Latest / Swanns Way / 58 - Swanns Way by Marcel Proust

Transcript

58 - Swanns Way by Marcel Proust · Swanns Way

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Part four, Section four of Swan's Way by Marcel Proust,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: translated by C. K. Scott Moncrief eighteen eighty nine to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Part four place names
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the name Section four. While I had been going up
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the Avenue de Champmelisee, Jilbert had arrived by the rue
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Bois de d'anglais, Mademoiselle having taken advantage of the fine
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: weather to go on some errand of her own, and
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Monsieur Swan was coming to fetch his daughter. And so
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it was my fault I ought not to have strayed
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: from the lawn, for one never knew for certain from
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: what direction Gilbert would appear, whether she would be early
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: or late. And this perpetual tension succeeded in making more
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: impressive not only the champmelize in their entirety, and the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: whole spin of the afternoon, like a vast expense of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: space and time on every point and at every moment
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of which it was possible that the form of Gilbert
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: might appear, but also that form itself, since behind disappearance.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I felt that there lay concealed the reason for which
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: it had shot its arrow into my heart at four
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: o'clock instead of at half past two. Crowned with a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: smart hat for paying calls instead of the playing cap
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: for games in front of the ambassadors, and not between
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the two puppet shows, I divined one of those occupations
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: in which I might not follow Gilbert, occupations that forced
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: her to go out or to stay at home. I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: was in contact with the mystery of her unknown life.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It was this mystery, too, which troubled me. When running
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: at the sharp voiced girl's bidding so as to begin
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: our game without more delay, I saw Gilbert, so quick
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and informal with us, make a ceremonious bow to the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: old lady with the debates, who acknowledged it with what
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a lovely son. You'd think there was a fire burning,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: speaking to her with a shy smile, with an air
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of constraint, which called to my mind the other little
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: girl that Gilbert must be when at home with her
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: parents or with friends of her parents paying visits. In
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: all the rest that escaped me of her existence, but
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of that existence, no one gave me so strong an impression,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: as did Monsieur Swan, who came a little later to
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: fetch his daughter. That was because he and Madame Swan,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: inasmuch as their daughter lived with them, as her lessons,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: her games, her friendships depended upon them, contained for me,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: like Jilbert, perhaps even more than Jilbert, as befitted subjects
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that had an all powerful control over her, in whom
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: it must have had its source an undefined and inaccessible
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: quality of melancholy charm. Everything that concerned them was, on
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: my part the object of so constant a preoccupation that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the days on which, as on this day, Monsieur Swan,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: whom I had seen so often and long ago, without
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: his having aroused my curiosity, when he was still on
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: good terms with my parents, came for Jilbert to the Champmelyisee.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Once the pulsations to which my heart had been excited
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: by the appearance of his gray hat and hooded cape
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: had subsided. The sight of him still impressed me as
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: might that of an historic personage upon whom one had
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: just been studying a series of books, and the smallest
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: details of whose life one learned with enthusiasm. His relations
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: with the Comte de peris, which, when I heard them
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: discussed at Combra, seemed to me unimportant, became now in
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: my eyes something marvelous, as if no one else had
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: ever known the House of Orleans. They set him in
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: vivid detachment against the vulgar background of pedestrians of different
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: classes who encumbered that particular path in the Chammelizee, in
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the midst of whom I admired his condescending to figure,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: without claiming any special deference, which, as it happened, none
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: of them dreamed of paying him. So profound was the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: incognito in which he was wrapped. He responded politely to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the salutations of Gilbert's companions, even to mine, for all
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: that he was no longer on good terms with my family,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: but without appearing to know who I was. This reminded
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: me that he had constantly seen me in the country,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: a memory which I had retained but kept out of sight,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: because since I had seen Gilbert again, Swan had become
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: to me pre eminently her father, and no longer the
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Combrice's Swan. As the ideas which nowadays I made his
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: name connote were different from the ideas in the system
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of which it was formerly comprised, which I utilized not
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: at all. Now, when I had occasion to think of him,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: he had become anew another person. Still I attached him
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: by an artificial thread secondary and transversal to our former guest.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: And as nothing had any longer any value for me,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: save in the extent to which my love might profit
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: by it, it was with a spasm of shame and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: of regret at not being able to erase them from
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: my memory, that I recaptured the years in which, in
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the eyes of this same swan, who was at that
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: moment before me in the Champmelisee, and to whom fortunately
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Jilbert had perhaps not mentioned my name, I had so
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: often in the evenings made myself ridiculous by sending to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: ask Mamma to come upstairs to my room to say
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: good night to me. While she was drinking coffee with
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: him and my father and my grandparents at the table
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: in the garden. He told Jilbert that she might play
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: one game. He could wait for a quarter of an hour, and,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: sitting down just like anyone else on an iron chair,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: paid for his ticket with that hand which Philippe the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: seventh had so often held in his own, while we
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: began our game upon the lawns, scattering the pigeons, whose
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: beautiful iridescent bodies shaped like hearts, and surely the lilacs
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of the feathered kingdom to refuge, as in so many sanctuaries,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: One on the great basin of stone, on which its beak,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: as it disappeared below the rim conferred the part assigned
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the purpose of offering to the bird in abundance the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: fruit or grain at which it appeared to be pecking.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Another on the head of the statue, which is seen
