The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust Read online

  Honoré (without hesitating): Of course I will obey, how can you doubt me?

  (The beloved enters; the roses, the orchids, the maidenhair ferns, the pen and the paper, the Dresden clock, and a breathless Honoré all quiver as if in harmony with her.)

  Honoré flings himself upon her lips, shouting: “I love you!

  Epilogue: It was as if he had blown out the flame of his beloved’s desire. Pretending to be shocked by the impropriety of his action, she fled, and if ever he saw her after that, she would torture him with a severe and indifferent glance. . . .

  The Fan

  Madame, I have painted this fan for you.

  May it, as you wish in your retirement, evoke the vain and enchanting figures that peopled your salon, which was so rich with graceful life and is now closed forever.

  The chandeliers, whose branches all bear large, pallid flowers, illuminate objets d’art of all eras and all countries. I was thinking about the spirit of our time as my brush led the curious gazes of those chandeliers across the diversity of your knick-knacks. Like them the spirit of our time has contemplated samples of thought or life from all centuries all over the world. It has inordinately widened the circle of its excursions. Out of pleasure, out of boredom, it has varied them as we vary our strolls; and now, deterred from finding not even the destination but just the right path, feeling its strength dwindling and its courage deserting it, the spirit of our time has lain down with its face on the earth to avoid seeing anything, like a brutish beast.

  Nevertheless I have painted the rays of your chandeliers delicately; with amorous melancholy these rays have caressed so many things and so many people, and now they are snuffed forever. Despite the small format of this picture, you may recognize the foreground figures, all of whom the impartial artist has highlighted identically, just like your equal sympathies: great lords, beautiful women, and talented men. A bold reconciliation in the eyes of the world, though inadequate and unjust according to reason; yet it turned your society into a small universe that was less divided and more harmonious than that other world, a small world that was full of life and that we will never see again.

  I therefore would not want my fan to be viewed by an indifferent person, who has never frequented salons like yours and who would be astonished to see “politesse” unite dukes without arrogance and novelists without pretentiousness. Nor might he, that stranger, comprehend the vices of this rapprochement, which, if excessive, will soon facilitate only one exchange: that of ridiculous things. He would, no doubt, find a pessimistic realism in the spectacle of the bergère on the right, where a great author, to all appearances a snob, is listening to a great lord, who, dipping into a book, seems to be holding forth about a poem, and whose expression, if I have managed to make it foolish enough, shows quite well that he understands nothing.

  Near the fireplace you will recognize C.

  He is uncorking a scent bottle and explaining to the woman next to him that he has concentrated the most pungent and most exotic perfumes in this blend.

  B., despairing of outdoing him, and thinking that the surest way to be ahead of fashion is to be hopelessly out of fashion, is sniffing some cheap violets and glaring scornfully at C.

  As for you yourself, have you not gone on one of those artificial returns to nature? Had those details not been too minuscule to remain distinct, I would have depicted, in some obscure nook of your music library at that time, your now abandoned Wagner operas, your now discarded symphonies by Franck and d’Indy and, on your piano, several open scores by Haydn, Handel, or Palestrina.

  I did not shy away from depicting you on the pink sofa. T. is seated next to you. He is describing his new bedroom, which he artfully smeared with tar in order to suggest the sensations of an ocean voyage, and he is disclosing all the quintessences of his wardrobe and his furnishings.

  Your disdainful smile reveals that you set no store by this feeble imagination, for which a bare chamber does not suffice for conjuring up all the visions of the universe and which conceives of art and beauty in such pitifully material terms.

  Your most delightful friends are present. Would they ever forgive me if you showed them the fan? I cannot say. The most unusually beautiful woman, standing out like a living Whistler before our enchanted eyes, would recognize and admire herself only in a portrait by Bouguereau. Women incarnate beauty without understanding it.

  Your friends may say: “We simply love a beauty that is not yours. Why should it be beauty any less than yours?”

