Near the end of the celebrated first chapter of Marcel Proust’s novel, “Swann’s Way,” the anxious first-person narrator, Marcel, tells us that Charles Swann is the “unconscious author of my sufferings (48).” This sets up a multi-dimensional perspective that runs through the rest of the novel and leaves the reader questioning how much we actually know about Swann and how much of him is Marcel projecting his own insecurities.
It is not only on Swann that Marcel’s projecting his insecurities; he’s also doing it on Swann’s daughter, Gilberte. Marcel falls in love with the image of Gilberte:
“But when I learned that day that Mlle. Swann was a creature of so rare a condition, bathing as though in her natural element in the midst of such privileges, that when she asked her parents if anyone was coming to dinner, she would be answered by those syllables filled with light, by the name of that golden dinner guest who was for her only an old friend of the family: Bergotte; that for her the intimate talk at the table, the equivalent for me of my great-aunt’s conversation, would be Bergotte’s words on all the subjects he had not been able to broach in his books, and on which I would have liked to hear him pronounce his oracles; and that, lastly, when she went to visit other towns, he would walk along next to her, unknown and glorious, like the Gods who descended among mortals; then I was conscious both of the worth of a creature like Mlle. Swann and also of how crude and ignorant I would appear to her, and I felt so keenly the sweetness and the impossibility of my being her friend that I was filled with both desire and despair. Most often, now, when I thought of her, I would see her in front of a cathedral porch, explaining to me what the statues signified and, with a smile that said good things about me, introducing me as her friend to Bergotte. And always the charm of all those ideas awakened in me by the cathedrals, the charm of the hills of Ille-de-France and the plains of Normandy cast its glimmers over the picture I was forming of Mlle. Swann: this was what it meant to be on the point of falling in love with her (111).”
Later, in Part II, Proust uses the narrative techniques of superimposition and time shift best, which he learned and extrapolated from Gerard de Nerval’s novella, “Sylvie.” The entire part is, to use Marcel’s word, “cloaked” in ideals. It is exemplified when Swann obsesses over his mistress, Odette de Crecy, and Botticelli’s painting, “Youth of Moses:”
“He placed on his worktable, as if it were a photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro’s daughter. He admired the large eyes, the delicate face, which allowed one to imagine the imperfect skin, the marvelous curls of the hair along the tired cheeks, and adapting what he had found aesthetically beautiful up to then to the idea of a living woman, he translated it into physical attractions which he rejoiced to find united in a creature whom he could possess. The vague feeling of sympathy that draws us toward a masterpiece as we look at it became, now that he knew the fleshly original of Jethro’s daughter, a desire that henceforth compensated for the desire that Odette’s body had not at first inspired in him. When he had looked at that Botticelli for a long time, he would think of his own Botticelli, whom he found even more beautiful, and, bringing the photograph of Zipporah close to him, he would believe he was clasping Odette against his heart (252-253).”
In the first sentence of that graf, Swann is swooning over the reproduction of the painting. It is not the original, just as the image that Swann has of Odette in his mind is not the original her; it is bathed in his ideals, many of which he finds in the end of that graf in Zipporah. The theme of this novel is that everyone forms their own perspectives and live in their illusions similar to real life.
Another realistic trait of Proust’s novel is its portrayal of the human consciousness. His constant shifting back and forth between past and present represents human consciousness better than any author not named Ford Madox Ford. Scientifically, what separates human consciousness from others is that they are able to think in the past, present, and future, which Proust demonstrates with Marcel:
“The flowers that played on the grass then, the water that flowed past the sunlight, the whole landscape that surrounded their appearance continues to accompany the memory of them with hits unconscious or abstracted face; and certainly when they were slowly studied by that humble passerby, that child dreaming — as a king is studied by a memorialist in the crowd — that corner of nature, that bit of garden could not have believed it would be thanks to him that they would be elected to survive in all their most ephemeral details; and yet the fragrance of hawthorn that forages along the hedge where the sweetbriers will soon replace it, a sound of echoless steps on the gravel of a path, a bubble formed against a water plant by the current of the stream and bursting immediately — my exaltation has borne them along with it and managed to carry them across so many years in succession, while the paths round about have disappeared and those who walked on them have died, and the memory of those who walked on them (205).”
This sentence is set off by “then,” which suggests the past, and meanders to “continues,” which suggests the present, and with “were” it flows back into the same past and then “forages” jumps back into the same present, before leaping into the future with “soon” and finally wrapping it up with memories of the past. This realism, this superimposition, this time shift, is impressive and stems from Marcel’s omnipresent anxiety.
Anxiety is present throughout the novel. The word “anxiety” or “anxious” appears countlessly, like the word “cloak” does, and all of the characters have symptoms of anxiety and obsessiveness:
- Marcel’s aunt’s obsessive desire to know an individual in Combray (62),
- The dysfunctionality of the family when their routine is thrown off by eating lunch an hour earlier every Saturday (122)
- Swann’s excessive chatting (261) passivity (122: “He would have had the courage to remain; but he did not have the courage to leave”)
We can sense it in Proust himself as he was writing this novel. One can imagine Proust going back into the manuscript and compulsively adding more thoughts, more imagery, more allusions, expanding his sentences to include everything he could, as he was known to do. His anxiety and control are why the work is coherent, even though it is not as tight as it could be, despite its complex structure.
Appendix
The pages referenced below are from Lydia Davis’ translation.
Anxiety and control: 25, “395 cloak,” 63, 77(?), 123, 398
Perspective: 22-25, 30, 280, 332, 385
Philosophy of life and love: 261, 263
Structure, superimposition, time, and projection: 19, 21, 48, 53, 85, 87, 111, 203, 204-207, 203, 251-253