Part 6

The French themselves seem hardly to realise how sharp and deep their political divisions are become. Yet when we remember that during the last forty years politics have been able to make of that gentle latin scepticism, which gave us Montaigne, Bayle, and Voltaire, and still gives us M. Anatole France, something as narrow and bitter almost as Calvinism; when we hear of such pretty place-names as (say) St. Symphorien being changed into (say) Émile Combesville; we ought not to be surprised if literature even gets splashed a little in the dirty dog-fight. Because Marcel Proust is supposed to have chosen as the subject of his epic the _faubourg St. Germain_, it is assumed that he admired and believed in it. Was not _L’Action française_ amongst the first to hail his rising genius? Is he not half a Jew and therefore wholly a renegade? He is a black reactionary and an enemy of light. He is not a good man, so how can he be a good writer? We are back again in a very familiar world of criticism; only the English critics can prove that he was good, after all.

As a matter of fact, which I know counts for little in politics or criticism, Proust seems to me often unduly hard on the _faubourg_. I shall not easily forget, nor perhaps will it, the devastating effect of that small phrase, when, after treating us to a ravishing description of a theatre full to the brim of _beau monde_, after explaining how these are the people fitted by training, tradition, and circumstance to taste the things of the mind, he adds, by way of afterthought as it were, “si seulement ils avaient eu de l’esprit.” For my part, sitting next her at that gorgeous dinner-party, I was completely bowled over by the matchless Oriane, Duchesse de Guermantes (late Princesse des Laumes), bowled over not only by her beauty and seduction, and a little perhaps by her great name, but by her _bel esprit_ and intelligence. To me her observations on Victor Hugo in particular and the art of writing in general seemed to possess that airy profundity which above all things one relishes in a literary conversation, until M. Proust, after pooh-poohing her circle, undid the duchess herself with this painfully just appreciation: “Pour toutes ces raisons les causeries avec la duchesse ressemblaient à ces connaissances qu’on puise dans une bibliothèque de château, surannée, incomplète, incapable de former une intelligence, dépourvue de presque tout ce que nous aimons, mais nous offrant parfois quelque renseignement curieux, voire la citation d’une belle page que nous ne connaissions pas, et dont nous sommes heureux dans la suite de nous rappeler que nous en devons la connaissance à une magnifique demeure seigneuriale. Nous sommes alors, pour avoir trouvé la préface de Balzac à _la Chartreuse_ ou des lettres inédites de Joubert, tentés de nous exagérer le prix de la vie que nous y avons menée et dont nous oublions, pour cette aubaine d’un soir, la frivolité stérile.”

By naming Madame de Guermantes I have given myself occasion to remark one of M. Proust’s most extraordinary gifts—his power of realising a character. Without being presented one would know the incomparable duchess should one ever have the happiness of meeting her at a party; and I should recognise one of her good things (“Oriane’s latest”) were it repeated in the train. When some one quotes a saying by Dr. Johnson or the Duke of Wellington we need not verify by the book; their characters are so vivid to us, and they speak so much in character, that their phrases have the ring of familiar voices. It is the same with Madame de Guermantes. How many authors have achieved this miracle? Shakespeare, of course, who achieved all miracles, can distinguish even his minor characters. In a tipsy dialogue between Mrs. Quickly and Doll Tearsheet you can tell by the mere phrasing, by the particular way in which a bawdy joke is turned, which of the ladies is speaking. And who else can do it? Not Balzac, I am sure. Dickens, some one will say. Yes, but only by giving us for characters blatant caricatures. We all know the devil by his tail.

So far I have not contested the common opinion that Proust is the poet of the _beau monde_; I have sought only to show that, if he were, it would not follow that he was either a snob or a reactionary: it would not follow that he was taken in. In fact, the subject of Proust’s epic is the whole of French life as it was from forty to twenty years ago—a subject of which the _faubourg_ is but a part. He gives us a full-length picture of family life in the provinces and of a quasi-intellectual circle in Paris, of the “seaside girls” who run about with Albertine, and a _croquis_ of “county society”; best of all, perhaps, he gives us exquisite landscapes and still-lifes. And surely at this time of day it ought not to be necessary to remind people, especially French people, that any subject, provided the artist is thoroughly possessed by it, is as good as any other; that the forms and colours, and their relations, of a pot of flowers or fruit on a table, passionately apprehended, are capable of inspiring as sublime a work of art as the Madonna or the Crucifixion. If the _faubourg_ above all things fascinated Proust, that I suspect was because in it Proust saw a subject proper only to the touch of a master psychologist. “Society,” he saw, is a hierarchy without official grades or badges: unlike the army, with its colonels, majors, and captains; unlike the navy, with its admirals, captains, and commanders; it resembles rather a public school or small college. It is a microcosm in which people are moved up and down, in and out, by mysterious and insensible powers; in which they are promoted and degraded by a breath of fashion blowing they know not whence; in which they obey slavishly unwritten laws, as absolute as those of the Medes and Persians: powers these, none of which they themselves can apprehend, but of which some can be surprised by sensibilities in their way as delicate and subtle as those which know when a lady changes her _sachets_ and can distinguish the _bouquet_ of Léoville from Larose. Herein perhaps, rather than in its social prestige, lay the charm of the _faubourg_ for Marcel Proust.

