XITHE SPELL OF PROUST
THE magic ring which Marcel Proust drew, almost literally, round his readers—since it is in the circle of “le temps perdu” which is to become “le temps retrouvé” that he sets us and himself—seemed early in the incantation to betray a break whereby we might escape, did we so wish, from his compulsion. For, enthralled as we had been bySwann, there was a sensible relaxing of the spell with theJeunes Filles. Not in the opening pages, where the atmosphere that we had rapturously learned to breathe was potent still with its intoxicating magic; but when we came to Balbec, and the group of seaside girls began to show as rulers of the scene, there was scarce one of us who did not own to disappointment.La petite bande, more actual and, on the surface, more alluring thanla petite phrasein the sonata of Vinteuil, yet wholly failed to charm the sense or the imagination as the enigmatic little group of notes had charmed. We heard, and we responded to, the cry: “Those flappers are so tedious!”—and as Albertine grew more and more significant,wegrew more sceptical, and told ourselves that we could step outside the ring at any moment we might choose. But somehow, that emancipative moment never came. Despite the blinding print of the edition in a single volume—printthat must have permanently injured our collective sight—there always was a reason why we could not break away. And finally, we realised that we were wrong, and that the spell had but become more absolute, in both the shades of meaning in that word. For now that some of the more normal baits for interest were laid aside, we could perceive that here was sorcery in its pure state—the thing itself, stripped of all seeming. Now we could not so easily, or easily at all, “say why” when the profane inquired of us what the magic was—why, reading Proust, we were so interested. We werenotso interested; we could scarcely say, or even think, that we were “interested” any more.
The miracle had happened. We were spellbound, for good and all, within the magic ring. We had forgotten what we used to mean when, in the world outside, we had said “dull”; for here was much that was not merely dull but positively soporific, yet our eyes were glued upon the baleful page, and any interruption seemed a challenge to the occult power that held us. Something was risked, immeasurably worth our while, did we fall short of the required submission.... This was because we now could feel more deeply the extent of what the wizard meant to do with us. We were not passively to stand within the circle. We were, with him, to pace it mystically round, while time ran back to fetch the Age of Gold.Le temps passéwould betransmuted, imperceptibly, intole temps retrouvé; and our aid was necessary to the necromancer’s full success. With this flattering divination there began a new excitement, different in action from the old; for soon, instead of rushing at the latest Marcel Proust directly we had bought it, we indeed did buy it, but re-read the earlier volumes first. Here was the very magic ring itself, drawn round our fireside chair! The latest Proust lay ready to our hand, slim or substantial token of the power still unspent; but lest we should have missed a single letter in the charm, we spelt it through devoutly once again; and, in the spelling, found how many an indication subtly skilled at once to warn and to escape us till the moment of reflection or re-reading! And as a consequence, we now perceived so intricate and exquisite a “pattern in the carpet” as could make the newest volume into something more exciting for anticipation even than we had dreamed.
This is the proof, to me, of Marcel Proust’s (as one might think, indisputable; yet by a few disputed) genius. TheSwannbook contains the largest share of interest, no doubt—that merer, franker kind of interest which other books can give us in a hardly less degree. But in the later volumes, as they “grow on” us, there is far more (if also there is less) than this; and it is through the more that we come finally to clear perception of Proust’s purpose and his mastery. For in these less immediately attractive volumeswe are conscious of an ever-growing sense of the significance so deeply interfused through the whole work. He had by then become absorbed to such degree in his interpretation of the microcosm which he saw as a sufficing symbol of the irony, absurdity, and the incessant alternation, “intermittency,” and travail of the consciousness of man, that we are sensible, as he proceeds, of powers more transcendent than the highest of the writer’s mere accomplishment—stupendous as that is in Proust, who could “write” anything he chose, and chose to write so many things, from satire that is blighting in its smiling subtlety (so muted as to mock the hasty ear!), to lyric flower-pieces like the paradisal hawthorn-hedge inSwann, and the unrivalled comments upon buildings, pictures, fashions in dress and manners (who will forget the monocles at the big evening-party at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s?), books, the drama, even photographs! In the great elegiac glories of the death of Bergotte (not yet published in book-form), and of thatgrand’mèrewho is themotif, as it were, in the symphonic composition of the unnamed central figure’s personality, Proust sounded chords which lay till then beyond the compass of his readers’ hearing, but were then revealed to sense that shall not lose them while it yet survives.
But over all this virtuosity there rules a mightier gift—the master-gift of insight. Proust, one could say, “knows everything,” in therestricted meaning of the words. No bent, no twist, of modern thought escapes him; yet, as one reader writes to me, “there is no dead psychology”—no case stretched on a Procrustean bed, with all that does not fit lopped comfortably, and discomfortingly, off. He, unlike Nature, is most careful of the single life. If ever we had questioned that—and we had very little questioned it—the Charlus portrait answered us: that masterpiece of the undaunted, following eye and mind. Proust leads us with him on this journey of the visual and mental powers; we are no more involuntarily drawn on than he has been into the state of an astounded fondness and appreciation for the maudlin, overbearing, ludicrous, yet constantly pathetic or superb old “invert.” We are offended personally by the insolences of his favourites; the tears in his unholy eyes can well-nigh wet our own ... and this though, with the master’s hand upon our shoulders, we have gone through every phase of the degrading intimacies, seen and heard the tragi-comic outbursts of the princely victim, every now and then remembering his “rank” and seeking to restore the true relation between him and those whom in his view he honours by his merest word, yet who are his disdainful masters through his helpless depravation.
If there were nothing else than Charlus in the books, Proust must be given pride of place among the masters. But with the plenitudethere is—what must we give? More than a master, one would say, a writer cannot be. Yet in the image here suggested of the magic circle, there is possibly the one thing more that causes Proustians to divide their reading lives into the time before and after they have read these books. No spell had yet been worked on us of potency like this; for though we are pent within the ring, we move within it too—the world revolves, for us, as in a crystal held beneath our gaze by one who, moving with us, will reveal the secret hidden not there only but in our own dim sense, when at the lastle temps perdushall have becomele temps retrouvé.
ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE.