The Growth of A la recherche du temps perdu: A Chronological Examination of Proust's Manuscripts from 1909 to 1914 9781442681415

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Abbreviations
Introduction to Volume Two
Abbreviations
Part One. Towards the Typescript of 'Combray' (1909)
chapter I. The Foundations (May 1909)
chapter 2. A First Version of 'Combray' (June to August 1909)
chapter 3. Beyond Combray, and Back Again (August to October 1909)
chapter 4. Beyond Combray, and Back... Again (October to November 1909)
chapter 5. The 1909 Typescript (December 1909)
Part Two. Towards a Complete Typescript (1910-1911)
chapter 6. The Sequel to Combray (January to March 1910)
chapter 7. New Material for Combray and Querqueville (April to May 1910)
chapter 8. Guermantes (May to August 1910)
chapter 9. The Final Sequence (Winter 1910-1911)
Part Three. The Typescript of 1911-1912
chapter 10. 'Combray' (Spring and Summer 1911)
chapter 11. 'Un Amour de Swann' (September to October 1911)
chapter 12. 'Noms de pays: le nom' (Winter 1911-1912)
chapter 13. 'Noms de pays: le pays' (March to June 1912)
chapter 14. 'Le Cote de Guermantes' (June to Early August 1912)
Part Four. Towards Publication
chapter 15. Revising the Typescript (August to October 1912)
chapter 16. The Grasset Proofs
chapter 17. Beyond the Grasset Volume
Conclusion
Appendix. Information concerning Proust Documents
Bibliography

Citation preview

The Growth of A la recherche du temps perdu: A Chronological Examination of Proust's Manuscripts from 1909 to 1914

Typescript page from Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. NAF 16752, fol. 150, cliché Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The Growth of A la recherche du temps perdu A Chronological Examination of Proust's Manuscripts from 1909 to 1914 Volume I: 1909-1911

Anthony R. Pugh

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2004 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8818-x

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Pugh, Anthony R., 1931-2004 The growth of A la recherche du temps perdu: a chronological examination of Proust's manuscripts from 1909 to 1914 / Anthony R. Pugh. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN o-8o2O-8818-x (set of 2 v. ) I. Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922. A la recherche du temps perdu - Criticism, Textual. 2. Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922 - Manuscripts. I. Title. PQ2631.R63A864 2004

843'. 912

C2003-907430-7

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Gratefully and gleefully dedicated to Florence Callu and Françoise Leriche defenders respectively of the Right Bank and the Left Bank whose names have never before been bracketed together

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Contents

VOLUME I: 1909-1911 Foreword I xvii Introduction / xxi Abbreviations / xxxiii Part One Towards the Typescript of 'Combray' (1909) I The foundations (May 1909) / 3 1. 0 Introduction / 3 1. 1 Cahier 4/5 1. 2 Cahiers 25', 31, and 36/9 (a) Cahier 25', f. 47v-42v / 11 (b) Cahier 31 / 13 (c) Cahier 36, f. 67v-53v and f. 2-10 / 17 1.3 Cahiers 7, 6, and 51 / 20 (a) Cahier 7, f. 1-14 / 20 (b) Cahier 6, f. 1-9 / 21 (c) Cahier 7, f. 15 et seq. / 22 (d) Cahier 51, f. 1-22 / 25 (e) Cahier 6, f. 16 et seq. / 27 1. 99 Conclusion / 29 2 A First Version of 'Combray' (June to August 1909) / 30 2. 0 Introduction / 30

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2. 1 'Combray I' (Cahier 8) / 31 (a) The Prologue (f. 1-9) / 33 (b) A false start (f. 9-13)7 34 (c) The good-night kiss (f. 14-45) / 36 (d) The madeleine (f. 46-8) / 38 2. 2 'Combray II' / 39 (a) Tante Léonie (Cahier 8, f. 48-66) / 39 (b) From Cahier 8 to Cahier 12/42 (c) The rest of Combray II (Cahier 12, f. 1-42) / 44 2. 3 Work interrupted (mid-August 1909) / 47 2. 99 Conclusion / 50 3 Beyond Combray, and Back Again (August to October 1909) / 52 3. 0 Introduction / 52 3. 1 Querqueville (Cahier 12, f. 42-95) / 53 3. 2 Revisions to 'Combray' / 57 3. 3 The fair copy of 'Combray' (Cahiers 9, 10, and 63) / 62 (a) Modifications / 63 (b) Analysis of 'Combray' in the fair copy / 71 3. 99 Conclusion / 76 4 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again (October to November 1909) / 78 4. 0 Introduction / 78 4. 1 The hawthorns (Cahier 12, f. 99-110) / 78 4. 2 Back to Querqueville / 80 (a) Five girls (Cahier 12, f. 111-24) / 80 (b) Swann, the Protagonist, and 'les filles' (Cahier 25', f. 41v18v)/81 (c) Querqueville and the young girls (Cahier 64', f. 145vu6v)/86 4. 3 The Two Ways (Cahier 26, f. 1-21) / 91 4. 4 Querqueville, Swann, and the Protagonist / 94 (a) Swann, the Protagonist, the girls (Cahier 26, f. 22-60) / 95 (b) More on Swann (Cahier 36, f. 10b-32a) / 101 (c) The girls in Paris (Cahier 36, f. 32-52) / 103 (d) Further material on Swann (Cahier 12, f. 124-35) / 105 4. 5 Excursions to Padua and to Guermantes / 107 (a) The kitchen-maid (Cahier 5, f. 49-54; Cahier 10, f. 44, 46-8)/107 (b) Guermantes (Cahier 5, f. 55-66) / 111

Contents ix 4. 6

The fair copy revised / 112 (a) 'Combray I'/ 113 (b) 'Combray II'/ 120 4. 99 Conclusion/122

5 The 5. 0 5. 1 5. 2

1909 Typescript (December 1909) / 123 Introduction / 123 Description of the typescript / 124 The date of the typescript / 129 (a) Cahiers or typescript? / 130 (b) What his friends were told / 133 (c) Editors/ 136 (d) Books borrowed / 138 5. 3 Changes to the typescript / 139 (a) Swann's social personality / 140 (b) George Sand /142 (c) The madeleine / 144 (d) The curé / 148 5. 4 Some revisions / 150 5. 99 Conclusion/156

Part Two Towards a Complete Typescript (1910—1911) 6 The Sequel to Combray (January to March 1910) / 159 6. 0 Introduction/159 6. 1 'Un Amour de Swann' / 162 (a) Cahier 69/165 (b) Cahier 22, f. 1-31 / 171 (c) Cahier 27, f. 1-12 / 173 (d) Cahier 22, concluded / 174 6. 2 Swann and Gilberte (Cahier 27, f. 13-58) / 176 6. 3 A plan of Querqueville (Cahier 27, f. 59-61) / 185 6. 4 More on Gilberte, and episodes for 'les filles' / 187 (a) Cahier 64, f. 1-34 / 188 (b) Cahier 29, f.1-11/191 6. 5 Andrée and Maria / 194 (a) Cahier 12, f. 121 v-7v / 195 (b) Cahier 64', f. 116v-50v /198 6. 6 Around Querqueville (Cahier 29, f. 12-36) / 207

x Contents 6. 7

Drafts of the opening pages of Querqueville / 211 (a) Prologue (Cahier 65, f. 1-7) / 212 (b) Arrival at Querqueville; Madame de Villeparisis (Cahier 3 2 ) / 2 1 3 (c) Arrival at Querqueville; illness of the grandmother (Cahier 65, f. 8-53) / 219 6. 99 Conclusion / 223

7 New Material for Combray and Querqueville (April to May 1910) / 225 7. 0 Introduction / 225 7. 1 'La vraie réalité' (Cahier 14) / 226 (a) Art and artists (f. 1-16) / 227 (b) Death of the grandmother, f. 17-34 / 233 7. 2 From Montargis to Bergotte / 235 (a) Additions to Cahier 32 / 235 (b) Cahier 13', f. 68v-66v / 237 (c) Cahier 29, f. 37-63 / 237 7. 3 Elstir at Querqueville / 242 (a) Cahier 28, f. 1-16 / 242 (b) Cahier 28', f. 94-52v / 243 7. 4 Reading Bergotte at Combray; Gurcy at Querqueville / 247 (a) Cahier 28', f. 51v-47v / 247 (b) Additions to Cahier 28' / 248 (c) Additions to Cahier 7 / 249 7. 5 The Protagonist and Bergotte, the hawthorns, and the death of the grandmother / 251 (a) Cahier 29, f. 62-85 / 251 (b) Cahier 14, f. 85-97 / 256 7. 6 Sunday afternoons at Combray (Cahier 14)/ 257 (a) Principally hawthorns (f. 35-51) / 257 (b) Principally Bergotte (f. 51-65) / 258 (c) After luncheon (f. 66-84) / 260 7. 7 Complements / 267 (a) Cahier 28, f. 17-45 / 267 (b) Cahier 13, f. 1-27 / 270 7. 99 Conclusion / 274 8 Guermantes (May to August 1910) / 275 8. 0 Introduction / 275 8. 1 Madame de Guermantes / 277 (a) Cahier 66 / 277

Contents xi

8. 2

8. 3 8. 4

8. 5

8. 99

(b) Cahier 30 / 280 (c) Cahier 67* / 284 Entry into Guermantes / 287 (a) A false start (Cahier 41, f. 1-3) / 291 (b) Cahier 39 / 292 (c) Cahier 40/295 (d) Cahier 41 / 298 (e) Cahier 42 / 301 (f)Cahier 43/303 Guermantes concluded: search for a young lady; discovery of Gurcy's homosexuality (Cahier 49) / 307 Beyond Guermantes / 315 (a) Cahier 38'/315 (b) Cahier 5 1 ' / 3 1 6 (c) Cahiers 39 and 40 / 319 Further additions, chiefly to Querqueville / 323 (a) Cahier 30' /324 (b) Cahier 32 / 324 (c) Cahier 64', f. 49v-34v / 326 (d) Additions to Cahier 64' / 327 (e) Cahier 38/329 (f) Cahier 65, f. 53 et seq. / 332 (g) Cahier 37/334 (h) Cahier 67'/335 Conclusion / 338

9 The Final Sequence (Winter 1910-1911) / 339 9. 0 Introduction / 339 9. 1 Towards Le Temps retrouvé / 341 (a) Cahier 24, f. 1-11 / 341 (b) Cahier 13' /343 (c) Cahier 23/343 9. 2 Before Venice: Picpus, Verdurin, the death of the grandmother, the article in Le Figaro /345 (a) Cahier 47 / 345 (b) Cahier 48/349 9. 3 Venice / 358 (a) Italy, Cahier 50, f. 1-34 / 358 (b) Additions to Cahiers 48 and 50 / 362 (c) En route for Paris, Cahier 50, f. 34-40 / 364 (d) Conclusion, Cahier 50, f. 40-63 / 365

xii Contents 9. 4 Le Temps retrouvé / 366 (a) Cahier 26, f. 15v-18v / 368 (b) Cahier 58/369 (c) Cahier 57 / 372 (d) Cahier 11, f. 1-4 / 374 (e) Additions to Cahiers 57 and 13/375 9. 99 Conclusion / 375 VOLUME II: 1911-1914

Introduction I xv Abbreviations / xix Part Three The Typescript of 1911-1912 10 'Combray' (Spring and Summer 1911) / 379 10. 0 Introduction / 379 10. 1 'Combray' completed / 381 (a) Cahier 11, f. 7-26 / 382 (b) Cahier 68, f. 1-33/385 (c) Cahier 68, f. 39-50 / 391 (d) Cahier 68, f. 33-8, 37v/393 (e) Cahier 11, f. 27-37 / 395 (f) Cahier 68, f. 57-60, ov / 396 10. 2 The typescript of 'Combray III' / 397 (a) The fair copy of 'Combray III' / 397 (b) Typist X (July 1911)/ 399 (c) Miss Hayward at Cabourg (August 1911) / 402 (d) Typist D (October 1911) / 406 10. 3 The 1909 typescript revised (August to September 1911) / 407 (a) New material to be inserted: 'Combray I' / 409 (b) New material to be inserted: 'Combray II' / 413 (c) Insertions in 'Combray II'/ 418 (d) Suppressions / 420 10. 99 Conclusion/423 11 'Un amour de Swann' (September to October 1911) / 424 11. 0 Introduction / 424

Contents

11. 1 'Un Amour de Swarm' in Cabourg (Cahiers 15 and 16) / 428 11. 2 'Un Amour de Swann' in Cabourg (Cahier 17) / 442 11. 3 'Un Amour de Swann' in Paris / 446 (a) An insertion / 446 (b) Cahier 18/447 (c) Cahier 18 paginated / 452 (d) Typist C/454 (e) New material for Cahiers 18 and 17 (Typist D) / 456 (f) Cahier 19 / 458 (g) Typist D: the first hundred pages / 461 11. 99 Conclusion / 464 12 'Noms de Pays: le nom' (Winter 1911-1912) 7465 12. 0 Introduction / 465 12. 1 'Gilberte Swann, ' the first draft (Cahier 20) / 469 12. 2 'Gilberte Swann' revised / 475 (a) Cahier 21 / 476 (b) Cahier 24 / 481 12. 3 Revising 'Gilberte Swann' for the typist / 484 (a) Paginating the manuscript / 484 (b) The typescript / 491 12. 4 'Gilberte Swann' concluded / 497 (a) Odette at the Bois / 498 (b) Odette and her salon, manuscript / 498 (c) The visits to the Bois, manuscript / 500 (d) The visits to the Bois, typescript / 501 (e) Revision to Odette's salon / 502 (f) Conclusion to 'Gilberte Swann, ' typescript / 505 (g) Modification to the first part / 505 12. 99 Conclusion / 506 13 'Noms de pays: le pays' (March to June 1912) /507 13. 0 Introduction / 507 13. 1 'Noms de pays: le pays': the manuscript/512 (a) Cahier 701513 (b) Cahier 35, f. 1-57/519 13. 2 'Noms de pays: le pays': preparing the transcript / 522 (a) The additions / 522 (b) Numbering and reordering / 525 13. 3 'Noms de pays: le pays': the typescript / 531 (a) The first part / 531

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(b) The copy, NAF 16704 / 532 (c) The typescript of the second part / 537 13. 99 Conclusion / 539 14 'Le Côté de Guermantes' (June to Early August 1912) / 541 14. 0 Introduction / 541 14. I 'Le Côté de Guermantes I': manuscript / 544 (a) Cahier 39/544 (b Cahier 45/545 (c) Cahier 35, f. 58-147 / 548 (d) Cahier 44/555 (e) Cahier 35, f. 147-50, 123, 124 / 560 (f) Cahier 34A, f. 1-23 / 562 14. 99 Conclusion / 565 Part Four Towards Publication 15 Revising the Typescript (August to October 1912) / 569 15. 0 Introduction / 569 15. 1 'Combray'/571 (a) 'Combray I and II' / 572 (b) 'Combray III' / 575 15. 2 'Un Amour de Swann' / 576 (a) The first hundred pages / 577 (b) Miss Hayward and B / 579 (c) Sainte-Euverte / 580 (d) The final pages / 583 15-3 'Noms de pays: le nom'/ 584 (a) Typist E's portion / 584 (b) Miss Hayward's portion / 588 15. 4 'Noms de pays: le pays' / 593 15. 5 Updating D1 / 596 (a) 'Combray' / 597 (b) 'Un Amour de Swann' / 599 (c) 'Noms de pays: le nom'/ 601 (d) 'Noms de pays: le pays' / 604 15. 6 Changes to D2 /605 (a) Changes partly involving Cottin / 606 (b) Changes copied by Proust/613

Contents xv (c) Changes not copied into D1 / 623 Further changes to D1 / 626 (a) New material copied onto D2 / 627 (b) Corrections that did not survive / 632 (c) Corrections to D1 (only) that were rescued / 634 15. 99 Conclusion / 638 15. 7

16 The Grasset Proofs / 640 16. 0 Introduction / 640 16. 1 In search of a publisher (October 1912 to March 1913) /641 16. 2 The first set of Grasset proofs: 'Combray' and 'Un Amour de Swann' (April to June 1913) / 652 (a) 'Combray I' / 655 (b) 'Combray II and III' / 662 (c) 'Un Amour de Swann' / 667 16. 3 The first set of Grasset proofs: 'Noms de pays: le nom' (June to July 1913)/ 674 (a) The end of Volume One /675 (b) Corrections affecting Volume Two / 682 16. 4 The second set of Grasset proofs (June to July 1913) / 686 (a) The dates / 686 (b) The corrections / 692 16. 5 The rest (third to fifth sets) of the Grasset proofs (August to November 1913) / 694 (a) The third proofs / 694 (b) The fourth proofs / 700 (c) The fifth proofs and the 'bonnes feuilles' / 701 16. 99 Conclusion /701 17 Beyond the Grasset Volume / 703 17. 0 Introduction / 703 17. 1 Preparing the typescript / 708 (a) New material and pagination (November to December 1912) / 708 (b) The typescript (1913) / 714 17. 2 Correcting the typescript (January? to May 1914) / 717 (a) Modifications / 717 (b) Additions/731 17. 3 Towards the third volume: the 'jeunes filles' (? late 1913) / 733 (a) A l' ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs / 735

xvi Contents (b) Cahier 34, f. 24-54/738 (c) Pagination and elaboration of Cahier 34 / 741 (d) Cahier 33 / 745 17. 4 For the third volume: Albertine, new plans (before May 1914)/749 (a) Cahier 71 / 750 (b) The plan revised: Cahier 13 / 756 (c) Cahier 46, f. 2 and f. 39-57 / 759 (d) Cahier 46, f. 57 et seq. / 766 17. 5 Grasset proofs and NRF extracts (May to July 1914) / 770 (a) Galley proofs for Part Two / 771 (b) The first extract / 772 (c) The new galleys / 773 (d) The second extract / 774 (e) The death of the grandmother in 1920 / 781 17. 99 Conclusion / 789 Conclusion / 791 Appendix: Information concerning Proust Documents / 805 Bibliography / 815

Foreword

At the beginning of his Introduction, Anthony Pugh recalls 'hawking around' the manuscript of an earlier, equally ambitious reference book. As I remember them, the sequence of events leading to the publication of Balzac's Recurring Characters was simpler and somewhat more dignified. Oxford University Press - at this distance, there is little point in being coy about the publisher involved - had hummed and hawed, as they tended to do in those far-off days, possibly weighing up the merits of Will Moore's witty but acerbic comments against the more positive reactions of another reader. Having just moved to Canada, it was natural for Professor Pugh to approach the University of Toronto Press, whose Romance Series was well-established by the early 19703 and expanding rapidly. As principal reader for the French side of the series, I had no difficulty in persuading the Press to accept the manuscript, thus launching a thirty-year-old association, of which the present study of the growth of Proust's great novel is the happy culmination. Having presided over the beginning of this association, it is both a professional privilege and a personal pleasure to pay a brief tribute to one of Canada's leading textual scholars. The pleasure is compounded with admiration - to have completed a book of this complexity and dimensions despite failing health shows a quite remarkable fortitude; and with sadness, too, since at the time of writing, while he was able to see the page proofs, it does not appear that the author will have the satisfaction of holding in his hands the published volumes themselves. Like many successful marriages - and in that sphere, as he freely acknowledged, Anthony Pugh was singularly blessed - our friendship was based on a mixture of shared fundamental value-systems and ongoing, but usually stimulating, disagreements. We both knew, without having to talk

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Foreword

about it, that music was the greatest of the arts. Had Balzac never existed, our professional lives would no doubt have been very different, but we would have got by, with a little help from friends like Proust or Flaubert; whereas a life without Schubert (for me) or Mozart (for him) was quite simply unthinkable. Although fully capable of entering into the spirit of Romanticism - nobody who had listened attentively to Alfred Cortot, as he was lucky enough to do more than once during his adolescence, could remain exactly tone-deaf in that regard - Pugh was a classicist at heart, in the sense that for him the meaning of any work of art lay ultimately in its form; the emergence of that form, its gradual elaboration through successive textual states, is thus a central concern in all three of his major books, as well as many of his articles. Needless to add, the use of recurring characters as a structuring device in the Comédie humaine, the ordering or arrangement of Pascal's Pensées, and the chronological mapping of the entire corpus of Proust's literary remains in the present book pose quite separate problems, requiring different kinds of expertise; yet all three projects are based on the same premise that an intimate knowledge of the compositional process can lead to a fuller understanding of the published, canonical text. While sharing this belief, and indeed advocating for several years the approach that came to be known as 'genetic criticism, ' I was not able to follow Anthony in his tireless quest for formal patterns, whether advertised (as in Balzac), latent (in Pascal), or gradually emerging, as in the present detailed history of Proust's preparatory drafts. Rather than bringing order to the aleatory flux of the quotidien, the role of great art, it seemed to me, was on the contrary to upset the apple cart of our all too orderly and ordered daily existence by introducing an element of healthy anarchy, corresponding more or less to what Morse Peckham once referred to as 'man's rage for chaos, ' into lives that were circumscribed, and in many respects paralysed, by routine. (Marcel Proust, who thought more deeply and wrote more convincingly about the nature of aesthetic experience than any of the other major novelists, was incidentally sympathetic to both these points of view. ) Yet in the fields in which he chose to become an expert, Professor Pugh was a formidably persuasive sparring partner. On the last evening we spent together, for sentimental reasons, I would have liked to listen to the Bach B flat Partita played by Dinu Lipatti, another victim of leukemia, and perhaps the only major artist about whom we never had a moment's disagreement. For some reason, that record was not to hand, so we settled for Josef Krips's recording of Schubert's 9th symphony with the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. Within half an hour, score in hand, totally focused on the smallest detail while never losing sight of the work as a whole - a talent that

Foreword

xix

the reader will find on virtually every page of these weighty tomes - he managed to convince me not only that Krips was one of the great Schubertians, but wherein that greatness lay. That side of Pugh's work, that of an incorrigible proselytizer, who must have made a deep impression on several generations of students in Belfast and Fredericton, is now over. But the equally indefatigable literary detective, whose professional philosophy, typically Northern in its down-to-earthness ('let's get the facts straight, so at least the critics have something solid to go on'), has left a legacy that every advanced student of Balzac, Pascal, and Proust throughout the world will continue to find indispensable. Off-hand, it's hard to think of another textologue of whom the same could be said. Rather than mourn, we should be gratified for what he gave us. Graham Falconer Professor emeritus of French, Founding Director (1994-9) of the Joesph Sable Centre for 19th Century French Studies at the University of Toronto Hastings, Ontario 1-2 February 2004

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Introduction

'This is a work of reference, and like all works of reference, it is singularly lacking in suspense. ' These words, witty but unfair, formed part of the report submitted to a well-known university press by the late Will G. Moore of Oxford in the sixties, when I was hawking around the manuscript of my book on Balzac's recurring characters. If I quote them now, it is to anticipate a similar reaction from reviewers and readers of the present study. A work of reference it certainly is; whether it lacks suspense depends to a large degree on the attitude of the people who need to consult it. Assuredly the composition of the book, over a period of nearly twenty years, has produced for me suspense aplenty. The aim of the book is to survey everything we know of Proust's activity as a writer during the years when he was composing A la recherche du temps perdu, from 1909, when the novel first began to take shape, up to the outbreak of war in 1914. The primary focus of this survey has not been to understand better Proust's creative process, though that is clearly important, and will be addressed in the Conclusion. The focus has been always on the task of establishing the chronological sequence of the writing of the thousands of units which make up the vast corpus of manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs that have survived from this period. Proust is a privileged case; for few other major writers have we such a rich collection of 'avanttextes, ' virtually complete, enabling us to examine in detail the way the great novel gradually came into being, the hesitations, the false starts, and above all the way the different parts slowly took shape, always inspiring new developments of other parts of the novel as characters and events took on more complexity. Over the last thirty years a distinguished body of genetic criticism has been produced, shedding brilliant light on parts of this story, and hinting not only at the way Proust's creative mind worked, but at some of the mysterious laws of the creative imagination in general.

xxii Introduction

Such an approach, if it is to be reliable as well as insightful, must rest on a solid grasp of the sequence in real time of the pages which are being studied. As one reads the critical literature, one becomes aware that this chronology has often been a bone of contention. Dates of portions of the exercise books Proust habitually used for his sketches have been modified over the years; different scholars have proposed slightly (occasionally radically) different solutions to the problems. It was my awareness of these disagreements, often implicit rather than thrashed out in the open, which led me to begin my project in the first place; a growing realization of just how numerous the disagreements were obliged me to abandon my initial plan, which was to examine methodically the handful of cases where irreconcilable accounts of the temporal sequence had been proposed, and to apply the same systematic approach to the entire range of manuscript material. My chapters on the early years were complete when Marion Schmid issued a plea for exactly the kind of study I had undertaken: A detailed chronological analysis of the cahiers in the period 1908-11 (when the first framework of the novel emerged), which would synthesize the highly compartmentalized knowledge and give a fuller picture of the early years of planning, plotting and composition, however, is still lacking. (1998 125)

The necessity for a thorough investigation (going beyond 1911) soon became so pressing that it moved into first place; general conclusions, I decided, should be relegated to a brief final chapter, and not allowed to interfere with the concentration on the arguments concerning the relative chronology of the manuscripts, in all their materiality. I say relative, because it has not been important or necessary (or possible) to put a date on every page Proust wrote and subsequently revised. The actual dates do come into the argument, naturally; part of the evidence is furnished by letters or by specific references to recent events in real time, and there are enough of these for us to place the undated matter within prescribed limits. The important thing has however been to arrange the sundry compositional acts in a rigorously established chronological sequence. In this way, scholars interested in examining in detail the evolution of one defined aspect of the novel can be spared the very time-consuming task of trying to deduce the order for themselves, and they can be sure that the basis of their study has been established with certainty (or, at the least, can know where reasonable doubt remains, and what are its limits). A further advantage is that they will be able to see the context in which the passage under consideration was composed.

Introduction xxiii

In its essentials, the solution to the countless problems posed by the challenge of establishing a relative chronology has depended on two kinds of evidence. One is internal, where of two versions of the same passage, one is a more elaborate or more polished version of the other. This criterion works well enough if we are interested only in the way one particular theme or character has evolved, but it does not set the different versions in any wider context. The second criterion, external evidence, is at once surer, more revealing, and also more complicated. It is more complicated because we are dealing not with homogeneous exercise books, but with a series of small units written down in exercise books. Even if we choose to set out with the working hypothesis that all the units in one cahier were written in the order we read them, we have to be prepared to modify that assumption. It is sure only when the sequence seems logical, and there is no sign of an interruption, recognized by a change in the ink or by a few blank lines or pages. A change of ink does not necessarily mean, of course, that anything intervened between the two units involved, but it opens the possibility. Where a whole page or several pages are left untouched, the likelihood that Proust set the book aside (and that he may have written something else before he returned to it) is increased. Sometimes the evidence works in the opposite direction. In some cases we can be sure that a unit found in second place was actually written before the unit that comes before it, because the latter has to dodge round the former, and continue at the end of it, a clear sign that the 'later' text was already in place. Study of the individual cahiers therefore leaves us fairly confident that we have established the order of the different units, but not yet sure whether gaps in the sequence point to the creation of new units in other documents, or merely to the necessities of eating, sleeping, and socializing. When one has established the order of the basic units that are to be found in the exercise books, one is faced by another problem: the revisions. Proust wrote on the recto pages, and later reread what he had written, and added more material in the margins, between the lines, and on the versos. The margin of error in situating these additions chronologically is much wider than that which governs the basic text. Between the date of the first layer, and the date of a subsequent rewriting which incorporates the revisions, there can be a gap of months, even years. There is however usually a spot where the internal logic of the genetic story being told invites us to place our consideration of these revisions. It was one thing to analyse each individual exercise book, but it was quite a different matter to decide how the exercise books related to each other.

xxiv Introduction Here one could take as a starting point the suggestions made in various numbers of the Bulletin d' informations proustiennes and elsewhere, but these accounts are sometimes inconsistent with each other, and sometimes pose problems not seen until they are examined in minute detail. It was here that the possibility, allowed by the physical appearance of the cahiers, that Proust might have moved between cahiers, starting in one, continuing in another, returning to the first, going back to the second, proved to be the way out of many an impasse. In all of this jigsaw puzzle, the constraints placed upon us by the material evidence must always be respected. It was important therefore not to jump hastily to conclusions, but to leave all reasonable possibilities open, hoping that gradually their number would be reduced as other pieces of evidence came into play. There have been many false trails, many convictions that had to be abandoned. It soon became obvious that I owed it to my readers to put all my cards on the table, and to show all the reasoning which led to the conclusions I reached. In many cases, the sifting of the often perplexing evidence was a slow, and for me truly suspenseful, activity, and I hope that the marshalling of the relevant minutiae will be of interest. Quite apart from the fascination of all detective work, it was necessary to present all my reasons to save other scholars from following the same false trails themselves. I have tried to mention the traps as well as the ways through the maze, and to show why I have rejected a reading of the facts which at first blush might seem the correct one. I have also been totally open with regard to my many predecessors in the field. Scholarly articles, and the copious annotation of the Pleiade edition, are full of 'facts' concerning the manuscript material. Let me say here that I owe a tremendous amount to those who sifted through the collection before me, opening up the jungle as it were, often making remarkable discoveries, and offering illuminating hypotheses. I hope that I have done justice to them, and that I have acknowledged all points of agreement. At the same time, I have predictably found myself obliged to question many assumptions or statements, and I have scrupulously documented all these disagreements, not in order to put anyone down, but so that my readers will know that I have not overlooked a view of the situation which is at odds with my own. When I began this project, in 1983, 1 had little idea of its complexity, and I did not realize that we just did not have enough documentation to answer all the questions. But three things happened in the eighties which seemed to me providential. The first was the acquisition by the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1984 of an extremely important collection of cahiers from the