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to crown with one of those enameled objects whose polychrome
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: varies in certain classical works, the monotony of the stone,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and with an attribute which, when the goddess bears it,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: entitles her to a particular epithet, and makes of her
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: as a different Christian name, makes of a mortal a
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: fresh divinity. On one of these sunny days which had
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: not realized my hopes, I had not the courage to
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: conceal my disappointment from Jilbert. I had ever so many
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: things to ask you, I said to her, I thought
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that today was going to mean so much in our friendship,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And no sooner have you come than you go away.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Try to come early tomorrow so that I can talk
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to you. Her face up and she jumped for joy
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: as she answered, tomorrow. You may make up your mind,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: my dear friend, I shan't come. First of all, I
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: have a big luncheon party. Then in the afternoon I
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: am going to a friend's house to see King Theodosius
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: arrive from her windows. Won't that be splendid? And then
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: next day I'm going to Michael Strogoff. And after that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: it will soon be Christmas and the New Year holidays.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Perhaps they'll take me south to the Riviera. Won't that
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: be nice? Though I should miss the Christmas tree here Anyhow,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: If I do stay in Paris, I shan't be coming
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: here because I shall be out paying calls with Mama. Goodbye,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: there's Papa calling me. I return home with Francoise through
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: streets that were still gay with sunshine as on the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: evening of a holiday, when the merriment is over, I
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: could scarcely drag my legs along. I'm not surprised at Francoise.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It's not the right weather for the time of year.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It's much too warm. Oh, dear, oh dear, to think
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: of all the poor sick people there must be everywhere,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: you would think, add up there too. Everything's got out
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of order, I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: words in which Jolbert had given utterance to her joy
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: at the prospect of not coming back for a long
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: time to the Chammelisee. But already the charm with which,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: by the mere act of thinking my mind was filled,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: as soon as it thought of her, the privileged position unique,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: even if it were painful, in which I was inevitably
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: placed in relation to Gilbert by the contraction of a
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: scar in my mind had begun to add to that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: very mark of her indifference something romantic. And in the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: midst of my tears, my lips would shape themselves in
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a smile, which was indeed the timid outline of a kiss.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And when the time came for the postman, I said
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: to myself that evening, as on every other, I am
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: going to have a letter from Gilbert. She is going
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: to tell me at last that she has never ceased
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: to love me, and to explain to me the mysterious
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: reason by which she has been forced to conceal her
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: love from me until now. To put on the appearance
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of being able to be happy without seeing me the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: reason for which she has assumed the form of the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: other Gilbert, who is simply a companion. Every evening, I
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: would beguile myself into imagining this letter, believing that I
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I would stop in alarm. I had realized that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: if I was to receive a letter from Gilbert, it
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: could not in any case be this letter, since it
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was I myself who had just composed it. And from
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: that moment I would strive to keep my thoughts clear
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of the words which I should have liked her to
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: write to me from fear less by first selecting them myself,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I should be excluding just those identical words, the dearest,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the most desired, from the field of possible events. Even
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: if by an almost impossible coincidence, it had been precisely
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the letter of my invention that Gilbert had addressed to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: me of her own accord, recognizing my own work in it,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I should not have had the impression that I was
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: receiving something that had not originated in myself, something real,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: something new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: my will, a gift indeed from love. While I waited,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I read over again a page which, although it had
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: not been written to me by Jilbert, came to me
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: none the less from her. That page by Bergaunt, upon
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the old myth from which Racine drew
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: his inspiration, which with the agate Marble I always kept
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: within reach. I was touched by my friend's kindness in
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: having procured the book for me. And as everyone is
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: obliged to find some reason for his passion, so much
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: so that he is glad to find in the creature
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: whom he loves, qualities which he has learned by reading
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: or in conversation are worthy to excite a man's love,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that he assimilates them by imitation and makes out of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: them fresh reasons for his love, even although these qualities
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: be diametrically opposed to those for which his love would
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: have sought, so long as it was spontaneous, as Swan
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: before my day had sought to establish the esthetic basis
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: of Odette's beauty, I who had at first loved Gilbert
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in Combrie days, on account of all the unknown element
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: in her life into which I would fain have plunged
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: head long have undergone reincarnation, discarding my own separate existence
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: as a thing that no longer mattered. I thought now,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: as of an inestimable advantage, that of this, my own,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: my too familiar, my contemptible existence, Gilbert might one day
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: become the humble servant, the kindly, the comforting collaborator, who,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: in the evenings helping me in my work, would collate
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: for me the texts of rare pamphlets. As for Bergonk,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I had, first, before I had ever seen her, loved Gilbert.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Now it was for Gilbert's sake, chiefly that I loved
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: him with as much pleasure as the pages that he
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: had written about Racine. I studied the wrapper, folded under
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: great seals of white wax and tied with billows of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: pink ribbon, in which she had brought those pages to me.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I kissed the aged marble, which was the better part
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of my love's heart, the part that was not frivolous
