The Guermantes Way (Remembrance of Things Past, 5)

Rating:
Summary: Paris society under a microscope
Review: In "The Guermantes Way," the third volume of "In Search of Lost Time," Proust's nameless narrator has reached his teenage years and continues to observe the world around him as inspiration for his planned career in literature. His family's relocation to a new apartment building in Paris, the Hotel de Guermantes, affords him the opportunity to acquaint himself with the Faubourg Saint-Germain and what he imagines to be the fashionable, intellectual side of the city's society, personified by the Duke and Duchess de Guermantes.

The narrator's fascination with the Duchess could be described as an infatuation far surpassing that he used to have of Gilberte, the daughter of his parents' friend Charles Swann. Sickly and meek, he has trouble making a positive impression on the Duchess in his chance encounters with her, but he is persistent. He happens to have befriended her nephew Robert de Saint-Loup, a young military officer, from whom he politely requests a proper introduction by claiming a common interest in the work of a painter named Elstir. Through Robert's help, the young narrator gains admission to the high society of his dreams, which gradually destruct into the apprehension that the rich can be frivolous and boring.

As Balzac's interest was in the depiction of Paris society as a "human comedy" in all its colors and movements, Proust's palette is much more subtle and sensitive but no less broad, taking prose about as far as it can go in the description of the intimacy of all the various complex emotions. Cruelty, for example, is a simple subject, but Proust's portrayal of the nasty trick that Robert's girlfriend Rachel, a full-time actress and part-time prostitute, plays on one of her rivals, allows the narrator an inconceivably deep meditation on the ugliness of conceit. Similarly, the narrator's unreasonably lengthy account of his grandmother's stroke and subsequent death is actually a brilliant exposition on the agony of mortality.

The events of "The Guermantes Way" play against the backdrop of the Dreyfus affair, and Proust remarkably demonstrates the heavy impact this incident had on the society of the day, bringing to the surface the particular virulence of French anti-semitism, usually latent, occasionally blatant. Society is divided between pro-Dreyfus and anti-Dreyfus factions, Proust's sympathetic narrator being of the former but, like most "Dreyfusards," not too vocal about the matter. Proust uses a Jewish character, a rising dramatist named Bloch, as a token of the conflict, exhibiting him as an object of a peculiar French attitude that is less racial hatred than exotic curiosity.

Swann, himself of Jewish heritage, makes an appearance towards the end of the volume to remind the reader of his long relationship with the humble narrator. Roughly I detect an analogy, not easily sustained by the evidence presented in this review but palpable in the text nonetheless, of their friendship with that of James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, also a Jew in a hostile environment, and Stephen Dedalus. What Proust and Joyce really have in common, though, is their ability to forge bold new forms of literature that explore aspects of life never before exposed on the printed page.

Rating:
Summary: High Society
Review: In the previous two volumes of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, we have seen the young Marcel fantasize about love (in the persons of Gilberte and Albertine) and high society (in the person of the Duchesse de Guermantes). The bulk of THE GUERMANTES WAY's 819 pages is concerned with two parties involving the glitterati of fin-de-siecle Paris.

At the party of the literary Mme de Villeparisis, Marcel gains his first admittance to the world of the nobility and gets invited to an evening of his prized Dutchess, whom he had gazed on from afar when she attended church services in Combray, amid the tombs of her ancestors. Sometimes, however, when you get your heart's desire, there is that nagging question: "Is this all there is?"

At one point in the latter party, Swann says to Marcel that "one can't have a thousand years of feudalism in one's blood with impunity." The novel ends with the Guermantes about to leave for yet a more empyrean social gathering, to which Marcel is not even sure he is invited. (As we see in the next volume, he is invited and does attend.) At the very end, the Duke puts off seeing a dying friend and begins carping about his wife's choice of shoes.

We see the beginnings of Marcel's disenchantment with the social scene. Since this volume covers such a short span of time, we do not yet see the effect of his grandmother's death on the young narrator. We leave him, stunned and confused, at the threshhold of a personal triumph that has already lost much of its luster for him.

As I re-read Proust's great series, I am struck by how much I missed the first time I read it years ago. Many reviewers are struck by the length of the scenes describing the parties, but now I find that there is so much going on, and so many undercurrents, that the interior action passes quickly. Most of the action takes place in Marcel's mind as he encounters these gods of society and their hangers-on as they duel for position in their circles.

"Thus I beheld the pair of them," muses Marcel, "divorced from that name Guermantes in which long ago I had imagined them leading an unimaginable life, now just like other men and other women...."

Rating:
Summary: In touch with the high spheres of society
Review: The third volume of In search of Lost Time begins with the moving of Marcel's family to an apartment in a palace, next to the which Charlus lives. This is where Marcel begins to deal with the highest society: the Guermantes family, which seemed so distant to him in his child fantasies, becomes soon part of his life. He goes to parties and meetings, where he can see Mme Cambremer, duchess Orianne and her husband, Charlus, Odette, Swann, etc. The words of the narrator are as thorough as his sight, and he describes for pages and pages the dialogues and behaviours that take place during such encounters. In this volume is where we begin to find the diferent sexual tendencies that will be later explored. As Marcel keeps visiting Saint-Loup, Mr. Charlus develops an interest in Marcel, therefore he begins to play a series of odd games: Charlus will have outbursts of rage as Marcel's shallowness becomes clear to the count.
The snobism and everchanging criteria, through the which political circles consider someone as part of the group of desireable relations, are shown through the detailed depiction of the Dreyfuss affair. The fears of society are suddenly embodied in the character of this german diplomatic, who apparently is spying on the french government. But, even worse, he is a jew. The colliding opinions about this affair divide society. In the midst of this social confusion, Marcel is but a quiet witness, whose interventions seem to stop in invitations and references to other great names of society. One of his favorite activities during this parties is to find and reconstruct the family ties between the different participants. An interesting relationship develops between Marcel and Orianne and her husband, while Charlus finds this to be of bad taste. Marcel will know through these people the details surrounding Saint-Loup's romance with an "indecent" dancer. He knew something from the days he spent visiting his friends while he was in service.
By the end of this volume we get to see Swann's decadence in the high circles, while his wife, Odette, seems to gain more terrain everyday. Swann tries to mantain his contact with the Guermantes, but they are less interested in him as time goes by... and not even his revelation of being in the route of death, due to an ailment, captures their interest. Even more, they don't believe him.
Proust keeps working in describing the defyning coordenates of this world of looks and absurd, hollow judgements. The life of the court parties is ruled by worldly signs, theatrical effects and empty forms. Although the character's fantasies surrounding the name of the Guermantes crumbles after he meets them and find them to be... just humans (and not the corporeal reality behind the images he used to see with endearment in Combray); although this fact, he is more and more fascinated by their importance between the other aristocrats. His desire is renewed by the inclusion of a third party that desires to establish contact, or to hold good relations with the Guermantes. It is the game of snobism, in which fear seems to be the main tool.