One word more: a translation may do very well, but we can have no English Proust. No Englishman, I mean, writing in English, would be allowed to publish in England so complete a picture of life. Wherefore as a novel- and play-writing nation we have lost pride of place, and cannot hope to regain it till we have set our laws in order. An artist must be possessed by his subject; but the English novelist who is inspired by his sense of contemporary life is not allowed to express that by which he is possessed. Fielding, Jane Austen, Thackeray, Dickens, Meredith, James, and Hardy, English novelists who took contemporary life for their province, all had something to say which may have shocked or hurt but which the age did not prohibit. They were, therefore, as free to express the best that was in them as Balzac, Zola, or Proust. But to-day our subtlest and most active minds, affected maybe, consciously or unconsciously, by modern psychological discoveries, are concerned, so far as they are concerned with life at all, with certain aspects of it, with certain relations, of which they may not treat freely. Their situation is as painful and absurd as would have been that of men of science who, towards the close of last century, should have been allowed to make no use of Darwin’s contribution to biology. The gap between first- and third-rate minds has been growing alarmingly wide of late. Proust moves in a world unknown almost to the intellectual slums, or to those intellectual lower middle classes from which are drawn too many of our magistrates, judges, and legislators. These lag behind, and impose their veto on the sincere treatment of English manners by a first-rate English artist. And perhaps the best tribute which English admirers of Proust could pay his memory would be to agitate for the repeal of those absurd and barbarous laws which make an English _Recherche du Temps Perdu_ impossible.

CLIVE BELL.

XI

_THE SPELL OF PROUST_

The magic ring which Marcel Proust drew, almost literally, round his readers—since it is in the circle of “_le temps perdu_” which is to become “_le temps retrouvé_” that he sets us and himself—seemed early in the incantation to betray a break whereby we might escape, did we so wish, from his compulsion. For, enthralled as we had been by _Swann_, there was a sensible relaxing of the spell with the _Jeunes Filles_. Not in the opening pages, where the atmosphere that we had rapturously learned to breathe was potent still with its intoxicating magic; but when we came to Balbec, and the group of seaside girls began to show as rulers of the scene, there was scarce one of us who did not own to disappointment. _La petite bande_, more actual and, on the surface, more alluring than _la petite phrase_ in the sonata of Vinteuil, yet wholly failed to charm the sense or the imagination as the enigmatic little group of notes had charmed. We heard, and we responded to, the cry: “Those flappers are so tedious!”—and as Albertine grew more and more significant, _we_ grew more sceptical, and told ourselves that we could step outside the ring at any moment we might choose. But somehow, that emancipative moment never came. Despite the blinding print of the edition in a single volume—print that must have permanently injured our collective sight—there always was a reason why we could not break away. And finally, we realised that we were wrong, and that the spell had but become more absolute, in both the shades of meaning in that word. For now that some of the more normal baits for interest were laid aside, we could perceive that here was sorcery in its pure state—the thing itself, stripped of all seeming. Now we could not so easily, or easily at all, “say why” when the profane inquired of us what the magic was—why, reading Proust, we were so interested. We were _not_ so interested; we could scarcely say, or even think, that we were “interested” any more.

The miracle had happened. We were spellbound, for good and all, within the magic ring. We had forgotten what we used to mean when, in the world outside, we had said “dull”; for here was much that was not merely dull but positively soporific, yet our eyes were glued upon the baleful page, and any interruption seemed a challenge to the occult power that held us. Something was risked, immeasurably worth our while, did we fall short of the required submission.... This was because we now could feel more deeply the extent of what the wizard meant to do with us. We were not passively to stand within the circle. We were, with him, to pace it mystically round, while time ran back to fetch the Age of Gold. _Le temps passé_ would be transmuted, imperceptibly, into _le temps retrouvé_; and our aid was necessary to the necromancer’s full success. With this flattering divination there began a new excitement, different in action from the old; for soon, instead of rushing at the latest Marcel Proust directly we had bought it, we indeed did buy it, but re-read the earlier volumes first. Here was the very magic ring itself, drawn round our fireside chair! The latest Proust lay ready to our hand, slim or substantial token of the power still unspent; but lest we should have missed a single letter in the charm, we spelt it through devoutly once again; and, in the spelling, found how many an indication subtly skilled at once to warn and to escape us till the moment of reflection or re-reading! And as a consequence, we now perceived so intricate and exquisite a “pattern in the carpet” as could make the newest volume into something more exciting for anticipation even than we had dreamed.

