Page 422 Little Bara to point out to Gallimard.
1r
Pierre de Verjus Comte de Crécy arms a sprig of verjuice grapes
For the Simiones semé of towers azure and flers-de-lys with the device:
"Sustendant lilia turres" [The towers support the lilies]
d'Ambreuil, de Sineta
Monpezat de Gerbon
Courbon, de la Corbinière
The books proclaim: I belong to Baron de Charlus
Spes mea [My hope]
Comte Parat de Chalandray
Mme de Villedume
In praeliis semper [Not always in combat]
Mme de la Maurinerie
Mme d'Orangis
Atavis et armis [By Ancestors and arms]
Arte et marte [By skill and by force]
Rozière surmounted by a leopard accompanied by two roses in gules
1v
Marquise de St Comtest
Fortis fortuna fortior [Strong, stronger than fortune]
PLVS VLTRA CAROL [Further beyond Charles]
To add with Cambremer
Marquis de Mouvans the same pleasures as the master
Expectata non eludet [He will not disappoint hopes]
Marquis d'Armilly
charged cantoned with
twenty crosslets of gold
crossed at the base of gold
fitché of gold, dexter field ermine
Frezeau de la Frezelière
Squire Montargis
Valbelle de Tourves
Comte de Vassé
2r
Death is life to me
Manet ultima caelo [The end belongs to Heaven]
Fourré de Tremigny
I will wait
For Norpois and Mme de Villeparisis (perhaps, in any case it's for
him I put it in the morning article):
coterie
Because be it for an hour and even giving his name to it, he must get a
clear idea of everybody who enters into other surroundings to his own,
assuming at that very moment in front of those who make up this different
group, an absolute incognito.
A weaponed arm issuing[?] from a cloud with
Fecit potentiam in brachio suo [He hath shewed strength with his arm]
For Le Temps retrouvé
AB UNO TANTUS SPLENDOR [Such brilliance coming from one person]
[margin] Add that to Venice, even if certain words in it were
there for the first time.
He found the Doubovaia Balka weak, the de Beers stronger, Royal Dutch in
demand; Primrose better held onto but then only a little activity by
Tharsis and that even Chartered came in brightly, he deplored seeing Rente
so relaxed; so much so that there would never be an end to it if you
wanted to address your congratulations or condolences to him, more
positively an indication of an annulment and a proposal to buy for each of
these charming people
3r
What affirmed to me that I had understood correctly was not the praises of the living, but resemblances with the dead. It is enough to find in one of Diderot's books that we do not know, something that we have said, to be assured of its truth (even more so to encounter it in life, because truth is an intellectual thing and what affirms it is less life's accidents than the efforts of the brain). Also it is not publicity that fortifies a writer but being read, it is not the commendations for the living but praise for a deceased.
4r - 5r
Capital to be added to cahier 19 I think when I see that our successive works of art resemble one another because we resemble each other
And this resemblance between works of art which come in part from life projects into life in its turn a resemblance that writers do not think about sufficiently. If different models pose one after the other for example for the woman who excites jealousy, when the writer portrays this, in his suffering, in front of the first model he gives no thought to future loves. But he leaves betrays in his book work a secret that the models women who are to follow will profit from. He assures them that he is not jealous. They will be ready to believe this, but suddenly they open his book, it seems to be written about them; it is as though some episode has been anticipated; they see they discover who the hero is, about whom the artists has told them at all events, in the fear that they read the book: "I tried to portray the complete opposite of myself, I who know nothing of jealousy." But he has portrayed himself too truthfully, they are not deceived by this however unintelligent they might be, they might have been duped by his words, the book inspired by the previous woman enlightens them, (sometimes on the wrong day because men vary) and they tell him, mistresses finally of the power which had escaped them: "the jealous one, it's you!". And that is why the only truly dangerous books, those we ought to forbid the woman we love from reading, are our own books.
Réjane's old age, and Le Bargy for Cahier 20.
6r
Capital for cahier X when M.
de Charles ins
For sleep (Côté de Guermantes most probably).
We do not know what death is. But in sleep we have a first useful indication
warning that may find itself interrupted for a longer or shorter duration,
perhaps for ever, the coincidence between our thoughts with their multiple
objects. In reality our spiritual life is not continuous but cut through
by a chasm fault
line, and every morning we are obliged to rediscover our thoughts from the
previous day, just as we search for an object that has been lost.
6r - 8r
Capital
For Le Côté de Guermantes at lunch (when I must not forget to show Aimé as
floor waiter at Balbec before head waiter (retrospectively) and the double
avalanche descending from the 5th floor to the entresol, incessant,
transparent [margin] secret, transforming[?], instructive as a
form of human geography with multicoloured views | among whom for his
greater profit, he had lived for several years, marvellous strangers of
both sexes, stout amorous ladies, young inverts from warm countries who
come to France every year for a few months like storms [?] who every
evening arrange varied, multicoloured,
kaleidoscopic rendez-vous, leaving at the hour when the waiters
go out or go to bed
[margin] He hardly had enough to manage on but never stood anybody up, because he was a good husband, would soon have children to feed, and because of that showed himself as more serious, the opposite of the less correct employees who, expected by a rich Brazilian lady, impolitely made her wait because they had met a pretty
6v
impolitely made her wait because they had met a pretty woman. Aimé had more courage and more judgement.
7r - 8r
I will also say of Rachel: her lack of success in the theatre surprised me not one bit, she was awkward clumsy, even at lunch during meals. In a general way she [illegible] in an awkward fashion every object that she held in her hands, apart from this virile and lively person, her taste for whom gave her on the contrary a delicacy, an unprecedented sweetness, no doubt more intuitive than studied, and because she put herself in the place of men, she discovered by a sort of inspiration the mechanism thanks to which she could awaken, prolong, renew their pleasures.
M. de Guermantes let's take forty winks it's bedtime.
the lift attendant at Balbec: My porter talking about the head porter above him, just like the lady of the house saying my porter
Françoise that is as forbidden to her (being intelligent or good...) as the Lord's prayer to a donkey
[margin] As they say where I come from they don't need a goat to go to the fair
Her whole family looks like it's fed on lizards
9r - 10r
In Le Côté de Guermantes Bloch will say to me for example, he looks at his seat before sitting down or I have read his recollections about salons but I don't recognize those salons, and also as he hasn't the gift[?] of life, all that means nothing to me. In Le Temps retrouvé he will say one of these exact phrases to me, or both; in the same way that people use the same form of greeting; whereas he denied ever having an opinion on the congregations and denied it in good faith; because perhaps through weakness of mind we parsimoniously preserve the same thoughts and we keep them at hand, through the course of our life, and by contrast we change our opinions with extreme ease; and the sole feature of these two facts (another word rather than facts) is perhaps our facility for forgetfulness which allows us not to see things clearly, because we do not remember them, because twenty times we have expressed a certain an identical thought and a contradictory opinion in front of the same person.
11r - 12r
For Sodome et Gomorrhe
It is dreadful to think that in a coarse, deceitful, vulgar person there
might be thoughts of extreme delicacy, an attentiveness of boundless good
nature, quite simply in fact that his inclinations cause him to go in
search of a false[?] friend[?] rather than a pretty woman (this
would be best for Jupien and might also be appropriate when I talk about
the two identical twins - and in this way demonstrate that M. de Charlus'
pride resembles that of M. de Guermantes) the delicacies of one of them
comes from his inversion and I will add: Even more so it is not [illegible]
in the same family, but in the same person, (in the end it is the same
thing).
[margin] this is true of a cowherd that goodness in a family moreover appears alongside of homosexuality like a providential gift, like a vocation
[margin] this comes from the theatre box and later story of the Duchesse de Guermantes with her betrothed footman
Françoise on the subject of Albertine it's you who will go pale for it [pâlirez]
instead of suffer for it [pâtirez] I told them I did, that in
this day and age everybody wants to get money without doing anything for
it
Waking up like the sun breaking through the
clouds (see next page)
forgetting = non representation on unknown walks
(see next page)
13r - 14r
Côté de Guermantes
On those days when sleep finding itself modified by a stimulant, by
illness, by the suppression of a narcotic, ideas wandering through the
brain the whole night, eyes tight shut, retaining at all times those
faculties of invention, of expression and differing only from what they
are during wakefulness in the various episodes that the mind contemplates,
that it follows without interruption, without missing a word of dialogue -
have no place at that particular time in the exterior world. It is like a
novel that we have been carefully following, full of conversations where
somebody says something [illegible] generally held between the
characters who are much better understood by the sleeper, for example the
drama [?] of a visit that has been announced for which he has asked that
somebody comes to wake him up in an hour and who, having already arrived,
goes out with him into the streets, holding a conversation of which the
sleeper takes in not a single word and with whom he replies perfectly.
[margin] The Duc de Guermantes he always prefers not to wrap himself up before going out at least as a general theory all rules allow for exceptions don't they?
Côté de Guermantes
Awakening when one has slept well sometimes takes place very slowly. The
sunlight of the intelligence is already dawning but across the images that
put it out of shape.
14r - 16r
Sodome et Gomorrhe
I never pictured those walks (Albertine under Andrée's protection) to
myself and that was enough to take the edge off my jealousy just as
happens at the end of a love affair, in the period when one is already
beginning to forget. Because any powerlessness of the intellect that may
be the cause of it instantaneously sets off one's uncertainty about the
place and the people we doubt [?], just as the end of a love affair is in
reality the same powerlessness even though due to different causes. In the
same way that we cease to be alive a little while we sleep, so I was
ceasing little by little - for a few hours - to be jealous of Albertine
when I did not know what she was doing without me. During each of these
walks I was struck with a kind of detachment, but on a daily basis only
that was comparable to forgetting (but with a distance between them that
was greater still because forgetting is generally final) like the setting
of the sun in the last days of autumn.
[margin] Think too about the days when we have not slept = melancholy days of removals, days when we have slept too much = too full of days blessed by convalescence, or New Year's Day. We wake up in bed in the afternoon and at the age of fifty we still think that we will be brought presents that have been promised us, or allowed our first sole [?].
Besides had I invented what Albertine was doing in order that during those months I should not be submitting myself to the slightest shock of reality, simply because I had invented it all according to my suspicions which were at the same time beyond anything that might have taken place one way or another. If Albertine was my prisoner, I was even more the prisoner of my own thoughts and they survived unknown and so different from what Albertine was actually doing, that everything I discovered came as an astonishment and an anguish to me.
16r - 17r
Sodome et Gomorrhe
The wind was blowing a gale. Its furious dashing did not reach the little
bay at Balbec other than as an echo repeated in enormous proportion, of
what must have been taking place on the high sea, from the opposite coast
at Incarville the river at Doville was white with foam like a sea and
encumbered with swirling branches. This did nothing to stop us venturing
forth in a cabriolet to take the train to Doville to view the storm
against the rocks etc... (Penmarch, see Elstir) we will all go, if the
wind doesn't overturn our carriage, we'll leave at four in the morning! -
Mont St Michel - first flowers Walking Houses [in English]
(route) [?]
[margin] Put in the name of the river, the rocks etc. that Elstir painted in his pictures.
17r - 18r
Sodome et Gomorrhe
Do you see, Albertine, in Hugo's poetry with its dazzling palisade
constructed in advance and the verse - even the stanza - even the entire
poem - arrange and reverse their order so that the dazzling palisade is
left till the end containing everything for me. [?] What
might be [illegible] the most beautiful of Hugo's is the
one we read together, Ruth and Boaz.
palisade rhyme [?]
Enters to eternal days and leaves by the changing days
he has deferred between these eternal days that in prose would come after
and the changing days.
Palisade number
She is half alive and I am half dead
Palisade closing the whole poem
That golden sickle on the field of stars
Baudelaire the opposite
[margin] The manager at Balbec says the
treaty is soon to be rectified (for ratified)
Françoise that will be done stantaneously for instantaneously as well as
estassionate, true perversity.
18v
Furniture in Baudelaire (Delphine's curtains) beds,
sophora and the whatnots from the death of the lovers, the balcony
This has been put in so as not to have the Hotel de Porgès
which as a consequence [illegible] in Rembrandt's The Jewish
Bride without understanding that a painter likes to keep company with a
model, laundresses, a brothel keeper, or even the brilliant guests of
Mme de Porgès
(at the end Mme de Guermantes will say of an artist it's the fringe
element that irritates me)
19r
Mme
de Cambremer (the young)
It is not impossible
Walk
on the beach in Sodome et Gomorrhe, with Albertine if possible
The waves after a slight rush as though from amorous gaiety, spreading
out smoothly over the sand, covering it with a curvaceous and unified
caress and retiring with a knowing skill to return again a moment later
to caress it once more further along. But these caresses like all those
that originate in marine nature were pure, and because of that so
restful that one might have remained for hours just watching their
laughter before caressing the sand and immediately afterwards their
slower adhesion to it in a caress that touched it all over then slipped
away. And art helping us to interpret nature, we gazed, Albertine and
myself, at the perfect lines of the waves whose beauty Elstir had taught
us to love.