Introduction

xxv

estate of Jacques Guérin. Up until that date, the Library had sixty-two exercise books; everything with a number higher than 62 belongs to the Guérin set, and the Guérin documents filled enormous gaps in our knowledge. Nobody could ever have guessed at the riches they contain. The second lucky break was the publication of the new Pléiade edition in the late eighties. This edition has been criticized, legitimately, on three grounds: a certain arbitrariness in the manuscript material included, a method of presentation which isolates the stages a given episode went through from the wider picture, and a fairly large number of errors of detail. On the last question, I have considered it needful to correct the errors at the appropriate places; on the other two, my approach will, I trust, go some way towards correcting the perspective, as I say below. But when all is said and done, we should be ready to admit that without the Pléiade edition, Proust genetic studies would be in a less healthy state. Certainly, I know that I would never have been able to keep abreast of all the material I had to keep in mind, if I had not been able constantly to refresh my memory by rereading the 'Sketches' that the Pléiade editors chose to reproduce. Even if the selection of material is only that, a selection, and even if there are errors necessitating systematic recourse to the original source, the assistance offered by having such a tool has been invaluable, especially for someone living three thousand miles from the place where the manuscripts are housed. The third happening had nothing to do with the accessibility of the documents and everything to do with processing one's thoughts: the advent of the age of personal computers. I could not count how many drafts each paragraph of this book has been through. Without the inestimable advantage of an instrument which obviated the need to retype a page every time I needed to make an alteration, I would have given up years ago. But to know that a quotation and a reference, once correct, would stay that way, that I was at liberty to add and subtract at will, freed me from a burden that would have overwhelmed me. I must not claim too much. There are, it must be admitted, problems with the famous cahiers that common sense and scrupulous attention to detail cannot quite resolve. Classifying the documents required great patience and understanding, and the young lady who was entrusted with the task, Florence Callu, a medievalist with no previous experience of twentieth-century manuscripts, did a remarkable job. If, after thirty or forty years of further study, some decisions might be questioned, that is natural, and we should be grateful that there are not more points of contention. What one really regrets is that we have no means of knowing exactly how

xxvi Introduction

the exercise books looked back in 1960. Some of them were, apparently, in poor condition, and it is wholly natural that the leaves which had become detached should be carefully rebound into the books where they were found, or where they appeared to belong. It is obvious moreover that sheets had been cut out (by Proust himself), and that elsewhere sheets had been intercalated. Often in my study I have wished to know, when pages were removed from an exercise book, exactly where they were situated, and how many were affected. The constitution of the exercise books in quires of six double sheets (twelve pages) has often enabled me to extrapolate the information I needed, but sometimes the single sheet which has been loosened as a result of the removal of its partner has been repasted, very professionally, so neatly indeed that there is no trace of the way the sheets in a quire were originally paired. Again, here and there one suspects that pages have been intercalated at the wrong place. It goes against the grain to admit that a few problems have gone unsolved, but there have been occasions where I felt I was up against a brick wall. Quite apart from the restoration, there are times when the external criteria defined earlier do not clearly support the internal evidence, although the latter is very strong. Readers will find that in my treatment of Cahier 25 (section 1. 2a) and Cahier 36 (4. 4b) I have frankly admitted that the external evidence for the position I take on 'internal' grounds is not conclusive. Occasionally I have fallen back on a fragile hypothesis, convinced only that all other hypotheses are demonstrably wrong. As I worked on these exercise books, I found myself looking forward to the day when I could tackle the typescripts. They, I felt, would be much easier. But I was over-optimistic. They are easier to decipher, naturally, but they present their own problems, arising chiefly out of Proust's manner of revising them. It was essential first to establish the original layer of the typescript, which sometimes entailed restoring an order which the revision process had modified. The revision itself was often intricate, especially when passages were bodily lifted and transferred to another point in the narrative. There were always at least two copies of each page, and examination of the way Proust had his corrections copied from one to the other enables us to make clear distinctions between different periods of revision. The typescript became the basis for the proofs set up by Proust's pre-war editor, Bernard Grasset. The proofs of Volume I (and for part of Part II, as it was conceived in 1914) bring a new crop of methodological challenges. It was clear that neither of the sets of the first proof held by the Bibliothèque Nationale went to the printer; the set that did (or most of it) was auctioned by Christie's in the year 2000 (and I was fortunate

Introduction xxvii

enough to be able to see it), but at the time of writing it is not accessible to scholarly scrutiny. There are still a few gaps in our documentation, but while it would be good to plug them, I do not think that we are missing anything which would seriously alter the picture that emerges. As I slowly unravelled the tangled skein of the individual units, it became clear that there was nothing arbitrary in the way Proust was proceeding, and that one could be scrupulously respectful of the chronology without presenting the reader with a bewildering series of logically unrelated moments. And so the study began to fall into self-contained chapters. We shall examine these more closely in the Conclusion. In very general terms, we can say that Proust worked almost cyclically, each cycle having two or three different 'movements. ' A first movement was to sketch out some crucial incidents, roughly in the order in which they would eventually appear in the novel. A second movement was to go back to the beginning and work carefully at the elaboration of one part of the novel. But Proust did not pursue this to the point where he had a definitive text. It would be a great advance on what had preceded, but in time he would leave it, and work on the next section. This procedure would continue, except that his mind could well prompt him with new incidents for a part already well advanced, so that just as he was writing 'crucial incidents' earlier, he would now write new incidents for inclusion in due course in sections already extant. Thus we find a series of preliminary sketches, followed by serious work on 'Combray' interrupted from time to time for fairly serious work on Normandy and a few sketches for later parts. He even managed to get his 1909 version of 'Combray' typed out at the end of the year. There followed serious work on the sequel to 'Combray, ' which however became more sketchy as he moved on towards the concluding portions of the narrative. It was, moreover, constantly interrupted while he wrote new incidents he intended to incorporate into 'Combray. ' After that, in 1911, Proust reworked his material with the specific goal of having it typed. In 1912 he abandoned the typing in order to go back to the beginning and revise his new typescript with a view to submitting it to an editor. For all the localized digressions, this is a logical progression, and it has made it easy to divide the study into seventeen chapters, which delineate seventeen phases in Proust's odyssey. The seventeen chapters fall into four parts, the first taking us to the initial typescript of 'Combray, ' the second to the moment when a manuscript of sorts had been produced for the rest of the novel, a third for the setting up of a proper typescript of the first third of the novel (which was as

xxviii

Introduction

far as the typescript went), and a final part for what happened after that: the preparation of the second volume (and sketches for a third) and work on the proofs of Volume One, which was published in 1913. As we said, we finish at the outbreak of the First World War, with Volume Two on the stocks, but set aside because Proust's publisher had to leave for military service. Each of the seventeen chapters is constructed in the same way. They fall into sections (themselves divided into subsections), framed by an introduction (suffix. 0) and a conclusion (suffix. 99). The introductory portion outlines the problem facing Proust, and the way we have presented it. The main sections give the detailed examination of each unit, presented in strictly chronological order (unless clarity suggests a minor adjustment), marshalling the evidence for the position I take, and describing the content of each unit. I do not go into details of stylistic variants, best left for individual studies of selected aspects, but I do summarize the storyline. Then, in the conclusion to each chapter, I say briefly what Proust has achieved in the course of this phase, and where he moves from there. One advantage of a chronological survey is that each moment in the ongoing development of a particular incident or a particular character is placed in the wider context of Proust's work on the total novel. This means, of course, that anyone especially interested in one aspect has to skip to a later chapter. A very full system of cross-references should make that reader's task easier. I have always indicated where one can find discussion of the point from which a particular passage picks up, and also where that thread in the tapestry next emerges. These references are made to the section and subsection, such as 'see section 10.1b.' A few idiosyncratic decisions should be reported. The principal character of the novel is usually referred to as the Narrator, but I have preferred to call him the Protagonist, reserving the word Narrator for those passages where he presents himself as the present writer looking back. Naturally neither of these characters is to be identified with Proust the writer who invented the whole fictional system. This essential distinction is blurred, however, when one has recourse to the pronoun 'he. ' There have been many occasions when I have preferred the elegance of the pronoun to the more accurate, but ungainly, use of the word Protagonist every time there is the danger of ambiguity. After all, Proust himself sometimes used the first person in notes to himself about what his protagonist should do next. I have not followed the protocol of ITEM (Institut de Textes et Manuscrits Modernes) for the transcription of manuscript passages, where deletions are to be italicized. I have used square brackets [thus] for deletions, and

Introduction xxix

angled brackets for additions, italicizing comments like 'del. ' and 'add. ' where they seemed necessary. Over the course of the years, I have developed my own shorthand, in addition to the standard abbreviations listed elsewhere. Cahier numbers are bolded, which makes it easy to pick them out. The Pléiade edition is referred to as NP, because for many years I had to distinguish the New Pléiade from the Old. I have used colons in two slightly different ways. When talking of the Cahiers or other Bibliothèque Nationale documents (generally identified by the call number in the 'Nouvelles acquisitions françaises' section of the Manuscript collection), it precedes the page or sheet number, thus: 23: 5, means Cahier 23, f. 5; 16703: 21 means the document classified as NAF 16703, f. 21. (The same convention is used for abbreviations such as D1 for the first typescript, e. g., D1: 153. ) With the Pléiade edition, however, the colon indicates the line reference, thus: NP I, 620: 21 would mean Volume I of the (new) Pléiade, page 620, line 21. Where the Pléiade leaves a couple of lines blank between blocks of text, I have included the spaces in my reckoning, so that there are always 43 lines per page. On the rare occasions where the printing on a page begins halfway down the page, however, the first line is always 'line 1. ' I can recommend readers to follow the advice of Douglas Alden, and to mark on an index card the spacing of the lines on a standard Pléiade page, and use it to find the relevant line without counting it out every time. Where a page number is followed by a lower-case letter, as 203a, the reference is to variant a of that page of the Pléiade edition. When Proust began an exercise book from the back, I designate the book thus: 64', and when it is necessary to distinguish clearly the reversed use from the direct use, I use an asterisk, as 64*, for the direct position. In order to locate individual passages on a page, I give each separate passage a letter. Therefore f. 46ra will mean the lines near the top of page 46 recto, 64vb the second unit on page 64 verso, etc. An additional refinement is the use of 'm' for margin (56ma therefore equals the first passage in the margin of f. 56). A slash indicates a page break when a passage quoted straddles more than one page, e. g., du / monde. Sometimes a page has been cut into two, and the two parts separated. In those cases I use capital letters, as in 54A, 54B. I have sometimes felt obliged to supply numbers where the sources had none. The 'Esquisses' of the Pléiade edition, for example, do not always number separately any clearly marked divisions within their sketches. These added numbers are always enclosed in square brackets (as XIX. [I]). Sometimes the Bibliothèque Nationale skipped a page, and corrected their mistake later by a number on the pattern of '10bis.' On the rare occasion

xxx Introduction

when they did not spot the omission, I have numbered it along the same lines. These suffixes are to be distinguished from other suffixes such as 8. 2, 8. 3, etc., which is my way of referring to missing sheets. Occasionally Proust has written on the fly-leaf, and it has not been numbered; the designation 'f. o' seems the most appropriate one to use. For references to the letters in Kolb's edition of the Correspondence, I give both the letter number and the page number, separated by a slash: Corr XII, 70/159 means Letter 70 of vol. XII, page 159. Acknowledgments are due to many scholars, friends, and officials. In general terms, I must express my gratitude to the countless army of Proust specialists who have inspired me by their writings and often encouraged me by their support. Most of my work was done in the Departement des Manuscrits of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, at a time when the director was Mme Florence Callu. Her readiness to allow me to work with the precious originals was a privilege for which I shall be eternally grateful. Hence the co-dedication. Her successor, Mme Monique Cohen, has continued the tradition. To the conservateurs with whom researchers are in daily contact, I extend thanks for their graciousness, and for making each visit a pleasure. To the gardiens, also, who fetched and carried without complaint, when they were allowed to do so by the reluctant subaltern who supervised their activities. I also regularly visited the Proust division of the Institut de Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, and I am grateful to M. Bernard Brun, always ready to welcome bona fide researchers and to put the considerable resources of the library at their disposal. His willingness to supply me with photocopies of his microfilms when I was running into difficulties between visits went far beyond the call of duty. For many years I was the recipient of grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Unfortunately my unwillingness to publish part of the puzzle before I had satisfied myself that I had solved the whole worked against me, and my publication record, a major asset when I began, suddenly turned into a liability after I had committed the unpardonable sin of letting six years go by without publishing anything of importance. But for the many grants I did receive I am grateful. The support of the University of New Brunswick during those years was immensely important to me also, and I wish to thank Dr Wladyslaw Cichocki, Chair of the Department of French, for his constant encouragement and advice. The Aid-in-Publication fund of SSHRCC awarded a major grant that did not completely cover the publication costs, but which contributed in a significant way. Dr John McLaughlin, President of the University, and

Introduction

xxxi

Dr John Rowcroft, Dean of Arts, both helped to offset the shortfall which was revealed when the publication budget was calculated. Thanks go also to Marie-Andree Somers, then a fourth-year undergraduate with a Rhodes Scholarship and a Harvard Presidential Fellowship ahead of her, for reading my entire manuscript in 1999 with exemplary care and attention to detail. The countless Proustians whose friendship and interest have buoyed my spirits are too numerous to name, but I would single out Genevieve Henrot, Enid Marantz, Nathalie Mauriac-Dyer, Jean Milly, and Mireille Naturel. One name I detach from this list: Frangoise Leriche, whose knowledge of Proust's manuscripts is without equal, has been a constant inspiration, and her approval of what I was doing has meant more than I can say. My dedicating this book to her is a token of my great esteem and gratitude. Finally, I wish to name the late lamented Philip Kolb, who befriended me when I was a PhD student, in 1955, and whose warm interest in my work, expressed in many ways and especially when I would meet him and his wife Dorothy in Paris during the summer months, was something I prized greatly. My own wife, Mary, while never involved directly with the research, shared in all the suspense of the last seventeen years, and provided the ambience that made the long hours of collecting data and reflecting on them possible. Finally, I extend my most grateful thanks to the syndics of the University of Toronto Press for the enthusiasm they showed for this project, and in particular to my editor, Jill McConkey, who answered every question I emailed to her so clearly, so sensibly, and so promptly; to Barbara Porter, Managing Editorial Department, who supervised the final stages; and to John St James, copy-editor, who scrutinized every word and every comma of my typescript with immense competence and intelligence. Anthony R. Pugh Fredericton New Brunswick, Canada October 2001-June 2003

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Abbreviations

AD Albertine disparue BIP Bulletin d'informations proustiennes BMP Bulletin Marcel Proust BN Bibliotheque Nationale de France BSAMP Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Marcel Proust CMP Cahiers Marcel Proust Corr Correspondance (ed. Kolb) CSB Contre Sainte-Beuve (Pleiade) CSBF Contre Sainte-Beuve (Fallois) D Typescript NAF 16736 Di, Da 'First' and 'second' typescripts (NAF 16730-2, 16733-5) EFL Essays in French Literature Esq Esquisse FS French Studies FSB French Studies Bulletin Fug La Fugitive Guer Le Cote de Guermantes i (int) interlinear insertion Inv Inventaire JFF A rombre des jeunes filles en fleurs JS Jean Santeuil m (mg) marginal insertion Mat Bonnet, ed., Matinee chez la Princesse de Guermantes MF Microfilm, Bibliotheque Nationale NAF Nouvelles acquisitions franchises, Bibliotheque Nationale de France NP Pleiade edition of La Recherche, 1987-9 NRF Nouvelle Revue frangaise

xxxiv Abbreviations PRAN Proust Research Association Newsletter Pr La Prisonniere RD 'Reliquat de dactylographies corrigees' (NAF 16752) RHL Revue d'Histoire litteraire de la France RR Romanic Review SF Studi Francesi SG Sodome et Gomorrhe Sw Du cote de chez Swann TR Le Temps retrouve var variant See also the remarks on 'shorthand' forms in the Introduction.

Introduction to Volume Two

The Growth of 'A la Recherche du Temps perdu' is a single work in two volumes. Our aims and our methods have been described in the longer Introduction published in volume i. This second volume begins at the point where volume i had taken us, that is, at the moment when Proust had drafted virtually all of his novel, some parts more sketchily than others, and was ready to write a polished version that could be typed out. Our chronological survey of the first two years of the composition of La Recherche has shown that Proust was not able to concentrate single-mindedly on any one part of his novel at any one time. Nevertheless, one part of the novel would dominate, and pages where he developed an idea to be inserted later into a different part of the book could usually be understood as an offshoot of the work in hand. Once the principal focus was the typescript, digressions were less frequent. For each of the first four parts of his novel, Proust was able to write his new version, and prepare it for the typist, who would type it immediately. The first four chapters of this second volume (10 to 13) present the first four parts of the novel, from final manuscript to typescript. With the fifth part (14), Proust got no further than writing the manuscript. He then had to revise the typescript for a publisher (15). Once the publisher set it in proof, he had to devote several weeks to correcting, and sometimes changing, the printed text (16). Once Volume I was in print, and part of Volume II in proof, he could move to preparing the next part of the typescript, to overseeing the publication of extracts, and to beginning work on the sequel. All that comes into our final chapter, which takes us to the outbreak of war in 1914. A Conclusion surveys the lessons to be drawn from the whole study, covering the ground of both volumes, from chapter i through to chapter 17. In all of this discussion, we frequently refer the reader back to the

xvi Introduction

discussion of the material Proust is working with. These cross-references are an integral part of the study. The book takes a rigorously chronological approach, which means that a given topic, character, incident is frequently lost from view as Proust deals with other matters. The cross-references enable the reader to extract from the total story being recounted a specific element that is of particular interest. Chapters are divided into sections, themselves further divided into subsections. The cross-references are always to the subsections, or to specific footnotes in a given section. It is assumed that the reader of volume 2 has volume i to hand. In volume i I have explained the various codes I habitually employ, as well as the protocol for transcriptions. I repeat those paragraphs here, for convenience. I have not followed the protocol of ITEM for the transcription of manuscript passages, where deletions are to be italicized. I have used square brackets [thus] for deletions, and angled brackets for additions, italicizing comments like 'del. ' and 'add' where they seemed necessary. Cahier numbers are bolded, which makes it easy to pick them out. The Pleiade edition is referred to as NP. I have used colons in two slightly different ways. When talking of the Cahiers or other Bibliotheque Nationale documents (generally identified by the call number in the 'Nouvelles acquisitions franchises' section of the manuscript collection), it precedes the page or sheet number, thus: 23: 5, means Cahier'23, £5; 16703: 21 means the document classified as NAF 16703, f. 2i. (The same convention is used for abbreviations such as Di for the first typescript, e. g., 01: 153. ) But with the Pleiade edition, the colon indicates the line reference, thus: NP I, 620: 21 would mean Volume I of the (new) Pleiade, page 620, line 21. Where the Pleiade leaves a couple of lines blank between blocks of text, I have included the spaces in my reckoning, so that there are always 43 lines per page. On the rare occasions where the printing on a page begins halfway down the page, however, the first line is always 'line i. ' I can recommend readers to mark on an index card the spacing of the lines on a standard Pleiade page, and use it to find the relevant line without counting it out every time. Where a page number is followed by a lower-case letter, as 2033, the reference is to variant a of that page of the Pleiade edition. When Proust began an exercise book from the back, I designate the book thus: 64', and when it is necessary to distinguish clearly the reversed use from the direct use, I use an asterisk, as 64*, for the direct position. In order to locate individual passages on a page, I give each separate passage a letter. Therefore f. 46ra will mean the lines near the top of page 46 recto, 64vb the second unit on page 64 verso, etc. An additional refinement is the use of'm'

Introduction xvii

for margin (s6ma therefore equals the first passage in the margin of £56). A slash indicates a page break when a passage quoted straddles more than one page, e. g., du / monde. Sometimes a page has been cut into two, and the two parts separated. In those cases I use capital letters, as in 54A, 546. I have sometimes felt obliged to supply numbers where the sources had none. These added numbers are always enclosed in square brackets. Sometimes the Bibliotheque Nationale skipped a page, and corrected their mistake later by a number on the pattern of 'iobls. ' On the rare occasion when they did not spot the omission, I have numbered it along the same lines. These suffixes are to be distinguished from other suffixes such as 8. 2, 8. 3, etc., which is my way of referring to missing sheets. Occasionally Proust has written on the fly-leaf, and it has not been numbered; the designation 'f. o' seems the most appropriate one to use. For references to the letters in Kolb's edition of the Correspondence, I give both the letter number and the page number, separated by a slash: Corr XII, 70/159 means Letter 70 of vol. XII, page 159.

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Abbreviations

AD BIP BMP BN BSAMP

CMP Corr

CSB CSBF

D Di, D2 EFL Esq FS

FSB Fug Guer

i (int) Inv

IFF js

m(mg) Mat MF NAF NP

NRF

Albertine disparue Bulletin d'informations promtiennes Bulletin Marcel Proust Bibliotheque Nationale de France Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Marcel Proust Cahiers Marcel Proust Correspondance (ed. Kolb) Contre Sainte-Beuve (Pleiade) Contre Sainte-Beuve (Fallois) Typescript NAF 16736 'First' and 'second' typescripts (NAF 16730-2, 16733-5) Essays in French Literature Rsquisse French Studies French Studies Bulletin La Fugitive Le Cote de Guermantes interlinear insertion Inventaire A rombre des jeunes filles enfleurs Jean Santeuil marginal insertion Bonnet, ed., Matinee chez la Princesse de Guermantes Microfilm, Bibliotheque Nationale Nouvelles acquisitions franchises, Bibliotheque Nationale de France Pleiade edition of La Recherche, 1987-9 Nouvelle Revue fran^aise

xx Abbreviations PRAN Pr RD RHL RR SF SG Sw TR var

Proust Research Association Newsletter La Prisonntere

'Reliquat de dactylographies corrigees' (NAF 16752) Revue (THistoire litteraire de la France Romanic Review Studi Francesi Sodome et Gomorrhe Du cote de chez Swann Le Temps retrouve

variant

See also the remarks on 'shorthand' forms in the Introduction.

Part One Towards the Typescript of 'Combray' (1909)

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chapter I The Foundations (May 1909)

i. o Introduction Our starting point is Cahler 4. One can confidently assert that it was in that exercise book that Proust's novel was born.1 It was, however, not the first exercise book to be used, and in a previous monograph, entitled The Birth of 'A la recherche du temps perdu, ' we traced the stages that led to the eruption of a genuine narrative structure. In the beginning was the idea of writing about Sainte-Beuve, and from that came the invention of a framework: a conversation between the Narrator/critic2 and his mother in which he would develop his ideas on aesthetics, in opposition to the aesthetic of Sainte-Beuve. The conversation would be triggered by a particular incident: his mother would bring him a copy of the morning paper, in which there was an article he had written, and he would tell her that he had the idea for another article, about Sainte-Beuve. Before his mother came into his room, the Narrator would be daydreaming, his thoughts being suggested partly by sensations (the sunlight, the sounds from the street outside), partly by what could be seen from the window (girls passing by, or a countess who lived in the same building), and partly by memories, including, naturally, his childhood. At the same time, in discussing Sainte-Beuve, Proust was led to create a society of readers, to whom he gave the name Guermantes. The two levels were fused when he found room for the 1 A confidence admittedly not shared by all. See below, section i. i note 5. 2 We prefer the term 'Protagonist' to 'Narrator' for the fictional person whose life is the subject of the novel. It is, however, useful to have a different word for the present-day narrator who explicitly contrasts past and present. See our Introduction, and below, sect. 2. 1, n. 6. Richard Bales, in the preliminary notes to his Companion to Proust (2001, xviii) makes the same distinction, but prefers to use 'Narrator' as the default designation.

4 The Foundations

Guermantes in his childhood memories too, and identified the countess downstairs as Mme de Guermantes. Thus, from the start fiction tended to take over from the original intention, which was criticism. For a while Proust juggled with both possibilities, seeing the conversation about SainteBeuve as the denouement of his burgeoning novel. As the novel developed, however, the inadequacy of such a denouement became apparent, and the Sainte-Beuve theme was to be absorbed into the fiction in other ways. There is indeed very little of Sainte-Beuve after May 1909, the date, we believe, of Cahier 4. Much more important is the Protagonist's personal world: his childhood and adolescence, and the characters whom he meets and who quickly attain independent status. Coping with these inner voices was never straightforward, and we shall watch Proust expand, backtrack, join his strands together, often experimenting with the possibilities he sensed in his material, heedless of how they related to what was already in place, but often too taking time to plan his overall structure and to rewrite passages accordingly. The new organization itself would then suggest new possibilities. In this first chapter we follow Proust through half a dozen exercise books in which he is led from a first sketch of Combray (concentrating on the walks the Protagonist would take as a child) to a first sketch of his holidays at the seaside, where the emphasis is more on the characters he met, characters who have their own stories waiting to be told. 3 One of these is a middle-aged homosexual, and in tracing his decline Proust hit upon one strand of what was to become Le Temps retrouve. Proust did not wait until one exercise book was full before picking up another, and it is sometimes hazardous to affirm the precise order in which the fragments succeed each other. We have opted for what seems to us the most practical solution, while admitting the grounds for being hesitant. 3 According to Johnson (1969, 25), these cahiers (4, 31, 36, 6, 7, 51) are all of the same kind, as is 5, which Proust began before 4. They bear the watermark 'Visconti, ' as do 4, 5, and (the odd man out) 48, but no others. The listing in the Nouvelle Pleiade edition (hereinafter 'NP'), I, cli-clii, implies some slight differences. The watermark is not given, but i to 7 are described as 175011, as against 170 for the other three (Johnson gave 170 for all ten). The Inventaire materiel put out by CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in the seventies gives a slightly different measurement for every cahier. The material is said in NP to be 'toile grise' (i and 2), 'toile noire' (3, 5, 6, 31, 36, and 51), and 'moleskine noire' (4 and 7). Johnson said that 3, as well as i and 2, were 'faded beige'; these were the three he did not group with the Visconti books. On internal evidence, we are led to include the first portion of Cahier 25' in the same time frame, although it is of a different material kind. See also below, sect. 1. 2 n. 5.

1. 1 Cahier ^ 5 i. i Cahier4 In Cahier 4 (direct position) Proust was inspired by the structure he was devising. It opens, like countless drafts in earlier exercise books, 1 with the Protagonist lying in bed imagining the world outside. 2 This leads him to speak of the countess frequently seen in the courtyard onto which the window of his bedroom looks.3 Next the reclining Protagonist is made to recall other bedrooms, hence other places. One of these is specified; it is Combray (£23), and the Protagonist launches on an evocation of his childhood.4 For this evocation, Proust hit on a frame which, suitably refined, will be the fundamental structure of the Combray section of his novel. The chief thing the Protagonist remembers of his bedroom in Combray, he says, is that on occasion his mother did not come to wish him good night when he was a child. There were two reasons for this - either it was late because they had been for a long walk 'du cote de Villebon, ' or else there was a guest (M. Swann) for dinner. Proust then explored all manner of ideas and experiences, loosely attached by association to the two 'ways, ' and this marks, if anything does, the moment when the elements were fusing into an integrated fictional world. 'II y avait a Combray, pour les promenades, le cote de Meseglise [sic] et le cote de Villebon' (f. 25r).5 'Villebon' is replaced by Guermantes (itself temporarily replaced by Garmantes), which ties the Combray topography in with a family Proust had created in quite another connection (in an essay

1 Cahiers 3, 2, i, 5, all used (like Cahier 4) in the reversed position as well as direct. The Inventory to Cahier 4 is in BIP 9 (1979) 37-43, and there is a summary of its contents in Bardeche 1971, I, 375-9. 2 See Pugh 1987, 65; Schmid 1998, 145-8; and the following Esguisses in NP III: Pr XVIII. 1-4 (i 171-3), XIX. [i] (i 174-5). Figures in brackets are used when the NP edition does not formally divide sketches that comprise separate elements. 3 Reproduced in NP II as Esquisse Guer V, 1041-5. 4 NPI, 665-6, EsqVIII. [i]. 5 £25-44 were published by Claudine Quemar, 1975, 161-77. NP I, 805-14, Esq LIII. Unless otherwise noted, all references to NP in this chapter are to vol. I. We do not analyse in detail this passage, soon to be rewritten in Cahier 12 (see below, sect. 2. 2c). Schmid (1998) situates the 'transition between the Sainte-Beuve narration and the novel' in the cahier immediately preceding 4, Cahier \ (see her note 71 on p. 145), but it would seem to me that while the impulse to create a controlling structure is evident there, it has still not resulted in a good overall solution to the problem. With Cahier 4, however, the novel is truly launched.

6 The Foundations

on Balzac and his public in Cahier i1),6 and also with the countess in the dwelling below. The change of name is, we believe, significant, and it enables us to date Cahier^ with considerable precision. It has become customary to allocate all the cahiers discussed in this chapter to 'Spring' or 'March to June. ' On 23 May 1909, Proust wrote to his friend Georges de Lauds, with whom he will often discuss the progress of his manuscript, to ask him if'le nom de Comte ou Marquis de Guermantes... est entierement eteint et a prendre par un litterateur. '7 This is sometimes taken to be the first time Proust thought of the name Guermantes, which would make it contemporary with the creation of the family in Cahier i1. If this were so, all the preliminary work would have to be set back to the months of May and June or July. But it is surely more likely that when he put the request to Lauris, Proust was suddenly realizing that he was onto something important, that what he was now writing might well one day be published, and that he ought to find out if the name he would like to use was in fact free. The temporary change of the name to Garmantes8 would be a sign of his scruples, which he managed to get rid of before very long, even though Lauris apparently did not give him the answer to his question. 9 The traditional dating would then be correct, but too vague. We should be prepared to say that having begun using exercise books early in 1909, Proust was composing Cahier 4 in May 1909, and it was then that the novel really began to take shape. From f-44b, Proust developed the second reason for his mother's not visiting his bedroom, and he tells us of Swann's visits.10 Immediately Swann is presented as an interesting character in his own right. In the first draft (£45-9) Swann shares the stage with the Protagonist's grandfather, who is an anti-Semite and who, though himself very simple, is passionately interested in details of the personalities of the aristocracy, a taste his sisters find incomprehensible. The next passage in Cahier 4 has apparently no immediate connection with Swann, but Swann remains, as we shall see, very much in Proust's mind. This independent episode (f-49v, 50-2r) is about reading, and it mentions in passing Combray and the two ways (f-5i). The 'je' critic is the 6 We use the sign ' to represent a cahler used in the reversed position and, in those cases where it is necessary to make the distinction clear, an asterisk if it is used in the normal position. 7 Corr IX, letter 52, p. 102 (hereafter abbreviated as 52/102). 8 NP 809 et seq., Cahier 4: 35 (i. e., Cahier 4, £35). 9 See Corr X, 31/73, 56/120, 102/217, 166/338, 196/384. 10 NP 666-8, Esq VIII. [2].

1. 1 Cahier 4, 7

same then as the 'je' who can remember Combray; fiction and criticism are still not separate. The passage should be added, Proust says, 'au Balzac de M. de Garmantes, ' evidently referring to the pages in i1 that presented M. de Guermantes, the reader of Balzac. 11 It had broken off in mid-sentence at the beginning of a new paragraph mentioning the Hotel de Villeparisis (f. 24v). The previous paragraph concluded thus: 'La personne de la famille sur qui Balzac cut le plus d'influence fut le marquis. ' We argued in our previous study that Proust reread this page, and elaborated further. 12 The new passage on i" is about Francoise and her opinions on three people, including the marquis. Then, on f. 2ov, Proust took up the last sentence of his earlier essay and altered it significantly: 'Le lecteur de Balzac sur qui son influence se fit le plus sentir fut la jeune marquise de Cardaillec nee Forcheville. ' He says she had Swann blood as well as Forcheville blood, that she had inherited Swann's intelligence, even if she did not honour his memory (f. 2ov-i8v). 13 The exact connection of Swann and Forcheville (not to mention Cardaillec) is obscure. Proust had however referred a few pages earlier in Cahier^ to a Mme de Forcheville whom he would later visit at Combray (4: 42). I4 Clearly there was a character, or a set of relationships, ready to be developed. When Proust returned to 4, having written his three pages in i1 on Mme de Cardaillec and Balzac, he probably had a clearer idea of how he was to treat Swann, whose marriage and whose ambitions for his daughter were to form an important strand in his burgeoning novel. For the moment, how11 Fallois used the title 'Le Balzac de M. de Guermantes' when he edited these pages in his Contre Sainte-Eeuve (chapter XII). The addition comes on pp. 238—40. See also CSB (Pleiade) 295-6. Both editions print 'Guermantes' for 'Garmantes' when they reproduce the note in Cahier 4. 12 Pugh, 1987, 68-70; i': 23v-2ivc. 13 Pugh, ibid., CSB 293-4, CSBF 244-6. 14 The name Forcheville has been struck out in favour of Guerchy. (Schmid wrongly reads the name as Querely, 147. ) Claudine Quemar (1975, 175 n. 2) believes that the change to Guerchy must have been made later. It is by no means certain, however. Proust wrote: 'Bien des annees plus tard je devais avec madame de [Forcheville] dont il sera question plus tard[. ] lone line blankl quitter Combray a 1'heure ou je rentrais I four lines blank! Puis on revenait (etc. ). ' The full stop (crossed out) after 'tard' implies that Proust broke off there, despite the fact that the word 'devais' is left dangling. Later (but how much later we cannot say), Proust completed the sense by adding the words we read below, but only after he had struck the name Forcheville and replaced it by Guerchy in the space immediately below the sentence. It may be relevant that the rare form Guerchy is found also in Cahiers 51* (see 1. 30 n. 26) and 6 (see 1. 30). But we should be cautious; after all, Cahier 4 resumes immediately, with no break in the continuity. The change of name and the correction could have occurred with no interruption at all.

