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55 - Swanns Way by Marcel Proust · Swanns Way

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  Speaker 1: Part four, Section one of Swan's Way by Marcel Preuss,
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  Speaker 1: translated by C. K. Scott Moncrief eighteen eighty nine to
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
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  Speaker 1: recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Part four place names
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  Speaker 1: the name section one. Among the rooms which used most
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  Speaker 1: commonly to take shape in my mind during my long
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  Speaker 1: nights of sleeplessness, there was none that differed more utterly
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  Speaker 1: from the rooms at Combrie, thickly powdered with the motes
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  Speaker 1: of an atmosphere granular pollinus, edible and instinct with piety,
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  Speaker 1: than my room in the Grand Hotel de Laplage at Balbach,
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  Speaker 1: the walls of which, washed with ripellin, contain, like the
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  Speaker 1: polished sides of the basin, in which the water glows
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  Speaker 1: with a blue lurking fire, a finer air, pure asure
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  Speaker 1: tinted saline. The Bavarian Uphold Bosterer, who had been entrusted
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  Speaker 1: with the furnishing of this hotel, had varied his scheme
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  Speaker 1: of decoration in different rooms, and in that which I
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  Speaker 1: found myself occupying, had set against the walls on three
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  Speaker 1: sides of it a series of low bookcases with glass fronts,
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  Speaker 1: in which, according to where they stood, by a law
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  Speaker 1: of nature which he had perhaps forgotten to take into account,
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  Speaker 1: was reflected this or that section of the ever changing
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  Speaker 1: view of the sea, so that the walls were lined
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  Speaker 1: with a frieze of sea scapes, interrupted only by the
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  Speaker 1: polished mahogany of the actual shelves. And so effective was
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  Speaker 1: this that the whole room had the appearance of one
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  Speaker 1: of those model bedrooms which you see nowadays in housing exhibitions,
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  Speaker 1: decorated with works of art, which are calculated by their
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  Speaker 1: designer to refresh the eyes of whoever may ultimately have
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  Speaker 1: to sleep in the rooms, the subjects being kept in
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  Speaker 1: some degree of harmony with the locality and surroundings of
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  Speaker 1: the houses for which the rooms are planned. Yet nothing
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  Speaker 1: could have differed more utterly either from the real ballback,
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  Speaker 1: than that other ballbeck of which I had often dreamed
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  Speaker 1: on stormy days when the wind was so strong that Francoise,
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  Speaker 1: as she took me to the Champalisee, would warn me
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  Speaker 1: not to walk too near the side of the street,
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  Speaker 1: or I might have my head knocked off by a
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  Speaker 1: falling slate, and would recount to me with many lamentations
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  Speaker 1: the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that were reported in the newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: I longed for nothing more than to behold a storm
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  Speaker 1: at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a
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  Speaker 1: momentary revelation of the true life of nature. Or rather,
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  Speaker 1: there were for me no mighty spectacles save those which
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  Speaker 1: I knew to be not artificially composed for my entertainment,
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  Speaker 1: but necessary and unalterable. The beauty of landscapes were of
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  Speaker 1: great works of art. I was not curious. I did
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  Speaker 1: not thirst to know anything save what I believed to
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  Speaker 1: be more genuine than myself. What had for me the
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  Speaker 1: supreme merit of showing me a fragment of the mind
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  Speaker 1: of a great genius, or of the force, or the
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  Speaker 1: grace of nature as she appeared when left entirely to
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  Speaker 1: herself without human interference, just as the lovely sound of
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  Speaker 1: her voice, reproduced all by itself upon the phonograph, could
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  Speaker 1: never console a man for the loss of his mother.
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  Speaker 1: So a mechanical imitation of a storm would have left
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  Speaker 1: me as cold as did the illuminated fountains at the exhibition.
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  Speaker 1: I required also, if the storm was to be absolutely genuine,
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  Speaker 1: that the shore from which I watched it should be
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  Speaker 1: a natural shore, not an embankment recently constructed by a municipality.
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  Speaker 1: Besides nature, by all the feelings that she aroused in
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  Speaker 1: me seemed to me the most opposite thing in the
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  Speaker 1: world to the mechanical inventions of mankind. The less she
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  Speaker 1: bore their imprint, the more room she offered for the
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  Speaker 1: expansion of my heart. And as it happened, I had
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  Speaker 1: preserved the name of Balbach, which Le Grandin had cited
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  Speaker 1: to us, as that of a seaside place in the
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  Speaker 1: very midst of that funereal coast, feigned for the number
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  Speaker 1: of its wrecks, swathed for six months in the year
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  Speaker 1: in a shroud of fog and flying foam from the waves.
