Okay, so I got up to page 129 in the Pleiade for my ‘read Proust marathon starting January 1,’ and then I had to go back again. There was too much stuff packed into the pages and I couldn’t take it all in properly to serve my purposes, which is to track the little phrase. Thus, I’ve had to slow down, and am not on track. So be it.
But there was value in pushing through and re-reading. On a mundane note, there were points where the French was throwing me off. For example, the word steeple. I didn’t know, and still don’t quite understand to be honest- why it’s called the Clocher de St. Hilaire. A cloche seems to be the exact opposite of a steeple- the latter pointy, the former more like, well, a bell. The other word combo I didn’t know was rayon de miel- honeycomb. I mean, there were other words, but those two- because important- eluded me.
Afterwards I came away with a feeling of the value of the mosaic, the church, and … the honeycomb! It has been a long time since I came up with my little phrase theory, and for the majority of the years I was tracking the theory I barely paid attention to “L’eglise.” I was hell-bent on thinking about the clocktowers and the quartet of Moors, and figured eh, the church, who cares. A failure, a laziness, whatever the reason, I didn’t focus as I should have on the church. I don’t even recall when it was that I took my attention away from the Moors and said oh duh, the church, the cathedral, the Persian elements, St. Mark.
I can feel the layers building, the honeycomb of hexagonal thought (and the mosaic quality of the idea of honeycomb.) Frankly I can’t wait now to read Sodome and Gomorrah because I remember there was quite a lot of bee imagery and I had no interest in it, none at all. This reading will help ground me in those signs.
At this point I’m sending the idea of rooms, of cells and prisons, how we get stuck in word and meanings and can’t see beyond their walls to openings, how we imprison them in their own silos of meaning. Rooms of signs hold meaning, but also imprison it. Habit intervenes and there’s no connection. You stay within your own cell. You can’t hobnob with other cells, right?
And then there’s the opposite of that- the undoing – where things are flowing outside of their borders, where the language is so baroque, so pregnant with words and thoughts that you almost can’t keep track, can’t keep things in their separate cells, and you’re hard-pressed to track the cells.- or as Proust mentions at one point: “as though I were cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water, rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or motion—were only drops in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of my life.
So at the start of the novel (Longtemps) in the room in Combray, we see the narrator trying to place himself, put all the parts back in order in their habitual spots and points in time. Furniture and rooms are moving all over the place. The names flow outside of their borders The narrator is dislocated. His own bedroom is overtaken by the magic lantern, images overtaking the room in a way that resembles or presages the Cathedral of St Marc, albeit on a domestic scale.
We also meet Swann. There’s much talk of envelopes and castes, of Swann as a type (though really he’s two types- people need to identify him, put him in a certain place in their mind and keep him there) He married a woman who wasn’t his type and look where that got him!? A bit later there’s a section that speaks to Swann having to place phrases in parentheses, as do members of his social circle.
Next? The Madeleine section! We are in resurrection territory- resurrection of memories that bypasses the divisions of time and space. Marcel is not at Tante Leonie’s, he’s much older, and yet he is able to transport himself back. The teacake is dissolved in liquid and he then miraculously bypasses the constraints of time and space. involuntary memory takes over.
Tante Leonie is Mme Octave- and though she’s on a lesser scale, or should I say a lower one- than the Lion of St Mark, she’s a stand-in. This is Easter time, (much talk of elevations (rogations), and Tante Leonie is the one assisting in the resurrection of Marcel’s memory. [See the post called Tante Léonie is a Beast]
After the Madeleine scene we enter the church of Combray. Proust describes the coats of the churchgoers causing the stone to melt like honey i.e hard to softening, Oddly, Proust uses the same word-sillons, as he did when describing the Madeleine – the sillons disappearing when dipped. In this case the sillons are formed by hands of parishioners.
Here, I feel Proust is coloring outside the lines- referring to the etymology of this little tea-cake- the Madeleine- as a tower- by the constant use of pastry metaphors in this section- not just about the church, but about the meals in the house surrounding this Easter time. He even refers to almond cakes in the church:
“When, before turning to leave the church, I made a genuflection before the altar, I felt suddenly, as I rose again, a bitter-sweet fragrance of almonds steal towards me from the hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed that on the flowers themselves were little spots of a creamier colour, in which I imagined that this fragrance must lie concealed, as the taste of an almond cake lay in the burned parts.’
And says “we had in front of us the steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still of ‘holy bread,’ with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked its sharp point into the blue sky”
Next, Proust starts to ‘moisten’ the church, as if it too has been dipped in tea.
A fleeting smile from the sun… could be seen and felt as well here, in the blue and gentle flood in which it washed the masonry.”
The descriptions of the church are incredible- its walls at once marble, tapestry, glass, sapphire, stalactite, flame, sapphire and so on, the words and the memories flowing forth in a veritable cascade of symbolism. It’s as if the tower is dissolving – as if time (the tower is a belltower tolling the hours) and space (the construct, the walls, the steeple) are at the mercy of the author. It’s as if Proust plays with the root of the word for a Madeleine – which is a tower- a Magdala. A baptism.
The descriptions flow one to the next, the church described as a grotto with moist walls. And then there is hard sapphire, glass and jewels, peacocks– all imagery that best describes the cathedral and not the church in Combray. There are references to kings – as if bringing Kings into the church of Combray is a way of referring to the. basilica (root is King) Last, Proust uses a baking metaphor to speak of the apse- a brioche – which to me signals the advent of the dome and Venice. bénie, avec des écailles et des égouttements gommeux de soleil, piquait sa pointe aiguë dans le ciel bleu. Last, as the sun sets, he describes the church as ‘dressed like a cushion of brown velvet against the sky.
And then there are metpahors of shells and spires.
All of this is building, block by block – the construction of Proust’s cathedral, his book. No wonder he loved Corot’s painting of the Cathedral of Chartres so much.
