a refuge and she is only interested in the superficial banal events of her everyday life and she bans most visitors. As concerns their different perceptions of time, the hero becomes absorbed in his book in the garden and even misses the sound of the church clock striking, which reveals to him the subjective nature of time (alrtp: 86–7). The aunt, on the other hand, only feels secure if her own monotonous daily rituals of praying and taking medicine are repeated and the actions of the villagers do not deviate from their usual behaviour (ALRTP: 54–6). For the hero all these experiences will form part of his apprenticeship as a future novelist and will also form part of the book he finally decides to write, although it is not clear whether it is the book the reader is actually reading. As regards the portrait of the aunt, many of her actions are depicted as eccentric, which means they capture the reader’s attention, despite the small space allotted to her in ‘Combray’. Thus for de Chastonay, the portrait of the aunt ‘fait figure d’emblème, de symbole caricatural du narrateur lui-même’ (669). The two characters are brought closer together in the episode of the madeleine in what can be seen as the most important scene in Combray. The aged hero, feeling cold has some tea and a madeleine cake brought to him by his mother. This sensory experience triggers his involuntary memory and transports him back in time to a similar incident when he had tea and a madeleine with his aunt Léonie. The taste of cake dipped into his tea resurrects what, until that moment, had been lost in times past. Thus, Léonie is part of this very important scene concerning the involuntary memory and becomes, unwittingly, a catalyst for the main philosophy and structure of À la recherche (44–7). These scenes, which depict similarities as well as differences between the aunt and the hero also suggest a warning note, showing the way in

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which the hero could have followed a completely different path in life. The avant-texte shows how Proust slowly created the image of the aunt to reflect characteristics of the hero, but often in the form of a parody. Thus the aunt, albeit unknowingly, shows the reader and also the hero at a much earlier time, the path he must not follow. He could have followed his aunt’s example and allowed his illness to take over his life, producing a very sterile and unproductive existence. Instead of this he spends his time, often subconsciously, storing up all the material of his life, gleaned from his various experiences, in order to write his own novel. Thus, as seen in the evolution of ‘Combray’ through the avante-texte, the aunt serves partly as a potential double of the hero, but finally assumes her role as the photographic negative of his existence and exerts a powerful influence over her nephew (de Chastonay: 671). To sum up, in the ideas, and particularly the techniques, used in the portrayal of the hero in relation to Léonie, there is much to be discovered, in an indirect way, in ‘Combray’. Even these short episodes can be seen to show the influence of modernism, especially in the technique employed. Rather than an omniscient narrator explaining the contrasting role of the aunt with her nephew, this is implied by the juxtaposition of the episodes relating to both of them. Therefore, as Proust points out, the use of similarity and of difference can be a highly effective tool for the communication of an idea to the reader. He sums up this concept as follows: ‘l’analogie et ... la différence qui ont tant de pouvoir sur notre esprit ...’ ( js: 331).

Chapter 5

Reading, Writing and Literature and Their Evolution in ‘Combray’ and the avant-texte

Puis-je appeler ce livre un roman? C’est moins peut-être et bien plus, l’essence même de ma vie, recueillie sans y rien mêler, dans ces heures de déchirure où elle découle. Ce livre n’a jamais été fait, il a été récolté ( JS: 181). The centrality of reading in Proust’s novel is no real surprise, given the views expressed in ‘Journées de lecture’, the essay he originally wrote as a Preface to his translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies. This essay emphasises the importance of childhood reading, the highly subjective, creative nature of the act and the ceaseless, complex interaction between the reader, the text, and the environment in which reading takes place (Watt: 3).1

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the hero’s approach to reading, writing and literature, in a body of avant-texte, including ‘Journées de lecture’ (the preface for Proust’s translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies) and the printed and modified version, Sur la lecture, in addition to Jean Santeuil, and Contre Sainte-Beuve, leading up to and including ‘Combray’.2 It seeks to demonstrate using ideas, developed through the avant-texte, that Jean Santeuil was the most important text in the evolution of these ideas, particularly, in the areas of reading and writing. However, they do not surpass the more numerous allusions and more sophisticated ideas found in ‘Combray’. The discussion will begin with writing in ‘Combray’ and the avanttexte, though there is some overlap with reading in certain texts. In the preface to Jean Santeuil writing and reading mainly form part of the narrative and so are very vividly presented. Two friends spend some time together on the coast at Kerengrimen. There they encounter the writer known 1 2

Adam Watt, Reading in Proust’s À la recherche – ‘Le Délire de la lecture’ (Oxford: OUP, 2009). Sur la lecture (Paris: Éditions, Sillage, 2011).

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simply as C. There is an example here of the epic situation when the writer is seen in the act of literary creation. The importance of this activity is seen in the respect C. is accorded by those around him when he is working. He takes over, for certain periods, the home of the miller and his wife, who allow him to practise his vocation in their sitting room. There are very few examples of the hero of a work of Proust mentioned actually in the act of writing, either in the avant-texte or the final version of À la recherche. However, in the avant-texte and especially in Contre Sainte-Beuve, we see the writer experimenting with different openings to the novel. Thus in one of the attempts in the cahiers at finding a beginning for his work Proust, the implied narrator, writes describing being in bed and hoping he will finally see an article he has written published in Le Figaro: J’étais couché depuis une heure environ. Le jour n’avait pas encore tracé dans la chambre à l’endroit où nous imaginions la commode, cette ligne blanche au-dessus de laquelle court s’installer la fenêtre, que dans l’obscurité nous avions placé comme un soulier de Noël, près de la cheminée … Je pensais à un article que j’avais envoyé il y avait longtemps déjà au Figaro, j’avais même corrigé les épreuves, depuis j’avais espéré chaque matin le trouver dans le journal, puis j’avais cessé de l’espérer (cahier 3, fos 1–3r).

Contre Sainte-Beuve is rich in ideas about writing, reading and literature.3 Early in the edition of 1954, the hero describes his experiences of falling asleep (similar to those expressed in ‘Combray’). He mentions the newspaper he reads in bed and which he thinks he is still holding when he wakes up momentarily (csb, 1954, ‘Sommeils’: 61–7, ‘Chambres’: 68–73). The hero has also undertaken some writing, an article for Le Figaro, which is an important theme in Contre Sainte-Beuve (94–104). His mother brings him a copy one morning and there is a description of the anticipation its author feels on finally seeing his article published. The narrator here has the role of a virtual reader: Aussi, lecteur nouveau, je prends mon article comme si je ne l’avais pas lu, j’ai une bonne volonté toute fraîche, mais en réalité les impressions du second lecteur ne sont pas très 3

It is difficult to relate Contre Sainte-Beuve directly to ‘Combray’ as the theories found there are developed throughout À la recherche and particularly in Le Temps retrouvé, but they also underpin the first section of the novel.

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différentes et sont tout aussi personnelles que celles du premier. Je sais bien au fond que beaucoup ne comprendront rien à l’article, et des gens que je connais le mieux. Mais, même pour ceux-là, cela me donne l’agréable impression d’occuper aujourd’hui leurs pensées … (csb: 100–1).

However, the narrator realises that he cannot act as a first virtual reader of his own article, as each person’s view of a piece of writing is unique, including his own. The hero of ‘Combray’, reading on a figurative level, can see the huge changes, or metamorphosis, brought about by the painter Elstir, when, for example, his portrayal of the sea and the sky is difficult to distinguish from one another. Elstir, a fictional painter appears to belong to the impressionist group. His paintings represent his own personal impression of a scene he has witnessed at a particular time: ‘… Le charme de chacune [des marines] consistait en une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore …’ (alrtp, II: 191). Thus the hero finally discovers that each person has a very different individual view of the world, which, when used in an art form, can allow others to access the same unique viewpoint. This potential opening of the final novel in Contre Sainte-Beuve shows the importance of both reading and writing in this work. These changes have another importance, as Luc Fraisse points out in his new work, which provides formerly unpublished parts of the developing final novel. He gives several examples of the beginnings of the novel which he sees as important in relation to how time is presented, as well as what the narrator is reading. Underlining the style rather than the material, he concludes as follows: Ces versions contenaient beaucoup plus d’attaches à une situation pouvant se mettre en place, ce que refusera la version définitive: longtemps restera volontairement beaucoup plus vague que pendant de longues années ou bien des années, chaque soir instaurait une temporalité vécue, quand je venais de me coucher donnait à voir le héros, les temps étaient ceux du récit, quand, le passé composé de la version finale instaure seulement un rapport direct entre le héros et le narrateur, ce dernier opérant, dans un aujourd’hui énigmatique, un bilan de son expérience passée.4

4

Luc Fraisse, ed., Marcel Proust, Le Mystérieux correspondant et autres nouvelles inédites, suivi de Aux sources de ‘La Recherche du temps perdu’ (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2019), 151.

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This developing method of taking out fairly precise references to time, especially, but also place, makes this novel a more difficult read, as it gradually takes on modernist characteristics, until familiarity and some rereading overcome the problem. In ‘Combray’ the hero talks about his future writings and how he draws his courage to write from sometimes seeing parallels between his work and that of Bergotte (alrtp, I: 95). In a late manuscript version in cahier 11 (the beginning of fo 15r), the hero is deeply affected by the sight of the church towers of Martinville which seem to move before him while he is travelling in the local doctor’s vehicle. The child experiences an intense joy, but although the words to describe it go through his mind, they do not appear in written form in this late version of the episode. However, a space is left in the manuscript which seems to indicate Proust’s intention of adding them at a later date. In ‘Combray’, there is only one episode where the reader sees the hero writing. It occurs, in similar circumstances, when the family gets a lift in doctor Percepied’s carriage, and on the journey, the hero notices the apparent movements of three church towers, the two towers of Martinville and that of Vieuxvicq. He describes these movements in a short passage, the writing of which fills him with joy and points, to some extent, to his possible development as a writer (alrtp I: 179–80). This piece of writing is based loosely on an article in Le Figaro of 1907, entitled ‘Impressions de route en automobile’. This article was in turn inspired during a trip Proust took to visit old towns, cathedrals and churches and the description of the church towers was particularly influenced by those of Caen.5 Similar material appears in greater detail in the final version of ‘Combray’. Thus the activities of reading and writing develop, through the manuscripts and the early works, the important role they will play in the final novel, which is the discovery of an artistic vocation. Proust, reflecting on his own very innovative writing, in letters and the early parts of À la recherche, in relation to past and contemporary writers,

5

For earlier references to this important episode, see P. Kolb, 1976, Le Carnet de 1908, pp. 12–3 and p. 56, and also Bulletin des informations proustiennes, no 34 (2004), 50.

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expressed his anxiety that his work may not be understood. However, as Hugues Azérad and Marion Schmid, have pointed out: ‘By concretizing and actualizing the reception of his work among past and present French literary traditions – in his novel, but also via his letters – Proust did away with potential critics and with his own anxiety.’6 In Jean Santeuil, there is an examination of the important interplay between literature and life, when C. appears to incorporate traits of the people he sees around him, such as the maid, into his novel. However, although the maid does indeed recognise herself, C. is aware that he has exercised a subtle change by introducing her into a piece of literature: C’est qu’en réalité il n’aurait pu dire à personne, à rien, depuis la Princesse jusqu’à Félicité, depuis ses insomnies jusqu’à la plage de C.: Vous êtes dans mon livre. Car il sentait trop bien qu’eux-mêmes n’étaient pour rien dans l’illumination qu’il avait eue souvent en leur présence ( js: 193).

Therefore, an important change occurs when people, objects and events, are incorporated into literature, where they serve a very different purpose and are the result of a deep impression the writer of the work has experienced in their presence. Later, in Jean Santeuil, Proust, the implied author, elaborates on this idea, when the two friends feel it would be worth a lifetime’s effort to discover the secrets of art such as: les métamorphoses nécessaires qui existent entre la vie d’un écrivain et son œuvre, entre la réalité et l’art, ou plutôt, comme nous pensions alors, entre les apparences de la vie et la réalité même qui en faisait le fond durable et que l’art a dégagée ( js: 190).

The link between the work of a writer and his persona in life is also touched on in the preface to Jean Santeuil. Despite his talent as a writer, C. is not a very moral man. He frightens away the geese of the miller’s wife who offers him hospitality. Thus, the character in life is different from the writer’s persona – an argument taken up again in Contre Sainte-Beuve. The importance of the link between ethics and literature is again seen in À la recherche.7 6 7

Hugues Azérad and Marion Schmid, ‘The Novelistic Tradition’, c­ hapter 19, Marcel Proust in Context, ed. Adam Watt (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 67–74, 73. Maureen Ramsden’s MA thesis, awarded by the University of British Columbia, Canada, was entitled: Morale et esthétique dans ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’, 1982.

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In cahier 29, this idea is seen in the character of the writer Bergotte, but is not foregrounded in the same way as in the final novel. Bergotte’s powers of recitation are made fun of and, in addition, he is described as boring in conversation: … les hommes intelligents … qui regrettaient de ne pas avoir plus de temps pour lire mais cependant goûtaient un ‘plaisir de délicats’ à savourer Bergotte et se promettaient un grand plaisir de le connaître, étaient franchement déçus, trouvèrent que ce n’était pas du tout l’homme de ses livres, lui trouvaient l’esprit confus, les manières pédantes, la diction fatigante et prétentieuse.

As noted above Contre Sainte-Beuve is also a valuable source of information on literature, writing and reading. The hero is shown to be eager to get his ideas down on paper as he is very conscious of the passing of time and all that he has left unwritten (csb: 119–24). The Fallois edition of Contre Sainte-Beuve, as well as being anecdotal, contains a section on literary analysis based on a repudiation of the methods of the critic Sainte-Beuve. Proust criticises the central idea that one arrives at a knowledge of a work by knowing all one can about the writer. He describes Sainte-Beuve’s method: [qui] consiste à ne pas séparer l’homme et l’œuvre …, à s’entourer de tous les renseignements possibles sur un écrivain, à collationner ses correspondances, à interroger les hommes qui l’ont connu … cette méthode méconnaît ce qu’une fréquentation un peu profonde avec nous-mêmes nous apprend: qu’un livre est le produit d’un autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dans nos habitudes, dans la société, dans nos vices (csb: 136–7).

The hero feels that the reality one should seek in literature lies at a much deeper level and that some degree of solitude is also required to discover this ‘vraie vie’: En aucun temps, Sainte-Beuve ne semble avoir compris ce qu’il y a de particulier dans l’inspiration et le travail littéraire, et ce qui le différencie entièrement des occupations des autres hommes et des autres occupations de l’écrivain. Il ne faisait pas de démarcation entre l’occupation littéraire, où, dans la solitude, faisant taire ces paroles, qui sont aux autres autant qu’à nous, et avec lesquelles, même seuls, nous jugeons les choses sans être nous-mêmes, nous nous remettons face à face avec nousmêmes, nous tâchons d’entendre, et de rendre, le son vrai de notre cœur, et non la conversation! (csb: 140).

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The first luminal quotation, found in the unfinished introduction to Jean Santeuil, points more clearly to what Proust the narrator felt should form the material of a work of literature. The hero states that his autobiographical work is not merely based on the superficial events of everyday life, but drawn from the depths of his being and his most vivid experiences and, more importantly, his impressions. However, these form only a small part of the work, and occur most frequently when the hero is in close contact with nature, as when Jean sees his favourite flowers, the apple blossom: Il nous semble que sous le vernis vert de la feuille et sous le satin blanc de la fleur il y ait comme un être particulier, un individu que nous aimons et que personne ne peut nous remplacer. Nous sentons qu’il ne faut pas nous arrêter au satin blanc de la fleur blanche, au vernis vert de la feuille verte; qu’il y a quelque chose dessous, notre plaisir est comme profond, nous sentons quelque chose qui s’agite au-dedans, que nous voudrions saisir et qui est bien doux ( js: 279).

However, there is no analysis of this vivid impression and the hero’s consciousness remains on the surface of the object. This problem of trying to look further than the surface, to the hidden depths of an object, will be discussed in much greater detail in ‘Combray’. Therefore, there are already metafictional comments in Jean Santeuil, as seen also in the first luminal quotation, taken from the incomplete introduction to Proust’s first novel, where it is made clear that the work is not simply an autobiographical narrative, but is, in part at least, drawn from the very essence of the hero’s life. Such comments are much more numerous and more developed in À la recherche, into which much of the material from Contre Sainte-Beuve has been transferred and from which the final novel emerged. In earlier versions of the opening of the novel, as mentioned above, the hero reads a newspaper. At the beginning of ‘Combray’ the older hero/ narrator falls asleep while reading a book. This change in the important opening scene indicates the great importance given to reading in À la recherche. During his sleep, the hero dreams that he is one of the characters in the book. Thus, it can be seen that reading can appear to change the identity of the reader and also transport the reader to other realms.

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In Jean Santeuil, there are insights into the hero’s attitude to reading. In fact, the heroes in both Jean Santeuil and À la recherche are encouraged to read the French canonical works of literature, by their mothers, in order to help develop their intellect, their aesthetic sense and their knowledge. Jean prefers the lighter entertainment of Gautier’s Le Capitaine Fracasse, but the hero in À la recherche, who has no name, becomes an avid reader of the French classics. In a positive way, therefore, reading is especially important in intellectual development. This idea can also be seen in the prologue to Proust’s translation of Ruskin, ‘Journées de lecture’, in the Pastiches et mélanges (1919) and in Sur la lecture. In Contre Sainte-Beuve, reading is described as ‘L’acte psychologique original’ (csb: 157–226). The nineteenth-century writers, Nerval, Baudelaire and Balzac, whom Proust, the narrator, greatly admired, are discussed in this work. Reading is also shown to be an important activity in Jean Santeuil, as the writer C. (anonymous, as is the hero of À la recherche) engages in the practice of reading what he has written during the day to the two friends. Thus, C. can add another, somewhat rudimentary, layer of meaning to the text by, for example, the tone of his voice or emphasising a word or phrase. He also acts as a critic of his own work ( JS: 189). The young hero in ‘Combray’ has his first important experience of reading when his mother reads George Sand’s François le Champi to the child, who is unable to sleep as he has missed his mother’s kiss when going to bed. He does not, in fact, understand much of the story as his mother leaves out any sexual references and it is not really a book for a young child. However, he does have a mainly emotional experience, a heightening of the senses and his interpretation and contact with the book are encapsulated in its deep red cover (alrtp, I: 41). Adam Watt has very lucidly studied this scene, as well as other pivotal scenes of reading (Watt: 17–44). The circumstances in which reading should take place are also illustrated in the narrative of Jean Santeuil. The hero often stays in his bedroom reading when other members of the family set off for a walk, or go to the family’s garden or park, situated at some distance from the house. This action emphasises the importance of reading. Jean also often continues his reading in the park, like the young hero in ‘Combray’ who reads in the garden and in his bedroom (alrtp, I: 82–7). Often, when there is company, Jean prefers to continue reading in his room and hides away from the visitors (JS: 310–11). There is

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a parallel here with the author, referred to as C., in Jean Santeuil, who seeks solitude for writing his book. Reading is therefore a serious activity which requires concentration and some degree of solitude. The effect reading can have when seen in relation to the reader and the environment is also examined in Jean Santeuil. The hero sometimes becomes so engrossed in his reading that he loses all sense of what is happening around him: ‘[p]‌ris peu à peu dans l’action du livre où il suivait passionnément chaque personnage, il perdait par moments tout sentiment du reste des choses’ (js: 310). In a similar way, the hero in ‘Combray’, while reading in the garden, loses all sense of time and of what is happening in the real world and fails to hear the church clock in Combray strike the hour (alrtp, I: 86–7). This scene also illustrates what Proust/the narrator has described as a continual action of moving between the ‘dedans’ and the ‘dehors’, or subjective and objective time. Thus in cahier 14 the hero is seen to appreciate the beauty of the garden while reading. He loses all sense of time and does not always hear the church bell strike. However, an essential lesson, that of the subjectivity of time, is not clearly incorporated into the work at this point, but it is an essential idea in the final version. As Wetherill points out: ‘… key moments (in the garden, the goodnight kiss, or listening to the story of Geneviève de Brabant which accompanies the magic lantern show) are inseparable from the act of reading – and of course, the process is multi-layered, the story of François le Champi offering a covert “reading” of Marcel’s relationship with his mother.’8 The scenes of reading in the garden also illustrate, to some extent, how impressions are gathered. However, this passage can also be seen to relate to the place the reader is in and which appears forgotten when the reader is caught up in the action of a narrative. However, the environment is also a part of our reading experience. As Watt describes it: ‘When one is absorbed in reading, the body remains a part of the physical world, whether that be a darkened room or a garden underneath the expanse of the skies. 8

Michael Wetherill, Proust Du côté de chez Swann, Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature, 22 (Glasgow:  University’s Design and Print, 1992), 25. Here Wetherill uses the name ‘Marcel’ to refer to the hero, but as Proust only used it twice in the whole novel, the author of this work uses ‘the hero’ or ‘the narrator’, a common convention (see also p. 71). Gorman also uses ‘Marcel’ (see p. 105).

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The focusing of the mind that occurs in the act of reading, however, varies in intensity like an adjustable filter that, as we read, now allows in a certain measure of sensory stimulation …, now effectively shuts off our attention from everything but the text in hand’ (Watt: 40). In the early work, Sur la lecture, on the somewhat contradictory and complex experience of reading, the hero, when a child, finds it difficult, because of other activities, such as the demands of family members, meal times and even a buzzing fly, to maintain the quietness and attention, he feels are necessary to continue the all-important act of reading. However, in later life, these events which at the time, were annoying interruptions, return, linked to the complex issue of time, as the most vivid memories: Il n’y a peut-être pas de jours de notre enfance que nous ayons si pleinement vécus que ceux que nous avons crus laissser sans les vivre, ceux que nous avons passés avec un livre préféré. Tout ce qui, semblait-il, les remplissait pour les autres, et que nous écartions comme un obstacle vulgaire à un plaisir divin: le jeu pour lequel un ami venait nous chercher …, l’abeille ou le rayon de soleil gênants … le dîner pour lequel il avait fallu rentrer … tout cela, dont la lecture aurait dû nous empêcher de percevoir autre chose que l’importunité, elle en gravait au contraire en nous un souvenir tellement doux (tellement plus précieux à notre jugement actuel, que ce que nous lisions alors avec tant d’amour), que s’il nous arrive encore aujourd’hui de feuilleter ces livres d’autrefois, ce n’est plus que comme les seuls calendriers que nous ayons gardés des jours enfuis, et avec l’espoir de voir reflétés sur les pages les demeures et les étangs qui n’existent plus (23–5).

These past experiences often return very vividly, as in the case of the hero in ‘Combray’, who, when a much older man and while waiting to join the other guests at the soirée of the princesse de Guermantes, sees the title of a book, read many years ago – François le Champi. It is the book which his mother had read to him when he was distressed as a child at bedtime and which now brings back his thoughts and impressions of that very moment in time: [C]haque chose que nous revoyons; car les livres se comportent en cela comme des choses, la manière dont leur dos s’ouvrait, le grain du papier peut avoir gardé en lui un souvenir aussi vif de la façon dont j’imaginais alors Venise et du désir que j’avais d’y aller, que les phrases mêmes des livres (alrtp, IV: 464).

In Contre Sainte-Beuve the reader also learns that looking back on past memories of reading conjures up more than the content. It includes

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‘l’image des lieux et des jours’, when the reading took place, as well as the experience of deep joy. Thus reading can be seen as a journey, which encapsulates, like the involuntary memory, and the church of Combray, a fourth dimension (Watt: 152). In ‘Combray’, the reader at the beginning of À la recherche also shares the experience of the narrator, who for a short time, loses his identity, as well as where he is situated in time and space. Thus sleep, as well as being engrossed in reading, affects our reactions to outside sensory stimuli. Watt discusses the uncertainty the reader experiences in the interpretation of such a modernist work, which makes much greater demands on the reader (23). Reading also allows us to move beyond the surface of objects, which occurs because of the ‘mince liséré’ of our perception, which is an obstacle to discovering ‘la vraie vie’ in the real world (alrtp, I: 83). The possible dangers of reading are also pointed out, for example, in Sur la lecture: ‘La lecture est au seuil de la vie spirituelle; elle peut nous y introduire: elle ne la constitue pas’ (51). Jean Santeuil also contains the hero’s ideas about the material he reads and the form in which it is presented. Jean, like the two friends in the preface who read C.’s work, enjoys it when the writer interrupts the story to give his opinion on something which enables him to see the same thing through the author’s eyes: Car un écrivain que nous adorons devient pour nous comme une sorte d’oracle que nous aimerions à consulter sur toute chose, et chaque fois qu’il prend la parole pour donner ainsi un avis, exprimer une idée générale, parler, lui, de cet Homère, de ces dieux que nous connaissons, nous sommes ravis, nous écoutons bouche bée la maxime qu’il lui plaît laisser tomber, désolés qu’elle soit si peu longue ( js: 314).

This idea also reappears in ‘Combray’. This interest is generated by the fact that each individual has a unique experience of the world and the idea that a writer must have the most interesting and knowledgeable point of view. The hero of ‘Combray’ likewise enjoys above all the disquisitions of Bergotte on, for example, Racine, forests and Notre Dame, which interrupt the story, but provide him with an insight into the writer’s thinking on a wide range of topics.