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  Speaker 1: You feel there below your feet still, he had told me,
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  Speaker 1: far more even than at finished Aire. And even though
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  Speaker 1: hotels are now being superimposed upon it, without power, however,
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  Speaker 1: to modify that oldest bone in the earth's skeleton. You
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  Speaker 1: feel there that you are actually at the land's end
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  Speaker 1: of France, of Europe, of the old world, and it
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  Speaker 1: is the ultimate encampment of the fishermen, precisely like the
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  Speaker 1: fishermen who have lived since the world's beginning, facing the
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  Speaker 1: everlasting kingdom of the sea, fogs and shadows of the night.
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  Speaker 1: One day, when at Combra I had spoken of this coast,
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  Speaker 1: this ball back before Monsieur Swan, hoping to learn from
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  Speaker 1: him whether it was the best point to select for
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  Speaker 1: seeing the most violent storms, he had replied, I should
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  Speaker 1: think I did know. Balbach. The church at Balbeck, built
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  Speaker 1: in the twelfth the thirteenth century, and still half Romanesque,
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  Speaker 1: is perhaps the most curious example to be found of
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  Speaker 1: our Norman Gothic, and so exceptional that one is tempted
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  Speaker 1: to describe it as Persian in its inspiration. And that
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  Speaker 1: region which until then had seemed to me to be
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  Speaker 1: nothing else than a part of immemorial nature, that had
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  Speaker 1: remained contemporaneous with the great phenomena of geology, and as
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  Speaker 1: remote from human history as the ocean itself, or the
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  Speaker 1: Great Bear, with its wild race of fishermen, for whom
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  Speaker 1: no more than for their whales, had there been any
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  Speaker 1: Middle Ages. It had been a great joy to me
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  Speaker 1: to see it suddenly take its place in the order
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  Speaker 1: of the centuries. With the stored consciousness of the Romanesque
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  Speaker 1: epoch and to know that the Gothic trefoil had come
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  Speaker 1: to diversify those wild rocks also at the appointed hour,
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  Speaker 1: like those frail but hardy plants, which in the polar regions,
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  Speaker 1: when the spring returns, scatter their stars about the eternal snows.
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  Speaker 1: And if Gothic art brought to those places and people
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  Speaker 1: a classification which otherwise they lacked, they too conferred one
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  Speaker 1: upon it. In return, I tried to form a picture
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  Speaker 1: in my mind of how those fishermen had lived the
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  Speaker 1: timid and unsuspected essay towards social intercourse which they had
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  Speaker 1: attempted there clustered upon a promontory of the shores of Hell,
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  Speaker 1: at the foot of the Cliffs of Death. And Gothic
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  Speaker 1: art seemed to me a more living thing now that
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  Speaker 1: detaching it from the towns in which until then I
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  Speaker 1: had always imagined it, I could see how, in a
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  Speaker 1: particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had
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  Speaker 1: taken root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire.
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  Speaker 1: I was taken to see reproductions of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: of the statues at Balbeck, shaggy blunt faced apostles, the
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  Speaker 1: Virgin from the porch and I could scarcely breathe for
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  Speaker 1: joy at the thought that I might myself one day
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  Speaker 1: see them take a solid form against their eternal background
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  Speaker 1: of sult fog. Thereafter, on dear tempestuous February nights, the
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  Speaker 1: wind breathing into my heart, which it shook no less
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  Speaker 1: violently than the chimney of my bedroom, The project of
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  Speaker 1: a visit to Balbeck blended in me the desire for
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  Speaker 1: Gothic architecture with that for a storm upon the sea.
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  Speaker 1: I should have liked to take the very next day,
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  Speaker 1: the good, the generous train at one twenty two, a
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  Speaker 1: which never, without a palpitating heart, could I read in
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  Speaker 1: the railway company's bills or in advertisements of circular tours.