20r - 23r
Capital
During the war the French went out with as much precaution as if they were
going to the colonies towards the German lines where they traded prudently
with the Boche, risking their lives, embracing their dreams of
fortune, like Europeans going to carry out some forbidden commerce with
savages.
Capital
Don't forget in the last conversation with Andrée, I say (without
believing a word of it in a
joking way as though talking at random): "But did Mme Bontemps
have any of those sort of relations with her niece?" Andrée did not seem
the slightest bit surprised by such a supposition and as if it were the
most natural thing in the world replied: "At Incarville it is quite
possible since they shared the same bed, but in Paris I honestly don't
think so. No, in Balbec the person who was very much that way inclined was
the First President's wife. And on what Mme Bontemps might have done with
her niece at Incarville Andrée gave me some extenuating details according
to her because that proved very little, but with an crudity that created
in me as much as an impression of novelty as if I had landed on an island
of cannibals. Because a little or a lot it amounted to the same thing. So
that whatever little might have taken place between Albertine and Mme
Bontemps, something that seemed so natural to Andrée seemed to me to be
unimaginable, even when one tried to imagine outside the bounds of
probability, and it is this unforeseeability that comes as a surprise to
us from tomorrow's masterpieces that even when they were not built on the
memory of yesterday's masterpieces we had never been able to imagine them.
In the realms of repulsion I had just as extreme a curiosity about the
cannibalistic island very different from what I remembered when Mme
Bontemps said at most things that were very different, talking about
Albertine as a shameless little thing. I knew then nothing of life and
when I was not there Mme Bontemps must have behaved quite differently in
front of Andrée for her to have made such assumptions with so much
calmness. People had always been proper and talkative with me in a worldly
way, on the shore of that unknown island I had only known the
smiles and the joyful cries of the cannibals.
In Sodome et Gomorrhe
Most capital probably at the Princesse de Guermantes' soirée (if I don't
have to bring back Saint Loup a bit later) Saint Loup will say to me:
"It's a shame that your little friend from Balbec (Albertine) doesn't have
the fortune expected by my mother. We both understand each other very
well, I think" he added with an air of discretion which struck me without
my attaching any great importance to it.
[margin] for Norpois last conversation Albania which figures in this document is of no importance to the other territories mentioned therein
24r - 25r
Jupien opposite of a discomfort for certain things. Fear of disaster [?]
Wrecked my career
Duchesse de Guermantes and footman
The manager at Balbec memorandum for moratorium, [illegible] for
Rueil.
Mme de Cambremer having little success as a wife, when she is with me (at
the Hotel in Balbec or better going back to the Verdurin's) say, like Mlle
(Goldsmidt's fiancé) and a bit like the young woman in the dynamite
factory, we are (she and I) charming people, completely at ease with our
desires (maybe she can say it by turns to a scorned intimate like
Goldsmidt) and to a cab driver (or railway employee). She will also say to
me "the Duchesse de Guermantes doesn't like me. I don't know what I've
done to her, try to find out what she has against me." I reply stupidly:
"But surely she has nothing against you, surely she likes you, but you
know she's also a bit of a snob." At this blunder Mme de Cambremer replied
lightly "Oh no, she isn't a snob, because if she were she would make every
effort to seek me out, she would try to have me in her house."
Brichot prick them both
Brichot or Norpois: the covenant
[margin] the manager at Balbec you see I've
had shams put in the chimney.
I've only read the first paraph, the evidence is not admitted as an excuse
and has demanded a separation (for armed reparation) they have
been told
Françoise: what a snout
The manager at Balbec I took up arms first under M. Paillard.
26r
Mme de Cambremer or the Duchesse de Guermantes
You are in a mischievous mood
manly rage [?]
Cottard
The epidemic The
illness is remarkable by the gravity and the violence of its attacks (as
though he were paying it a compliment). I have treated a patient for the
same sort of malady who had no more breath than a drowned man. The crisis,
he added with an air of regret, does not always arrive in such a dramatic
character.
Côté de Guermantes
Françoise: I think he married one of those duke's sisters.
Capital
Don't forget when there is music at the end at the Princesse de
Guermantes-Verdurin's (cahier19) to say, because as that became more and
more tedious at Mme Sazerat's, likewise the ex-Verdurin continued after
many years to have a young pianist, always about the same age, so
consequently always a different one.
27r
Mme Verdurin as Cottard said to M. de Charlus "From
time time to time I find the Baron has a Marseilles accent" replied while
addressing herself to the Baron and wishing to talk about Marseilles: "But
Aren't you one of them in
any case? from
Marseilles." "Eh! Eh! that's a bit rich" replied the Baron who
by dint of spending time with people from the lower classes and to speak
to them in their own language said for the first time "a bit rich" which
he never would have done ten years earlier.
28r
Capital for Sodome et Gomorrhe I
Albertine often spoke to me about her female friends, about her aunt.
But I noticed that she was frequently lying without even realizing it,
which meant that she would contradict herself straight away. On the other
hand she wished some people dead,
found them the worst of all, but was quick to be reconciled, found them
"in the end the least wicked of all" (Alfred, Henri)
[margin]: It had rather the effect, be it that her lies forced her to pass judgement after what she had said, be it from her grudges or from her compassion which made her change the objects of her hatred by turns, of an extreme fickleness in her judgements and her decisions.
29r - 30r
Capital
When somebody mentioned Swann at the Verdurin's at Balbec "Don't you
know his daughter Gilberte?" I asked Albertine.
"No", she replied.
Later
When Albertine comes to my house in Sodome et Gomorrhe, she asks me "Who
are you writing to?"
"To a pretty friend of mine, Gilberte Swann, you don't know her."
"No."
Later when I say at Balbec, at the Verdurin's or coming back from there
with her, somebody was talking about the Swanns, Albertine says: "Oh,
Gilberte's parents."
"Do you know her?"
"Oh, hardly at all, I
Not very well."
On my return I remember this and I remember that she had told me that
she did not know her, from which I conclude that she wanted to create an
impression in front of the Cambremers. But later on when Albertine is
living with me I remember Gilberte saying to me "her niece Albertine who
was wicked".
Françoise it's well known that he's an English.
31r
M. de Norpois he's thrown down the gauntlet to him
the manager at Balbec: he is very easily grateful [reconnaissant]
(for recognizable [reconnaissable]) with his little moustache cut
the American way [?]
dictatorship [dictature] for the act of dictation. (perhaps
Françoise might say this about my books)
deceived [déçu] for decayed [déchu]
Relations between the two countries are extremely tangential [tangentes]
for strained [tendues]
Françoise: as they say where I come from he looked for work and prayed to
God not to find it.
Françoise says of Albertine I can hear her performing her somersaults
Mme Cottard: I need to have an understanding with Mme Verdurin so that we
hurry the day
I'm tied up til Tuesday. After
Tuesday I'm free apart from Saturday
[margin] We wager
it is losing its cuddliness there [?]
I beg that nobody cries scandal you can treat me as a dunce if you wish
31v
The manager at Balbec
I'm afraid that the heat doesn't come through the
fixtures [fixures] in the wall. (For cracks [fissures])
I've got some excellent donkeys [bourriques] of old wine in the
cellar. (for barrels [barriques])
32r
Most Capital
Somebody came to wake me up; it as easy to be awoken from natural sleep
as from sleep brought on by hypnosis or by chloroform. Roused by the
sounds of my toilet door, a few minutes before anybody came into my room,
thoughts from my dreams rose to the surface from the depths of my sleep,
in a vertical whirlpool, and were dispersed to the surface of my
consciousness where the thoughts of the previous day took their place so
immediately that in the moment that Françoise told me "Monsieur is
asleep", retroactively and brusquely sweeping away my recent dreams that
had been brought to my mind, with the best faith in the world I replied:
"No, Françoise, I've been awake for some time."
[margin] this column has nothing to do with
the page but might have
Manager from Balbec No, not at all, you haven't offended me by saying that
you have been woken up. If I gave that impression in any way, it isn't
anger it's astonishedness [étonation]
33r - 35r
Françoise will say about Albertine She's the one who gives the orders here mark my words, with that air of imposition
In volume XX and the last one and while the music is
being played
(I should have said before that the Duchesse de Guermantes had a feather
in her hair, a hair style usually reserved for the evening but at the
Guermantes' it was worn during the day, at the big receptions, even if
they took place within the family, in former times the Princesse de
Guermantes wore such a feather in a turban so as to resemble Mme de Staël
to whom she was vaguely related through the Broglies. The Duchesse wore it
with no other ornament as a token of her aristocracy and at the same time
she was, as was said among the people, dressed up to the nines and in such
a noble family an ostrich feather in a shade of violet was sufficient to
demonstrate her elegance. While the music is being played I will say: The
Duchesse really has aged, there is nothing left of her beauty but an empty
shell; for some years during the music she no longer appeared to be
anything but an epileptic cutlet with all the flesh eaten away. Now
sufficiently absorbed by her old age she took no pleasure in listening,
all her musical sensibility had taken shelter in her violet tinted ostrich
feather which swung from left to right, in a knowing way, but taking no
more account of the fact that any human agency had ceased to participate
it its movement than an automobile that continues to move forward even
though its driver has fallen asleep or has been killed by a bullet. Such
autonomy taking the function of a metronome hidden from view by the
coverings judged the most precious, become an instrument of beauty, and
besides, never having been the apt instrument in the musical sense of the
word because it never beat time correctly, balancing above the Duchesse's
head stood the single, haughty and curling feather.
36r - 37r
Bloch presented me to his father. I could not recognize him. But however marked his age was in his features it was even more so in the suppression of his familiarity, the breaking of any links to the past. I was expecting the same words that he usually said to me: What a pleasure to see you again, how are you, are you still going to Balbec, do you remember how you used to keep your shutters closed all morning and how that swine of a director would deny us the concerts on the beach out of respect for your sleep. (And in truth once or twice the potentate[?] director had put up a large sign which obliged the musicians and the public to leave just before the concert had started). But even though M. Bloch senior recognized me perfectly well and could remember all this he made no mention of it, because he had become a different person and was immersed in the all encompassing life of his old age (it was said that he was over eighty years old). To add to my astonishment, after shaking my hand almost as though with a stranger, all he could say to me was: "The programme is beautiful isn't it, how well they play, and what a magnificent concert hall, it really is princely." About the fact that he had not seen me in thirty years not a word passed his lips. He had ceased even to be surprised by it.
38r
[margin] for example the day the apple trees were in blossom
The Manager at Balbec
"You ought to stay in the Hotel today, you could catch cold outside,
there's a fearful wind! In any case you won't be bored, there's a gala at
the casino with extraordinary conjurors. The leader of their group has
been to speak to me just now, we've agreed on the turns they are going to
put on, it's going to be stupendous." As a matter of fact there was a wind
but nothing really to fear (what the manager called fearful)
You who have the incapacity you ought to get hold of...
All this is through lack of inactivity (instead of saying through
inactivity).
All that puts us under the dome of the English for years to come.
39r - 41r
When M. de Charlus told me that we have won the war but that we will
not win the peace, I spoke to him about the noble intervention by the
Prince de Parme that had been revealed. I thought it would please him. It
turned out quite the opposite. "My unfortunate nephew Sixte: he has
destroyed his country, he has destroyed France because you know that all
this is not yet over, he has destroyed Europe because the Yellow Hordes
will be coming over. You see I was right all along, my other nephew, your
friend, Robert de Saint-Loup thought that we were not sufficiently
generous towards Italy and every day she shows herself greedier and
greedier until she bursts just like the frog in the fable. But then again
didn't he have his own logic, he was against Tradition, he thought the
Papacy could be brought down, that Britain would leave Italy to rule over
the Mediterranean. Look at the Fiume affair. But Sixte and Xavier were to
a certain extent instilled with tradition. So the unfortunates made the
best of their country, of ours, of the whole world. I've told Sixte ten
times over: If you want to get anywhere the only two men you must avoid
talking to are Lloyd George and Clémenceau. It's the king of England you
must write to, but then again don't write to him directly. Send your
letter to Lord Landsdowne. If not you will see what appalling consequences
will come about. Well they have come about, alas, and continue to do so.
