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Essay / Analysis of the "Combray" section of Marcel Proust's "Chemin de Swann"
The "Combray" section of Marcel Proust's Chemin de Swann is a long meditation on an idyllic past. The book begins, however, not with memories of Combray, but with a description of the narrator's state of half-sleep, a state of consciousness in which he does not know where, or even who, he is. The expanded memories of his past then seem an attempt to establish a stable sense of self, one that continually eludes him. In this exploration, which constitutes the entirety of the "Combray" section, we find the narrator, a young man with literary aspirations, striving to understand the characters of his childhood in order to capture their contradictions, only to ultimately note that each seems more like a spectrum of singular and varied selves than a single demarcated identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get an Original Essay When we meet the narrator addressing the problems faced by the artist, he notes that "the first novelist's ingenuity" lay in the awareness that a simplification of characters which corresponds to the "removal" of "'real' people" inevitably makes novels stronger, more effective in eliciting a sympathetic response from a sensitive reader. "A 'real' person," he begins, "however deeply we may sympathize with him, is to a large extent perceptible only through our senses, that is, he remains opaque , offers a dead weight for which our sensitivity does not have the strength. raise. If some misfortune happens to him, it is only in a small part of the complete idea that we have of him that we are capable of experiencing any emotion whatsoever; in fact, it is only in a small part of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion. (83) The way a novel works, Proust's narrator suggests, is through a trick of illusion, a sleight of hand, with the aim of arousing sympathy. By substituting "immaterial things...which the mind can assimilate" for the "opaque sections" of "real" human existence, the sleight of hand of sympathy is implemented; we can now justify and corroborate the veils that the novelist has created for us, and feel the corresponding emotion for the illusory "feelings", under the "cover of truth", of literary creations (83). The novelist's art consists of eliminating the "dead weight" of real life and presenting us with reactive abstractions. As the whole of a being is unassimilable, untenable, crossed by contradictions (hence “opaque”), the reader must be given the effective parts, from which he creates the affective illusion of a whole. This theory of the novel inevitably extends into our own reading of experience, the way we feel and empathize with the undoubtedly "real" people with whom we interact. Because of the indisputable fact that we can never feel what another feels, but merely “see” what they feel, our experience of others ends with our observation of them; what we call “sympathy” is made up of expectations. The introduction of more information, the creation of opacity, can even be a factor attenuating sympathy, as demonstrated by Françoise's sincere response to distant tragedies, but her indifference to local misfortunes (122). We believe that the inner lives of others are as we suppose them to be; the work of the mind consists (although it may seem unacceptable) of eliminating all dissonance in our impression of what can only be experienced as stable and coherent characters. In theleisure world of Combray, this is accomplished by reducing people to their social environment. environments, with a discerning eye for fine class distinctions. “Even in the most insignificant details of our daily lives, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole... our social personality is created by the thoughts of others,” the narrator asserts, “We pack in the physical contours of the creature that we see with all the ideas that we have already formed about him, and in the complete image of him that we compose in our mind, these ideas certainly have the main place” (17). we have already formed about the person in question include their determined position in the social cosmos, their family background and their profession, hypotheses which can persist without being corroborated (as in the case of Swann) and have only incidental importance In a small town like Combray, in particular, these preconceived details about what can broadly be called status are obvious, omnipresent and difficult to change. In order to study how these perceptions work, it can be useful. to examine one of the novel's most closely characterized figures, the narrator's Aunt Léonie, in her perch above Combray, who can rightly be seen as one of the guarantors of the situation. stability of the social order, despite its voluntary exclusion. The narrator's aunt Léonie is the daughter of his great-aunt, or cousin of his grandfather (48 years old). Although apparently of the same generation as his parents, she seems much older than him. they. This is perhaps because she is a widow and is officially called, after her late husband, Mme. Octave. She is bedridden, although this has not been the case throughout the young life of the narrator, who remembers a visit to her in Paris, when she lived with her mother. His imprisonment as an invalid was a gradual process; “after the death of her husband, she had little by little refused to leave Combray first, then her house in Combray, then her room and finally