The Guermantes Way

I was sitting next to some vulgar people who did not know who the regular seat-holders were but were anxious to show that they were capable of identifying them and were naming them loudly. They went on to remark that these regulars behaved as if they were in their own drawing-rooms, which implied that they were paying no attention to what was being performed. In fact it was quite the opposite. The inspired student who has taken a stall in order to see La Berma thinks only of keeping his gloves clean, of not disturbing, of ingratiating himself with the neighbour whom chance has placed in the next seat, of pursuing with an intermittent smile the fleeting glance, or avoiding with apparent bad manners the intercepted glance, of someone he knows and has seen in the audience; after endless indecision, he decides to go and pay his respects just as the three knocks from the stage, sounding before he has had time to reach his acquaintance, force him to flee back to his seat, like the Hebrews in the Red Sea, through the heaving swell of men and women in the audience whom he has made to get up from their seats and whose dresses he tears and whose boots he crushes on the way. By contrast, it was because society people sat in their boxes (behind the tiered circle) as in so many little suspended drawing-rooms with the fourth wall removed, or little cafés where refreshment can be taken, unintimidated by the gilt-framed mirrors and the red plush seats of this Neapolitan establishment; it was because they rested an indifferent hand on the gilded shafts of the columns supporting this temple of lyric art and because they remained unmoved by the excessive honours which they seemed to receive from the two sculpted figures that held out palm and laurel branches towards each box, that they alone would have had the clarity of mind to attend to the play, if only they had had minds.

I really was in love with Mme de Guermantes. The greatest boon I could have asked of God would have been that he should bring down upon her every possible calamity, and that ruined, discredited, stripped of all the privileges that separated me from her, with no home of her own or people who would consent to speak to her, she would come to me for asylum. In my imagination, I would picture her doing this.

Je ne cherchais qu’un plaisir poétique. Sans le connaître eux-mêmes, ils me le procuraient comme eussent fait des laboureurs ou des matelots parlant de culture et de marées, réalités trop peu détachées d’eux-mêmes pour qu’ils puissent y goûter la beauté que personnellement je me chargeais d’en extraire. (Pléiade, t. II, p. 825)

Man's life is a cheat and disappointment;
All things are unreal,
Unreal and disappointing:
The Catherine wheel, the pantomime cat,
The prizes given at the children's party,
The prize awarded for the English Essay,
The scholar's degree, the statesman's decoration,
All things become less real, man passes
From unreality to unreality.

"... the presence of Jesus Christ in the host seemed to me no more a mystery than [the Duchess's] house in the Faubourg being situated on the right bank of the river and so near my bedroom in the morning. I could hear its carpets being beaten. But the line of demarcation that separated me from the Faubourg St. Germain seemed to me all the more real because it was purely ideal."

“…cuando una vez por cada mil podía seguir al escritor hasta el final de su frase, lo que veía era siempre de una gracia, de una verdad, de un encanto análogos a los que en otros tiempos había encontrado en la lectura de Bergotte, pero más deliciosos.”

“Semejantes a esas plantas a que un animal a quien están enteramente unidas nutre con los alimentos que atrapa, come, digiere para ellas y les ofrece en su último y completamente asimilable residuo Françoise vivía con nosotros en simbiosis; éramos nosotros los que, con nuestras virtudes, con nuestra hacienda, con nuestro pie de vida, con nuestra situación, teníamos que encargarnos de elaborar las pequeñas satisfacciones de amor propio de que estaba formada.”

“Oriane de Guermantes, que es fina como un coral, maliciosa como un mono, que tiene dotes para todo, que hace acuarelas dignas de un gran pintor y versos como pocos grandes poetas los hacen, y ya saben ustedes que, por lo que se refiere a la familia, es de lo más encopetado que hay, su abuela era la señorita de Montpensier, y ella es la décimoctava Oriana de Guermantes sin un solo entronque desigual, es de la sangre más pura, antigua de Francia.”

