Proust Moment, April 22, 2003

The Caste System

Marcel revisits his memories of Swann, hovering over them like a ghost, the unseen omniscient presence, as he often seems to have been in childhood: paying more attention to everyone, and everything, than they do to him. Here is Swann, whom the family tries to avoid:

"... one could tell him only by his voice, for it was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose and green eyes, under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red hair, dressed in the Bressant style ..."

We learn that Swann's father was a close friend of Marcel's grandfather, who was with him on the night of his wife's death, an event from which tle elder Swann never quite recovered.

The Swann family, like Marcel's, was not quite at the cutting-edge of high society, although this will not prove true for Swann himself, the son of a stock-broker whose own stock, so to (lamely) speak, rises considerably, if somewhat secretly. When Swann, as a young bachelor, comes to visit, the family is unaware that he has become "one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain."

They do not know because Swann doesn't advertise it; Swann's new-found position would conflict with their sense of social order, a sense that will be limned throughout the course of the novel:

"Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in the world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good' marriage, could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior caste. M. Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young Swann' found himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as in a list of taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income."

In this regard, Swann is ruthlessly self-effacing; he not only plays down his elevated social position, but casts himself as the fool. If the family knew of his rank, it would change their relationship with him. Swann's own sense of decency dictates that they condescend to him, not the reverse.

"Had there been such a thing as a determination to apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar to himself, as distinct from all the other sons of other stockbrokers in his father's position, his coefficient would have been rather lower than theirs, because, leading a very simple life, and having always had a craze for 'antiques' and pictures, he now lived and piled up his collections in an old house which my grandmother longed to visit, but which stood on the Quai d'Orleans, a neighbourhood in which my great-aunt thought it most degrading to be quartered. `Are you really a connoisseur, now?' she would say to him; `I ask for your own sake, as you are likely to have "fakes" palmed off on you by the dealers, for she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical faculty, and had no great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in conversation, would avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull preciseness, not only when he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most minute details, but even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him about art. When challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to amuse us by telling us the story of his latest adventure—and he would have a fresh story for us on every occasion—with some one whom we ourselves knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our coachman. These stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but she could never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which Swann invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that he shewed in telling us of them. `It is easy to see that you are a regular "character," M. Swann!'"

--"Overture," Swann's Way

A note from Vladimir Nabokov, in his superb Lectures on Literature -- which for $18 and the cost of a few used paperbacks will buy you the finest literary survey course imaginable -- seems apposite:

Swann is a man of fashion, an art expert, an exquisite Parisian greatly in vogue in the highest society; but his Combray friends, the narrator's family, have no idea of his position and think of him only as the son of their old friend, the stockbroker. One of the elements of the book is the various ways in which a person is seen by various eyes ...

One essential difference exists between the Proustian and the Joycean methods of approaching their characters. Joyce takes a complete and absolute character, God-known, Joyce-known, then breaks it up into fragments and scatters these fragments over the space-time of his book. The good rereader gathers these puzzle pieces and gradually puts them together. On the other hand, Proust contends that a character, a personality, is never known as an absolute but always as a comparative one. He does not chop it up but shows it as it exists through the notions about it of other characters. And he hopes, after having given a series of these prisms and shadows, to combine them into an artistic reality.