The Marquis de Castellane, who in my opinion is the great diplomatic mind
of our era, the most useful of men, in the highest sense of the word and
would have been made the least use of, liked to repeat those words of his
great uncle the Prince de Talleyrand. "For Europe to prevail, France and
Britain must be united just like horse and horseman. Only France must
guard against being the horse." And Castellane would add, I always thought
that France had forgotten Talleyrand's precept, and that she had been the
horse, or even worse, the donkey."
Before that Jupien had told me that he must rest because he had to
leave for Prague to see the young Austrian Emperor who had requested his
advice.
41r
[margin] Or even place this when I was to write a book, in Volume XIX or XX
Most Capital
When I have written the article for the Figaro that I think ought to be
printed after my death:
Strange condition where a man is obliged to
exist on two levels where each of them actually cancels out the reality
of the other.
42r - 43r
I was pleased that the Guermantes, society and the society of writers who had up until now looked upon me as a nobody now considered me a superior man, that the Légion d'honneur that would soon be adorning my button hole giving the Manager at Balbec, giving Aimé, a lofty idea of me. But relative to death, to the nothingness that follows it, what could the esteem of the Duchesse de Guermantes do to someone who through anticipation of the idea was no longer anything, for whom these flattering considerations were cultivated, having already had it clear in her mind that they were addressed to Nobody, and that they were Nothing? Was it not that in that way I was living in a contradiction just as shocking as the one that shocked me in the case of Bergotte when, both at the same time, I saw that he did not believe in the reality of the external world and sought out the Academy. But if on the other hand I was to live only in the afterlife, in the impersonal Absolute, was it not necessary to return straight away to the other plane, that in which I might be thought guilty of being impolite towards Bloch and not replying punctually to Madame Marsantes, because some years previously she had lost a son who had been my friend. Such is the strange condition assigned to the man, and above all to the artist, of existing on two planes at the same time and with no possibility of happiness, because each of the two is objectivized by turns, and in fact cancels out at the same stroke the reality of the other.
[margin] Capital. I was looking in the Figaro in all [illegible] ways to see if some unknown person might not miss seeing my article and through excessive particularity [?] it seemed to me that it was the only thing that one's attention might pass over.
For the literati
strange that
for
is it not strange that
The Manager at Balbec
You are the best of customers, the idealistic customer (for ideal)
[margin] Françoise. And then Alsace Lorrain what is the one to do when the other one is conquered
44r
For Le Côté de Guermantes
Most capital when I talking about sounds and deafness.
Sometimes the noise of the fire such as it was at that moment in the room,
is not heard by an invalid who who has had his ears hermetically sealed.
Most capital for Sodome et Gomorrhe I.
When I saw her on the beach I certainly did not feel the same anguish
as I did when the lift boy had gone to look for her and I was waiting for
her. I did not even feel the same pain as I would have had she been over
familiar with a man or a woman. But hers showed
an excess of coldness and insignificance that seemed
45r - 46r
[margin] All this is for when Albertine is staying with me
in a rush, I could not prevent myself from thinking that she was going to rejoin somebody. Perhaps my assumptions were false but they gave me a merciless interpretation of the words she had spoken to me one day with a sly but serious look: "As for me, when I like a person it is precisely that person that I am coldest to in front of everybody else" and she added with a look of sly pride that irritated me all the more by the tone of defiance she assumed. She even seemed ashamed[?] of including me with her friends, then with the derided ones: "Also Gisèle and the others have often tried to find these things out, nobody can be certain whether I like somebody or not. They can have their doubts, try to find things out, poke their noses in, nobody can prove anything." And because she was talking about proof it must have meant that the people that she "liked" had had less innocent dealings with her than the simple friendliness that she claimed.
[margin] All of this equally for when Albertine is staying with me.
The foolishness that was present in her pride, the irritating satisfaction that she took in duping others among whom, without naming me, she evidently included me did not prevent such things as she said from making her more seductive. Because Albertine's beauty was now made up of the kisses that I imagined she had received, her value the multiplicity of desires she excited, the assignations that she had had; what I loved in her was the love that she inspired and gave to others and which she hid from me. From now on her present beauty was in the whole absent and diverse life that I was seeking out, nothing could be expected of her, at least I let go my hold on her slender body that had participated in all the choices that I did not know which was a mute witness that I guarded jealously so as to interrogate it without it being able to reply. Her beauty was like the tiniest point of light upon which depends, like the moving shadows depend on the lamp in a magic lantern, the immensity of my jealousy. Her beauty was made of all the unknown in which I was groping with no guide to follow, her beauty was
47r - 48r
Most capital For Le Côté
Sodome et Gomorrhe I or II
Françoise found it out that
the first president had died (that M. Nissim Bernard had died).
She had only seen him once, a very long time ago and he had been so
repugnant to her that she often spoke about him but only to speak ill of
him. Nevertheless she announced his death to us in a faltering voice,
frequently interrupted by sobs, because it had "done something to her", as
they said in Combray. Before long she broke down in tears. I smiled,
perhaps it was wrong of me. It is possible that women, young maidens and
elderly women of the people, and particularly of the people who stick
close together and work around St André des Champs without having any
conception that their portraits are open to view in stone medallions on
the lintels of the church, know the truth better than us and have better
preserved the profound idea of death, those who have been struck by death,
and which quite naturally makes these young maidens and old women into a
cortège of weeping mourners. She was disconsolate simply that we were not
at Balbec at the time of his death, because then perhaps we would have
charged her with going to find out the news and so would have had the
desired opportunity to spy on the death bed and exchange tearful
condolences with the servants
For Cahier XX about my book.
Shrinking from thinking about others and talking about myself, I wanted in
one word to refute the aesthetic doctrines that might have condemned my
book. But they change so frequently - in literature just as in painting
and music - and as I write the newcomers of the day before were already
the outmoded of tomorrow, and their ideas along with them, so I renounced
having to follow the changes in their rapidity that was as great as their
madness.
49r - 53r
Capital in Le Côté de Guermantes before the conversation between M. de
Norpois and the Prince.
The Prince says to himself I haven't selected the right key. It is a form
of reasoning tof which M. de Norpois, shaped in the same school, would
have been capable. Because if diplomats admire a word pronounced by a
sovereign during a toast in a slightly infantile way, and into which they
imagine a whole universe, this infantilism has its counterpart. They know
that all fine feelings, all noble speeches, all supplications count for
nothing, and that the truth, the determinant lies elsewhere, in the
possibility that the adversary, if he is strong enough, has or has not a
desire to satisfy. This order of truth, which excludes a completely
disinterested person, such as my grandmother, was something that M. de
Norpois in his more tragic periods had often grappled with. Being an envoy
to countries with whom we were on the brink of war, he knew that it was
not the word peace or the word war that would be said to him, but
something quite different, banal in appearance that actually meant war,
which through this diplomatic code he would be able to distinguish
immediately, and to which, in order to safeguard the dignity of France, he
would respond with another apparently banal word and which would mean war.
And the dialogue in which destiny delivered these words, had usually taken
place not in the minister's office, but on a bench during a walk where it
had been agreed that they go together to take a glass of water at a
thermal spring, a walk that each of the two interlocutors knew to be as
tragic beneath its outwardly benign appearance as an order for
mobilization. The Prince had played this same game and in a private
affair, just like a presentation before the institute, he used the same
system of inference, of lecturing across diverse superimposed symbols.
Certainly my grandmother had not been alone in not knowing anything about
this kind of calculated behavior. One part of ordinary humanity existed in
walks of life that had been set out for them in advance, was united in its
lack of intent with the sublimity possessed by my grandmother. It is often
necessary to descend down to people who are kept, men or women, down to
street ruffians, to seek the changeability of behavior or the most
innocent words, in the interests and the necessities of staying alive. But
as for the Prince and M. de Norpois, even if those street ruffians were
unknown to them, had accustomed themselves to acting on the national
level, nations which too are, despite their greatness, creatures of
selfishness and guile, that can only be subjugated by force, acting on
behalf what is in their interest and for which they will go as far as
murder, a murder that is just as symbolic as everything else, because any
hesitation or denial before it could mean assassination! But as that is
never said, books never opened [?], the people are voluntarily pacifist,
or if they are warlike it is instinctive on account of hatred, of grudges,
not through reasons that have been decided upon by heads of state on the
advice of their diplomats.
Make Sherbatof Mme Edwards
taxi with Aimé, who sees what I have given,
Café des Sports, Santois and M. de Charlus
Jupien's daughter
54r
Françoise:
all slapdash
the devil and all his train
(his train as in his Empire and his Dominions) (she says this about
Albertine).
The Manager at Balbec talking about the lift attendant he's too giddy, at
eighteen years old you're no longer a child, he should have more
weight in his sails (for in his head). It's the primitive quality (for
the premier quality)
talking about Aimée he's too ancient (he pronounces it tros
ancient for the house). That makes a contraxt. I told them so.
55r
Frosty letter of condolence from Saint-Loup
Old Bloch no longer likes to be invited along with his son because they
know all the same stories
Santois spotted Jupien's daughter coming to my house. The fiction that
follows
Uncertainties about others, about oneself, about Albertine
The marriages declined by Mlle Forcheville for the Duc de Guermantes =
effective liaison
by refusing possession, kisses.
55v
M. de Guermantes it's a phantasmagoria
56r - 57r
[margin] Mme Antoine and Mme Tyskievitch she's dressed like a little girl
[margin] because the Baron considered himself - quite wrongly to tell the truth - to be partly responsible in the deception of Jupien's niece.
[margin] Burning smell rising up to my balcony = Yturri, what seems to please delights
After the scandal concerning M. de Charlus at the Verdurin's.
This damage was, in parenthesis, a consequence:
Conforming to an intention that he had then spoken of for a long time, but
which his fear of displeasing Morel, who was very angry at the
waistcoat-maker, which had prevented him from putting into practice, M. de
Charlus adopted Jupien's daughter. She took the name of Mlle d'Oloron
(avoid Vermandois on account of Pierre de Polignac), a name that would
have rightly been taken by M. de Charlus' daughter, had he had one. (It
should be perhaps at the Verdurin's at Raspelière that he says that he is
Marquis d'Oloron, and perhaps rather Duc d'Agrigente than Prince
d'Agrigente) (as for Tarente). Yet she shows herself to be perfectly
worthy of such an adoption. My grandmother had not been mistaken in her
judgement when she found Jupien's daughter to be most distinguished. And
through her relations with M. de Charlus she assimilated some knowledge of
literature, painting and music, which was astonishing. (Because when my
mother considered what my grandmother had thought about Mlle d'Oloron's
marriage, she said that on account of the
different social orders in Combray she had been dumbfounded, but also in
the end she had found it all faultless, as the young girl was charming
and discerning, much more so than M. de Guermantes.
[margin] I put this last phrase in its place in cahier XV.
57r - 58r
Visits at Mlle d'Oloron's betrothal like Mlle Radziwill (Doudeauville) at
Mme Legrand's. But she made it appear that she had not undersood. In any
case she had the upper hand, (Mme de Polignac initially snubbed [?] by Mme
Legrand) because she held all the cards in her hand, the trumps. The
Faubourg always waits to see "how things turn out" when it ought to be
fully understood that "On the side of money is all the power" and also
through a grand title.
M. de Charlus had even had it better applied to himself but preferred [illegible]
fine nobility of the poorer [?] provinces (La Ferté Marne) she created a
position for herself rather than lose her husband's.
Perhaps rather have these visits for Gilberte?
Among the remarks that Cottard finds ridiculous has no interest in like the forty year old always giving out that he is thirty one [?], he let slip an obscene figure in a low voice to Brichot
59r
The Duc de Guermantes
to blunder. Picture!
don't give us that humbug
The lift attendant, I have a brother who is married to a woman of the
highest social standing, besides which she plays the piano for example,
and speaks English and even a bit of Spanish you know the sort, Madame has
her chambermaid with her. She's a bit fierce, but there it is.
60r
[dictated to Henri Rochat]
For Le Côté de Guermantes.
Françoise (talking about a dish) it's esquisite (for exquisite).
they certainly have their wander lust.
[margin] le manager at Balbec
He was at Monte Carlos and I think he lost at Caravan
[Roulotte] (for roulette)
The Manager at Balbec
Oh! that's of no importance I only stayed for an infinite time (for
infinitesimal), a few seconds
That could make them blow up the lentils with them (for lintels)
61r - 62r
[Draft letter to Pierre de Polignac, Prince de Monaco, dictated to Henri Rochat, Feb 1920. Translated in Selected Letters v4 p.127.]