8 The Foundations

ever, the pressing thing was to rewrite the pages on Swann the visitor. The new version fills £53-60, 15 the first page (on the bell announcing the visitor's arrival) rewritten on 52v and at the bottom of 53r. Proust added the directions: 'Mettre avant 1'arrivee de M. Swann' at the top and 'suivre aux pages precedentes' at the end. This means that the page on the grandfather teasing Swann by humming songs which refer to Jews remains intact. But the sequel (Swann's social connections) is greatly expanded. On f. 6o Proust, having mentioned 'le mauvais manage, dont je parlerai tout a 1'heure, ' rather self-consciously introduced another aspect of Swann: his susceptibility to beautiful women. He would approach friends who knew the women who now attracted him. The Protagonist's family, however, refused to cooperate. (The idea was further developed on f. 6ov, 6iv, and 62rm. )16 The Protagonist's source for this, we are told, was his cousin (f. 62 add). Swann is explicitly stated to resemble the young Protagonist in some respects (f. 6o). Thus, as Quemar said (1975, 213 n. 4), 'le drame du coucher est ainsi completement oublie. ' Proust was evidently about to present an incident involving Swann at the seaside, something which the Protagonist himself witnessed because he was there on holiday with his grandmother. But he was side-tracked. J'avoue que par ce desir d'aller bravement au fond de ce que la realite nous offre, je le sens si pres de moi que je ne peux me lasser d'en parler. Je me souviens d'une annee ou nous etions au bord de la mer avec ma grand'mere. (f. 62b, struck out)

With this the Protagonist slides back into first place: a curious phenomenon which we shall encounter again, more than once. 17 The new passage 18 includes details of the grandmother's open-air regime, and her insistence on prolonging the return journey to visit interesting places. The firstperson plural is used, in a way which implies the existence of a brother; Proust is still quite close to autobiography. 19

15 NP 668-72, Esq IX. 16 Part of the bottom corner of f. 6iv was lost when the page was removed from its original place and pasted onto another sheet. 17 See sections 4. ab (25'), 4. 43 (26*). 18 NP II, 910-12, Esq JF XXXVI. The first sentence of the passage in question (£62) is also transcribed by Yoshida in his thesis, I, 5-6. 19 Yoshida 1983, 42.

1. 2 Cahiers 25', 31, 36 9 He then launched into a description of the first day, not forgetting to write: 'Des le jour de notre arrivee ma grand'mere avait apercu Swann... ' (£63). But he added: 'et aussi une vieille marquise de Villeparisis avec qui elle avait ete a Sacre Coeur, ' and for the rest of the passage, which goes to the end of £65, Swann is forgotten. We read of the young boy's frustration because his grandmother did not cultivate Mme de Villeparisis, when that would have given him prestige in the eyes of two girls who were staying in the hotel and who appear to treat him and his grandmother as a joke, and we are told of other 'personalities. ' The profound significance of these pages will be apparent. So far only the Combray part of the novel had emerged from the mists of the copious sketches. Now, suddenly, we have the seeds of'Un Amour de Swann' and of the first stay at Balbec. These seeds will germinate fast - and reproduce.20 1. 2 Cahiers 25', 31, and 36 The Combray part of Cahier 4 will be picked up again and reorganized in Cahier&.1 Before attending to that, however. Proust continued his narration, providing a first rudimentary sketch of the novel in Cahiers 31 (roughly 'Un Amour de Swann'), 36 (the original Cote de Guermantes, which would have included the jeunes filles of Balbec), and 51, which shows one character in his decline (one element for Le Temps refrouve), with other developments in Cahiers 7 and 6. We deal with Cahiers 31 and 36 in this section, and with the other three books in section 1. 3. Although there were a few pages still free in Cahier 4, Proust pursued his writing in another exercise book. How would he continue? Cahier 4 left three possibilities open. The first was Swann's fondness for attractive women. Another was the story of his marriage. The third, which seemed to be taking precedence over these, was to recount what happened to the Protagonist himself at the seaside resort. It would be nice if we could produce an exercise book (of the same kind as 4, preferably) that develops these three themes. The nearest we can get to it is Cahier 31, which does resemble 4, and which picks up two of the 20 The rest of Cahier 4 is taken up with material written in the reversed position. See Pugh 1987, 63-4 and 70, and below, sect. 6. 7 n. 2i. For the sequel to this section, see 1. 2 and for the next attempt to flesh out the Combray material, see chapter 2. i See chapter 2.

10 The Foundations themes. But in doing so it presents two rather odd features. The first is that f. i begins with the theme of the grandmother, though it turns immediately to Swann and his marriage. The second is that when Proust finally gets back to the grandmother and the Protagonist (on £24), he starts in the middle of a sentence, implying that at least two words are missing. If we look for the other theme (Swann and the young ladies), we are even more puzzled. The only extant passage that looks as if it was written quite early- before other characters and incidents became associated with Swann is in a totally different exercise book, which Proust did not continue until towards the end of the year, Cahier 25. Although there is no firm evidence that this book was started as early as 31, it would seem that this is the best place to present its opening pages.2 Several scholars have proposed an early dating for the pages on Swann and Anna in 25'.3 Whether they came before 31 (as Bakker suggests, p. 84), or soon after, is however not easy to decide. We present them first partly for convenience, but also because we incline to think that with 31 Proust is launched on a road that seems to take him in a steady progress, from which Swann and Anna would be a manifest digression, and also because Proust made no attempt to reconcile these pages with what he developed in 31, suggesting that they preceded that development. 4 The only slight obstacle to this hypothesis is that 25 is materially different from the exercise books traditionally grouped together. 5 Fran5oise Leriche (1989, 74-5) thinks that we can assume that there were two distinct Swann projects, developed more or less simultaneously: the crystallization of his love for a cocotte, 2 The opening pages are f. 47v—42v (the cafiierwas used in the reversed position). The rest is certainly later, and we discuss it in section 4. 2b. The indication in NP (II, 1852) that '[Le passage] du Cahier 12 est sans doute legerement anterieur, le Cahier 25 renvoyant au Cahier 12' is too wholesale, as the renvoi, which comes on 25' f-4iv, does not affect the dating of f. 4yv—42v. There are several other allusions besides that one. Similarly, the obstacle Francoise Leriche mentions in her article on the genesis of 'Un Amour de Swann' (1988, 74), namely, that Querqueville is named in 25', does not apply to these first pages. One need not be surprised that Proust would start an exercise book upside down. He was capable of doing the same thing when writing to friends (see Corr IX, 4O/ 80, 2 May 1909: 'J'ai pris mon papier a 1'envers sans m'en apercevoir'). 3 Bardeche (I, 275), Brun (i982b, 79), Bakker (thesis, 167 n. 3, 179 n. i), Leriche (19873, 16, 18), Ishiki (thesis, I, 26). 4 One might initially be tempted to bracket this passage on Anna with another one at the end of 12, but another explanation of the re-emergence of the name there is possible, and we prefer to keep the two passages separate (see below, 44d). 5 It measures 190 cm, as against 170 or 175 (see i. o n. 3). It is of the same kind as Cahiers 26, 8, 9, 10, 63, and 69, all used later in the year.

1. 2 CahiersZS', 31, 36

11

whom he married, and jealousy occasioned by suspicions of lesbianism. But even if she is right to conclude that the order 25'~3i is not logically inevitable, it still seems to us more likely than the reverse. We begin, then, with Cahier 25'. 6 (a) Cahier 25', f-47v-42v The first passage written in 25' has been transcribed and well analysed by Alma Saraydar. 7 It comprises a series of short paragraphs about Swann and Anna, numbered I to VIII by Saraydar, with two additional fragments, which she calls A and B. The basic text (here we interpret the evidence slightly differently from Saraydar) was written on the verso pages, 4yv-42v, dodging round a couple of fragments on f. 45vc and 44va. The recto pages contain an amplification that makes for a smoother transition, f. 46r, and a somewhat different passage, f. 44r~43r. The text begins with the words 'De toutes ces femmes, ' implying that Proust had already spoken of Swann in connection with a band of women at Querqueville. Two are singled out: Anna and Septimie. Other names in the text are Celia, Arabelle, and Renee; also Juliette (46v). The first few lines present Swann experiencing movements of attraction towards Anna and Septimie; they die, but can be reborn (4yv, Saraydar I). There follows a tense dialogue with Anna (4yv-46v, Saraydar II), whom Swann suspects of lesbian relations with Septimie. He treats her badly, neglects her for others, but remains attracted to her, and is convinced that she is the one he really loves. The nature of love is analysed with characteristic subtlety. Alma Saraydar sees this as a deliberate (and not wholly successful) attempt to fuse two incidents from Jean Santeuil; Anna inherits both the virtue of Mme S. and the possible lesbianism of Francoise. The third fragment (46v~45va, III) is a brief canvas for an amusing episode. Anna is to play Celimene in a performance of Le Misanthrope. Swann makes careful arrangements to free himself to go. His father is to visit him, so Swann asks him to postpone the visit. In looking forward to the production, Swann does not consciously single out Anna. But she falls ill, is replaced, and Swann's enthusiasm disappears; he tells his father he can receive him after all. 6 We have to assume that Proust started this exercise book upside-down, as 25* is definitely later. It is not the only case where Proust did so. For 25* see sections 5. 30 and d. The inventory for Cahier 25 is in BIP 12 (1981) 41-5 (Annie Mejean). 7 BIP 14 (1983). The transcription is on pp. 24-8. Also in NP II, 927-32 (Esq XLV, first portion), and Bardeche I, 397-401, with commentary (275-6).

12 The Foundations In the fourth fragment, equally short, we see Swann obsessed by the thought of Anna, bringing her into every conversation, looking at a map of Paris, at the telephone directory, to find traces of her (45vb, IV). The fifth fragment, labelled A by Saraydar, is written in a different manner from the rest, and may have been set down earlier (45vc).8 It generalizes in a convoluted fashion. He is dissatisfied with the relationship and would like to start it afresh. Over the page, and in a different handwriting from 45vc, are a couple of hastily written sentences saying he only speaks ill of Anna when talking to Septimie, who replies in kind (44va, Saraydar's 'Fragment B'). Although both these fragments refer back to the beginning of the second paragraph, where he treats Septimie better than Anna, we would not bracket them together as Saraydar has done.9 The following paragraph, also short, draws a parallel with Chateaubriand and Disraeli (44vb, Saraydar 'V Suite'; we explain her title shortly). There are three more developments (Saraydar's VI-VIII). In the first (44vc~43va) Swann is happy to have signs that he is part of her life. In the second, which contains an obvious echo of Le Misanthrope, he again wishes her desires were modelled on his (43vb). The final development (43vc-42v) is in different writing. It concerns Swann's ambivalent feelings about a rendezvous. Meetings are never very enjoyable, but if she were to cancel, he would want them more than anything else. Two passages are found on the recto pages, f. 46r and 44r-43r. The first makes a transition between what preceded and what followed Fragments A and B. A renvoi at the end of 44vb makes its function unambiguous, and the last words ('Quand il lisait que Chateaubriand etc') make it equally obvious that the sequel must be Saraydar's 'V Suite. ' Even without grounds for hope, his love is an inalienable part of him. Alma Saraydar sees this transition as written after f-45vb (IV) and before 44vb (V suite) - she calls it V - but we believe it was added later. The other passage (f-44r and 43r, NP 931-2, Bardeche 401-2) continues the theme of jealousy based on suspicions that the girl might be lesbian. We believe it to be much later than the verso narrative. The writing is quite distinct, and Bakker (181) finds the style different also. Moreover it reverts to the first person. We shall discuss it in section 4. 2b. 8 The first words of f-45vc, transcribed by Saraydar as 'Quand il voulait d'elle disait du mal pour montrer etc' rightly puzzled Leriche (1988, 78 n. 2). They should read 'Quand il parlait... ' Bardeche omits this fragment. 9 The handwriting of 44va ('B') is like that of 45vb (IV), not 45vc, and also like what follows, 44vb.

1. 2 CahiersZy, 31, 36 13 (b) Cahier 31 As we have said, it was in Cahier 31, which physically resembles 4, that Proust developed the themes introduced at the end of 4. He there continued to talk of Swann, now concentrating on his marriage. He also pursued at length the subject of the Protagonist's summer holidays. 10 Thus, as we follow Proust out of 4 and into the next set of cahiers, we shall have to identify two groups of interrelated notions: (a) Swann, his courtship (with the Verdurin salon as its setting), his marriage, his daughter, his death, his widow's remarriage with Forcheville; (b) the Protagonist at the seaside, Mme de Villeparisis, Montargis, the Comtesse de Guermantes, her homosexual brother-in-law. There are also periodic returns to the Combray material. A couple of attempts to write a sentence on his grandmother's natural good taste, which protects her from reality, lead nowhere. The idea grows directly out of the last sentence on 4 (£65): 'qui leur permet de Jeter sur la foule une sorte de regard dedaigneux et ironique dans lequel moins eleve de sentiments que ma grand'mere je souffrais en baissant les yeux d'etre englobe. '11 (The bottom corner of £65 has been lost, and with it one or two words at the end of the very last line. ) Immediately below, and in different writing, Proust broached the subject that must have been in his mind ever since he gave 'Mme de Forcheville' Swann blood: the marriage of Swann. He began a sentence on Swann's marriage which must be the sequel to the pages on his love affairs. 'Mais un jour Swann se maria et se maria fort mal, avec une femme qui n'etait pas une cocotte mais n'en valait guere mieux. '12 There are several comparable false starts before the narration starts in earnest on f. 2(rc). What we have then is a rapid sketch of what will become 'Un Amour de Swann, ' and the first part of A r ombre ('Autour de Mme Swann').13 10 These pages are very precisely described in Claudine Quemar's Inventory, BIP 9 (1979) 45-5411 See Leriche 1988, 80. 12 31 f. i, NP I, 1506, presentation of Esq VIII. The phrase grows out of 4: 31 (Quemar 1975, 215 n. 3), and was announced on f. 6o ('le mauvais mariage' etc), as we have seen (i. i). Enid Marantz appears to overlook the existence of Swann in Cahier 4 when she writes that Swann 'ne figure pas dans les avant-textes avant le Cahier 31' (1985, 42 n. 3). 13 f. i-ioa, transcribed by Bardeche I, 405-9, and Bakker, thesis, 87-93. Bardeche calls it

14 The Foundations First of all, the beginnings of the liaison, with Sonia and her friends (the 'X'), and Swann's jealousy when he realizes that he has a rival, Forcheville. Despite his ambivalence, he marries her. She continues to see other men, but he finds contentment in his marriage. They have a daughter, whom he adores. After this presentation, Proust reintroduces the motif of Swann's relationship with the Protagonist's family. One day, with his father, the young boy meets Swann and Mme Swann, the ice is broken, and his father (at least) can henceforth dine at the Swanns. The Protagonist, meanwhile, is infatuated. Proust describes the slow and deliberately calculated ascent of Mme Swann in society (f. 10-14). 14 In the first draft, the friends of Sonia who have a salon are called X. 15 On f. i4vl6and I5~23r Proust gave them a name - Verdurin - and he presented them at considerable length, their circle and their posturing, developing an elaborate analogy between the Verdurins and certain Venetian squares 'que vous decouvrez tout d'un coup le soir, au hasard d'une promenade, ' before introducing Swann on £23. 17 The episode would obviously be placed at the beginning of the sequence we have discussed. Later, when Proust worked systematically on 'Un Amour de Swann, ' he took over the passage as it stands, shortening it slightly (see 6. 1 a and also ii. i n. 5). For more on the Verdurins, see 1. 36. Then Proust returned to the other topic broached at the end of 4: the summer holidays by the sea. As Claudine Quemar remarks, f. 24 starts mysteriously in the middle of a sentence ('jusqu'au jour ou elles tomberent pour ainsi dire 1'une sur 1'autre... '; cf. NP II 54: 10). It must be the sequel to the situation described in 4, where the Protagonist's grandmother avoids Mme de Villeparisis. It is just possible that the words lost because of the tear at the bottom righthand corner of 4: 65 (following the sentence quoted) could have been 'Cela

14 15 16 17

the 'third version. ' See also his commentary, 276-8. The pages are briefly analysed in NP, 1187-8 and 1506, and the last paragraph is reproduced as Esquisse JFF VIII (1009). An addition on f. 6v-8v (Bakker, thesis, 94-6), on the subsequent progress of his love, was probably written later. See 6. 1 (end of the introductory portion). Bardeche I, 409 (line 3) to 411. F. IO-I i are transcribed by Bakker, thesis, 70-1, and NP I, 981-2, Esq LXXXIII. F. I2-I4 are to be found on NP 1019-20 (Esq JF XV). Once (f. 8) called Y, probably by mistake. The passage begins, exceptionally, on the verso. The passage is summarized in NP 1187-8, and reproduced in Chelet-Hester's thesis, 401-7; Yoshida transcribed the first two pages in his thesis (II, 238-40). See Schmid 1998, 149.

1. 2 Cahiers 25', 31, 36

15

dura, '18 but it is not easy to explain why we should find the sequel twentythree sheets in a new book. One tempting explanation would be that Proust set down his thoughts on Swann in this new exercise book as soon as he realized that he was losing sight of Swann in 4. Even so, why split the sentence, and why were two words lost by tearing? Also, the abortive sentences on f. i rather get in the way of such an explanation. Francoise Leriche has suggested that there might be a missing exercise book, which would account not only for the half sentence on f. 24, but also for the 'toutes ces femmes' of 25': 47v, mentioned above. She refers to Quemar's Inventory, p. 50, which indicates other episodes 'supposes connus du lecteur et pour lesquels nous ne possedons aucun brouillon. '19 After the Protagonist and his grandmother have made contact with Mme de Villeparisis, they meet the great-nephew of the latter, Montargis (the future Saint-Loup), who becomes the Protagonist's best friend (£24-36). On £37 Proust linked this narrative with another important element from 4: the Comtesse de Garmantes. We have seen that the Guermantes family was created to illustrate a certain way of reading Balzac, and Mme de Villeparisis was even then a member of the same family (i *: 33v-24v). Then in 4 (f. Qv-iSr) the Protagonist spoke of the countess whom he often saw from his window, and for whom he had an adolescent infatuation. Later in the same cahier, at Combray, he came across the Comtesse de Garmantes (Garmantes temporarily replacing Guermantes). In the passage we are considering (31: 37-49) Proust pulls various threads together. 20 The countess who lives in the same building is the Comtesse de Garmantes, niece of Mme de Villeparisis, and the Protagonist fell in love with her after seeing her 'sur la route de Garmantes. ' Garmantes is replaced by the original form Guermantes from £38 on £30 et seq. Proust completely reworked the motif of the Protagonist's love for the countess. The Protagonist hopes to enlist Montargis's aid. He is careful not to tell Montargis of his own humble status in Combray. He watches the countess, is disappointed that she has not more of an aura, but he overcomes the disappointment and restores the aura (£37-40). 2I Quemar (In18 The space is about right, but from the trace that remains of the first letter, it was probably not a C. 19 Leriche 1989, 82. See also 4. 4 n. 4. Leriche adds more evidence: Cahier 26: 49 (see below, 4. 4 n. i6), and Cahier65 f. i, a 'copie definitive' which copies, she says, nothing we know. (See however 6. 73. ) For more evidence still, see 6. 2. 20 NP II, 1101-9 (omit 1106-8), Esq Guer XII. [i]. For the balance of this chapter, NP references are to vol. II. 21 NP II, 1101-3. See Bardeche II, 78 n. 5

16 The Foundations ventory, 51) sees in the last phrase on f. /^oa ('Pas toujours la meme, laitier etc') a clear reference to 4: 17 (CSBF 92), and with suitable modifications, part of that first text on the Protagonist's love for the countess could certainly fit in here. But Proust was to give it new developments. The Protagonist's love for the countess makes it imperative that he cultivate Montargis and thus attract the countess's attention. So he visits his friend, who is with the army in a garrison town, a long passage stressing Montargis's exquisite courtesy (£40-7). 22 On f. 4ivb~4v and 45v (NP II, i io6-8),23 there is an addition about Montargis and the soldiers under him. On the facing pages (39v~4iva) Proust added, maybe later,24 an episode concerning Montargis and his mistress, who is an actress. They quarrel, but Montargis is anxious to make it up, handling his mother roughly in the process (NP II, 1150-1, Esq GuerXVI). Proust comes backonf-47 toMme de Guermantes. Montargis is unable to arrange for the Protagonist to meet his aunt, and the Protagonist believes she is avoiding him because his attentions are unwelcome. He feigns, and soon acquires, indifference (f. 47b9a, NP 1108-9). Having written that, Proust went on to describe how the Protagonist was invited to one of Mme de Villeparisis's five-o'clock receptions. The first segment (f. 49b-64a; NP 1165-72, Esq Guer XIX) chiefly concerns the composition of Mme de Villeparisis's salon, where he meets Mme de Guermantes. There is a reference to the Guermantes' interest in the Villeparisis inheritance (£51). Proust wrote of the marriage Mme de Villeparisis arranged for her niece (called Oriane) with a cousin, le Comte de Villebon, who later took the name of Comte de Guermantes (f. 6o). Marion Schmid has pointed out how the creation of Mme de Villeparisis as society hostess is already encouraging Proust to talk of politics, and the Dreyfus affair (150, 31: 62). After one line space, the sequel (64b~7i; NP 1109-12, Esq XII. [2J) reintroduces Montargis. The first two pages describe Montargis as he was when the Protagonist met him again a year later. He has changed greatly as

22 NP II, 1103-6. For a consideration of Montargis as typical of Proust's method of creating character, see the brief but perceptive remarks of Schmid, 1998, 149. Montargis illustrates two features: that characters go on to belie the first impression they create, and that they link two narrative elements, here Querqueville and Mme de Guermantes. 23 Also Pouli, thesis, 10-14. F. 45V, independent of f. 4i-4v, and written at the bottom of the page, is reproduced on NP 1106; see note b. 24 At a different time, certainly, from the addition on 4ivb~5v, already in place; but see below, 74b.

1. 2 Cahlers 25', 31, 36

17

a result of being rejected by his mistress,25 and he now frequents brothels, where, he says, one can find women of good social status, like Mile d'Orcheville (or some such name). This is a preparation for the identification of Mile d'Orcheville at the end of a series of related incidents to be found in Cahier 36 (see 4.4c). Montargis and the Protagonist visit the salon of Mme de Guermantes (once, on f. 66, Proust slips into calling her Garmantes). He describes satirically the young women the Protagonist meets there, who have all the poise in the world but little depth. The last sentence is not complete; it ends with the words 'et une jeune. ' It is probably the same as one found on Cahier 36: 1: 'Et une jeune femme plus neuve, plus naive, plus timide, ' though the Inventories of the two Cahiers in question do not say so. 26 The passage in 36, like the last passage in 31, presents the Protagonist, with Montargis, visiting Mme de Guermantes. The two cahiers are of the same format. (c) Cahier 36, f.67v-53v and f.2-io We have presented 31 as a single sequence, culminating in f. i of 36. We shall follow Proust ten sheets into this new book. We believe, however, that simultaneously Proust had been using the other end of Cahier 36, (36'). 27 The fifth of the five segments in 36* was written after 31: 47, and the other four (variants of a single idea) were probably no earlier. All of these passages prolong the preoccupations of the latter parts of 31. First come four versions of a scene presenting a Mile de Cauderan, related to the Guermantes family, whom the Protagonist sees dining with her father in the hotel restaurant. 28 In the fifth segment, the Protagonist sees a girl at a ball given by Mme de Garmantes (sic), and tries in vain to identify 25 This passage may have impelled Proust to make the addition already mentioned, as well as an addition on f. 4i-4v, NP 1106-8, which refers to 'des dettes qu'il avait faites pour cette chanteuse. ' 26 NP agrees with us, and tacks 36 f. i onto the end of the extract from 31 (NP II, 1112, Esq Guer XII). The Inventory, p. 56, omits the words 'plus naive. ' 27 Proust began Cahier 36 from the back, but the Bibliotheque Nationale staff has paginated it the wrong way round, and we have no choice but to follow suit. We shall therefore call the main portion 36*, although the margins are on the right throughout. The Inventory is the work of Bernard Brun, BIP 9 (1979) 55-61. 28 37': 67v-66va; 66vb-6sv; 64-6ov with additions on 63r, 62r, 6ir; 5gv-56va. Presented by Georgette Tupinier 1973, 213-27. NP gives only the fragment on 66v-65v (II, 906-7, EsqJFFXXXV. i).

18 The Foundations her.29 The ball could not have been evoked before 31: 47, for that is where Proust had his Protagonist meet Mme de Guermantes for the first time. And although one should not attach too much importance to the relapse into Garmantes, it may be significant for the dating of 36" that the same lapse came towards the end of 31 (f. 66). If those pages were filled a little while before Proust reached the end of 31, one can understand his using the other end of the exercise book, reversed, to write what was needed to complete 31. It would also explain why he continued to write in the 'wrong' position (if he in fact did). We add that qualification because 36* presents a knotty chronological puzzle. In several respects it seems to be written in the wake of 31. Indeed, the first page must have been written at the same time as the last page of 31, as we have seen.30 From f. 2-io is an episode centred on the Baronne de Picpus's maid; this too could have been written at the same time. Of the next block or blocks we can be less sure. In the episode that begins on f.2,31 the Protagonist learns from Montargis that the Baronne de Picpus has a maid whose favours are easy to obtain (Montargis knew about such things in 31), but it is a whole year before he is able to meet her because, as he learns one day by a report in the newspaper, she is going to Venice and from there to the Indies. The Protagonist would like to go to Venice to look her up. Ishiki (thesis, I, 70) quotes here from the first carnet, f. 8: 'Depart opportun pour la cristallisation amoureuse. ' By the time he does meet her, she has been disfigured in an accident. When he talks with her then, he finds, thanks to a chance reference to Montargis's aunt 'de Guermantes, ' that she is from near Combray. Proust includes 29 f. 56vb~53v, with an addition on 551", NP III 960-1, Esq SG V; discussed by Tupinier, 240-1. On p. 961, NP 'corrects' Garmantes to Guermantes, which is indefensible. 30 Above, end of sect. i. ab. 31 Published for the first time by Fallois in 1953, and reproduced in the volume of Textes retrouves in 1968, 198-202; French ed., 1971, 263-8. Those versions omit the first sentence ('Je crois qu'elle ne vient pas en ce moment'), and give the ending that Proust added later (we discuss it in 44c). The passage is represented in NP I by a short extract only (897-8, Esq LXXIII, f. 8-g), and by a few lines quoted on p. 1063 (£5-6). The correct text (with both endings, and no comment) is in NP IV, 710-16 (Esq AD XVIII). There is a discussion of the passage in Ishiki, thesis, I, 69-73. On NP III, 1816, the passage is said to have been written 'vers 1910, ' but the close links with Cahier 4, and the fact that a later passage in Cahier 36 ties in with the fair copy of 'Combray' drawn up before the end of 1909, make this late date unlikely. NP IV (1353) gives 1909, without being more precise. Bardeche (II, 393-5) also suggests a later date for the Picpus incident, but that is because he believes it to be a revision of the version of the same episode found in Cahier 50, whereas the reverse is true (see 9. 3 n. 4).

1. 2 Cahiers2S\ 31, 36

19

reflections on the different images there are of Combray (£4-6).32 The affair seems to be advancing in a promising way when they are interrupted by the girl's aunt. Proust links the aunt to a passage in 31 (f. 18-19). She is the mother of the pianist whom the Protagonist has met in the salon of Mme de Verdurin. The aunt hates Verdurin, but likes Swann. The vulgarity and indiscretion of the aunt when they dine together at the restaurant cure the Protagonist of his desire for the niece. But the girl sends him postcards from Brou, and tells him that Theodule asks to be remembered to him. As well as being linked to 31, this passage is in the direct line from 4. The fisherman comes from 4, f. 28. Theodule the 'gargon pharmacien' recalls the 'garcon ferrant' of the same page. (In 12 he will find his definitive name and role, that of 'gargon epicier. ') The places near Combray include Guermantes (as in Cahier 4) and Brou. Brou, which becomes Pincouville or Pinsonville in Cahier 7,33 is a real place not far from Illiers, the real-life origin of Combray.34 (Proust had actually written Illiers before deciding on Brou. ) Combray is in the Eure-et-Loire, like Illiers. (In Cahier 4, indeed, the river was still the real Loir, not the Vivette that it will become in 12. ) We can therefore surmise confidently that these pages must have been written quite early. This certainty does not extend to the sequel. The passage that follows (f. iob-32a) has nothing to do with the Protagonist's affairs, nor (except indirectly) with Combray. It reverts to Swann and to his social situation after his marriage. It too could have been written along with the passages that precede it in the cahier, for it is not implausible that Proust should have wished to set down his ideas on the social career of Swann's widow and daughter after the former's death. Some names and some details seem to continue the preoccupations of 4 and 31. But one could well argue that Proust did not continue beyond f. 10 until later, and that is the position we adopt here. We give our reasons when we discuss the rest of Cahier 36 in section 4. 4 (see note 26). Meanwhile, the material of 4 and 31 is continued in other books: 6, 7, and then 51. 32 Ishiki (1985, 73-4) has interesting comments on the links between Combray and Venice/Padua. 33 Ishiki, I, 72 n. i. 34 See the map in Claudine Quemar 1975, facing p. 240. Ishiki (thesis, I, 71 n_4) gives many details about a different Brou, near Bourg-en-Bresse, which are interesting but not really relevant. Brun records it as Bron (19793, 56-7).

20 The Foundations 1.3 Cahiers 7, 6, and 51 After setting Cahier 36 aside, Proust opened three more exercise books, numbered 6, 7, and 51 in the Bibliotheque Nationale collection. 1 They were not written successively; Proust wandered from one to another. In general, 7 precedes 6*, but part of 6 was written when Proust had covered only a few pages of 7, and 51* was written before Proust completed 6. We can follow the movement between Cahiers 6 and 7,2 but it is less easy to be sure where in the sequence Proust wrote 51*. Certainly it must have been after 7: 40 and before 6: 29b. We present it before we deal with 6: 16. Neither 31 nor 36 had gone back to Combray material. The new books do, and they also continue along the lines begun in the previous books, with pages on Cottard and the Verdurins, and on Guercy, the future Charlus. In time, 'Combray' will divide into two, and the good-night kiss will be in the first part, while the walks will make up the second half of part two. The balancing pillar in part two will be the Protagonist's aunt Leonie, her visitors, and their conversations. One of these conversations makes its first appearance in 7 and 6*. (a) Cahier 7, £. 1-14 The conversation between the cure and the Protagonist's aunt, here 'Mme Charles, ' was sketched on f.1-4 of Cahier 7 (following the words, crossed out: 'Je me souviens qu'apres'), and immediately elaborated (f.4-9).3 A brief sequel is to be found in 6*, followed in turn by the Protagonist's comment that the church did not strike him the way it did the cure (6:3-5).4 He writes of the poetry the church contained for him. 1 The Inventories are in BIP 9 (1979): 6 by Elizabeth Des Fortes, 69-74, 7 by Claudine Quemar, 63-8, 51 by Bernard Brun, 75-7. 2 Cahier6 f. i-9 have to be inserted between 7: 14 and 15. Cahierb £. 10-15 follow on from the end of Cahier 7. 3 NP I, 733-4, Esq JFF XXV. NP references in this section are to vol. I unless indicated otherwise. 4 Like Cahier 36, 6 has been paginated upside-down. Therefore, when we refer to 6*, we are speaking of an exercise book where the margins are on the right of each page, while 6' has the appearance of a normal cahier. The first pages of 6' (f-7iv-68va, 68vb-67v, 66v63b) are early. The first of these three passages, on the steeples of Chartres, is transcribed by Wada in his thesis, I, 11-15, and it is given in NP I, 736-8, Esq XXVII. The NP editor also includes the two paragraphs that follow, on the same subject (f. 68vb-67v). The third passage, inviting girls into his apartment (they recall something he had seen 'a Querqueville ou a Paris'), is given in NP III, 1137-8, Esq Pr XII; see Pugh 71. If he wrote the

TT Claudine Quemar, who presented the avant-textes of the Combray church in an important study in the Cahiers Marcel Proust, was understandably puzzled that Proust should have left Cahier'] for Cahier b in the middle of a development, and concluded that f. io of Cahier'j was already filled, however improbable that might be, even for Proust.5 We see it rather differently. On 7: 9, the cure is talking of Guermantes, and Proust rounds the passsage off with a reference to the motif that launched the conversation (the painter in the church, who would like to see Guermantes, where the abbots are buried). Perhaps instead of continuing with the poetic counterpart to the cure's prosaic view of the church, Proust immediately decided to talk of Guermantes and another church, the old abbey. This passage, which runs from f. io to £14 of Cahier 7, was first reproduced in Fallois's edition of Contre Sainte-Beuve,6 and can be read in NP II, 1046-8. The Protagonist speaks to his mother about what he found at Guermantes, which was more, not less, than what he expected: the witness in stone to time. Proust had not yet excluded the 'present' (the Protagonist's conversations with his mother) from the narrative. On this argument, the passage near the beginning of 6, in which the Protagonist offered a corrective to the cure's view of the church (£3-5), would be a different development. But though that view disposes of Claudine Quemar's rather desperate solution, it does not explain why Proust took up a different exercise book at this point, yet returned to his original book when he had finished the episode - and for something much less relevant to what he had already set down in 7. (b) Cahier 6, f. i-9 The first entry written in 6 (f. 2) gives nine lines on the magic lantern that projected images of Genevieve de Brabant. 7 Opposite that (on f. iv, probably written after f. 2r, though the idea is developed immediately) is something on the objects to be found in churches, rich in historical and poetic

name Querqueville before he started a more organized narration in Cahier 8, this would be the first time he used it. If, on the other hand, the use of the name in Cahier 8 marks its first appearance, then this addition to Cahier 6 must have been written later, and we have no explanation for it. The handwriting does not encourage us to separate this third passage from the previous one. See 2. 1 n. i i. 5 Quemar 1973, 290 n. i. 6 CSBF 284-8, as far as 'champ d'azur. ' 7 Reproduced by Quemar 1973, 288 n. i; NP 662, Esq VI. i.

22 The Foundations

asssociations, making churches 'des lieux enchantes. '8 These two notions are elaborated on the pages that follow. Proust wrote three pages on the poetry of Combray church (6: 3~5),9 following a pivot, as we pass from the cure to the Protagonist. The connection betweeen the quasi-legendary figures associated with the church and the magic lantern is made explicit: 'ces personnages qui n'etaient guere pour moi qu'une silhouette eclatante, falote et tremblee dans ma lanterne magique' (f-4). Swann is mentioned in passing, as a connoisseur of art. Immediately following (f-5rb) is a note on the steeple, so intimately linked to emotions experienced at Combray, and giving its benediction to the street in which the church was situated. 10 This is essentially a reworking of something on £3. On f. 6 and 7, extended on 5v, Proust elaborated on the other motif, that of the magic lantern, which brings back memories of when the Protagonist was a boy, with his mother (NP 662-3, Esq VI. 2). The addition evokes the silhouette passing over and mysteriously transforming the wall. Thus, elements are creeping in that will eventually find a place in the first part of'Combray. ' The passage that covers the rest of f. y and also f. 8 and 9 was reproduced by Fallois (CSBF 298-300). The Protagonist is again talking to his mother (as on 7: 10-14) and the thoughts follow what was said there about the steeple. The sight of Combray steeple seen from Guermantes on that visit evoked in 7 reawakened a childish need to be with his mother, and he hastily packed his bag and left. This revelation of how he missed her as a child pushes the conversation into a new direction, as his mother delicately reminds him that he will one day lose her for good. (The passage immediately preceding, on the lantern, implied that she was indeed no longer with him: 'ces bras, je ne les avais plus, ' f. j. ) It seems therefore that the first nine pages of 6 elaborate on ideas noted on the first fourteen pages of 7. The sequel (6: 10-15) is the continuation of the very last item in 7, an essay on Baudelaire (7: 56-71). Proust must therefore have put Cahier 6 aside after f. g, and returned to 7. When he resumed Cahier 6, he wrote more on the church (see 1. 36). (c) Cahier 7, £15 et seq. A passage a little further on into 7 (£21-4) amplifies part of 6 (f. 3-5). Whether Proust wrote the pages on the Verdurins which precede that 8 Quemar 1973, 296-7. 9 Transcribed by Quemar 302-4, NP 733-4, Esq XXV. 10 Given in note a to p. 738 in NP I, 1447.

1. 3 Cotters 7, 6, 51 23

amplification (7: 15-20) before or after the new development in 6 cannot be known for sure, but the most sensible surmise would be that Proust reverted to 6 immediately upon completing £14 of Cahier']. After extending Combray in Cahier 6, therefore, Proust would have turned his attention to the character of Swann. Six pages of 7 (f. 15-20) are given over to the Verdurins, growing out of what Proust had written in 31. The first four, f. 15-183, coming after three jottings and a sentence about the Verdurins' clannishness, follow very smoothly onto 31: 23. '' Forcheville reveals to the Verdurins that Swann is well received by high society ('toujours fourre chez les La Rochefoucauld'). There follow three shorter segments. From f.: 8b to 193, with additions on the verso pages,12 there is a first portrait of Dr Cotard (sic),13 his ambiguous smile, and his predictable repliques. On f. igb-aoa, we are told that the musicians who attend the soirees are expected to play, though nothing had been planned. Finally (f. 2ob), we have the painter, whose enthusiasm for a Rembrandt he has seen recently enchants the company. He encourages Swann and his girlfriend, here called Wanda. After that, as we have said, Proust returned briefly to Combray, to the church as the Protagonist sees it (£21-4, NP 734-6).I4 These pages are not reproduced by Claudine Quemar. However, she summarizes them in the Inventory (66): 'Bien que sans comparaison avec les cathedrales et les grandes eglises celebres, Saint-Hilaire de Combray avec son abside grossiere, sa facade sur la rue, "absolument comme une autre maison, " et son clocher familier garde aux yeux du narrateur, depuis 1'enfance, un caractere unique et sacre. ' They develop the much shorter passage in 6 (f-5): 'il donnait au quartier quelque chose de sacre... il mettait sa marque sur tout. ' A sentence quoted by Ishiki in his thesis (I, 14 n>3), referring to 'deux charmants hotels Wanes' that he saw at Falaise, will not be entirely forgotten (see below, 6. 6, note 8). Another Combray incident follows: autumn walks the Protagonist takes after the death of the aunt, now called Bathilde (7: 25-9, NP 871-3, Esq LXV, Wada 119-23). He would read Augustin Thierry, and go off for a walk, frequently in the rain. Often he would get as far as Pinsonville. His grandmother suggested he should stay there some time, and board with one of the inhabitants, but he did not want to. In his exalted state, the youth longs to encounter a peasant-girl. Later (this follows four blank lines), he 11 12 13 14

See section i. 2b. From 'Cela n'empechait' to Tentendre' (NP 891). The error is corrected on f. igv. Esq XXVI. On p. 734, the source should be Cahier 7, not 6.

24 The Foundations discovered that the girl of his imaginings did actually exist there. This links up with Mme de Picpus's maid,15 but the passages are not wholly consistent. She is here called Viviane, the legendary name given also to Mile de Quimperle (i2: 53),16 and the village where she lives Pinsonville (and not Brou). Mme Picpus is not named here. (For more on Combray, see below, section e. ) From f. 29c to £54 Proust concentrates on a new character, Guercy. The various episodes delineated on 7 are familiar to readers of La Recherche. The first group belongs to the seaside resort: 17 - Montargis describes his uncle Guercy to the Protagonist (£290-303). - The Protagonist's bewildering first encounter with him (f. 3ob-ia; the additions on the verso pages were made much later). - The Protagonist is later introduced to him, and finds him very cold (f. 3ib-2a, also with later additions). - The Protagonist is puzzled by the contradictions of Guercy (32b~9a). Then we follow Guercy to Paris. 18 He visits the countess (who is his sister), and the Protagonist watches him (39b-4oa, NP 919). At that point, Proust left six lines blank, as if he intended to come back to this scene. But for the moment another idea is more urgent, and the sequel to 7: 40 is to be found in a different cahier, 51. The episode that follows (4ob-9a, NP 9I9-23)'9 introduces two new members of the Guermantes family, the prince and princess. The Protagonist never expects to be invited to their salon, but one day he is so invited, and there finds Guercy (once again cold). When he leaves, however, Guercy accosts him very warmly, only to retire behind his shell as soon as he realizes that he is being observed. In the first part of the episode, Proust dwells on the Protagonist's nervousness. He quotes a story of Huxley's 15 36: 2-10, see sect. i. 2c. 16 See Ishiki, 20, and below, 3. 1 0. 4. 17 We are ignoring additions on the versos. See below, 7. 40. F. 3orb-2ra are transcribed by Whiteley, thesis, 60-2. 18 NP III 919-28, first part of Esq I, with a summary only of f. 47b~9a. All this portion, from £39-55 and with the same cut, was reproduced in CSBF (247-60, chapter XIII). The only significant difference is that Fallois inserts into £53 a passage that follows a blank line on £54, whereas the Pleiade editor follows the order of the ms. Throughout this chapter, Fallois used the later form Quercy. 19 The last two pages (47b-9a) are summarized only, on III, 1799 (n. 2 to p. 923), and they are identified as f. 47-8.

1. 3 Cafoers7, 6, 51 25

about a lady suffering from hallucinations. In Cahier I, f. 11-13, this story is associated with the Protagonist's first visit to the house of the girl he loves.20 Now Proust is ready to give the revelation. The Protagonist realizes Guercy's secret: he is homosexual (4913-55, with additions). 21 F. 56 contains seven jottings which Claudine Quemar entitles 'Notes pour le langage de M. de Guermantes(?)' (Inventory, 68). After that Proust wrote an essay on Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire which brings us right back to the original Sainte-Beuve project. The essay goes to the end of the cahier (56b-yi, with many additions), and it is continued in Cahier 6, from f. io to 15, where it is entitled 'Fin de Baudelaire. ' The Baudelaire essay out of the way, Proust turned back to his novel. It is possible that what follows Baudelaire in 6 was written immediately. It elaborates on various ideas from 7. However, Cahier 51 does the same, and we present it here, rather than at the only other possible place, between the two halves of 6: 29. (d) Cahier 51, f. 1-22 Cahier 51 continues in the vein of Cahier 7. It contains passages at both ends. 22 The recto pages (51*: 1-22) present three portraits of Guercy: his encounter with Borniche when he visits Mme de Villeparisis; his encounter with the pianist, thanks to which he becomes an habitue of the Verdurins; and years later, his sad decline. The verso pages (5i': 68v-55v) treat the effect of Time, first at a soiree of the Princesse de Guermantes, and second in the same character's box at the theatre. Henri Bonnet prints the verso first (1982, 31-46), but gives no justification. We prefer to place it much later. There was no 'Bal de Tetes' in I9O9.23 The recto sequence is entitled 'Suite, ' though that word was written at a different time, and it elaborates on the paragraph temporarily abandoned in 7 (£39-40): the arrival of Guercy in the courtyard below the Protagonist's apartment. As Bonnet points out (47), Proust started Cahier 51* with the idea of telling what his Protagonist saw from the window: Guercy's encoun20 NP Esq JFF XIV, I, 1016-18. 21 NP III, 923-7 for the recto text; 927-8 gives f_5ov-2v, and f. 53v~4v fill the rest of 9280. Guercy's name is given as Gurcy on £. 50; see NP 924, n. i. 22 They have been transcribed by Bonnet (in his Matinee chez la Princesse de Guermantes, 1982; see section i of Bibliography), and (fragmented) in various parts of NP. 23 Schmid makes the same point (160). See sect. 8. 4b.

26 The Foundations

ter with Borniche. But the opening lines have been crossed out, and the incident now occurs on f. 6 only, contained in another episode. Mme de Villeparisis's relations with Monsieur and Madame de Guermantes are strained. They suspect that they might be cheated in their expectations of being Mme de Villeparisis's heirs.24 It is after a visit to his aunt that Guercy sees Borniche, and from then on he becomes an assiduous visitor. From 51 f. grb Proust wrote another Guercy episode: how he met the Verdurins. The Protagonist says he went to the Verdurin salon because he wanted to see 'la tante de [Celia] Leoni. ' This must be the character introduced in Cahier 36*, except that he did not find her particularly sympathetic then. On one occasion he sees Guercy in earnest conversation with the pianist (the lady's son, as we know). The new liaison risks causing the defection of the pianist, but his mother has M. de Guercy enrolled in the salon (f. io). A sheet is missing,25 and on f. 11 we are already in the salon, with Cottard and the painter; Forcheville is introduced later (f. 15). These characters come from Cahier 7. The passsage is a variation on the theme of the social personality, already broached in connection with Swann. It runs to f. lyra.26 On the facing page (i6va) a note of three lines: 'Guercy invite chez lui les Verdurin etc. ' Beneath it, in different ink and probably written at a different time, is another addition, on Guercy's son.27 The sequel, following without any break, runs from f. iy to f. 22. It takes place years later. Mme Verdurin is dead. The Protagonist comes across Guercy, now old and decrepit, but magnificent like King Lear, with Borniche 'devenu son secretaire. ' Borniche tells the Protagonist that the Guermantes have inherited from Mme de Villeparisis. Thus the epilogue to a not very promising episode gives us the first hint of one panel of Le Temps retrouve: the transforming power of Time. Brun (1979, 16) believes there was an 'etat anterieur de 1'oeuvre, se terminant par la conversation, ' but nothing justifies such a claim. Proust did not return to Le Temps retrouve before 1911 (see 9. 4).

24 This possibly grows out of a remark on 31 £51: 'en dehors de tous les Guermantes et parents attentifs a un heritage qu'on disait considerable. ' 25 Bonnet suggests (56 n. i) that the missing word needed to complete f. 10 is 'joues, ' but when the same sentence reappears at the bottom of f. i i the word is 'levres. ' 26 On £15-16 the name Guercy is three times written Guerchy. We find this form also in Cahier 4 (f-42); see i. i n. 1427 F. i6vb, iyv; see Bonnet ed., Matinee, 73 n. i, and also below, 8. 4b at note 3.

1. 3 Cahiersl, 6, 51 27 (e) Cahier 6, f. 16 et seq. We can now return to Cahier 6. On f. 16, Proust wrote 'Suite du dr. Cottard, ' and we have three segments (NP I, 892-7, Esq LXXII). The first (892-4) runs from f. 16 to 20a, skipping £19, and it speaks of Cottard's lack of finesse, which provokes a page on the sensibility of the Verdurins, of Cottard's lack of social confidence, and of M. Verdurin's knowledge of medicine. Proust then speaks of Swann's knowing M. de Grevy, which we count as a second segment (2ob~5a, NP 895-7). An addition, found on f. 2ov and 2 iv 28 (NP 894-5), amplifies the initial suggestion of Cottard's lack of social self-confidence. A third segment (25b-9a)29 introduces another guest of the Verdurins, Princess Sherbatoff. From the look of the page, Proust did break between 29a and 29b, but not between 253 and 25b. After f. 29a, Proust left the Verdurins behind. From f. 29b to 32, he gives a past to Guerchy, as the name has now become (NP III, 929-30, continuation of Esq i ).3° A casual reference to his catching the train might mean that Proust had already written his account of Guercy meeting the pianist, which happens in a railway setting (51: 9). For this reason, we tend to believe that 51* preceded the continuation of 6*. But was the passage on Cottard in 51 already written when Proust first turned back to Cahier 6? Nothing settles the matter one way or the other. Both passages (that in Cahier 6 and that in Cahier 51) refer back to Cahier 7, but do not make reference to each other. Following his title on 6: 16, Proust wrote: 'Fait suite a ce que le Docteur Cottard au repos avait 1'air de sourire preventivement. '31 The reference is evidently to 7: 18-19. Cottard must have come in on the missing page after f. 10 of Cahier 51. On f. 11 we hear Cottard exclaim: 'Le marquis? Qui ca?' The origin of that remark is also in Cahier 7, f. 18v. After 6: 32 (and still in the wake of Baudelaire), Proust wrote about Nerval (f. 33-6a). Fallois incorporated these pages into an essay on Nerval

28 NP (1476) gives the reference as 2ov and 22v, and says that the recto pages go as far as f. 2j. See sect. 6. 1 n. 25. 29 NP III, 1007-9, Esq SG X. 30 Reproduced also in CSBF 262-3, 265-6. On 263-5, Fallois substituted for f-3ib a longer development of the same idea which is to be found on £39-41, and which the NP editors rightly put where it belongs, on 931-2. 31 Bardeche (278 n. 2) gives 'Collard (sic), ' but the two t's are perfectly clear on the manuscript. The words 'au repos' were underlined by Proust.

28 The Foundations taken from Cahier $*\ Clarac sees the text of Cahier 6* as the sequel to that of 5*32 On f-36b, following Nerval, is a short passage on the absolute distinction between names that recall Trouville and superficially similar names that recall Combray. Proust cites Pinconville, evoked as Pinsonville in Cahier j (f. 25-9).33 The next passage Proust noted down on Cahier 6 was a five-page reflection on 'la race des tantes' (f. 37~4i).34 A brief passage on two verso pages, describing a solitary young man observed at Querqueville (f-35v and 36v)35 is probably an addition to the foregoing, and intended as a prelude. Given its position, and the fact that Querqueville has not been mentioned before,36 it was very likely written later. At the end of Cahier 6* Proust came back to Combray, to the crypt of the church (f. 42),37 and to the scene of the good-night kiss, announced long before, but never yet described, and now filling nine pages ^. 43-51). In Cahier 4 it was not this one crucial incident that Proust related, but a general disquiet which seized the child every evening, and which was intensified on those occasions when his mother did not come to his bedroom, either because of the late return from the family walk, or because of a visit from Swann.38 The new episode is summarized in the Inventory (73), and reproduced in NP.39 It covers the note sent to his mother40 via Francoise, the long wait, the unexpected reaction of his father, the acceptance by his parents of his illness, and the reading of George Sand. 41 32 CSB 240-2, CSBF 163-6. 33 In Cahier 6 it is spelled Pir^onville and Pinsonville once each, Pinconville twice. We should not attach any importance to the fluctuations in the name, and the omission of the cedilla is habitual with Proust (as with Francoise, passim). Brun in his thesis (148), and Des Portes in the Inventory (72), give the name as Pincouville, but we read Pinconville. Wada (164 n. i) reads it the same way. 34 NP III, 930-3. Fallois saw this as a reworking of material used for Guercy ten pages earlier, and inserted £39-413 into his transcription of £29-32 (CSBF 263-5, included in 262-6). 35 NP III, 933, CSBF 261-2. 36 But see above, n. 4. 37 Quemar 1973, 305-6. 38 4: 23-5, Inventory p. 40. 39 I. 673-7, Esq X. 40 'Maman, ' and not 'Mme Proust' as Elizabeth des Portes's summary implies. 41 Short passages are transcribed by Enid Marantz, 1982, 34 (passages J, X, and K, f_49, 50 and 51). See also her comments, p. 28-9.

1. 99 Conclusion

29

F. 52 and 51 v are passed over in the Inventory. Proust had two shots at a paragraph beginning 'C'etait une de ces petites villes de province. ' Nothing explicitly indicates Combray, and the motif of silence, which was to have been developed here, does not seem to have retained Proust for long. But it is the first sketch of what will be the first paragraph of'Combray II, ' once the formal distinction of the two parts has been made. Finally, on £53, Proust jotted down some lines on the sound of the church bell at midday (reproduced in the Inventory, 74).42

1. 99 Conclusion We have been considering a first run through material that has not yet organized itself, but which with hindsight strikes us as containing already many elements that become keystones of the later novel. The first part, 'Combray, ' was less fragmentary than the rest, and Proust frequently returned to it, adding new incidents. Swann, associated in the first place with Combray, was the subject of later developments, about his early affairs, set in the salon of the Verdurins. He was also to have been introduced in a seaside setting, though he quickly yielded there to the Protagonist himself, and to a cluster of new characters, all associated with another family, the Guermantes (Mme de Villeparisis, Montargis, the count and countess, Guercy). Each of these characters gave rise to another, and hence to new developments of the fictional narrative. Moreover, these different threads often criss-crossed. Guercy visited the Verdurins, and the property of Guermantes was located in the Combray region. In the next phase we shall find Proust returning to Combray, and building his pieces into a controlled structure.

42 For the last pages, written in the reversed position, see above, n. 4.

chapter 2 A First Version of 'Combray' (June to August 1909)

'Dans le futur Du cote de chez Swann... c'est la genese de Combray qui est la plus difficile a suivre. '

J.-Y. Tadie1 2. O Introduction In May 1909, with a rough outline down on paper, Proust could return to important incidents, rewrite them, develop them, and amplify his sketches. Equally important was the need to organize his episodes and create a coherent framework. He began, not surprisingly, with the Combray section, the one dealing with the Protagonist's childhood and prefaced by the Protagonist in the present, lying in bed and reflecting. This first version of 'Combray' is to be found in Cahiers 8 and 12. Since the posthumous publication of an article by Claudine Quemar in 1982, it has become customary to present Cahier 8 later in the sequence, after a number of exercise books that, like 6, 7, 31, and 36, contain a variety of sketches. These are Cahiers 12, 25, 26, and others too. We believe firmly, however, that the view which prevailed in the 19705 was correct, namely, that the first part of Cahier 12 follows directly the version of 'Combray' given in Cahier'8, and that the books used in the wake of 12 represent a new stage in Proust's elaboration of his novel. In this chapter, we concentrate on Cahier 8 and the first forty-two pages of Cahier 12. Later, Proust would divide 'Combray' into 'Combray F and i Tadie 1983, 20.

2. 1 'CombrayF 31 'Combray II, ' and that distinction provides a useful way to split this chapter into two sections. 2 We add a third section detailing Proust's attempts to interest a publisher in the novel he had undertaken, in the month of August 1909. All the Pleiade references in this chapter are to volume I, unless otherwise stated. 2. 1 'Combray I' (Cahier 8) As we have seen, Proust already had material in Cahiers 4, 6, and 7 for his Prologue (the Protagonist in bed, recalling other bedrooms including the one at Combray), for the unhappy memory of being deprived of his goodnight kiss, for the walks in the Combray countryside, for a Combray neighbour (Swann), and for the church. So far, however, he had not made the radical distinction between a conscious memory of Combray and another kind of memory, released by association through tasting a particular biscuit. That will come in Cahier 8 - but not immediately. The first eleven pages of Cahier % give a first draft of the opening portions of the novel. Proust then amplified and augmented his text, on the verso pages and also on f. 12 et seq. At that moment he saw how the ideas should be organized, and going back to the beginning of the Combray section, he rewrote, continuing long past the point he had reached on f. 11. This version, recognizably the novel that we know (although several passages are not yet in existence, and others have still to be given their definitive place) continues, we believe, with Cahier 12. Some forty pages into 12, Proust abandoned 'Combray, ' and recalled the Protagonist in bed in order to launch the next division, memories of the seaside resort the Protagonist visited in his adolescence. Cahier 8 is not without its problems. While some sketches are found where we would expect them to be, facing the passages they amplify, others are often quite independent of any recto text. There are signs that pages have been removed from the exercise book. And there are four pages at the end of the cahier that were manifestly written later than what had gone before. It is unfortunately difficult to glean the necessary information from the Inventory, as the person responsible, Annie Mejean, has often run

2 The NP edition, more accurately but more cumbersomely, prefers Du cote de chez Swann I, i and 1, 2.

32 A First Version of 'Combray'

recto text and verso elaborations together as one sequence, ignoring the obviously chronologically significant divisions. 1 The summaries are, however, useful as an indication of what was and what was not in place at this stage. The essential elements that we are dealing with here are six: (a) (b) (c) (d)

the Protagonist in bed, recalling various rooms he has slept in the particular example of Combray the magic lantern, palliative to the sorrow of bedtime the painful memory of being deprived, by a visit from M. Swann, of his mother's kiss (e) the seeming impossibility of remembering anything else, before the day he tasted a biscuit that brought back whole areas of his childhood experience to his mind (f) the authentic evocation of Combray, beginning with the sight of the steeple, and the streets of the little town

Many of these elements are extant, though not yet structured. Element 'a' has occurred in many of the first sketches (3*, I*),2 but only in passing in 4.3 Element 'c' (the lantern) is found in 6 among sketches for the church (see section i-3b). Element 'd' (the dramedu coucher) was hinted at on 4 but not described, as Proust expanded at length on the two reasons why the child sometimes went without his mother's kiss, namely, the walks (now in Combray II) or the visits of Swann, treated in the round as a character and not just as a visitor. The crucial incident itself came in 6. The painful memory is in any case not yet detached from other memories, as element 'e' (the madeleine) has not been called upon, although it can be traced back to the essay on Sainte-Beuve. 4 The sixth element (the evocation of life at Combray) draws on Cahier 4.5

1 BIP 12 (1981) 27-32. Cahier& can be reconstituted fairly accurately from the documentation in NP I, notably Esguisses IV, XV, VII, XII, XVI, XVII, XLII, XXII, XIII. 2 See the study by Milly, 1979/80. 3 f. 23: 'Souvent je ne me rendormais plus et ma pensee evoquait ma vie dans 1'une de ces chambres d'autrefois ou a Finstant je m'etais cru couche. L'une de celles dont le souvenir gardait pour moi quelquechose de douloureux etait la chambre que j'habitais a Combray quand j'etais petit. ' 4 NAF 16636, f. i; CSB 211-12, CSBF 53-4. See Pugh 1987, 49-51. 5 Presented in sect, i. i, above.

2. 1 'Combray F

33

(a) The Prologue (f. i-9)

At the beginning of 8, the Protagonist-Narrator6 is lying in bed, thinking of other places where he has lived, and he proceeds to evoke one of these, Combray. The first version, as we have said, goes to f. ii. The first nine pages correspond to the Prologue (element 'a, ' NP I, 3: 1-9: 8),7 but with significant differences (NP 653-8, Esq IV).8 Proust begins by informing us that at the time of the matinee he wants to narrate (a clear preparation for the last part of the novel as it was then conceived), he used to sleep during the day, although previously he was in the habit of going to bed early. He thinks of various rooms that he has slept and woken in. These are enumerated in an undisciplined way, with sundry additions. On f. 5 he imagines himself'chez Mme de Villeparisis a la campagne' or 'dans la chambre de Combray, chez mes grands parents morts depuis longtemps. '9 On f. 6 and 7 Proust reworked this paragraph, with countless additions in the margin of f. y and on the facing page (6v), along with a small number of additions on f. 5v and 6rm, yv, and 8rm. Jean Milly's transposition of these pages, which are extremely difficult to sort out, is invaluable. 10 On f. y the Narrator evokes a barracks where he has to get up and find himself a cup of coffee 'avant de partir en marche, musique en tete. ' Finally Tange de la certitude' restores the present reality, and he knows he is not in any of the places he has just fleetingly recalled. However, 'le branle etait donne a ma memoire' and he lies awake thinking of his life 'a Combray, a Querqueville, ailleurs encore, les etres que j'y avals connus, ce que j'avais su d'eux, ce qu'on m'en avait raconte' (£9, cf. NP 9: 4-8). This may be the

6 The distinction between the Protagonist, principal character of the story, and the Narrator, looking back on the past from his present standpoint, is at times forced, but in a rough and ready way, it is quite useful. See sect, i. o n. 2. 7 I. e., New Pleiade edition, vol. I, page 3, line I, to page 9, line 8. 8 Also Quemar 1976 (BIP 3) 12-13. 9 The comma there is ambiguous, as it could mean that the grandparents' house is, or is not, the one at Combray. An addition on f. g implies that the grandparents were associated with Paris: 'notre vie d'autrefois a Combray, ' though even there we are not free from ambiguity, as the sentence could be construed 'notre vie d'autrefois a Paris, chez mes grands-parents a Combray. ' Milly (see next note) and Keller (1978) both put a comma after 'grands-parents, ' which clarifies the sentence. NP puts commas after both 'Paris' and 'grands-parents' (658). 10 Milly 1979, 16-18, transcribing £7-9, 6v, and 7v.

34 A First Version of 'Combray'

first mention of Querqueville (later to become Balbec).11 It is perhaps significant that Querqueville was not included on £5-7, as if Proust only saw the full structural possibilities when he picked up the motif on £. 9; at that time he would have realized that he ought to give a name to his anonymous resort, to balance the name of Combray. At the moment the structural frame is thus simple: after the hazy memories, the conscious memories of Combray (part one of the novel), of Querqueville (part two), maybe of other places too (not yet conceived). Proust started on Combray immediately, simply writing 'alinea' in the margin (f. Qrb: element 'f'). (b) A false start (£9-13) But first there was a false start (NP 702-3, Esq XV). What Proust tells us of Combray is not yet structured the way it will be in the novel, with its distinction betweeen the one memory his conscious mind has retained and the fuller memories released by the madeleine. The elements come into this first sketch, but they are not yet in place. It begins, as 'Combray II' will do, with the words 'Combray, de loin, a dix lieues a la ronde. ' He first describes Combray as it is seen from the train, 'une eglise, resumant la ville. ' He mentions the streets (Saint-Hilaire, Sainte-Hildegarde, the rue du Saint-Esprit), the constant awareness of mortality, the house presided over by Leonie (as she is now called). This is the sixth of the elements listed above, and it will of course become the opening of 'Combray II, ' NP 47-8. In the next paragraph he says he retained only an 'image tronquee' of Combray (f. io): the bedroom, the staircase, the dining room, decor for the upsetting evenings when Swann's visits meant that he had to go without his mother's kiss (element 'd'). He remembered nothing else until one day he chanced to taste a biscotte dipped in tea (element 'e, ' f. i ia).12 Thus we have 11 The name also occurs in Gahier 6, in a passage that might be earlier still; see sect, i. 3 n. 4 and 36. (If Cahier 12, in which the seaside resort is named, did antedate Cafoer8, as Quemar believed, then 12 would be the first time the name was used. ) 12 Bardeche (1971) astutely comments (I, 251) that there is something implausible about using involuntary memory to restore the memory of a place visited right up to puberty, and says that it made more sense in an early version that restored the memory not of Combray/Illiers but of his grandfather's country house (i. e., Auteuil), which Proust knew when he was four years old. But he is wrong to imply that the person remembered in the early versions of the novel (8 and 25") is still the grandfather. The Auteuil connection is made only in the Sainte-Beuve preface, NAF 16636, f. 1-2 (CSB 212, CSBF 54).