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  Speaker 1: The hour of departure, it seemed to me, to cut
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  Speaker 1: at a precise point in every afternoon, a most fascinating groove,
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  Speaker 1: a mysterious mark from which the diverted hours still led
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  Speaker 1: one on, of course, towards evening, towards tomorrow morning, but
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  Speaker 1: to an evening and morning which one would behold not
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  Speaker 1: in Paris, but in one of those towns through which
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  Speaker 1: the train passed, and among which it allowed one to
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  Speaker 1: choose first stopped at by you e Couton, at Vitre, Atquestmbert,
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  Speaker 1: at Pontorson, at balbanch, Elaignon, at Lombards, at Benodet, at
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  Speaker 1: pont Auveras, at Quimperre, and progress magnificently surcharged with names
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  Speaker 1: which had offered me, so that among them all I
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  Speaker 1: did not know which to choose. So impossible was it
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  Speaker 1: to sacrifice any But even without waiting for the train
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  Speaker 1: next day, I could, by rising and dressing myself with
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  Speaker 1: all speed, leave Paris that very evening, should my parents permit,
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  Speaker 1: and arrive at Balbeck as dawn spread westward over the
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  Speaker 1: raging sea, from whose driven foam, I would seek shelter
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  Speaker 1: in that church in the Persian manner. But at the
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  Speaker 1: approach of the Easter holidays, when my parents had promised
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  Speaker 1: to let me spend them for once in the north
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  Speaker 1: of Italy lo in place of those dreams of tempest,
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  Speaker 1: by which I had been entirely possessed, not wishing to
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  Speaker 1: see anything but waves dashing in from all sides, mounting
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  Speaker 1: always higher upon the wildest of coasts, beside churches as
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  Speaker 1: rugged and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers the sea
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  Speaker 1: birds would be wailing, suddenly effacing them, taking away all
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  Speaker 1: their charm, excluding them, because they were its opposite and
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  Speaker 1: could only have weakened. Its effect was substituted in me
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  Speaker 1: the converse dream of the most variegated of springs, not
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  Speaker 1: the spring of Combri, still pricking with all the needle
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  Speaker 1: points of the winter's frost, but that which already covered
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  Speaker 1: with lilies and anemones, the meadows of Fistole, and gave
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  Speaker 1: Florence a dazzling golden background like those in front Angelico's pictures.
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  Speaker 1: From that moment, only sunlight, perfumes colors seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: to have any value, For this alternation of images had
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  Speaker 1: effected a change of front in my desire, and, as
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  Speaker 1: abrupt as those that occur sometimes in music, a complete
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  Speaker 1: change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about
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  Speaker 1: that a mere atmospheric variation would be sufficient to provoke
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  Speaker 1: in me that modulation, without there being any need for
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  Speaker 1: me to await the return of a season. For often
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  Speaker 1: we find a day in one that has strayed from
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  Speaker 1: another season, and makes us live in that other summons
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  Speaker 1: at once into our presence and makes us long for
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  Speaker 1: its peculiar pleasures, and interrupts the dreams that we were
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  Speaker 1: in process of weaving by inserting out of its turn
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  Speaker 1: too early or too late. This leaf torn from another
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  Speaker 1: chapter in the interpolated calendar of happiness. But soon it
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  Speaker 1: happened that, like those natural phenomena from which our comfort
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  Speaker 1: or our health can derive, but an accidental and all
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  Speaker 1: too modest benefit, until the day when science takes control
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  Speaker 1: of them and producing them at will, places in our
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  Speaker 1: hands the power to order their appearance, withdrawn from the
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  Speaker 1: tutelage and independent of the consent of chance. Similarly, the
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  Speaker 1: production of these dreams of the Atlantic end of Italy
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  Speaker 1: ceased to depend entirely upon the changes of the seasons
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  Speaker 1: and of the weather. I need only to make them reappear.
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  Speaker 1: Pronounce the names Balbeck, Venice, Florence, within whose syllables had
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  Speaker 1: gradually accumulated all the longing inspired in me by the
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  Speaker 1: places for which they stood, even in spring to come
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  Speaker 1: in a book upon the name of Balbeck suffice to
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  Speaker 1: awaken in me the desire for storms at sea, and
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  Speaker 1: for the Norman Gothic. Even on a stormy day, the
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  Speaker 1: name of Florence or a Venice would awaken the desire
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  Speaker 1: for sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of the Doges,
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  Speaker 1: and for Santa Maria del Fiori. But if their names
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  Speaker 1: thus permanently absorbed the image that I had formed of
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  Speaker 1: these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by
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  Speaker 1: subordinating its reappearance in me to their own special laws.
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  Speaker 1: And in consequence of this they made it more beautiful,
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  Speaker 1: but at the same time more different from anything that
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  Speaker 1: the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be,
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  Speaker 1: And by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated
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  Speaker 1: the disenchantment there was in store for me when I
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  Speaker 1: sat out upon my travels. They magnified the idea that
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  Speaker 1: I formed a certain points on the Earth's surface, making
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  Speaker 1: them more special and in consequence more real. I did
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  Speaker 1: not then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic buildings as
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  Speaker 1: pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there
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  Speaker 1: of a substance that was common to them. All looked
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  Speaker 1: on each of them as on an unknown thing different
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  Speaker 1: from all the rest, a thing for which my soul
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  Speaker 1: was a thirst by the knowledge of which it would benefit.
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  Speaker 1: How much more individual still was the character that they
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  Speaker 1: assumed from being designated by names, names that were only
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  Speaker 1: for themselves, proper names, such as people have words present
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  Speaker 1: to us little pictures of things lucid and normal, like
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  Speaker 1: the pictures that are hung on the walls of school
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  Speaker 1: rooms to give children an illustration of what is meant
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  Speaker 1: by a carpenter's bench, a bird in ant hill, things
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  Speaker 1: chosen as typical of everything else of the same sort.