  Let them at least allow me to say: “So few women comprehend their own aesthetics. There are Botticelli madonnas who, but for fashion, would find this painter clumsy and untalented.”

  Please accept this fan with indulgence. If one of the ghosts that have alighted here after flitting through my memory made you weep long ago, while it was still partaking of life, then recognize that ghost without bitterness and remember that it is a mere shadow and that it will never make you suffer again. I could quite innocently capture these ghosts on the frail paper to which your hand will lend wings, for those ghosts are too unreal and too flimsy to cause any harm. . . .

  No more so, perhaps, than in the days when you invited them to stave off death for a few hours and live the vain life of phantoms, in the factitious joy of your salon, under the chandeliers, whose branches were covered with large, pallid flowers.

  Olivian

  Why do people see you, Olivian, heading to the Commedia every evening? Don’t your friends have more acumen than Pantalone, Scaramuccio, or Pasquarello? And would it not be more agreeable to have supper with your friends? But you could do even better. If the theater is the refuge of the conversationalist whose friend is mute and whose mistress is insipid, then conversation, even the most exquisite, is the pleasure of men without imagination. It is a waste of time, Olivian, trying to tell you that which need not be shown an intelligent man by candlelight, for he sees it while chatting. The voice of the soul and of the imagination is the only voice that makes the soul and the imagination resonate thoroughly and happily; and had you spent a bit of the time you have killed to please others and had you made that bit come alive, had you nourished it by reading and reflecting at your hearth during winter and in your park during summer, you would be nurturing the rich memory of deeper and fuller hours. Have the courage to take up the rake and the pickax. Someday you will delight in smelling a sweet fragrance drifting up from your memory as if from a gardener’s brimming wheelbarrow.

  Why do you travel so much? The stagecoaches transport you very slowly to where your dreams would carry you so swiftly. To reach the seashore all you need do is close your eyes. Let people who have only physical eyes move their entire households and settle in Puzzuoli or Naples. You say you want to complete a book there? Where could you work better than in the city? Inside its walls you can have the grandest sceneries that you like roll by; here you will more easily avoid the Princess di Bergamo’s luncheons than in Puzzuoli and you will be less tempted to go on idle strolls. Why, above all, are you so bent on enjoying the present and weeping because you fail to do so? As a man with imagination you can enjoy only in regret or in anticipation—that is, in the past or in the future.

  That is why, Olivian, you are dissatisfied with your mistress, your summer holidays, and yourself. As for the cause of these ills, you may have already pinpointed it; but then why relish them instead of trying to cure them? The fact is: you are truly miserable, Olivian. You are not yet a man, and you are already a man of letters.

  Characters in the Commedia of High Society

  Just as Scaramuccio is always a braggart in the commedia dell’arte, Arlecchino always a bumpkin, Pasquino’s conduct is sheer intrigue and Pantalone’s sheer avarice and credulity, so too society has decreed that Guido is witty but perfidious and would not hesitate to sacrifice a friend to a bon mot; that Girolamo hoards a treasure trove of sensitivity behind a gruff frankness; that Castruccio, whose vices should be stigmatized, is the most loyal of friends and the mo
st thoughtful of sons; that Iago, despite the ten fine books he has published, remains an amateur, whereas a few bad newspaper articles have anointed Ercole a writer; that Cesare must have ties with the police as a reporter or a spy. Cardenio is a snob, and Pippo is nothing but a fraud despite his protestations of friendship. As for Fortunata, it has been settled definitively: she is a good person. The rotundity of her embonpoint is enough of a warranty for her benevolence: how could such a fat lady be a wicked person?

  Furthermore, each of these individuals, so different by nature from the definitive character picked out for him by society from its storehouse of costumes and characters, deviates from that character all the more as the a priori conception of his qualities creates a sort of impunity for him by opening a large credit line for his opposite defects. His immutable persona as a loyal friend in general allows Castruccio to betray each of his friends in particular. The friend alone suffers for it: “What a scoundrel he must be if he was dropped by Castruccio, that loyal friend!”

