Day 24: Cet escalier détesté

I have just reached the spot where, after all his subterfuge to persuade his mother to come kiss him goodnight and her refusal, he pounces on her as she passes his room, shocking and angering her. Before she can shoo him back into his room, his father appears, and to his complete astonishment, tells his mother she ought to spend the night with him and comfort him, as he looks so miserable.

It is an amazingly vivid scene, set up beautifully by the boy's description of the "hateful staircase" which smells of varnish that has "absorbed and crystallized the special quality of sorrow" which he feels every night when he is forced to climb it against his heart's desire. One can truly feel his despair.

And it is a feeling I think most of us have experienced - a mother's love, withheld. It can be devastating for a child. I myself had a special attachment to my mother, although nothing approaching the obsession that Proust felt for his mother and can remember quite vividly times when, perhaps after being punished and sent to my room, I wholeheartedly believed that she did not love me and would sob into my pillow.

Something that occurred to me while reading this passage, and which puzzles me greatly, is why Proust has not introduced his brother. I don't know if he will appear later in the story, but I find it very interesting that all the rest of his immediate family have made an appearance, but there is no brother. From what I have read of his biographies, he was quite close to his brother Robert, who was only 2 years younger than he, and of whom he was quite fond and protective. 

I suppose that it might detract from the misery he is trying to convey if he were to introduce a sibling. And considering that Robert seemed to be everything that Marcel was not, might induce one to be less sympathetic with Marcel, at a point where your complete sympathy is vital. 

Another point I found very interesting is his first mention of photographs, which he says his grandmother would have liked him to have in his room, but "she would find that vulgarity and utility had too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical nature of their reproduction..." This would have been around the 1880s when the daguerreotype  and collodion were established methods of producing photographs, and George Eastman was about to invent film as we know it. 

Photographs then were considered principally a means of accurate reproduction and certainly not in any way "art." And so, as a photographer myself, it is quite fascinating to read this passage and how the grandmother seeks to eliminate this "commercial banality" and replace it with "art."

But that is really a topic for another blog!! Proust's exposure to art as a young child, and his associations with some of the great artists of the time later in his life, however, are of great importance and will provide fertile ground for discussion.

How is everyone else doing? Still chugging along, I hope!  I'd love to hear from you!

À bientôt!

-Michel

Next posting: Thursday, April 5th