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In the opening pages of À la recherche, the hero, while sleeping, dreams that he is one of the characters in the book. Thus, it can be seen that reading can appear to change the identity of the reader and also transport the reader to other realms (43–7). In cahier 28, the hero is transported away from his immediate environment and dreams of future projects such as boat trips and travelling: Et comme je lisais un livre, comme je remettais à un autre, à un écrivain, de prendre ma vie et ma pensée en main, de me donner les plus grands buts sans que j’aie d’effort à faire, je connaissais le repos le plus profond qui soit. La nature et la saison m’étaient perpétuellement suggérées par la chaleur, par le clair-obscur, sans que j’aie à les percevoir. Elle rendait possibles d’agréables projets ‘de’ canotage qui sans que j’y pensasse, sans que je prisse la peine de les former, m’effleuraient tandis que je lisais, mêlant aux mille désirs ‘de’ voyage et d’action que me donnait la lecture du livre, d’autres désirs presque aussi doux de promenades et de plaisirs …

Watt sums up this idea, using a scene of the hero reading in the aunt’s garden in ‘Combray’, as follows:  ‘The narrator’s experience of the bells and the sky … is as much a part of his reading experience as the book itself ’ (40). The content of a book can be so engrossing that the hero is content to allow a book to enable him to enjoy the outside world, and even leisure pursuits, with no physical effort on his part being involved. This episode again illustrates this movement between becoming involved in reading and being aware of the outside world. In addition, on these occasions the ‘dedans’ and the ‘dehors’ can also merge forming one very rich experience (Watt: 40). Finally, it shows the hero’s laziness which prevents him from using his vivid impressions of nature to discover his vocation as a writer. While reading in his bedroom on a summer’s day, the hero in cahier 14 is even more aware of the weather outside than if he were there, because the conditions in his room, in particular the sounds which penetrate this space, evoke the outside conditions very vividly. Thus reading can also heighten the senses, so that the hero reading in his bedroom, with the blinds almost shut, is very aware of the summer day outside due to what he hears and smells (Watt: 40). The hero therefore learns that our

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limited indirect impressions of a hot day, when we are made aware of it when inside, can be more vivid than when we experience it from outside and while reading: [É]‌tendu sur mon lit s’il faisait trop chaud pour sortir avant que le soleil eût un peu baissé, les volets et les rideaux presque fermés et ne laissant entrer de jour que ce qu’il fallait pour lire, la splendeur du jour ne m’était rendu sensible, si c’était un jeudi, que par la sonorité des coups frappés par l’emballeur … Mais si c’était un dimanche, l’emballeur, même ma tante étant éveillée, ne travaillait pas, c’étaient les mouches qui faisaient goûter à mon imagination la joie d’un après-midi trop brûlant pour que mon corps pût les affronter directement, en exécutant autour de moi les concerts où elles font entendre comme la musique de chambre de l’été (alrtp, I: 82).

In cahier 29, the hero is seen to admire the writer Bergotte. In the final version the hero is much influenced by his friend Bloch who recommends Bergotte, a fictional writer, to him. In cahier 14 (fos 50v, 51r, 52–54r and 53v), the hero is seen to appreciate Bergotte’s musical quality and his use of archaic expressions. This information is particularly important as each writer puts across, in his work, his own unique viewpoint, using his own style (ALRTP: 94). In the final version, the hero again admires Bergotte’s style – particularly its musicality, the archaic expressions the writer uses and his images (ALRTP, I: 93). This emphasis indicates the importance style will assume in À la recherche, which could only be written when Proust, the implied narrator, finally finds a very new way of presenting material which has appeared several times already in previous works. In the final novel, Proust/ the narrator uses long sentences which also often acquire a musical quality. Thus, he seeks to express the richness and complexity of his ideas, also seeking a way to define an aspect of the complex and elusive real world. The difficulty is seen when the child in ‘Combray’ watches the story of Golo, with the use of a magic lantern, and the reader understands how difficult it is for this rudimentary ‘film’ to project itself onto reality: ‘Le corps de Golo … s’arrangeait de tout obstacle matériel …, en le prenant comme ossature et en se le rendant intérieur, fût-ce le bouton de la porte sur lequel [il] s’adapait aussitôt …’ (103).

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In cahier 14 (which Proust has crossed out) he comments on the interest of Bergotte’s apostrophes, or comments strictly outside the main narrative, and particularly the style in which the ideas are expressed: Mais par moments – les moments trop rares, que j’aimais le mieux – les moments divins, il semblait avoir conscience que ce ‘que’ son lecteur attendait de lui, c’était ce chant si original, et alors il s’y laissait aller; il interrompait franchement son récit et dans une sorte d’invocation, d’apostrophe, il laissait un libre cours à son inspiration mélodieuse, il exhalait un véritable cantique. En même temps que cette disposition à chanter hors du propos, j’avais remarqué chez lui une sorte d’affection pour certaines expressions assez peu usuelles, presque archaïques. Et elles devaient avoir pour lui quelque vertu musicale. Car il était bien rare que dans les pages où elles se rencontraient avec un peu d’abondance, la phrase ne commençat à se gonfler, à s’enrichir de développements commandés par le besoin de l’harmonie et du rythme, devenir parfois une cantilène.

This use of long sentences differs from that of a nineteenth-century writer, such as Balzac, who seeks above all, to convey, by numerous details, the solidity of the world he creates. In Proust they are used to evoke for the reader the complex impressions experienced by the hero and their musicality can suggest a joyous experience. Jean’s mother also tries to interest the hero in descriptions and experiences of everyday, banal objects, which he sees and hears around him, such as the sunlight, the apple blossom and the sound of church bells. It is only later in life that Jean is able to appreciate these simple, everyday experiences and learns to read, for example, people and places on a metaphorical level. Dix ans plus tard, sa vie ayant bien changé, un jour que dans une rue du faubourg Saint-Germain il se sentait vaguement attristé par le regret indistinct des années perdues de son irrévocable enfance et de sa vie au grand air, il sentit tout à coup un son insouciant et léger frapper à la cloison de son oreille. Un autre suivit, puis un autre, et un à un les battements doux et profonds des cloches d’une chapelle lointaine arrivèrent à lui, montés [sur] la brise ( js: 247–8).

Thomas Baldwin, in his book on the material object in Proust’s work, has pointed out the considerable transformation in relation to

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the uses of such objects between the writing of Les Plaisirs et les jours and in Jean Santeuil, where there are signs that Proust had begun to conceive of these objects in terms of ‘a philosophical drama’.9 Therefore, some objects can be used metaphorically and take on layers of meaning, becoming symbolic. Thus, the author of this genetic study would contend that this change is even more marked in ‘Combray’, where the narrator’s past, in the form of very vivid memories, emerges out of a simple cup of tea. In addition, in cahier 14 the hero states how well Bergotte speaks of the simple things in life, like a pair of slippers and stew. Baldwin also notes the musicality of the languages often used to describe such objects: Bergotte parlait de sa cuisinière ou de ses pantoufles avec les mêmes belles expressions qu’on n’emploie d’habitude que pour le langage cérémonieux des vérités philosophiques et entraînant avec eux le déclenchement de sa musique intérieure, cela lui faisait en l’honneur de ses pantoufles ou de son ragoût des sortes de psaumes. … Mais le plus délicieux est qu’il sentait que ce noble langage appliqué à des choses vulgaires comportait une sorte de comique dont il n’était pas dupe et qu’il recherchait et cultivait avec un raffinement exquis …

This passage is an early example of the use of comedy, often in the form of irony, which is frequently used by the narrator in ‘Combray’, as it allows him to criticise the actions and ideas of characters, often his younger self, in an indirect way. This style fits well into this modernist novel, in which the meaning is often conveyed in an indirect way. It also shows how the writer transposes material from the actual world when he includes it in a book. Proust, the implied narrator, also examines the different attitudes to reading in relation to social class. He shows how Balzac’s work, greatly respected by Proust, is seen by the aristocracy and the middle classes, represented in ‘Combray’ by the Guermantes family and Swann, respectively.

9

Thomas Baldwin, The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), 63.

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These social classes are in turn linked to the ‘deux côtés’, the two different walks which the family take, while staying in Combray, and which in various ways take on a figurative meaning. As Sheila Stern points out, the aristocracy judge Balzac in terms of social class and see him as ‘attempting to depict social circles into which he was never admitted’.10 This is a form of literary criticism, which seeks to access a writer’s work, by knowing details of his life, an idea with which Proust, in Contre Sainte-Beuve, strongly disagrees (24). Swann, a member of the middle class, who is accepted in the salons of the aristocracy, and who does have a genuine interest in literature and paintings, refuses in public to make serious comments on art. He therefore typifies a dilettante, or a man who has taken the wrong path in life and failed to use his artistic talents. These groups are compared with the attitude of the child’s mother and grandmother to books. They genuinely appreciate the classics of French literature and seek to introduce the child to such fulfilling reading. It is the grandmother who chooses George Sand’s novels for the hero’s birthday in ‘Combray’: The narrator’s family … come much closer to that submissive attitude to their reading, unclouded by their own preoccupations … His grandmother … esteems purity of language and the refined observation of human motives above everything else (Stern: 26).

This is shown clearly in À la recherche. Even family members, however, can be seen to fail to appreciate the act of reading at a deeper level, heightened, as mentioned, by present experience and the environment. It can also allow the reader to view the world through the eyes of a particular author and thus transcend his/her own narrow view of the world. Thus, various themes related to reading can be seen throughout the development of ‘Combray’. Literature can also show an even greater interchange between the world of the book and the real world, the one influencing the other. Thus as Wetherill points out, the hero’s reading of Bergotte influences his perception of Gilberte (25). The child/hero fails to read, or understand, on their first meeting, Gilberte’s lewd gesture, which, for the young boy, signals scorn for his inferior family. In addition, how a person reads a 10

Sheila Stern, Marcel Proust:  Swann’s Way, Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1989).

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work of literature can reveal an unexpected relationship between the reader and the narratee. This, as Wetherill has pointed out, occurs when the mother reads François le Champi to her son, missing out all sexual references, and thus, as pointed out above, offering ‘a covert “reading” of Marcel’s relationship with his mother’ (25). In addition, art, such as literature, can have an influence on and be an aid to comprehension of a novel such as À la recherche: ‘Meaning comes from the ways in which [À la recherche], as a work of art, communicates with, and is illuminated by, other works’ (Wetherill: 25). So a reference to Balzac often shows the wide divergence between the two styles of the writers. Reading is also a means of acquiring an education at the level of spiritual and noble values, which the hero’s mother in ‘Combray’ believes are partially to be found in the novels of George Sand. This partly explains the mother’s wish, in both Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’, for her son to learn to enjoy, mainly the French classics. For the grandmother the work of Sand epitomises these noble values (ALRTP, I: 41–2). However, too often the hero’s other activities, including, later in life, his contacts with high society, lead him away from his literary pursuits, both as a reader and as a writer. However, reading cannot be a substitute for what we learn in everyday life. The narrator believes art is a medium, which leads the reader to a deeper reality, that of ‘la vraie vie’. However, not many people reach this level of knowledge of reality for various reasons, such as laziness or other activities, which distract us. There are also very different levels of reading. In addition to reading books at a literal level to discover, amongst other things, ideas and events, it is also possible, and indeed necessary, to read or interpret people’s characters and actions or the meaning of an event in the real world. Seen by people in different social classes, Swann appears to be a completely different character. The hero’s aunts assume that, as a child from a middle-class family, he will only frequent people in the same class, whereas, in fact, he is well known in aristocratic circles (alrtp, I: 15). The aunts thus expect him, during a visit, to wait on them and to bring small gifts. As Wetherill expresses it, they see Swann ‘through the prism of their social beliefs and experiences’. Errors in reading on this level can lead to misunderstandings for the hero and can also lead to uncertainty, for example, in the hero’s attempts to find

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the real and absolute truth about the world and the people he encounters (Watt: 8). The hero, towards the end of the novel, becomes very aware of ‘la difficulté de présenter une image fixe aussi bien d’un caractère que des sociétés et des passions’ (alrtp, III: 327). Thus, the reader must work hard to interpret the text and discover its meaning, or his/her interpretation of it, which Proust describes as a translation of the work. Therefore, the reading experience can, for the reader, lead, on this metaphorical level, to writing. On a literal level, the hero will finally undertake the writing of a novel. In ‘Combray’, Proust, the implied narrator, has moved much further away from the canonical texts, which had so clearly influenced him in earlier works, in both subject matter and the style of writing. The episode at Montjouvain, between two lesbians, was found to be shocking, by many contemporary readers, because of the very clear portrayal of the sexual orientation of Mlle Vinteuil and her friend and, in addition, the mockery by the daughter of her deceased father (alrtp, I: 157–63). In style, Proust has also moved well beyond the writing technique used in preceding works, not only in a variety of genres, but also in the unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil. This work is still recognisable as a nineteenth-century novel, mainly because of its fairly clear chronological order and the loosely autobiographical genre. However, in ‘Combray’ the helpful all-knowing omniscient narrator has disappeared. The reader must mainly take up this role. The opening pages and the episodes in ‘Combray’, up to the first description of the village of Combray, aim to introduce the reader to a very different experience with episodes apparently juxtaposed together and making sense according to the overall aim of Proust, the implied author, which may not at first be apparent. However, parts of À la recherche teach the reader how to read the work. This technique of intertextuality is much in evidence in the nouveau roman. The reader must learn to deal with a much more fragmented style and episodes juxtaposed together to indicate their meaning.11 Often meaning is better understood retrospectively, so that the importance of objects such as the book, which slips from the narrator’s hands as he falls 11 See Maureen Ramsden’s forthcoming article, entitled:  ‘Proust’s Kaleidoscopic Vision’.

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asleep, at the beginning of ‘Combray’, foretells the importance of this reading activity, as well as the discovery of his literary vocation, in the final novel. The narrator’s apparent inability, in the opening pages of ‘Combray’, to place himself in terms of age and place, show how subjective the sense of time and space are. As was seen in the chapter on the role of tante Léonie, her importance as an illustration of a person living a life of little achievement (her aesthetic sense shown by her interest in patterns on the plates she uses), is highlighted by the episodes relating to the hero. His daily life is filled with family walks, reading and an appreciation of the beauty of nature, and especially the hawthorn flowers. Thus, in ‘Combray’, there is an emphasis, by means of the juxtaposition of episodes relating to the life style of tante Léonie and the hero, on the fruitless life the hero must avoid. It is also clear that reading, in its much wider sense, must form an important part of our lives, if we are to interpret its complex reality and make constant necessary revisions in our perception of character. An example would be the hero’s confusion, when the kindly and helpful maid, Françoise, appears to take pleasure in killing a chicken for the family’s meal. We never have any certainty about external reality and this is shown clearly in ‘Combray’. Hence, the comparison, which is often made, between this great novel and other modernist works, including those of Joyce and Eliot. However, more importantly, as noted by Watt, reading and writing in Proust’s work can be seen, not as separate activities, but as a continuum, because the act of reading involves not simply a transcription of the hero’s deepest experiences, but in reality a translation of them, to use Proust’s term (Watt: 87). Therefore, the act of reading becomes a need both to discover the meaning of these very innovative ideas and then to convey them, in appropriate language and style, to other readers. In conclusion, this chapter has shown clearly Proust, the narrator’s, ideas on the importance and complexity of reading, the value of reading literature to develop an aesthetic sense and moral values and how the reader must engage with these very different texts. The avant-texte also reveals how early these important ideas on reading, writing and literature appear in ‘Journées de lecture’, Sur la lecture, Contre Sainte-Beuve and especially Jean Santeuil, where the most important and most numerous ideas in these

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areas appear. They are shown as part of the narrative in the prologue, and as episodes in the main narrative of Jean Santeuil, so they are easily accessible to the reader. Some of these ideas are taken up again in Contre SainteBeuve, as well as a few new ones, and there are lengthy comments against studying the life of an author, in order to understand his works. However, the main contribution in this work is one of technique. The narrator’s testing of different openings for the final novel, for example, has resulted in the work moving closer to the final novel, with its lack of precision in time and space, so the reader must act as a translator of this new approach. Therefore, despite the richness of the ideas on reading, writing and literature, in the avant-texte, and especially in Jean Santeuil, the final novel À la recherche still moves further, in both material and techniques, to become a modernist novel and a challenging work for the reader.

Chapter 6

The ‘deux côtés’ of Combray in Their Genetic Context

… mon père parlait toujours du côté de Méséglise comme de la plus belle vue de la plaine qu’il connût et du côté de Guermantes comme du type de paysage de rivière … (ALRTP, I: 133). Le côté de Méséglise avec ses lilas, ses aubépines, ses bleuets, ses coquelicots, ses pommiers, le côté de Guermantes avec sa rivière à têtards, ses nymphéas et ses boutons d’or, ont constitué à tout jamais pour moi la figure des pays où j’aimerais vivre … (ALRTP, I: 182). La haie [des aubépines] formait comme une suite de chapelles qui disparaissaient sous la jonchée de leurs fleurs amoncelées en reposoir … (ALRTP, I: 136).

Setting the study in context The depiction of the ‘deux côtés’ of Combray, the two walks which the family of the hero of À la recherche du temps perdu take on the Méséglise or Swann side of Combray and on the Guermantes side, receives detailed attention at the end of the ‘Combray’ section of Du côté de chez Swann. As Howard Moss points out: ‘The word “way” in English, like the phrase “du côté” in French, has a double meaning. It means, on the one hand, a direction, progression, or journey; and on the other, an aspect, manner, or style. “Swann’s way” [or the “Méséglise way”] and the “Guermantes way” are pilgrimages and places; they are also modes of living …’1 This observation points to the rich suggestive power in meaning of the ‘deux côtés’. 1

Howard Moss, The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Remembrance of Things Past (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 17.

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The purpose of this chapter is to examine to what extent these geographical features, and their deeper significance in relation to ideas and to style in Proust’s novel, developed through various manuscripts, and particularly Jean Santeuil, to their final form in ‘Combray’. Several researchers have written about the ‘deux côtés’. Some, such as Claudine Quémar, ‘Sur deux versions anciennes des “côtés” de Combray’, have written about its genetic dimension while others have written about the finished novel, such as Guy Renard, ‘Les “Deux Côtés” de Guermantes’ and Akio Ushiba, ‘À propos des “deux côtés” d’À la recherche du temps perdu’.2 In this present chapter, in order to show the episode in its genetic context, as fully as possible, there will be an examination of manuscripts IV and XII, of the time of Contre Sainte-Beuve, and beyond, analysed by Quémar. Though a different approach will be used here, much is still owed to Quémar.3 However, what this present chapter primarily aims to bring to the debate is the extent to which different elements of the ‘deux côtés’ appear in Jean Santeuil – a very important avant-texte in relation to À la recherche. Both the overview of the work already published on the genesis of the ‘deux côtés’ and the new material from Jean Santeuil will, it is hoped, add insights into their importance in relation to ideas in ‘Combray’, the process of their development and, in addition, add further information about the novel’s form.

The genetic roots of ‘Jean Santeuil’ The aspects of the two ways mentioned above appear in a fairly rudimentary form in Jean Santeuil, in the section entitled [À illiers], and the village where the family go to stay with their relatives, which is variously

2 3

Claudine Quémar (1975, 159–282). Articles on the completed novel include Guy Renard (1993, 67–85) and Akio Ushiba (1978, 78–98). Cahier IV, 161–77. Cahier XII, 177–210.

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called Éteuilles, or Sargeau. It must be remembered, however, as Pierre Clarac points out, in his introduction to Jean Santeuil, that many of the texts relating to the unfinished novel are of different ages and separated from one another. They are also often unfinished and fragmentary. In addition, this unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil, is a literary autobiography, rather than a work about the discovery of a literary vocation, as in the case of À la recherche, and the discoveries made by the hero on life and the aesthetic are on a different level. Finally, the two walks in Jean Santeuil are less distinct from one another, though elements of both can be discovered. Thus, the lessons of the walks are fewer and less clear in Proust’s first novel. The fairly limited space of the garden is an important factor in Jean Santeuil, as in ‘Combray’. In the former there is the small garden near the aunt’s house and a family park or garden known as the ‘Cotte’, which is some distance from the house and which will develop in later manuscripts into Swann’s park, ‘le côté de chez Swann’. The description of the Cotte is to be found in most detail in the fragments entitled [le jardin du grand-pÈre santeuil] (js: 322), [le ‘parc’] (JS: 284) and [dÉpart pour la promenade] (JS: 327).4 Other important gardens are those of the villagers, such as that of the notary and the priest, which share some of the characteristics of the future ‘parc Swann’, as, for example, the presence of hawthorn flowers and the pond in the notary’s garden and the lilacs in that of the curé. Another characteristic, related to the situation of the future Swann’s park, is that of the plains and the isolated poppies, which in Jean Santeuil, lie outside the wall of the Cotte. This is seen in [promenade d’aprÈs-midi, en juin] (JS: 300). Thus several important features of the ‘deux côtés’ in the final novel appear in Jean Santeuil. On the whole, the flowers which appear in the Cotte and in the gardens of the villagers are similar to those found in and near Swann’s park, in the final version. However, they are simply noted individually, as the family enjoy their garden or that of others, even though the flowers are almost the same as those found, in different places, and with much greater significance 4

Other references to ‘Le parc’ are to be found in [lilas et aubépines] (280), [l’Épine rose] (330), [lilas et pommiers] (278), [le ‘parc’ au petit jour] (295) and [matinÉe au jardin] (297).

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in ‘Combray’. In the fragment entitled [lilas et aubépines] the same flowers, lilacs and hawthorn, as well as apple blossom, are found in the Cotte and lilacs are also found in the village gardens. The hawthorn blossom in the Cotte appear to be positioned on an altar like the hawthorn in ‘Combray’: Tout le long du parc les fines chapelles dentelées que sont les haies disparaissaient, comme il convient au mois de Marie, sous les guirlandes roses des épines roses, sous les branches d’aubépine blanche, mêlées comme dans une offrande tressée avec goût avec les fleurs des églantiers ( js: 335).

This metaphor is not surprising given it is May and hawthorn blossom is commonly found in church. It does not, as in ‘Combray’, have a wider meaning and does not build in meaning, so that it even takes on the role of structure in the novel, as the hawthorns reappear outside Gilberte’s garden in ‘Combray’, so prefiguring the hero’s first meeting with Gilberte.5 In the fragment [l’Épine rose], there are both pink and white hawthorns found en route to the park. Jean, like the hero of À la recherche, gives greater value to the pink flowers, and also likens the pink blossom to the colour of the cream cheese, in which he mixes strawberries: … Jean avait … élu l’épine rose, pour laquelle il avait un amour spécial …, et que, sitôt aperçue au fond d’un jardin ou le long d’une haie, il s’arrêtait à regarder et à désirer … Est-ce qu’avec cette aubépine et [cette] épine rose s’associa le souvenir de ce fromage à la crème blanche qui, un jour qu’il y avait écrasé des fraises, devint rose …. ( js: 331–2).

Jean does not meet any mysterious women on his walks, but the flowers themselves, as in the final version, are often personified. The flowers, for example, found in the gardens of the villagers, appear to greet the passer-by. Their perfume announces their presence like the lilacs on the Méséglise side in ‘Combray’: Il y avait peu de maisons qui ne logeassent alors dans leur jardinet … des lilas arborescents, qui quelquefois dépassaient en une seule flèche … le toit bas de la maison, d’autres fois …, dépassant le mur et se penchant sur la rue, [ils] venaient 5

See Maureen Ramsden’s forthcoming article in French Studies Bulletin, ‘Proust’s Metaphorical Vision: The Hero’s First Meeting with Gilberte Swann’.

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chercher de leur bonne odeur jusque sur le trottoir opposé le passant même qui ne les voyait pas, et le forçaient à lever la tête … ( js: 278).

In other cases, the flowers are again given animate qualities, and resemble beautiful women. Thus in [lilas et pommiers] the lilacs inside the Cotte are described as follows:  ‘Au-dessus du mur du pré [quelques lilas] inclinaient encore leur tête fine avec une grâce nonchalante, se laissant frôler par les feuilles au-dessus desquelles elles s’élevaient’ ( js:  280). Also inside the park, situated around the water, are the hawthorns. They are described as if they were ladies at a fête: ‘[Elles] apparaissaient [avec] leurs longs bras horizontaux, leurs mains fines et tendues, attachées, nouées d’innombrables pompons de fleurs roses …’ ( js: 280). It is here that Jean learns to identify the hawthorns which have such a central part to play in the final version. In [le camÉlia] (js: 333), Jean has a similar experience with the camellia flower, which takes on female attributes, but this flower does not reappear in ‘Combray’. In the fragment entitled [en canot] (js: 325) there is mention of the snowball flowers inside the Cotte, which are sometimes seen on the altar in the church, but this role is taken over by the hawthorn in the final version. However, unlike in À la recherche, the flowers are not associated with particular women in the text, such as Gilberte and the hawthorns at Tansonville. In addition, in Jean Santeuil, certain flowers, as in the final version, seem to offer a deeper meaning which the young Jean cannot yet comprehend. There appears to be hidden, deep within the pink and white apple blossom, a familiar presence belonging to some time in the past. This is reminiscent of the deeper meaning the hero/narrator of À la recherche seeks in the hawthorn blossom ‘du côté de Méséglise’. In the case of ‘Combray’, this flower is a sign of the hero’s still latent literary vocation, but in Jean Santeuil it simply shows the child’s developing aesthetic sense: Nous sentons qu’il ne faut pas nous arrêter au satin blanc de la fleur blanche, au vernis vert de la feuille verte; qu’il y a comme quelque chose dessous, notre plaisir est comme profond, nous sentons quelque chose qui s’agite au-dedans, que nous voudrions saisir et qui est bien doux ( js: 279).

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Other items associated with Swann’s daughter, the object of the hero’s ­obsession in the final version, when she is glimpsed by the hero in Swann’s park, also appear in Jean Santeuil. These include a pond, a fishing line and a spade. However, in Jean Santeuil they lack the deeper levels of meaning and close association with the loved one found in ‘Combray’. They are simply the tools of the children’s play. There is also a river which runs through the Cotte and recalls the river Vivonne in the final version. This river is simply used for fishing and is little more than a geographical feature. Jean is seen fishing in the river and his cousins are seen carrying their rods home on the way to lunch. These objects are thus no more than banal details of a literary autobiography. In terms of evidence of any distinction between a long and a short walk in Jean Santeuil, the walk to the family park most nearly resembles the short walk in ‘Combray’. In [dÉpart pour la promenade], the family passes through the village. The closeness of the park to the plains, which they reach through a door in the fence, recalls the park ‘du côté de chez Swann’. However, there is no clear reference to the separate doors which the family uses in ‘Combray’ to set off on the different walks. A longer walk is mentioned several times in Jean Santeuil, but it is far less clearly differentiated from the short walk than in the final version. In [le parc] Jean’s uncle and cousins take a long walk, though the direction is not specified. Jean does not join them, but stays reading in the Cotte. In [LE ‘PARC’ au petit jour], Jean goes for a long walk with his uncle. They go via the Cotte, associated with the Méséglise side, where the uncle gives directions to the gardener. They cross the river, which recalls the river Vivonne ‘du côté des Guermantes’ in ‘Combray’, and walk along by the river, named Le Loir in [le jardin du grand-pÈre santeuil] (js: 322). It is a hot day, as on the long walks at ‘Combray’, but there is the mention of Sargeau which, in later writings, is associated with Swann’s Way, so that once again there is confusion between the two walks and they are not clearly differentiated as in the final version. A long walk, which Jean takes with his parents, also takes place on a hot day – warm weather being associated with the Guermantes Way in ‘Combray’ (see [promenade d’aprÈs-midi, en juin]) (300). Jean’s mother lends him her parasol and they keep to the shade of the hedgerows.

