Le Temps de Proust:
About reading In Search of Lost Time, associated Proust criticism, and other secondary literature.

I’ve perhaps waited too long to write my impressions of In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, but with nothing but voluntray recollection to help me, I’ll have to post what I have. I read the Grieve translation of this volume, and I liked it. There are some problems with it, as I saw when I went to check the translation against the French, and found that in the theater scene preceding Marcel’s first vision of Berma, Grieve added the phrase “I enjoyed…” several times throughout two pages of text describing entering the theater, sitting down, watching the audience, etc. Proust, however, uses the phrase only once to introduce the entire section of description. Regardless, it was nice to read another translation of this novel, and the language Grieve uses admirably captures the feeling of anticipation throughout this second volume.

The movement throughout this section of In Search of Lost Time–from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience, from love to indifference, from the name to the thing–describe so many of the crucial parts of Marcel’s development. The theme throughout is apprenticeship, the flowering of Marcel, the growth of the young man from the boy. Development is described in that particular Proustian way, moving from general to specific, so that each scene grows out of the soil of its own type. Too, Proust’s method of retelling the same story but moving outward into the world from its previous setting puts us on familiar terrain. But, as readers, we’re also serving an apprenticeship in this volume, for we have to adjust ourselves to Proust’s startling way of introducing characters with whom we are already familiar in entirely new aspects. Proust’s characterizations are novel here because of what we’ve read before, and we have to find a way to account for them.

We start with the descriptions of a new Swann, a new Dr. Cottard (who, contre Sainte-Beuve, is revealed as a genius diagnostician despite being a social and intellectual dolt) and Ambassador Norpois. Norpois is the important one of the trio here, described in terms taht are belied by his appearance later in the first section. Proust again, in miniature, manages to draw the distinction that colors so much of his novel, that what we hear about something and what we allow ourselves to anticipate, ultimately has no relation to the thing itself. The name is different from the place, and reconciling the two is an act of will, understanding and time.

The narrator’s trip to the theater to see Berma play Phedre is another instance, though more complex, of this phenomenon. Rather than enjoying the performance he has dreamt of, Marcel is nonplussed by her flat style and what he sees as the artlessness of her approach. This disjunction, as so many in the novel, is made tragic by the anticipation the narrator had invested in his first trip to the theater, and in seeing Berma in particular. It’s only after the show, when reading reviews and indeed talking to Norpois, that the narrator begins to understand that he has witnessed something impressive. But this is a complex moment in Proust, one not fully explored until later in this section, which reveals an equivocal and troubled approach to art.

The trip to the theater is limned by the obsessions of the narrator, who spends literally hours dreaming of the theater and ranking the leading actors and actresses of the day based on nothing but reviews and half-invented suppositions. In Place Names: The Name, we’ve seen the narrator describe how important this all is to him, not only informing but forming his school friendships. One of the Marcel’s activities is to read the Morris column that bears the announcements and posters of plays, a strange kind of remove from going to the theater but necessitated by his parent’s refusal to allow him to actually attend. The theater, then, becomes invested with not only the magical qualities of Art but with the lure of the forbidden. It’s not beside the point that it is Norpois, a man of the world whose experience is broad and practical, who convinces Marcel’s parents that seeing a play would not unduly injure his sensibilities.

By the time of his afternoon there, the theater has come to stand not only for some of the forbidden fruits of adulthood, but for a shared artistic experience the currency of which is also its general availability colored by the perspicacity to understand it. Marcel attends the theater in order to be admitted into the realm of the artistic, in order to leave behind the childish lack of understanding which has marred his most fervently imagined ambitions. Going to the theater will mark the moment when the narrator becomes an artistic adult, able to analyze, discuss, revisit and offer opinions about a shared world of artistic experience which until now his youth and inexperience have kept closed to him. If this seems like overstatement, compare the narrator’s discussions of attending the theater with his shockingly casual (shocking because so casual) revelations, in this same section of the novel, of beginning to frequent brothels.

But the apprehension of art is shown to be a distressingly complex process, and the narrator is more baffled than enlightened by his trip to the theater. “This first matinee was, alas, a great disappointment.”(17) The proximate problem, of course, is that he doesn’t really like Berma’s acting, which not only disappoints but also confuses him. In fact, it is the minor characters who enthrall him and convince him, each in turn, that they are Berma. When he finally sees the great actress he is not simply disappointed by his own expectations (although Proust’s novel always contains this paradoxical element of desire satisfied), he cannot even see the art in her delivery, he finds her gestures wooden, he fails to find beauty in her expressions. All of this is brilliantly set off by Proust, who shows Marcel enjoying every other aspect of attending the play. It’s against the background, then, of confirmed expectations and enjoymen that the exposure to Berma’s art stands.

Of course after this disappointment Marcel realizes that he has much to learn about the appreciation of fine acting, and by making Norpois his first teacher in this matter Proust passes a subtle and rather cruel judgement on the narrator. Marcel, who has previously prided himself on not only his abiding interest in art, but in the superiority of his feelings, is brought back to earth rather rudely by the banality of judgement represented by Norpois. This functionary, for as brilliant as his position might be, Norpois is a functionary, knows more about art than the sensitive narrator. He recognizes the greatness of Berma, even if he derides Bergotte and implicitly rejects Marcel’s own efforts. Marcel, who until now has thought that he has some special access, a direct connection, to Art, is left disabused and confused. If he’s unable to recognize the genius of Berma, why should his opinion of Bergotte be sound?

The trip to the theater establishes quite early in the volume the overriding theme of this section of the novel, apprenticeship. Throughout In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Marcel is learning the ropes. This is obvious the scenes involving the young band and the flowering of Marcel’s passion for women. He is learning how to seduce, how to be seduced, what to notice and when. In even the wider realm of society, he is learning throughout the volume what to expect and when to expect it. From the start, with his trips to Mme. Swann’s, through his introduction to Mme. de Villeparisis, to his friendship with Robert, Marcel is learning the ways of social intercourse and flattery. He’s a relatively quick study.

Marcel is exposed to all types of art through this volume, by Norpois, Bergotte, Berma, Elstir, even St. Loup. His apprenticeship is not only in what to like and how to like it, but also in the much more delicate realm of talking and thinking about art. Much is written about Proust’s theories of art, his love for Ruskin, his disdain for the method of Saint-Beauve, but what’s clear from this section of his great novel is that Proust did not expect art to be transparently meaningful. The narrator is essentially made a fool of throughout this section, failing to have the transcendent artistic experiences that he craves, but then being corrected by men of higher understanding than his own. The disappointment of seeing Berma is only outdone by the indignity of being lectured about her brilliance by Norpois and then Bergotte. It hasn’t been that long since the narrator defined his very friends based on which actors (none of whom they had actually seen on stage) they liked, and when presented with the opportunity to not only fulfill his dream but to display his critical acumen, Marcel has a horrible time. Similarly at the church of Balbec, that church that turns out to be a double joke on the narrator, once because it isn’t actually located in the Balbec to which he has directed all his thoughts, and once because he cannot see the joy of its carvings despite (or because of) his fantasies about them, Marcel is disappointed. It is only later, in one of the most touching scenes in this volume, does Elstir explain to him why the carvings of the Balbec church must be cherished and loved. Indeed, on the last of the narrator’s visits to Elstir, when he is being taught the value of a good dressmaker, he remarks that his whole perception of nature has been changed by his conversations with Elstir, by looking at his canvases. Marcel no longer seeks to view nature uninterrupted by the figures and forms of civilization, for Elstir has taught him that it is looking through the interaction between the natural and the civilized that nature shines the most. By the end of In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel’s way of looking at the world has changed completely.