2. 1 'Combray I'

35

here the beginning and the end of the long dramedu coucher section, but for the moment no more.13 Proust left a space, the equivalent of one complete page ( l i b and I2a), which may indicate a break in the writing; however, the passage that follows is the logical sequel to the madeleine. After the revelation he is able, he says, to remember Combray as it was, for example, the rue des Perchamps, which no longer exists. After this warning - that his memories are not a reliable guide to the present state of Combray - he can begin his Combray section afresh: 'Combray, de loin, a dix lieues a la ronde' (£13). The structure is now clear. The less selective account of Combray sketched on £9-11 as an introduction to the original short version (the general view, the streets, the aunt) becomes the introduction to 'Combray II, ' following the revelation afforded by the madeleine. But before proceeding with that, Proust broke off, and what we in fact find on f.13b and 14-45 is a third version of the dramedu coucher'(see next subsection). The madeleine will follow (see 2. id) and then the full evocation of Combray (2. 2a). However, none of this was written immediately. 14 Before he started on it, Proust wrote the magic-lantern episode (element 'c') on f. gv-iiv (reproduced in NP 663-5, Esq VII). Proust made two changes to his first sentence. The text on f. gv originally began: 'Cette chambre ou je couchais dans une triste maison ou nous avions habite il y a bien longtemps. ' The first words became 'Je revoyais la chambre, ' which makes a good way to lead in from the Prologue, and he added after 'couchais': 'chez mon grandpere. ' Perhaps at the same time he added 'a Paris chez mes grands parents' to the indication of the places he would remember (f. ga: 'a Combray, a Querqueville, ailleurs encore'). 15 The lantern is therefore not yet associated with Combray. It was to be placed first, before the evocation of Combray; a sign placed between 93 and 9b indicates clearly where it was to be inserted. '6 As soon as Proust decided 13 The experience of tasting the biscuit is not developed; Proust does not even use the analogy with the Japanese paper flowers that he had hit upon in the draft preface to his Sainte-Beuve essay (NAF 16636 f. 2, CSB 212). Keller (1978, 19) thinks that Proust was keeping it in reserve for the essay, which he still hoped to publish. But the rest of the passage is so close to the preface that that argument will not wash. 14 The account we are about to give of the expansion of £9-13 seems plausible. The fact that f. i I is unattached need not detain us. CaftierS would belong to the class of exercise book where the first of its six quires consists of five and one-half double sheets, with the second quire starting at f. 12. 15 See above, n. g. 16 See Keller 69-70.

36

A First Version of 'Combray'

to rewrite his Combray material, beginning at I3b, he struck out everything from gb to I3a and wrote a sign at the end of f. 11 v and at the end of f. 133. The position of the latter sign, placed before the continuation of the text and not in the margin, shows that the lantern was written as an intercalation into the first version of the evocation, before Proust embarked on the fuller and better-organized version that begins at f. i3b. Keller has pointed out that the phrase 'Ma chambre de Combray, ' squeezed in somewhat awkwardly at the very bottom of f. I3b, follows a passage on another room (i. e., Paris, scene of the magic lantern, f. gv-i iv) more smoothly than it would follow the text of f. i3a. 17 (c) The good-night kiss (f. 14-45) The drame du coucher follows, in a well-amplified version (f.I3b-45), 18 which contains the social comedy surrounding Swann's visits and his 'other life. ' This comes on £17-30. The elements are (a) the family's inability to accept the evidence concerning Swann's connections, (b) the first clue, which came from Mme de Villeparisis, (c) the disapproval of the family, once they do realize, and (d) the would-be subtle hints the aunts let drop in front of Swann. Most of this is drawn from Cahier 4, f. 46-y, 53-60 (see i. i). Mme de Villeparisis was not in that previous version, but she was introduced in the sequel, £63 (NP 685): she had been brought up with the Protagonist's grandmother at Sacre-Coeur. The same detail reappears in Cahier8, f. 24, with the new information that she is of the illustrious family of Bouillon. Her nephews (subsequently altered both times to 'nieces') are the Villebons (f. 26); the name of Villebon, forerunner of Guermantes in 4, lingers on.19 The section describing Swann's visit and the family's reaction is not as full as in the familiar version. We are told how the family responds to the sound of the bell (NP 13: 31-14: 37, see p. 681), then Swann appears, Swann the best friend of the Protagonist's great-uncle. The latter, we are told, generally disliked Jews and amused himself humming songs that alluded to 17 Keller 12; he arrives at the same conclusion as ourselves, though by a needlessly tortuous route. 18 NP 679-94, EsqXII. 19 See above, i. i.

2. 1 'CombrayF 37 Jews whenever Swann was present (£18-19, NP 681-2, subsequently transferred to Bloch's visit, NP 90-1). Swann takes it in good part. Next, Swann's double life, which the family astonishingly did not suspect, though they were aware that he did not live in a manner altogether appropriate to his bourgeois status (f20-3, NP 682-4, cf. I5:33-I6: 33, 17: 14-18: 12). When told that he had dined 'chez une princesse, ' they interpreted the phrase in a special way. The real facts they failed completely to notice. 20 Proust makes an observation here, that we are seen quite differently by different people (£23-43, cf. 18: 34-19: 5).2I Then he says (f. 24b, NP 685) that his family's suspicions were aroused by a remark made by an old friend of his grandmother's, Mme de Villeparisis (NP 20: 1-7). There was a little more about Mme de Villeparisis at this stage than we find now. We are told that learning that Swann knew Mme de Villeparisis's 'Villebon nieces' diminishes the latter rather than elevating the former. (In the published text this is applied to Mme de Villeparisis herself, NP 20: 24-41. ) But worse is to come (f. 26, NP 685-6). The suspicions become reality when they discover that Swann dines in high society. To the aunt this is 'une sorte de declassement, ' and Swann loses all the benefit of his respectable bourgeois station (as NP 20: 42-2113, 8-21). However, Proust continues (f.27, NP 686-7), the grandfather seized the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity about the personalities of high society - a curiosity that (along with his literary tastes) his sisters-in-law were far from sharing (cf. 21: 3-8, 24-41, 24: 31-27: 3). From the last line of £30 (NP 687) the perspective changes, and we concentrate on the emotions of the boy, deprived of his mother's kiss. The reading of George Sand to console the anxious child took only two pages in this version (£44-5, NP 694). There is first his grandmother's choice of book, which his father thinks eccentric (cf. NP 39: 10-19), then the reading of La Mare au Diable I Francois le Champi (41: 9, 32-3, 41), obscure because his mother omitted the love scenes. But when she had retired, he retained an impression of utter magic. He evokes especially the moonlight scene, and the peculiar aptness of his mother's voice to the prose of George Sand (she found Flaubert vulgar). The Narrator muses on the memory that has stayed with him. La Mare still means for him that particu20 Here Proust repeated, in slightly different form, something he had written on f. 20. The definitive version of the idea is found at 15: 33-43. 21 The passage was longer then, and the two sentences inverted. See the lower half of NP 684, beginning at 'Et si j'y pense. '

38 A First Version of 'Combray'

lar copy, read with that voice. It was his initiation into the reading of novels. He is frightened to become over familiar with La Mare in case the magic wears off. 22 (d) The madeleine (£46-8) With f. 46 we arrive at the biscuit episode, which had featured in the SainteBeuve preface and had been first introduced into the novel on f. 11 of the present cahier, at the point where Proust left a space of two half-pages. Here again we run into a crop of very curious textual problems. As we know the incident, it follows a well-defined sequence: - that is effectively all he remembered of Combray; the rest was dead - the Celtic legend that the souls of the dead are imprisoned in material objects - the tasting of a madeleine, and the sensation produced - the effort of will required to identify the association - the original memory - the rest of Combray, now resuscitated F. 46 gives the first element, and the beginning of the second. It amplifies the version found on f. io-i I and contains several corrections, including a passage added in the margin. 23 F. 47, which starts in mid-sentence, and continues on the following page, gives the last two elements. 24 Keller supposes (13) that there are several sheets missing, and the NP edition confidently asserts that four sheets have disappeared. 25 We can in fact affirm that while four sheets were removed, only two are actually missing, as f. 46 and 47 have been restored to their correct position, between f. 45 and 48.26 22 See Marantz 1982, 31. 23 The passage under discussion is not reproduced in NP. See Keller's study of the avanttextes of the madeleine, 29-31 (transcription), 72 (reproduction), and 14 (commentary). The marginal addition goes from 30 line 7 to 31 line 3 of the transcription. 24 Keller 27-8 (transcription), and 13 (commentary). 25 NP695 and 1065. 26 Four sheets were removed between £45 (the tenth sheet of the fifth quire) and 48 (the third sheet of the sixth quire). F. 46 and 47 appear to be the eleventh and twelfth sheets of the fifth quire, but that is because they were pasted in at that point. It is probable that f. 46 is back where it always was. F. 47, however, must have been the second sheet of the sixth quire.

2. 2 'CombraylF 39

A reason for the removal of four sheets is given in the NP edition, where we read that 'Proust a du les arracher pour faciliter le travail de recopiage de cet episode dans les derniers feuillets de ce cahier' (1065). The later version is far more than a 'recopiage'; it represents a complete reworking, but the idea that Proust wanted to remind himself of what he had written on f. 46 et seq. is very plausible. Proust would not have removed f. 48, because it contained the continuation of the next section ('Combray II, ' see 2. 2) and had to stay where it was. He must then have realized that £47 had to be restored, because the verso side contains the opening of Combray II. But he probably did not go so far as to paste it back into place; that would have been done when the cahier'was restored, and f. 46 (sole survivor of the other three floating sheets) would have been pasted in at the same time. In contrast to f.46, f-47-8 are relatively untroubled, like all of f.13-45, and Keller assumes (14) that they belong to two distinct versions, £46 replacing the first part of an earlier version that survives in f. 47~8. He therefore transcribes f. 46 after f. 47-8. But it could simply be that Proust found the first page more difficult than the rest. The parts reworked are precisely the ideas not contained in the version of f. io-i i. The fact that only two sheets are unaccounted for, and that they would correspond in content to three sheets of the next version (f. 67, 68, and 68v) would indicate that the version represented by £46 and 47-8 is a single unit. Moreover, it is difficult to see where f. 46 could have come from if it were written after f. 48. The cahier\\zs manifestly not been tampered with after f. 48; from f. 47 to the end the quires are complete and the content uninterrupted before f. 66. Proust's further attempts to produce a satisfactory version of the madeleine episode (including f. 66v-69 of the current cahier) will be discussed in section 5-3C. 2. 2 'Combray IF We continue with the sketch for 'Combray' set down in Cahier % and Cahier 12. This is the evocation of life in the little town, triggered by the madeleine, and distinct from the memory the Protagonist retained of the good-night kiss. (a) Tante Leonie (Cahier 8, £48-66) Having completed the biscuit sequence, Proust will obviously embark now on the proper evocation of Combray, beginning with the familiar phrase

40 A First Version of 'Combray'

'Combray, de loin, a dix lieues a la ronde. ' And he did write the word 'Combray. ' But he crossed it out, noted 'Voir la page en regard et suivre ensuite ici, ' and the first paragraph of the new section is copied onto the facing page (f-47v; 1 NP 703-4, Esq XVI). The text is virtually identical with what he had written originally on f. 9-io.2 F. 48b starts off with the portrait of Aunt Leonie (the point where Proust had stopped on f. 12). Evidently the urge to create was strong, and he did not want to waste time copying something with which he was satisfied. That could be done later, on the facing page. The section on Leonie (NP 704-14, Esq XVII) comprises -

the description of her room (f. 48-9, NP 48: 25-52: 6), her conversation with Frangoise (£49-53, NP 54: 13-58: 13), the presentation of Eulalie (£54-9, NP 67: 40-70: 6), her conversation with Francoise in the afternoon (£59-61, NP 99: 38-102: 3), and - the visit of the cure (f. 61-6, NP i02: 3~iO5: 2i).3 For the aunt's conversations with the cure, Proust followed closely what he had written in Cahier'j (£4), even forgetting to change her name from Mme Charles to Mme Octave.4 The verso sides are covered with additions that we shall present later, in section 3. 2. This portion of the novel takes us to £66, 'On les a transported tous deux au Musee de Cluny. ' These pages were ordered differently at this stage.5 Immediately after the sentence that characterized Leonie's confined existence (£48, NP 48: 25-32), Proust wrote: 'Quand j'etais reste un instant avec elle le matin elle me renvoyait. ' Her words, with a few changes, are now on NP 52: 3-6. In this version it was after he left her, rather than before he entered her room, that he could hear her talking to herself (50: 3-11). The observation comes nevertheless at the beginning of the passage. Next came the description of her bedroom (52: 28-39) divided at line 35 by her dismissal of the boy (51: 41-52: 2): Elle-meme quand me disant: va jouer mais n'oublie pas de faire ta priere au bon Dieu, quand elle me tendait son front pale et fade ou les 23 63: 1-7) the Protagonist's view of the church (58-66; f. 8-22) Eulalie and Francoise (105-8; £22-7) 22 With one additional sentence (recorded on NP 1118 as the first sentence of 43 var. a). 23 These pages have been transcribed by Quemar (1973, 321-2). Cahier 10 ends with an elaboration by the cure of the difficulty he has with the light refracted through the stained-glass window (following 103: 32, at the fourth line of NP 1152).

3. 3 The fair copy of 'Combray'

75

- Saturday routine (108-10; £27-30) Legrandin (66-7; £30-2) - Leonie, imaginary dramas (i 14-17; £32-6) - Legrandin's behaviour (i 17-19; £. 36-8) - Francoise and the maid (i 19-22; £38-44) - Legrandin explained (122-31; f. 44-58) - The Two Ways (beginning) (131-3; £. 58-62) From this outline we can see first that while the third copybook is essentially based on the first seventeen pages ot Cahier I2,24 the material written later in 12, and on the verso pages of 8 (Legrandin, the kitchen-maid; see above, 3. i and 3. 2) is included in the text. We see also that the Protagonist's corrective to the cure's view of the church still followed the latter, as in the sketches (see 2. 2c). 25 When it is moved, the first Legrandin incident will go with it, making their meeting Legrandin a Sunday rather than a Saturday event. Two observations should be made concerning the material taken from Cahier 12. When he copied f. ii (63: 23), Proust amplified what he had written on Fran9oise's resentment of Eulalie. The addition is sketched first on I2: 98;26 it corresponds to NP 106: 2-5, n-i4> 32-7. Second, the third copybook includes the episode of Legrandin, already pretty well complete in 12 (£74-89). We noted earlier (at the end of section 3. 2) that Proust was considering inserting the first part of this episode into the unit on Saturdays (i2: i6v). In accordance with the implications of that note, the three parts of the Legrandin material (the friendly greeting, the snub, the explanation) are integrated into the 'Combray' text at three different moments. 27 The text of the Copy is in some respects different from that of Cahier 8, even in its augmented form. In particular the pages on the kitchen-maid were expanded, after the copyist had left Proust's service. We discuss the matter in section 4. 53. The new passages, which take the Protagonist to Padua, and supply a footnote on Gustave Moreau, did not survive. 24 Not Cahier 8, as stated NP clii. 25 In the paragraph beginning on NP 62 (about his grandmother's appreciation of the steeple), the second sentence (describing the crows) is not yet written. 26 In our progress through Cahier 12 we have reached £96 (the kitchen-maid, sect. 3. 2). On f-97 of 12 (a page ignored by both the Inventory and the summary on the inside cover, but reproduced by Bardeche, II, 90 n. 2), there is a note about Mme de Guermantes, 'oiseau a grandes ailes mais a forte colonne spinale, ' and the relation of love to certain 'moments d'exaltation. ' The note is too elliptical to be interpreted, but we can note that both notions recur in the material presented in our next chapter. 27 See Schmid 1998, 167.

76

Beyond Combray, and Back Again

We see also that three episodes are missing: Uncle Adolphe (NP 71-9), reflections on reading, including the visit of Bloch (82-99), and the first Vinteuil episode (110-13) - as well, of course, as everything following the introduction to the walks (133-81) and the conclusion to 'Combray' (181-3). Finally, Proust started to describe the Two Ways. In his introduction to this section (NP 132-3) he insisted on their separateness. He was however still prepared to tell of the revelation of unity that his protagonist had later: how when he was in an automobile and stopped for directions he was told that the road he was on would take him to Guermantes, which was one way of getting to Meseglise (63: 60-1, cf. 4; the passage is found at the equivalent of NP 133: 5). 28 Later this will be replaced by further thoughts on the separateness of the two ways (NP 133: 8-26). The text breaks off just as the family approaches Swann's park. Proust knew that he had more work to do on that, and we find his new thoughts, significantly, beginning at f. 99 of Cahier 12 (see section 4. 1).

3. 99 Conclusion We incline to the view that Proust did not attend to his unfinished 'Combray' during his holidays in Normandy, but that he did write fifty pages of his next section, set in a resort he called Querqueville. Here too he was drawing on material sketched earlier in the year, with the arrival at the hotel, the guests, the young girls. Elements announced earlier were expanded, some were ignored, new ones were introduced. For the moment, however, no clear narrative movement was discernible. Back in Paris in late September, inspired by the thought that more than one editor was aware of his project, Proust resumed work on 'Combray. ' He did not tackle the unsolved problem of how to end it, but he rewrote, and often expanded, the parts which were already in fairly good shape. He proceeded in a way that was to be characteristic: he would reread his text, amplify it on the verso pages, sometimes using another exercise book in order to experiment; he would try to integrate the new material with the old, and then, faced with a new and improved text, treat it in the same way. Thus he began to add new material on the verso pages of Cahier 8. It is at this stage that he introduced the kitchen-maid and distributed the Legrandin incidents in different parts of his narrative. 28 NP 1333: 'Et quand il y a... toute mon enfance, ' wrongly identified in NP as an addition. See 9. 3 n. 39 and 10. 3 n. 6o.

3. 99 Conclusion 77

This revised text (still incomplete) could be dictated, or recopied, into other cahiers which he regarded as his fair copy, something he could ask a stenographer to type. When he dictated his text, he made further changes, extending some of the episodes, notably that of the kitchen-maid. But the copy was still not ready to be given to a typist, and as we shall see in the next chapter, other parts of the novel beckoned, tempting him once again to set 'Combray' aside. Only after several such explorations did Proust revise his fair copy (see 4. 6).

chapter 4 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again (October to November 1909)

4. 0 Introduction One might be forgiven for thinking that once he had prepared his fair copy, Proust would lose no time in revising it and handing it over to a typist, and that he would not pick up the stories of Swann and of Querqueville until the typist had taken it away, and he had some time on his hands. But it cannot have happened quite like that, because some of the corrections Proust eventually made to his fair copy echo incidents freshly invented for the sequel. This chapter accordingly follows the same plan as the previous one, with Combray quickly abandoned for other developments, which in time bring Proust back to Combray and to the fair copy. Following the chronological sequence, we are obliged to begin with Proust's sketch of the passage on the hawthorns of Combray (in Cahier 12, 4. i), but before we return to Combray for the Two Ways (Cahier 26, 4. 3), we must insert a long section (4. 2) on Querqueville, where the Protagonist's first encounters with the young girls (continuing Cahier 12) are intermingled with echoes of Swann's liaisons (Cahier 25), before continuing with a series of variations on adolescent desire (Cahier 64). The confusion between Swann and the Protagonist continues in Cahier 26, after the pages on the Two Ways of Combray, and once that is sorted out, Proust pursues both lines: the career of Swann and new developments concerning the girls (in Cahier 36 and Cahier 12, 4. 4). Finally, Proust returned to 'Combray, ' amplifying the thoughts on Giotto (4. 5) and revising the fair copy (4. 6).

4. 1 The hawthorns (Cahier 12, £99-110) We have seen that the text of 'Combray' did not get far into the section on the Two Ways. When he reached Cahier 12 f. iy, Proust realized that there

4. 1 The hawthorns 79 was no point in continuing to copy out what he had written; more work was needed. Still using Cahier 12 for his experiments, 1 Proust sketched out his next incident: the encounter with Gilberte in Swann's park (£99-1 io).2 The family approach the park only when they believe Mme Swann absent. But they miscalculate once, and come across Mme Swann and her daughter, with Guercy. This amplifies what was barely sketched on £20-3.3 Much of the new material revolves around Gilberte (named for the first time on f. io6 in an incident that looks forward to later developments; see 6. 2 n. y), the associations with the cathedral towns she visits (£101-3), and reflections on the way we conceive beauty (103-4). Wada (thesis, 124) has pointed out a curious detail which, while it is not conclusive, is certainly suggestive: on f. ioi Proust spells Legrandin's name Le Grandin, and the same spelling also occurs a few times in the third copybook - Cahier63, between f. 44 and £51 (equivalent to NP 1, 122 et seq.; see 3. 3) - implying perhaps that Proust wrote the passage on the park as soon as he set the copy aside.4 On the facing pages (beginning f. loova, but amplifying below, loovb, and on 99va,5 and then starting again at 95v and continuing, with much initial repetition, to f. iO3v), Proust wrote about the hawthorns.6 Wada (who inexplicably considers the hawthorns to have been written before the recto pages on the park [123]) points out (122) that in the margin of f. 2i Proust wrote, in thick ink and underlined: 'tout bourdonnant de 1'odeur des aubepines'. That is the key phrase that launches the pages on the hawthorns. They are written opposite, rather than following, £99-1 lor, because they belong with the recto text at this point. Brun remarks (217) that the lilacs of the first version (£20-3) are explicitly 'over' in the second version of the encounter with Mile Swann (£99). They are replaced by the hawthorns, which are needed, as Brun also points out (271), to balance the water lilies of the other cote. Though it starts out as a simple description, the longer version associates the flowers from the outset with sexuality and with worship. In the associations Mme Goupil has an important role. The passage finishes with a dialogue between the Protagonist and the hawthorns.7 1 2 3 4

For 12: 97 and 98 see section 3. 3 n. 25 and text. NP I, 842-7, Esq LVII. It has been transcribed by Wada, thesis, II, 85-96. See 2. 2c. The passage in question is included in Esq LIV, NP 818-20. Elsewhere, however, as I2: i6v, the two forms jostle each other; and Le Grandin reappears twice in a series of notes, 25': 28v. 5 F. ggva is clearly made to join up with f. loovb. 6 NP 851-7, Esq LXI; transcribed by Bernard Brun, 1984, 217-27. See his commentary, 270-80. 7 Wada (234) believes that we should be considering 32 before this portion of 12. But 32 implies 29, which implies 27, which implies 26 and 25, etc., and it cannot possibly have been so early. We shall mention 32 again at the appropriate place (below, 6_7b).

80

Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

It is probable that the fair copy was made before Proust worked on the hawthorns, for otherwise he would surely have included this passage in it, instead of breaking off as he did at NP 133 (63: 62). Consequently, we must say that the passage following the hawthorns, which is about Querqueville, and which starts a new train of thought, was written after Proust had returned to Paris and was simultaneously working on the fair copy.

4. 2 Back to Querqueville Despite his hard work on Swann's park, Proust was not sufficiently encouraged to incorporate it in the fair copy. He must have abandoned any hope of producing a complete text for typing. He did work further at the Two Ways, as we shall see, and he tried to improve the copy, incomplete though it may have been, so that it could be typed out. But his mind went back constantly to Querqueville and to Swann. These two different activities must have been carried out simultaneously. Occasionally there are crossreferences, which enable us to establish a probable chronological sequence. (a) Five girls (Cahier 12, f. 111-24) First, still using Cahier \ 2, he turned his attention to Querqueville. It may have been because he had been writing about adolescent love that he thought of further developments of the same theme, but in a different setting, or it may have been because he wanted to continue with something already started, but not yet clarified. We saw (3. 1, above) that the incident of the Protagonist's eleventh-hour desire for the girl who was leaving Querqueville, and his subsequent indifference, had involved the abandonment of Mile de Quimperle, who did not quite fit the role Proust found himself giving her. She herself had grown out of an earlier passage in which there were two girls in the hotel from whose world the Protagonist felt excluded. Now, instead of compressing them into one, Proust extended their number, to four or five. 1 Again, the Protagonist feels excluded from the world of these four girls, so self-assured, so insolent, so humiliating to him, and whose lifestyle, which he imagines as very free, fascinates him. He wonders if any of them could love him. He describes them. One, 'brune avec un petit visage rose et i Cahier 12, f. i i 1-173, NP II, 935-8, Esq XLV. 2; transcribed by Ishiki, thesis II, 25-32. All NP references in this section are to vol. II.

4. 2 Back to Querqueville 81 parfait' (£115), is big, and melancholy. Another is blond, with perfect features. A third is also blond, with perfect skin, and short-sighted. A fourth looks Spanish, and is athletic. 'C'etait la brune espagnole que j'aimais, ' he writes (though she is ousted for a while by no. 2). There is a fifth, carefully guarded by her governess, whom he imagines to be vicious. In the sequel, 'Enfin matinee chez le peintre' (f. iiyb-22b, elaborated further on f. I2iva, with an insertion mark),2 he is invited to the studio of a painter who is at Querqueville. The painter has promised to introduce him to the Spanish girl. He takes endless care over his appearance. Everything goes fine, but his interest dies as soon as he meets her; she is no longer the girl who appeared to mock him, and whom he idealizes. Other guests, including M. de Quimperle, interest him more. And he realizes that she is not particularly impressed by him. Then shortly afterwards (f. i22c~4a),3 as he and his grandmother, very casually dressed, were talking to someone, Mme de Chemisey drove past with the girl. Spontaneously he waved, and both ladies waved back.4 The cahier continues with two fragments on Swann, which we intend to place a little later (section 4-4d). For more on the girls, we must turn to Cahier 25. (b) Swann, the Protagonist, and 'les filles' (Cahier 25', f. 4iv-i8v) The psychological complexities of teenage romances provide Proust with material for endless developments, and in order to write these, he picked up a book he had probably begun already: Cahier 25'. We cannot be quite certain that the pages on Swann and Anna, which open the book, were as early as we have implied by presenting them in section i. 2a, but it would seem a retrograde step to cast Swann in such a role once the outlines of his marriage were fixed, and once the potential richness of the Protagonist had been understood. The pages on Swann speak of his attraction for various 2 NP 989-91, Esq LXIII; Ishiki II, 32-9. It follows i iya with one line blank. The last paragraph of Proust's recto text (i22b) is merely summarized in NP (note i to p. 992). The intercalation referred to is the paragraph printed on p. 991 ('Chacun de nous, ' f. i2iva). The last paragraph of the Esquisse (i2ivb-2v, from 'Et pourtant') was added much later. See below, 6. 5 n. i. 3 NP 993-4, Esq LXV. 4 Ishiki wonders (I, 25) if Proust intended to use the Spanish brunette for the departure (as at 12 £69) and subsequent indifference. We shall see, however, that the motif of the girl who leaves is always conceived as a separate episode, involving a different girl from the one the Narrator is particularly attracted to.

82 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again women at the seaside resort, especially Anna and Septimie. Themes from Jean Santeuil (the virtuous woman and the suspicions of lesbianism) are called upon. The paragraphs do not present a well-balanced story, but fix upon certain key incidents or reactions in a relationship. For once, the manuscript does seem to leave no room for doubt; after the end of the Swann-Anna pages, the handwriting changes very markedly, and the sequel, entitled 'Les Filles, ' is on a new page (f. 4iv). Even the evidence from the handwriting has been interpreted in two different ways, however. Garla Bakker (thesis, 167 n. 3) believes like us that it shows that the sequel was written at a different time, and for her, the fact that it starts on a new page confirms that hypothesis.5 We would agree; Proust seldom went to a new page, even when the subject he is writing about changes radically. Wada, on the other hand, says: 'II ne semble pas qu'il y ait, dans le 25, une rupture entre le premier fragment sur Swann et le second sur 1'apparence de la "petite bande"' (157). This seems to us highly contestable.6 Placed here, immediately after 12, and before the systematic exploitation of 12 in 26, Cahier 25" appears as a development of certain motifs that had come to the fore in the latter pages of 12. Behind 12 is 4, where Swann was also implicated in the life of Querqueville. When we presented the first six pages of 25', we mentioned that two passages on the recto sides were very likely added later. One (£46) was a simple transition, but the other ^. 44-3) was new and significant. It continues the theme of jealousy based on suspicions that the girl might be lesbian. We believe it to have been added at the time Proust had reached f. 27, and consequently we postpone discussion of it a while. In the sequel, the narration is in the first person, the women have become girls, and the themes are developed in the context (already known) of the Protagonist's summers at Querqueville. 7 The passage develops the Protagonist's changing reactions to a group of young girls, drawing on 12, but not on 26, which was a systematic exploitation of 12, which we accordingly present in a later section (4. 43). The group of girls strikes him at first as amorphous (41 v). He had noticed them, he says, during his first stay. So this must be his second visit (Ishiki I, 5 Bakker also finds the style different from that of the Anna passages (181). 6 Nonetheless, the NP runs all of f. /ij-^j together, as Esq XLV (II, 927-35). The passage that begins at f. 4iv occupies pages 932-5. 7 Transcribed by Ishiki II, 51-85 (f. 4iv-i6v), and in part by Bardeche, II, 375-81 (f. 4iv32v). The NP give the portion transcribed by Bardeche, split into two separate entries: Esq XLV. i on 932-5 (f-4iv-37v), and Esq LXXI on 1006-9 (f-37v~32v). The Inventory of Cahier 2. ^ is in BIP 12 (Mejean).

4. 2 Back to Querqueville

83

27). 'A mettre en son temps' Proust writes above the first line; then, at the end of the paragraph, very specifically: 'a mettre dans le morceau marque de [dessin de paon]. ' The peacock is inscribed on 12 at f. i i iv, facing f. i 12. But he realized that the whole passage should be rewritten. In Cahier 12 there were four girls, now there are six, who behave in the same insolent way. He singles out in particular a 'jeune fille rose a visage poupin et a yeux verts. ' He tries to imagine their background, and decides that they are daughters of'agents de change' (Swann's family milieu, in fact!). 'Voir dans 1'autre cahier' (38v). The NP editor thinks that this is another reference to Cahier 12, though he does not identify the passage, and it is not easy to find anything suitable. Ishiki thinks Proust was referring to 3*: 3iv-2v (CSBF 8i-2),8 which is less plausible on the face of it, though the passage does fit. There are two lines blank before the sequel: the Protagonist's fetishism for the streets the current favourite lives in, and all that concerns her. Another blank (f-36v) probably indicates that Proust would have written at this point a scene in which the Protagonist gets to know one girl. The scene already exists, in 12, the 'matinee chez le peintre, ' f. i 17 et seq.9 So now he knows one of them, Mile Floriot. She is quite different from the 'amazone sportive' he expected. (In 12, the 'brune espagnole' was athletic. ) She is interested in intellectual things, and has very strict principles. Then he grows less interested in her, and he begins to notice others, like the schoolgirl (the fifth member, from 12: 116-17). He wants Mile Floriot to introduce him to the schoolgirl. She does so reluctantly, and makes it clear to her friend that her presence is unwelcome. The Protagonist realizes that the schoolgirl is leaving that evening. One line is left blank on f-35v; Proust evidently would have placed here the 'galopade a la gare' from 12 (£69; it was the first episode with the 'jeunes filles' to be properly thought out). On f. 35v he wrote: 'J'etais decide etc. ' These actual words do not figure in 12, but they could make the transition into that passage perfectly well. Despite that distraction, a sign of his waning interest in Mile Floriot, he continues to see her. Although she is very severe, dismissing several other girls she knows as 'infrequentables, ' she is always tender with him, hinting at a romance between them. When he leaves a book with her by mistake, she even uses the gambit: 'Puissiez-vous y avoir oublie en meme temps votre coeur, ' which Proust will transfer to the far from strict Odette (NP 219, 278). She tells him that she is leaving the next day and will be 8 Ishiki I, 29 and n. 2, also II, 56 n. (a). The last named extends the reference to pp. 30-3. 9 The affiliation with 12 is evident. Ishiki, however (30 and n. i), refers here to 4: 3v~5r.

84

Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

spending the night at his hotel. He takes the hint, calls on her, tries to kiss her, and is furiously dismissed. And that cures him of her. The source is Jean Santeuil.10 Once again, knowledge has led to indifference. In his reflections he considers the two ways she has of considering friendships between a boy and a girl. Proust finishes with a few notes (f. 32v). On f. 3iv-28v (reproduced by Kato, thesis, 515-18) he remembered another scene from Jean Santeuil( 183-91), and wrote about the Protagonist's visit with his friend to a painter's studio. The friend is Montargis, 11 and the two youths are initiated into the aesthetics of impressionist painting. The painter is an American (as in Jean Santeuil}, and he turns out to be the same painter as was seen in Combray church, to the indignation of Aunt Leonie. Although Yoshida (thesis, 214-16) writes as if this is the first appearance of a painter at Querqueville, antedating the matinee of 12, the reverse is manifestly the case: the painter in 12 was a pretext merely, and this is where he receives an identity. The next page (28v) contains a series of notes, reproduced after a fashion by Mejean in the Inventory. 12 They touch on a number of matters, but not \hejeunesfilles. From f. 2yv to 24v we have the episode that follows the scene in the bedroom, where he called the bluff of the girl who seemed to be encouraging him.13 She is not named, but it is plainly the same girl (who returned, we were told on f-32v, where Proust added above the line the phrase 'les 2 hypotheses sur caractere'). Her behaviour continues to suggest a genuine fondness for him, but not all the time. He puts forward two 'hypotheses. ' The same phrase comes a third time, in the addition on f. 44r~43r, and it is reasonable to think that this is the moment when the latter passage was inserted. This passage (f-44r and 43r, Bardeche II, 401-2) continues the theme of jealousy based on suspicions that the girl might be lesbian. Proust marked it 'A, ' but no corresponding indication has been found elsewhere. 14 This time her name is Claire, not Anna, though the name of Septimie is retained for her friend. And the jealous lover is the Protagonist, not Swann. Remarks 10 11 12 13

837-42. Frequently brought into 7 and 31 and mentioned again in 12 (see i. 2b, 1. 30, and 3. 1). P. 44. Ishiki reproduces the first half only, but more accurately. Mejean (Inventory, 44) says it is the sequel to her unit '4, ' but she must mean unit '5' (unit 4 is f-47v-42v). 14 The letter is written in pencil, and is clearly a later addition. It was very likely connected with a cross-reference in Cahier 29, though the letter is not used there. See 6. 4b. We know that Proust continued to work with Cahier 25. See 5. 30 and d.

4. 2 Back to Querqueville 85

are interpreted according to the principle of two hypotheses (innocent/ guilty, candid/concealing something), and the second always turns out to be correct. This leads him into a constant state of jealousy. Alma Saraydar argues (24) that this passage was added at this point with the intention of incorporating it into the third-person Swann narration, and not, as might have been thought, because Proust wished to transfer the Swann material to the Protagonist. Although I have some reservations about her remark that it has 'pour effet de decharger le protagoniste' of the inheritance of Jean Santeuil (he will have his own share of that inheritance in La Prisonniere), I agree that this particular development was destined for Swann. Why then was it written in the first person? Not, I submit, because Proust here slipped from Swann to 'je, ' but because later, when Proust was writing in the first person, he conceived this paragraph, saw that it suited Swann better than the Protagonist, so turned back to the Swann pages and wrote it on the two blank recto sides. But by then he was thinking in the form of the first-person narration, and he did not bother switching back to the third person. 15 That would explain why it was written on the recto pages, and not on 41 v itself. We shall return to it later, when we deal with f. 27v. We thus have the following sequence: Proust had once toyed with the idea of Swann in Querqueville in order to launch an embryonic 'Swann in love. ' As happened elsewhere, he abandoned this in order to develop a parallel text, with a younger set of characters, explicitly meant to amplify something already extant. Then, when the first-person narrative suggested an incident more appropriate to Swann than to the young Protagonist, he inscribed it on a space in the early part of the cahier, perhaps, as Saraydar suggests, with the idea of adapting it to Swann. For the moment, however, he is writing in the first person. The rest of the exercise book contains unrelated notes and developments. The notes that follow (24vb-23v, reproduced in the Inventory, more or less, but not by Ishiki) again cover a variety of different topics, and mention Carpaccio and Tansonville, Verdurin, 'le furet, ' 'la phrase de Saint-Saens, ' 'Bonne a Querqueville ouvrant la maison ou je couche avec, ' 'Depeche de J. de Castellane pour M. de Guermantes, ' 'fin de siecle, ' and La Rochefoucauld's 49th Maxime. They seem to tie in with the work to be described below in chapter 6; some indicate an intention to raid Jean 15 Actually, Proust does once slip into the third person, but he corrects himself: '[cette vague possibilite de 1'avoir pour lui qui suffisait a son coeur] Alors dans mon coeur. ' Saraydar unfortunately takes it upon herself to 'correct' the error, without comment.

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Santeuil. Francoise Leriche thinks that Proust was actually rereading Jean Santeuilzt the time (1987, 20). 'A ajouter aux jeunes filles, ' Proust wrote on f. 22v, at the head of a passage of generalities about experiencing a new love. He feels excluded, scorned (as at the beginning of the sequence). The passage goes to f. iSva, and is reworked on f. i8vb-i6v. On f. igr we have something else, a remark that possession blocks thought. 'Peut-etre apres la femme de chambre de Mme Putbus. ' As the name (both here and a few lines higher up) is Putbus and not de Picpus, this entry must have been written later. See section 9. ic. More relevant, probably, is the fact that turning once more to Cahier 12, Proust wrote two passages (the second starting a fresh page) on Swann, passages that can be slotted into the larger story of Swann's marriage (i2: i24b-9 and 130-5). Very likely they belong to the same impulse as the notes on f. 23v, several of which get worked into short sketches. Certainly these passages preceded the extended survey of Swann's story that we shall be describing in chapter 6 (chapter 5 being given over to the typescript). Because they link up also with new material in Cahier36, we include them in section 4. 46. One other matter should be mentioned here. Some of those notes on f. 24v-23v are used for Querqueville, and it may well be that some sketches for the first part of that section (meeting one of the girls in a painter's studio, and the sequel) also follow with little gap what we have been presenting here. They come in Cahier 64, after the pages on Leconte de Lisle. Moreover, verso pages of 12 are used to pull them together. We discuss the first text in the next section. (c) Querqueville and the young girls (Cahier 64', f. i45v-i i6v) We are presenting next a very fat exercise book, similar to Cahier 12, which came into the Bibliotheque Nationale only in the mid-nineteen-eighties. The BN staff have given it the sequential number 64. It is a very important book, which concentrates on Querqueville, but not exclusively. 16 It is used 16 The Inventory, by Fran?oise Leriche, is in BIP 18 (1987) 37-59. The second part of Yuzawa's thesis is a transcription of the greater portion of Cahier f*^. There is a discrepancy in the pagination of the microfilm. The original counts the fly-leaf, which has a drawing on it, as f. iv, and the first page as 2; the microfilm counts the first page as f. i. (The recto of the fly-leaf is not accessible. ) Therefore everything is out by i, and one has to add i to the MF figure to obtain the genuine cahier foliation. Although we have preferred generally to regard the manuscript as having sole authority, the fact that all published discussion of Cahier 64 follows the microfilm makes it less confusing if we do likewise.

4. 2 Back to Querqueville

87

in both directions. The first pages to be filled were probably f. i66v-i59v (64'), and we mentioned them briefly in section 2. 3, note 6. They go back to the Sainte-Beuve project, and treat Sainte-Beuve and Leconte de Lisle. We incline to think that Proust took this book with him to Cabourg, along with its twin, Cahier 12, and that (leaving a gap of several pages) he began using it for his fiction while he was there. The text of 64', beginning now at f. I45v, was interrupted at f. i i6v. The rest of the book was written somewhat later, in both the direct position (34 pages only) and the inverted position (80 pages). These eighty pages, which were not necessarily written at one time, were later augmented by many additions on the recto pages (see sections 6. 5b and 8. sd). A lot has already been written about the girls the Protagonist meets at Querqueville, in Cahiers 12 and 25'. The first book approximates more to a narrative thread, while the incidents and reflections in 25' were less structured. Despite the confusion, there is a definite pattern in these sketches. They amount to a series of variations on a theme: that desire, when it is satisfied, leads to indifference. These variations will bring about others: there are several girls, whose names change from version to version, and different means will have to be found to introduce the Protagonist to girls he does not know. The first variation was found in Cahier 12, when the Protagonist prevailed upon the painter to introduce him, and once he had met the young lady, he was more interested in the other guests. (This will be replaced by an interest in the other girls. ) There is a sequel to the meeting in the painter's studio, when the Protagonist sees her pass in a carriage, and she waves in a friendly way, although usually she treats him with indifference. This leaves him 'stupefait, ' and presumably (though there is no sequel) interested again. That would be Variation 2. In Cahier 25', Proust approaches the theme in a different way. This time it is a girl who appears athletic, but turns out to be intellectual and very much like the Protagonist, and so as he knows her better, she interests him less. A fourth variant is introduced into this part of the story, his sudden desire for another girl, identified simply as the schoolgirl, and his race to the railway station to try to catch her as she travels back to Paris. The scene is not new. A fifth variation goes back to the intellectual, and also to the motif of ambivalence, noted over the carriage incident. She is strict and yet apparently encourages his desires. But when he tries to take advantage of her in her bedroom, she is furious, and again the end is indifference. A final variation is more disturbing, as it involves suspicions of a lesbian attachment. Francoise Leriche calls this a radical novelty (1987, 18). This too is elaborated in Cahier 25, though it is not properly integrated yet.

88 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

The first part of 64, to be considered in this section, comprises about thirty pages (f. i45v-ii6va), with additions on the recto sides. As far as f. i lyva, Proust is simply reworking what he had already sketched in Cahier 12 (f. 111-24; see section 'a' above), and he even borrows the same title ('Matinee chez le peintre'). 17 These pages give two versions of a single incident: the Protagonist's timidity in the face of the insolent young girls who dominate the beach, and how he met one of them in the studio of a painter whom he cultivated for the purpose. In his first draft (64 f. i45v-i37v, Yuzawa 2-11), Proust went no further. In Cahier 12: 111-17, Proust had described four girls, adding a fifth at the end. In this new version there are five from the outset, sportive, selfpossessed, insolent, and the presentation is very similar (64" f. i45v-i42v). He imagines they can have only scorn for boys like him (i42v-i4ov). As in Cahier 12 also, his intermediary will be a painter, who assures him that the girls are middle class and uninteresting. One is the daughter of 'un grand notaire de [Caen] Rouen, ' f. i4ov. Though the painter promises to introduce them, he does not do so in fact, and the Protagonist presumes it is because the girls do not want to know him (i4ov-i39v). But the introduction to the one who most interested him does come. With acquaintance, however, interest wanes (i38v-i37v), and he wants now to meet the others. This is what we called 'Variation I. ' The 'scene de la voiture' (Variation 2, 12: 122-4) is not used. This first outline is augmented by additions on the recto pages (Yuzawa 12-14). l8 On f. i46r-i45r, he makes a schematic contrast between how he imagines her and how he actually finds her. 'Et la, mettre le morceau ou je dis que j'avais voulu vivre aupres d'elle' (146). The narration is then interrupted by notes for a section on 'les maquerelles' (i36v-i35v). 19 Then, on f. i34v, there is a very interesting paragraph saying that small things evoke whole areas of the past, and that this is 'la matiere meme de la litterature' (NP IV, 1455). We find this theme developed in Cahier 26 (see next section). After that, Proust wrote, 'je reviens aux filles et vais tacher de copier exactement et avec suite. ' For the next twenty pages, beginning at f. i42v, he wrote an expanded version of the six pages just presented, again with 17 Fran£oise Leriche has noted in her Inventory the self-borrowing that is prevalent in these pages, chiefly from 12, but also from 26 and 25'. 18 Although these are scrupulously noted in the Inventory, they are sometimes presented before the verso pages, which makes it imperative to read the account in the Inventory with special care. 19 Expanded later, see 8-5d.

4. 2 Back to Querqueville 89

many additions on the facing pages (i34v-i lyv). So we have first the girls as a 'hedgerow, ' indistinguishable from one another, and characterized by their insolence and insensitivity (i34v-i27v, Yuzawa 15-47). Passing comparisons to Pennsylvania roses and to Gozzoli show that he is still in the line of 25'.20 Then we have the painter, who reveals their bourgeois status (Boulogne replacing Rouen), the difficulty the Protagonist experiences in getting an introduction (isyv-iasv). He decides that the girls are snobbish (i25v-i22v, skipping I24V-I23V, which is an intercalation).21 He tries desperately to set up a situation where he will meet them (i22v-i2ov), but he muffs it.22 The painter will invite him to his studio and invite 'Mile Poupardon'23 there. So the encounter does take place (i 19-117va). The Querqueville narration continues on f. ii7vb. After the studio, the version in Cahier 12 gave the 'scene de la voiture, ' our Variation 2. Proust did not use it in the version described earlier (to f. I37v), but it looks as if he would have gone that route on f. 117v. The first few lines of f. 117vb (Yuzawa, thesis, 47) have been crossed out, but they show that Proust would have inserted those pages from Cahier 12 in which the girl, introduced to him by the painter, greets him from Mme de Chemisey's carriage, and then is again cold. As a result (in this version), the Protagonist decides to have recourse to the painter once more. Clearly this is becoming circular. So, crossing these lines out, Proust found a better way to continue (Yuzawa 48). As on f. i37v, he does not use the incident of the carriage, but moves straight to our Variation 4, the departure of the schoolgirl, originally written in Cahier 12, but fitted into the events of 25". He simply says that one day the Protagonist meets the girl, but he finds her uninteresting, and he hopes that she will introduce him to her friends. However, she refuses, 20 'Marches, clematites lettres apres dejeuner, diner apres roses de Pennsylvanie et clair de June' (25': 24; Gozzoli was also on f. 4ov). 21 An intercalated double sheet of writing paper in which the girl he notices particularly is a Mile S. or a Mile K. The description of the girl as a blob of pink against the grey sea is, as Frangoise Leriche says (Inv 43), a direct reminiscence of Lucy Gerard, seen at Cabourg in 1908 and noted on the first cornet, f. 6v. The reference is clarified in a letter to Louisa de Mornand (Corr VIII 108/200-1). Leriche (19873, 20) draws attention also to a letter written two months earlier to Albufera, which uses the same initials (63/126). Garnet \ was first published under the misleading title (Gallimard's) Le Cornet de 1908. 22 On f. 120-1 igv, the lane he goes down at Querqueville is compared to a lane in Holland, and the marketplace to the England of George Eliot. It is the first version, very simple, and expanded between the lines, of something we find again in Cahier 32 (f-39v; see 6. 7b n. 2i). 23 It is difficult to be sure whether Proust wrote Pompardou or Pompardon, and twice (f. i2yv and I25v) he put Pompardier. This is the only name given in the entire passage.

90 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

and is unpleasant to one of her friends, the schoolgirl, when she joins them with the words 'Je vous derange. ' The Protagonist reproaches her, but she is unrepentant, and tells the Protagonist that the schoolgirl is in any case leaving the next day. The fragment is interrupted on f. i i6v in the middle of a word. Proust rewrote the last part (i i6vb, Yuzawa 50). Did he do so immediately, or did he perhaps at this moment write, on f. I i8r (facing f. I iyv), a revised version of the opening, and leave the sequel until later? We choose the second option, for a number of reasons, which will become clear in section 6. 5b. Proust stopped where he did because the scene of the 'depart' will not present any problems, whereas he had not got the first part right, and it must have been nagging him. The passage is therefore rewritten, on f. ii8rb(Yuzawa49).24 Unfortunately the revision is no more satisfactory than the passage it is intended to replace. Proust was obviously wanting to work in the 'scene de la voiture, ' while at the same time abandoning the girl the Protagonist met at the painter's, who no longer interests him. He now wants her to introduce him to Tamie de Mme de Chemisey. ' She at first declines, saying 'C'est une fantasque, ' but then does so. The 'scene de la voiture' takes place the next day, and will incorporate the 'lignes barrees en face, ' that is, f. iiyvb, presumably without bringing the painter in again. It is difficult, however, to see why the girl who knew Mme de Ghemisey would have waved, if she had never been introduced. Then we are to have the schoolgirl, and that is where the addition stops. As far as we can tell, Proust did not continue at this time with his narration, interrupted on f. i i6v, nor did he immediately try to resolve the problem of his transition from the painter's studio to the 'depart. '25 Other episodes develop other aspects of the Querqueville weeks. If this view of what happened is accepted, we can conclude that in the autumn of 1909 Proust was tempted to start putting order into the Querqueville section, but was quickly distracted. The distractions were caused by the need to supervise the typing of the Combray portion, and also by his desire to pull together Swann's story, with its sequel in the Champs-Elysees when the Protagonist falls in love with Swann's daughter.

24 F. i i8ra will be filled later. 25 Frangoise Leriche (19873, 13) agrees that the writing was interrupted on f. i i6v, though she does not discuss the problem of f. i i8r. However, in her Inventory she says that 'cette redaction schematique est reprise aussitot. ' For the sequel, see 6-5b.

4. 3 The Two Ways 91 4. 3 The Two Ways (Cahier 26, f. i-2i) Although the most important task facing Proust was to complete 'Combray, ' he constantly found himself leaving Combray for other aspects of his novel which were started but not completed, such as the story of Swann and the Protagonist's encounter with the young girls at Querqueville, both of which had been advanced further in Cahier 25'. His next journey round this cycle occurred in Cahier 26. This exercise book follows the same path as 12, after £25. At the very end Proust found himself writing something that would go nicely into his Prologue, and that brought him back, at last, to the copy; at the same time, he also used Cahier 36 to develop some ideas further. Several scholars have found Cahier 26 particularly problematic. Bardeche believed that 25* and 26 preceded 12, but the evidence is inconclusive. Quemar believed that 26 was written between the first 42 pages of 12 and the sequel, though she admitted that that hypothesis raised many difficulties (1982, 18; see section 3. 0). More recently, Ishiki has written: 'Nous disposons de trois cahiers (12, 25, 26) ou s'inscrit un travail acharne afin de creer une chaine coherente entre ses recits, travail qui denote tant d'hesitations et de tatonnements, qu'il est difficile de comprendre d'une maniere parfaite le mouvement interieur qui aboutira a la creation de Maria... 26 appartient sans doute a un autre cycle que completera les deux autres cahiers (12, 25) et sera reutilise partiellement dans un autre but' (234). Wada, in his thesis (I, 152), finds Claudine Quemar's argument 'incoherent, ' but agrees with it. He divides 26 into two, with f. 1-57 coming before 12: 42 and £58-60 coming after I2: d 39vb-4iv (transcribed 119-22). 11 Ishiki, 116-19, NP 950-1. This passage is later marked 'PPP a copier dans le cahier rouge, 1 a reference to 64: 104^ See sect. 6. 5b. 12 Georgette Tupinier (240-1) sees the origin of the name in another name, found in 39 (f. 12), where Proust develops a passage from 36" on the 'inconnue au bal': Fontaine-lePoet. This however creates untold chronological complications, as Cahier 39 was written later. Fontaine-le-Poet reappears in Cahier 49, f. 42. (Cahier 49 belongs to the same sequence as Cahier39. ) There is also a Fontaine-le-Port, a vicomtesse and cousin of the Guermantes, who lives near Bayeux (29: 26). See 6. 6 n. 8. 13 Also mentioned briefly in 12, f-72. See the comment above, in 3. 1. 14 NP 953-5, see Bardeche, II, 386-8. The text is marked 'a ajouter aux traits de la figure des jeunes filles, ' but that notation was added later.

4. 4 Querqueville, Swann, and the Protagonist 99

an independent note on f. 43b; 15 on 43c~4a, 'a ajouter aux jeunes filles qu'on a connues, ' an observation that the imagination withdraws once the girl becomes a friend (NP 956-7); on f. 44b-6a, 'a ajouter aux jeunes filles, ' on tenderness, which encourages love (NP 957-8, Esq LI); on 47~8a, 'a ajouter a la jeune fille qui s'en allait, ' on the way we seek a heroine for the scenario we have invented, a phenomenon that saddens us once we realize it (NP 958); on 46m and 46v, an addition 'a mettre ailleurs sur les jeunes filles': that girls often caress each other innocently, out of friendship; and on £49-533,l6 headed 'Querqueville Suite, ' a new variation on the theme of habit: the maids who look after him when he is convalescing, and how he has come to find life at the hotel normal, to the extent of not feeling any desire to go back to Paris. Could this be what Proust had in mind when he noted 'Bonne a Querqueville ouvrant la maison ou je couche avec' on 25': 23v? The theme of habit is then applied to the girls (f. 53b-6a, 'a ajouter aux jeunes filles, ' NP 959-60, Ishiki 111-16). One is given a name (£54): Simone. 17 He recalls how the name Simone was once mysterious. He first heard her name when her mother calls her - just like Gilberte on 12 (f. 106). Now it has become ordinary. The girls are 'quatre deesses metamorphosees en compagnes' (f-55). A second passage follows (f. 56b~7, 'a ajouter aux jeunes filles'). 18 It is the end of the second year. He is afraid to lose the girls and become indifferent. Mme de Villeparisis gives him some advice: to go to Italy. But the desire to go to Italy cannot stop him from considering the girls as his constant companions. We need the future to be an improved version of the present, not something different from it. And he continues on habit, saying how we fear novelty, forgetting how habit quickly consoles us. Our fear of death belongs to the same pattern (£58-60). I9 This passsage is extensively rewritten (660-2, Esq V. 2), with additions crammed onto the verso pages and in the margins.20 On one of 15 NP 1857, note a to p. 956. 16 NP 1010-12, Esq LXXIII. Previously transcribed by Bardeche, I, 413-15; see also 3556. See also Leriche, thesis, I, 82; she calls it a 'curieuse unite, ' and suspects a missing antecedent. 17 On the shadowy Simone see also 6. 3 (27), 6. 4b (29), and 6. 5b (64'). 18 NP II, 902-5, Esq XXXIII. See also Tupinier, 243. Esq XXXIII also gives some of the continuation, but this is more fully transcribed in vol. I, Esq Sw V. See below, n. 2O. 19 NP I, 658-60, Esq V. I a and ic. V. ib (the second half of 659) was inserted later; see next note. Esq JFF XXXIII, NP II, 906, gives only the last half of this addition, f. 6o. The whole passage is clearly transcribed by Jean Milly in BIP 11 (1980) 9-11. 20 The addition on f. 59rm and 58v is included in Esq Sw V. i, NP I, 659, and in Esq JFF XXXIII, NP II, 904. The passage was then partially reworked on 57v, 5gv, and 58v, the

100 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again these (f. 59m) Proust works in the advice of Mme de Villeparisis, to go to Italy, only this time it is M. de Penhoet, who suggests South America. 'Mais alors je ne verrai plus votre fille. ' Italy has more of a future in the novel than South America, but the reintroduction of Mile de Penhoet (the name had replaced Quimperle on f-39)21 has an immediate consequence. The theme of habit was of course treated in the very opening pages of the novel, when the Protagonist was lying in bed. So Proust wrote at the head of the last passage: 'a intercaler dans le debut. ' Moreover, he wrote the heading, which is underlined, before the rest, so the text was revised with the Prologue in view. And indeed, six pages, on which the passage is neatly copied - and including the rather mysterious reference to M. de Penhoet and his daughter - are intercalated in Cahier 9 and duly typed by the typist. 22 (As well as having these pages recopied, Proust revised f. 6o further. ) Thus, we can be sure that when Proust wrote - or, more accurately, rewrote - the last pages of 26, the first copybook, if no more, had been written, but the typist had not started work. 23 This effectively disposes of the idea, put forward by Claudine Quemar and Bernard Brun, that Cahiers 12, 25, 26, 32, 29, 23, and 27 all antedate Cahier %.

second version breaking off about two-thirds of the way through. This is Esq Sw V. 2, 660-2. The first half (only) is included in Esq JFF XXXIII, 903-4. The two editors disagree also about what to do with a sentence rewritten in the margins of f. 6o. In NP I the original is given in a note (66ob), and the revised version used for the main text; II chooses the original, and puts the second version in a note (gosd). This is because it is allegedly 'difficile a accorder. ' NP II also mentions an 'addition interlineaire' that the editor has been unable to decipher (var. c). This is simply the beginning of the variant, 'qui se sent brusquement mise en/ presence, ' and had been correctly transcribed in vol. I and by Milly. NP II includes the adverb 'brusquement' in the original version, whereas it belongs only to the revised form. The second transcription also errs in giving 'qu'on le frappe' for 'la' (I'amitie). 21 It is surprising to find Ishiki saying that Mile de Penhoet replaces Simone (43). 22 9: 15-20, reproduced by Milly 1980, 14-16, and Bales 1975, 85-6. The typescript version is in Milly, 20—2, and NP 8a, 1090—2. See 4. 63. The passage was excised later. 23 It is surprising that Jean Milly, whose transcription of the relevant pages in BIP 11 (1980) makes the intercalation very clear (14 n_3, 16 n. 3), puts forward as an equally valid hypothesis the idea that Cahier 9 was begun after 26 (ibid. 9 n. i). We return to the general question of the intercalations in the copybooks below, 4. 6. In the same number of the BIP, 50 n. i, Bernard Brun makes a strange remark about Cahiers 26 and 10 (the second copybook): 'Le Cahier 26, repris dans le Cahier 11, est sans doute plus ancien que le Cahier 10, qui fait partie d'une version du debut du roman etablie en recopiant des brouillons anterieurs. ' There is, however, nothing of 26 in 10. Wada, who tries to convince us, for no good reason, that Cahier 26 was written before 12: 42 et seq., puts these three pages between 12: 96 and 12: 99 (158-9; he does not mention £97-8).

4. 4 Querqueville, Swann, and the Protagonist 101 (b) More on Swann (Cahier ^6, £. 100-323) Although an examination of Cahier 26 leads us back to the fair copy, Cahier 36* does the same, and it was evidently completed either at the same time as 26, or very soon after. We have already presented the first pages of this book, because f. I was the direct sequel to the early Cahier 31, and the incident that followed (f. 2-ioa) seemed to belong to the same period.24 But the rest of the exercise book seems to be later, as there are references to characters not created at the time of 31. The long passage that begins on f. lob goes as far as f-32a, and is about the social consequences of Swann's marriage.25 It completes the story begun on 31, of Swann's courtship, his rival Forcheville, his marriage, and his wife's social ambitions. They have a daughter. The Protagonist has learned, through Mme de Villeparisis, of Swann's connections with Villebon/ Guermantes (f. io), and how well liked and appreciated he is. Though he accepts that they will not receive his wife, he very much hopes that they will receive his daughter. But although Swann is dying, the Guermantes (Adolphe and Oriane) refuse this request, for foolish reasons, which are analysed. After his death, however, his widow marries Forcheville, and now the way is clear. Forcheville allows Swann's daughter to take his name. And Mile de Forcheville never alludes to her Swann blood, although she has inherited her father's taste and is very like him in many respects, hence her popularity. There is speculation about whom she might marry: Guercy? Henri de Montargis? Three details in this passage tie in with earlier material, but they do not make it any easier to place it accurately in chronological sequence. 26 On 24 See section i. 2c. We also presented in the same section the other end of 36, numbered 36' although it is actually the right way up. 25 The episode has been transcribed in extenso in NP IV, 677-87, Esq AD XII, and by Bakker, thesis, 272-89, with commentary, 289-95. 26 There can be no question that the first ten pages of Cahier 36, on Mme Picpus's maid, are relatively early (see 1. 2 n. 3i), and that the last ten were written a few months later (see next section). There is, however, no consensus about the passage that goes from f. io to f-42, a passage that comprises two separate blocks, dividing at f. 32. A detail on f-37 obliges us to consider the second of these blocks as subsequent to Cahier 26, presented in the previous section, and there is no clear sign of an interruption of the writing at £32. Nonetheless, in NP I (i 188) the first block is summarized as if it was written between 31 and 7. Bakker also takes it to be contemporary with 31 (thesis, 85). As we said at the end of section 1. 2, it seems to continue in the same vein as the early cahiers. On the other hand, Bardeche says many times that the body of 36* is much later than the Cauderan passages of 36" (e. g., II, 22 n_3, 42 n. i, 393, etc. ), but that is because he

102

Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

f. 10 and 12, we are told that Swann is a friend of Guercy, and Guercy was not created before Cahier "i\ later, therefore, than 31 (see 1. 30). But though Guercy does not appear before Cahier 7, the name Guerchy was inscribed in Cahier %, as an afterthought, admittedly, but before the ink was dry (see i. i n. 14). Also on f. 10, Proust writes: 'Je compris alors qui etaient les neveux Villebon avec qui Mme de Villeparisis avait dit a ma grand'mere que Swann etait si intime. ' That seems to be a clear indication that Proust is thinking of what he had written in Cahier8, again later than 31. But Proust could have conceived the Villebon-Guermantes connection before writing Cahier %; that would explain why in Cahier36, as in the original text of 8, he speaks of nephews, whereas on 8 they are immediately changed to nieces. However, against that is the observation that on 31: 6o we were told that one niece had married the Comte de Villebon. The 'nephews' could have been a simple lapse. Thirdly, as Bakker astutely points out (289-90), it is obvious that when Proust wrote Cahier36, he had not considered that anything had transpired between the Protagonist and Mile Swann. But the revelation that Mme Swann married Forcheville, and that her daughter took Forcheville's name looks more like an attempt to sort out something that had become confused. We have seen that the two names were linked in a very unclear manner, in Cahier 26, written very recently. Much earlier, in Cahier^, Proust had mentioned the 'sang Swann' of the marquise de Cardaillac 'nee Forcheville. ' The text of 36 gives a much clearer idea of the relationships than either of these texts. If Proust had already written the present passage, it is not likely that he would have made the confusion later, in writing 26. All this is somewhat speculative. Probably the best way to account for what we find is to assume that after Proust's work on 25' and 26 had set him thinking about Swann and Querqueville, he reread the abandoned sketches of 31 and 36 and continued in the same vein. There is admittedly no clear sign that the ink or the handwriting changed on f. 10, but four lines are left blank, and a short line separates the old from the new. However, at the end of the passage, on £32, where again the writing appears similar, only one line is left between the two blocks, and what follows there is certainly later than f. i-ioa (see next section). makes an unwarranted assumption about the Picpus incident, which we refuted in note 31 of section 1. 2. In NP IV (1339) the date is simply recorded as '1909. ' For different reasons, laid out in the following paragraphs, we tend to favour placing it later than the Picpus incident, allotting it to the autumn of 1909. This position would require that there be a change of ink at f. 10, which can be defended, although the change is not as obvious as the one at {. 42.