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None of these domestic details are found in the final version. The long walk is preceded by the need to cross over a bridge as in ‘Combray’, but in Jean Santeuil the bridge spans the river of the Cotte, so that details of both ways are once again not clearly differentiated. As in the final version, however, the family has a picnic tea and then sees a rower. In ‘Combray’, the rower is only glimpsed lying in his boat, but in Jean Santeuil he is actually rowing. In the fragment called [en canot], the children row on the river at the Cotte. Thus, the allusion to rowing takes on less importance when it appears in the final version. It has not been included in the repeated metaphors acquired by other objects and activities between Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’. There is no mention of the water lilies found on the long walk in ‘Combray’, only the cherry blossom and some isolated poppies and an iris in the fields and some periwinkles near the river. The allusion to the poppies suggests the short walk found in ‘Combray’. Thus, although many of the elements of the two walks are found in Jean Santeuil, they are less well differentiated and developed and there are fewer lessons to be learned from them.

The roles of differentiation and development played by the ‘cahiers’ The cahiers IV and XII, which Quémar points out are the oldest manuscripts on the ‘deux côtés’, will be examined along similar lines to the material in Jean Santeuil, though much is obviously owed to the commentary of Quémar. The existence of two different ways, the ‘côté de Méséglise’ and the ‘côté de Villebon’ (also referred to as Garmantes, and even Guermantes, 29 r0, on one occasion), are announced in cahier IV (25r0). However, to what extent are these ways clearly differentiated from one another, what lessons do they offer the hero and how close are they to the final version? The differences between the two ways are very much apparent at some levels in cahier IV. The family, for example, takes different exits from the

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house, when setting off on a particular walk. They take the front door for Méséglise and the garden gate for Guermantes, as in the final version (26r0). However, there is also normally good weather on both walks, whereas in ‘Combray’ it is usually bad weather when the family walks the Méséglise Way. Many more details are given of the long Guermantes walk in this cahier and few of the Méséglise Way, which is a short walk. The Cotte will disappear in the final version, subsumed by Swann’s park. In addition, unlike in ‘Combray’, Swann’s park appears on the Guermantes side. The village gardens are hardly mentioned. The family often goes to the family park, seen as a short walk, and sometimes they open the gate there and take a further walk, on the plains on the Méséglise side. Thus, the situation regarding the different gardens in the text has changed somewhat at this point in the avant-texte. However, there is much less emphasis on the flowers and their appearance and effect on the hero, than in Jean Santeuil and the final version. We are however told that on the Méséglise walk the child loves the cornflowers, poppies and apple blossom which have become associated with this walk: ‘C’est du côté de Méséglise que j’ai pour la première fois aimé les bleuets et les coquelicots, les fleurs de pommiers, et qu’il y a pour moi entre ces fleurs-là et toutes les fleurs des fleuristes, la même différence qu’entre le côté de Méséglise et un joli paysage étranger’ (40r0). There is only a short mention of the perfume of the lilacs, unlike in the final version (26r0). There is also a brief mention of the hero trying to discover some mystery, which seems to be hidden in the depths of the apple blossom, but at this stage in the text the hero fails to learn the lesson (41r0). On the Guermantes side, the walk is along the river Loir, the path being reached by a bridge, where a fisherman sits near a plum tree (28r0). Only the latter does not appear in the final version. However, plains are also mentioned on this side which recall the Méséglise Way. The river walk takes on further characteristics of the ‘Combray’ version. The hero sees bottles in the river left to catch fish (29r0) and the family throws bread into the river causing numerous fish to appear on the surface (30r0). On the Guermantes Way, the child also discovers the rather unimpressive source of the Loir which is another lesson in disillusionment (35r0).

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There is still a lack of clarity in the flowers found on each way. On the long walk, the child sees the water lily, which is caught in the current of the river (32r0). He also sees what appear to be borders of water lilies, as in a garden, and an area of pink and white lilies. These lilies belong to the Guermantes side, when seen in ‘Combray’. The water lily has not yet become associated with obsessional behaviour as in ‘Combray’. There is a brief mention of some hawthorn, which will, in later manuscripts, have an important role on the ‘Méséglise Way’, taking on the role of the apple blossom. There is also the smell of lilacs which announce Swann’s park, the lilacs being described as ladies at a garden party – another personification of the flowers as seen in Jean Santeuil (30r0). This park with its lilacs and its hawthorn is finally moved to the Méséglise side in later versions. Thus, the ‘Guermantes Way’ has some characteristics of the final version of the ‘deux côtés’. Again, there is no link with art as in À la recherche. In cahier IV the child meets a woman and a young girl, but both on the Guermantes Way. There is the blond comtesse de Guermantes in her carriage, who seems to disdain him, and thus engenders in the child feelings of love for her (35r0). The child also sees Swann’s daughter in the park and falls in love with her, because in this version, she appears to welcome him (31r0). These incidents are brought together in ‘Combray’. The reaction of the woman and child to the hero is the opposite in the final version, but nevertheless points to the lessons in love which the hero learns in ‘Combray’: C’est sur le petit chemin qui mène à la route de Garmantes et que j’ai appris depuis conduit à Méséglise que j’ai appris que c’est assez pour faire naître l’amour qu’une femme fixe son regard sur nous et que nous sentions qu’elle pourrait nous appartenir. Mais c’est sur la route de Garmantes que j’ai appris que c’est assez pour faire naître l’amour qu’une femme détourne son regard de nous et que nous sentions qu’elle ne pourrait pas nous appartenir (43r0).

This discovery is confined to the Swann side, in the final version, where objects and actions take on a more metaphorical meaning. None of the objects associated with Swann’s daughter in the final version, and seen in a different context in Jean Santeuil, are visible in cahier IV. The child wears a pink hood. This disappears in ‘Combray’, but the

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colour remains associated with Swann’s daughter who, in the final text, has red hair and freckles (31r0). Thus, although there are clearly two walks in cahier IV, with their different characteristics, they do not possess the fuller contrasting features of the final version, which underlines the very different lessons learned by the hero. In cahier XII there are once again references to the two distinct ways of Guermantes (now spelt with an ‘e’) and Méséglise and to the fact that the family uses different exits from the house to reach them (16r0). Now, however, the walks are taken in different weather conditions – uncertain weather in the case of Méséglise and fine weather in the case of Guermantes (18r0). All these elements might seem to suggest that there is a clear differentiation in the characteristics of the different ways. In general, the elements are rearranged once again with changes between cahier IV and cahier XII, and again within cahier XII itself and the result is closer to the final version in ‘Combray’. The only garden now mentioned is that of Swann and it is placed on the side of Méséglise (17 v0). Once again, at the estate, the hero’s family is greeted by the smell of the lilacs (17 v0 and 20 r0) and later by the hawthorn blossom (21r0). The lilacs are again personified and appear as graceful women. There is a much more detailed description of the hawthorns which are beginning to assume greater importance. However, there is no religious connotation relating to the hawthorn blossom in this cahier. The hero is again aware of a deeper meaning in the beauty of the apple blossom (24v0), which still takes the place of the hawthorn of the final version, in this ­respect. The hero abandons the effort to discover the secret of the apple blossom and fails to learn this lesson contained in the ‘Méséglise Way’. The plains and especially the flowers, now associated with this way, are present – the poppies, the lilacs (unusually some violet-coloured clover), the apple blossom, the hawthorn and some cornflowers, which give rise to shouts of joy from the hero, appreciating their beauty (24r0). However, the flowers are not given the same respective importance, or placed in the same area as in the final version. Few of the objects associated with Swann’s daughter, at the first meeting, such as the spade and the pond, are present in this version and she once again wears a pink hood and her eyes are described as blue and are a similar colour when she appears in ‘Combray’. The

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flowers in the park, the lobelia, periwinkle and forget-me-nots, also seem to enhance her beauty as in the final version (21r0). The elements in the final version which occur at the beginning of the long walk are present in cahier XII on the Méséglise side. Thus, the family passes over the bridge and sees the fisherman and the plum tree, a plant which is not present in ‘Combray’ (18r0). The family walks along the banks of the river, now called the Vivette or Vivonne, and a new element is introduced as the hero sees the buttercups which remind him of the taste of eggs, showing the importance of colours in both novels, but especially À la recherche (18v0, 19v0). These flowers are associated with the Guermantes family in the final version, but do not possess the gustative qualities which the pink hawthorn has for the child. Once again the family sees bottles in the river and throws in bread to attract the fish (19 r0, 20 r0). However, there is no reference to a possible literary vocation for the hero in this cahier, which is an important element of the ‘Guermantes Way’ in the final version. Later in the cahier this part of the text, beginning with the walk over the bridge, is transferred and linked up with familiar characteristics of the long walk on the Guermantes side, such as the water lily caught in the current (27 r0, 28 r0), the groups of water lilies which appear to form flower borders (29 r0, 30 r0) and also a reference to some rowers (310r). The child even goes rowing with his cousin (31r0, 32 r0). This episode, with the introduction of a restaurant on the Guermantes side (31r0), disappears in ‘Combray’. The hero once again learns some lessons on the ‘deux côtés’, which are an important part of this avant-texte and of the future ‘Combray’. He suffers the loss of his idealistic imaginings of the source of the Vivonne (32v0, 33r0, 34r0). He also learns some lessons in love, being attracted by the countess who seems to disdain him (34r0) and Swann’s daughter who seems to welcome him – a change from cahier IV (22r0, 21v0). In addition, he learns of the accessibility of the two ways. A peasant tells him later in life that Guermantes is easily reached by car (17r0) and that it is possible to reach Guermantes by way of Méséglise (18 r0). Further illuminations take place regarding the ‘deux côtés’ in Le Temps retrouvé. For example, the hero’s experiences on meeting the comtesse de Guermantes and Swann’s daughter, prepare the hero for his experiences in society in later life (alrtp, IV: 6–7); but this is outside the scope of this study. Thus, although some

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details concerning the ‘deux côtés’ have been lost in this version and some new ones, later to disappear, have been introduced, their main characteristics and the differences between the two ways, which act as lessons for the hero, are close to the final version. The depiction of the ‘deux côtés’ and the two different walks, taken by the family, receive detailed attention at the end of the ‘Combray’ section of Du côté de chez Swann (alrtp, I: 132–83).6 They constitute for the hero a psychological and aesthetic geography, and the lessons he learns from them, on the way to the discovery of his literary vocation, can be seen to a much larger extent at this point in the novel. Further lessons resulting from these walks are revealed in Le Temps retrouvé and at the end of Albertine disparue, on the level of the series of oppositions between them and their metaphorical meanings: … Gilberte me dit: ‘Si vous voulez, nous pourrons tout de même sortir un aprèsmidi et nous pourrons alors aller à Guermantes, en prenant par Méséglise, c’est la plus jolie façon,’ phrase qui en bouleversant toutes les idées de mon enfance m’apprit que les deux côtés n’étaient pas aussi inconciliables que j’avais cru (alrtp, IV: 268).

In ‘Combray’ itself, the different and very distinct geographical features of the two walks are given and the different weather conditions which seem to exist on each way. Guermantes, with its river walk, is associated with fine weather, whereas Méséglise, with its plains and Swann’s park, is associated with bad weather. Both the walks give the hero a lesson in love – that of the attraction of a woman who appears to show rejection, as does Swann’s daughter, Gilberte, on the Méséglise Way, and that of a woman who smiles and seems to show encouragement as does Mme de Guermantes, though this incident, in the final version, actually takes place in the church of Combray. The two ways also represent different social milieux – the middle class Swann family and the aristocratic Guermantes clan. This points to the different experiences in society which the hero will later undergo. The reader, however, must work harder to interpret the full meaning of the walks for the hero. 6

The final description of the ‘deux côtés’ is to be found in À la recherche, 1 (1987), 132–83.

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An equally important lesson is related to the hero’s sense of a literary vocation. He despairs when passing along the Guermantes Way of discovering any subject matter for his book. On both ways, he experiences deep impressions of objects – mainly flowers – which seem to offer a deeper meaning, which at that point in his life eludes him. For example, this is especially true in the case of the hawthorn hedge on the Méséglise side, though in earlier manuscripts and in Jean Santeuil, the hero is conscious of the aesthetic value of these and other flowers, such as the lilacs and the apple blossom. These deep impressions, recaptured by memory, will later form an important part of the hero’s literary work. On the Guermantes side he is moved by the vivid experience of a changing point of view as, travelling in the doctor’s buggy, he sees the three steeples, two belonging to the Martinville church and one to that of Vieuxvicq, which seem to move in relation to his own movement and appear to dance before him. This leads to the production of his first literary composition – a short description of his experience of the church steeples, when they appear to move, as the hero travels away from them, in the doctor’s carriage, in ‘Combray’. This shows the hero the relative nature of space, which is linked to point of view (alrtp, I: 177–8). As seen above, an important element of the hero’s experiences is that of a garden – the family garden of the house belonging to tante Léonie, the park belonging to Swann and the unseen ideal of that of the Guermantes chateau.7 It is in Swann’s park that the hero first sees Gilberte. The objects around her, a pond, a fishing rod and a spade, relate to gardening and leisure pursuits. The flowers in the vicinity, the stock, jasmines, pansies and verbena, become associated with her image and underline her blue eyes, strawberry blond hair and red freckles. In fact, flowers, in ‘Combray’, are often associated with women and described in female terms. There is an erotic dimension to the scene (alrtp, I: 136–9). Each way is also associated with different flowers. On ‘Swann’s Way’, it is principally the hawthorns, the lilacs and the apple blossom. On the ‘Guermantes side’, it is the violets, the buttercups and the water lilies, which seem to form a flower border as in a garden. Both ways are ideal spaces which, once lost through time, change 7

The importance of the garden in Proust has been signalled by Moss, c­ hapter  2 (1962).

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and progress, remain only in the narrator’s memory. Many of these lessons learned by the clear differences in characteristics of the ‘deux côtés’ and their two very distinct directions.

In conclusion At first reading, the description of the two walks taken by Jean and his family in Jean Santeuil might seem to bear little resemblance to those of the final version. However, numerous elements of the walks are present, if arranged in different forms and places in this literary autobiography. Gardens, flowers and the river play an important, if rudimentary role, in the development of the significance of the two walks. Thus, Jean Santeuil shows itself to be an important avant-texte for À la recherche. Cahier IV is already at a much more advanced stage in relation to the final version, as the existence of two fairly distinct walks, with their different characteristics, is already in evidence. Proust/the narrator also begins to develop the lessons that are to be learned on the ‘deux côtés’. Some overlap between the two walks is present in cahier XII, but this situation is resolved in the latter part of the cahier and details are added so that the final form of this text is very close to that of the final version. This development of À la recherche has involved the move away from the autobiographical work, Jean Santeuil, in which flowers appear in gardens and fields and are presented simply as a part of the village and its landscape. In the final novel, their meaning is more important, but presented in an indirect way, as in the very obvious contrast between the landscapes of the two walks. Even more important is their representation through the different scenery of two different social classes, the wealthy, but middle class, Swann family and the aristocratic Guermantes family, a circle into which the hero will later aspire to enter. It is also a journey in aesthetics, so the work is underpinned by the discovery of a literary vocation, to which the walks and landscape have contributed in À la recherche du temps perdu. Finally the technique and the wider vision changes with the movement of the material, so that the flowers, which had in the first cahiers simply

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formed part of the scenery, begin to come together, first in a rudimentary form, then in a more obvious and developed form, so that the two separate walks are clearly differentiated. This in turn means that the reader must discover the final significance of both the walks and the scenery, which in Combray, form two parts of a whole. In addition, later experience, using the latest technology, in this case a car, will demonstrate that our view of the real world depends on our personal vision, so that the two separate walks can form a whole circle, when seen in one afternoon from an automobile. Thus change continues, as does the reader’s interpretation of external reality in the novel, which depends largely on his/her ability to interpret a more metaphorical view, seen clearly, finally, in the modernist novel which À la recherche becomes. The metaphorical use of the ‘deux côtés’ has a very important, even pivotal role in the final novel. Proust emphasises the importance of difference and analogy as insightful in his work ( js: 331). This also recalls his definition of metaphor, the main stylistic tool used to translate his complex vision. The geography, the series of oppositions and the potential lessons of the ‘deux côtés’ are present in Jean Santeuil, but this central idea still lacks clarity, because of how it is conveyed in the presentation of the material. Roger Shattuck sees the ‘deux côtés’ of Combray as representing the two parts of a central metaphor.8 As the two parts of the metaphor come together to produce a new vision, created, seemingly, by what they have in common and how they differ, so the two ways are seen to combine, as they can be visited in one day in a giant circle, offering the hero a new insight into the relativity of space and of external reality more widely.

8

Roger Shattuck, Proust’s Way-A Field Guide to ‘The Search for Lost Time’ (New York: Norton, 2001).

Chapter 7

Innovation in Narration, the Role of the Narrator and of the Reader, in Proust’s Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’

The main question being posed in this chapter is why so many readers of the opening of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu feel so disorientated when they begin reading this very innovative and rich novel and what innovations have been introduced since the writing of Jean Santeuil, where the style appears closer to the nineteenth-century novel writing tradition. In order to answer this question, there will be a brief discussion of the material used in both these novels, as well as earlier works, in different genres, and a close examination of the narrative in each work, as well as a more detailed discussion of the changing roles of the narrator, and also the role of the reader. The discussion will then move on to how Proust discovered the changes needed to finally write the novel he had spent most of his life in delaying, particularly as he had not found a suitable form for writing it. This will involve a comparison between the narrative method of Jean Santeuil (as far as the text allows the reader to determine this) and the change to the more modernist approach of À la recherche. Finally, there will be a close analysis of the opening pages of both novels, which serves as a final illustration of the discussion. The final novel, À la recherche, emerged out of the work of literary criticism, Contre Sainte-Beuve. In other words, using the terms of Genette in his Figures III, a work in which the histoire (story), the material used, finally came together to form a récit, an elemental plot, which is then shaped into a discours, or in this case, a very sophisticated narrative, chosen to present the narrative material, using very new techniques, to put the message across in the most telling way.1 However, Jean Santeuil shows clearly that 1

Gérard Genette, Figues III (Paris: Seuil, 1972).

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Proust had not found the all-important narrative required, as a young man, and was only moving, in thought and technique, towards the modernist approach required for his material and concepts. He also had to discover a means of instructing the reader on how to read this very innovative novel, À la recherche. In previous chapters, there was an analysis of the changes in the avanttexte, including a character, a place and an episode, as well as the activity of reading and the topography of the two different family walks. It is important now to see how this material was presented and linked together both in Jean Santeuil and in ‘Combray’, again using a genetic approach, but mainly relating the early novel to the final one, in addition to a close reading of the openings of both novels. In relation to genetic studies, as has been noted above, Proust often stated that he did not like the idea of people looking through his manuscripts as he felt there was a danger of misinterpretation. However, the author of this genetic study would argue that Jean Santeuil shows a much greater similarity to À la recherche than does Contre Sainte-Beuve in terms of its material and technique, as shown in previous chapters. It is also an important aid to a much better understanding of À la recherche, especially in its narrative form. The unfinished novel Jean Santeuil, although it is 259 pages in the Gallimard Pléiade edition, consists mainly of fragments of text, often reworked by Proust, as author. However, there was little indication of how this material was intended to be linked together. One of the editors, Pierre Clarac, mentions the pleasure of doing this work and how it helped to understand Proust’s method of writing, which he describes as follows: Au gré de l’inspiration, à mesure que ressuscitaient en lui des moments de son passé, il écrivait quelques pages, parfois seulement quelques lignes. Les fragments s’amassaient ainsi. Le moment du “jointoiement,”… et de la mise en ordre viendrait ensuite. Il n’est jamais venu. Cette succession de morceaux indépendants pourra étonner le lecteur. Mais c’est un vif plaisir, et bien instructif, que de surprendre l’écrivain au travail, de voir comment et sous quelle forme les idées naissaient en lui ( js: ix–x).

This quotation describes very well how this important work consisted mainly, in terms of material, of the ideas and experiences, resurrected, from the past by the involuntary memory the mechanism for which was

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not well understood in this first novel. As the manuscript was never completed, or the different parts assembled by Proust, this was done, first of all, by Bernard de Fallois, in 1952, and then by Pierre Clarac, with the collaboration of Yves Sandre, in a second edition of Jean Santeuil, in 1971 ( js: avant-propos, ix–x). In putting the work together, they retained much of its unfinished state. However, the work was given a title. Many of the pages have very abrupt endings, as well as some overlap of very similar fragments found together. There was also a lack of consistency in the names of characters ( js: notice, 981). The great aunt is mainly called Mme Servan, but Mme Sureau is also used ( js: 340). However, this approach is useful for genetic studies. The editors also inserted some new subtitles, in square brackets. In order to link the fragments together, they used the age of the hero and, if this failed, they placed episodes with a similar theme together ( js: notice, 982). It has been said that all Proust’s previous work was but ‘a rehearsal for À la recherche’, including portraits of characters, in the style of seventeenthcentury moralists, such as La Bruyère, seen in the very early work Les Plaisirs et les jours, which Proust himself saw as an avant-texte.2 This avant-texte also consisted of many different genres, including newspaper articles, which often appeared in Le Figaro, the preface to his translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, now published separately in a volume entitled Sur la lecture, his Pastiches et Mélanges, which shows Proust as a talented literary and art critic and his ability to recognise a writer’s style so well that he reproduces the work of, for example, Flaubert, and the Goncourt’s diary, as well as essays in the style of the literary critic, Sainte-Beuve. Finally, there is the most relevant (albeit unfinished text) in this discussion, Jean Santeuil. Traces of these different genres remain in the experimental novel, À la recherche. As Genette expresses it: [I]l y a chez Proust une particularité qui est bien connue, mais qui est lourde de conséquences moins perceptibles: c’est que, sans le savoir, bien sûr, puis en le sachant de plus en plus intensément, il n’a jamais vraiment écrit autre chose qu’À la recherche du temps perdu.3 2 3

Les Plaisirs, ‘À un snob’, p. 45 (one of several descriptions). Gérard Genette, ‘La question de l’écriture’, Recherche de Proust (Paris:  Seuil, 1980), 7–12.

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Some very important scenes such as the narrator’s experience of being in bed and his confusion on waking are repeated in several of Proust’s works and in different genres. For example the section ‘Sommeils’ and ‘chambres’, showing the disorientated hero between sleeping and waking, and which appear in Contre Sainte-Beuve (csb: 61–7 and 68–73), can also be found in different forms in À la recherche. These scenes are near the beginning of both works, which underlines their importance. A scene very similar to the madeleine scene can also be found in Proust’s preface to Contre Sainte-Beuve (csb: preface, 53–9). One of the most important scenes, the ‘drame du coucher’, is found only in Jean Santeuil and À la recherche (js: 202–11, alrtp, I: 27–43). However, in Jean Santeuil, the incident is seen mainly as a childhood problem which, if not overcome, could affect the child’s future. In ‘Combray’, it is linked to one of the most important themes, the search for an artistic vocation, which will require willpower to attain it. The repetition of similar scenes, from different avant-textes, is even more evident in Jean Santeuil. The characters in the two novels often illustrate a theme. Swann and tante Léonie, for example, can both be seen as having some interest in artistic material, but they did not pursue it. They can be seen as failed artists. Léonie is mainly interested in the chronicle of daily life in ‘Combray’ (alrtp, I: 51), seen from her window, and the plates used for family meals, which have scenes of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and his Magic Lamp from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (alrtp, I: 56). These characters did not make the effort needed to produce or learn to appreciate artistic works themselves, thus emphasising the point in the case of the hero, as he also, for most of his life, neglects to even try to write. The main role of these two characters, in À la recherche, is to show the life the hero might have led, if he had not overcome his inertia and taken so many wrong paths in his life, because of his ambition to join the salons of the aristocracy and his obsessional pursuit of women, such as the young Gilberte Swann and later Albertine. In Proust’s À la recherche, a substantial amount of documentary evidence can be found on the mores of society, as in Balzac’s work. There

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is also a lot of material in À la recherche relating to a very important political and historical event, the Dreyfus Affair, and the reaction of high society to this event. In Jean Santeuil, this event is also documented, in the form of Emile Zola’s trial, arising from his newspaper article, ‘J’accuse’, which attacked those who sought to disgrace Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer. However, it is given much less importance in the first novel, and occurs for the hero amidst much more mundane events of everyday life. The historical and political situation in France was changing rapidly in this period, reflecting the fragmentary construction of ‘Combray’. The new technology is also much in evidence, such as the new transport of the train and even the invention of cars and planes, in later volumes. The magic lantern, seen also in Jean Santeuil, is a forerunner to making films and the family arrive for their holiday by train, though once there, any transport is by carriage and the change from the use of candles, is emphasised by repetition of the word, or synonyms, before they are replaced by electricity.4 Françoise also makes a reference to X-rays in relation to the mother’s ability to understand her feelings (alrtp, I: 53). These details are again important in the way characters use them or react to them. This technique is less evident in Jean Santeuil (though Zola’s trial for supporting Dreyfus is covered), as it was written so much earlier than ‘Combray’, and its importance, on a metaphorical level, in the novel was not widely recognised. In À la recherche, these new inventions are not of much importance in themselves, but acquire it in relation to Proust’s ideas on perception and points of view.5 The child becomes aware of how our perception of objects,

4 5

Cynthia Gamble, ‘From Belle Epoque to First World War: The Social Panorama’, ­chapter  1, The Cambridge Companion to Marcel Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 17–21. Pericles Lewis, ‘Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past’ (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 11.