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: but faithful, And for all that it was adorned with
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the mysterious charm of Gilbert's life, dwelt close beside me,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: inhabited my chamber shared my bed. But the beauty of
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that stone, and the beauty also of those pages of Bergotte,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: which I was glad to associate with the idea of
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: my love for Gilbert, as if in the moments when
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: my love seemed no longer to have any existence, they
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: gave it a kind of consistency, were I perceived anterior
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to that love, which they in no way resembled. Their
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: elements had been determined by the writer's talent or by
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: geological laws before ever Gilbert had known me. Nothing in
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: book or stone would have been different if Gilbert had
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: not loved me, And there was nothing consequently that authorized
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: me to read in them a message of happiness. And
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: while my love incessantly waiting for the morrow to bring
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a confession of Gilbert's love for me, destroyed unraveled every evening,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the ill done work of the day. In some shadowed
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: part of my being was an unknown weaver who would
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: not leave where they lay the severed threads, but collected
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and rearranged them without any thought of pleasing me, or
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of toiling for my advantage, in the different order which
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: she gave to all her handiwork without any special interest
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: in my love not beginning by deciding that I was loved.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: She placed side by side those of Gilbert's actions that
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: had seemed to me inexplicable, and her faults which I
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: had excused. Then one with another they took on a meaning.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: It seemed to tell me this new arrangement that when
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I saw Gilbert, instead of coming to me in the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Champmealysee going to a party or on errands with her governess,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: when I saw her prepared for an absence that would
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: extend over the New Year holidays, I was wrong in
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: thinking in saying it is because she is frivolous or
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: easily led, for she would have ceased to be either
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: if she had loved me, and if she had been
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: forced to obey, it would have been with the same
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: despair in her heart that I felt on the days
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that I did not see her. It showed me further
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: this new arrangement that I ought, after all, to know
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: what it was to love. Since I loved Gilbert. It
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: drew my attention to the constant anxiety that I had
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to show off before her, by reason of which I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: tried to persuade my mother to get for Francoise a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: waterproof coat and a hat with a blue feather, or
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: better still, to stop sending with me to the Chammelyize
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen to,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: all of which my mother replied that I was not
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: fair to Francoise, that she was an excellent woman and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: devoted to us all, and also that sole exclusive need
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to see Joubert, the result of which was that months
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: in advance, I could think of nothing but how to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: find out at what date she would be leaving Paris
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and where she was going, feeling that the most attractive
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: country in the world would be but a place of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: exile if she were not to be there, and asking
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: only to be allowed to stay forever in Paris so
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: long as I might see her in the Chammelyisee, and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: it had little difficulty in making me see that neither
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: my anxiety nor my need could be justified by anything
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: in Gilbert's conduct. She, on the contrary, was genuinely fond
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: of her governess, without troubling herself over what I might
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: her not to come to the Chammelyisee if she had
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to go shopping with mademoiselle delightful if she had to
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: go out somewhere with her mother, and even supposing that
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: she would ever have allowed me to spend my holidays
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in the same place as herself. When it came to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: choosing that place, she can considered her parents wishes, a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: thousand different amusements of which she had been told, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: not at all that it should be the place to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: which my family were proposing to send me. When she
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: assured me, as sometimes happened, that she liked me less
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: than some other of her friends, less than she had
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: liked me the day before, because by my clumsiness I
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: had made her side lose a game, I would beg
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: her pardon. I would beg her to tell me what
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I must do in order that she should begin again
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to like me as much as or more than the rest.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I hoped to hear her say that that was already
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: my position. I besought her as though she had been
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: able to modify her affection for me, as she or
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I chose to give me pleasure merely by the words
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that she would utter, as my good or bad conduct
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: should deserve. Was I then not yet aware that what
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I felt myself for her depended neither upon her actions
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: nor upon my desires. It showed me finally the new
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: arrangement planned by my unseen weaver, that if we find
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: ourselves hoping that the actions of a person who has
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: hitherto caused us anxiety may prove not to have been sincere,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they shed in their wake a light which our hopes
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: are powerless to extinguish, a light to which, rather than
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to our hopes, we must put the question, what will
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: be that person's actions on the morrow? These new counsels,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: My love listened and heard them. They persuaded it that
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the morrow would not be different from all the days
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: that had gone before. That Jolbert's feeling for me, too
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: long established now to be capable of alteration, was indifferent
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that in my friendship with Jolbert it was I alone
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: who loved. That is true. My love responded, there is
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: nothing more to be made of that friendship. It will
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: not alter now, and so the very next day, unless
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I were to wait for a public holiday, if there
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was one approaching, some anniversary the new year, perhaps one
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: of those days which are not like other days, on
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: which time starts afresh, casting aside the heritage of the past,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: declining its legacy of sorrows. I would appeal to Gilbert
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: to terminate our old and to join me in laying
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the foundations of a new friendship. End of Part four,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Section four. Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine,