Two Swanns in Love

I wanted to do a wrap-up of Swann in Love now that I have seen the film version and found my lost copy of Milton Hindus' book. When we can see this first volume in relation to the entire novel, perhaps there will be more thoughts to post.

"Swann in Love" is a French film that offers a good example of how a story changes through point of view. Though Proust's novel uses a first person narrative, he is virtually omniscient, as well as telling his story from hindsight. This allows us to see and understand all the characters and their motivations clearly. In the film, people are introduced and events occur that simply cannot mean much when they are removed from the fullness of the novel's treatment.

The film also is a not very good adaptation of a good story. It shows how truly important a director is in translating a novel to film. The film begins after Swann has fallen in love with Odette, and he is now falling into jealousy. There are numerous scenes faithful to the novel. Between these are moments of flashback, when Swann recalls their first times together. Presented in this way his jealousy comes across not as strong, because we don't have the foundation of their early relationship to contrast. Perhaps the flashbacks were meant to give the impression of Proust's scenes of involuntary memory, but in the film they don't really work.

The film also attempts to convey the power of music over Swann. The sonata is begun and he suddenly stops walking, goes into a sort of mesmerized state, grips a chair back. Visually, though, this does not convey the sensations that the novel does.

We see in the film the detail of Botticelli's painting which first causes Swann to find Odette worthy of love. Here, then, is the face of Odette:


Odette comes across as a coquette from the start of the film, which, initial suggests to the contrary, she did not to me in the novel. (Perhaps I am too much like Swann!) I would have preferred the revelation to come more gradually, and still remain uncertain, until the end. The film also jumps ahead, beyond the end of the book, to show us Gilberte and Mme. Swann--quite unchanged in her beauty and bearing--and Swann near death.

The character of the Baron de Charlus is wonderfully fun. There is a brief scene in which he is rebuffed by a young man, which seems rather out of place in the story of Swann. One reason it stands out so is that it is not from Swann's point of view, as is the rest of the movie. A basic rule is that if one is going to break an established point of view, there had better be an overwhelming reason, because it generally always weakens the story. If the scene is meant to illuminate some aspect of Swann's love, I missed it. One of my favorite scenes is when Swann is in desperate search of Odette through the streets of Paris, and an attractive young lady asks him for a ride in his carriage, clearly offering herself to him. Swann completely ignores her, telling his driver to remind him to order more firewood or some such thing. True to the novel, it demonstrates without a doubt the grip of love which held Swann, that he would rather be in search for something that he might not find and was yet but a desire, than to partake of what is freely offered him. The film also does a good job of presenting the difference in the social gatherings of the Guermantes and Verdurins, though, again, snippets of conversation too often come from all directions and, without support from the rest of the novel, produce confusion. The film left me eager to return to Proust.

So, back to the novel.

My thoughts began insensibly to wander. The moonlight shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in England--the night after a picnic party in a Welsh valley. Every incident of the drive homeward, through lovely scenery, which the moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance, though I had never given the picnic a thought for years, though, if I had tried to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing of that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell us we are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than memory? Here was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character, in a situation of uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to make the exercise of my recollection almost out of the question, nevertheless, remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people, conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had though forgotten forever; which I could not possibly have recalled at will, even under the most favorable auspices. And what cause had produced in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect? Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

Proustian as all; yet this comes from the 1852 short story "The Traveler's Story of a Terribly Strange Bed", by Wilkie Collins. Did Proust know it?

In A Reader's Guide to Marcel Proust, Milton Hindus calls Proust's novel the literary equivalent of Wagner's Ring cycle. I find this a particularly apt description. Both men were initially accused of not knowing how to create traditional works of art, because both were creating something new. Both works are internally connected through the whole by theme, or lietmotifs. Today we understand this, and often begin reading Proust's novel having some foreknowledge of it; yet what must it have been like for readers in 1913 who had only the first book, who had not yet seen or could even conceive of Proust's ultimate architecture?

There is so much to take in from this novel, already I am going back to reread sections, and finding key elements I had merely read through quickly without really comprehending what they meant. The novel seems to demand a second reading, and yet, having finally completed reading two thousand some pages, will the desire to reread them still exist?