  Fortunata can disgorge torrents of backbiting. Who would be so demented as to look for their source in the folds of her bodice, whose hazy amplitude can hide anything? Girolamo can fearlessly practice flattery, to which his habitual frankness lends the charm of surprise. His gruffness to a friend can be ferocious, for it is understood that Girolamo is brutalizing him for his friend’s own good. If Cesare asks me about my health, it is because he plans to report on it to the doge. He has not asked me: how cleverly he hides his cards! Guido comes up to me; he compliments me on how fine I look. “No one is as witty as Guido,” those present exclaim in chorus, “but he is really too malicious!”

  In their true character, Castruccio, Guido, Cardenio, Ercole, Pippo, Cesare, and Fortunata may differ from the types that they irrevocably embody in the sagacious eyes of society; but this divergence holds no danger for them, because society refuses to see it. Still, it does not last forever. Whatever Girolamo may do, he is a benevolent curmudgeon. Whatever Fortunata may say, she is a good person. The absurd, crushing, and immutable persistence of their types, from which they can endlessly depart without disrupting their serene entrenchment, eventually imposes itself, with an increasing gravitational pull, on these unoriginal people with their incoherent conduct; and ultimately they are fascinated by this sole identity, which remains inflexible amid all their universal variations.

  Girolamo, by telling his friend “a few home truths,” is thankful to him for serving as his stooge, enabling Girolamo “to rake him over the coals for his own good” and thereby play an honorable, almost glamorous, and now quasi-sincere role. He seasons the vehemence of his diatribes with a quite indulgent pity that is natural toward an inferior who accentuates Girolamo’s glory; Girolamo feels genuine gratitude toward him and, in the end, the cordiality which high society has attributed to him for such a long time that he finally holds on to it.

  While expanding the sphere of her own personality, Fortunata’s embonpoint, growing without blighting her mind or altering her beauty, slightly diminishes her interest in others, and she feels a softening of her acrimony, which was all that prevented her from worthily carrying out the venerable and charming functions that the world had delegated to her. The spirit of the words “benevolence,” “goodness,” and “rotundity,” endlessly uttered in front of her and behind her back, has gradually saturated her speech, which is now habitually laudatory and on which her vast shape confers something like a more pleasing authority. She has the vague and deep sensation of exercising an immense and peaceable magistrature. At times, she seems to overflow her own individuality, as if she were the stormy yet docile plenary council of benevolent judges, an assembly over which she presides and whose approval stirs her in the distance. . . .

  During conversations at soirées, each person, untroubled by the contradictory behavior of these figures and heedless of their gradual adaptation to the imposed types, neatly files every figure away with his actions in the quite suitable and carefully defined pigeonhole of his ideal character; and at these moments each person feels with deeply emotional satisfaction that the level of conversation is incontestably rising. Granted, we soon interrupt this labor and avoid dwelling on it, so that people unaccustomed to abstract thinking will not doze off (we are men of the world, after all). Then, after stigmatizing one person’s snobbery, another’s malevolence, and a third man’s libertinism or abusiveness, the guests disperse, convinced that they have paid their generous tribute to modesty, charity, and benevolence; and so, with no remorse, with a clear conscience that has just shown its mettle, each person goes off to indulge in his elegant and multiple vices.

  If these reflections, inspired by Bergamo’s high society, were applied to any other, they would lose their validity. When Arlecchino left the Bergamo stage for the French stage, the bumpkin became a wit. That is why a few societies regard Liduvina as outstanding and Girolamo as clever. We must also add that at times a man may appear for whom society has no ready-made character, or at least no available character, because it is being used by someone else. At first society gives him characters that do not suit him. If he is truly original, and no character is the right size, then society, unable to try to understand him and lacking a character with a proper fit, will simply ostracize him; unless he can gracefully play juvenile leads, who are always in short supply.

