This post’s title was “Per viam rectam”, which I explain at the end. The post is dated October 29, 2010, just before I wrote the first draft of what became Kenning Magic. Make of that what you will.

Within a Budding Grove, pp. 369-382

The Trocadero, Paris

After a hectic week, it was a pleasure to sit down with Marcel and read a few pages. Proust’s text takes me away from the madness of NYC — the noise and crowds and torn up streets that have made cycling to work this week a daily challenge — and into the calm of poor Marcel’s infatuation with Gilberte.

Yes, he’s still going on about her. But in this section he crosses a threshold, literally. After hearing that Mme. and M. Swann “can’t abide” him, Gilberte suddenly begins inviting him to tea, where the Swanns treat him with polite distancing. Before, he would stand in the street and stare up at Gilberte’s windows, imagining what went on up there. But now, he stands at the window and looks down on the street, to see other guests arrive.

Palais de l’Industrie, Paris

It’s very sweet to see him finally spending time with Gilberte, finally allowed entré to the world of the Swanns, but I can’t help wondering if there isn’t some kind of disaster waiting for him. We’ll see.

One passage stood out as Marcel rues writing an impetuous letter to Gilberte stating his wish for more time with her. No response comes, and it nearly crushes him:

I had spent the New Year’s Day of old men, who differ on that day from their juniors, not because people have ceased to give them presents but because they themselves have ceased to believe in the New Year. Presents I had indeed received, but not that present which alone could bring me pleasure, namely a line from Gilberte. I was young still, none the less, since I had been able to write her one, by means of which I hoped, in telling her of my solitary dreams of love and longing, to arouse similar dreams in her. The sadness of men who have grown old lies in their no longer even thinking of writing such letters, the futility of which their experience has shewn.

And then, a few lines later, thinking about Berma surrounded by admirers but inured to their attentions, the older Narrator wonders if a letter from Gilberte could have fulfilled Marcel’s expectations:

At that moment, a message from Gilberte would perhaps not have been what I wanted. Our desires cut across one another’s paths, and in this confused existence it is but rarely that a piece of good fortune coincides with the desire that clamoured for it.

“The sadness of men who have grown old” and “this confused existence.” Melancholy phrases for an autumnal day.

BTW: The post title, “per viam rectam” can be found in Psalms 107:7 (et duxit illos per viam rectam/And he led them forth by the right way), and it’s the motto on the Gilberte’s stationery. Even more reason to worry about Marcel.