Proust Moment, April 21, 2003

Swann: A Glimpse

We receive our first notice of Charles Swann, one of Proust’s great characters, and to my mind one of the saddest in fiction. His story, including his disastrous marriage to Odette de Crecy, will be played out in all their tender tragedy in the pages to follow. What we notice here is that this refined and rather likable, pitiable gentleman is also a bit of a pest, a social hanger-on.

“On those evenings when, as we sat in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and noisy rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its ferruginous, interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who had put it out of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double peal—timid, oval, gilded—of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once exclaim “A visitor! Who in the world can it be?” but they knew quite well that it could only be M. Swann.”

Marcel’s obnoxious great-aunt is always there to make a fellow feel welcome: “...speaking in a loud voice, to set an example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound natural, would tell the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be more unpleasant for a stranger coming in, who would be led to think that people were saying things about him which he was not meant to hear...”

--"Overture," Swann's Way