63r - 66r
Capital for Sodome et G. I
Mme Verdurin to M. de Charlus: "The Jockey, that's a gathering of idiots.
Oh! I beg your pardon, I shouldn't have said that, I always forget that
you're one of them. And nobody could be one of them more than you are.
The Prince de Guermantes was staying close to Balbec
and had been introduced to Mme Verdurin. The Mistress, planning one of her
"Wednesdays", asked Ski: "The Prince de Guermantes and Charlus, would that
work?"
"Good Lord, my dear Mistress, it's always difficult enough to know. For
one of them."
"But one of them isn't enough. I'm asking you if both of them together
would work?"
"Ah! that's even more difficult to know."
Elsewhere in the same volume where Mme Verdurin is talking about
organizing a charity performance in honour of Wagner questions the Baron:
"M. de Charlus, do you go along with Wagner. No? you don't go along with
him? Well then, Charlie, surely he must. So it's agreed, you both are.
Charlie doesn't agree? He must. And if he doesn't you'll have to make him.
He can play solo violin and you can put out the chairs."
At the start of her stay at La Raspelière she likes M. de Charlus very
much. She thinks he talks well and shines in the little clan. She does not
yet think that he talks too much and holds back of the rest of her
faithful with his brilliance. She had never had a guest quite like him at
one of her Wednesdays. She told him about the party that she was going to
give: "But you'll be there of course! You ought to have the presidency of
my Wednesdays. Except I'm not giving it to you because it has always been
agreed that that is reserved for my husband who is king here. But when I'm
absent you could preside with him, he will be king, and you queen."
For this same singing entertainment.
"You'll need a whole formation of young sailors. But they don't need to
carry on dancing about like carp. But they have to move around a bit. I
can't do everything myself. Charlus who often goes to the coast could
quite well attend to it. Baron?"
"Madame..."
"Don't you know how to get these young sailors moving."
"Me? Yes. If they aren't already moving."
At the point where I say that M. de Charlus never doubted his reputation with the Verdurins, add (capital): In any case, the unfortunate expressions used by Mme Verdurin when she was talking to the Baron did not indicate that she knew anything about him. If she said anything inopportune in front of the Baron, it was in complete innocence. Had she known that certain expressions were slang usages for a certain way of life, she would have avoided them. Because she was still far from the point when she found Charlus too Chateaubriand. "Chateau too briand" Saniette spat out over his glass, while Cottard more audaciously excited laughter by crying out: "Chateaubriand and potatoes."
67r - 68r
[dictated to Henri Rochat]
Nota Bene - (from placard 10 of Le Côté de Guermantes - (after the
calculations are rigorously exact)
The example that I will use regarding this in the war in 1916 will be
Falkenhayn's manoeuvre over Craiova, see Bidou, Débats of 23 and 24
November 1916 to be re-read thoroughly. Elsewhere before the war
Saint-Loup compares Lule Burgas with Ulm to me; at the start of the war
Charleroi with Ulm. In the end as regards the original principles he
thinks they have been changed by the Transvaal war and the Manchurian war
(and the Balkan war?). I shall show his wife that he is partially
mistaken.
General (about la Croix perhaps). But some truth in it however (Pétain: it
is the war before the war). (Falkenhayn's feint - movement by the
Prenovember [?] in the direction of Campolung deception even after the
attack even to Bidou who on the 23rd calls this manoeuvre a failure which
he discovers a feint the following day 24 November 1916). The breakthrough
by the centre at Rivoli is what Kluck attempted at the battle of the
Marne, see in the "Débats" of 1st or 2nd February 1917. The conference by
Bidou, and better still the conference.
Manager: the whip [cravache] of the commander of the Légion d'honneur (for the neck ribbon) [cravate]
[margin] Bring forth on a silver tray like the head of Jonathan.
68v
Support [?]
Cross out
The almost identical patois of Françoise and her niece from Méseglise, so
similar and yet, slightly different just as the countryside is not exactly
the same. After the descent into Combray the speech is softer, as the
willows [?] become more frequent. There was a little area of the country
far distant from there where they spoke just the same patois as at
Combray. Françoise friend of the cook who spoke it.
69r
Françoise about Albertine
Poor simpleton! she thinks she is making herself deserving by that air of
imposition, she thinks it makes her look intelligent. Intelligent! that is
just as forbidden to her, as they say where I come from, as the Lord's
Prayer to donkeys.
Françoise malicious (Mme Antoine Tyskievitch) at ten paces when her back
is turned, just look at her still dressing like a little girl, which gives
her airs when it's only too clear to be seen, she knew how to lay it on
and be ready for sea [?]: pétroleuses and the revolution, the Daughter [?]
of the Revolution is that of the Ancien Régime. the people always have a
time when they have "no pity".
a trifler a sort of lorette (for
courtesan, coquette)
M. de Guermantes the feats of my nephew
70r
Brichot Dame Nature
one of the devotees of Holy Geometry
Françoise cocoa tree [cocotier] for an egg
seller [coquetier]
To do:
The three charming ladies
done The
mimicking Greek psychic [?]
The immortality of the creature whom one does not possess deduced from the
forgetting of Albertine
Obscurity allows the immediate
71r - 74r
The three charming ladies
1st to be placed (Most capital in Sodome
et Gomorrhe I)
At that time a rather strange phenomenon occurred which only deserves
mention because it turns up again at all the important periods in the
story. Friends of the Duc de Guermantes knew that quite indifferent to
start with he had become a passionate anti-Dreyfusard. They were most
surprised on his return from a season he had spent at Barèges when they
was talking to them about Dreyfus to hear him reply "Well his trial will
be overturned and he'll be acquitted, you can't condemn a man when there's
nothing against him. Have you ever seen a general who takes the biscuit
for talking so much about a revision for the famous Dreyfus" he had been
utterly stupefied to hear the Princesse and his sisters-in-law saying:
"It's never been so close. You can't keep a man in prison who hasn't done
anything." "Eh? Eh? Eh?" the Duc
stammered at first, as if at the discovery of a bizarre nickname that was
used in that particular household to deride somebody who up until then he
had thought intelligent. But after a few days through cowardice and a
disposition for imitation we too cry out "Hey Jo-jotte", without knowing
why a great artist who we have only seen in this house should only be
referred to in this way, the Duc still feeling irritated by the new habit
said however: "But really though, if there is nothing against him." The
three charming ladies thought that he wasn't moving quickly enough and
bullied him a little: "But in the end nobody with any intelligence could
have possibly thought that there was anything against him." Every time
that anyone was "too harsh" against Dreyfus the same thing happened and
when the Duc thought that that was going to bring over the three charming
ladies he came to entice them, they laughed out loud and with fine
dialectical logic they easily demonstrated to him that the argument was
worthless and ridiculous. "Eh? Eh?" The Duc had returned to Paris a rabid
Dreyfusard. And certainly we are not claiming that the three charming
ladies were anything less, in this instance, than messengers of the truth.
But it is noticeable that every ten years when one has left a man full of
sincere convictions, all it needs is that an intelligent Comte[?] or a
charming lady enter into his society for him to appear quite changed after
a few months. And on this point there are many countries that behave just
like the sincere gentleman, many countries that we have left full of
hatred for one people, full of good-will towards another and towards whom
in six months time we have changed our opinion and reversed our alliances.
I've done the 2nd and put it in Cahier XVIII (in the first pages of Cahier XVIII, if not the very first then at least all those when I'm talking to Charlus.
Penboch Guern
72v
For the Charlus marriage
All the same if they have a child old mother Jupien's blood will be amazed
to be met with that of the Duc de Berri in the same veins, laughed the
Duchesse de Guermantes who never imagined that Universal History is made
out of these happy confluences.
Louis XIV candlestick
Gentlemen's headwear at Marly
Dummy whist
Grumblings by the ones that have not been asked for the candlestick
I don't know him, I don't know who he is. He's a man I've never set eyes
on.
Not going to Marly in passing when going to Versailles
furious about the pheasants politene to return the pheasants [?]
73v
Capital at Balbec (Sodome et Gomorrhe II)
Mme Cottard often said no, next week I'm "taken", which caused a little
consternation and her outward appearance of astonishment. But by "taken"
she merely meant to say that she would not be "free", that she had
"promised" her evening to a friend.
M. de Norpois last conversation
Nobody imagines what can ever be attributed to the
discredited government of Germany
Serbia Holland, receiving for its virile
part, a portion of Austrian Magyar
Turk Ottoman heritage.
So what made Charles wait [Charles attend]
(Charlatan)
she did not understand that it was too much.
I had slept for so long that I had as much difficulty opening my eyes as if they were two clasps on a box that has been closed for a long time and which are rusted.
[margin] Françoise's daughter or Albertine
75r - 80r
Manager at Balbec or Françoise
clarified cupping-glasses
Most capital for the 1st part of Le Côté de
Guermantes the last proofs of which are going to be sent back to me.
It is the moment after coming out of the theatre after Saint-Loup has
administered a slap.
We walked out. I was walking behind with Rachel (perhaps she has already
quarrelled with Saint-Loup, then it would be better if I was waiting a few
steps behind[)] at my favourite corner of the Champs-Élysées where in the
past I used to see Gilberte. I wanted to catch up with Saint-Loup and I
saw a shabbily dressed man talking intimately with him, I assumed that he
was a personal friend of Saint-Loup's, yet they seemed to draw closer to
each other again when all of a sudden, like a stellar phenomenon bursting
in the heavens, I saw ovoid bodies take up with vertiginous rapidity all
the positions that might compose an unstable play of skill in front of
Saint-Loup.
[margin] constellation formed by his simultaneously multiplied
fists.
These bodies, just like stones flung from a sling and which seemed to me
to number between seven and ten, were simply Saint-Loup's two fists
occupying successively all the differing positions in this ideal and
decorative ensemble, not through any care for beauty but in the direction
of the nose, the chin and the cheeks of the shabbily dressed man; because
this multiple, divergent, kaleidoscopic hail of fists had no aesthetic
intention but rather one of aggression, and being hardly aware of the half
demolished countenance of the poorly dressed man who was bleeding
profusely from his nose and mouth and who no longer seemed to possess a
jawbone. This loss of blood moreover was his only reaction because he
withdrew with one slow and dejected step. If Saint-Loup, who had received
nothing in exchange, was not furious then he certainly was a moment later
when he rejoined me, and his eyes were glowing with rage. I thought that
the slow moving escapee was one of the men from the theatre and perhaps
even the one who had been slapped. Not at all, he was a passer-by who upon
seeing the handsome military man that was Saint-Loup had made a
"proposition" to him. Saint-Loup could not get over the increasing
audacity of that group of people who did not even wait for the shadows of
night time to take their chances. He said it with the same indignation as
the newspapers that report an armed robbery in broad daylight, in a
central quarter of Paris. Yet thinking about it the beaten man could be
excused inasmuch as when a downward slope quickly brings the desire for
pleasure, so that beauty appears already to imply consent. Now Saint-Loup
was beautiful. Blows of the fists such as his have this value for an
aggressive man like the one who he had attacked in that they force him to
reflect though never long enough for him to mend his ways. And so, even
though Saint-Loup had given out his punishment without any thought, it
might come to assist the law but without ever bringing any uniformity in
morals.
But so many incidents and doubtless the one he thought about most, his
quarrel with Rachel, had unnerved Saint-Loup, he begged me a moment later
that we separate, promising to meet up with me again at Mme Villeparisis'
where we agreed that I would go directly.
80r - 81r
Equally most capital
for spiritualist photographs: And even in a general way do we not have the
impression - make more striking by the insignificance of their words -
that we live in the midst of a humanity that is easily evoked, where even
men of genius, similar in this to those from the past whose spirits these
mediums evoke, tell us at the moment when we are waiting for them to give
us the secret of the infinite: "That we take good care of my top hat".
81r - 82r
M. de Norpois frivolities
Regions of sleep: that valerian effaces etc, near the small convent where
we hear the lessons being repeated that we have learned before falling
asleep and that we will only know on waking; whereas in a closed bedroom
we hear the tick-tock of the interior morning alarm-clock that has been
set through our anxiety to the hour when we must get up, to the extent
that the morning alarm of our housekeeper will be unnecessary and when she
comes to tell us it is eight
seven o'clock, she will find us up already; the dark walls on which hang
the memories of our dreams wrapped in darkness that we often hardly notice
until the middle of the afternoon when the sunlight of our reminiscence
strikes them with one of its rays; but some of them already so
harmoniously clear upon waking, but already become so unrecognizable that
not having recognized them all we can do is to hurry to lay them back in
the earth like the too quickly decomposed dead, objects crumbling to dust
from which the most skilled restorer is able bring back nothing.
