If you haven’t figured out by name, I’m relatively obsessed with names and etymologies. I can remember way way back carrying my Petit Robert around to look words up. But the name Vinteuil has been stubborn as hell- refusing to come to the light. At a certain point I resigned myself to the annoying realization that Proust had deliberately chosen a name defying any sort of guess as to its meaning. That I would look as foolish as the curé coming up with any guesses. Though I did try. I tried to convince myself that Vingt Oeils had something to do with 20/20 vision, though I knew, of course, that the metric system didn’t measure sight like this. I wondered how many eyes there were on a peacock’s tail. Perhaps 20?! Ha. Nice try.
But this is why I’m reading from start to finish. This morning I come to the Mlle. Vinteuil section.
“The window was partly open; the lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement without her being able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rustling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy upon her. “
” …Presently she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to close the shutters and not succeeding. “Leave them open,” said her friend. “I am hot.” “But it’s too dreadful! People will see us,” Mlle. Vinteuil answered.”
I was so happy to be here. I love this section- the fact that Marcel is so blatantly there, for no reason whatsoever. Clearly this is the role of the narrator- to be ‘in the room where it’s happening’ without really being there. And the whole landscape building up to this scene is wonderful- open, stormy. I hadn’t at all remembered how forthright it is in describing Marcel’s explorations of his own sexuality, wow.
“I explored, across the bounds of my own experience, an untrodden path which, I believed, might lead me to my death, even—until passion spent itself and left me shuddering among the sprays of flowering currant which, creeping in through the window, tumbled all about my body.”
Peeping Tom, Jean Carolus
“The window was partly open; the lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement without her being able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rustling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy upon her.”
Do not ask me why I looked up the etymology of window. Obviously I know what a window is. But there I was, actually looking this simple word up. It was kind of the way I looked up the rivalry of the two Kings, except even more inane.
Etymology of Window c. 1200, literally “wind eye,” from Old Norse vindauga, from vindr “wind” (see wind (n.1)) + auga “eye” . Replaced Old English eagþyrl, literally “eye-hole,” and eagduru, literally “eye-door.” Compare Old Frisian andern “window,” literally “breath-door.” Vindr + Auga = Wind + Eye = Wind/Vent + Oeil = Venteuil aka Vinteuil
I logged on to my Gutenberg text online and ran through uses of the word ‘window’ in Swann’s Way. The scene that caught my eye was as Marcel is on his own, wandering around, exploring his sexuality, hoping to run into a peasant woman. Tante Léonie is dead. Cwalking (right after the scene where he says Zut Zut Zut. When he comes upon the edge of M. Vinteuil’s property, the paragraph is full of wind (so to speak, ha!)
“After an hour of rain and wind, against which I had put up a brisk fight, as I came to the edge of the Montjouvain pond, and reached a little hut, roofed with tiles, in which M. Vinteuil’s gardener kept his tools, the sun shone out again…The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken’s downy feathers, both of which things let themselves float upon the wind’s breath to their full extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter.” .
The above description precedes the Mlle. Vinteuil scene. Then comes the window and Marcel as voyeur. He’s found his framework.
The Room, the Sign, the Window.
Combray and the room. Swann and the Sign. Vinteuil. and the Window.
The window is the path forward. A break-out of the room, the bedroom, Tante Léonie’s rooms, to walks, and nature, a window to the world.
Also let’s not forget (spoiler alert here) what Marcel is looking at through the window! Mlle. Vinteuil’s lover (who truly does not have a name!) — the very one who will assemble the bits and pieces of Vinteuil’s scraps of paper into the final Septet.
In sum, it’s been a really good day! I feel a whole lot better about the reading today. The last week has been rough – behind, discouraged, confused.
P.s. Here’s a link to read about my ‘theory,’ if you’re not sure what the heck I’m talking about and would like a little background.