4. 4 Querqueville, Swann, and the Protagonist 103 (c) The girls in Paris (Cahier 36, £32-52) The next segment in 36 (£32-41 )27 is about three young girls whom the Protagonist passes in the street near his home, the first 'brune, grande, vive, animee' and carrying a tennis racket, the second 'blonde, rose, gaie, myope, ' the third 'blonde, maigre, nerveuse. ' The third one appeals to him least, but she seems to be trying to attract his attention, so she is the one most likely to introduce him into their circle. He sees them emerging from the Guermantes residence. One of them is a 'Mile d'Orcheville ou de Forcheville. ' He decides that this must be the one who has noticed him, and he remembers what Montargis told him about a girl with such a name, that she had experimented with prostitution. But it transpires that Montargis got the name wrong, and the blonde girl does not answer the other girl's description at all. He would like to meet her all the same. If only she knew that he too knew the Guermantes. Finally he does meet the young ladies, but he is no longer interested. The mystery is cleared up the next day when Mile de Forcheville tells him he had seen her 'chez mon pere, M. Swann. ' He says tactlessly that he thought her name was de Forcheville, but she does not mind, any more than her father minded the Jew-baiting of the Protagonist's grandfather. There is more. The Protagonist is interested now in someone else, Mile de Penhoet. One of the girls, Cecile, the 'sportive, ' who turns out to be intellectual, does arrange a meeting, though with reluctance, as the girls find Mile de Penhoet 'un peu declassee, ' 'pas un tres bon genre, ' 'pas du tout de notre milieu. ' The Protagonist is able to meet Mile de Penhoet and the others at a 'fete de charite' in the Bois. And Mme de Picpus's maid accompanies him to the boat! It is obvious that all this is of a piece with what precedes it in 36: the remarriage of Mme Swann, the concern with the Guermantes, even the unexpected reappearance of Mme de Picpus's maid. The storyline (d'Orcheville, Forcheville) was prepared in 31, and obviously planned then.28 The fact that instead of referring to Querqueville, Proust wrote 'Saint-Valery' (£38), would also seem to point to an earlier date (Leriche 1989, 81-2), although we have no other version using that name, and it 27 NP IV, 663-8, Esq AD X; also transcribed by Ishiki, thesis, II, 123-34. Schmid (152-3) draws out the connections between this new sequence and what precedes it in Cahiers 31 and 36. 28 Ishiki (I, 36-7) traces it back to an interesting page of the first carnet, f. jr ('je la regardais' etc. ).

104 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

could betoken a passing desire to change the name of the resort. This last hypothesis would accord better with the fact that once again other details show that what we have here must have been actually written later than 31. Much of the description of the girls, for example, comes out of 12: the way they are characterized (12: 111-17), his exploitation of his connections (in 12 it was the 'brune espagnole' he wished to impress by virtue of his knowing Mme de Villeparisis), his trick of ignoring them once the ice is broken (again, as with the brunette of 12). The precise memory of Gilberte comes from 12 too.29 The context is plainly a reworking of a passage in 26 (£36-7), transposed from the seaside resort to Paris.30 But what finally clinches it is the choice of Mile de Penhoet for the new interest. That name appeared for the first time in 26 (£39 and 59), as we saw earlier in this section (4. 43). It locates this episode, and by implication all that precedes, from f. rob and the addition of f. gv. The unexpected mention of Mme de Picpus's maid suggests that Proust had reread the episode already set down at the beginning of Cahier 36, abandoned after ten sheets (36: 2-10). There are two additions to this passage. One, occurring on f. 4v-6v, could have been written at any time, though as it refers also to Querqueville, it must be later than I2.31 (It also mentions Stendhal, Flaubert, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. ) It concerns the name Merouville; one might have expected Pinsonville, given the frequence with which that name has turned up (7, etc).32 The second addition comes at the very end (f-9v), and must have been written after the passage on Swann, which begins on f. lob, for otherwise it would have followed the existing text directly. 33 In the restaurant where the Protagonist dines with the girl's aunt, the Guermantes are dining also, at a nearby table, and he blushes to be seen in the aunt's company. The incident reinforces his decision to break with the maid. Following the ten pages about the three girls seen in Paris, on f. 42, 29 Tupinier traces it back to 4 (249 11. 3; for £. 41 read £. 31). 30 Tupinier 247-8. 31 In the NP transcription (IV, Esq AD XVIII), it is not distinguished from the text that was written on the recto pages. It runs from the middle of p. 712 ('"De Merouville, m'ecriais-je... "') to the top of 714 ('... trop en dessous'). Kolb does not give it in the Textes retrouves. 32 This passage may be connected with a note made in Cahier 32, f. 26v: 'Tacher que ces traits se trouvent dans la ire partie. ' But there is no reason why Proust should have gone back to Cahier 36 at that moment. 33 The NP editor tacks it on at the end of the Esquisse (p. 716) without comment. Earlier editors give the new ending and suppress the sentence it replaced.

4. 4 Querqueville, Swann, and the Protagonist 105

Proust made a couple of notes for an episode identified as 'Heritage Villeparisis. '34 Here we can say for certain that there really was a break in the writing. The only such episode is in 51*, already discussed (section i. 3d), and it was referred to in the portrait of Mme de Villeparisis in 31 (£51, NP II, 1166). This does not invalidate our chronology, however, for the passage in 51*, while it does reveal at the very end that Mme de Villeparisis has always considered the Guermantes to be her heirs (5i*: 2i), has nothing corresponding to this note. The note is therefore probably meant for a new development of the theme, which again Proust might have been reminded of by browsing through these old cahiers. After three blank pages, there is another short passage on the three girls (f. 46-47), on the mystery presented by a girl's name. Then, after three more blank pages, f-5ov, 5ir, and 52 are occupied by a development on Swann's social personality.35 Now this is the first draft of a passage that was then written into the fair copy, 9: 53 et seq. It is difficult to say for sure whether the pages in 9 were written when Proust first dictated £53 to his secretary, or later, when he was intercalating leaves into his cahiers at frequent intervals. As Cahier 26 prompted an intercalation at the beginning of 9, we would expect the rewriting of the passage on Swann's social personality to be intercalated also. We analyse it on that assumption in section 4. 63. We are thus brought back once again from the sequel to Combray to the fair copy and the corrections. (d) Further material on Swann (Cahier 12, f. 124-35) The last two entries in Cahier 12 give two incidents concerning Swann. They were probably written after Cahier 36, but before the rewriting of Swann's story in Cahiers 69 and 22 (see section 6. 1). They were not necessarily written immediately one after the other (the second starts a fresh 34 Quoted in the Inventory (BIP 9 [1979] 59): Heritage Villeparisis traits villeparisiens [credit] dont elle use pour ma gd'mere fixite qu'elle prouve a ma gd'mere et dans son testament. Diner ou Swann ne me reconnait pas Castellane Jeune fllle qui aime trop le bal.

35 F-53V is tne 'ast Pa§e of 36' (see i. 2c). It is possible, though in our view not likely, that f. 50v-2r were written before the rest of the book had been used as far as f. 47_ Bakker calls them the earliest draft, but that leaves out of account 8: 23-4.

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page), but were probably prompted by what Proust found at the beginning ofCafiiers 36 and 25" respectively. The first (f. i24b~9) follows on from the 'scene de la voiture' of 12: 124a, but the writing is clearly different, implying a gap of time.36 This first passage is entitled 'Swann et le Monde. ' Swann hardly ever goes into society now, though he does care about his former friends, and conceives an exquisite gift of fruit for the Princesse de Holstein. He has melancholy thoughts of his death and the reaction of his friends (including Gurcy). In society he suffers from Madeleine's absence, but he goes to maintain contacts useful to her. So he visits the Princese de Guermantes, and views the spectacle of high society with ironic detachment. He arrives, and the servants who greet him are likened to works of art.37 Guercy and the Guermantes and the motif of Swann's death were part of the block that began on 36: io. 38 One notices that Guercy has become Gurcy, and that the member of the Guermantes family mentioned here is the Princess. Also that Swann's future wife is now Madeleine. A comparison with Tolstoy may tie in with something on Cahier 25* (see the end of section 5. 3). The second fragment39 starts on a new page, leaving f. 129 blank. It is a slice of Swann's story, his attitude towards his mistress before his marriage. An incident took place 'une fois que Forcheville avait maltraite son frere devant eux. ' Swann's mistress (here called Anna) looked admiringly at Forcheville on that occasion, and Swann wonders if she speaks of him in the same admiring way. When he is in society (as in the first of these fragments), he knows that he is appreciated in a way that he is not appreciated by her. But his love is nonetheless always present within him. He gives the analogy of the bell, always there if not always heard (Bakker 103). So he continues to think of ways to please her. Jealousy and the satisfac36 It is partly transcribed by Chelet-Hester, 540-2 (£. 124-5) and 517-20 (£. 127-8). 37 On this segment see Chelet-Hester, 520-2 (commentary). On the difficulties raised by Madeleine, see Leriche, thesis, I, 83. 38 Commenting on the two passages at the end of 12, Bernard Brun writes: 'Le Cahier 12, s'il reprend 1'amour de Swann pour "Anna, " deja presente sous ce nom dans le Cahier 25, situe Faction non plus a Querqueville mais a Paris, non plus dans le milieu Verdurin mais aussi dans celui des Guermantes' (BIP 14, 17). The last sentence seems to me confused. The passage where Anna admires Forcheville is certainly 'dans le milieu Verdurin, ' even if the Verdurins are not named; and there is nothing new in associating Swann with the Guermantes. 39 F. I30-5, transcribed by Bardeche, II, 402-5. The summary in NP presents the two passages in reverse order (1189). Chelet-Hester gives from f. 130 to the top of £. 132 only (542-6).

4. 5 Excursions to Padua and to Guermantes

107

tions of love grow together. Proust indicates another thought which he must 'mettre a sa place': her life, to him, is made up of specific memories. If somebody says they saw her, he suffers because he is reminded of her other life, which he does not share. Clearly Proust took the name of the girl (Anna) from Cahler 25', either because he wrote the passage at the same time, or (much more likely) because the name was in his mind after rereading the pages of 25'. Its position at the end of Cahier 12 makes it impossible to believe that it was written along with 25'. And as we shall see (section 6. ib), it was certainly written before 22, which gives an improved version of the first few lines, and indicates that the rest of the incident is already extant. The passage in Cahier 12 itself looks as if it is to be inserted into something already written (see 6. 1). But Proust did not as yet have a coherent framework, and it is understandable that that should be one of the most urgent things to attend to. However, the fair copy and the typescript were even more urgent, and the revision of the copy was probably already underway. 4. 5 Excursions to Padua and to Guermantes In the next section (4. 6) we present the revisions Proust made to the fair copy of 'Combray' and we talk about the 'intercalations' which Proust introduced into his copybooks. One of these is prepared by two entries in Cahier 5, which continues with a sketch of another incident, unconnected with 'Combray. ' Although time could have elapsed between the 'Combray' sketches and the 'Guermantes' pages, it is convenient to discuss them together. If the 'Combray' incident announces the corrections to the copy, the 'Guermantes' text seems to be conceived in the wake of Cahier 36, presented in our previous section. (a) The kitchen-maid (Cahier 5, £. 49-54; Cahier 10, £. 44, 46-8) We have already seen (in section 3. 33) that the portrait of the maid was sketched on four verso pages of Cahier 8 (following a few lines noted down in 12, £96), and copied into Cahier 10, £. 41, 42, 42. 2, ' 51, and that the missing sheet (42. 2) was immediately amplified and replaced. We left f. 44 and f. 46-8 out of our presentation. Neither involve the copyist whose hand we find throughout Cahiers 9, 10, and 63. i Our designation of the sheet, now missing, that must have joined £. 42 to £. 51. See section

3-3*-

108 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again The new pages contain two new passages, which extend the episode further. Both are drafted in CaMers*, an exercise book Proust had used for preliminary sketches earlier in igog.2 It is not the only instance of Proust returning to an exercise book he seemed to have finished with. To maintain that because Cahier $ was early, the passages presented here were also early, creates unnecessary difficulties. 3 There were two things that still needed attention. The comparison with Giotto's angels was ill prepared, as the young Protagonist was supposed to know only the Virtues and Vices; and there was a reference to Gustave Moreau in Cahier & that had been allowed to lapse (f. 57v). In Cahier $ we find two consecutive passages, one on each of these themes, which will be inserted into Cahier 10 at this point. 4 The first (5: 49-50) is the draft of a note on Gustave Moreau, beginning: 'C'est ainsi que dans 1'oeuvre de Gustave Moreau les muses sont representees. '5 This note was to go with the last sentence of £45, which spilled over onto the top of £49, and it fills most of £46-8. The second passage (sketched on 5: 51-4) elaborates on the first part of f. 45, and is the page intercalated as f-44. It tells of the Protagonist's discovery of the Giotto originals when 'Bien des etes apres celui-la, j'allai a Padoue. '6 As Yoshida suggests (I, 186), Proust must have felt that it was awkward to 2 See Pugh 1987, 60—2. Everything before £. 46 (the portrait of Frangoise, the count and countess, the count's fondness for Balzac) is early. F. 46-8 are blank. The new matter starts on f_49. 3 See next note. 4 This is why we cannot believe that these pages of Cahier 5 antedate the copy. The list of manuscripts in NP does not divide the cahiers. But it is clear that the editors did not consider the possibility of there being two dates for Cahier 5 when they wrote: 'La fille de cuisine que le Cahier 5 evoquait a Foccasion de Fepisode des asperges, reapparait dans le Cahier 12' (I, 1066). Bernard Brun, making the same assumption that Cahier 5 is homogeneous and early, is obliged to write of the two passages that Proust incorporated in his pages on Giotto: 'les deux fragments, quoique continus, sont isoles et ce serait une extrapolation abusive que de les relier a un fil narratif qui a cette date est encore bien fragile. II faut attendre un brouillon du roman, au Cahier 8, pour voir s'organiser... une serie de notes etc... Ces grossieres ebauches, fragmentaires et incoherentes, sont partiellement reprises sur le £96 du Cahier 12' (1981, 19). But it strains credulity too far to expect us to believe that two unconnected passages written for no good reason months before should together provide the substance of an addition that develops an episode written recently. Francoise Leriche (19873, 18-19) is also bothered by the apparent discrepancies within Cahier 5. 5 NP I, 1141, Bales 1978, 88. 6 Yoshida wrongly prints 'allais' in his commentary (thesis, I, 181), though his transcription (II, 123) is correct.

4. 5 Excursions to Padua and to Guermantes 109

give the young Protagonist knowledge of Giotto that went beyond the reproductions of the Virtues and Vices he had received from Swann. So the angels now form an independent episode, at Padua, written into Combray by anticipation. The visit is described in two quite distinct versions.7 Both are heavily reworked. In the first Proust tells of a visit the Protagonist made many summers later to Padua, where he was able to see and admire the originals of those things of which Swann and his grandmother had given him photos. Now he could see the real thing, so much more than a mere photograph. At the same time, it was less than the photograph, as it was a building huddled in with other buildings. The chief theme is his frustration at finding wonderful buildings occupying a place in the ordinary world of contingent happenings. Far from elevating the setting, this proximity reduces their prestige in his eyes: an amusing echo, we might think, of what happens to Mme de Villeparisis's nieces when the Protagonist's relatives find that they know Swann. Proust does not make the connection; instead he remarks that a great man (he cites Barres and Nietzsche) has his etat civil like everyone else. The passage is not very coherent: he still talks of Giotto's angels as if they belong to the set of Vices and Virtues, and he even mentions Chartres cathedral among the buildings (Yoshida I, 180). The revised version on £54 tidies this up; Proust remembered to say this time that he saw not only the Virtues and Vices, but also Giotto's angels, not included among the photographs Swann had given him, and which made the same impression. This version is recopied and intercalated into the copy (Cahier 10) as £44. As we would expect, the words needed to conclude £43 ('de la mort /' now 'idee de mort, ' written on the top of f. 45) were recopied by Proust, and struck off £45. We can still read on f. 44 the words 'Bien des etes apres celuila, j'allai a Padoue, apres. ' The rest of the page, like £45, has been cut out.8 7 £. 51—3r, rewritten £51 v and 52v, and again on 54r. Yoshida separates them, transcribing them on pages 12-17 and 123-4 respectively. 8 Both sheets are to be found now in the manuscript of La Fugitive, CafiierXlV, NAF 16721 £. 117-18. But they were probably removed before Proust constituted that manuscript (during the war). When Proust drafted the last part of his novel, in 1911, he decided to make the Protagonist's visit to Italy part of the novel. This happens in Cahier 50 (see 9. 33). Rather than recopy a page with which he was satisfied, he cut it out. Later still, during the war, he revised this draft for the part of the novel he called La Fugitive (NP IV, 226), and incorporated several sheets from Cahier 50 into his new manuscript, including the two he had taken from Cahier 10. Only the top and the left margin remain in Cahier 10, and they have been pasted onto a new blank sheet.

110 Beyond Combray, and Back... Again

The note on Moreau (f. 46-8) is an expansion of a half-sentence on 8: 58v,9 which would have been on the missing page 42. 2, written by the first copyist. As the note was sketched, in Cahier 5, just before the page on Padua, one would expect to find that it was inserted at the same time. It is however in the hand of a different copyist, who copied some eleventh-hour modifications to Cahier y. 10 We present it here for commodity. Originally, as we have said, the text ran over from f. 45 to 49: 'le meme que celui de/personnages qui n'[en] auraient pas , quand il arrivait 80, 8ibis, 82, and 84-5. ^ All these pages are missing from 03 except T74~7(a). As they were replaced in Di and D2 when T7i~7 were retyped in 1909, carbons of these pages in 'Chambres' must once have been in one or other of the principal typescripts.14 'Chambres' does not account for Ti 14-15, 117, 119, and 121-3, also missing from RD. On Ti 17 see below. There are three other cases where it is more practical to look outside D2 in order to read the first layer of the typescript: T97, TiO3, and T24. In two of these cases, Proust cut the page when he introduced a long insertion at a later date. With T97 (split between Dz, £104 and f. i i6), 15 one line was lost in the process, but it can be restored from one of the other two copies (Di: io8, 03: 165).l6 TiO3 is a little more complex, because the lower 12 CorrXI, 147/289-90; NP I, 1044-5. See 16. 1 0. 27. 13 The order in 'Chambres' (edited to make a coherent text paginated in blue pencil 'i' to '48') is T79bis, 80, 8ibis, 82, 84, 85, 21, 44-8, 51-5, 57-65, 74-7, 3, 4, 7-13, then the first typed page of'Noms de Pays: le Nom' ('Rien ne ressemblait... '), followed by some pages from 'Noms de pays: le pays, ' T6oo-i, T630, and finally three manuscript pages in Albert Nahmias's hand, numbered 632—4. The last seven pages are later than 1909 (see below, 13. 3 notes 4, 12, 19), but the others evidently come from the typescript we are considering here. T^6 must once have been with them, as the copy in 03 has the number '20, ' but it has a blue cross covering the entire page, and the last lines of T55 ('19') and two-thirds of T57 are struck out similarly. T^j is numbered '20, ' so the decision to cut two pages must have been made as he was numbering them (see Backus 1986, 28 n. i). T8obis and T8i, once numbered 3 and 4, have been removed from the folder, and the next page has the numbering (in blue pencil): 'Pages 3, 4 et 5 en une seule. ' 14 See 5. 3, n. 10. 15 Everything from NP 70: 6 to 79: 30 was an addition. (All NP references in this chapter are to vol. I. ) 16 See NP 79 var. a. The remark on NP 1139 (end of the variant) is misleading, in that it implies that D2 goes directly from 'cette visite' to the beginning of the next paragraph, 'La fille de cuisine. ' In fact both typescripts have a sentence of two or three lines at this

128 The 1909 Typescript

portion comprises a footnote, begun on TIOI and Ti02. The note therefore belongs with Ti02 and the top portion of Ti03 (TiO3A, 02: 122; on D2, Ti03B, with the last part of the note, is f. 141). 17 The original formofTio3 can be seen on 03, f. 171. The case of T24 is different: it exists in D2, but at a different place, because it was moved and incorporated in a later addition. It can be found at £134 (renumbered TiO3n, and following T103111). It is still in its original position on Di and 03. l8 There are various untidy details, apart from the ones just noted. In two instances (Ti4 and T54A) Di houses two copies, the authentic Di copy and the rejected page from D2, placed in front of it. Brydges does not indicate these duplicates in his table. The two copies of Ti4(a) in Di are f. iy and 18. A note on f. 17 refers to something inscribed on the previous verso, i. e. Ti3v, and we find this in D2 (f. iSv). ¥. ij of Di was therefore originally in the set we are calling D2. 19 It has been replaced there by a revised version, Ti4(b), 02: 19. See section 10. 33. Similarly, when Proust added a paragraph to the middle of T54, he had the page retyped, and the original was set aside. This would have given two new pages, but there is no trace of a second typed page; the second half of the addition is on a sheet handwritten by Proust and joined to the bottom of T54(b). At the end of the new material, where we rejoin the text originally typed on T54(a), Proust simply attached the lower portion of the sheet he had set aside to the new sheet. That is how it appears in D2 (f. 6i). The half-sheet that he no longer wanted, T54A(a), was removed from D2 and filed in Di (£64), immediately before the complete T54(a) of that set (01: 65).20 One consequence of this reshuffling is that the addition he had sketched on the verso of two pages (T$3v and 54v) is now found in fragments. The first lines are in D2 (f. 6ov, T53v), the continuation in Di (f. 64v, the half page T54A that Proust took out of D2), and the last two

17 18 19 20

point, which was struck when Proust wrote his long insertion: 'et des deux heures, Fran?oise etait obligee de monter pres d'elle pour l'"occuper, " deleguant ces jours-la a notre service celle qu'elle appelait "sa fille de cuisine. "' The very long addition goes from NP 82: 6 to 99: 38. We use the letters A, B, etc. if the page has been cut and the parts separated. Originally, of course, the pieces formed a single sheet. The passage from T23-6 was affected by a subsequent reordering of the text (see I5. 6c). The run is complete only in 03, as Di lacks T25The original of Ti4(a) is in 03 (RD: iO4). Later, when Cottin was copying Proust's corrections into Di (see 15. 53), he cut £65 in two and attached the two halves to a new sheet on which he copied out the supplementary paragraph by hand. The copy of T54(a) that was once in 03 was used for 'Chambres' (see above, n. 13).

5. 2 The date of the typescript

129

lines are on the verso of T54B as incorporated into the attachment on D2: 6i. See section 10. 33. Conversely, Dz contains two copies of T i i y (£155 and 156). As T i i y figures in DI also (f. 157), one would assume that one of the two pages in D2 really belongs in 03. 2I It is possible, therefore, to restore the very first typescript. All the pages we have mentioned have corrections in the margins, and as we have seen from the existence of'(b)' pages, Proust made some changes immediately. We can be certain that some of the marginal corrections date from the same time. Can we be sure which ones? As a general rule, we can say that whereas Proust used Di or 03 (but not Da) for his first corrections, after 1911 he worked from Da. The first corrections were copied onto Da later in 1910 or 1911. (Why this should be so will be explained in the next section, at 5-2C. ) Similarly, the corrections Proust made on D2 in 1911 or 1912 were copied onto Di by his amanuensis, Nicolas Cottin. 22 The difference in the handwriting helps us to keep the two sets apart. Like all general rules, there are exceptions, and no doubt there are many corrections it is difficult to date with confidence. But the present study is more concerned with structural than with stylistic changes, and it is usually very obvious which of the structural modifications are early and which late.

5. 2 The date of the typescript We have argued that the BN typescript contains two distinct layers, and that the original layer is based on the fair copy (Cahiers 9, 10, 63), with the sundry emendations and intercalations included. It would seem likely that the typescript was made with the minimum delay. The fair copy was taken in hand around November 1909 (see 4. 99). The typescript would then in all probability date from the very end of November or early December. This hypothesis stands up well when we test it against the correspondence. Yet it is only relatively recently that this reading of the evidence has received support. 1 21 It is f. i55 that was moved, probably in order to copy an addition on the verso in red ink. We shall see later (5. 4) that this case is more complicated than it seems, and there might have been a double shuffle, with the current Di copy coming from 03, and the extra copy in Da having started off in Di. 22 See below, section 15. 0. i See 5. 0 n. i.

130 The 1909 Typescript

Proust mentions his novel in three letters that Kolb assigns to late November or early December: two to Lauris (Gorr IX, letters 115 and 118) and one to Reynaldo Hahn (u6). 2 From them it transpires that about a week before the end of November 1909, Proust read to Hahn the opening portion of what he had written,3 and told Hahn that the copyist was having difficulty with the sequel, and that there would be a short delay. About a week later we find Proust sending Lauris a revised version of two pages of the first cahier (the pagination, he says, is the same), along with the other two cahiers. He had noticed several errors, and one page ('115, je crois') where some lines had been inadvertently repeated. He had managed to correct some of these errors 'a 1'encre' before sending the copy forward (i 18). And from a much later letter to Lauris (X, 35/83), we learn that the text was in the hands of the reader for Le Figaro by 5 December. Much later still (in 1913), Proust wrote to the gentleman in question, Andre Beaunier, and referred to 'le debut de mon premier volume (tout ce que vous avez lu en cahiers). '4 (a) Cahiers or typescript? It has always been assumed5 that the cahiers in question were the three exercise books that contained the fair copy, and that the 'debut' was 2 Actually the date now proposed by Kolb for the letter to Hahn is a relatively recent suggestion. Originally, he had assigned it to 21—4 May 1910 (Lettres a Reynaldo Hahn 180i). In redating the letter, Kolb says nothing about the 'etudiants moldaves, ' which were one reason for dating it May 1910 when he first published it. But the arguments for November 1909 seem cogent. The 'representation' that is to take place on 'Saturday' (see Kolb's note 11) is the subject of the first of Proust's letters to Lauris too. See also notes 1, 7, 12, and Wada's rigorous argumentation (thesis) I, 18-22. We suggest below that the letter should be brought forward by a few days, to 23 November. 3 'Mon debut (200 pages), ' letter 115 to Lauris. This is twice the figure quoted to Vallette in August, when Proust had suggested copying or typing 'les cent premieres pages, ' 787 1574 Corr XII 189/375. By sending the manuscript to Beaunier rather than Calmette, Proust committed what he later called a 'gaffe, ' and what Philip Kolb has called 'une heureuse bevue' (Kolb 1971; 'heureuse' because without the delay, there would never have been the opportunity to develop the novel on the huge scale that it needed). Calmette was hurt at the evident implication that he, Calmette, was less able than Beaunier to judge whether Le Figaro could publish it. Other references to what happened are less frank. To Antoine Bibesco, Proust said that 'on a trouve le moyen de m'aliener Calmette' (X, 447 100), and he wrote to Max Daireaux of a 'gaffe idiote (pas de moi)' (59/125). To Maurice Duplay, Proust spoke merely of his 'grosse deception' (79/167), and to Calmette himself, in September 1911, he could refer to the first division of the novel as 'yours' (X, 171/349). Du Cote de chez Swann was in fact dedicated to Calmette, despite the fact that he did not publish it! 5 E. g. by Roloff, 265.

5. 2 The date of the typescript

131

'Combray' (187 pages of the Pleiade edition). Since the discovery ofCaAier 63 and since Brydges's detective work on the typescript, we have to say, instead of'Combray': that portion of'Combray' that Proust had completed (to NP 134); but the basic assumption is unchanged. Such a reading, however, presents serious problems, both psychological and material. An obvious difficulty raised by the traditional reading is that it assumes that Proust submitted a handwritten copy to Le Figaro, which is most unlikely. Furthermore, we know that the handwritten copy is at times difficult to decipher, and that it did not include the all-important episode of the madeleine. But the traditional reading also runs into difficulties of a material kind. It implies first of all that the pages of the cahiers were numbered. But the pages of Cahiers 9, 10, and 63 are not. Secondly, it assumes that Proust kept a copy of the text he had lent Lauris; otherwise he could not have revised two pages and given them the same number. But there is no trace of any such copy, nor is it likely that there ever was one. Thirdly, nobody would apologize for the presence of 'ratures a rencre1 in a copy entirely written in ink. Fourthly, why would the copyist write to say he was having difficulties when the text was regularly dictated to him? And fifthly, there would be no point in having 'Combray' copied if Proust did not envisage having it typed.6 None of these objections holds if Proust was referring to a typescript, which would normally exist in more than one copy, where the pages would be numbered and where ink corrections would detract from its neat appearance. This supposition becomes a virtual certainty when we set Proust's comments alongside the typescript itself. He told Lauris that he was replacing two pages of 'cahier i' and he described them. Now T34 and T35 exist in two versions, typed on the same machine, and the description of the content fits (Leriche 1986, 17). There is no comparable duplication in the exercise books. Proust also referred to a stupid repetition on 'p. 115' (Vest de la folie'). None of the exercise books has 115 pages; on Ti 15 there is a repetition of the kind Proust described.7 6 Leriche assumes that the 'copyist' and the typist were one and the same, that Proust would read his text to the copyist, sometimes taking it from him to write a tricky passage, or to write in a significant addition, and that the copyist would then take it away and type it. That would explain why there are no blanks or misreadings in the typescript, something Brydges had noted also (1984, 12-13), deducing that the typescript must have been dictated. As the letter we have quoted refers to 'brothers, ' however, it might be that one brother took the dictation, and the other did the typing, in collaboration. 7 The repetition is not really foolish, as the typist simply followed what Proust had left uncorrected in 63: 11 (Leriche 1986, 15; Wada, thesis, I, 27). Proust changed it on D2, suggesting that he had not caught it in time to correct it on Lauris's copy before Lauris took it, nor before his typescript went to Le Figaro.