[margin] forgetfulness that heals the griefs of love, forgetfulness so active, so zealous in its task, the active effort of forgetfulness that a nightmare sometimes comes and interrupts, undoes but which is very quickly begun again.
81v
Most capital for Sodome et
Gomorrhe
(Albertine) With regards to
83r - 84r
before this sleep into which I had fallen as though into a hole from which one is very pleased to pulled later, heavy from having been overfed whilst one slept by all the agile activities actions vegetative powers that have merely redoubled their activity whilst one was sleeping.
my grandmother at the foot of the staircase "that is worthy" of Mme de Sévigné.
for noise put the tasks that the workmen had begun by
banging with their hammers above our heads on another day
as my old housemaid said
her hag of a mother, that we are all in agreement are we not in calling
her old carrion of a mother
M. de Charlus squeezed my arm very tightly telling me: That would be very
well done, eh, don't you think.
For we others who like exotic spectacles we'd like to slap some old cow
with all our might. I remembered that in his family they quoted many
touching examples of M. de Charlus' kindness and for his old nurse-maid
whose Molièresque patois he quoted, and I thought to myself that the
connexions, up until now little studied, it seemed to me, between kindness
and malice in the same person's heart, would be very interesting to
establish.
Don't forget the barber to whom Saint-Loup owes his
leave.
milk soups and salt
I had no difficulty in understanding how at Balbec my
grandmother Mme de Villeparisis was so well informed about the
trip my father was taking in Spain with M. de Norpois. The ambassador was
the old lover of the Marquise.
85r
Most Capital for the proofs of Le Côté de Guermantes part 1 that Tronche is going to return to me, after the alarm-clock (check the spelling) at least that sleep itself more powerful had not stopped the alarm clock, made time stand still
[margin] after the first few onsets of awakening that are more dreams of the abortive onset of awakening, the deepest sleep has not taken it upon itself to stop completely the clock that has started up again; then the time is veiled [?]. We can no longer calculate the time on awakening.
And a little further on in the same episode and up to that brilliant star which at the moment of awakening illuminates behind the sleeper his entire period of sleep, makes him believe for a few seconds that it was insomnia; a shooting star indeed that soon disappears and enables the one to whom it comes to wake up properly, to finally say to himself: I have been asleep.
86r - 87r
for M. de Norpois The Sublime Doorway, the United
Kingdom we are in the presence of a people who have made up their minds to
let themselves make sport of us
Enver Pasha's creatures
the defeatists disguised as nationalists (or rather this for Brichot)
from that time onwards, look well upon,
subject to a humiliation
after the customary protestations.
bring down Germany (or socialism etc.) or she (Germany) hopes to bring us
down
put the plebiscitary crowd to rights
Don't forget the new proofs for the 1st Guermantes Mme Sazerat Dreyfusard, my grandfather anti, hailing the colonel
for Norpois to sap [not Proust's handwriting]
you have to pursue them with a sword to the kidneys
show the glint of the sword
[not Proust's handwriting] Françoise cocoa tree [cocotier]
for an egg seller [coquetier]
86v
[not Proust's handwriting] M. de Norpois
heap indignities upon them with impunity
I don't know what vassalage [?]
88r
M. de Norpois one
might with difficulty
recanted blood
the shrewd Comice [?], the shrewd Porel (only in a determinative sense, is
it really determinative, in the end it doesn't have the sense of an
epithet. This determinative principle exists in Greek.
Françoise's fleeting disappearances that intrigued
me. It was to meet up again with a dressmaker who had made her niece come
to make a dress for her out of crêpe because along with most women all
this leads to the question of trying things on.
Invited Jupien under the [illegible]
pretext of telling him about the funeral
89r
Mme Cottard's extraordinary servants
After what they said [illegible] "Good masters make good
servants."
Try to include the adjective
surreptitious in the last proofs of Côté de Germantes I on the
page about sounds
(I'm thinking about that powder that burns without warning us by its noise
M. de Norpois high flying adventurer
local petty tyrants
(as far as possible not one or the other)
90r - 93r
Most Capital for Sodome et Gomorrhe I
Finally I arrived at the mansion of the Guermantes. The reception rooms
were occupied by a primitive race, more ancient and consequently more
noble than the Guermantes themselves and their guests, they were occupied
by motionless divinities of the foyer, their majestic, mysterious
servants. The Prince's footmen, who were from a more recent era passed
silently through the doorways, without brushing against any of the guests.
The most ancient of them remained standing, steely eyed, without moving.
Every one of them belonged to a race as little understood as the
Etruscans. Sublime flurries passing across his mysterious cast of mind,
(incapable of prolonged reflection, fixed upon the art of restraint, upon
occult divinations). His superstitions rendering his benevolence more
beautiful still, when one thinks of the profound contempt - so far as to
make him seem capable of anything - that his valet had for his master, who
if his master fell ill would watch over him night and day with greater
devotion than a friend or a brother. This abnegation being more touching
still than that of the atheist because it does not rest on mere unbelief,
but on the belief in vices and crimes to which it devotes itself, giving
no explanation, perhaps unknown even to those who practise it, in the
augural colleges assembled for the office and where the deeds of their
masters are distorted and slandered in improbably odd conceptions, (shored
up daily by false or incorrectly interpreted facts) that remains so
impenetrable to the mistress of a house, whose servants, as they take
their breakfast, have just reckoned up all the lovers that they ascribe to
her, and at the next moment as they come into the drawing-room to ask for
orders, if one of the guests says conventionally: "they seem to be very
devoted to you", the mistress of the house, a certain Mme Cottard replies
in the most naive and comically false way: "Good masters make good
servants."
The Prince and Princesse de Guermantes, good masters, had the most
detestable and ostentatious servants. Lined up in front of the reception
room on the evenings of their parties, they were practically all enormous
and ageing footmen that former excesses of champagne had driven to the
necessity of Contrexéville water, and who with their monumental stature
and their skin like prehistoric or Mexican pottery, created, between the
arcades of the mansion, the most impressive colletion of sculptures that
it was possible to see.
For Sodome et Gomorrhe Most Capital
add (in the scene where Albertine having wanted to renounce going to
Infreville in order to regain Lost time says to me: "I'll throw myself
into the sea, I'm seeing you for the last time) in talking about her add
"in a kind of madness
lunacy like all the foolishness she put into simulation and cunning - in
order to leave sooner
Most capital
add to the trip by motor car with Albertine going to the Verdurin's. The
motor car gave me a little of the sensation of those new mathematical
theories that Poincaré talks about. Distances were cast to right and left
like broken crockery, and the land that was transformed in this way was
different too from the land where with much difficulty one could motor in
one day from Balbec to Doncières, was also that which might be for example
a land over which a straight line would not be the shortest route between
one point and another.
95v
Most capital For Guermantes II
Françoise would have preferred my grandmother to take more
medications. She found that generally they did nothing but upset the
stomach. But all the same
she found the staging of it a little paltry. She had a
niece young cousin
in Combray cousins in the Midi - and relatively rich - whose
daughter had fallen ill at about
twenty and who was dead at twenty three. But in those three years her
mother and father ruined themselves over the cost of medications,
different doctors, trips from one nursing home to another, up until her
death. But to Françoise
this seemed like a sort of luxury, as if they had owned race horses or a
house in the country. They themselves as distressed as they were drew a
certain amount of vanity from so much expense. They had nothing left, and
worst of all they had lost their daughter, but they liked to tell
everybody that they had done more for her than even the very richest
people could have done. Ultraviolet rays, to which they had submitted the
unfortunate girl, made them feel particularly flattered. The father was
ruined by a dancer from the Opéra from which, in his suffering, he could
take no more glory. Françoise
loved the staging of it. As for my grandmother's illness, which was no
more remarkable than for some poor person, deeply humiliated her. She
found it a little paltry.
94r - 96r
For Cahier XX (?)
La Berma not only thought that Rachel was nothing more than a tart,
because that indeed is what she was at the time when La Berma was at her
height, and nobody received tarts, but also that she had no talent
whatsoever, that she could neither speak her lines nor act, that she did
not even possess the first basics. And indeed everything that La Berma had
learned from the greatest masters of her time and that she had carried to
a prodigious degree which they themselves found astonishing, and where the
most skillful effects had the appearance of a simple outburst of
naturalness and improvisation, all of this craft added to her genius and
of the greater or lesser perfection with which she was accustomed to hear
actors make their judgements and to judge them herself, Rachel did not
know the first thing about, she belonged to a school, to a period that had
shaken all that off. And so it was without jealousy that La Berma could
say of Rachel that she did not know what it was to act in a theatre, just
as without any feelings of sympathy for him she said on hearing her rival
Coquelin the elder: "My goodness that's well performed, it's marvellous."
It must not be believed for all that that La Berma must have left only an
historical trace, like a model of genius for unnecessary "craft" in XIXth
century tragedy. We abandon our worn out principles, we come back, the law
of flux and reflux guides the critics, and all that which in a particular
period has built up the glory of Claude Monet and forgotten David, then
causes in the subsequent period the resurrection of David and the
disparagement of Claude Monet, with no certainty that this disparagement
and this resurrection will be definitive or any more ephemeral, but
perhaps will continue to alternate.
96r - 98r
Cahier XX
A gentleman, bent over, groaning and delicately convulsed like a weeping
willow, sent towards me like falling leaves a look of tenderness and
recollection, and gently murmured a few lamentations. I
was so absolutely certain that I did not know him that in order to force
him to tell me his name I made no attempt to hide the tears in my eyes
or my profound astonishment;
[margin] After having with
no as a matter of conscience leafed through the illustrated
dictionary that is bestowed on us by our memory and being unable to find
there any analogous human
form that answered to a name that was known to me in the
whirlpool of years and places I had lived any analogous human form that
answered to a name that was known to me, I resigned myself to forcing this
one-sided friend to tell me what he was called, and to not hide the
profound astonishment that his greeting had caused me.
he did not appear to take any notice because, indicating to me a dark
woman who seemed about to leave, he said sadly, my wife, and added,
pointing out a young red-haired boy: my son. I imagined it to be an error
on the part of the willow when I heard my name murmured to
the woman in the wife and the son's direction with a disconsolate
gesture. Unfortunately this unknown person did not have the willow's
rootedness to a particular place. By the time I tried to ask his name of
friends who may perhaps have been able to inform me he had disappeared. I
searched through my memories in vain, I could discover no period of my
personal life, even if I performed in my imagination all the mutations
accomplished by the passage of time, that could have any physical
connection with this plaintive gentleman. And yet he knew me, and what is
more he had recognized me. That I could not to do the same, it must be
that through the course of one's life one can change so much that there no
longer remain any of the primitive elements that might suggest to us some
form of identification. Then one has truly become a different person. This
man had certainly known me well, judging by the melancholy concern with
which he spoke to me and presented me to his family. He had known me,
which is to say that the person he had been had known me. But of that
particular man nothing remained. And in vain did I try to bring out into
the light of day, year by year, place by place, association by
association, all these possible images, none of them came to take their
place in my search into this impenetrable mystery that was totally new to
me, and which had made me think only of a weeping willow.
96v
2nd Guermantes 2nd
Sodome
Françoise didn't say messenger [courrier] or messenger girl [courrière]
but runner [coursière] (maybe in
the 2nd at the end of the 1st Sodome she could say it
As for that one who seems to have so much running about to do he ought to
get one of the little lady's helpers as a runner, unless he prefers to use
Julien himself as a runner. He'll be better off than in his town hall.
2nd Gomorrhe
The Balbec manager's two brothers were one a waiter in the dining room,
the other a dish-washer. But in his pride he preferred to appear not to
know this so that nobody could accuse him of handing out privileges or
injustices, which everybody advised him to do
99r - 101r
To be put in Cahier VIII probably, when I say that Albertine and myself
are able to wash ourselves alongside each other almost, just like friends
at the seaside. I need to keep this image
comparison for the end of the section and write this.
