XXIITHE LAST WORD
TWO of the contributors to the stout Proust memorial number ofLa Nouvelle Revue Françaiseremind me that I met Marcel Proust many years ago at a Christmas Eve party given by Madame Edwards (now Madame José Sert) in her remarkable flat on the Quai Voltaire, Paris. (Not that I needed reminding.) With some eagerness I turned up the year, 1910, in my journal. What I read there was this: “Doran came on Sunday night for dinner. We went on to Misia Edwards’ ‘Réveillon,’ and got home at 4A.M.” Not a word more! And I cannot now remember a single thing that Proust said.
I have, however, a fairly clear recollection of his appearance and style: a dark, pale man, of somewhat less than forty, with black hair and moustache; peculiar; urbane; one would have said, an aesthete; an ideal figure, physically, for Bunthorne; he continually twisted his body, arms, and legs into strange curves, in the style of Lord Balfour as I have observed Lord Balfour in the restaurants of foreign hotels. I would not describe him as self-conscious; I would say rather that he was well aware of himself. Although he had then published only one book,Les Plaisirs et les Jours—and that fourteen years before—and although the book had had no popular success,Proust was undoubtedly in 1910 a considerable lion. He sat at the hostess’s own table and dominated it, and everybody at the party showed interest in him. Even I was somehow familiar with his name. As forLes Plaisirs et les Jours, I have not read it to this day.
A few weeks before his death, while searching for something else in an overcrowded bookcase, I came across my first edition ofDu Côté de chez Swann, and decided to read the book again. I cared for it less, and I also cared for it more, than in 1913. Thelongueursof it seemed to me to be insupportable, the clumsy centipedalian crawling of the interminable sentences inexcusable; the lack of form or construction may disclose artlessness, but it signifies effrontery too. Why should not Proust have given himself the trouble of learning to “write,” in the large sense? Further, the monotony of subject and treatment becomes wearisome. (I admit that it is never so distressing inSwannas in the later volumes ofGuermantesand ofSodome et Gomorrhe.) On the other hand, at the second reading I was absolutely enchanted by some of the detail.
About two-thirds of Proust’s work must be devoted to the minutiæ of social manners, the rendering ridiculous of a million varieties of snob. At this game Proust is a master. (Happily he does not conceal that, with the rest of mankind, he loves ancient blood and distinguished connections.) He will write you a hundred pagesabout a fashionable dinner at which nothing is exhibited except the littleness and thenaïvetéof human nature. His interest in human nature, if intense and clairvoyant, is exceedingly limited. Foreign critics generally agree that the English novelist has an advantage over the French in that he walks all round his characters and displays them to you from every side. I have heard this over and over again in conversation in Paris, and I think it is fairly true, though certainly Balzac was the greatest exponent of complete display. Proust never “presents” a character; he never presents a situation: he fastens on one or two aspects of a character or a situation, and strictly ignores all the others. And he is scarcely ever heroical, as Balzac was always; he rarely exalts, and he nearly always depreciates—in a tolerant way.
Again, he cannot control his movements: he sees a winding path off the main avenue, and scampers away further and further and still further, merely because at the moment it amuses him to do so. You ask yourself: He is lost—will he ever come back? The answer is that often he never comes back, and when he does come back he employs a magic but illicit carpet, to the outrage of principles of composition which cannot be outraged in a work of the first order. This animadversion applies not only to any particular work, but to his work as a whole. The later books are orgies of self-indulgence; thework has ruined themoralof the author: phenomenon common enough.
Two achievements in Proust’s output I should rank as great. The first is the section ofSwannentitledUn amour de Swann. He had a large theme here—love and jealousy. The love is physical and the object of it contemptible; the jealousy is fantastic. But the affair is handled with tremendous, grave, bitter, impressive power. The one fault of it is that he lets Swann go to asoirée musicaleand cannot, despite several efforts, get him away from it in time to save the interest of the situation entire. Yet in thesoirée musicaledivagation there are marvellous, inimitable things.
The second achievement, at the opening ofSodome et Gomorrhe, is the psychological picture of the type-pederast. An unpromising subject, according to British notions! Proust evolves from it beauty, and a heartrending pathos. Nobody with any perception of tragedy can read these wonderful pages and afterwards regard the pervert as he had regarded the pervert before reading them. I reckon them as the high-water of Proust.
Speaking generally, Proust’s work declined steadily fromSwann.A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurswas a fearful fall, and as volume followed volume the pearls were strung more and more sparsely on the serpentine string. That Proust was a genius is not to be doubted; and I agreethat he made some original discoveries in the by-ways of psychological fiction. But that he was a supreme genius, as many critics both French and English would have us believe, I cannot admit.
ARNOLD BENNETT.
THE END
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