Hello Everyone,
This week’s reading, “Combray” in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, was challenging but insightful for me to read. When I first started reading, I struggled to get the central story and the chronological order of the texts. I found the text to be in a dream-like flow, where the focus jumps quickly across themes like a flashing light. By reading more slowly, I gradually understood some of the mysteries and aesthetics of the story about memory and childhood.
The story begins with recollections of the narrator’s childhood. Because these memories are fragments, the plot development is not smooth and is difficult to follow. However, the events and scenes the narrator recalled are detailed and vividly beautiful.
Part 1 of “Combray” is long but centers around the narrator’s anxiety about sleep, obsession with his mother’s kisses, and his father’s scolding from a child’s perspective. It becomes clear that the narrator is a very sensitive child, and the fear of sleep and eagerness for a kiss has become his earliest memories of Combray and the past.
What stimulated his memory of Combray was the taste of tea-steeped madeleine that Aunt Léonie once offered him. In this part, Proust emphasizes how the experience of taste can open a gateway to the past. For me, this transition to part 2 is very aesthetic; the madeleine is like the missing piece of a machine. When you successfully find it, your memory also successfully runs.
A highlight for me in part 2 is the detailed depiction of landscapes in Combray. Many people may wonder why the author spends so much time depicting the scenery instead of focusing on the plot and characters. In my opinion, without these recollections of the details of the scenery, the narrator wouldn’t be able to recall the full picture of memory. Just as the narrator said, when he sees a steeple in different places, it reminds him of the steeple of St. Hilaire church in Combray and its relevant memories.
Other than this, the depiction of Aunt Léonie is so detailed and creates a sad atmospheric section in part 2. After the death of her husband, she no longer connects with the outside world, “always lying in an uncertain state of grief, physical debility, illness, obsession, and piety.” (p. 80) It is clear she was interested in what was going on outside, but it is unknown what stopped her from connecting with the outside world. Was it sorrow, fear of stimulation, or mentally ill? In all, Crombray is aesthetic to read, characters like Swann and Odette are also important to analyze, but however, I had more reflections and thoughts about the above writings.
One question I would like to post is why Proust would choose to write over 40 pages to depict the narrator’s sleep and anxiety, and how does it connect to the rest of the parts in Crombray?
Hi Esther, I also really struggled to get into the novel and the story in the beginning. However, it’s interesting to read your perspective on the descriptions of the landscape. I personally didn’t like how there wasn’t much attention placed on character development, but I like your perspective on how it represents and enriches individual memories. I never thought about it like that.
Hello Esther,
Thank you for sharing your own interpretation on “Combray”. I think you’ve asked a crucial question. Even, I asked myself a question while reading, why Proust portrayed the narrator as an insomniac. In fact, the end of “Comray” is about the narrator slowly awakening from his dream, but his thoughts are still in a place where he is at the boundary between his past memories and the present. This got me thinking that perhaps this is a way of contrasting the activity of the mind with the numbness of the body, and that it is through the dual memories of the mind and the body that one is able to orient oneself to the world after waking up. It is because of memory that people can know which time and place they are in, and how they relate to others, in order to orient themselves from such external coordinates. It is only after both the memory of the mind and the memory of the body are awakened that we can move from unconscious sleep to wakefulness and return to reality.
Esther,
It is great practice to adjust your reading habits to the reading and it’s even better that you’ve noticing it!
Memory is a tricky thing, your reflection makes a good job of acknowledging the lack of a lineal thought or consistency with in memory. In this way, I think he did a good job, in that sense, of depicting memory as we experience it in real life. Similarly, you caught onto this as well when you comment on the moment when a pastry triggered his memory – much like it can happen to us in real life when a smell, taste or sight recalls something that might’ve seemed hidden from off the top of our heads.
Thanks for your comments!
Hi Esther!
Thanks for sharing your perspective on the reading! I agree that it was a difficult read as the narrator jumps around a lot but his descriptions were so vivid and tasteful, especially in the second part describing the steeple of the Combray church. As for your question, I think that the first section of the narrator’s writing about his sleep anxiety is an introduction and foreshadowing of the rest of the story. I don’t think it exists only to acknowledge his anxiety as it also opened the door for readers to visit his past. He introduced us to many characters in this part of the story (M. Swann and Francois) and revealed his family’s dynamic (strict father and gentle mother). Lastly, it was a transition into the next part of the story (section 2) as he recalled how memories are fickle and arise from seemingly random events, such as tasting of a madeline.