Sometimes, if she knew that in the
darkness of my room with the curtains drawn I was not asleep, she would
make some noise as she was bathing. Then it happened that I would go to
her bathroom. We know that while in days gone by a theatre director
might spend hundreds of thousands of francs so that an actress might
have genuine emeralds on her dress, a genuine gold sceptre etc., modern
stage managers by means of a simple play of the light have succeeded
better in producing for the spectator the translucence of emerald and
the glitter of gold, by making different coloured lights play onto
worthless glass beads or even onto simple pieces of paper. But even
these splendours
illusions, already so immaterial, are nothing next to the ones we
discover, when we are in the habit of rising at noon, in a bathroom at
eight o'clock in the morning. The only true
truly exultant stage-effects, the only veritable changes of vision, are
those that spring, for example, from a change in our hours, awakening
from the very depths of our being an entire series of forgotten
memories. In order not to be seen into from outside the windows of
Albertine's bathroom were not plain, but patterned and irregular, with
an artificial frosting that made curtains unnecessary. How ever little
sunlight came in, it was charming to see changing its colour and
breaking forth that white
double muslin of glass. One would have thought it deep in the full light
of day, filled with birdsong, because Albertine was in the habit, which
enchanted me, of whistling. Sometimes I decided then and there to get
dressed as well so that I could go out with her and the partition that
separated our two bathrooms was so thin that we could talk to each other
as we got dressed, with that sort of holiday mood intimacy that we have
where there are fewer rooms than in Paris, in a hotel at the seaside.
99v & 100r
For M. de Norpois in the last conversation with Mme de Villeparisis. There are occasions when we must not fear exercising the old politics of do ut des [I give that you might give], which our ambassador in London, who isn't lacking in a certain wit the Marquis added sincerely, called the politics of do ut dièze [?]. It is very musical and in fact doesn't it consist of blackmail. Fearing that Mme de Villeparisis had not understood, he added: It is composed of two notes. The point is to find the right note and to stay in tune.
M. de Norpois a wet blanket of a
minister
the role of a minister for foreign affairs is always difficult. In any
event it cannot be played as is the pretension today, with a raised
foot.
101r - 102r
Then near the end of Albertine's stay
in my house.
There were mornings when thinking about Albertine I felt towards her an
almost exasperated weariness. At that time if she knew that I was not
asleep during the night in my room with the curtains drawn, she would
take to whistling and singing whilst she was getting washed, her
chirping formerly so sweet sounding to me seemed stupid and irritating.
When she came through to see me I told her that I hated it when people
felt the need to sing when they were carrying out some task or other. I
listed out to her all the professions where people did not sing and by
contrast I declared to her that after having sought to classify all the
most stupid things that I could think of, the prize for silliness it
seemed to me had to be awarded to the traditional songs of workmen who
come in to paint an apartment. She did not contradict me, but the next
time, no doubt not applying this to herself began once again to sing and
whistle while she was getting washed.
101v
Norpois
Play the game of agitator
Foe Sodome II when I am "just like my grandmother my father" with Albertine: Everything that our parents tell us in the morning of our lives are like the lessons that, on our own account, we recite in the evening.
I go along with the Revue (Françoise's daughter perhaps)
[not Proust's handwriting]
M. de Norpois let us not be blinded by parochial considerations
Dubious electioneering tactics
Undesirable to become a bone of contention
The electoral spoils
Galvanized
Our veto
Guermantes II
Small gallop
103r - 104r
For the Manager at Balbec
I found him very changed, he had lost so much weight he was hardly
recognizable
In Le Côté de Guermantes
in Balbec when I am thinking about the death of my grandmother.
In the end had I not been more or less unconsciously the cause of her
death? Ever since my childhood when she was going on a journey in order
to have the rustic novels of George Sand for my birthday, later when I
exaggerated my choking fits in front of her, and above all the last day
when I had hurried her to go out; coming down the stairs before her
because I thought she was lagging behind, had I not precipitated, caused
to advance in a fatal way the illness that one might perhaps have been
able to moderate. And then I thought about Gilberte who forced her
father through her caresses to go into society and introduce her to
people when he was already so ill, about Bloch's father to whom a doctor
who was in love with his daughter-in-law had persuaded that the fatigues
and distractions of the Stock Market would be of nothing but benefit to
him, at the period in his life when he had so much need of rest; and thinking
about all the poor invalids who I asked myself in the face of
this terrible host of our victims if we were not, almost each and every
one of us, a great brotherhood of assassins. And who can say if, in our
life, we will not have to kill more than once.
104r - 108r
To be put in
Sodome et Gomorrhe Evening party at the Princesse
Duchesse de Guermantes'. I approached the wife of the minister
ambassador of Turkey. I
had not however met her very often at the Duchesse de Guermantes' and
she was however extremely intelligent and amiable. But she talked about
people she had not yet met in a manner that irritated me. Not that she
belonged to that group of
women new group of women who call
say Gisèle
Renée, Mathilde when they talk about women they have not yet even been
introduced to. That form of poor manners is in any case no more
disagreeable than that assumed form of good manners that makes people in
society say Monsieur Loti, Monsieur Bergon in almost the same tone as
Monsieur Brasseur or Monsieur Paulus, so as to show at one and the same
time that they do not know them but that they have the good breeding
enough that they could know them, the gentleman in question being both
remote and yet an opening. A fair [illegible] between "Babal"
and Monsieur Loti is
naturally so rare [illegible] by good education. The
form the ambassador's wife's vulgarity took was slightly different. Like
a schoolboy who only has a few months Admittedly, but in the
same way as a schoolboy who only has a few months to prepare for a
difficult examination, she did not have time to study everything she
ought to. And for the things she did not know she relied on those
who knew others. But she quoted them with no transposition,
without dreaming that what was natural from the mouth [from the mouth sic]
of a friend or a relation of that person, was not at all from her own.
For example the Duchesse de Guermantes, with the naivety of the people
of the Faubourg St Germain, had told her a story that reputedly
explained the success of M. de Bréauté
and another that recounted one of M. de Charlus' eccentricities. As it
happened the Turkish ambassador's wife knew neither of those two
gentlemen. Nevertheless in an animated voice and with much laughter "Do
you know the cause of Babal's success? Well I'll tell you all. Just
imagine that Babal.. " etc. and there followed a long account which was
followed by the one about Mémé.
One may feel that the Duchesse de Guermantes was somewhat lacking in the
way she spoke by using the abbreviations Babal and Mémé.
But at least that was how she spoke to them themselves. The ambassador's
wife to whom they had never been introduced simply thought that she was
telling the story as it should be told, by using the same expressions as
the Princesse; she had thought that by saying M. de Bréauté,
M. de Charlus, she was committing the same error in terminology that,
if, being acquainted with a doctor and knowing what an illness was
called, she had given it an incorrect name. I must have heard her tell
this improbable story about the Princesse and M. Groult eight times even
though she did not know the Princesse de Guermantes.
And while denying it completely she said: Would you believe that
Marie Gilbert... And as some people doubted the authenticity of such a
story said: "Your trusted admirers [?]" because even as an elegant
foreigner one might confer with a rather vulgar French person, as if one
were old French and of humble origins [?] the ambassador's wife who was
really a little common would reply to the question "Are you sure?" with
the words "sure and certain". The ambassador's wife had always said some
unpleasant things about Marie Gilbert. "I tell you she's most unfriendly
towards me', she said, "I have a rightful dislike for her." It was
because the Princesse de Parme had never yet invited the ambassador's
wife that the latter thought that she was making it be believed that
this dislike, from an intellectual and moral basis, was the reason she
was never seen at the Princesse's. But the Princesse had finally invited
the ambassador's wife and from that day on she lost as if by magic not
only any need for Marie Gilbert but cultivated with an esteem and a
peculiar circumspection, with a "remarkable woman" [??] whom she took
great pains to be on friendly terms with [?]. To return to the
ambassador's wife's faults they were not in the end so very serious. But
in all of our relationships, even in our friendships (except the very
greatest ones) our friends' faults are a special kind of poison against
which we are "immunized" by an addiction whose effect has suddenly
ceased. Then these same people, even our most intimate or disparate
friends become intolerable to us for a time. Without complicating
matters with over scientific comparisons, by talking about anaphylaxis,
let us say that in the bosom of all our friendships there is an
hostility that has been overcome but which returns in an intermittent
fashion as an attack. It might be said that we suffer less from these
poisons in the moments when the persons who unleash them are genuine. Mme
de Cambremer The wife of the Turkish ambassador never thought
to doubted to what extent she added anything to her charm when she
talked about Mémé
and Babal. On the other hand she was generally agreeable when she evoked
her childhood on the Bosphorus.
106r
[margin] Add to the end of the section most capital to give some grace to the articulations in the book [?] in spite of her ridiculousness, the wife of the Turkish ambassador was agreeable to know, was necessary to portray one of those performances that might be called diverse evening parties, because she had not been going into fashionable society for very long. The great stars of the past, the old stars of society what use was it to them to appear. Surrounded by satellites, they remained unknown in the darkness. The new hemisphere of Time that had appeared recently meant that the wife of the Turkish ambassador was much more akin to the younger members than Mme Standish. In her was made concrete a whole bustle of snobbishness and parties. She was a false star but at least she shone. The nomenclature of great marvels [?] changes every twenty years. The names of the old ones fell into oblivion, at least they lived on in books. And the new feted [?] discoveries new amusements in the old game are useful if one wants to play the part and take one's seat in the front row.
107r
[margin] also create a Mme Rebbinder who is bored by everything [?] (this will probably be the Duchesse de Guermantes at the end of the book)
102v
When Elstir
Bergotte comes to pay me long visits to get news of my grandmother.
[margin] In connection with this say that Bergotte took little
interest in what he was told, nor hardly read [illegible]
anything.
Already most of his thoughts had passed from his brain into his books.
And at that time his reproductive instinct no longer impelled him to any
activity. It was as if he had been operated on for his books and lived
the vegetative life of the convalescent. His fine abilities remained
immobilized in that kind of vague and contented reverie that we see in
women who have just given birth; or all those people who lying down
beside the sea watch, with no other thought in their heads, as each
small wave takes shape and then expires.
But quite simply I did not admire him any more. His books that I read
frequently were as easy for me to follow as my own thoughts, furniture
that had been placed in my own room, carriages passing through as if in
the street, indeed everything there could be seen clearly and if not as
they had always been seen, at least as they could usually be seen today.
But a new writer had begun to publish his books in which the
associations between things were on the contrary so different from those
that for me almost invincibly connected them, that I could understand
absolutely nothing of what he wrote. He said for example: "the
sprinklers admired the splendid upkeep of the roads," (and that was
straightforward, I followed smoothly along those roads) "that set out
from Briand and Claudel." At which point I no longer understood, because
I had expected the name of a town, not the name of a person. But I felt
that it was not a false relation between things, but a relation that was
placed at a height that I was unable to reach because I was not
Continues on the
following verso page
103v
as agile or as strong as the new writer. On reading each of his sentences I renewed my efforts, using my feet and hands to reach the point from which I could see as clearly as he the relation between things. Each time I fell back down without having seen; But I understood that if it gave the appearance of not wanting to say anything it was not because the author was bad but that I had less gymnastic strength. And I admired him as might an awkward boy in the presence of another more nimble boy. From then on I admired Bergotte much less, where I could see everything as clearly as in my looking-glass. Which now seemed to me to be insufficient. There was a time when people recognized things quite easily when it was Fromentin who had painted them and could not recognize them at all when it was Renoir. Now people recognize things by Renoir perfectly well and they seem more true than in a Meissonier. This has taken a great deal of effort and it is silly to forget that in order to find this end point so simple, where women in the street appear as Renoirs, they have called Renoir a great eighteenth-century painter. People forget that it took a long time in the nineteenth century for Renoir to be called a great nineteenth-century painter. Taste says eighteenth century, but that is to misunderstand the effort over time, which is life. It was not the incoherence of the new writer's sentences that led me to admire him more than Bergotte, but on the contrary the perfect coherence between the associations that were unknown to me. I perceived this coherence as each sentence began straightforwardly, but I stumbled every time in exactly the same manner, never reaching the heart of it, my strength having deserted me. And not ten times, not a hundred times, but a thousand times, following the course of a thousand sentences where, in
Continues on the following verso page
104v
every single one of them, I always fell down before the end. And this coherence was not the only thing to convince me that it was the strength, not the weakness of the writer that prevented me from following him on that sort of side by side excursion which is reading; sometimes a phrase let slip its meaning, and that meaning was always something droll, something charming, something real, just as it was in Bergotte when I first began to read him, but different, new, delightful. I mused that it was not so many years ago that this remaking of the world had been furnished me by Bergotte himself. And I was led to ask myself if the distinction on which I stood was not a joke piece of silliness which had it that science is in continual progress, whereas literature has not progressed since the time of Homer. It seemed to me now that every new and original writer was making great strides beyond the one that he cast into the shadows. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is like the sciences; and perhaps in ten twenty years, when I shall have come to double the loop as easily
Continues on the following verso page
105v
as the new writer, there might arrive [?] another behind whom the new writer of today will follow at a far distance, just as did, at this very moment, for me, Bergotte. I spoke to Bergotte about this new writer. But for a long time now the master who I had admired so much did not read anything, taking an interest only in his own work. And yet jealousy had prompted him to open one of the new writer's books; because he told me that his art was facile, coarse, and that he had nothing to say. I was even less impressed by his description of the new writer (I had never seen him), who, Bergotte assured me, bore a strong resemblance to Bloch. From then on whenever I read the new writer's books the image of Bloch pursued me, I liked his books less and took fewer pains to try to understand them.