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for example the church spires of Martinville and Vieuxvicq, seem to change their position as the doctor’s carriage, with the child and his parents on board, moves off in a direction away from the churches, when the church spires, known to be separated, appear for brief moments, to come together. The child reacts to this sight as follows: Au tournant d’un chemin j’éprouvai tout à coup ce plaisir spécial qui ne ressemblait à aucun autre, à apercevoir les deux clochers de Martinville, sur lesquels donnait le ciel couchant et que le movement de notre voiture et les lacets du chemin avaient l’air de faire changer de place, puis celui de Vieuxvicq qui, séparé d’eux par une colline et une vallée, et situé sur un plateau plus élévé dans le lointain, semblait pourtant voisin d’eux. En constatant, en notant la forme de leur flèche, le déplacement de leurs lignes, l’ensoleillement de leur surface, je sentais que je n’allais pas au bout de mon impression, que quelque chose était derrière ce movement, derrière cette clarté, quelque chose qu’ils semblaient contenir et dérober à la fois (alrtp, I: 177–8).

Thus the hero learns that our senses cannot be trusted and the outer world here lacks the solidity of that found in Balzac. This incident is of great importance on a metaphorical level. The child feels there is something more than shown by mere appearances. It is also the first and only time the child, who aspires to become a writer, is seen to compose a short piece on this experience, because of the very vivid impression it made on him: Seuls, s’élevant du niveau de la plaine et comme perdus en rase campagne, montaient vers le ciel les deux clochers de Martinville. Bientôt nous en vîmes trois: venant se placer en face d’eux par une volte hardie, un clocher retardataire, celui de Vieuxvicq, les avait rejoints. Les minutes passaient, nous allions vite, et pourtant les trois clochers étaient toujours au loin devant nous, comme trois oiseaux posés sur la plaine, immobiles et qu’on distingue au soleil. Puis le clocher de Vieuxvicq s’écarta, prit ses distances et les clochers de Martinville restèrent seuls, éclairés par la lumière du couchant que même à cette distance, sur leurs pentes, je voyais jouer et sourire. Nous avions été si longs à nous rapprocher d’eux, que je pensais au temps qu’il faudrait encore pour les atteindre quand, tout d’un coup, la voiture ayant tourné, elle nous déposa à leurs pieds (alrtp, I: 179).

This piece of writing by the young hero already shows many of the characteristics of the mature narrator’s style. The imagery is very apt, using

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personification to compare the spires to athletic people making a great leap, then birds resting on the plain, then more references to people, left alone, but seeming to be at play and smiling, until with a sharp turn the carriage brings the passengers directly in front of them. There is also a sense of rhythm in the sentences and the description uses the first-person pronoun, so this discovery is directly experienced by the young hero. Moving on to a different type of material used in both novels, there is frequent depiction of everyday, banal objects. Comparing the use of small details with a nineteenth-century novel, such as Le Père Goriot by Balzac, whom Proust greatly admired, their use is very different in Proust’s work in order to serve different goals. Proust himself in Jean Santeuil d­ escribes the way Balzac relates all objects in a home to its owner, thereby disclosing ‘… une sorte d’histoire où côte à côte l’individu, la profession, la classe avaient arrêté leur présence, fixé leur vie, exprimé leur rêve, déposé leur mémoire (js: 434). The description of the boarding house in Le Père Goriot, in which the poorer characters, in Paris, must live, is so minutely described that accurate drawings can be made of it. This technique is used to give a sense of solid reality. Proust believed that such descriptions are no longer possible, as works of art are created in very different eras. Robbe-Grillet maintains that the writer should accept ‘avec orgueil de porter sa propre date, sachant qu’il n’y a pas de chef-d’oeuvre, dans l’éternité, mais seulement dans l’histoire’.6 In Jean Santeuil, numerous details about a place or a person are not used in the same way as in Balzac. They are usually far less numerous and retain their everyday banality, apart from descriptions of nature, which are more detailed. Such detailed descriptions of nature can also be found in À la recherche. However, in ‘Combray’ many details take on a metaphoric significance. Everyday items such as a book, especially George Sand’s novel, François le Champi, read to the anxious child by his mother, serve to point the way to the artist the hero eventually becomes (alrtp, I: 41). The ­objects around us help to define our identity and place in time and space, as seen in the opening pages of Combray, where the position of the bed and the window, in his bedroom, enable the mature narrator to regain his identity (alrtp, I: 8). 6

Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1963), 10.

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Thomas Baldwin, in his monograph on Proust, points out the great importance of very banal objects in Proust’s novels. This occurs mainly due to the influence on Proust of John Ruskin who, in his work Modern Painters, points out the beauty of simple everyday objects, such as a blade of grass.7 Baldwin examines different aspects of the presentation of objects, mostly from nature, but some man-made, from Les Plaisirs et les jours, and especially, Jean Santeuil and À la recherche. These include the magic lantern and the telephone Jean uses when separated from his mother (JS: 16–18, 359–61). Baldwin also includes literary influences, such as Balzac and his aim to create ‘l’effet de réel’, to demonstrate how a modernist writer, such as Proust, presents a very self-conscious way of looking at objects. It involves, in particular, their surfaces and the ‘mince liséré spirituel’, or thin spiritual partition, of our perception, which separates us from any real contact with objects in the real world (Baldwin: 9 and alrtp, I: 83).8 In fact, objects are used to illustrate some of the central ideas in the work, such as the way we enjoy repetition, as it appears to give a significance to our daily life and thus a sense of security. For example, tante Léonie regularly takes herb tea, carries out her religious practices and takes her medications (alrtp, I: 50–1). Normally, everyday life produces few dramas, but in À la recherche events can acquire an importance on an epic scale (Shattuck: 77). An example would be Léonie’s desire to know whether Mme Goupil had her umbrella with her when it started to rain, and if she had arrived in time for mass (alrtp, I: 67, 99–100). Sometimes, in order to find any information not provided by the daily chronicle of Combray, seen from Léonie’s window, Françoise is sent to buy some salt and to find the answer, chez Camus, le grocer, because: ‘… à Combray, une personne “qu’on ne connaissait point” était un être aussi peu croyable qu’un dieu de la mythologie …’ (alrtp, I: 56). The importance of this event to the people concerned is emphasised by the use of mythical vocabulary. In addition, there is a very different use of objects in Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’ than in Balzac, where they evolve from creating a sense of the real, to underlining facets of the different characters, to being a means of 7 8

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5 vols (London: John W. Lovell Company, 1900). Roland Barthes, ‘L’Effet de réel’, Communications (1968), 11.

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accessing a deeper unseen reality and even to express a philosophy. In Jean Santeuil, many objects have no deeper meaning, but the simple pleasures of nature are enjoyed, and there is some awareness of a further deeper significance, which is not explored, in this unfinished novel. Some objects in nature give the hero great pleasure, such as the beauty of colours in nature, as in the section entitled [le ‘parc’ au petit jour] (js: 295), where: ‘Le soleil passait sur les eaux qui n’avaient plus la limpidité des eaux, mais l’éclat de l’or, ou de véritables couleurs, mauves, roses, jaunes comme au soleil couchant … Cette douceur ne conduisait pas au recueillement et au silence, mais à l’allégresse de la vie’ (js: 296). However, in [lilas et pommiers] and in a later description in this section, there is a deeper sense of a reality to be discovered (JS: 278–80). Enjoying the sight of the apple blossom, the hero explains that: ‘… nous sentons quelque chose qui s’agit au-dedans, que nous voudrions saisir et qui est bien doux’ (JS: 279). Thus, banal objects sometimes appear to have a special significance in this novel. In addition, objects in nature have a large amount of botanical detail, both in Jean Santeuil and in À la recherche, which is not found in Balzac, even though ‘Balzac’s text is replete with natural objects to an almost claustrophobic extent …’ (Baldwin: 34–6, 37). This detail underlines the importance of objects, especially in nature, in both Jean Santeuil and À la recherche. In ‘Combray’, objects also acquire extra meaning and layers as they recur in the text. Ruskin’s influence can also be seen in the importance given to humble objects and the happiness derived from them, such as the hawthorn blossom: Je le trouvai [le petit chemin] tout bourdonnant de l’odeur des aubépines. La haie formait comme une suite de chapelles qui disparaissaient sous la jonchée de leurs fleurs amoncelées en reposoir; … leur parfum s’étendait aussi onctueux, aussi délimité en sa forme que si j’eusse été devant l’autel de la Vierge (ALRTP, 1: 136).

The impact of the flowers on the hero in Combray is underlined by religious imagery. As Baldwin points out, there is some reflection on manmade objects, as well as those found in nature, for example the magic lantern, used to help the over anxious child sleep, and the tea taken with a madeleine cake, given by the mother, which enables the hero to remember

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in detail his holidays in Combray (alrtp, I:  44–7). Thus, the young hero’s past life, in all its vividness and emotional impact has its source in a cup of tea. Such objects are well remembered by readers of À la recherche, and especially the madeleine, which is known to many people who have not read the novel and can be seen as literary folklore. Thus such objects serve to illustrate an important experience such as the madeleine linked to the discovery of the involuntary memory for the hero of ‘Combray’, or the magic lantern, the colours of which bring Jean joy in Jean Santeuil (js: 316–21), whereas in Combray it is seen from a negative point of view, as it makes his bedroom, the scene of the ‘drame du coucher’, and separation from his mother, even harder to contemplate. It removes the familiar aspect of the bedroom and also portrays a somewhat alarming battle between good and evil, between the hero and the heroine, Golo and Geneviève (alrtp, I: 9–10). There is a much more superficial treatment of such objects in Jean Santeuil, where there is no central episode relating to the importance of objects, as in the madeleine scene in À la recherche. In addition, as Baldwin has stated: ‘The narrator in Jean Santeuil never makes an explicit aesthetic judgement about the appearances of things that he is describing …’9 Objects and events usually have a much deeper significance in ‘Combray’, as described when the child tries to remember seeing the effect of the sun reflected off a roof: [ J]e m’attachais à me rappler exactement la ligne du toit, la nuance de la pierre qui, sans que je pusse comprendre pourquoi, m’avaient semblé pleines, prêtes à s’entreouvrir, à me livrer ce dont elles n’étaient qu’un couvercle (alrtp, 1: 292).

Such emotions are not lost, but explored, sometimes even on a metaphysical level, in À la recherche, where, as Ton-That expresses it:  ‘Proust est passé du fait divers, à la dimension tragique de la condition humaine et des rapports entre les êtres.’10

9 10

Thomas Baldwin, The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), 88. Thanh-Vân Ton-That, Proust avant la Recherche: jeunesse et genèse d’une écriture au tournant du siècle (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), 42.

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Objects are both numerous and described in a very detailed way in both Jean Santeuil and À la recherche, and in the latter, often used on a metaphorical level. Gilberte Swann, in her father’s garden, is surrounded by many natural objects – a pond and various flowers – as well as some manmade objects, like the garden hose. The water from the hose and the voice of the mother, carry as far as the watching young hero, outside the garden, showing, metaphorically, the child as an outsider. They also delineate the limits of Gilberte’s freedom, as well as her enjoyment of the park, which is part of her everyday life. This scene also underlines some important ideas, like the child’s impatience to arrive ‘chez’ Swann and the very unexpected presence of Swann’s daughter. There is also the girl’s unexpected reaction to the hero’s appearance, by making a lewd gesture, which he fails to interpret correctly, feeling he and his family are socially inferior. All these details are drawn together and are rich in layers of meaning (alrtp, 1: 138). Tadié sums up the importance of objects, which often appear very banal, as follows: ‘il n’y a pas de sujet inintéressant [chez Proust].’11 Much of the content of À la recherche and Jean Santeuil, including objects and characters, is closely linked to the theme of time.12 It is a part of every experience. It builds a character, forms and reverses opinions and perceptions and explains, to some extent, the complex, changing and surprising behaviour of characters in Balzac and Proust. In both writers, characters are described in detail, but with very different aims. In the case of Balzac’s Le Père Goriot, there are some reversals and reconsiderations about a character, which have to be made by the reader, as in the case of Vautrin, who is unmasked near the end of the narrative, as an ex-convict, who is also using an alias. In À la recherche, changes in character are part of a much more unstable world and people’s behaviour can be difficult to interpret. They sometimes appear to be completely different people on different occasions, such as the family friend, Swann (alrtp, 1: 15–23). Pendant bien des années, où… M. Swann, le fils, vint souvent les voir à Combray, ma grande-tante et mes grands-parents ne soupçonnèrent pas qu’il ne vivait plus du tout dans la société qu’avait fréquentée sa famille et que sous l’espèce d’incognito 11 12

Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 282. Brian Rogers, ‘Proust’s Narrator’, c­ hapter 6, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 88.

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A character can never be fully understood as we do not always realise our own deep motivation for our acts and aims, which also colours our view of others. There can appear to be contradictions, but this is often due to a lack of knowledge. For example, Vinteuil appears to be a very simple family man, but he experiences shame because of his daughter’s behaviour – her lesbian acts. So Swann and the hero’s mother find it hard to see him as a very talented musician and composer (alrtp, 1: 157–8). There is also the father’s very unexpected sympathy for his distressed son, waiting for his mother to come to bed, when he would normally be angry about such behaviour (alrtp, 1: 35). Therefore, even strict rules can change, which leads to more anxiety for the child, but adults also look for stability in tradition and public and personal rules. Here the importance of time is shown in the narrator’s differing views about people and places, as well as values, as the hero grows up. Society and its mores, as well as love and betrayal, truth and the real world are to be found on a very different level than in everyday life. For example, Proust/the narrator believes that at least two meetings must take place before any knowledge or impression can be confirmed of another person (CSB, preface by Bernard de Fallois: 10–11). Thus, when the hero of ‘Combray’ discovers Gilberte Swann, in a garden, and wants to have contact with her, he fails to interpret her lewd gesture correctly and so believes she has no interest in him (alrtp, 1: 139–40). The situation changes when he later becomes friends with her, while playing in the garden of the Champs-Elyséees. Elle jeta en avant et de côté ses pupilles pour prendre connaissance de mon grandpère, et de mon père et sans doute l’idée qu’elle en rapporta fut celle que nous étions ridicules, car elle se détourna …[E]‌lle laissa ses regards filer de toute leur longueur dans ma direction, sans expression particulière, sans avoir l’air de me voir, mais avec une fixité et un sourire dissimulé, que je ne pouvais interpréter d’après les notions que l’on m’avait données sur la bonne éducation, que comme une preuve d’outrageant mépris … (alrtp, 1: 140).

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Finally a whole idea, such as that of differing views of objects, depending on our perspective, can be summed up by one or more objects such as the church tower: Il faut avouer du reste qu’on jouit de là d’un coup d’œil féerique, avec des sortes d’échappées sur la plaine qui ont un cachet tout particulier. Quand le temps est clair on peut distinguer jusqu’à Verneuil. Surtout on embrasse à la fois des choses qu’on ne peut voir habituellement que l’une sans l’autre, comme le cours de la Vivonne et les fossés de Saint-Assise-lès-Combray, dont elle est séparée par un rideau de grands arbres, ou encore comme les différents canaux de Jouy-le-Vicomte … (alrtp, I: 104–5).

From objects and our reaction to them, sensations arise which have a central importance in both Jean Santeuil and À la recherche, when recorded in an appropriate manner by the young heroes. Broadly speaking, in Jean Santeuil, apart from certain flowers, perfumes and sounds, objects retain their banality and although aware of important sensations emanating from apple blossom and violets, Jean, the young hero, does not make the effort to pursue any deeper meaning ( js: 285–6). He enjoys a leisurely life, with little effort, often by the fireside, for example, after a copious lunch. Therefore under the heading [farniente aprÈs le repas], in Jean Santeuil, the enjoyment of a lack of activity is described as follows: Il y a, dans le temps qui suit un repas copieux, une sorte de temps d’arrêt, plein de douceur, de l’intelligence et de l’énergie, où rester sans rien faire nous donne le sentiment de la plénitude de la vie, tandis que le moindre effort nous serait insupportable. Les tristesses que nous avions apportées en venant déjeuner ont disparu, et si nous y pensons, c’est avec un sourire, comme à des maux passés dont la cause a disparu ( js: 286–7).

Here Jean shares some of tante Léonie’s characteristics of enjoying small, banal pleasures in life with little effort. Proust kept a notebook, the carnet of 1908, in which he recorded his numerous impressions, which he felt were important material for future works. Many of these do reappear in his other works. Baldwin, in his remarks relating to the impressions which objects make on the hero, agrees with Edward Hughes that while the hero of À la recherche ‘lives a denser, more entangled reality’, Proust’s earlier fiction reveals less reflection, but a

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greater ‘contentment with sensation itself than with any lucid analysis of such experience (Baldwin: 15)’.13 Thus the mood is more often one of joy in Jean Santeuil, but less so in ‘Combray’. This is because, again, as Baldwin explains, with reference to Hughes: In Proust’s early work … metaphysical reflection,.. and an over-reaching, “hyperactive mind” that obsessively scrutinises personal experience are all viewed in terms of an “obstruction” to any instinctive happiness or pleasurable living (Hughes: 36).

It is possible to encounter the same objects, yet relate to them in a very different manner. As Proust notes in his preface to Contre Sainte-Beuve: Chaque jour j’attache moins de prix à l’intelligence. Chaque jour je me rends bien compte que ce n’est qu’en dehors d’elle que l’écrivain peut ressaisir quelque chose de nos impressions, c’est-à-dire atteindre quelque chose de lui- même et la seule matière de l’art (csb: 53).

In ‘Combray’ the apparent simplicity and banality of life in the hero’s family, and even the hero’s meetings with people outside it, are used by the mature narrator – Proust the implied narrator – to set out his main ideas and aims in a demonstration. The fabric of the book thus becomes its main content, as well as its form. ‘Combray’ emerged, in considerable detail, out of a mere cup of tea, not even an Aladdin’s lamp (Baldwin: 46). Thus, the most everyday object can be a springboard to apparently lost experiences. Baldwin is therefore able to describe both Proust’s novels as an ‘object-world’ (Baldwin: 15). However, there are difficulties in discovering ‘la vraie vie’ when impressions are easily forgotten, difficult to express and appear to be ephemeral. The characters can also make errors of perception which mislead them. What the hero in À la recherche has discovered is another obstruction to real knowledge, in addition to laziness and easier pleasures, it is the ‘mince liséré spirituel’, or the thin partition, of our perception, which, as noted above, prevents a direct contact with such objects (alrtp, I: 83). How can we come to grips, even with the outside world, as there is always 13

Edward J. Hughes, Marcel Proust: A Study in the Quality of Awareness (Cambridge: CUP, 1983), 36.

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a layer (our perception) between the viewer and the objects? It is only in art, ­together with the involuntary memory, that we are able to relive these experiences, in an even more vivid way, than at the time they were first perceived. There are also modern inventions, mentioned above, which travel so much faster, including a train, a car and, later, even a plane, so causing transformations in how objects and places can be perceived. An example would be the child’s perception of the ‘deux côtés’, as being separated by a great distance, and so the shorter walk is taken when the weather is less good (alrtp, 1: 132–33). However, in a car, both places can be seen in one afternoon. As Shawn Gorman points out, in his article on ‘Proustian Metaphor and the Automobile’, in Sodome et Gomorrhe: The effect of automobile travel is strikingly illustrated when Marcel is surprised to discover the actual proximity of Balbec [a fictional seaside town] and a village that, until then, he had believed was totally isolated.14

We find the meaning of our most vivid impressions deep within ourselves, but they must be brought to the surface and expressed in an artistic form (Baldwin: 34–5). Otherwise these ephemeral feelings seen, for example, during the hero’s walk and his shout of ‘zut, zut, zut’, showing his frustration at being unable to capture a special moment, might be lost for ever: Quand j’essaye de faire le compte de ce que je dois au côté de Méséglise, des humbles découvertes dont il fut le cadre fortuit ou le nécessaire inspirateur, je me rappelle que c’est, cet automne-là, dans une de ces promenades, près du talus broussailleux qui protège Montjouvain, que je fus frappé pour la première fois de ce désaccord entre nos impressions et leur expression habituelle … Et voyant sur l’eau et à la face du mur un pâle sourire répondre au sourire du ciel, je m’écriai dans mon enthousiasme en brandissant mon parapluie refermé: “Zut, zut, zut, zut.” Mais en même temps je sentis que mon devoir eût été de ne pas m’en tenir à ces mots opaques et de tâcher de voir plus clair dans mon ravissement (alrtp, 1: 153).

Therefore, the biggest problem in seeking to convey our impressions is that of their expression or form. The reader does not always recognise 14 Shawn Gorman, ‘Proustian Metaphor and the Automobile’, Studies in 20th and 21st-Century Literature, 29, no 2 (summer 2005), 223–4.

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them as signs for the hero, which will lead to a literary vocation and time regained. The hero in Jean Santeuil simply enjoys the moment in which he can experience such pleasures. He does not look any deeper into the reason for his happiness and the feeling that there is something hidden below the surface of the objects he is viewing. Simple everyday events appear to bring happiness, such as sitting by the fire. However, as in the colours used to describe Combray, there is lightness and darkness also. Thus, M. Lepic treats his wife very badly, controlling her every action. However, in Jean Santeuil, it is the more positive side of life which is more frequently described. The controlling husband, M. Lepic, is however shown, but there is no explicit reason given for his behaviour, which is not analysed, despite its effect on his wife ( js: 226–8). Carter, referring to Jean Santeuil, expresses the hero’s experience of happiness and the feeling that there is something more important in life, under the superficial level of everyday life, and the wish to be an artist, as follows: … moments of vivid, spontaneous memory and their conscious application in the creative process form the real life and that our daily life, in its habitual, vain actions is a life lived on the surface, and hence, a life lost.15

In 1899, Proust abandoned Jean Santeuil, unable to create a plot and find the right point of view and narrative style. Much of what was needed, in terms of material for a future work, is already there in Jean Santeuil, and other early works. Ironically, it is Jean’s childhood, once feared lost for ever, but transposed in ‘Combray’, and full of apparently everyday activities, and which he often spent reading a book, rather than joining in other activities with his cousins, which will form the material for his future book. The material for ‘Combray’, which forms the first part of À la recherche, is provided largely by the involuntary memory. In the preface to Sésame et les Lys, Proust sums up the richness of the reading experience which could, with memory, evoke the places 15

William C. Carter, ‘The Vast Structure of Recollection: From Life to Literature’, ­chapter 2, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 34.

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and people around us when reading a certain book. Using reading in a far wider meaning as a metaphor, it would become much more: ‘Il n’y a peutêtre pas de jours de notre enfance que nous ayons si pleinement vécus que ceux que nous avons cru laisser sans les vivre, ceux que nous avons passés avec un livre préféré’ (Sur la lecture, 23). Routine and habit are enemies of what constitutes ‘la vraie vie’. However, we tend, like the family, to be more comfortable using them. The family’s Saturday routine is different from other days, as Françoise goes to the market, so this slight difference gives the family pleasure in its novelty (alrtp, I: 108–9). … tous les samedis, comme Françoise allait dans l’après-midi au marché de Roussainville-le-Pin, le déjeuner était pour tout le monde, une heure plus tôt. Et ma tante avait si bien pris l’habitude de cette dérogation hebdomadaire à ses habitudes, qu’elle tenait à cette habitude-là autant qu’aux autres (alrtp, 1: 109).

Proust was also very new, as a writer, in introducing material into À la recherche, rarely used before in books. Proust’s very detailed analysis of the psychology of same-sex experiences was a particularly new topic in art at this time. ‘Avant la nuit’, written in 1893, was Proust’s first published work on homosexuality, which was to play such an important role in À la recherche, and especially same-sex love (Carter: 31). In ‘Combray’ the reader witnesses Vinteuil’s daughter engaging in lesbian acts with a friend (alrtp, I: 158–63). Proust, as noted above, also wrote ‘La Confession d’une jeune fille’, in which a young girl admits to her mother, while dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, that she has engaged in lesbian acts. As Carter expresses it: ‘[In À la recherche] Proust became the first novelist to depict the continuum of human sexual expression’ (31). Adding a further remark on the subject of material, there is a reference in ‘Combray’ to an unknown lady, who lives in isolation in the countryside. There are rumours about her situation, but there will be no more knowledge about her for the reader. So information can be withheld, as well as presented in a fairly detailed way, but often on a metaphorical level in ‘Combray’, which constitutes the reader’s main experience in reading this work.

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Finally, some very important material is introduced in Jean Santeuil and treated in greater depth in À la recherche. It is that of the self-conscious novel – works which question their own relation to reality.16 In Jean Santeuil, this theme appears very near the beginning as a discussion around the material apparently used in C.’s book, which is taken from his stay at a farm called Kerengrimen. However, he denies he has used the maid he met there in his novel, as she has become a character in a work of fiction. In À la recherche, of course, the whole story will be transposed into a novel and the hero aspires to be a writer, but only realises at the end that the banal events of everyday life will form the material of the work to be written. However, as mentioned above, the reader never really knows if the work s/he is reading is that of the child who grows up to become a writer. That question is never answered. This is a common facet of a modernist work. The following quotation, taken from the preface of the work of Mireille Marc-Lipiansky on Jean Santeuil, explains what has been gained in this novel, and what work remains to be done to transpose the new material and experience of life and a consciousness, very aware of the passing of time, into a new novel form: [L’]’un des grands mérites du livre de Mireille Marc-Lipiansky c’est de mettre en évidence la grandeur incomparable d’ À la recherche du temps perdu. Avec Jean Santeuil, tout est préparé, mais aussi tout reste à faire et à refaire. Il faudra, en particulier, à son auteur, explorer le domaine, interdit tant que sa mère est là, de Sodome et Gomorrhe, donner à sa psychologie de l’amour et de la jalousie une extension extraordinaire, rendre sensible l’importance du temps et de la mort et exposer dans le Temps retrouvé une esthétique qui n’est rien de moins que l’aventure de la connaissance.17

Therefore, À la recherche is finally seen as a very abstract inner journey, communicated on a largely metaphorical level.

16 David H. Walker, ‘Formal Experiment and Innovation’, c­ hapter 8, The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel From 1800 to the Present, ed. Timothy Unwin (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 139. 17 Mireille Marc-Lipianski, La Naissance du monde proustien dans ‘Jean Santeuil’ (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1974), preface by Henri Bonnet, 8.