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  Speaker 1: But names present to us of persons and of towns,
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  Speaker 1: which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique
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  Speaker 1: like persons. A confused picture which draws from the names,
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  Speaker 1: from the brightness or darkness of their sound, the color
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  Speaker 1: in which it is uniformly painted, like one of those
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  Speaker 1: posters entirely blue or entirely red, in which, on account
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  Speaker 1: of the limitations imposed by the process used in their reproduction,
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  Speaker 1: or by a whim on the designer's part, are blue
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  Speaker 1: or red not only the sky and the sea, but
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  Speaker 1: the ships, and the church, and the people in the streets.
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  Speaker 1: The name of Parma, one of the towns that I
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  Speaker 1: most longed to visit after reading the chartreuse, seeming to
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  Speaker 1: me compact and glossy, violet tinted soft. If anyone were
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  Speaker 1: to speak of such or such a house in Parma
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  Speaker 1: in which I should be lodged, he would give me
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  Speaker 1: the pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a
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  Speaker 1: dwelling that was compact and glossy, violet tinted, soft, and
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  Speaker 1: that bore no relation to the houses in any other
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  Speaker 1: town in Italy, since I could imagine it only by
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  Speaker 1: the aid of that heavy syllable of the name of Parma,
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  Speaker 1: in which no breath of air stirred, and of all
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  Speaker 1: that I had made it assume of Stendalian sweetness and
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  Speaker 1: the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought of Florence,
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  Speaker 1: it was of a town miraculously embalmed and flower like,
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  Speaker 1: since it was called the City of the Lilies, and
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  Speaker 1: its cathedral our Lady of the Flower. As for Balbeck,
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  Speaker 1: it was one of those names in which, as on
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  Speaker 1: any old piece of Norman pottery that still keeps the
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  Speaker 1: color of the earth from which it was fashioned, one
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  Speaker 1: sees depicted still the representation of some long abolished custom,
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  Speaker 1: of some feudal rite, of the former condition of some place,
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  Speaker 1: of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language which had
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  Speaker 1: shaped and wetted its incongruous syllables, and which I never
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  Speaker 1: doubted that I should find spoken there at once, even
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  Speaker 1: by the innkeeper, who would pour me out coffee and
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  Speaker 1: milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch the
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  Speaker 1: turbulent sea chain before the church, to whom I lent
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  Speaker 1: the aspect disputatious, solemn and medieval of some character in
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  Speaker 1: one of the old romances, had my health definitely improved,
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  Speaker 1: had my parents allowed me, if not actually to go
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  Speaker 1: down to stay at Ballback, at least to take just
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  Speaker 1: once so as to become acquainted with the architecture and
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  Speaker 1: landscapes of Normandy or Brittany. That one twenty two train
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  Speaker 1: into which I had so often clamored in imagination. I
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  Speaker 1: should have preferred to stop and to alight from it
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  Speaker 1: at the most beautiful of its towns. But in vain
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  Speaker 1: might I compare and contrast them, I was one to
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  Speaker 1: choose any more than between individual people who are not interchangeable.
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  Speaker 1: Between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble coronet of rusty lace,
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  Speaker 1: whose highest point caught the light of the old gold
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  Speaker 1: of its second syllable vitre, whose acute accent barred in
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  Speaker 1: ancient glass with wooden lozenges, gentle Lumba, whose whiteness ranged
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  Speaker 1: from egg shell yellow to a pearly gray coutens. A
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  Speaker 1: Norman cathedral, which its final consonants rich and yellowing, crowned
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  Speaker 1: with a tower of butter l'gnon, with the rumble and
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  Speaker 1: buzz in the silence of its village. Street of the
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  Speaker 1: fly on the wheel of the coach Castambert pont Urson,
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  Speaker 1: ridiculously silly and simple, white feathers and yellow beaks strewn
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  Speaker 1: along the road to those well watered and poetic spots. Benodet,
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  Speaker 1: a name scarcely more that seemed to be striving to
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  Speaker 1: draw the river down into the tangle of its seaweed.
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  Speaker 1: Pont aven the snowy, rosy flight of the wing of
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  Speaker 1: a lightly poised quoth tremulously reflected in the greenish waters
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  Speaker 1: of a canal. Comperele More firmly attached this and since
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  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, among the rivulettes with which it babbled,
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  Speaker 1: threading their pearls upon a gray background, like the pattern
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  Speaker 1: made through the cobwebs upon a window by rays of sunlight,
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  Speaker 1: changed into blunt points of tarnished silver. End of Part four,
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  Speaker 1: Section one recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine,