In April, the French publisher Éditions Gallimard released “Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets et Autres Manuscrits Inédits,” by Marcel Proust. The volume contains a seventy-five-page manuscript from 1908, long rumored to exist but discovered only recently, in the private files of the publisher Bernard de Fallois. In those pages—which include the following passage—Proust sketched out many of the themes and scenes he would eventually draw on for his masterpiece, “In Search of Lost Time.”
One day on the beach, I spotted, walking solemnly along the sand, like two seabirds ready to take flight, two young girls, two young women, really, whom, because of their unfamiliar appearance and style, their haughty and deliberate gait, I took for two foreigners I’d never see again; they weren’t looking at anyone and didn’t notice me. I didn’t see them again in the next few days, which confirmed my sense that they were only passing through our little seaside town, where everyone knew everyone else, where everyone led the same life and met up four times a day to play the same innocent beach games. But several days later I saw five or six girls of the same type gathered around a splendid carriage that had stopped beside the beach; the ones in the carriage were saying goodbye to the others, who hurried over to their horses, which were tied up alongside and on which they rode off. I believed that I recognized one of the two girls I’d seen walking on the sand, though I wasn’t sure, but the girl who really stood out for me this time had red hair, light-colored, superior eyes that rested on me, nostrils that quivered in the wind, and a hat that resembled the open wings of a seagull flying in the wind that was ruffling her red curls. They left.
I saw them again from time to time. Two of them I recognized and wanted to keep seeing. Sometimes, when I came across the strange group, those two weren’t among them, and that made me sad. But, not knowing where they came from or at what time they would be there, I was never able to anticipate their appearances, and either I was longing to see them without being able to, or, when I did suddenly catch sight of them, I was too flustered to take any pleasure in it. They were the daughters or the nieces of the local aristocracy, the noble families or the wealthy families who mixed with nobility and spent several weeks of the year in C. Some of those whose châteaux were very close by, just a few kilometres away, came to the beach often in this season, though they didn’t live in the town itself. Although not everyone in their milieu was so elegant, of course, the chance grouping of these girls conferred on all of them a certain grace, elegance, and agility, a disdainful pride that made them seem of a completely different species from the girls in my world. They seemed to me to dress in an extraordinary way that I wouldn’t have known how to define, and which was probably quite simply a result of the fact that they spent their time pursuing sports that my friends weren’t familiar with—riding, golf, tennis. Usually, they wore riding skirts or golf outfits, tennis shirts. Probably they pursued these things far from the beach and came there only occasionally, on a schedule that I had no way of knowing—for example, perhaps after golf on the day when there was no dance at the Château de T., etc.—and they stayed for only a short time, as if visiting a conquered country, without deigning to give the natives who lived there more than a haughty and blatantly impolite glance that said “You don’t belong in my world,” and sometimes even exchanging among themselves, without trying to hide it, a smile that signified “Just look at them!”
Our old friend Monsieur T. was constantly inveighing against their poor manners. Mama, on the contrary, paid no attention to them and was surprised, as, by the way, most intelligent people are, that anyone would waste his time thinking about people he didn’t know and questioning whether or not they were polite. She considered the girls coarse but was entirely indifferent to what they might think of her. I have to say, honestly, that I did not share Mama’s philosophy, and I would have passionately loved—I won’t even say to know them, but for them to form a high opinion of me. If only they knew that my uncle was the best friend of S.A., the Duke of Clermont, and that at that very moment, if Mama had wanted to and hadn’t preferred the sea air, we could have been at Clermont, where His Highness had invited us to stay! Ah! If only it could have been written on my face, if someone could have told them, if the Duke had thought to come here for a couple of days and present me to them! But, in reality, if the Duke of Clermont had come here, they would have taken him for a bourgeois and poorly dressed old man, in whose politeness they would have seen proof of a common birth, and they would have looked him up and down. They didn’t know him, because they came from a world that believed itself brilliant but wasn’t at all. And I don’t see how the Duke of Clermont, even if he called on his most humble acquaintances, would have been able to put me in touch with them. Their fathers were rich businessmen, or minor noblemen from the provinces, or businessmen whose nobility had only recently been conferred.
Monsieur T. knew some of their fathers from the area, and for him they were quite brilliant people, who, although they had started off in pretty much the same position as him, were leading more brilliant lives. Twice I saw him chatting amicably with men I’d seen with the girls and who must have been related to them. When this happened, I became feverish with the knowledge that I could, if not become acquainted with them, then at least be seen by them in the company of someone who was acquainted with them. (I didn’t yet know that Monsieur T. liked to rant about their rudeness.) Suddenly I felt the deepest friendship for T., I lavished him with affection, and, with permission from Mama, who had no idea why I’d asked, I bought him a superb pipe that his thriftiness had kept him from buying for himself. And one day, when I spotted the girls on the beach, I was just steps away from T.’s house. But, before going in, I raced home to comb my hair, to put on a pink tie that belonged to my older brother, and to put a bit of Mama’s powder on a small pimple I could feel emerging on my cheek. I took Mama’s parasol, because it had a jade handle and seemed to me to signal opulence.
“Monsieur T., I beg you to come and take a little walk along the beach.”
“But why, my friend?”
“I don’t know. I like you so much, and it would give me pleasure.”
“Well, all right, if you like, but wait, because I have to finish a letter.”
He laughed at my parasol, wanted me to leave it at his house; I took it back from him roughly, saying that Mama had forced me to take it to protect myself from the sun. I had become a pitiless liar in defense of my desire. “Oh, if only you didn’t have to finish your letter!” I told myself that the girls would be gone, I urged him to hurry, I was feverish. Suddenly, from the window, I caught sight of the six young girls (on that day they were all there—it would have been perfect) gathering their things, whistling for their dogs, getting ready to leave. I begged him, he didn’t understand my insistence, we headed down, the beach was deserted, I had tears in my eyes, I felt the cruel and useless beauty of that pink tie, my combed hair, the speck of powder, and the parasol.