132 The 1909 Typescript None of these difficulties is faced by Brydges, although he does see the flaw in Kolb's idea (note 3 to letter 118) that two copies of the manuscript were circulating. He surmises that Proust sent Beaunier first Cahier3)

That is the point where the camera moved back to Leonie, conversing with Fran£oise in her bedroom. The addition begins in mid-sentence with the words 'qui etait a peine tiede, ' and takes a different direction. Proust now evokes the family, lingering on at the dinner-table, overcome by the food they have just consumed, while Fran§oise becomes anxious as Leonie needs her upstairs. New here is the insistence on the satiated appetites of the eaters, germ of a fuller description of the meal. A reference to Ali-Baba is characteristic of these additions in red ink (see 5. 4 n. 7). Then Proust went on to describe that corner of the garden where the Protagonist would sit (the text is slightly shorter than before), finishing: 'De ce bane 1'arrierecuisine. '18 Evidently Proust would have copied his page from Cahier 2$ at this point. 17 Transcribed by Wada, II, 28-9. See NP 1139, at the top of the page (end of var. a to p. 79). The sentence beginning 'Depuis longtemps' should be provisionally omitted. It was added in black ink, probably without much of a delay. The presence of red ink on the typescript normally points us in the general direction of January 1910, earlier than the dating proposed by Leriche (see 7. 1 n. i5 and text). The red ink here could be an exception to that general rule; it is impossible to be dogmatic. See below, n. 23. 18 This half-sentence is not given in NP.

7. 6 Sunday afternoons at Combray 263

In Cahier 14 Proust wrote the entire post-prandial sequence, incorporating these new elements. This time it will come not after the portrait of the kitchen-maid, but before. This is the original transition (Tgy): En realite, le jeudi et le dimanche, ma tante ne pensait qu'a cette visite et des deux heures, Francoise etait obligee de monter pres d'elle pour Toccuper, ' deleguant ces jours-la a notre service celle qu'elle appelait sa fille de cuisine. La fille de cuisine etait une sorte de personne morale d'institution.

The insertion comes after 'cette visite' (the fifteenth word), postponing the portrait for a paragraph. After a couple of false starts, Proust recopied the sentence as it was typed (14: 66). He continued by saying that the others lingered on at the table (an improved version of Ti02v,19 incorporating an improved version of 28: 5 iv). The explanation of 'taking the air' (from 28: 51 v) was tidied up on f. 66vb, replacing the last lines, heavily reworked, of f. 67r. 20 The paragraph concludes by saying that Franchise says she will send 'her'21 kitchen-maid to wait on them, while she looks after the aunt. Proust then wrote: 'La fille de cuisine etait une institution etc. ' (f. 68). The 'etc. ' means that we here rejoin the typescript,22 and that Proust saw no reason to recopy the portrait ('d') itself, which is very long. He left a space of one-and-a-half lines. Then he wrote: 'Tandis que la fille de cuisine 19 The added sentence ('Depuis longtemps') is included. 20 NP 759, first nine lines. Note a should be placed one word later. NP does not give the original version, but says that it is close to the version on Cahier 28. Bersani transcribed f. 6yr-8r, and the revised version on 6yr (interlinear corrections), 66vb, and 68rb in BIP 4 (1976) 9-10, as a sample of the method of transciption recommended by the Bulletin. Bersani's transcription gives a couple of words that NP rightly omits because Proust struck them out: '[et] sur la terre' and '[a] toutes les heures. ' Milly (1977, 31-2 and 1985, 10-11) also gives all three versions. Wada (II, 29-32) gives the first version (66r, 67r, 68ra), but only the second half (68rb) of the second version, as he omits to transcribe 66vb. As a result, his transcription starts in the middle of a sentence (68rb) and is incomprehensible. He gives part of 66vb at the end of his transcription of 66va (p. 35), but the two passages are quite independent of each other. F. 66va is a variant of the sentence that begins 'Mais alourdis' (seventh lines of Esq XXXVI, 758; cf. 1453, top). 21 Underlined in the manuscript, and in Wada's transcription; capitals in Bersani's model (see previous note), unmarked in NP. 22 NP is right (759 n. i) in saying that the cross-reference is to the typescript. Brun (Inv 55) refers us to 10: 41, but that was before the Combray typescript had been redated. In 1976 (see above, n. 2o), the reference given was to Cahier 8: 54v.

264 New Material for Combray and Querqueville

faisait briller involontairement etc. ' This time, the 'etc. ' indicates just two lines, quoted above. He is not going to tell us, yet, about the aunt's conversation with Frangoise, but about his own experience, reading in his bedroom and in the garden. Although the text continues on after this point, we can note here that further improvements were made to the evocation of the contented diners. The first comes on Di, f. ioyv, TQ6va (facing page Tgy, that is, before the portrait of the maid); still in red ink, though the red ink gave out, and Proust changed to black three words into the second sentence. 23 Proust started to describe the torpor of the family after lunch, and a brief description is given of the meal itself. Long after noon has struck, he says (this is the third sentence of the passage beginning on £67), he was still helping himself to jelly.24 These elements are included, and the meal greatly expanded, in a new version, added to 14 on f. 66va, and immediately extended in a marginal addition.25 The sequel (£69-70) is the passage on reading in the garden. We have seen already that Proust started an episode on reading on the versos of one

23 'II y avait / bien longtemps. ' There is an apparent difficulty concerning the red ink. As well as being used for the additions to the typescript in general, and the note in the Garnet (see 5. 2 n. 16 and 5. 4), we find red ink for the first layer of the addition on Ti03v (but not for the inserted sentence), for the first part (only) of T()6va, and also for several indications in the first part oiCahier 14 to omit passages, and to start with the passage on the grandmother (£17-34). As the Inventory indicates, red lines delete everything after the passage on the grandmother, from £35 to 57, and the revised version of the sadism passage that precedes it also (i6v-i9v). Brun plausibly implies (Inv 53) that this was done to direct attention to the passage on the grandmother, marked with a figure I, also in red. It could have happened just before Proust began on the sustained Combray section (which began at f. 66), and the experiments on the typescript made at the same time. But there is really no difficulty with this coexistence of red and black unless we think that Proust was incapable of going back to red once he had temporarily turned to black. That is to say, while we agree with Wada that the red ink helps to date additions within a very narrow range, it was not necessarily limited to a single session. We must admit, moreover, that the changes of ink from red to black and back to red are often capricious. Many pages contain corrections in both red and black, sometimes changing colour mid-sentence and changing back again a little further on. As an example, in the phrase 'le capucin n'avait pas ouvert son parapluie' (Ti56, RD 218), the word 'capucin' has been changed to 'homme' and 'ouvert' to 'mis' in black, and the words 'son parapluie' (struck out in black) have been rewritten as 'son' (black) 'capuchon' (red). On the implications of the red ink for the dating of these revisions, see above, n. 17. 24 The first sketch of this, also in black, is added to the verso of the other typescript. 25 Wada, II, 33-5 line i. They will subsequently be further developed on Gahieryo f. 2-3. See 8. i b.

7. 6 Sunday afternoons at Combray

265

of the typescripts (D3, Ti44~5v; see 5. 4). That is the source for the first lines of this new version, with the 'emballeur' duly integrated 'pendant les mouches. '26 Once again, Proust is concerned to organize elements already invented. He leads into it by saying that in his bedroom summer was recognized by certain sounds (£68-9, NP 759). On Thursdays, there might be the sound of the 'emballeur' knocking nails. On Sundays the sound was more likely to be of flies. The flies are evoked for a few lines. Proust continues on the theme of reading, taking from Ti53v the idea that the Protagonist would read in the garden if for some reason the walks were cancelled, but no longer putting this so late in the Combray narrative. 27 After saying that the books he read were generally recommended to him by a friend or teacher, and borrowed from the other town grocer (as Ti45v, but omitting the references to Stendhal and Balzac), Proust wrote several pages on the psychology of reading (f. 69-75, with the second half of f-74 blank;28 NP 759-62). The text comes from 29: 79-82, detached now from Bergotte, as a note on 29: 8ov had proposed (see 7. 53). Then on £75 he tells how his aesthetic preferences were all shattered when an older school friend initiated him into the tenets of the Art for Art's sake school (f. 75-84 and 84v).29 This had been prefigured on 26 at f. 5 (NP 831-3, see 4. 3), with the initiator there identified simply as 'on. ' Now it is Bloch. Bloch was given the role of initiator on 14: 51-2 (quoted above), and here the character is elaborated a little. As Proust was using the text of Ti44~5v for his lead-in, it is not surprising that the new version is sketched 26 Cf. the note on 28" f. sov, 'L'Emballeut, probablement pendant les mouches' (see 7. 43). 27 The transition is neater in the published text (bottom of NP 82).

28 NP indicates rewriting on f-70v (760 var. a) and 73rm (761 var. b), but there is actually more rewriting than that. The addition on f. 70v is not incomplete, as NP says ('plus que je n'aurais pense'), but continues with the word 'il' and then, on f-7iv, 'y avait done eu une heure que je n'avais pas entendue' continuing for several lines, which replace the passage quoted in NP as far as 'rue des Perchamps' (760: 40). On f. 6gv there are some 'notes d'esthetique' (Inventory), that is to say, reminders to work in ideas on Regnier, Jammes, Le Rouge et le Noir, '** (Sainte-Beuve), ' etc., 'Intercalages tres utiles pour plus loin. ' There is also an addition (f. 67v) on the 'cabinet de repos' of his uncle, from whom the Protagonist borrows a book. This is the germ of yet another episode. 29 NP 762-6, Wada 71-83. An addition on cathedrals and Ruskin (8orm and 79v) is given on NP 764, see var. a. Marantz (1985, 44) speaks of a 'solution de continuite' where we pass to the initiation theme, but it seems to me to flow perfectly well. The sheet numbered 83 by the BN is actually f. 82v, and Proust pasted onto it the bottom three lines of a printed page, on which he had made a marginal addition. As the Inventory indicates, it has no connection with any of this, the subject being the WC introduced on 14: 25 (see 7. ib). The page in question is the very last portion of galley 54 of the galley proofs produced by Grasset in May 1913. See 16. 3 n. i i.

266 New Material for Combray and Querqueville

on Ti45v:3° 'Un jour un camarade que mon grandpere n'aimait pas [et que celui-la] is later than those of 13 and 66. Yet Laget, discussing the Saxe motif in his thesis (41), writes about Cahier 13 as if Cahier ^Q came before it, although the table in which he seeks out elements the two books have in common (42) shows that 30 adds something to 13. His argument appears to rest on the observation (42-3) that the text of 30 still uses the word 'comme' while that of 13 has suppressed it, but this argument is not valid, as the word comes in the unit that occurs only in Cahier 30. Similarly, while it is true that Cahier 13 has 'des Saxe' where 30 and 39 use the singular, the context explains the difference, and the text of Cahier 30 is richer. We discussed Cahier 13 in section y. yb, and shall present Cahier 39 in 8. 2b. 21 This passage was rewritten on f. 23v-yv, and this time NP chooses to put the corrected version into the notes (1076 var. b, 1889-90). 22 NP does not give £32-33. See Leriche igSyb, 72-3; she transcribes extracts from £. 30, 32, and 29v. She argues that Cahier 30 marks an advance in Proust's aesthetic over passages in Cahiers 14, 29, 28, and 49. Cahier 49, however, is definitely later (see 8. 3). 23 See Leriche 1987^ 72-4.

284 Guermantes

(the duchess's recognition of the Protagonist), but this is the first indication of any second thoughts about the much-worked Querqueville sequence (see notably 6. 5a). The passage that goes from f-33d to £39 exploits a different theme: the effect produced by a great actor or actress.24 It is rewritten on f. 32v~4v, but as that revised version is incomplete, the NP prints it only as a variant (10773, 1891-2). There is a marginal note to amplify it by two other scenes (f. 39m, NP 10793, 1892-3): 'tacher que le morceau quelques annees avsnt soit exactement symetrique. Ne pas oublier les slices a la sortie du thestre pour spercevoir 1'actrice et 1'indifference au theatre avec Montargis. ' This note is in line with what he h3d proposed on f. 25 of Cahier 66: that the theatre scene, initially simply the setting for Mme de Guermantes's unexpected smile, will give rise to two others. One will explore the emotions of the young man seeing a great actress for the first time, undistracted by an inf3tu3tion for a duchess, and the theatre will also be the setting of a scene with Montsrgis 3nd his actress girlfriend. These scenes will be written, probably without delay, in Cahier 67. Finally, we have three completely independent intercaktions. On £40— 3, 'a ajouter a la chambre de ma Tante Leonie ou une 3utre' (cf. NP 49-50), he evokes the room and its smells (NP I, 724-5, Esq XX). Proust did not find this passage easy to write; two attempts are 3b3ndoned.25 There had been a return to Leonie in Cahier28, f. 20 (see 7. 73). Secondly, f. 43b-6, with f. 44 blank, 'Mettre pour 1'une des femmes que j'aime. ' He wants the girl when she is away, but close she disappoints. The girl's name is given here 3S Maria. Finally, after another blank page, on f. 48 there is a single sentence on Swsnn's suffering on account of Odette. These sdditions are in the orbit of our sixth chapter, and show Proust returning to parts of his novel he regarded as incomplete. (c) Cahier 67* The second exercise book that extends Cahier 66 is 67, used in both directions, first fof a visit to the thestre and secondly, in the reversed portion, for a visit to a sslon. A detailed inventory was published by 24 NP 1076-9, with an addition (f-35v) printed on 1079-80. See also 1078 var. a (f-36v). Commentary by Leriche, 19870, 72-3. 25 The second (£. 400) is given as var. a to p. 724, on 1444. Many lines are crossed out on f. 4ib also.

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285

Francine Goujon. 26 Much of Cahierby is reproduced in NP. 27 It is in this cahierthvit Proust concentrated on the motif of the Protagonist's infatuation with the theatre. The first fifteen pages describe a visit to see Phedre.2* The actress (not named in the first line but soon identified as Sarah Bernhardt),29 has been praised by Swann, and the Protagonist becomes totally obsessed by the thought of seeing her, and by imagining the experience (f. i~3a). Though his parents fear for his health, they give permission, and he worries about the possibility of letting them down (f. 3b-6a). So he goes, astonished first by the theatre itself (f. 6b), by the sounds announcing the beginning of the performance, and by the curtain raiser, which he mistakes for a genuine squabble (f. 6c-9a). Then, after a delay, comes the promised act QiPhedre, and his mistaking inferior actresses for the great one (f. Qb-ioa). When the latter does appear, he finds he is disappointed (f. iob-i2a). Subsequently, discussion with Swann (i2b-i3a, reworked on I3b-i5)3° shows him what he missed, and he would like to go again, but his parents will not allow him. However, in the next section, which follows without a break, he does go to the theatre, but this time with Montargis, who wishes to see his mistress.3* The great actress is performing, but he is no longer interested (f. 16iya). He is amused by a dancer studiously practising his role (f. iyb-iga).32 Montargis is jealous of his girlfriend's interest in the dancer, and they quarrel (f. i9b-2Oa). Montargis's stormy relationship with an actress goes 26 BIP 18 (1987) 23-30. 27 It has 50 sheets, not 51 as stated on p. cliv; the pencilled pagination on the original jumped from 20 to 22 ('20' has now become '20-21'). The microfilm pages are numbered correctly, from i to 50, and this is the system we follow. 28 NP I, 993-1001, Esq JFF II. 29 The identification of the actress with Bernhardt and the play with Phedre goes back to CaMer^i, £54 (NP II, 1168), and was made also in Cahierys. A note in Cornet i, f-44v ('Morceaux a ajouter. Paris: affiches, theatre [illusion] Sarah, ' not later than January 1910) suggests perhaps that he had intended to attach greater importance to the billboards than is the case here in Cahier 67. The fever induced by reading the billboards in Paris had also been the subject of a passage in Cahier 28, f-4i-5, but related to various celebrated actors, not to actresses. Towards the end of this passage on 67, the actress becomes Mile X. or Mme [blank] or Mme K. 30 See NP 1000 n. i. 31 The opening lines are quoted on NP 1501 (var. a of 1001). Note 2 refers to 64: 5, where Proust mentions 'le boulevard Saint-Martin ou j'accompagnai mon ami jusqu'au theatre ou il allait se perdre. ' 32 See note 2 to NP 1001 (though the term 'acteur' is not well chosen).

286

Guermantes

back to Cahier 31, the original source for much of the sections of the novel that Proust is now attending to. Much is added to this framework later. Several additions are found on the versos, and several at the end, with an indication of where they should be inserted. Some of these are included in the NP text,33 some are reproduced as separate Esquisses, 34 some are not mentioned. 35 Some simply rewrite the recto pages.36 In the new material certain preoccupations dominate. Thus, we have f. 2v-4v on the advantage of seeing the actress in a well-known role; f. ir, i va, yv-8v and also f. 24 give new developments around the same idea. 37 On f. 2v-3v Proust rewrote something sketched on the rectos. On f. 5r, 5v, 6v, he passed to the building as an extension of the actor (NP 995-6, see 995 n. d); on f. gv and lova (NP 998, 38 see nn. a and d) he worked over this idea further. The addition on f. i2-i3v, with the opening extended on f. iovb, is of particular interest. The subject is the fleeting nature of the theatrical experience, which is nurtured by memory. 39 He illustrates the law by the 33 F. irma, indicated by 993 note b (the reference should, however, be placed two lines higher, at 'Ah!'); iri and rmb, 993 n. d; 6rm, 9950 (arrival at the theatre); 5v, 995d; gvblova, 9983; gva (an insertion in gvb, not indicated as such, from 'II me semble' to 'mal mis'); I irma, 998c (another insertion in the foregoing); i irmb, 9993 (enthusiasm of her audience); 11 rmc-i2rm, 999b (admiration of someone nearby). 34 F. iva is Esq V. 2, 1005-6; lovb, I2V-I3V is Esq III, 1001-2. See below, n. 38. 35 F. ivb-2va, which ends 'Ceci se met en face de la page precedents pour 1'y intercaler'; 2vb-3v, 'Mettre a un de ces endroits'; 4v [a c b f d e]; i ivd, incorporating i ivb, facing f. 12, Swann's explanation; yv-8v, the latter sheet marked 'annexe au verso precedent. ' 36 F. ivb, 2va (he tries to imagine what it will be); i iv (the conversation with Swann). 37 F_4v is not easy to decipher. In one further addition there, in tiny writing, he compares his excitement with anticipating Venice. The addition on f. ir (that he wished to hear her in one of her best roles) is included in NP 993; see note d. Proust wrote 'ce morceau est ecrit ailleurs, ' but as the NP note says (993 n. i), no such description has come down to us. The addition on f. iva is Esq V. 2, 1005-6. It includes the indication: 'Meier tout cela avec le morceau fait ailleurs probablement dans le Cahier recopie de la soiree ou je vis Mme de Guermantes et sur des feuilles detachees placees dans ce cahier. ' Goujon suggests 30 f-33-9, and the NP note (1005 n. 3) follows this lead, mentioning also f. i-3 of the same book. Better than f. 1-3 in my opinion would be f. 13-17. There are, however, no 'feuilles detachees' in Cahier30. The sequel, to f. iv ('voir la suite de ceci six pages plus loin, ' i. e. f_7v), is not given in NP. It has a similar indication: 'Mettre a un de ces endroits ou [sic] dans la 2e partie (journee ou je vois Mme de Guermantes) (plutot dans cette partie-ci). ' F. 24b-5a is Esq V. i, 1005. 38 There are two insertions into this addition, one on i irma (noted in 998 n. c) and one on f. gva, from 'II me semble' to 'mal mis' (not noted). 39 Esq. JFF III in NP I, 1001-2, with revealing notes on p. 1502. F. iovb must have been added later, as it ends with the first four words of the passage that starts at f. 12v, implying that that passage follows on. See 1001 var. b.

8. 2 Entry into Guermantes

287

decor, the costumes, and a 'danseur de genie. ' The annotation in NP shows that Proust was adapting remarks first made by Reynaldo Hahn in a review of Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes on 10 June 1910. The connection with Hahn gives a relatively late date for this addition, and maybe other additions too, and it affects our dating of Carter 40 (see 8. 2, fourth paragraph). More thoughts for insertion into the first text come on the ten pages following f. 20, entitled 'Quelques annexes a ce morceau. ' They are given, without being precisely identified, as Esquisse IV, NP ioo2-5.4° On £31 rb (Inv 28), Proust made a note to draw a parallel with these fantasies based on mysterious names when the Protagonist is dreaming about Venice and Querqueville. Cahier 67 is also used in the reversed position, but although the opening pages are linked to Cahier 66, other material it contains leads us to group it with the exercise books written after the long Guermantes narration (see 8. 5h). 8. 2 Entry into Guermantes (Cahiers 39-43) After so many fragments, it is pleasant to encounter a draft for the whole of the next part of the novel, Le Cote de Guermantes. It fills six exercise books, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 49. This phase has been admirably summarized by Thierry Laget in NP II (1494-1503), and generous extracts are given in the Esquisses and in the notes. Some additional information is contained in Laget's thesis, which is a critical edition of Cahier y^. Dharntipaya Kaotipaya followed suit in 1986 with a thesis on Cahier 40. What we say here adds little to Laget's account, save in one important detail. Neither Laget nor any other commentator except Kaotipaya1 has allowed that Cahier 49 is the sequel to 43, though it is generally admitted that it gives a good idea of what the 'missing' sequel 'must have' contained. Yet it can be demonstrated that 49 starts in the middle of a sentence begun at the end of 43. Because Cahier 49 is a special case, we allocate it to a separate section. Laget shows (NP 1495) that when Proust began his sustained writing for Le Cotede Guermantes, it was in the book now numbered 41, on which he had 40 F. 2ob-ia, 2ib-3, 23b-4a (summarized NP 1503, as 1003 n. d), 24b~5a (NP 1005, Esq V. i), 25b-8a. NP does not give the rest, which continues to £. 31: 'Quand j'hesite pour aller a Querqueville ou a Venise (voir) je dirai. ' That is the last entry on the recto sides, except for the last page of all (f-5o), which is very late, citing Charlus, Morel, Albertine. i Thesis, 18 and 27 n. i.

288 Guermantes

inscribed 'IVe partie / i' (the figure below the title). The designation 'IVe' implies that Proust had not realized that with the eruption of'Gilberte' as a separate section, coming between 'Un Amour de Swann' and Querqueville, 'Guermantes' is really the fifth part; his third part is a diptych comprising 'Noms de pays: le nom' (including 'Gilberte') and 'Noms de pays: le pays. ' Proust made three attempts to write the first few lines of his text, corresponding to NP 310: 41 to 311: 11. Instead of continuing on the next page, however, he began afresh in a new book, which is entitled 'IVe partie / 2. '2 It would seem likely that Proust had prepared three or more books in advance, hence the number '2' for a book that contains the opening paragraphs; Proust later changed the '2' to a 'i. ' At the end oi Cahier y) (f. 6jv), he wrote: 'Suivre au Cahier 3, '3 showing that he had not yet changed his original numbering. 'Cahier 3' is Cahier 40* ('IVe partie / 3, ' the '3' later changed to a '2'). In time, naturally, the 'i' of Cahier ^\ will be changed to '3. ' Cahiers 42 and 43 have the numbers '4' and '5, ' but the fuller title has disappeared, probably in the process of binding them.4 In the opening pages of his thesis (8-21), Laget gives several precise pieces of information that enable us to date this project. In a table printed on p. 21, he proposes as the starting date April-May 1910, which may be a trifle early. If we accept Leriche's argument concerning the relatively late dating of the first pages of Cahier 14 we would expect the new enterprise to have begun in May or even June, and this later date is supported by various clues in the Guermantes cahiers^ There is first a clear indication that Proust could not have written f. 23 of 2 NP II, 1494-5. References are all to vol. II, unless indicated otherwise. 3 NP 1159, end of Esq XVII. 4 Laget, NP 1494. See PRAN 2 (1969) 20. On p. 24 it is implied that the book may have had the title once, and the commentary in BIP i says correctly that 'les etiquettes des deux derniers cahiers n'existent plus qu'a 1'etat de fragments' (16). On Cahier 41 we can read 'IVe partie, ' but on 42 and 43 we can read only the numbers ('4' and '5'). 5 See above, 7. 1. In his thesis (8) Laget evokes a letter to Gregh of 5 June 1910 in which Proust talks of a 'livre que j'ai commence a mettre en ordre' (Corr X, 49/107). There is no need to limit that reference to Guermantes; indeed, the one phrase that Proust cites is from 'Combray, ' and so Proust probably had his whole project in mind, or perhaps the work we analysed in the previous chapter. On the other hand, it is no doubt significant that in late April, and again in June, Proust reminded Lauris that he had never answered his question about whether the name Guermantes was free (31/73, 56/120, see i. i, fourth paragraph). A third reference, the following November, seems to imply that Proust had received a reply, but that it was not precise enough: 'Je ne sais toujours pas si Frangois de Paris vous a dit expressement que je pouvais disposer en toute liberte du nom de Guermantes que je voudrais a la fois illustrer et salir' (102/217).

8. 2 Entry into Guermantes

289

Cahier 40 before mid-June at the earliest. Proust is talking about the ephemeral nature of artistic performance, and among many illustrations he mentions Tinstant ou une attitude de la mimique du danseur prend la place d'une autre attitude qui n'est pas finie encore et va se changer en une attitude nouvelle. ' The point is sufficiently general, we might think, to have no specific referent. But Kaotipaya is right to say (18) that Proust is thinking of Nijinsky, whom he saw dance in Paris on 4 (probably) and 11 June.6 Moreover, the phrase just quoted was the fruit of reflection. Reynaldo Hahn wrote about the Ballets Russes on 10 June, and Proust sent him a quizzical letter admitting that he had not noticed half the things Hahn writes about, notably the blue costumes ('qu'est-ce que c'est que tes bleus?') and the 'mimique' of Nijinsky ('comment peux-tu meme distinguer de la mimique de Nijinsky?'). Nevertheless he wrote a short piece about the fugitive nature of art in Cahier 67,7 and there he adopted Harm's point of view ('la salle eblouissante, les costumes bleus... Ce danseur de genie a fait cette mimique qui vous semble inspiree, mais deja son corps a pris une autre attitude'). These thoughts are then incorporated in the much more intricate development of Cahier 40, and because of the flow of the narrative, we can say that they had been set down in Cahier 67 some time earlier. These same ideas are reintroduced and developed at greater length in an intercalation within an intercalation placed at the end of Cahier 39 (f. 66v, NP 1155-6), and the allusion to Nijinsky and the 'troupe etrangere qui avait en ce moment [sic] un si grand succes a Paris' is transparent. Laget has shown, by deciphering a cryptic allusion in the text, that these lines were written in the wake not of the direct experience of the ballet, nor of Harm's review, but of an article of Louis Vaudoyer which appeared on 15 July.8 By that time, therefore, the main text of Cahier y> had been written, maybe the original intercalation too, and it follows that the sequel (in Cahier 40) had been written also. But although the inserted paragraph must be ascribed to late July, we must point out that the text of f. 66, which this addition extends, comes directly from Cahier 67: 17-19, the dancer practising his steps among the well-dressed members of the public who have gone backstage (see 8. ic). It is on other grounds that we can maintain that the 6 Corr X, 52/114 and n. 2, 51/113 and n. 2, 56/119 and n_3. 7 F. I2V-I3V, Esq JFF III (NP I, 1001-2 and notes, based on Kolb's notes to letter 52). See 8. 1 at n. 39. 8 For details of Laget's demonstration, and for the arguments supporting our statement that the final episode of Cahier 39 was an intercalation, see 8. 40.

290 Guermantes whole of the episode which goes from £63 to the end of Cahier 39 was written after the main narrative had been written and continued in Cahier 40 (see 8. 40). A second example shows a similar pattern, of a dateable source influencing the main text of one of the later cahiers (here 41) and additions to Cahier 39. Proust refers several times to La Chartreuse de Parme, and the references come on the versos of Cahier y) (25rm-24v, 38v, 61 v), but on the recto pages of 41 (^38-40), suggesting that something prompted Proust to bring Stendhal's novel into his own text at a date between writing the first layer of Cahier 39 and writing Cahier 41. Now, in the very same letter in which Proust told Lauris that he had been to the Ballets Russes (56/119), he said that he had just finished rereading La Chartreuse. We might assume that he had already written Cahier 39 before he read La Chartreuse, but that he had read the novel before he wrote Cahier 41. This could bring the date of Cahier y) forward to May.9 In the same letter Proust wrote to Lauris: 'Je ne peux toujours pas vous envoyer mes cahiers car je ne peux pas travailler, mais quand je pourrai cela ira si vite. ' It is difficult to take such protestations seriously, particularly in view of the enormous amount of work Proust accomplished in the spring and summer of 1910. Even if we were to use this statement as evidence that the Guermantes manuscript was not begun until June, it hardly squares with the number of cahiers Proust filled during the previous weeks, analysed in the previous chapter. Proust was in Cabourg from 17 July to the end of September, and he continued to work while he was there, as he had done the previous year. We know this is so by a note on f-34vb (NP 1120 var. a: 'Je laisse en suspens la question de savoir si ce passage inspire a Cabourg sera pour Mme de Guermantes et comment il se reliera'). On NP 1939 Laget implies that the basic text was written by August 19 io. 10 There are one or two other 9 It so happens that Vaudoyer's article mentions La Chartreuse as well as the Russian Ballet, but only in passing, and we would expect to find that for these passages on La Chartreuse Proust was inspired by direct contact with the novel rather than by a single allusion to an imaginary comtesse Mosca in Vaudoyer's article. So these Stendhal references do not have to be delayed until late July. See the details in note 2 to NP 1156 (on 1914-15). io Wada demurs, but the argument he advances should be discounted. He refers (201) to a letter Proust wrote while he was at Cabourg to Bibesco, which he interprets as meaning that Proust wants the Repertoire of Cerfbeer and Christophe in order to collect some new names (Corr X, 72/153). But it seems to me that Bibesco asked Proust to return his copy of the Repertoire, and Proust is simply saying that he cannot trust the people in Paris to put their hands on the right volume.

8. 2 Entry into Guermantes

291

references that can safely be ascribed to the autumn, or even the following January, but they are all additions to the principal text. 11 (a) A false start (Cahier 41, f. 1-3) The three versions of the opening lines on Cahier 41 are a reworking of what Proust had already sketched on Cahiers 66 and 30. These versions are less straightforward than NP leads us to believe. The first thing to notice is that there seems to be a sheet removed before f. 2 ('f. i' is the inside cover, which might well have been called 'f. ov'). F. 2 starts with three words 'les pays, il, ' followed by a blank line; probably Proust broke off his first version there, wrote a second version on the page facing his first page, that is, on the inside cover, and removed the first page later, in order to be able to see his second version while he composed his third version, on f. 2. The second version, then, is the one on the inside cover. Proust was constantly crossing words out, retracing his steps, adding improvements between the lines, so that in fact this actually constitutes more than just one version of the text. 12 He started again (third version) on the third line of f. 2, continuing to f. 3a. This too was often crossed out and rewritten, with a tidier version of part of it in the margin (f. 2rma). Then beneath that (f. 2rmb) all of the first few lines were copied out tidily, after which the principal text (f. 2rc~3a) is the valid one. It is this final version that NP reproduces in part on 1499-1500.13 This version was then copied by Cottin onto the first sheet of Cahier y), but Proust took it up himself, made some changes, and rewrote it.14 With that he was launched, and the text continues virtually uninterrupted.15 11 See below, 8. 40. 12 'A 1'age ou les noms [de cites celebres], «de la geographie> [ayant Fair seulement de]