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Narrative and the modernist movement Proust’s failure to complete Jean Santeuil was mainly because he realised he needed a very different mode of presenting this material. However, Jean Santeuil has been put together to form a novel from notes and manuscripts, so it is more difficult to speak of its form, though the way it was put together, by the age of the hero and, when this failed, by the themes found in these events, suggests a much more chronological form than the final novel, À la recherche. Therefore, to what extent do the two works, Jean Santeuil and ‘Combray’, at the level of technique, rather than the similar material used, show the influence of Balzac’s work (or that of the ‘traditional’ nineteenth-century novel), or a radical departure from it? One of the factors which made À la recherche a difficult novel to read is, as Marion Schmid has observed, its expansion during the First World War and also its modernity.18 The way writers put their work together is an important factor in giving meaning. Using the nineteenth-century novel, Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale, already moving in the direction of modernism, and Proust’s twentieth-century novel, À la recherche, a modernist work, Schmid shows how differences in the composition of the two novels, from different eras, can be an aid to explaining the final work: As a rule, programmatic writers structure and organize their ideas and their fictional material in plans and scenarios before textualizing it. In other words, the phase of conceptualization precedes that of formal and stylistic elaboration. Immanent writers, on the contrary, engage with the writing process without a premeditated plan or structure in mind. Ideas, themes and narrative strands emerge during composition. The organization of the emerging text is either carried out in retrospect or, more often, starts taking shape during the course of writing (189).

Schmid goes on to comment as follows: 18

Marion A.  Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation:  Flaubert and Proust (Legenda: Oxford, 1995), 194.

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This is another pointer to the difficult task of reading À la recherche. These comments also add greatly to our knowledge of how Proust worked, compared with a nineteenth-century writer, and why the two traditions produce such very different works. People experience the world through ‘inherited conventions’ which lead to very different kinds of narrative (Pericles Lewis: 26). In the nineteenthcentury novel, as Abbott points out, readers expected a reliable narrator to lead them through a novel. They would accept some character changes, unexpected twists in the plot, but would expect a recognisable ending.19 Wetherill describes the basic assumptions which led to the writing of the ‘traditional’ nineteenth-century novel in France, as follows: As much nineteenth –century writing demonstrates, the realist vision is structured by the rational values of causality, linear chronology and historical significance. The individual is defined by the way the past has shaped the present, and by the social and historical context he/she finds himself/herself in, rather than by any inner state. Realism is founded on ‘objective’ forces and values: the significance of the world is centred on quantities, visuality and volumes: it’s what you see and can measure that gives the world meaning. That is why realist novelists spend so much time describing faces, clothes, people’s houses and what they contain, and the state and origins of people’s fortunes.20

Another prerequisite for a reader of this era, as Brian Nelson points out, was that such novels should be read by ‘a passive reader’.21 A realist writer tended to use a chronological, linear plot. This was seen as particularly important, as it contributes to our perception of the world around us. As Abbott comments:  ‘[N]arrative is the principal way in which our 19 20 21

Porter H.  Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd edn, c­ hapter  1, ‘Narrative and Life’ (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), 73. Michael Wetherill, Marcel Proust: Du coté de chez Swann (Glasgow: Universities’ Design and Print, 1992), 2. Brian Nelson, ‘Realism: Model or Mirage?’ Romance Studies, no 1 (Winter, 1982), 2.

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species organizes its understanding of time’ (3). With the change in the material used in the nineteenth-century novel, often a life developing and moving forward to marriage or to a career, this type of novel no longer provides an equally appropriate narrative. This is one of the biggest innovations in ‘Combray’, which sets it apart from all Proust’s other works. Shattuck points out the different kinds of familiar plots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, noting the popularity of the Bildungsroman, in which, typically, the immature hero develops in mind and character as he learns to make his way in an often hostile world.22 Such familiar and popular types of narrative have been described as ‘Master plots’ and compared with fairy tales (Abbott: 46–9). These translate our deepest fears, and can become obsessions, such as the hero in ‘Combray’, as a child, finding it unbearable to be parted from his mother and tante Léonie’s need to know the name of every person who passes by her window (alrtp, I: 55–7). Social and cultural changes alter the way the world is perceived and how it is represented by artists. For example, in À la recherche, Elstir’s paintings are the product of his inner consciousness and his unique subjective viewpoint. So the sky and the sea appear to merge, because the colours he sees, at that moment in time, are very similar, as in an impressionist painting. They are the product of his unique vision, which allows other people to view the world from his perspective. His studio is described as: ‘le laboratoire d’une sorte de nouvelle création du monde’ (alrtp, II: 191). His work is seen by the hero as being: … une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore et que si Dieu le Père avait créé les choses en les nommant, c’est en leur ôtant leur nom, ou en leur en donnant un autre qu’Elstir les recréait (alrtp, II: 191).

The time change from the seasonal to factories and urban timetables was a huge change and involved a very different space in which to work, which became very impersonal (Lewis: 11). People also experienced 22 Roger Shattuck, ­chapter  5, ‘Lost and Found:  The Structure of Proust’s Novel’, Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 75.

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a division in time between time as ‘public life’ and ‘private experience’ (Lewis: 12). The hero of À la recherche has this experience while reading in the garden, and becomes so absorbed, he fails to hear the church clock strike one hour: ‘Et à chaque heure il me semblait que c’était quelques instants seulement auparavant que la précédente avait sonné; … quelque chose qui avait eu lieu n’avait pas eu lieu pour moi’ (alrtp, I: 86–7). In Jean Santeuil, this experience is present but not elucidated in its importance for the reader. It appears to be mostly simply a facet of reading: ‘… pris peu à peu dans l’action du livre où il suivait passionnément chaque personnage, il perdait par moments tout sentiment du reste des choses’ (js: 310). It is, however, À la recherche, which in most ways, moves away from the nineteenth-century novel to that referred to as a modernist novel. This can be seen in the quotation by Lewis: Modernism offered an artistic and literary response to a widespread sense that the ways of knowing and representing the world developed in the Renaissance …, distorted the actual experience of reality, of art, and of literature. The crisis involved both the content and the form of representation. That is to say, it concerned the appropriate subject matter for literature and the appropriate techniques and styles by which literature could represent that subject matter (xviii).

Proust very much admired the work of Balzac, usually seen as a writer of ‘traditional’ realist works, such as Le Père Goriot. Therefore, both traditional novelists and their techniques will be examined in the analysis of Proust’s two novels, to try to understand how such great changes came about, particularly in relation to technique in Proust’s two very different novels. Narrative proceeds in Jean Santeuil, as far as can be discovered, in this unfinished work, mainly in chronological order, based on the hero’s age. However, as Schmid points out, Proust normally used a fragmented approach to his work, both in the manuscripts, the note books, in his construction of Jean Santeuil and later, for very different reasons, in À la recherche. Before this last novel, Proust would work on building a character, a place or an episode, in one or more pages, often coming back to make additions, before moving to a new fragment. This is why the editors of the first edition of Jean Santeuil had to find a way of putting together pieces of

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text, be it a character, place, an episode, or a sub title. These signposts were often left out all together, or remained incomplete, ending, sometimes, in the middle of a sentence. An example of this would be the episode, with the subtitle [l’Épine rose] in Jean Santeuil (js: 330–3). In fact, when examined closely, the narrative in Jean Santeuil does, in many ways, resemble a nineteenth-century novel, in which the hero sets off on an autobiographical/confessional journey, which is a somewhat vague quest for the truth, rather than the social aspirations of the character Rastignac in Balzac’s Le Père Goriot. However, in Jean Santeuil, some details are little changed from a situation in Proust, the author’s life. Thus, a maid named Ernestine, who had been a servant to an uncle in the Proust family, appears in this novel with the same name, so this work is not far from real life, or an autobiography (js: 281). The hero in Jean Santeuil has no very clear goal in life, such as improving his situation by studying for a profession, and the material does not fit the ‘traditional’ technique of the nineteenth-century novel. There is also confusion over relationships and names. The manuscript mainly gives the name Mme Servan to the aunt, but in one instance, she is called Mme. Sureau (js: 339–42, 340). There are even contradictions, so nothing is ever clear. This could be the result of writing the work in a hurried way. As MarcLipianski points out, the characters in Jean Santeuil tend to be very superficial, and easily forgotten. They are also very close to real people whom Proust had known in the real world, or their role is often simply to allow the hero to learn about himself, in an impressionist way (JS: 140–3). In À la recherche, characters are not only very complex, but also very memorable. The narrative in Jean Santeuil, despite the hurried writing, is a long way from the solidity of the nineteenth-century world, with its certainties in the new knowledge of the industrial revolution, rather than the surprises and uncertainties, found in the plot of a modernist novel. In addition, as discussed above, Jean Santeuil has material of a very different kind to the ‘traditional’ novel. The hero experiences deep emotions, often arising from nature, which bring him very heightened experiences of joy. An example would be the smell of apple blossom, and the sense of something more profound in nature. However, these sensations are not explored for any deeper meaning.

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The narrator addresses the reader, ‘lecteur’, as if he wishes her/him to share this view, again a technique often used in eighteenth-century novels. This memory leads to similar ones, such as lazy days, which can also be special, the music of flies and the fairly quiet and passive contentment of Mme Servan, chatting with her maid, Catherine and the family relaxing while digesting lunch. These memories are also all a source of great pleasure and joy, but the hero does not seek the reason (js: 292–3, 340, 286–9). Reflecting on his love, especially of the ‘épine rose’, or pink hawthorn, Jean poses the question: Était-ce qu’ayant vu auparavant de l’épine blanche, la vue d’une épine rose et dont les fleurs ne sont plus simples mais composées, le frappe à la fois de ces deux prestiges?… Est-ce qu’avec cette aubépine et [cette] épine rose s’associa le souvenir de ce fromage à la crème blanc qui, un jour qu’il y avait écrasé des fraises, devint rose, du rose à peu près de l’épine rose, et resta pour lui la chose délicieuse qu’il jouissait le plus à manger …? Peut-être cette ressemblance l’aida-t-elle à remarquer l’épine rose et à l’aimer et en conserva-t-elle le goût dans un impérissable souvenir de gourmandise, de jours chauds et de bonne santé (js: 331–2).

Baldwin sees the development of the involuntary memory in such experiences. He also points out that there is no dramatic build-up to a scene, relating to this theme, in Jean Santeuil, as can be found in À la recherche. However, this experience shows some awareness of the importance of a more profound understanding of external reality, which Baldwin describes as: … a self-describing reflexivity … But, unsurprisingly, this reflexivity or approfondissement is not as complex or as developed as it will be in the mature novel … and [Proust] does not afford it the kind of mythic status he does later on, it nevertheless contains an – albeit rather limited – construction of experience into a complex philosophical drama (Baldwin: 62–3).

This illustrates some similarity between Jean Santeuil and À la recherche, though the subject is not well understood and worked through as in À la recherche (Baldwin: 61–3). Such material does not, however, fit the typical nineteenth-century narrative paradigm, in which the world is generally

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seen as more solid and certain and where there is a clear narrative pattern to follow. In addition, these feelings do not, as in ‘Combray’, form part of the apprenticeship of the child in becoming a writer. In Jean Santeuil, the hero and his family enjoy many simple pleasures, whilst on holiday in the country at Illiers, where, ‘au sein d’une vie heureuse les événements les plus simples projettent une sorte de bonheur, comme sur le canal par ces journées tranquilles toutes les feuilles des grands peupliers, les brindilles d’osier du petit pont rustique, la canne de Jean se reflétaient dans l’eau …’ (js: 285). The hero in À la recherche has similar experiences of nature and special flowers, but he will finally examine and discover the cause of such emotions, when less lazy and preoccupied by other interests. The narrator, in Jean Santeuil, was also too close in age to the hero, which meant his experience of life was less useful in moving the plot forward. It was also too close to Proust, the author’s, own life in this very autobiographical novel. Despite some new material and techniques, it is clear in the planned, but never completed, introduction to Jean Santeuil, that Proust had wanted to include in his novel this sense of a deeper reality, but felt he had failed. Thus, he asked himself if he had indeed written a novel rather than a more philosophical work, as the well-known quotation in the introduction seems to show: ‘Puis-je appeler ce livre un roman ? C’est moins peut-être et bien plus, l’essence même de ma vie … Ce livre n’a jamais été fait, il a été récolté.’ This first novel was abandoned, perhaps because, major changes in technique were needed, and Proust was unwilling to make this effort, or unable to find a suitable narrative, to fit this new material, into a post nineteenth-century mould. Therefore, Proust still had a long search through different genres and literary influences, before he discovered a new way to present his work, which he found in the very process of writing Contre Sainte-Beuve. He thus discovered the technique needed for his most autobiographical work with major changes, which included the depiction of a fictional life, with ‘des images différentes sous lesquelles il y a longtemps qu’est morte la réalité pressentie que je n’ai pas eu assez de volonté pour arriver à découvrir’ (alrtp, I: 177). There would also be the major change of the mature fictional narrator, discussed later in the chapter.

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In the preface to Marc-Lipianski’s critical work on Jean Santeuil, Bonnet comments on what was lacking, not only in this novel, but also in the modernist novel, À la recherche, which used a very different technique to translate Proust’s vision into a text, in which the structure, or ‘charpente’, was so sophisticated, it seemed as if it did not exist. This criticism relates in ‘Combray’ to the writer Bergotte, whom the child admires. However, how are the new ideas, the inner life, to be expressed if contemporary writers continue to imitate realist writers such as Balzac?23 The narrator finally realises his work must contain and express the deep impressions he has experienced in nature and the simple actions of daily life, vividly recalled by the involuntary memory, like a family walk ‘du côté de chez Swann’. Thus, it is the poetic element of the hero’s writing which will bring a new dimension in form to Proust/the narrator’s future work. …[ Jean] n’ignore pas … la supériorité de la vie intérieure. Mais il semble que tout cela soit resté chez lui au stade des vérités apprises, des vérités théoriques dont on ne tire pas les conséquences pratiques. (Bonnet: 6)

Ton-That resumes the influence of realist writers and the tradition of the novel of apprenticeship in Jean Santeuil, and the attempt to bring a new dimension and method to his novel, as follows: Jean Santeuil illustre bien les problèmes posés par le roman d’apprentissage à la fin du siècle. En effet, comment à cette époque un jeune écrivain peut-il réutiliser la structure et la thématique du Bildungsroman sans être influencé par les grands modèles du genre? Curieusement, Jean Santeuil semble en décalage par rapport au roman de son époque, puisque l’influence des romans réalistes et naturalistes est plus importante que l’inspiration symboliste et décadente. Proust imite ses prédécesseurs, comme le montrent ses emprunts, ses allusions à Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert entre autres, mais il se livre en même temps à un travail de réécriture et de détournement du genre grâce à la dimension autobiographique et poétique de son œuvre (63–4).

As Proust reused the same material, when he tried out many different genres, so Jean Santeuil, the first novel, is a new challenge in technique. 23

À la recherche, I, 464.

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However, it is only moving towards a more modernist work, though there are some traces of it, whereas À la recherche shows the techniques of a metanarrative within an already modernist work. Moving on to the structure of ‘Combray’, episodes are often juxtaposed side by side without an obvious chronological link. These changes lead to a sense of instability. A different conception of time and space leads to further instability and also the problem arises of whether we can really know people and places, and even ourselves. As Wetherill expresses it: ‘[In À la recherche] Proust has abandoned all idea of a solid, authentic core of personality. Rather, the individual is made up of variable, contradictory and on occasion simultaneously divergent impressions’ (75). Proust, the implied author, describes the self as ‘quelqu’un des innobrabrables et humbles “moi” qui nous composent’ (alrtp, III: 430). The motif of the kaleidoscope, a word which appears several times in the novel, is very apt, in this context, as change of all kinds is an important factor in À la recherche.24 This sense of uncertainty also applies to characters, so the hero’s family have very different ideas about their neighbour Swann, whom they assume, as a member of the middle class, would be very unlikely to be welcome in the salons of the aristocracy, which is in fact not the case (alrtp, I: 16–8). In addition, the self is unable to ever really escape from his own inner self: ‘L’homme est l’être qui ne peut sortir de soi, qui ne connaît les autres qu’en soi …’ (alrtp, III: 450). Another example would be the maid, Françoise, who does all she can to make the family’s stay as comfortable as possible, but has no qualms about killing a chicken or ensuring another maid, who might take some of the family’s interest in her away, is then ousted from the family, so showing a very cruel side to her character: Quand je fus en bas, elle était en train, dans l’arrière-cuisine, … de tuer un poulet qui, par sa résistance déséspérée et bien naturelle, mais accompagnée par Françoise hors d’elle, tandis qu’elle cherchait à lui fendre le cou sous l’oreille, des cris de ‘sale bête! sale bête!,’ mettait la sainte douceur et l’onction de notre servante un peu moins en lumière, qu’il n’eût fait, au dîner du lendemain, par sa peau brodée d’or comme une chasuble et son jus précieux égoutté d’un ciboire (alrtp, I: 120).

24 See Maureen Ramsden’s forthcoming article on ‘Proust’s Kaleidoscopic Vision’.

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Time is used in a very different way in À la recherche and there is much uncertainty and flexibility, for example, in different concepts of time, and of characters. This is what Proust meant by the idea of the ‘dedans’ and the ‘dehors’, that is the subjective and the objective view of the world, as well as our inner life and life as we experience it in the world (Shattuck: 74–84). An example would be the child /hero reading in the garden, becoming so engrossed in his book that he fails once to hear the church clock strike, as quoted above. There is also the use of many adverbs which imply uncertainty in the narrative. There are also numerous examples of the ‘dedans’, being an enclosed space, such as the hero’s garden on a summer day, which he is better able to appreciate when its qualities are distilled and filtered through the window and his senses: Cette obscure fraîcheur de ma chambre était au plein soleil de la rue, ce que l’ombre est au rayon, c’est-à-dire aussi lumineuse que lui, et offrait à mon imagination le spectacle total de l’été dont mes sens si j’avais été en promenade, n’auraient pu jouir que par morceaux (ALRTP, 1: 82).

Finally, time is also part of our conception of space. Memories, on which the narrative is mainly based, return in unexpected ways and times, which are a difficult fit for any narrative. However, fragmentation, which arose directly from how Proust, the author, approached writing, in any genre, would seem to offer a possible structure, but even fragments must be held together and contain within them clear, if very complex, ideas. There are some similarities in the overall structure of À la recherche, with that of the nineteenth-century novel, loosely defined, which is that of the quest –in this case for truth, ‘la vraie vie’. The very title of this work suggests a quest, but not for some future success, but for the recapture of time lost or wasted, in the past. In À la recherche, there is also a definite pattern of an apprenticeship, which Proust, the narrator, worked through and his hero will experience similar turning points and disillusions, as did the nineteenth-century hero, on his quest for social success. In ‘Combray’, we see the hero maturing, in both physical and psychological terms, but

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his journey as an artist barely coincides with this pattern. Both material and technique must be integrated. Bearing in mind the basic tenet that fiction is not life, so the material, in ‘Combray’, moves much further from an autobiography, than it does in Jean Santeuil. In addition, the hero has not decided what final route to take, so that the pattern of being lost and found, in his socialising with the aristocracy, and his love affairs, will not meet the goal he is barely able to articulate, even at this late point in his life (Landy: 118–22). Perhaps the greatest disillusionment for the reader is that s/he will never know, if the narrator and the hero are one and the same. In addition, in true modernist style, the reader is denied a clear conclusion, or closure in the final novel. Instead of the emphasis being on the documentary content, including the mores of society or the search for lost/wasted time, which can be seen as the narrative on a superficial level, Proust is more interested in showing how his characters react to such events and what they mean for the narrator, as he takes the reader through them, in terms of changes in content, perception of time and space. Thus the seemingly trivial event, perceived from a very different viewpoint, gains in importance and in informing the reader of some discovery made on this journey. The material forms part of the pattern, or fabric of the novel. There are recurring scenes, places and characters. ‘Combray’ is often our introduction to them and further appearances come later in the novel. The reappearance of characters in Proust’s ‘Combray’ is very different from that of Balzac’s characters, who become more solid and plausible, while Proust, the narrator shows more facets of his characters with each appearance, making them more opaque and elusive. In the case of Legrandin, a family friend, there are apparent inconsistences in his behaviour. When the hero’s father sees him in the village, Legrandin fails to acknowledge him, when escorting a member of the aristocracy. The narrator implies these different facets of a character by comparing what the family of the hero believes Legrandin to be, with what they have actually heard or experienced in relation to his character. There is no explicit comment, but the contradictions in his behaviour, how he presents himself to the family and other types of behaviour, when his snobbery is apparent, add up to a

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number of obvious contradictions in his behaviour which become evident to the attentive reader (alrtp, I: 118, 122–31). Sans doute il ne disait jamais rien de tout cela dans le langage que mes parents et moi-même nous aimions tant. Et si je demandais:  ‘Connaissez-vous les Guermantes?,’ Legrandin le causeur répondait: ‘Non, je n’ai jamais voulu les connaître.’ Malheureusement il ne le répondait qu’en second, car un autre Legrandin qu’il cachait soigneusement au fond de lui, qu’il ne montrait pas, parce que ce Legrandin-là savait sur le nôtre, sur son snobisme, des histoires compromettantes, un autre Legrandin avait déjâ répondu par la blessure du regard, par le rictus de la bouche, par la gravité excessive du ton de la réponse, par les mille flèches dont notre Legrandin s’était trouvé en un instant lardé et alangui, comme un saint Sébastien du snobisme … (alrtp, I: 127)

Some very new experiences, in relation to the world and our basic knowledge of time and place and roles, as well as personal ambitions, are described in this novel. The image of the kaleidoscope, mentioned above, illustrates this approach as being made up of fragments, which, in relation to character and places, are continuously forming different patterns. This pattern is seen in the structure of the narrative, which appears to be a series of episodes without obvious links. This in turn leads to surprises for the reader, typical of modernist texts. However, certain patterns in the presentation of the narrative can be discerned, which apply to parts of the novel, or the whole of it. As the hero does not decide what final route to take in his life, until the end of the novel, there is therefore the use of a technique, described by Shattuck, as ‘lost and ‘found’.25 This illustrates the concept of the hero, following the wrong paths and becoming lost and then finding his true self after a series of wrong paths. These include his socialising with the aristocracy and in spending so much time thinking of the first girl he is attracted to, Gilberte, encountered in her garden in Combray, or in the Champs-Elysées, and, in a later volume, the ‘lost time’ he will spend with Albertine, until he discovers his true path, that of becoming a writer. The reader is also unsure which paths to follow and which are the most important ones, so for the reader there is also a pattern of being lost and found. This is particularly the case in the opening of the novel. 25

Roger Shattuck, ‘Lost and Found’, 76.

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There is a further pattern of hope and disillusion, despair and enchantment, which sometimes overlaps with the technique discussed above. This second technique includes the young hero’s awareness of the disparity between his mundane, everyday experiences and his awareness, at unexpected intervals, that there is a deeper and richer reality which he encounters, occasionally, in the presence of nature or women to whom he is drawn. This in turn brings similar experiences to the forefront of his mind. He describes his meeting with ‘la dame en rose’, his uncle’s mistress, in this way: J’éprouvais une petite déception, car cette jeune dame ne différait pas des autres jolies jeunes femmes que j’avais vues quelquefois dans ma famille … Mieux habillée seulement, l’amie de mon oncle avait le même regard vif et bon, elle avait l’air aussi franc et aimant. Je ne lui trouvais rien de l’aspect théâtral que j’admirais dans les photographies d’actrices, ni de l’expression diabolique qui eût été en rapport avec la vie qu’elle devait mener (ALRTP, I: 76).

Another technique to aid the reader’s understanding is the introduction of humour into the novel. The mature narrator uses irony to underscore the meaning of the young hero’s behaviour. In this implicit manner, he shows that the hero has made a bad decision, for example in his great admiration for the fictional writer, Bergotte. Simple everyday acts are elevated in the context of the novel to epic stature, like life at Versailles in the time of Louis XIV, in the manner of a seventeenth-century moralist, such as La Bruyère or Saint-Simon. An example would be, Léonie waiting, impatiently, to find out whether a neighbour, Mme Goupil, got wet, or if she had an umbrella to protect her new dress, and also if she arrived in time for mass (alrtp, 1: 107). This illustrates the obsessive nature of this character, but also how concerned she is about trivial events, underlining, perhaps, someone who has also followed the wrong path in her life. The mature narrator uses irony to underscore the meaning of the young hero’s behaviour. In this implicit manner, he shows that the hero has made a bad decision, for example in his great admiration for the fictional writer, Bergotte. The young hero starts his quest for ‘la vraie vie’ by reading, in its literal and metaphorical meaning, the people he meets and the places he visits and the sensations he experiences. In this way, he acquires knowledge. The plot is therefore a search for a vocation, in its widest sense, but also the

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apprenticeship of the reader. S/he must learn from events and characters for him/herself, in order to really understand this complex work. S/he must piece together information, but never really knows the true opinion of the narrator as ideas are put across indirectly, often by analogy, using symbols, in a pictorial way, or in the form of a dialogue or a scene. The reader is like a member of the audience at a theatre, trying to understand a performance, which may not, in the case of people he meets, be authentic. In addition, each reader has his own interpretation of the work. From the very beginning of the novel, reading is a major theme. The hero, in his dreams, becomes the character in the book he was reading, when he fell asleep. The difficulty of putting together events in the real world, with its unstable nature and complexities, into a fictional world, and then bringing the material and the style together, is illustrated by analogy with the story of Golo, shown by the pictures of the magic lantern and recounted by the voice of the grandmother (alrtp, I: 9–10). The images are not only reflected on the wall of the bedroom, but also on the curtains, so a more difficult surface. This, as mentioned above, shows the difficult accommodation between the real world and that of fiction: Et rien ne pouvait arrêter sa lente chevauchée. Si on bougeait la lanterne, je distinguais le cheval de Golo qui continuait à s’avancer sur les rideaux de la fenêtre, se bombant de leurs plis, descendant dans leurs fentes (alrtp, I: 10).

This text also indicates how the reader should interpret this novel, especially when characters’ appearance and behaviour change in time. The pictures, produced by the magic lantern, meet the real world in the form of the obstacles posed by the objects in the child’s bedroom. They have considerable difficulty, because the everyday presents so many examples of our fragmented view of reality, or what Proust described as: ‘la difficulté de présenter une image fixe aussi bien d’un caractère que des sociétés et des passions’ (alrtp, III: 327). Proust preferred the analogy of the cathedral to explain the structure of his novel. Perhaps remembering the ideas of Ruskin, he believed that ideas could be conveyed in a pictorial way. So the worn stones of the church porch, at Combray suggest the age of this building and show the reader a different point of view, a fourth dimension – that of time. However, Proust abandoned this idea, as he felt it was too pretentious:

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Son vieux porche par lequel nous entrions, noir grêlé comme une écumoire, était dévié et profondément creusé aux angles (de même que le bénitier où il nous conduisait) comme si le doux effleurement des mantes des paysannes entrant à l’église et de leurs doigts timides prenant de l’eau bénite, pouvait, répété pendant des siècles, acquérir une force destructive, infléchir la pierre … (alrtp, I: 58).