I didn’t want to stay at the beach. I accompanied Monsieur T. to the post office, where he mailed his letter, and, on our way back, we suddenly found ourselves face to face with the six girls, who had stopped their carriage and their horses in order to do some shopping. I grabbed Monsieur T.’s arm so they would clearly see that I was with him, and I began talking animatedly so they would notice us, and, in order to be sure not to lose them, I suggested to Monsieur T. that he come with me to buy something in the boutique; at the same time, I unbuttoned my overcoat so they could see my pink tie, I tipped my hat back to reveal my curly lock of hair, I glanced furtively at a mirror to make sure that the powder hadn’t rubbed off, leaving my pimple visible, and I held my parasol by the tip to show off the splendor of the jade handle, which I twirled in the air. Literally hanging from Monsieur T.’s arm, overwhelming him with signs of our intimacy, I chattered away excitedly. Then, suddenly, when I saw that they were all looking at us, and, I have to admit, the parasol didn’t seem to be producing exactly the effect that I had hoped for, on some absurd pretext, to prove to them that I was closely tied to someone who knew their families, I threw myself into Monsieur T.’s arms and embraced him. I thought I heard a light laugh from the young crowd; I turned and stared at them with the surprised and superior air of someone who was noticing them for the first time and taking their measure.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
The Comedian Karen Chee Tries to Keep Up with a New Yorker Cartoonist
At that moment, Monsieur T. greeted the father of two of the girls, who had come to find them. But although the father responded very politely with a tip of his hat, his daughters, whom Monsieur T. had greeted at the same time, instead of replying, stared at him rudely, then turned back to their friends, smiling. In truth, the father thought Monsieur T. a decent man but not part of what, for several years, he had considered his world. And the girls, who assumed they would eternally belong to the same world that their father had entered, and who viewed that world—that of the old solicitor T., of the biscuit magnate, of the fabricator of man-made hills, of the Viscount of Vaucelles, etc.—as the most elegant in the universe, or at least right behind the divine one shimmering on the horizon, to which belonged the Marquess of C., whom they had glimpsed at the racetrack and while visiting the Viscountess of Vaucelles, and who had once said to them, “Hello, young ladies,” considered Monsieur T., with his wide-brimmed straw hat and his habit of taking the tram, and his lack of light-colored ties, horses, and knickerbockers, as an ordinary man whose greetings they did not have to return. “What badly raised children!” T. cried. “They don’t know that, without me, their father would have neither his château nor his marriage.” Yet he defended the father, whom he considered a good man. The father, who was perhaps less ridiculous than his wife and daughters, was happy, even so, to wear those knickerbockers, which T. found comical, as he strolled along the beach with the Viscount of Vaucelles. Still, he politely greeted Monsieur T.
I had a vague sense that the effect this greeting produced was weak, but, following a certain wisdom that I have always had and that my father and my mother had, in different forms, to an even greater extent, I could not complain. I had the advantage of knowing a friend of the father of two of the girls, I had hoped that they would see me with him, and they had seen me. They knew, had had etched into their memories, thanks, perhaps, to the taint of ridiculousness, what I’d wanted them to know. I had nothing to complain about. If I couldn’t reach them in this way, I couldn’t reach them. They knew what they needed to know, and this seemed to me a form of justice. The girls were aware of the advantage that I had. This was justice. If they found it minor, or saw it as a disadvantage, that meant that what I saw as an advantage was not one for them. Which meant that I had nothing to regret. I had combed my hair as well as I could, and they had seen it, they had seen the jade parasol, which had given them an exaggerated idea of our wealth, because Mama used the parasol only to please her mother, who had given it to her; she found it much too beautiful for her, much too luxurious for our situation. Thus I had nothing to complain about. The powder had not been rubbed off my pimple, the pink tie was knotted snugly at my collar, in the mirror I found myself charming, the whole incident took place in the most favorable conditions. I returned home disappointed but content, less lost in the unknown than I had been until then, telling myself that at least they would recognize me now, I had an identity for them, I was the boy with the parasol, even though Monsieur T.’s friendship hadn’t legitimized me in their eyes.
We were making our way home along one of those streets shaded by plane trees, from beneath whose foliage the windows of the pastry shop, the shellfish shop, the shooting gallery, the carrousel, and the gymnasium smiled at the sun, where one is caught off guard by the tram from the seaside passing through the trees on its way to the countryside, when we ran into the Viscount of C., who was staying in C. for several weeks and was walking home with his daughters—two members of the famous gang of girls, the prettiest two, perhaps, one of whom was the noted redhead. He stopped for a moment to speak with us, my heart was beating so hard that I couldn’t even feel the pleasure that I’d had no chance to anticipate and with which I was now confronted. The Viscount of C. suggested that we walk together, and Monsieur T. introduced me to him. He introduced me to his daughter. To my great surprise, because the girls in my world were not so formal, she held out her hand, smiling, and, looking at me sympathetically, said, “I see you sometimes in C. I’m happy to meet you.” I was sure that she had laughed and looked insolent just moments before. We parted, and the next day, having had to step to the side of the road to let a car go past, I had barely had time to recognize the large group piled into the car when the redhead smiled, as though we were two old friends, and made a little gesture of greeting with her hand, to which I didn’t have time to respond. ♦
(Translated, from the French, by Deborah Treisman.)
No comments:
Post a Comment