104v
[margin]
Following on from the note on the previous page
It is nevertheless an astonishing thing, these metamorphoses of the
universe, that in actual fact are quite frequent and without the need to
go back to the flood and to the prehistoric era. Each time an original
painter comes along he acts in the same way as an oculist, at least in
taking care of the eyes. The course of treatment (by the painter) is
highly painful, takes some time. After which he removes the bandages and
tells us it's done, don't worry, all you have to do is look now. His
treatment has worked effectively upon our eyes, and now it is our eyes
that work effectively upon the world. In place of what the world might
be, as painted so faithfully by the last painters who have gone before,
[?] here women have taken on the exact form as in the painting
of the artist who has just treated us, we are unable to identify a
woman's form. This new woman is iridescent with the colours that we have
added to her through madness. Forests are like those that in the
pictures of the new painter appear to us as a sort of multicoloured
tapestry, without having any idea of what it was.
106v
M. de Norpois In his last conversation with Mme de Villeparisis At no point is there any need to be a prophet to
Norpois: Capital
Certainly I am not considered to be any more timorous than the next man
and it is my opinion, as our fathers used to tell us, that the man is
closed to dilatory measures, to
fruitless coercion, to that wait and see [in
English] that today seems decrepit. Enough of such incoherence
and tergiversation. That's what everybody says. But is it opportune to
take coercive measures at the prevalent moment when a spark is enough to
set off the inferno. This is what we must ask ourselves. After all we are
in London, are in St Petersburg, we are in London, I fancy that
is not to assist with
remain silent. Has not the government in this regard given carte blanche
to Cambon and to Paléo just like that before passing into legislation a
question that it is perhaps fruitless to ask it without high flown
phraseology as without excessive discretion. Parliament has in one
interpellation said against military force that it is better to bring
out the scabbard than to draw the sword or to give a stroke of the epée
into the heart [?]. We must not confine ourselves to face
saving measures, that would be to expose grave miscalculations.
107v
Concerning the same Turkish ambassadress I need to say
They are cousins
(Gautier Vignal talking about Barante Bailby about Monsieurs [?]
Manerville)
I should prefer glycerine (It was a Hot, excellent (this ascetic was a doctor)
To add In Guermantes II the Turkish ambassadress spoke with extreme harshness about the Princesse de Guermantes and said in my ear she is stupid. In Sodome II I was surprised to see a deferential affability towards the Princesse about her and she told me: "What an adorable creature." In reality she had always thought that, but all that had changed was that the Princesse had finally invited her for the first time and that would change again evidently would continue now that the door had been forced open. Three quarters of the worst things that are said are in reference to the people we think the best of. There is no need of spurned love or friendship for that, nor of political power that we feel is kept from us. One evening party to which we are not invited, one invitation received, and everything is changed. In the world of society there plays interminably [several illegible words] of the newcomers is a sort by a sort of amorous spite.
109v
For the noises (outwardly the murmur of foliage which are terrible [?] hammer blows) say: About love perhaps - (even add to love the love of life, the love of glory since it is said that there are people who are familiar with those particular sentiments) ought one to act in the same way as those people who, to counteract the noise, rather than making it stop block up their ears and thus instead of unceasingly examining to bring our defensive attention not on the external aspect of the object of our love, transfer our defences in ourselves, transfer to the heart our defences in ourselves to the heart so as not to diminish our sensib but in ourselves, onto our capacity to suffer from it.
109v
When that sings to us
110r - 114r
When the
Princesse de Parme speaks to M. de Charlus on behalf of Mlle d'Oloron
add most capital
The name Cambremer was unknown to M. de Charlus outside
long before Balbec, whatever might have been thought. The father of the
current Marquis and grandfather of the betrothed young man actually had
a peevish, almost notorious reputation which had not remained limited to
the Avrinchin, especially as his name was frequently mentioned by
learned Parisians [?] because he had been president of the society for
Norman Studies. (Retrospectively, when Brichot produced his etymologies
at the Verdurin's dinner at Raspelière
"Monsieur de Cambremer, you would have been of great interest to my
father. Besides you ought
to Ah! he liked such things more than anything", an
imperceptible smile crossed M. de Charlus' face). But the only effect of
that was to make it well understood by M. de Charlus that he was from
those people whom he did not consider to be from the high aristocracy,
but old families dating back to the days of chivalry and about which he
said with an appearance of uncertainty: "Yes, I've heard of the name".
But a family with good social standing, an ancient family, this is what
he wanted for Mlle d'Oloron. He changed
preferred to raise the stature of the name himself, establish grand
relations between the pair rather than making
cause any fruitless scandal and unnecessary publicity about a princely
marriage.
And especially when the marriage has taken place.
The society chroniclers
when they cover the marriage, be it through ignoran Malicious,
or simply insinuating and pleading their cause, or more probably
ignorant, the society chroniclers when they announce the marriage
celebrate first and foremost the universal reputation that had allowed
the Marquis de Cambremer, grandfather of the betrothed young man, to
shine and in which the Baron de Charlus, adoptive father of the
betrothed young woman revelled. Some of the pleasantries among the young
people who were familiar with their past histories, brought a smile to
these two patriarchs
great masters of such a special order, uniting their children. They took
it badly because they communicated their thoughts to other young people
whose relatives were exactly the same people who were the secret
companions in pleasure of the Baron de Charlus and had been also with
the Marquis de Cambremer. What was said about these two today could be
said about them tomorrow; also a contrary reflux came to rebound on
these malicious young persons. "I talked about the Marquis de Cambremer
and Baron de Charlus to some people who know them very well however",
cried the sons, aspiring sons-in-law etc, "old gentlemen who conceal
their way of life behind a soldierly bearing and a military moustache.
It appears they have always been quite the opposite of what you said, it
is absolutely untrue. In any case how would you know?" The malicious
young men could only hold their tongues. They simply imagined that in
the closest families there was also the Baron Legrandin at Meséglise,
and others too, and that every time an aristocratic marriage takes
place, commencing with everything it puts in motion, allied, on the
strength of serving as witnesses etc. for those people that Balzac calls
"queers", one might suppose that their number is infinitely greater than
might suppose those who aspire to become the sons-in-law of one of them
and who in any case they are too. Every best man had two mistresses, but
Aimé was
able to pass a different judgement upon them. If the late Marquis de
Cambremer had been able to read the list of male members of the wedding
party, he would have been able
to rest easy in his tomb upon seeing how
much their traditions remained his name was restored and
celebrated according to
by the people that he had known or that he had chosen, even though in
the special tradition that he had embodied they no longer met with the
adornment of that fine learning and of those elevated studies whose
traces can still be found in the book entitled Norman Customs.
114r
Put this addition either in the Princesse de Guermantes' soirée or even in Sodome et Gomorrhe I)
Yet it is striking that the French aristocracy is out all of them the one that offers the fewest examples of that sort. Without restricting itself to the territory of nobility, such a great country had recruited its embassy staff in Paris in such a way that, if some secretaries had not combined a genuine competence with the same inclinations as M. de Charlus, one might have been led to believe that it was simply on account of these inclinations that had dictated the nomination of each of them. They were seen as not being among the greater number of members of the embassy but as the totality. Because inversion, like the church, is useful for finding wealthy marriage partners, facilitating some marriages and also some divorces.
110v
Mme Swann when I talk to Cottard about her towards the end. She had done well for herself. When he said about her in all seriousness, she no longer says like she used to do: at two sous that makes ten francs. And she rarely said of herself "Joking apart".
Norpois on the
strength of being in government with those connections.
act with guile, dodge
Norpois
I should be happy to return to Paris and rediscover my gods of the
hearth.
112v
M. de Guermantes
or Norpois
You give the impression of being completely subjugated
have a grudge
against
not being in the saddle
a good for nothing
113v - 116v
Most capital for
the second Balbec
I saw Some days
afterwards (the young girls she had seen in the mirror) I saw a quite
very beautiful woman come in as
if to ask for her
note something at the casino. But
Albertine was quite a way away from me at that moment. Upon noticing
her, the woman's eyes became starry, through a phenomenon much like the
one I had occasionally observed between two young people. The young
woman, instead of going to make inquiries about what had been said
about her, passed in front of Albertine, her
gaze fixed upon her those newly illuminated stars; Albertine,
most probably because she knew that I was there, made it appear that she
had not seen her, and yet she could not have helped seeing her. Her
blank expression seemed to astonish the young woman rather cause her any
vexation. So were they in fact like former friends, and the young woman
was surprised not to immediately inflame the person she had known, every
day perhaps for an entire summer. Perhaps without knowing Albertine
somebody else who knew her had told the young woman about the tastes
that from time to time I feared. Or perhaps this information about her
was furnished by Albertine herself by some mysterious sign unnoticed by
me but which is immediately recognized by the initiated. A few days
later I saw the young woman in a gaming room looking at a woman in the
same way, but this woman responded to the illumination in the eyes of
the other with an equivalent phosphorescence. She quickly came up to
her. The husband of the young woman who had stared at Albertine rejoined
his wife who introduced him to the unknown woman as a childhood friend,
and he remained close by them, compliant, while the two women took
recourse to those paltry means, always the same, of brushing against
each others' knees, placing a foot against the other, to indicate their
desire. The table moved slightly, the husband saw nothing. Fathers
looked upon these women with whom they had forbidden their daughters to
ever dance with severity. And later on in the party room a little girl
of twelve years old who had the ingenious admiration of a still innocent
child regarding the beautiful lady who had stared at Albertine, crossed
the length of the ballroom in order to perform a thousand entirely
childish, entirely pure caresses with her idol. But the latter was
displeased by it, thought it compromising for her. As for Albertine she
gave every appearance of never having even noticed her. But this was
carried out with an indifference so stripped of vexation, stripped even
of that exaggeration we see when one's indifference clings to the
knowledge that we ourselves are indifferent to it, it was carried out so
naturally, that for several days I wondered if Albertine had not seen
her elsewhere, at certain times that I was unaware of, and was praying
that she would ignore her in the casino. This was a supposition that
appeared to corroborate the fact that Albertine, having told me that
very day that she absolutely did not know that woman, did not know who
she was, she then told me that she had known about her reputation for
some years, that everybody knew about it. She shattered the
contradiction that I pointed out to her by saying that perhaps we were
not talking about the same woman, and to make certain she asked me
various questions about the lady to which I made no response, fearing
that if it was the case that Albertine was innocent and yet pervertible
I might be steering her in that direction. A supposition that proved
that I really did have some love for Albertine, because it is only
through love, as if with the help of a supplementary sense, that we
penetrate worlds that are unknown to us that renew themselves
incessantly before our eyes without us seeing them and without the
phosphorescence that it the train of light that they generate,
often at great distances, between one woman and another, even though
scarcely visible to men, at least if they are not jealous. Be that as it
may much later I came to learn that in every part of the country, in
every town, in every village where she had been Albertine had come into
contact with those women that she "did not know in the slightest" but
whose reputations were found wanting. And so it is that a dispersed and
purely ideal Gomorrah tends everywhere to bring back together all its
separated members, to rebuild the biblical city, while on all sides too
the same efforts are made, maybe denied, maybe desired, because of the
contradictory surroundings into which their habitual situation plunges
them where they have attachments [?] to which they cling [?],
the same endeavours, be it in view of a reconstruction that is only
intermittent and for a short stay, the same efforts are made by the
exiles of Sodom.
113v
[margin]
Most capital
Sometimes a beautiful young girl passed with some others, Albertine
appeared not to have seen her. But a moment later she turned back with
the pretext that she
: "I'm looking at the new flag that they've put up over the casino. They
needn't have bothered." Or even "Why they haven't even repaired the
kiosk." And I felt that my presence must be a burden to her.
114r
Perhaps somewhere
in book XX Most Capital
The old man walked, his look circumspect, his step cautious, measuring
the distance that separated him from his grave, careful not to let
himself be pushed into any of those at either side of him. One felt
that, different in this way from other human beings, he was not alone.