Finally, after the pivotal experience of the madeleine episode, the hero is able, near the end of his life, to decide to become a writer, having accepted the challenge of exploring more deeply his special impressions, which lead, in the case of the involuntary memory, to a much greater recall of his experiences as a child in Combray, the village where the family take short breaks. This occurs when, as an adult, he drinks some tea and dips into it, a madeleine cake, which his aunt had also given to him, as a child, thus the involuntary memory brings back all his childhood memories of Combray. This episode illustrates the awareness of a deeper reality – the hero’s first experience of a sense, like taste, being able to resurrect the past in a very vivid way (alrtp, I: 44–7). Proust needed to read widely in order to experience the work of other writers and to find his way to a suitable style. So Proust, behind the narrator, tries to write a novel, Jean Santeuil, for the first time and is clearly unhappy with the result. Looking deeper than the nineteenth-century writer did, he perhaps realised that his material and ideas, including the reference in Jean Santeuil to ‘l’essence même de ma vie’, needed a very different presentation than a fairly ‘traditional’ nineteenth-century novel allows, though Jean Santeuil can be seen as moving in the direction of a modernist work. What Jean was interested in and finds beauty in, are the flowers which he sees on his walks and the deep impressions these make on him. For example, the hawthorns, also seen on the altar of the church of Combray, and the cream cheese and strawberries which all act to bring memories together (js: 331–2). Here their analogy in terms of colour underlines their importance. In À la recherche, the madeleine episode illustrates the instrument, the involuntary memory and the metaphor for recalling the past and making it into a work of fiction. This is mainly used in an ornamental way in Jean Santeuil. However, in À la recherche, it functions as a very vivid way of transposing sense experiences in the present into a work of art. In addition,

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in relation to structure, it brings together the present and the past to reawaken the lost time in all its vivid reality, which is even more real than when experienced for the first time, as we do not always realise the importance or the fullness of a sensory perception at its first occurrence (alrtp, I: 45–7). The discovery of the involuntary memory will enable the hero to discover this past reality more fully and to use it as the material for a novel. As Ellison expresses it, the hero is aware of: The impression of something situated beyond the limits assigned to human existence comes from the relational quality of memory itself – its capacity to unify present and past in one synthetic impression, thereby bringing together under one totalizing structure not only the individual’s life experiences, but also his consciousness and the power of his imagination.26

This new perception of time, leads to a new way of presenting it. Norpois, a former ambassador, comments on both the material used and the narrative technique of Bergotte, which might be applied to both Proust’s novels, in relation to content and form, but for different reasons: ‘Jamais on ne trouve dans ses ouvrages sans muscles ce qu’on pourrait nommer la charpente. Pas d’action-ou si peu- mais surtout pas de portée’ (alrtp, I: 464). This shows a possible criticism of both the content and particularly the structure of Jean Santeuil and À la recherche, which have been very much influenced by Proust’s admiration for Balzac, but also the changes in both these two areas with the movement to modernist texts, as events were perceived very differently. These are the main reasons the first novel failed and was abandoned. Ironically, material of everyday life and time ‘lost’ in reading will be the transposed material of the very successful novel, À la rercherche. Baldwin describes the use of the involuntary memory and the material in Jean Santeuil as follows: While in Jean Santeuil Proust does not explore fully the structures and effects of involuntary memory, and does not afford it the kind of mythic status he does later on, it nevertheless contains an – albeit rather limited – construction of experience into a complex philosophical drama (Baldwin: 63). 26 David Ellison, ‘Modernism’, ­chapter 28, Marcel Proust in Context, ed. Adam Watt (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 218.

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An example of recurring behaviour in characters, which is bordering on eccentricity, would be Léonie’s obsession about rituals, such as taking her medications and fulfilling her religious obligations, and reading the book of prayers (alrtp, I: 51). This technique helps the reader to understand such behaviour by showing the different forms it can take. Often this is reinforced by the use of a pictorial lesson in the form of an object being used metaphorically, such as the water lily caught up in the current of the river and only able to move back and forth. It is described as follows: [un] nénuphar à qui le courant au travers duquel il était placé d’une façon malheureuse laissait si peu de repos que comme un bac actionné mécaniquement il n’abordait une rive que pour retourner à celle d’où il était venu, refaisant éternellement la double traversée (alrtp, I: 166).

These recurring events and modes of behaviour emphasise its obsessive aspect, and so lead the reader to a negative conclusion, without any obvious intervention from the narrator. There is also a ‘narrative of postponement and delay’ (Shattuck: 74– 84). Objects and the way places and people are seen continually form different patterns and then break up and reform. Thus, structure is seen on a metaphorical level. An example would be Léonie needing to know if Mme Goupil arrived at church in time (alrtp, I: 54, 107). Proust does not explain these ideas in a literal way, but uses analogies and other techniques. Most readers would not share this anticipation, but realise its importance for the aunt. Repetition in the form of questions, by the aunt, directed at Françoise, the hapless maid, ensures this information is conveyed with the right tone to the reader, who maintains a certain distance from this obsessive character. This fragmentary method of writing, which came naturally to Proust, as seen in his general manner of writing in the avant-texte, was transformed into a very new style of writing in this modern novel, which À la recherche becomes.27 Proust seemingly puts together fragments of text, whose connection is not always obvious. However, it is similar to the fragments of 27

Marion Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation: Flaubert and Proust, 194.

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memory we are able to access at different times and in different circumstances. Perception of people and events, in the modern world, influence the manner of structuring this work, which is seen as so often unstable and unreliable, thus leading to the links which do not appear to be logical but, as viewed by critics such as Tadié, are rather abstract and poetic, as discussed in his book (Tadié: 433). Therefore, Proust was able to meet the challenge of a very new style in order to express ‘… une initiation tout en exposant une esthétique, c’est à dire de manière à faire sentir dans la forme même cette esthétique’.28 Moving on to the role of the narrator, this is again much more complex in Combray than in Jean Santeuil. In the latter, incomplete novel, the first-person viewpoint is used, in the framing narrative, in which some friends take a holiday by the sea and meet the author of a book, who is designated only as C. This abbreviation perhaps follows an eighteenth-century technique of not revealing the identity of a character, who perhaps exists outside the novel. It could also be a result of the novel’s incomplete state, especially as the letter B. is sometimes used to refer to the same character, the novelist, which can be confusing for the reader. It is also possible that Proust may not yet have decided on a name.29 Names in Proust’s novels can be very important. Some are chosen because, for the writer, they are evocative, suggesting a colour, for example the colour yellow, being evoked in the case of the wealthy Duchesse de Guermantes. The use of the ‘mise en abyme’ shows that, C., the author of a book, entitled Jean Santeuil, is staying in Kerengrimen when the friends arrive there, and it is also at this time that this novel is being written. Thus, the use of the ‘mise en abyme’ in Jean Santeuil, makes it clear to the reader who wrote the novel and when. This situation introduces the question of the problematic nature of the material in the novel, in relation to the real world. However it is also made clear that, although the writer uses some material taken from his stay at Kerengrimen, the maid who believes she is the same person as a

28 Bernard Brun, ‘ “Le Dormeur éveillé”: genèse d’un roman de la mémoire’, Cahiers Marcel Proust Nouvelle Série/Études proustiennes, II/IV (1982), 241–316, 304. 29 Ian McCall, “Je,” “Il, and “Vous”:  Narrator, Protagonist and Narratee from ‘Jean Santeuil’ to ‘À la, recherche’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 12.

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character in the book, does not understand that the material for a novel is transposed from ‘real life’, a novel having its own goals and being mediated by the author of the book. (Discussed by McCall: 14–5, & js: 193, 195.) This relation between reality and the contents of a novel are described as follows: … les rapports secrets, les métamorphoses nécessaires qui existent entre la vie d’un écrivain et son œuvre, entre la réalité et l’art, ou plutôt, comme nous pensions alors, entre les apparences de la vie et la réalité même … (JS: 190).

The author, C., even reads part of his novel to the friends who appear to understand the plot, as there is no questioning of its interpretation by the narratees. They are mainly passive, like readers of the traditional nineteenth-century novel. Thus begins the metacommentary of the narrator. In addition, it is made clear, in relation to the narrator in the book and the actual writer, C., and his persona, that they are also very different. C. is in fact selfish and cruel in his dealings with the mill owner, who allows him to engage in writing in his home. The mill owner’s wife finds her geese have been driven into the sea. This information shows that the narrator does not agree with the idea of Sainte-Beuve, that a knowledge of a writer’s life is necessary in order to interpret his work fully. The use of the first person at the beginning of Jean Santeuil, makes it even more difficult to create a distance between the largely autobiographical material and its transposition in the novel, where the hero is seen to be, superficially, on a philosophical and literary journey.30 This is important as Proust uses different linguistic techniques to put across the ideas of the implied narrator, in an implicit or suggestive way, on the level of analogy, repetition, images or a metaphor, in both the early and later novel. When some flies make ‘music’ they allow the hero to enjoy a summer’s day, from inside the house. The narrator goes on to explain this experience, using the ‘nous’ form to include the reader more fully in this experience and how it brings back memories of many other summer days:

30

Joshua Landy, ‘The Texture of Proust’s Novel’, ­chapter 8, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 118.

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The friends are also seen to be more interested in the language and the opinion of the writer, on a variety of matters, rather than the actual narrative. They are not looking for a deeper meaning, but a more individual perspective – that of the writer. The mechanism and importance of the involuntary memory is not well understood in this novel. The use of the first-person pronoun also enables the reader to share Jean’s experiences. This is helpful as the narrator is a comparatively young man and so is not able to interpret his experiences very well for the reader. The use of the first person is very new in relation to a realist novel and often means the implied narrator must find a new, more indirect way of explaining the significance of the material for the reader. The reader also has to work harder to interpret the work. As the main part of the novel begins with the section [enfance et adolescence], the viewpoint changes to the more traditional third-person view. It is difficult to know if Proust was unable to sustain the first person in the rest of the novel, or made the decision to revert to the third person, as a more familiar technique. The writing of À la recherche in the first person required very different techniques, such as analogy, repetition and various indirect means of putting the message across and these had not all yet been discovered and practised. This shows the hero’s difficult learning experience and the mature narrator’s knowledge, and the reader must understand this gap in knowledge between the two. Yet the lack of chapter headings, as in the traditional novel, suggests the much more modern fragmented view, adopted in the second novel. In Jean Santeuil the reader finds, with some clarification by the editors of the work, whole named sections, such as [enfance et adolescence] and [À illiers], with subsections such as in the first major section – [le baiser du soir], [‘jean aimera la poÉsie’]. The author of this genetic study would argue that this technique points to a fragmented, more modernist approach in narrative. The use of a conversation between the mother and a doctor who is there as a guest, with its familiar tone, drawing the reader in, acts as a transition to the more distant third-person viewpoint.

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However, this is a complex situation in Jean Santeuil, as the friends know the writer and so are less likely to be caught up in a plot which would put a greater distance between the author, C., and his readers. As McCall observes: ‘In the “Préface” the First Narrator implies that C.’s creative technique … involves the “metamorphosis” of reality into art’ (McCall: 16. Discussion, 16–17). In Chapter 1, the third-person viewpoint is used, but the conversation at the beginning draws the reader in, but later in the book, this viewpoint is not a satisfactory method of conveying the importance of the material, especially the impressions of nature. However, in the use of impressions and their link to memory, Jean Santeuil is moving away from the chronological plot and the informative narrator of the traditional nineteenth-century novel, but is only partially successful in using these techniques to put his ideas across to the reader. The role of the narrator and that of the reader, is even more complex in À la recherche, where Proust has discovered a way to both distance himself from the novel, but also to allow the reader to share his experiences, mainly without the need for much commentary. This is the use of the first-person pronoun which, because of its complexity, has been described as ‘le double ‘je’ de quatre personnes’.31 In this article the term relates to the introduction into the text of a fictional character, so that Proust, the implied author, does not have to take on that role, enabling him to maintain a distance in characterisation and also in time, as this character is a mature narrator, looking back on his life and experiences as well as gradually moving towards his discovery of his vocation as a writer. In an interview before the publication of À la recherche, Proust stated that he was not the ‘je’ of the mature narrator (McCall: 16–17). This is important as Proust believed ‘la vraie vie’ was to be found in literature, which contained mostly involuntary memories, which in turn allow the reader to access those past moments in a very full and vivid way. However, the infrequency of these experiences meant that he had to use some voluntary memories, as well as his intelligence, which helped him to recollect what he thought had been lost in time, and to organise this material in a novel. 31

Louis Martin-Chauffier, ‘Le double “je” de quatre personnes’, Confluences (1943), 21–4, 55–69.

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Chapter 7 Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveuer restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir (alrtp, I: 46).

However, this character also appears in the role of the young hero, with whom the reader shares his experiences, and who is also a potential writer. Schmid has emphasised the need, in this novel, for ‘double internal focalisation’, the first person being both ‘a narrating and a narrated [self ]’.32 In addition, the narrator is a potential ‘new writer’ and an actual ‘new writer’ (Watt: 68). This is a very helpful concept, but it does not make clear the relation between the ‘je’ of the older narrator and that of the younger self, so vital to maintain the distance in time and knowledge between them, as explained above. This enables the mature narrator, as Sheila Stern describes it: ‘to take on his complex role of conveyor of his rich store of impressions, of psychologist, of commentator on his era and on various artists and as ‘“moraliste”, in the seventeenth-century concept of the term’.33 Thus, he can mock his naive younger self using irony (Rogers: 95). He can also use an ironic tone to comment on the hero’s attachment to the fictional writer Bergotte, who appears in the novel to show what the hero most values in literature, at this point in his life. The hero particularly likes Bergotte’s use of language when expressing his philosophy or simply the beauty he sees around him. It is especially his imagery which the hero feels gives rise to a very vivid means of expression, thus conveying the writer’s impressions to him: ‘il faisait dans une image exploser cette beauté jusqu’à moi’ (alrtp, I: 94). The hero is also aware of the joy he feels on reading Bergotte’s books. The narrator wants to give permanent expression to his discovery of ‘la vraie vie’.

32 Marion Schmid, ‘Marcel Proust (1871–1922):  “A Modernist Novel of Time” ’, ­chapter  19, The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists, ed. Michael Bell (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 329–30. 33 Sheila Stern, Marcel Proust:  Swann’s Way, Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 39.

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It is a very different view of the world from that of the nineteenthcentury ‘traditional’ writer, expressed in a very new technique. We have a familial, social and historical context for the narrator, between 1870 and the early 1920s. He does not appear to engage in activity himself, so the reader does not know if this novel is the one planned by the narrator. However, there is ‘intense mental activity’, which is not obvious in daily life (Rogers, CUP: 86). We know how he reacts to people in social contexts in different eras and places (Landy: 120). The most important reaction he shows is in relation to sensations and impressions. Although he is fairly passive, he still leads a very rich life (Rogers, CUP: 98). As Rogers describes this technique, it extends ‘the realm of psychological analysis to embrace a commentary on mental worlds in evolution’ (CUP: 92). Carter describes the new narrator Proust created in À la recherche as ‘… the richest narrative voice in literature, a voice that speaks both as a child and as man, as actor and as subject, and that weaves effortlessly between the present, past and future’ (38). In the case of the hero, he is the central point of several ‘moi’, at different times of his life, and in different social and geographical environments. Landy describes the ‘discontinuity’ in the narrative due to the fact that the narrator only gives the reader what he remembers as important, at different points in his life. His younger self ‘fractures into a plurality of segregated moi, united only by a fantasy of cohesion’ (120). These include the child who cannot bear to be separated from his mother, the admirer of Swann and the boy who has his first deep impression of the relativity of space, when travelling in the doctor’s carriage. ‘Each minor self is a snapshot of the psyche at a given point in time …’ (Landy: 119). Yet these different ‘moi’ seem to know their place (Landy: 120). This complexity shows why it took Proust so long to find an appropriate form for the final novel and the fact that Proust was a young man when he wrote Jean Santeuil. The role of the reader is therefore much more challenging in the final novel. With few explicit guides as to how to interpret the text, or which episodes are the more important ones (Landy: 119). S/he must try to acquire patience, as once through the very rich, detailed, but very new introduction, s/he can, by dent perhaps of rereading, and especially accepting the apparently fragmentary narrative, due mainly to the sudden and largely unexpected nature of the recall of events by the involuntary memory, learn how to read and interpret this very new novel (Landy: 131–2).

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There are indications in the text as to how the reader should not approach the novel. He must overcome the inertia of Swann and tante Léonie, as described above. S/he must be prepared to serve a difficult apprenticeship as a reader. In Susan Suleiman’s edited work The Reader in the Text, there is reference to ‘a reluctant interpreter’ or reader, who must do more and work harder to gain a better understanding of a complex work, such as the experimental work which À la recherche had become when it was first published.34 As Karlheinz Stierle, in an article in this work, expresses it: ‘…[E]‌xperimental literature challenges the reader to new modes of reading …’35 As we have seen, the hero and other characters often fail to correctly assess, especially on first meeting them, other characters such as Legrandin and Swann, which is a different form of reading. There are many paths or threads to follow, but which direction should the reader take? He finds himself ‘lost’ and ‘found’ again which is a parallel of the narrator’s experience (Shattuck: 76). To find the right path in terms of understanding, the reader often only has a retrospective understanding of events and how they fit in this complex novel. The novelist himself found putting together his work difficult. As Schmid comments: ‘Even when the fictional project was already taking shape, Proust did not have a clear sense of where precisely it was taking him.’36 The reader is also challenged in relation to the very long and complex sentences. However, as the narrator knew, habit will finally overcome this obstacle. This technique is a reflection of the narrator’s complex experiences and the problem of conveying them to the reader, for example the long sentence resuming all that the ‘deux côtés’, with one side being a plain and the other a path by a river, meant to the child, and even more, in retrospect, to the mature man: Le côté de Méséglise avec ses lilas, ses aubépines, ses bluets, ses coquelicots, ses pommiers, le côté de Guermantes avec sa rivière à têtards, ses nymphéas et ses boutons 34 Susan Rubin Suleiman, Inge Crosman, eds, The Reader in the Text:  Essays on Audience and Interpretation (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014). 35 Karlheinz Stierle, ‘The Reading of Fictional Texts’, The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, ed. Susan R Suleiman and Inge Crosman (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 83–105. 36 Schmid, Processes of Literary Creation, 121.

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d’or, ont constitué à tout jamais pour moi la figure des pays où j’aimerais vivre, où j’exige avant tout qu’on puisse aller à la pêche, se promener en canot, voir des ruines de fortifications gothiques et trouver au milieu des blés, ainsi qu’était Saint-Andrédes-Champs, une église monumentale, rustique et dorée comme une meule; et les bluets, les aubépines, les pommiers qu’il m’arrive quand je voyage de rencontrer encore dans les champs, parce qu’ils sont situés à la même profondeur, au niveau de mon passé, sont immédiatement en communication avec mon cœur (alrtp, I: 182).

There are some important scenes of reading in the novel, which Watt has so lucidly studied, such as the hero’s mother reading François le Champi to the distressed and anxious child, but leaving out any sexual scenes. We also see the hero voraciously reading the fictional novelist, Bergotte. In the first example, we learn that complete mastery of a work is not necessary to enjoy it and that we, the readers, can choose the parts of the narrator’s work, which interest us the most, such as the writer’s personal ideas on the complex nature of the self, the story of the discovery of a vocation, or the author’s approach to language. However, all of ‘Combray’ requires interpreting and also a different type of reading, as interpretation is often on a metaphorical level. In addition, each reader will have his own unique reading experience. There is no definitive reading, seen when the narrator sometimes has doubts about, for example, how to interpret the behaviour of a character, leading him to use numerous qualifiers, such as ‘peut-être,’ ‘sans doute,’ and these terms, as Landy expresses it, ‘evoke the monadic isolation of a psyche which, when confronted with a potential object of knowledge, is continually thrown back on conjecture’ (Landy: 128–9). In Rogers’ opinion: ‘To understand the Narrator is … to understand Proust’s novel’ (CUP: 86). The retrospective viewpoint can be used by the narrator to mock the naivety of the young hero, to show his own opinion. This is in the tradition of the seventeenth-century ‘moralistes’, often commenting on social mores, but in À la recherche the criticism is indirect rather than explicit. In this case, it uses juxtaposition, as its main tool, for example, in mocking the aunts who innocently see Swann as their neighbour and part of the middle class, unaware of his visits to the salons of the aristocracy, where he is greatly respected (alrtp, I: 14–22). There is also tante Léonie, when she is so distracted by whether Mme Goupil will get wet, she almost forgets her rituals, and is more concerned with everyday things, such as how quickly time can pass, than in her prayers:

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The complex interplay between the voice of the narrator and the hero means that the reader is sometimes left in doubt as to whose opinion s/he is being given (Landy: 120). Opinions and lessons come from the experience of the mature narrator. Interpretation is not aided by a narrator the reader knows so little about. He is a critic of his era and of the arts. The reader sees the actions and thoughts of the hero at different points in his life and in different places. There is often no clear link between these fragments of text. They represent what Lanby sees as ‘a snapshot of the psyche at a given point in time …’ (119). It is not always clear how they relate to the rest of the novel. Thus the hero’s self (moi) is also fragmented (125). These ideas are summed up as follows: [T]‌he other mission of the Proustian spiritual exercise, is to impart, as it were, the virtue of patience. By continually forcing us to go back and reread, the narrative repeatedly reminds us - in the foreshadowings and anticipations of the complex chronology, the twists and turns of the syntax – that we cannot know anything (even our own lives) all at once, that enlightenment is always retrospective and often long in coming, if it comes at all (Lanby: 131–2).

Close analysis of the opening of the two novels On approaching Proust’s first novel, Jean Santeuil, a reader may believe he is reading a narrative which is close to the ‘traditional’ nineteenth-century, realist work, apart from the use of the first-person pronoun. The reader is well informed about this narrative in terms of time, space and characters. At the beginning of the narrative, two friends, while on holiday at a farm

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in Kerengrimen, in 1895, meet a writer, who is designated only as C. This lack of a name for a principal character, who is writing a book, could indicate a name has not yet been chosen by the author, Proust, or that the implied narrator is assuming the pretence of the early eighteenth-century novel, and is protecting the identity of a person who exists outside the fictional world. The writer of the novel is seen at work, thus creating an epic situation. Furthermore, the finding of this manuscript, years later, by the friends who decide to publish it, when the author, C., has died, is also a technique used in the eighteenth-century novels, to try to convince the reader of the Age of Enlightenment, to accept the novel as true. Tacit agreement only is expected of the reader as s/he is reading for pleasure and usually does not see the story as lies or dangerous – a fairly common view of novels in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, the implied narrator is also preoccupied by the differences between an author’s actual life and how his character is portrayed in a novel, as well as how he is seen by other characters in the work. The writer C. points out the necessary translation or metamorphosis, when real events become the material for a novel, as when the maid imagines her real self to be a character in the book (js: 195). The work includes events and people seen at the seaside, Kerengrimen, in C.’s book, but in a transformed state, showing the separation of reality and the literary work. This will form the main debate in Contre Sainte-Beuve. So Jean Santeuil is, in fact, very far from a typical nineteenth-century novel and parts of it are a metacommentary, and there are also some philosophical moments, but the story of Jean Santeuil, appears random overall with no clear aim. Proust, the implied narrator, does not appear to have thought about an ending for this work. There is no real conclusion reached, in relation to story and style, and the imprecise goals seem never to have been attained. Indeed, the ‘story’, in the terminology of Genette, remains recognisable, though the episodes used arise from a very different source. In addition, the discourse, or the telling of the story, has not changed enough to present these ideas. The reader has the experience, in parts of this work, of a semi-autobiographical, self-conscious and fragmented text, moving towards modernism. At the beginning of the discovered novel, Jean Santeuil, Proust, the implied author, writes the loosely autobiographical material which is narrated

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in the third person. The dialogue, with which the main narrative opens, seeks to engage the reader in this very differently presented narrative. This technique distances the reader even more from any connection with the material, gathered from the real world, and the world of the novel. As noted above, this could have been because of the technical difficulties involved in clarifying the ideas without a narrator and because the techniques needed to present the new material found, to some extent, in Jean Santeuil, and even more in À la recherche, had not yet been discovered by Proust. However, it is clear, from the opening of the novel, that Jean Santeuil is much closer to the modernist text, À la recherche, than Contre Sainte-Beuve. The opening pages of ‘Combray’ test whether the reader has the patience and understanding to continue reading this novel. In relation to focalisation, the temporal aspects of this are once again very different in these novels. The events in the preface to Jean Santeuil and in the novel itself, appear to be relatively recent, as the people recording events in the preface are young men and we know who wrote the novel and approximately when. However, in ‘Combray’, an apparently elderly narrator/hero recalls events of his life from childhood, which seem to him to be almost beyond recall, without the use of memory, and especially the involuntary memory, seen to be a very important tool which decides which events are present in the novel. Both texts have two beginnings, which are very different in technique. In Jean Santeuil, there is first of all the very traditional framing narrative of the discovery and decision to publish the manuscript of C., entitled Jean Santeuil. Giving only a letter for the name of a character is an eighteenthcentury technique, but used again in the nouveau roman, though for different reasons (Rogers: 28). Even modernist works, such as À la recherche, have some ‘narrative coherence’, though episodes often appear juxtaposed together, with no clear chronology and also recurring in slightly different forms (Abbott: 31–2). The reader, however, must put aside her/his outmoded expectations in relation to a helpful narrator/guide, and perhaps struggle with a narrative form which is very unfamiliar. The second part of Jean Santeuil begins in medias res (js: 202). In the section [le baiser du soir], in Jean Santeuil, the opening of the actual story, contained in C.’s manuscript, there is a conversation between

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the mother and a medical doctor, present as a visitor, who discuss Jean and his night-time fears and his nervous disposition. The child does not know why he is grappling with his difficulty in being separated from his mother at night, and without a goodnight kiss. This exchange must be seen by other people, as the narrative is in the third person. Yet the description of the child’s feelings is very vivid. They include religious images, the mother’s kiss being referred to as a viatique and the surprising realisation of the child that he is not really responsible for this behaviour, and the probable consequences of his lack of willpower in his future life (js: 205–11). The novel then continues in a roughly chronological way, with insights into the importance of nature, but the hero is often too lazy to read literature, suggested by his mother, and prefers ‘reading’ the world around him. This technique means that the amount of information given to the reader, at the beginning of this novel, is limited, but it is clear enough to show family relationships and to cast some light on the traits of important characters. However, there are few extraneous details and there is no attempt to build up an apparently solid, real world, using a large number of adjectives, as in Balzac. In the preface, as seen below, there is a lot more detail including the year and even the month the character travelled to Kerengrimen, and where he met the author of the manuscript of Jean Santeuil. Despite these details, Proust wrote, in what would have formed the introduction, ‘Puis-je appeler ce livre un roman?’, referring to the material as ‘l’essence même de ma vie’. The introduction does not complete the explanation for not going further with this novel. This underscores the problem of technique in this novel, despite Proust having written 715 pages in the Gallimard edition of this work. There was still a problem of genre, even at this late point in his life, and Proust had tried many major genres in past works, with just the one unfinished novel. The opening in ‘Combray’ allows the reader to encounter the narrator who is designated only as the first-person pronoun, ‘je’. We do not know who he is, what he is like, what age he is, or even where he is at first (alrtp, I: 3–8). As the narrator observes: ‘j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes’ (alrtp, I: 5). Although the opening part has 44 pages, in the Gallimard Pléiade edition, we are told that such experiences only last seconds, so our impression of reading the novel shows us how such impressions

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can be distorted in time, so sharing the disorientation of the narrator/hero. As he is between sleeping, dreaming and fitful wakefulness, the narrative style, with its sudden changes in memories, foreshadows the new fragmentary style of À la recherche. The very first sentence is also disorientating, ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure’. It is uncertain whether the narrator is elderly, so goes to bed early, or did so when a child. The use of the imperfect tense would be more usual in these cases. The reader is able to experience how much we depend on our knowledge of time and space, as well as memory, to maintain our very identity. In a state between waking and sleeping, the narrator fails at first to discover, not only where he is in space and in time, but even who he is, believing he is a character in a book he has read, until memory situates him at the correct point in his life and the anxiety is lost: … il sufffisait que, dans mon lit même, mon sommeil fût profond et détendît entièrement mon esprit; alors celui-ci lâchait le plan du lieu où je m’étais endormi, et quand je m’évaillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j’ignorais où je me trouvais, je ne savais même pas au premier instant qui j’étais; j’avais seulement dans sa simplicité première, le sentiment de l’existence comme il peut frémir au fond d’un animal; j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes; mais alors le souvenir - non encore du lieu ou j’étais, mais de quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et où j’aurais pu être – venait à moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’où je n’aurais pu sortir tout seul; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de civilisation, et l’image confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de chemises à col rabattu, recomposaient peu à peu les traits originaux de mon moi (alrtp, I: 5–6).