“Toda esta cuestión de Dreyfus no tiene más que un inconveniente, y es que destruye la sociedad… gentes conocidas, con las que me encuentro hasta en casa de mis primos porque forman parte de la Liga de la Patria Francesa, antijudía y no sé qué más, como si una opinión política diese derecho a una calificación social.”

“Un plano inclinado acerca el deseo al goce lo suficientemente aprisa para que la simple belleza aparezca ya como un consentimiento.”

“No fue a ella a quien amé, pero podría haberlo sido y una de las razones por las que el gran amor que pronto iba a sentir resultó el más cruel fue la de decirme –al recordar aquella velada– que, si se hubieran modificado circunstancias muy sencillas, podría haber recaído en otra, en la Sra. de Stermaria; así, pues, aplicado a la que me lo inspiró poco después, no era –como habría deseado, sin embargo, y habría necesitado tanto, creer– absolutamente necesario y predestinado.”

“Quien ha quedado totalmente sordo no puede siquiera calentar junto a sí una olla de leche sin dejar de acechar con los ojos, sobre la tapadera abierta, el reflejo blanco, hiperbóreo, semejante a una tempestad de nieve y que es la señal premonitoria a la que es prudente obedecer cortando -como el señor detenía las olas- la corriente eléctrica, pues ya el huevo ascendiente y espasmódico de la leche que hierve crece en unas elevaciones oblicuas, se infla, redondea algunas velas zozobrantes que habían plegado la nata, lanza a la tormenta una de nácar y la interrupción de la corriente -si se conjura a tiempo la tormenta eléctrica- hará arremolinarse todas y las arrojará a la deriva, convertidas en pétalos de magnolia.”

آن چه می گفتند همه هیچ و پوچ بود. گفتگو دربارۀ فرانس هالس یا خسّت و آن هم حرف زدن به همان لحن و شیوۀ مردمان معمولی. مهمانی ای که با آن هایی که در هر جای بیرون از فوبور سن ژرمن (محلۀ اشرافی پاریس) برپا می شد هیچ تفاوت اساسی نداشت. آیا به راستی برای مهمانی هایی چون مهمانی آن شب بود که آن کسان خود را می آراستند و بورژواها را به محفل های آن چنان بسته شان راه نمی دادند؟ برای چنان مهمانی هایی؟ یک لحظه باور کردم، اما این بیش از اندازه باورنکردنی بود. منطق ساده مرا به انکار آن وا می داشت.

…la duchesse, de déesse devenue femme et me semblant tout d'un coup mille fois plus belle, leva vers moi la main gantée qu'elle tenait appuyée sur le rebord de la loge, l'agita en signe d'amitié, mes regards se sentirent croisés par l'incandescence involontaire et les feux des yeux de la princesse, laquelle les avait fait entrer à son insu en conflagration rien qu'en les bougeant pour chercher à voir à qui sa cousine venait de dire bonjour, et celle-ci, qui m'avait reconnu, fit pleuvoir sur moi l'averse étincelante et céleste de son sourire.

The duchess – changed from goddess to woman, and seeming suddenly a thousand times more beautiful to me – took the gloved hand that was holding on to the edge of the box and raised it in my direction, waving it in a gesture of friendship; it felt like my glance had been intersected by the fiery, spontaneously incandescent eyes of the princess, who, without moving them, had unknowingly kindled them into flame by trying to see whom her cousin had just greeted; and she, having recognised me, let the sparkling and celestial cloudburst of her smile rain down upon me.

Ainsi les espaces de ma mémoire se couvraient peu à peu de noms qui, en s'ordonnant, en se composant les uns relativement aux autres, en nouant entre eux des rapports de plus en plus nombreux, imitaient ces œuvres d'art achevées où il n'y a pas une seule touche qui soit isolée, où chaque partie tour à tour reçoit des autres sa raison d'être comme elle leur impose la sienne.

Thus the spaces of my memory gradually became covered over with names which, by arranging themselves relative to each other, and tying themselves in knots of increasingly numerous interrelationships, resembled those accomplished works of art where no brushstroke is isolated, where every part in turn gets its reason for being from all the others, just as it imposes its own on them.