He had the preoccupied expression of somebody who feels that he has
fallen ill, and the wings of the invisible travelling companion who
accompanied him spread a leaden yellow on his cheeks which was perhaps
that of his last evening* and contrasted starkly with the "roses of
eternal morning".
115r
Françoise said to me one evening day when I had reproached her (during the period of Albertine's stay) Oh! my young master So my young master you want the old woman to go then? she'll be gone by tomorrow. But you know you have bought me and even far away from you I will always be yours. Then following some or other conversation with Albertine. That night I got up. I wrote to my banker who held all of my securities and asked him to have them delivered to me, sending him all the receipts. I received them the next day, I gave them all to Françoise, it was her I loved, not Albertine and it was only right and proper that the old woman who had toiled all her life should taste some kindness in her life, even if she no longer lived with us. But Françoise would not accept a single sou of all this fortune. An hour later she called Albertine that dingo, and proved herself to be so spiteful and so vulgar that I did not regret her disinterested refusal.
[margin] The manager at Balbec Above all else you must avoid not setting fire to the chimney.
Think about Vascoursellio's [??] appearance at a luncheon party
116r
In Sodome et Gomorrhe (probably in the Verdurin's soirée
in Paris)
M. de Charlus will say: I have been
fixed on that one for a long time. Besides I was after him a bit in
Constantinople and I had very precise information. And this "I have
been fixed" which was an expression M. de Charlus often used, seemed
to include so many memories that he smiled to himself about and that
by contrast, all the people who had not been fixed upon, who did not
even suspect as much, for whom in place of memories and information
there was nothing but emptiness, took on because of that moreover,
simple and honestly mediocre people that they were, an adorable halo
of saintly innocence.
116r - 118r
In
Sodome et Gomorrhe II
They love their mothers, their wives, their sisters and even years
later when anybody speaks of them their eyes well up, but merely in
the same way that the forehead of a very fat gentleman breaks out in a
sweat when he gets up to walk; with this difference that in the case
of the latter we pity them, we say: "How hot you are", whereas in the
case of the former we try to look as though we have not noticed their
tears so as not to encourage any sentimentality. "We" that is to say
people in polite society, because the servants become alarmed by teary
eyes will say - in a tone that is quasi medical "I don't like
to see you crying like that" and as if the most that one [illegible]
was a sort of haemorrhage, which is dangerous for the one who is
afflicted and also for the one who has to see it and who knows that
the sight of blood makes him bring his food back up. This affection of
inverts for their wives, for their sisters, is perhaps so deep that
for some periods of time they change their life and the return to
their usual habits is only one form of the consummation of forgetting.
But the most frequent lie under which they have continued to live is
the most powerful. They were obliged
forced to deceive
by the very prejudice that surrounds
encircles them, to deceive the people around them every day, that their
suffering, without ceremony, and their habits are simultaneous, and they
can arrive at the town hall or the church with an overflowing heart and
can make eyes almost maniacally at the superintendent of the funeral
group [?] or at a choirboy.
118r - 120r
Most Capital
For Sodome et Gomorrhe.
And from time to time I hoped that she did not come back because she
would surely leave again one day and thinking about the awfulness of the
moment when she went, I said to myself, like morphine addicts who prefer
not to take morphine again knowing that if not they would be forced to
give up morphine all over again [?] I asked myself [?]
(continued on the next page
if it would not be better to endure an absence forever than to face anew
the horror of departure
M. de Norpois or
Brichot: that's no reason to throw him down the Gemonian stairs (better
for M. de Norpois)
Right and proper
In bordellos strange usages [?] they say the assistant-governess as if is was up to her to teach and have repeated these of immoral lessons. And what a circumlocution in this expression "At the moment the ladies are assuming their poses, nothing happens". The terrible sounds of the mass, you can hear the responses. Circulation and interruption as though by police constables.
At Jupien's house vaguely Pompeian paintings in the basement, "There are some very nice ladies down here: spoken laughingly by Jupien in an affected and wheedling manner as he pointed out the oceans of Hurculaneum.
In Sodome et Gomorrhe II
Some of them were so clearly women, that one felt that the women who
looked at them with desire had vowed themselves (at least out of a
particular predilection) to the same deception in the same way that a
woman in one of Shakespeare's comedies is deceived by the young girl in
disguise who is making herself pass for a young man, the deception is
the same, the invert is
aware of it understands it himself when he sees a woman staring
at him, he desires [?] the deception that his disguise has brought about
in her [?] and in this way inversion is a source of poetry just like
those disguises that lead to the mistakes of sex in Twelfth Night.
119r
[margin] M. de Norpois make the magnates of finance stump up
120r - 121r
An invert can deny to his friend that he is one; perhaps even when telling him that he has never had relations with other men he is telling the truth. But when he undresses and puts on his white pyjamas, his arms bare, his neck bare under his black hair, his pyjamas have become a woman's camisole, his head that of a pretty Spanish girl and the friend is horrified to be confronted by these sexual confidences that are more true than his words, even of his actions, and that these actions cannot fail to confirm, if they have not done so already, because in life every person pursues his pleasure and seeks out the opposite sex to his own if they are not too lecherous. Because for the invert vice begins when he seeks to take his pleasure with women - certainly not when he has relations because they might be demanded by the duties of marriage, marital desire etc. - but when he takes his pleasure with women.
120r
[margin] M. de Norpois: Certainly the Germans want to seduce us, not to put too fine a point on it, on condition that it is they who lead the game. But upon this subject it is impossible for us not to say simply to go to Conossa even but to remain in league with Wilhelm II. M. de Norpois: Does this not touch upon the German question
117v
Madame Cottard
After a certain lapse of time...
Mme Cottard never said lapse indoors without picking up the expression
worthy of a lady who looks after her
best dresses her collars on
her day, because she thought lapse of time had something very
proper and rather distinguished about it.
M. de Norpois raise the standard of revolt
118v - 119v
For the last cahier when I think I am
close to death, not being able to go down the stairs.
From that moment on the measurement of Time changed for me. It passed
much more quickly. Not because I was afraid of not having enough time to
complete my work. But even without
any wish on my part, everything receding with an extreme while
making no apprehension intervene on my part, it was as though, in a
first degree where it did not "play its part", I was in a world as
different from the old one as, for example, at the outbreak of a
summer's day where everything is in its place, where not a single leaf
flutters, to a stormy autumn day, when the fallen leaves swiftly
circulate. I think that this had the result of my receiving more letters
and in seeing more people, because the rumour that I had some talent was
being spread, fatigue prevented me from reading these letters to the end
so that I could not remember a single word of them the next day nor even
if I had received them on seeing those people again. Also too perhaps
because everything played out so quickly before my notice that could
furnish only an instant, an instant not even prolonged it was reproduced
- as a statue is the reproduction of a dead person - by memory, time
seemed to me to have become very rapid; which made me suppose that its
duration is relative to the attention we give to it, that we can give to
things, and which seems to us something so powerful
calm and almost stable as long as old age has not yet come to us, in
part because we place a kind of insistence upon remaining close to
people, to be fully aware and knowing that we will continue to remember
the things we have read. So that by some strange contradiction time
never seems as fleeting until the moment when, even outside of our
understanding, or through the fear of the coincidence of identical
impressions, I was able to construct outside of it an extra-temporal
eternity, itself Time, even in a more humble and totally humane
understanding I was yet about to be able to account for its self
prolongation, having enormous dimensions, too great even for our
weakness. [?]
121r
At the bordello (Jean) those big eyes
were mirrors in which were repeated one moment but in which I was unable
to read see
everything that I wanted to understand (about Santois? about
Albertine?).
The forms of female beauty engender a purely physical pleasure in which
they count for nothing, and yet this pleasure sterilizes them, chastity
protects fecundity from amorous ideas.
121v
M. de Guermantes I do believe that she is slightly under the influence of Bacchus.
Mme Cottard: we are there at the mobile camp.
Mme Verdurin (for Charlus or Saniette) in a low voice: "A trap"
122r
M. de Norpois: we must respond to
Germany from lake to lake
threading the needle
Mme Bontemps
Cottard a silly turn of events has happened to me, I haven't got a cook,
as true as you see me now I'm going out into the countryside to find
one.
Sodome et Gomorrhe (2nd stay at Balbec)
My mother was annoyed because while wishing to be alone to think about
my grandmother, she met an old lady and her daughter from Combray on the
beach. But after chatting with her, seeing that they were
inconveniencing her, they were very discreet and never stopped her
again. They were two intelligent and sweet women but to whom their love
of sweetness was quite unyielding. Consciously - because they knew the
correct pronunciation of cueuillier [?] and Fénélon
perfectly well, the syrups that they made themselves from the flowers
they gathered in their large garden at Combray were so sweet that they
found it quite hard [?] when people poured two or three drops of it into
water. Having once heard me say that I had dined with Mme de Fénélon,
they had found
declared that my way of
talking was not at all harmonious way of talking lacked
harmony. They thought that the lady who was suitable for the bard of
Telemachus could well be bought at the cost of an accent that does not
figure in her name. They had, as grandmother had reproached them, for
picking the beautiful oranges that were as their
white flowers there were in the vestibule in front of the rooms
about thirty beautiful orange trees in pots, for stripping them of their
pretty white flowers to make the liqueur called "orange flower".
[margin]
to sound more distinguished they said se-aucer [secoupe]
instead of saucer [soucoupe] and did not find
122v
Françoise about Albertine she's a real prude
for Cottard po-ite for poet, exetra (for et cetera) hot drinks intrusion [?]
123r - 124r
To add to Albertine's Sleep
She was motionless,
With her eyes closed, she was motionless, like a marble statue. Sleep is a
great sculptor. I could touch her without making her move, reach out and
switch on the electric light without making her move. But to
know that this marble statue was alive, that even so I knew I could wake
her up, what excess of intoxication was added to my admiration of
this marble statue, with its so finely chiselled dimples, with its
incarnate splendour, motionless, but yet living and when I wanted to I kew
how to finally awaken the sleeping goddess, change her into a creature of
agile caresses.
125r - 125v
Have Le Côté de Guermantes
start like this
We may remember that that day, upon leaving the marvellous vantage point
that I had at the top of the house over the
first the mountainous valley that extended to the Hotel de
Tresmes and which gaily ornamented in pink campaniles the Marquis de Frécourt's
tiled coach-house, I had resolved to abandon my post and later in the
afternoon when I thought that the Duc and Duchesse would be on the point
of returning to come and sit back down on the stairs. Expediency
had prescribed that I abandon my high summit and I regretted
it; no doubt at that hour I would not have seen the minuscule characters
as if in a picture that from that distance the footmen from the Hotel de
Tresmes became, making the slow ascent up the steep slope, feather
duster in hand, between the isolated sheets of rock crystal. But how
pleasant it is at that hour to see the sun foliating these neighbouring
heights that seem so distant with their dazzling flame. But expediency
had suggested that I abandon my lofty post and I did not know that I was
going to be compensated in another way for what I was about to see from
the staircase. The windows and the glazed door were open and I had no
thought of closing them as I sometimes did when the air was scorching
hot and besides I could more easily hear the slightest sound, should the
Duchesse return on foot.
For
Sodome et Gomorrhe
Lying certainly perhaps a character trait
M. de Norpois the vagaries
tractions
compose (in the sense of being in composition)
[margin]
Carolus Comes Vyrdinensis [?]
Non est mortale quod opto [What I desire is not mortal]
[top of page] Peri with baton on base gules
126r
[written vertically, across top of page, not Proust's handwriting]
Léon Blum
Céart
Rachël Boyer
Madame Thomson
Léon Bailley
Doctor Bouillet (Mayor)
Henri de Régnier
Réne Boylesve
Henri Vonoven
Robert Dreyfus
Marcel Boulanger
Comtesse Chevigné
Françis de Croisset
Lieutenant Delus
Compte Greffulhe
Stephane Brassard
André Picard
Captain Fouquières
Franz Jourdain
Germaine Lavignac
Gaston Berardi
azure with three
eagle's heads extracted in gold
Te nemus omne canet [And every grove shall sing]
Mme de Turgis
Marquise de Canet
Marquis de Barillon
Marquis de la Porpe de la Vertu [?]
Charged with two
cinquefoils argent with wild cabbage argent [illegible] of
sinople
Marquis de
Baragnac de Plustôt had the war cry Plustôt to the death
Azure with argent
ewe grazing on sinople terasse
non sine labore [nothing without labour]
ecart with lion
holding fleur de lys or with leaves dexter beside two eaglets
Wolf's head issuing from castle argent
From Cahier 60, NAF 16700.
Created 01.05.16
Updated 09.11.16