The narrator gradually remembers how his body relates in space to the walls. He remembers the different rooms he has slept in, but imagines erroneously he is in bed with a woman. Such allusions prefigure important themes in the work such as the narrator’s love for Gilberte Swann in ‘Combray’ and Albertine, in other volumes of the novel. The bedrooms are linked to the different places he has stayed in, such as the grandiose home of Mme de Saint- Loup, which will later be elaborated on (alrtp, I: 6–7). He then goes on to remember many different rooms at different points in his life, such as a visit to Venice, to Balbec, the seaside and, very importantly, that of his great aunt Léonie at Combray, with which the novel begins, after this rich opening sequence (ALRTP, I: 8–9). The woman he imagines is lying in bed beside him, represents the women (mainly

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Gilberte and Albertine) the narrator fell in love with, and also became obsessed with: Quelquefois, comme Ève naquit d’une côte d’Adam, une femme naissait pendant mon sommeil d’une fausse position de ma cuisse. Formée du plaisir que j’étais sur le point de goûter, je m’imaginais que c’était elle qui me l’offrait. Mon corps qui sentait dans le sien ma propre chaleur voulait s’y rejoindre, je m’éveillais (alrtp, I: 4–5).

The reader also moves between the real world and the imaginary one when reading. The different bedrooms show in advance, places related to the older man’s social life. Thus, the reader is unknowingly being introduced to some of the main events or themes in this novel. As the narrator’s thoughts go much further back in time, we learn about the child’s anxiety when sent to bed, without saying good night to his mother, so similar material is used for very different goals. A major idea in the text is the need for inclusion, as seen in different social circles and the child’s separation from his mother at night. Thus for him the visit of Swann, a neighbour in Combray, is an unwelcome event. The visit of Swann also clarifies how much our expectations, combined with our prior knowledge of a person, contribute to form their identity, which will in fact be slightly different as each person has a unique viewpoint. Thus ‘… notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres’ (alrtp, I: 19). In this way, the reader learns how characters will be presented in this novel, without the apparent intervention of the narrator. The narrator recalls how in the evening he must think about bedtime when he would be separated from his mother. Thus, a magic lantern has been installed in his bedroom, but as it changes the appearance of the room he has grown used to, it only adds to his anxiety. The grandmother reads the child a fairy story, to accompany the images of the lantern. It is about the evil Golo who pursues the lady Geneviève, and which illustrates the basic conflict between good and evil – a very basic fear (alrtp, I: 9–10). The book which falls from the hands of the mature narrator, as he falls asleep, is a short, but telling event which, like the narrative about Golo, also underlines the hero’s love of reading and foretells his literary vocation. In this way, the very important theme of reading is also introduced, implicitly and with great economy of detail.

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In these opening pages, there are some very rapid transitions from one thought or short episode to another, illustrating again the fragmentary style of the whole work. These key ideas form the overture to this long novel and a lot of information is given to the reader in an indirect way. The reader is also able, by the indirect route, using the description of the clothes the narrator has worn and the candle mentioned, to establish approximately the era in which the events, being remembered, occurred. In the next section, the narrator goes on to inform the reader that his memories of these events were for a long time a very narrow view, in which the dining room and his bedroom were linked by the staircase. Remembering the past in detail depends, in this novel, on a chance occurrence. The taste of the madeleine and tea, brought to the hero by his mother, brings back the memory of the same taste when the child was given a madeleine bun, by tante Léonie, and so the hero’s involuntary memory, rather than his voluntary memory, or his intellect, becomes the main instrument for enabling him to recall much of his past, in a very vivid and detailed way. The narrator’s identity, as an older man looking back at his life, as experienced by the hero, his younger self, gradually becomes apparent at the end of the first part of ‘Combray’. A much fuller picture of his childhood experiences return with the discovery of the involuntary memory, in the famous madeleine scene: ‘… et tout Combray et ses environs, tout cela qui prend forme et solidité, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de thé’ (alrtp, I: 47). The source and nature of this narrative is, therefore, very unlike the nineteenth-century novel, in which the aim was to create the impression of solidity, using the imagination and the intellect. With the experience of the madeleine, the hero also felt his life had been given a meaning and a sense of happiness. This is the power of the senses over time, though it was in reality a very banal object – a cup of tea – which caused this revelation of his resurrected past, showing the very important place of banal objects in the novel. The magic lantern shows, figuratively, the fragmentary style of this novel, and the problem of transposing the real world into a text. Part Two then begins with the arrival of the family and the child hero at Combray. The reader may believe that s/he is now encountering an episode which is closer in technique to the traditional novel, with the details

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giving the reader a sense of its very solid existence and a more chronological approach. However, as shown in Chapter 2 of this study, which analyses this next section, the reader must be alert to minute details of the place, the way the church and the streets around it are perceived, the mood created, the introduction of a character, tante Léonie, her garden gate, and the experience of being lost in space and rescued by the father, after a late family walk. The reader who has also felt lost in the new style of the opening of the novel, which uses material largely drawn from the imagination, can identify with this experience, which is emphasised by humour. The father appears to be a magician, who reveals, to the surprised family, their own garden gate. The street names are those of saints and the church dominates the village appearing to be the instrument of the moral tenor of the place. The village appears rather gloomy, especially after the vivid recollection of these memories, and particularly the end of the description and the narrator’s elation after the darkness of his bedroom. There is some confusion over who sees these scenes, the older or the younger narrator. The vocabulary, however, underlines the positive nature of the childhood recollections, which are seen as magical (alrtp, I: 48). This descriptive passage shows the real world, in the past, which can be resurrected in great detail, including the narrator’s feelings at the time. Reality is found here at a deeper level than in the nineteenth-century novel. However, deciphering this level of reality leads to a much more authentic experience of the past. Its real importance will be understood as the narrative progresses, and the reader gains more experience of this narrative style: Je me souvins avec plaisir … que déjà à Combray je fixais avec attention devant mon esprit quelque image qui m’avait forcé à la regarder, un nuage, un triangle, un clocher, une fleur, un caillou, en sentant qu’il y avait peut-être sous ces signes quelque chose de tout autre que je devais tâcher de découvrir, une pensée qu’ils traduisaient à la façon de ces caractères hiéroglyphiques qu’on croirait représenter seulement des objets matériels. Sans doute ce déchiffrage était difficile mais seul il donnait quelque vérité à lire (alrtp, IV: 457).

The first scenes are a challenge for the reader, who may read on, or perhaps reread the opening pages, in order to understand more of the rich complexity of detail, which is not presented as in a novel by Balzac as a clear and full picture, which is self-explanatory.

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The nature of the challenge for Proust, in his many writings in different genres, including, Jean Santeuil, was to learn gradually, not only what material was most important to him, but that, although he admired past writers of different genres and used these very successfully himself, he finally realised that his new perspective meant his material had to be presented in a very different way and that he must convey this to the reader. Therefore, after Jean Santeuil, a more traditional novel, he had to discover, as an artist of his time, a new style for the new material and the very new manner of perceiving the real world in time and space. Proust learned how to present his material and then sought to teach the reader how to engage with this rich and innovative work. Reading lessons are also on different levels, literal and metaphorical. The hero’s mother reads to him, but she is not a faithful reader. The mother leaves out any sexual scenes in François le Champi, but the child still has a fulfilling experience, all subsumed in the deep red colour of the book. Reading is an important part of life for the hero and other characters, in developing an aesthetic sense, and encouraging the hero’s potential talent as a writer. Reading this work is also a training for the reader in how to approach this complex modernist novel. Understanding this work is a challenge, with its many different levels of meaning, its recurring characters, ideas and scenes, with the failure of the narrator to explain the importance of a scene or an action, the very complex way the novel is structured. Although a scene or an action often appears to be somewhat banal, they are, in fact, a sign of the sophistication of the narrative. It requires a great effort from the reader to undertake this task and to read on, after the confusing opening pages of this modernist work, which are very rich in themselves, and repay rereading, perhaps at the end of ‘Combray’, and even at intervals throughout the novel. In this way, the reader will begin to appreciate the richness and complexity of this work. These opening pages especially represent a very finely tuned and sophisticated introduction to themes, important objects and the wrong paths the hero took before discovering his vocation. They also indicate how the reader might be expected to engage with this distant mature narrator, in the rest of the novel, in order to appreciate its richness and highly innovative technique. This evolved slowly, with Proust’s use of very different genres, but with similar material. The following passage appears to be a very banal

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description, but these simple everyday actions acquire more importance, as we read, and contain, as we learn, several of the important ideas, such as Proust’s idea of the ‘dehors’ and the ‘dedans’, the world viewed directly or metamorphosed in the material for a novel, which is richer than our first experience of these events. There is also beauty in this everyday scene, represented, by the apple blossom. The hero’s memory will retain much of the detail he was not aware of when first experiencing these everyday events: Et revoyant tout d’un coup les beaux jours d’Illiers, les pommiers en fleurs dans le pré, le couvreur frappant dans la rue, la pêche dans l’étang, Jean remerciait ces innocentes musiciennes qui venaient près de lui lui announcer bruyamment qu’il devait se réjouir, qu’il n’était ni en dehors de la nature ni en dehors de l’été puisqu’il était près d’elles, et dans leur chanson monotone lui redisaient la gloire éternelle de l’été (js: 293–4).

This episode illustrates important ideas, such as a very banal occurrence can give great pleasure, even when not moving on the narrative. The author of this genetic study would therefore argue that Proust, in ‘Combray’ and the whole novel, was in fact, consciously or unconsciously, moving much further in novelistic technique, making the reader experience the complexity of the hero’s experiences and vision, especially in spatial form and in chronology. However, in this situation the reader may experience what Ellison has described as ‘referential anxiety’, as the text, formerly presented by an omniscient narrator, loses the main terms of reference and challenges the reader to engage with this process while learning to read the text with new techniques.37 The nature of the challenges, in the opening pages, for the reader, point to the modernity of this work, which leaves behind many of the reassuringly familiar techniques of the ‘traditional’ nineteenth-century novel. The novel thus meets the description of a modernist work, as defined by Ellison, showing ‘… an exceptional degree of self-consciousness, a strong emphasis on the individual over against society, and the capacity to create an imagined world which does not refer directly or mimetically to exterior reality, but calls attention to itself ’ (MPC, Ellison, 215). All these aspects fit Proust’s final work, to which all his prior experiments in writing had led him. 37 David R Ellison, Of Words and the World: Referential Anxiety in Contemporary French Fiction (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), 6.

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Therefore in the development of the final novel, Jean Santeuil not only contributed greatly to the material used – banal objects, themes, episodes, different experiences of time and memory, the complex depiction of character – but even more importantly, it was pivotal to the developing of a new style, without which À la recherche probably would not have been written. As Marc-Lipiansky expresses it: Il fallait Jean Santeuil pour que nous puissions nous rendre compte combien la beauté du style de Proust, loin d’être l’effet d’un don heureux, est le fruit d’un long et constant effort. Il a commencé par assimiler toute la littérature française, pour pouvoir faire aussi bien, et autre chose que ses prédécesseurs. Si Jean Santeuil n’atteint que rarement à la perfection formelle de La Recherche du temps perdu, ce roman de la jeunesse nous donne au moins le plaisir de participer à la ‘fabrication’ d’un style (Marc-Lipiansky: 211).

Bibliography

Primary sources, manuscripts Cahiers 1–32, BN, NAFr 16641–16672, mf 531–57. First Typescript of ‘Combray’, BN, NAFr 16733, mf 6151.

Primary published texts Proust, Marcel, and John Ruskin, Sésame et les lys, translation, notes and preface by Marcel Proust (Paris: Mercure de France, Paris, 1906). —— Jean Santeuil, ed. Bernard de Fallois (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1952). —— Contre Sainte-Beuve, Bernard de Fallois Edition (Paris: Folio, Gallimard, 1954). —— Contre Sainte-Beuve, preceded by Pastiches et mélanges and followed by ‘Essais et articles’, edition of Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). —— Jean Santeuil, edition of Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre, preceded by Les Plaisirs et les jours (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1971). —— Le Carnet de 1908, edition of Philip Kolb, Cahiers Marcel Proust Nouvelle Série/Études proustiennes 8/III (Paris, 1976). —— Les Plaisirs et les jours (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1986). —— À la recherche du temps perdu, 4 vols, edition of Jean-Yves Tadié (Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1987–89). —— Sur la lecture (Paris: edition Sillage, 2011).

146

Bibliography

Other published work Proust, Marcel, Correspondance de Marcel Proust, ed. Philip Kolb, 21 vols (Paris: Plon, 1970–93).

Critical works on Proust and À la recherche du temps perdu Abbott, H. Porter, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 2008). Anis, Jacques, ‘Préparatifs d’un texte: La fabrique du pré de F. Ponge’, Langages, 69 (March, 1983), 73–83. Azérad, Hugues, and Marion Schmid, ‘The Novelistic Tradition’, Chapter 9, Marcel Proust in Context, ed. Adam Watt (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 67–74. Baldwin, Thomas, The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005). Bales, Richard (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Proust (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Bardèche, Maurice, Marcel Proust romancier (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1971). Barthes, Roland, ‘L’effet de réel’, Le Bruissement de la Langue (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 167–74. Baudelaire, Charles, Les Fleurs du mal (Alençon: Poulet-Malassis, 1857). Bell, Michael (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists (Cambridge: CUP, 2012). Bellemin-Noël, Jean, Le texte et l’avant-texte:  les brouillons d’un poème de Milosz (Paris: Larousse, 1972). —— ‘Reproduire le manuscrit, présenter les brouillons, établir un avant-texte’, Littérature, 28 (1977), 3–18. —— ‘Lecture psychanalytique d’un brouillon de poème: “Été” de Valéry’, Essais de critique génétique (Paris: Gallimard Flammarion, 1979), 103–49. Bersani, Leo, Marcel Proust: Fictions of Life and Art (Oxford: OUP, 1965). Brée, Germaine, The World of Marcel Proust (London: Chatto and Windus, 1967). Brun, Bernard, ‘ “Le Dormeur éveillé”: genèse d’un roman de la mémoire’, Cahiers Marcel Proust, Nouvelle Série/Études proustiennes, 2/IV (1982), 241–316. —— ‘Avant-propos’, Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 21 (1990), 3–5.

Bibliography

147

Carter, William, C., ‘The Vast Structure of Recollection: from Life to Literature’, Chapter 2, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 25–41. Clarac, Pierre, ‘La place du Contre Sainte-Beuve dans l’œuvre de Marcel Proust’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 5–6 (1971), 804–14. Debray-Genette, Raymonde, Métamorphoses du récit:  autour de Flaubert (Paris: Seuil, 1988). de Chastenoy, Jacques, ‘Tante Léonie dans ‘Combray’, Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray (1978), 669–76. Eisenzweig, Uri, ‘La Recherche du référent:  l’église de Combray’, Littérature, 20 (1975), 17–31. Ellison, David, ‘Modernism’, Chapter 28, Marcel Proust in Context, ed. Adam Watt (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 214–20. —— Of Words and the World: Referential Anxiety in Contemporary French Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Flaubert, Gustave, L’Éducation sentimentale (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1980). Fraisse, Luc (ed.), Marcel Proust: Le Mystériex Correspondant et autres nouvelles inédites, suivi de Aux sources de ‘La Recherche du temps perdu’ (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2019). Gamble, Cynthia, ‘From Belle Epoque to First World War:  The Social Panorama’, Chapter 1, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 7–24. Genette, Gérard, Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972). —— ‘La question de l’écriture’, Recherche de Proust (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 7–12. Gorman, Shawn, ‘Proustian Metaphor and the Automobile’, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, 29, no 2 (summer, 2005). Grésillon, Almuth, Proust à la lettre: les intermittences de l’écriture (Charente: Du Lérot, 1990). —— Éléments de critique génétique:  lire les documents modernes (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1994). Grésillon, Almuth, and Jean-Louis Lebrave, ‘Avant-propos’, Langages, 69 (March 1983), 5–10. Hay, Louis, ‘ “Le texte n’existe pas”: réflexions sur la critique génétique’, Poétique, 16 (1985), 147–58. Hughes, Edward J., Marcel Proust: A Study in the Quality of Awareness (Cambridge: CUP, 1983). Labarthe, Patrick, ‘Le Regard de Léonie’, Le Miroir et le chemin, l’univers romanesque de Pierre-Louis Rey, ed. Vincent Laisney (Paris: Sorbonne nouvelle, 2006). Landy, Joshua, ‘The Texture of Proust’s Novel’, Chapter 8, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 117–34. Lebrave, Jean-Louis, ‘Lectures et analyses des brouillons’, Langages, 69 (March 1983), 11–23.

148

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Levaillant, Jean (ed.), Les manuscrits:  transcription, éditions, signification (Paris: Colloque, CNRS-ENS, 1975). —— (ed.), ‘Introduction’, Écriture et génétique textuelle (Lille: Presses universitaires de Lille, 1982), 11–24. Lewis, Pericles, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 2008). McCall, Ian, “Je,” “Il,” and “Vous”:  Narrator, Protagonist and Narratee from ‘Jean Santeuil’ to ‘À la recherche’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). Marc-Lipiansky, Mireille, La Naissance du monde proustien dans ‘Jean Santeuil’ (Paris: Nizet, 1974). Martin-Chauffier, Louis, ‘Le double “je” de quatre personnes’, Confluences (1943), 55–69. Melançon, Robert, ‘Le statut de l’œuvre:  sur une limite de la génétique’, Études françaises, 28 (autumn, 1992), 49–65. Moss, Howard, The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Remembrance of Things Past (London: Faber & Faber, 1962). Nelson, Brian, ‘Realism: Model or Mirage? ‘Realism in the French Novel’, Romance Studies, no 1 (winter, 1982). Ponge, Francis, La fabrique du pré (Geneva:Albert Skira, 1971). Pugh, Anthony R., The Birth of ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Kentucky: French Forum, 1987). Quémar, Claudine, ‘L’Église de Combray, son curé et le narrateur: trois rédactions d’un fragment primitif de Combray’, Cahiers M. Proust, Nouvelle série /Etudes proustiennes, 6/I (1973), 277–342. —— ‘Sur deux versions anciennes des “côtés” de Combray’, Cahiers Marcel Proust 7 Études proustiennes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 159–282. —— ‘Autour de trois avant-textes de l’Ouverture de la Recherche: Nouvelles approches des problèmes du Contre Sainte-Beuve’, Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 3 (1976), 7–39. Renard, Guy, ‘Les Deux Côtés de Guermantes’, Les Lettres Romanes, 47, no 1–2 (1993), 67–85. Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Minuit, 1963). Rogers, Brian, ‘Proust’s Narrator’, Chapter 6, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 85–99. Ruskin, John, Modern Painters, 5 vols (London: John W. Lovell Company, 1900). Schmid, Marion A., ‘Notes sur les inventaires des cahiers Combray’, Bulletin des informations proustiennes, 13 (1982), 327–42. —— ‘Teleology and Textual Misrepresentation: The New Pléiade Proust’, French Studies Bulletin (autumn, 1995), 15–17. —— Processes of Literary Creation: Flaubert and Proust (Oxford: Legenda, 1998).

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—— ‘Marcel Proust (1871–1922): A Modernist Novel of Time’, Chapter 19, The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists, ed. Michael Bell (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 327–42. Shattuck, Roger, Proust’s Binoculars: A Study of Memory, Time and Recognition in ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964). —— ‘Lost and Found: The Structure of Proust’s Novel’, Chapter 5, The Cambridge Companion to Proust, ed. Richard Bales (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 74–84. Stern, Sheila, Marcel Proust:  Swann’s Way, Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1989). Stierle, Karlheinz, ‘The Reading of Fictional Texts’, The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 83–105. Suleiman, Susan R., and Inge Crosman, The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980). Tadié, Jean-Yves, Proust et le roman: Essai sur les formes et techniques du roman dans ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). —— ‘Proust et l’inachèvement’ dans Le Manuscrit inachevé. Écriture, création, communication (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1986), 75–85. —— Marcel Proust (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). Ton-That, Thanh-Vân, ‘L’inachèvement dans Jean Santeuil’, Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 25 (1994), 17–26. —— Proust avant la Recherche: jeunesse et genèse d’une écriture au tournant du siècle (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012). Unwin, Timothy (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel– From 1800 to the Present (Cambridge: CUP, 1997). Ushiba, Akio, ‘À propos des deux côtés d’À la recherche du temps perdu’, Études de langue et littérature françaises, 32 (1978), 78–98. Walker, David H., ‘Formal Experiment and Innovation’, Chapter 8, The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel – From 1800 to the Present, ed. Timothy Unwin (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 126–44. Watt, Adam, Reading in Proust’s ‘À la recherche’ – ‘Le Délire de la lecture’ (Oxford: OUP, 2009). —— (ed.), Marcel Proust in Context (Cambridge: CUP, 2013). Wetherill, Michael, Proust:  Du Côté de chez Swann, Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature, 22 (Glasgow: Glasgow Universities’ Design and Print, 1992). Willemart, Philippe, L’Écriture à l’ère de l’indétermination:  Études sur la critique génétique, la psychanalyse et la littérature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019).