This is the proof, to me, of Marcel Proust’s (as one might think, indisputable; yet by a few disputed) genius. The _Swann_ book contains the largest share of interest, no doubt—that merer, franker kind of interest which other books can give us in a hardly less degree. But in the later volumes, as they “grow on” us, there is far more (if also there is less) than this; and it is through the more that we come finally to clear perception of Proust’s purpose and his mastery. For in these less immediately attractive volumes we are conscious of an ever-growing sense of the significance so deeply interfused through the whole work. He had by then become absorbed to such degree in his interpretation of the microcosm which he saw as a sufficing symbol of the irony, absurdity, and the incessant alternation, “intermittency,” and travail of the consciousness of man, that we are sensible, as he proceeds, of powers more transcendent than the highest of the writer’s mere accomplishment—stupendous as that is in Proust, who could “write” anything he chose, and chose to write so many things, from satire that is blighting in its smiling subtlety (so muted as to mock the hasty ear!), to lyric flower-pieces like the paradisal hawthorn-hedge in _Swann_, and the unrivalled comments upon buildings, pictures, fashions in dress and manners (who will forget the monocles at the big evening-party at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s?), books, the drama, even photographs! In the great elegiac glories of the death of Bergotte (not yet published in book-form), and of that _grand’mère_ who is the _motif_, as it were, in the symphonic composition of the unnamed central figure’s personality, Proust sounded chords which lay till then beyond the compass of his readers’ hearing, but were then revealed to sense that shall not lose them while it yet survives.

But over all this virtuosity there rules a mightier gift—the master-gift of insight. Proust, one could say, “knows everything,” in the restricted meaning of the words. No bent, no twist, of modern thought escapes him; yet, as one reader writes to me, “there is no dead psychology”—no case stretched on a Procrustean bed, with all that does not fit lopped comfortably, and discomfortingly, off. He, unlike Nature, is most careful of the single life. If ever we had questioned that—and we had very little questioned it—the Charlus portrait answered us: that masterpiece of the undaunted, following eye and mind. Proust leads us with him on this journey of the visual and mental powers; we are no more involuntarily drawn on than he has been into the state of an astounded fondness and appreciation for the maudlin, overbearing, ludicrous, yet constantly pathetic or superb old “invert.” We are offended personally by the insolences of his favourites; the tears in his unholy eyes can well-nigh wet our own ... and this though, with the master’s hand upon our shoulders, we have gone through every phase of the degrading intimacies, seen and heard the tragi-comic outbursts of the princely victim, every now and then remembering his “rank” and seeking to restore the true relation between him and those whom in his view he honours by his merest word, yet who are his disdainful masters through his helpless depravation.

If there were nothing else than Charlus in the books, Proust must be given pride of place among the masters. But with the plenitude there is—what must we give? More than a master, one would say, a writer cannot be. Yet in the image here suggested of the magic circle, there is possibly the one thing more that causes Proustians to divide their reading lives into the time before and after they have read these books. No spell had yet been worked on us of potency like this; for though we are pent within the ring, we move within it too—the world revolves, for us, as in a crystal held beneath our gaze by one who, moving with us, will reveal the secret hidden not there only but in our own dim sense, when at the last _le temps perdu_ shall have become _le temps retrouvé_.

ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE.

XII

_A NEW PSYCHOMETRY_[3]

[Footnote 3: Reprinted from _The Times_ of Wednesday, November 29, 1922. _The Times_ had been almost alone among English newspapers in giving “publicity” to the death of Marcel Proust in its issue of Monday, November 20.—C.K.S.M.]

To judge from the newspapers, there have been tremendous “crises” in public affairs during the last few days: the triumph of Fascismo in Italy, the Lausanne Conference, the English elections. But to many of us the great events are merely spectacular; they pass rapidly across the screen, while the band plays irrelevant scraps of syncopated music, and seem no more real than any other of the adventures, avowedly fictitious, that are “filmed” for our idle hours. They don’t, save on reflection and much diligent pondering of leading articles, come home to our business and bosoms. But one announcement in _The Times_ of last Monday week shocked many of us with a sudden, absurdly indignant bewilderment, like a foul blow: I mean the death of Marcel Proust. It is not only absurd but impious to be indignant with the decrees of Fate. The wise throughout the ages have prescribed for us our proper behaviour in the face of such an event; and most of us find the prescription quite useless. But, on the death of an author, there is this peculiar consolation that never fails: his work lives absolutely unaffected by his death.