  SOCIAL AMBITIONS AND MUSICAL TASTES OF BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET*

  Social Ambitions

  “Now that we have positions,” said Bouvard, “why shouldn’t we live a life of high society?”

  Pécuchet could not have agreed with him more; but they would have to shine, and to do so they would have to study the subjects dealt with in society.

  Contemporary literature is of prime importance.

  They subscribed to the various journals that disseminate it; they read them aloud and attempted to write reviews, whereby, mindful of their goal, they aimed chiefly at an ease and lightness of style.

  Bouvard objected that the style of reviews, even if playful, is not suitable in high society. And they began conversing about their readings in the manner of men of the world.

  Bouvard would lean against the mantelpiece and, handling them cautiously to avoid soiling them, he would toy with a pair of light-colored gloves that were brought out specifically for the occasion, and he would address Pécuchet as “Madame” or “General” to complete the illusion.

  Often, however, they would get no further; or else, if one of them would gush on about an author, the other would try in vain to stop him. Beyond that, they pooh-poohed everything. Leconte de Lisle was too impassive, Verlaine too sensitive. They dreamed about a happy medium but never found one.

  “Why does Loti keep striking the same note?”

  “His novels are all written in the same key.”

  “His lyre has only one string,” Bouvard concluded.

  “But André Laurie is no more satisfying; he takes us somewhere else every year, confusing literature with geography. Only his style is worth something. As for Henri de Regné, he’s either a fraud or a lunatic; there’s no other alternative.”

  “Get around that, my good man,” said Bouvard, “and you’ll help contemporary literature out of an awful bottleneck.”

  “Why rein them in?” said Pécuchet, an indulgent king. “Those colts may be blooded. Loosen their reins, let them have their way; our sole worry is that once they spurt off, they may gallop beyond the finish line. But immoderateness per se is proof of a rich nature.

  “Meanwhile the barriers will be smashed,” Pécuchet cried out; hot and bothered, he filled the empty room with his negative retorts: “Anyway, you can claim all you like that these uneven lines are poetry—I refuse to see them as anything but prose, and meaningless prose at that!”

  Mallarmé is equally untalented, but he is a brilliant talker. What a pity that such a gifted man should lose his mind the instant he picks up his pen. A bizarre illness that struck them as inexplicable. Maeterlinck frightens us, but only with mat
erial devices that are unworthy of the theater; art inflames us like a crime—it’s horrible! Besides, his syntax is dreadful.

  They then applied a witty critique to his syntax, parodying his dialogue style in the form of a conjugation:

  I said that the woman had come in.

  You said that the woman had come in.

  He said that the woman had come in.

  Why did someone say that the woman had come in?

  Pécuchet wanted to submit this piece to the Revue des Deux Mondes; but it would be wiser, in Bouvard’s opinion, to save it until it could be recited in a fashionable salon. They would instantly be classified according to their talent. They could easily send the piece to a journal later on. And when the earliest private admirers of this flash of wit read it in print, they would be retrospectively flattered to have been the first to enjoy it.

  Lemaitre, for all his cleverness, struck them as scatterbrained, irreverent, sometimes pedantic and sometimes bourgeois; he retracted too often. Above all, his style was slipshod; but he should be forgiven since he had to write extempore under the pressure of regular and so frequent deadlines. As for Anatole France, he wrote well but thought poorly, unlike Bourget, who was profound but whose style was hopeless. Bouvard and Pécuchet greatly deplored the dearth of a complete talent.

  “Yet it can’t be very difficult,” Bouvard thought, “to express one’s ideas clearly. Clarity is not enough, though; you need grace (allied with strength), vivacity, nobility, and logic.” Bouvard then added irony. According to Pécuchet irony was not indispensable; it was often tiring and it baffled the reader without benefiting him. In short, all writers were bad. The fault, according to Bouvard, lay with the excessive pursuit of originality; according to Pécuchet, with the decline of mores.