The Guermantes Way, Vol. 3 Book

À la recherche du temps perdu was divided into seven volumes (ten in my edition) by Proust's publishers but it also falls more naturally into a long series of chapters, some of which overlap the volumes. In these chapters, the narrator focuses on a specific theme, a particular place, or an individual character. A few of these characters provide a strong link between all the chapters and seem to be essential elements in the overall plan of the work. Of this small group of characters, Charles Swann and the narrator's grandmother stand out for me. They are amongst the most human as well as the most believable characters in the entire work; I would travel a long way to meet either of them.

Le Côté de Guermantes II is framed by these two characters; the beginning is devoted to the death of the beloved grandmother, an episode that is described in language that has to be the most moving and thought provoking of the work so far. The end of the book focuses briefly on Charles Swann, and while death is mentioned in relation to Swann and to a cousin of the Guermantes clan, the references are fleeting and bone-chilling, in quite startling contrast to the early passages relating to the grandmother's death.

I like the mirror aspect of this framing effect and although there are many other themes in this book, looking back now, six months after reading it, and having read the rest of the volumes in the meantime, it is this dual perspective on 'death' which characterises Le Côté de Guermantes II for me.

Proust writes about death in a way that may not be new but which I haven't encountered before. He personifies it, and illness too, and makes a case for our bodies being separate from ourselves, for us being in a perpetual struggle with our own physical shell. And the struggle must be done unaccompanied, "chaque personne est bien seul," he maintains. No matter how close the Narrator's family were to the grandmother, no matter how present they were by day and by night, she alone is dying and must die alone.

But for all the seriousness of the description of the grandmother's death, there is a sense of absurdity present throughout this section. The Duc de Guermantes arrives to pay his respects and is about to make an elaborate bow to the Narrator's mother but she is too caught up in her grief to welcome him and the duke is obliged to leave, his half-executed bow trapped in his body forever. An eminent doctor also pays a visit, and pockets his fee with the speed of a magician. A clerical cousin puts on a great display of piety and grief, his head buried in his hands, but the Narrator catches him peeping out from between his fingers. And Françoise, the housekeeper, can always be relied on for humour, even in the presence of the dying. She speaks of her grief as being like a weight on her stomach. The Narrator remarks that she uses similar words when she's had too much cabbage soup.

But the final absurdity belongs to the Duchesse de Guermantes. Hearing at the end of the book that a good friend has been told he is dying, she is caught between a desire to stay and console her friend, and an equal desire to go to the ball. She chooses to deny that her friend is dying so that she can go to the ball untroubled. That attitude is very much in contrast to the way her good friend Swann might have behaved, 'le côté de chez Swann', if you will, and it sums up perfectly the more egocentric inclined 'côté de Guermantes'.