Index

Abbott, H. Porter 110, 111, 136 Anis, Jacques 21 Aubépines 31, 75, 77–8, 99, 132–3 Avant-texte 3, 4, 5, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 40, 42, 43, 44, 47, 54, 55, 56, 74, 76, 82, 93, 125   Baldwin, Thomas 69, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 114, 124 Bales, Richard 95, 101, 106, 111, 127 Balzac, Honoré de 68, 69, 70, 71, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 109, 112, 113, 116, 124, 137, 141 Bardèche, Maurice 13, 27, 36, 37, 50 Barthes, Roland 98 Baudelaire, Charles 16, 17 Bellemin-Noel, Jean 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 35 Bersani, Leo 146 Brée, Germaine 40 Brun, Bernard 13, 25, 35, 126   Champi, François le 62–4, 71, 97, 133, 142 Chastenoy, Jacques, de 147 Clarac, Pierre 1–3, 7, 9, 11, 24, 27–30, 32, 33, 77, 92–3   Combray 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 33, 39, 41, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77,

78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109, 111, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 143 Debray-Genette, Raymonde 21 deux côtés:, les 27, 52, 70, 75, 76, 77, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 105, 132 Ellison, David 124, 143 Ernestine 8, 31, 113 Éteuilles 8, 31, 39, 77   Fallois, Bernard de 1, 3, 7, 11, 26, 27, 28, 30, 49, 57, 60 Flaubert, Gustave 11, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 93, 109, 116, 125 Fraisse, Luc 57 Françoise 8, 11, 12, 50, 73, 95, 107, 117, 125   Gamble, Cynthia 95 Genetic Criticism 1, 3, 4, 7, 14, 16, 45, 47, 51, 69, 76, 92, 93, 128, 143 Genette, Gérard 24, 91, 93, 135 Grésillon, Almuth 17, 19, 21, 22   Hughes, Edward, J. 103–4   Inachèvement 3, 18, 22, 27, 28, 35, 37

152 Index Kolb, Philip 2, 3, 8, 21–2, 30–1, 58   Landy, Joshua 127, 131, 133, 134 Lebrave, Jean-Louis 15, 21 Léonie, tante 5, 8, 10, 13, 33, 40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Levaillant, Jean 15 Lewis, Pericles 95, 110–12 Lilacs 2, 52, 77–9, 82–4, 87 Lilas 31, 75, 77–9, 99, 132   Marc-Lipianski, Mireille 1, 7–9, 33 Martin-Chauffier, Louis 129 Modernism/Modernist 6, 14, 24, 26, 35, 36, 44, 48, 58, 65, 69, 73–4, 89, 91–2, 98, 108–9, 112–3, 116–7, 119, 120, 123–4, 128, 130, 136, 142–3 Moss, Howard 75, 87   Nelson, Brian 110 Nénuphar 125   Pommiers 31, 75, 77, 79, 82, 99, 132, 133, 143 Ponge, Francis 21 Proust, Marcel Contre Sainte-Beuve 1, 2, 4, 5.7.9.10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 23, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 49, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 70, 74, 76, 91, 92, 94, 104, 115, 135, 136 Les Plaisirs et les jours 4, 7, 23, 69, 93, 98 Pastiches et mélanges 2, 4, 7, 23, 62, 93 Santeuil, Jean 1–5, 7–10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 13, 28, 32–7, 39, 47–9, 55, 59, 61–3, 65, 69, 71–4, 76, 77, 79,

81–3, 88, 89, 91–5, 97–9, 100–04, 106, 108, 109, 112–16, 119, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131, 134–7, 142, 144 Sésame et les Lys 2, 9, 10, 106 Sur la lecture 2, 4, 7, 47, 49, 55, 62, 64, 65, 73, 93, 107 Pugh, Anthony 11, 12   Quémar, Claudine 12, 13, 40, 76, 81   Rogers, Brian 101, 130–31, 133, 136 Ruskin, John 9, 98   Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de 52, 121 Sandre, Yves 2, 26, 27, 29, 31, 93 Schmid, Marion, A 109, 112, 125, 130, 132 Shattuck, Roger 111, 118, 120, 125, 132 Stern, Sheila 70, 130 Suleiman, Susan 132 Sureau, Mme 5, 33, 48, 93, 113   Tadié, Jean-Yves 1, 2, 3, 14, 22, 24, 27, 28, 35, 101 Ton-That, Thanh-Vân 1, 18, 37, 100   Ushiba, Akio 76   Water lily 83, 85, 125 Watt, Adam 55, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73, 124, 130, 133 Wetherill, Michael P 63, 70, 71, 72, 110, 117   Zola, Émile 18, 95

Modern French Identities

Edited by Jean Khalfa

This series aims to publish monographs, editions or collections of papers based on recent research into modern French Literature. It welcomes contributions from academics, researchers and writers worldwide and in British and Irish universities in particular. Modern French Identities focuses on the French and Francophone writing of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, whose formal experiments and revisions of genre have combined to create an entirely new set of literary forms, from the the- matic autobiographies of Michel Leiris and Bernard Noël to the magic realism of French Caribbean writers. The idea that identities are constructed rather than found, and that the self is an area to explore rather than a given pretext, runs through much of modern French literature, from Proust, Gide, Apollinaire and Césaire to Barthes, Duras, Kristeva, Glissant, Germain and Roubaud. This series explores the turmoil in ideas and values expressed in the works of theorists like Lacan, Irigaray, Foucault, Fanon, Deleuze and Bourdieu and traces the impact of current theoretical approaches – such as gender and sexuality studies, de/coloniality, intersectionality, and ecocriticism – on the literary and cultural interpretation of the self. The series publishes studies of individual authors and artists, comparative studies, and interdisciplinary projects and welcomes research on autobio­ graphy, cinema, fiction, poetry and performance art and/or the intersections between them. Editorial Board Contemporary Literature and Thought Martin Crowley (University of Cambridge) Francophone Studies Louise Hardwick (University of Birmingham) Jean Khalfa (University of Cambridge) Gender and Sexuality Studies Florian Grandena (University of Ottawa) Cristina Johnston (University of Stirling) Language and Linguistics Michaël Abecassis (University of Oxford) Literature and Art Peter Collier and Jean Khalfa (University of Cambridge) Literature and Non-fiction Muriel Pic (University of Bern) Poetry Nina Parish (University of Bath) Emma Wagstaff (University of Birmingham) Zoopoetics and Ecocriticism Anne Simon (CNRS/EHESS, Paris)

Volume 1

Victoria Best & Peter Collier (eds): Powerful Bodies. Performance in French Cultural Studies. 220 pages. 1999. ISBN 3–906762-56-4 / US-ISBN 0–8204-4239-9

Volume 2

Julia Waters: Intersexual Rivalry. A ‘Reading in Pairs’ of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet. 228 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906763-74-9 / US-ISBN 0–8204-4626-2

Volume 3

Sarah Cooper: Relating to Queer Theory. Rereading Sexual Self-Definition with Irigaray, Kristeva, Wittig and Cixous. 231 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906764-46-X / US-ISBN 0–8204-4636-X

Volume 4 Julia Prest & Hannah Thompson (eds): Corporeal Practices. (Re) figuring the Body in French Studies. 166 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906764-53-2 / US-ISBN 0–8204-4639-4 Volume 5 Victoria Best: Critical Subjectivities. Identity and Narrative in the Work of Colette and Marguerite Duras. 243 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906763-89-7 / US-ISBN 0–8204-4631-9 Volume 6 David Houston Jones: The Body Abject: Self and Text in Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett. 213 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906765-07-5 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5058-8 Volume 7 Robin MacKenzie: The Unconscious in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. 270 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906758-38-9 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5070-7 Volume 8 Rosemary Chapman: Siting the Quebec Novel. The Representation of Space in Francophone Writing in Quebec. 282 pages. 2000. ISBN 3–906758-85-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5090-1 Volume 9 Gill Rye: Reading for Change. Interactions between Text Identity in Contemporary French Women’s Writing (Baroche, Cixous, Constant). 223 pages. 2001. ISBN 3–906765-97-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5315-3 Volume 10 Jonathan Paul Murphy: Proust’s Art. Painting, Sculpture and Writing in A la recherche du temps perdu. 248 pages. 2001. ISBN 3–906766-17-9 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5319-6 Volume 11 Julia Dobson: Hélène Cixous and the Theatre. The Scene of Writing. 166 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906766-20-9 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5322-6

Volume 12 Emily Butterworth & Kathryn Robson (eds): Shifting Borders. Theory and Identity in French Literature. 226 pages. 2001. ISBN 3–906766-86-1 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5602-0 Volume 13 Victoria Korzeniowska: The Heroine as Social Redeemer in the Plays of Jean Giraudoux. 144 pages. 2001. ISBN 3–906766-92-6 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5608-X Volume 14 Kay Chadwick: Alphonse de Châteaubriant: Catholic Collaborator. 327 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906766-94-2 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5610-1 Volume 15

Nina Bastin: Queneau’s Fictional Worlds. 291 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906768-32-5 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5620-9

Volume 16 Sarah Fishwick: The Body in the Work of Simone de Beauvoir. 284 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906768-33-3 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5621-7 Volume 17 Simon Kemp & Libby Saxton (eds): Seeing Things. Vision, Perception and Interpretation in French Studies. 287 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906768-46-5 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5858-9 Volume 18 Kamal Salhi (ed.): French in and out of France. Language Policies, Intercultural Antagonisms and Dialogue. 487 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906768-47-3 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5859-7 Volume 19 Genevieve Shepherd: Simone de Beauvoir’s Fiction. A Psychoanalytic Rereading. 262 pages. 2003. ISBN 3–906768-55-4 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5867-8 Volume 20 Lucille Cairns (ed.): Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France. 290 pages. 2002. ISBN 3–906769-66-6 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5903-8 Volume 21 Wendy Goolcharan-Kumeta: My Mother, My Country. Reconstructing the Female Self in Guadeloupean Women’s Writing. 236 pages. 2003. ISBN 3–906769-76-3 / US-ISBN 0–8204-5913-5 Volume 22 Patricia O’Flaherty: Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972). A Philosophy of Failure. 256 pages. 2003. ISBN 3–03910-013-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6282-9 Volume 23 Katherine Ashley (ed.): Prix Goncourt, 1903–2003: essais critiques. 205 pages. 2004. ISBN 3–03910-018-1 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6287-X Volume 24 Julia Horn & Lynsey Russell-Watts (eds): Possessions. Essays in French Literature, Cinema and Theory. 223 pages. 2003. ISBN 3–03910-005-X / US-ISBN 0–8204-5924-0

Volume 25 Steve Wharton: Screening Reality. French Documentary Film during the German Occupation. 252 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-066-1 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6882-7 Volume 26 Frédéric Royall (ed.): Contemporary French Cultures and Societies. 421 pages. 2004. ISBN 3–03910-074-2 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6890-8 Volume 27 Tom Genrich: Authentic Fictions. Cosmopolitan Writing of the Troisième République, 1908–1940. 288 pages. 2004. ISBN 3–03910-285-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7212-3 Volume 28 Maeve Conrick & Vera Regan: French in Canada. Language Issues. 186 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03-910142-9 Volume 29 Kathryn Banks & Joseph Harris (eds): Exposure. Revealing Bodies, Unveiling Representations. 194 pages. 2004. ISBN 3–03910-163-3 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6973-4 Volume 30 Emma Gilby & Katja Haustein (eds): Space. New Dimensions in French Studies. 169 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-178-1 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6988-2 Volume 31 Rachel Killick (ed.): Uncertain Relations. Some Configurations of the ‘Third Space’ in Francophone Writings of the Americas and of Europe. 258 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-189-7 / US-ISBN 0–8204-6999-8 Volume 32 Sarah F. Donachie & Kim Harrison (eds): Love and Sexuality. New Approaches in French Studies. 194 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-249-4 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7178-X Volume 33 Michaël Abecassis: The Representation of Parisian Speech in the Cinema of the 1930s. 409 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-260-5 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7189-5 Volume 34 Benedict O’Donohoe: Sartre’s Theatre: Acts for Life. 301 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-250-X / US-ISBN 0–8204-7207-7 Volume 35 Moya Longstaffe: The Fiction of Albert Camus. A Complex Simplicity. 300 pages. 2007. ISBN 3–03910-304-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7229-8 Volume 36 Arnaud Beaujeu: Matière et lumière dans le théâtre de Samuel Beckett: Autour des notions de trivialité, de spiritualité et d’« autre-là ». 377 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0206-8

Volume 37 Shirley Ann Jordan: Contemporary French Women’s Writing: Women’s Visions, Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives. 308 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-315-6 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7240-9 Volume 38 Neil Foxlee: Albert Camus’s ‘The New Mediterranean Culture’: A Text and its Contexts. 349 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0207-4 Volume 39 Michael O’Dwyer & Michèle Raclot: Le Journal de Julien Green: Miroir d’une âme, miroir d’un siècle. 289 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-319-9 Volume 40 Thomas Baldwin: The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust. 188 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-323-7 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7247-6 Volume 41 Charles Forsdick & Andrew Stafford (eds): The Modern Essay in French: Genre, Sociology, Performance. 296 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-514-0 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7520-3 Volume 42 Peter Dunwoodie: Francophone Writing in Transition. Algeria 1900–1945. 339 pages. 2005. ISBN 3–03910-294-X / US-ISBN 0–8204-7220-4 Volume 43 Emma Webb (ed.): Marie Cardinal: New Perspectives. 260 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-544-2 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7547-5 Volume 44 Jérôme Game (ed.): Porous Boundaries: Texts and Images in Twentieth-Century French Culture. 164 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03910-568-7 Volume 45 David Gascoigne: The Games of Fiction: Georges Perec and Modern French Ludic Narrative. 327 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-697-X / US-ISBN 0–8204-7962-4 Volume 46 Derek O’Regan: Postcolonial Echoes and Evocations: The Intertextual Appeal of Maryse Condé. 329 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-578-7 Volume 47 Jennifer Hatte: La langue secrète de Jean Cocteau: la mythologie personnelle du poète et l’histoire cachée des Enfants terribles. 332 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03910-707-0 Volume 48 Loraine Day: Writing Shame and Desire: The Work of Annie Ernaux. 315 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03910-275-4

Volume 49 John Flower (éd.): François Mauriac, journaliste: les vingt premières années, 1905–1925. 352 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0265-4 Volume 50 Miriam Heywood: Modernist Visions: Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu and Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma. 277 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0296-8 Volume 51 Isabelle McNeill & Bradley Stephens (eds): Transmissions: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Cinema. 221 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03910-734-6 Volume 52 Marie-Christine Lala: Georges Bataille, Poète du réel. 178 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03910-738-4 Volume 53

Patrick Crowley: Pierre Michon: The Afterlife of Names. 242 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03910-744-5

Volume 54 Nicole Thatcher & Ethel Tolansky (eds): Six Authors in Captivity. Literary Responses to the Occupation of France during World War II. 205 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-520-5 / US-ISBN 0–8204-7526-2 Volume 55 Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze & Floriane Place-Verghnes (eds): Poétiques de la parodie et du pastiche de 1850 à nos jours. 361 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03910-743-7 Volume 56 Thanh-Vân Ton-That: Proust avant la Recherche: jeunesse et genèse d’une écriture au tournant du siècle. 285 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0277-7 Volume 57 Helen Vassallo: Jeanne Hyvrard, Wounded Witness: The Body Politic and the Illness Narrative. 243 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03911-017-9 Volume 58 Marie-Claire Barnet, Eric Robertson and Nigel Saint (eds): Robert Desnos. Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century. 390 pages. 2006. ISBN 3–03911-019-5 Volume 59 Michael O’Dwyer (ed.): Julien Green, Diariste et Essayiste. 259 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03911-016-2 Volume 60 Kate Marsh: Fictions of 1947: Representations of Indian Decolonization 1919–1962. 238 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03911-033-9

Volume 61 Lucy Bolton, Gerri Kimber, Ann Lewis and Michael Seabrook (eds): Framed!: Essays in French Studies. 235 pages. 2007. ISBN 978–3-03911-043-8 Volume 62 Lorna Milne and Mary Orr (eds): Narratives of French Modernity: Themes, Forms and Metamorphoses. Essays in Honour of David Gascoigne. 365 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-03911-051-3 Volume 63 Ann Kennedy Smith: Painted Poetry: Colour in Baudelaire’s Art Criticism. 253 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-03911-094-0 Volume 64

Sam Coombes: The Early Sartre and Marxism. 330 pages. 2008. ISBN 978–3-03911-115-2

Volume 65 Claire Lozier: De l’abject et du sublime: Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett. 327 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0724-6 Volume 66 Charles Forsdick and Andy Stafford (eds): La Revue: The Twentieth- Century Periodical in French. 379 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-03910-947-0 Volume 67 Alison S. Fell (ed.): French and francophone women facing war / Les femmes face à la guerre. 301 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-332-3 Volume 68 Elizabeth Lindley and Laura McMahon (eds): Rhythms: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. 238 pages. 2008. ISBN 978–3-03911-349-1 Volume 69 Georgina Evans and Adam Kay (eds): Threat: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture. 248 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-357-6 Volume 70 John McCann: Michel Houellebecq: Author of our Times. 229 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-373-6 Volume 71 Jenny Murray: Remembering the (Post)Colonial Self: Memory and Identity in the Novels of Assia Djebar. 258 pages. 2008. ISBN 978–3-03911-367-5 Volume 72 Susan Bainbrigge: Culture and Identity in Belgian Francophone Writing: Dialogue, Diversity and Displacement. 230 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-382-8

Volume 73 Maggie Allison and Angela Kershaw (eds): Parcours de femmes: Twenty Years of Women in French. 313 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0208-1 Volume 74 Jérôme Game: Poetic Becomings: Studies in Contemporary French Literature. 263 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-03911-401-6 Volume 75 Elodie Laügt: L’Orient du signe: Rêves et dérives chez Victor Segalen, Henri Michaux et Emile Cioran. 242 pages. 2008. ISBN 978–3-03911-402-3 Volume 76 Suzanne Dow: Madness in Twentieth-Century French Women’s Writing: Leduc, Duras, Beauvoir, Cardinal, Hyvrard. 217 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-540-2 Volume 77 Myriem El Maïzi: Marguerite Duras ou l’écriture du devenir. 228 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-561-7 Volume 78 Claire Launchbury: Music, Poetry, Propaganda: Constructing French Cultural Soundscapes at the BBC during the Second World War. 223 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0239-5 Volume 79 Jenny Chamarette and Jennifer Higgins (eds): Guilt and Shame: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture. 231 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-563-1 Volume 80 Vera Regan and Caitríona Ní Chasaide (eds): Language Practices and Identity Construction by Multilingual Speakers of French L2: The Acquisition of Sociostylistic Variation. 189 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-569-3 Volume 81 Margaret-Anne Hutton (ed.): Redefining the Real: The Fantastic in Contemporary French and Francophone Women’s Writing. 294 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-567-9 Volume 82 Elise Hugueny-Léger: Annie Ernaux, une poétique de la transgression. 269 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-833-5 Volume 83 Peter Collier, Anna Magdalena Elsner and Olga Smith (eds): Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture. 359 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-846-5 Volume 84 Adam Watt (ed./éd.): Le Temps retrouvé Eighty Years After/80 ans après: Critical Essays/Essais critiques. 349 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-843-4

Volume 85 Louise Hardwick (ed.): New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Culture and Film. 237 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-850-2 Volume 86 Emmanuel Godin and Natalya Vince (eds): France and the Mediterranean: International Relations, Culture and Politics. 372 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0228-9 Volume 87 Amaleena Damlé and Aurélie L’Hostis (eds): The Beautiful and the Monstrous: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. 237 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-900-4 Volume 88 Alistair Rolls (ed.): Mostly French: French (in) Detective Fiction. 212 pages. 2009. ISBN 978–3-03911-957-8 Volume 89 Bérénice Bonhomme: Claude Simon: une écriture en cinéma. 359 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-03911-983-7 Volume 90 Barbara Lebrun and Jill Lovecy (eds): Une et divisible? Plural Identities in Modern France. 258 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0123-7 Volume 91 Pierre-Alexis Mével & Helen Tattam (eds): Language and its Contexts/ Le Langage et ses contextes: Transposition and Transformation of Meaning?/ Transposition et transformation du sens? 272 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0128-2 Volume 92 Alistair Rolls and Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan (eds): Masking Strategies: Unwrapping the French Paratext. 202 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0746-8 Volume 93 Michaël Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (éds): Les Voix des Français Volume 1: à travers l’histoire, l’école et la presse. 372 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0170-1 Volume 94 Michaël Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (éds): Les Voix des Français Volume 2: en parlant, en écrivant. 481 pages. 2010. ISBN 978–3-0343-0171-8 Volume 95 Manon Mathias, Maria O’Sullivan and Ruth Vorstman (eds): Display and Disguise. 237 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0177-0 Volume 96 Charlotte Baker: Enduring Negativity: Representations of Albinism in the Novels of Didier Destremau, Patrick Grainville and Williams Sassine. 226 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0179-4

Volume 97 Florian Grandena and Cristina Johnston (eds): New Queer Images: Representations of Homosexualities in Contemporary Francophone Visual Cultures. 246 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0182-4 Volume 98 Florian Grandena and Cristina Johnston (eds): Cinematic Queerness: Gay and Lesbian Hypervisibility in Contemporary Francophone Feature Films. 354 pages. 2011. ISBN 978–3-0343-0183-1 Volume 99 Neil Archer and Andreea Weisl-Shaw (eds): Adaptation: Studies in French and Francophone Culture. 234 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0222-7 Volume 100 Peter Collier et Ilda Tomas (éds): Béatrice Bonhomme: le mot, la mort, l’amour. 437 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0780-2 Volume 101 Helena Chadderton: Marie Darrieussecq’s Textual Worlds: Self, Society, Language. 170 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0766-6 Volume 102 Manuel Bragança: La crise allemande du roman français, 1945– 1949: la représentation des Allemands dans les best-sellers de l’immédiat après-guerre. 220 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0835-9 Volume 103 Bronwen Martin: The Fiction of J. M. G. Le Clézio: A Postcolonial Reading. 199 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0162-6 Volume 104 Hugues Azérad, Michael G. Kelly, Nina Parish et Emma Wagstaff (éds): Chantiers du poème: prémisses et pratiques de la création poétique moderne et contemporaine. 374 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0800-7 Volume 105 Franck Dalmas: Lectures phénoménologiques en littérature française: de Gustave Flaubert à Malika Mokeddem. 253 pages. 2012. ISBN 978–3-0343-0727-7 Volume 106 Béatrice Bonhomme, Aude Préta-de Beaufort et Jacques Moulin (éds): Dans le feuilletage de la terre: sur l’œuvre poétique de Marie- Claire Bancquart. 533 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0721-5

Volume 107 Claire Bisdorff et Marie-Christine Clemente (éds): Le Cœur dans tous ses états: essais sur la littérature et l’art français. 230 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0711-6 Volume 108 Michaël Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (éds): Écarts et apports des médias francophones: lexique et grammaire. 300 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0882-3 Volume 109 Allison and Imogen Long (eds): Women Matter / Femmes Matière: French and Francophone Women and the Material World. 273 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0788-8 Volume 110 Fabien Arribert-Narce et Alain Ausoni (éds): L’Autobiographie entre autres: écrire la vie aujourd’hui. 221 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0858-8 Volume 111 Leona Archer and Alex Stuart (eds): Visions of Apocalypse: Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture. 266 pages. 2013. ISBN 978–3-0343-0921-9 Volume 112 Simona Cutcan: Subversion ou conformisme ? La différence des sexes dans l’œuvre d’Agota Kristof. 264 pages. 2014. ISBN 978–3-0343-1713-9 Volume 113 Owen Heathcote: From Bad Boys to New Men ? Masculinity, Sexuality and Violence in the Work of Éric Jourdan. 279 pages. 2014. ISBN 978–3-0343-0736-9 Volume 114 Ilda Tomas: Arc-en-ciel: études sur divers poètes. 234 pages. 2014. ISBN 978–3-0343-0975-2 Volume 115 Lisa Jeschke and Adrian May (eds): Matters of Time: Material Temporalities in Twentieth-Century French Culture. 314 pages. 2014. ISBN 978–3-0343-1796-2 Volume 116 Crispin T. Lee: Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres. 316 pages. 2014. ISBN 978–3-0343-1791-7 Volume 117 Ashwiny O. Kistnareddy: Locating Hybridity: Creole, Identities and Body Politics in the Novels of Ananda Devi. 208 pages. 2015. ISBN 978–3-0343-1814-3

Volume 118 Michaël Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (éds): De la genèse de la langue à Internet: variations dans les formes, les modalités et les langues en contact. 278 pages. 2015. ISBN 978–3-0343-1798-6 Volume 119 Peter D. Tame: Isotopias: Places and Spaces in French War Fiction of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. 592 pages. 2015. ISBN 978–3-0343-0837-3 Volume 120 Daniel A. Finch-Race et Jeff Barda (éds): Textures: Processus et événements dans la création poétique moderne et contemporaine. 242 pages. 2015. ISBN 978–3-0343-1898-3 Volume 121 Hélène Sicard-Cowan: Vivre ensemble: éthique de l’imitation dans la littérature et le cinéma de l’immigration en France (1986–2005). 149 pages. 2016. ISBN 978–3-0343-1944-7 Volume 122 Mercedes Montoro Araque et Carmen Alberdi Urquizu (éds): L’entre- deux imaginaire: corps et création interculturels. 216 pages. 2016. ISBN 978–3-0343-1926-3 Volume 123 Maureen A. Ramsden: Crossing Borders: The Interrelation of Fact and Fiction in Historical Works, Travel Tales, Autobiography and Reportage. 191 pages. 2016. ISBN 978–3-0343-1995-9 Volume 124 Jean Khalfa: Poetics of the Antilles: Poetry, History and Philosophy in the Writings of Perse, Césaire, Fanon and Glissant. 388 pages. 2017. ISBN 978–3-0343-0895-3 Volume 125 Mathilde Poizat-Amar: L’Eclat du voyage: Blaise Cendrars, Victor Segalen, Albert Londres. 252 pages. 2017. ISBN 978–1-78707-296-1 Volume 126 Philippe Willemart: L’Univers de la création littéraire: Dans la chambre noire de l’écriture: Hérodias de Flaubert. 160 pages. 2017. ISBN 978–1-78707-458-3 Volume 127 Margaret Atack, Alison S. Fell, Diana Holmes and Imogen Long (eds): French Feminisms 1975 and After: New Readings, New Texts. 276 pages. 2018. ISBN 978-3-0343-2209-6 Volume 128 Matt Phillips and Tomas Weber (eds): Parasites: Exploitation and Interference in French Thought and Culture. 284 pages. 2018. ISBN 978-3-0343-2266-9

Volume 129 Zoe Angelis and Blake Gutt (eds): Stains / Les taches: Communication and Contamination in French and Francophone Literature and Culture. 274 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78707-443-9 Volume 130 Michaël Abecassis avec Marcelline Block, Gudrun Ledegen et Maribel Peñalver Vicea (éds): Le Grain de la voix dans le monde anglophone et francophone. 332 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78874-107-1 Volume 131 Philippe Willemart: L’écriture à l’ère de l’indétermination: Études sur la critique génétique, la psychanalyse et la littérature. 232 pages. 2019. ISBN 978–1-78874-631-1 Volume 132 Augustin Voegele: De l’unanimisme au fantastique: Jules Romains devant l’extraordinaire. 382 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78874-513-0 Volume 133 Maggie Allison, Elliot Evans and Carrie Tarr (eds): Plaisirs de femmes: Women, Pleasure and Transgression in French Literature and Culture. 278 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78874-383-9 Volume 134 Aaron Prevots: Bernard Vargaftig: Gestures toward the Sacred. 144 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78997-357-0 Volume 135 Susie Cronin, Sofia Ropek Hewson and Cillian Ó Fathaigh (eds): #Noussommes: Collectivity and the Digital in French Thought and Culture. 184 pages. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78874-767-7 Volume 136 Anaïs Stampfli: La coprésence de langues dans le roman antillais contemporain. 456 pages. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78874-578-9 Volume 137 Philippe Willemart: Les mécanismes de la création littéraire: Lecture, écriture, génétique et psychanalyse. 214 pages. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78997-737-0 Volume 138 Maureen A. Ramsden: The Evolution of Proust’s ‘Combray’: A Genetic Study. 152 pages. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78997-785-1