He repeated to himself: “Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall.”
What is it about the death of Bergotte, poor Bergotte, that makes me love him so much? Yes, it’s his indigestion, and his silly little mantra about the patch of yellow wall. in Vermeer’s View of Delft. These pages are kinda heartbreaking, endearing, humble, I don’t know. He’s so fixated on his little patch of yellow wall and potatoes- so earthbound, he just full out swings and misses.
Yes, I admit, I’ve spent more hours than I’ll admit to wasting trying to find that patch of yellow wall. it’s here! No, I think it’s here!
Joke’s on me haha. Rather, it is a painting of the town its canals, and a missing clocktower. Bergotte stays at a literal earth-bound level. He even experiences digestion from consuming potatoes- a food grown in the earth. [Add no water, no flow, no sea too dry] The name Bergotte itself contains Gotte- as in gutter. And yet it is precisely the guttering of water that makes transport possible, controlling the water such that one can leave the domestic, the classic Vermeer interior, and move towards a larger vista of a town and a canal.
“They buried him, but all through the night of mourning, in the lighted windows, his books arranged three by three, kept watch like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more, the symbol of his resurrection.”
This image bears an uncanny resemblance to details on the facade of the cathedral of St. Marc where we see six angels flanking the lion of St. Mark, with a sloping roof that leads up to St. Marc himself, as if to say that Proust has brought Bergotte to life, the author immortalizing him through his writing, paying tribute to Bergotte as mentor, and resurrecting him for the reader.
Do you see them here? They’re up at the very top. (I just love this photo. The colors!)
“arranged three by three, kept watch like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more, the symbol of his resurrection.“
Look! There’s even a sloping roof, right?