... We can light the lamp, make a clear fire, and sit down to the book with the old thrill. There is only the thought that we must be content with what we have, that we are to get no more from that hand. With Marcel Proust, however, it seems that we are spared even that mortification. He has left behind him the completion of _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_. This is great news. The announcements from the press of _La Nouvelle Revue Française_ will be eagerly awaited. Even a new Anatole France is not so important an event.

It has been said that Proust will go down to posterity as the author of one book. This is only true in a literal sense. For the many volumes of _A la Recherche_ that already crowd the shelves are several “books” in one. It is not a “story,” but a panorama of many stories. Indeed, who reads Proust for the “story”? His book is really a picture of the modern world and the modern spirit, and that is its peculiar fascination for us. There are “morbid” elements in it, to be sure—you cannot read a page without seeing that it must have been written by some one who was anything but a normal, healthy human being, and it is not for nothing that _The Times_[4] has compared him to Petronius Arbiter. But one of the advantages of this hyperaesthesia is a heightened sensibility for _everything_, the perception and accurate notation of innumerable details in thought and feeling that escape a normal observer.

[Footnote 4: _The Times_, Monday, November 20, 1922: “Marcel Proust: An Appreciation.” (From a Correspondent.)—C.K.S.M.]

Take, for instance, the account of the famous author “Bergotte.” Proust, little more than a child, but already his ardent reader, meets him at luncheon. And, first, the boy’s imagined author, a “langoureux vieillard,” has to give place to the reality, much younger, a little man with a chin-tuft and a nose like a snail-shell. Then comes an elaborate description of his spoken diction, pronunciation, etc., and an attempt to reconcile these with the peculiarities of his written style. Special “notes”:

Doubtless, again, so as to distinguish himself from the previous generation, too fond as it had been of abstractions, of weighty commonplaces, when Bergotte wished to speak favourably of a book, what he would bring into prominence, what he would quote with approval, would always be some scene that furnished the reader with an image, some picture that had no rational significance. “Ah, yes!” he would exclaim, “it is quite admirable! There is a little girl in an orange shawl. It is excellent!” Or again, “Oh, yes, there is a passage in which there is a regiment marching along the street; yes, it is excellent!” As for style, he was not altogether of his time (though he remained quite exclusively of his race, abominating Tolstoy, George Eliot, Ibsen, and Dostoevsky), for the word that always came to his lips when he wished to praise the style of any writer was “mild.” “Yes, you know, I like Chateaubriand better in _Atala_ than in _René_; he seems to me to be milder.” He said the word like a doctor who, when his patient assures him that milk will give him indigestion, answers: “But, you know, it’s very mild.” And it is true that there was in Bergotte’s style a kind of harmony similar to that for which the ancients used to praise certain of their orators in terms which we now find it hard to understand, accustomed as we are to our own modern tongues, in which effects of that kind are not sought.[5]

[Footnote 5: [Transcriber’s Note: See next footnote.]]

It is, further, explained how this man of genius came to pay court to his intellectual inferiors with an eye on the Academy, and how, while his own private morals were bad, the moral tone of his books was of the loftiest.

Perhaps it is only in really vicious lives that the moral problem can arise in all its disquieting strength. And of this problem the artist finds a solution in the terms not of his own personal life but of what is for him the true life, a general, a literary solution. As the great Doctors of the Church began often, without losing their virtue, by acquainting themselves with the sins of all mankind, out of which they extracted their own personal sanctity, so great artists often, while being thoroughly wicked, make use of their vices in order to arrive at a conception of the moral law that is binding upon us all.[6]

[Footnote 6: I am glad that the acknowledgement here of Mr. Walkley’s courtesy in allowing me to substitute my version for his of these two passages from _A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs_ gives me an opportunity to acknowledge also my borrowing and to congratulate him upon the discovery of the word “mild”—“une véritable trouvaille,” as Norpois would undoubtedly have called it.—C.K.S.M.]

Nor is the portrait finished yet. Bergotte was at bottom a man who really loved only certain images and to compose and paint them in words. Had he had to defend himself before a tribunal, in spite of himself he would have chosen his words, not for their effect on the judge, but in view of images which the judge would certainly never have perceived.

It is this extraordinarily minute “psychometry” that is the peculiar mark of Proust’s work. The sensations Swann derives from a sonata of Vinteuil’s, the special quality of Elstir’s pictures of the sea-shore, the effect of afternoon light in the church at Combray, glimpses of military life at Doncières, with its contrast of the First Empire aristocracy and the _ancien régime_,—it is the first time that such things as these have been put into words and brought intimately home to you. Then there are the studies of _le grand monde_—the “gilded saloons,” as Disraeli would have called them, of the Guermantes and the rest. Here you have a picture of the Faubourg Saint-Germain that is as true, you are assured, as Balzac’s was false.[7]