her bed; and... henceforth no longer “descended”, but remained perpetually in an indefinite state of mourning, physical exhaustion, illness-related obsessions and religious observances” (48). She has limited her movements to a series of increasingly smaller concentric rooms, and the last, her bedroom, with her bed near the window, forms, if not a panopticon, at least a perch from which she can observe events. in its largest sphere, Combray. , practically unnoticed. When the episodes of his life do not come from the vicissitudes of the state of his own numb body, they come from the details of small-town life. His mental life arises entirely from watching others live their lives. But this is a particular speculation: she looks at the street and not at the windows (to contrast her constant "voyeurism" with the involuntary gaze of her nephew through the window of Miss Vinteuil's living room). From their activities in the street, an intensely public space, Léonie can only draw speculations on the social life of the inhabitants of Combray, the comings and goings, the entrances and exits that make up society. Even if those she observes do not know that they are being observed, we cannot say that their private (inner) life is divulged or revealed to Mme. Octave. This intense vigilance over the outside world is simultaneous with Léonie's constant concern for herself, for her state of body and soul. She gradually isolated herself from the world, restricted the circle of her acquaintances to those who confirmed her rather paradoxical vision of her own health. When we meet her, this company is made up of a certain Eulalie, a retired servant whose life only consists ofonly of the sick and of the Church, with in addition the Curé, who ensures the health of his soul. Her society is therefore limited not only by the illness that keeps her bedridden, but also by her own conception of the nature of this illness, which she must endure at all costs. She pretends to be seriously ill, so ill that she cannot sleep, but she keeps reminding herself of this fact, as if it were something that had to be confirmed by careful repetition, and her solitude is saved from silence by the conversation she is having. with herself, a conversation which turns on her own condition and which confirms her doubtful opinions about herself. His illness therefore does not have the phases and relapses that we associate with a long illness, but rather is a prolonged state of being on the verge of death without actually waiting for death. Jokingly, but with cunning truth, her nephew reports that when Eulalie suggests to him that she could live to be a hundred years old, she replies: "I am not asking to live to be a hundred years old", not with dark presentiments, but rather because "she preferred that the number of her days not be limited" (69). In reality, monitoring her illness the way she does is like fixing her in a constant state. The narrator later notes: "the heart changes... but we learn it only by reading or by imagination... for in reality its alteration is so gradual that... the real sensation of change escapes us" (84). .Part of Léonie's illness seems to be a ruse invented by her own vanity. Some of the "symptoms" from which she suffers, for example her insomnia, are fabricated, but out of benevolent indulgence, the members of her house indulge in them. One of her innumerable eccentricities lies in her speech: she only ever spoke in a low voice, because she believed that there was something broken in her head and floating there, which she could move in talking too loudly [and] she never stayed long. , even alone, without saying anything, because she believed that it was good for her throat, and that by keeping the blood circulating there it would make the choking and other pains to which she was subject less frequent. (49) As is the case with his tendency, physiological explanations are given for what would otherwise be pure eccentricity (just as his refusal to leave his room is explained by a physiological symptom of his illness, his "fatigue") ). However, as all these explanations are dubious to say the least, it is up to the narrator, and the interpreter, to try to decipher the psychological motivations for these behaviors. Her constant rant destroys any semblance of privacy she has. Even though she lives as a recluse, in virtual retirement, she reveals everything. Just as Léonie reports the fortuitous events of the city, she reports the fortuitous events of her body. Her nephew remembers, “in the life of complete inertia that she led, she attached extraordinary importance to the slightest of her sensations, endowed them with a protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to keep them secret, and, for lack of “a confidant to whom she could communicate them, she promulgated them to herself in an incessant monologue which was the only form of her activity” (50). This monologue is notable in part because of the importance of decorum and sobriety in the polite society of the time, where subtlety was the expected currency of conversation (remember the narrator's grandmother's sisters , obscurely thanking Swann for the case of Asti (23-4)). Léonie puts a lot of emphasis on this kind of decorum, since, from the top of her perch, she tries to check if Mrs. Sazerat arrived at the church at the scheduled time. Yet, in her restricted life, she applies the same sort of vigilance that she displays towards the events of the city to the "least of her sensations", existing.