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BY
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PROUST
AND
PAINTING
NEW YORK
``. . .
MAURICE CHERNOWITZ
酱
​1944
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រា
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PROUST
AND
PAINTING
BY
MAURICE EUGENE CHERNO"
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy,
Columbia University
NEW YORK
1944
Un
:
Copyright, 1944, by Maurice E. Chernowitz
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the author:
except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages in a review to be printed in a
magazine or newspaper.
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PREFACE
IN
N ABOUT two decades the prolific literature on Proust has
grown to comprise several thousand books and articles
written in more than a dozen languages. Yet many gaps have
been left unfilled. Proustian scholars still await, for example,
an authoritative, full-length biography of Proust. The litera-
ture about him has lacked more especially a study of Proust
and Painting. This subject begged for attention, since it would
have to be the first extensive monograph to treat the art of
painting in the work of a modern author. The topic presented
hitherto unsolved difficulties, to be sure, but also new possi-
bilities that challenged one's interest. Proust's significant use
of painting will keep reminding us of what can be achieved
by a mere art amateur if the amateur is a man of genius. By
examining the rôle of painting in Proust's magnificent opus,
it is to be hoped that this book will accomplish a double pur-
pose: throw further light on Proust in general and at the same
time illuminate at least a small segment in the vast field of
comparative studies of art and literature.
This work is part of a more comprehensive study on Proust,
which, it is hoped, will be published after the war. Begun
several years ago as a doctoral dissertation at Columbia Uni-
versity, the present work was carried on with many interrup-
tions to be finally completed in 1942, and officially submitted
in January, 1943. I cannot adequately express my gratitude
to the many scholars, librarians, artists, friends, and other
individuals from whom I received helpful information and
vii
سوار کیا
viii
PREFACE
encouragement and who, in various ways, contributed materi-
ally to the preparation of this book. Among the friends of
Proust whom I was privileged to consult before their recent
deaths must be mentioned the late Edouard Vuillard and Jacques-
Emile Blanche. I am indebted to Horatio E. Smith, Justin
O'Brien, John L. Gehrig, Henri F. Muller, and other Professors
of French at Columbia University for their advice and criticism.
I am particularly grateful to Meyer Schapiro, Professor in the
Department of Fine Arts, for giving me the benefit of his eru-
dition in matters of art as well as in problems treating the
relationship of painting to literature, and for offering un-
sparingly many constructive suggestions which have proved
invaluable in carrying out the present study. Above all I am
thankful for the inspiring devotion and patient help received
throughout this work from my wife, Rose, to whom this book is
affectionately dedicated.
PROUST AND PAINTING
CHAPTER I
PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
"P
AINTING is silent poetry and poetry is voiced paint-
ing." This far-reaching and rather modern thought is
said to have been expressed by the Greek poet Simonides
more than twenty-four centuries ago. Among the problems
still confronting both the literary and the art historian, few
have been more complex and more challenging than the rela-
tion between art and literature. Yet not only have the arts
followed strikingly parallel paths, they have mutually served
and inspired each other, contributing amply to each other's
substance, themes, ideology, view of nature, and even form
of expression.
The currents run in both directions. We need but glance
through any history of art to find a considerable proportion
of paintings with motifs drawn directly from literary and
mythological sources. The study of literary and thematic con-
tent in works of art has been a constant preoccupation of
art critics. On the other hand, the reverse current, from
painting to literature, has been no less productive, as can be
illustrated by Horace's much-debated line, Ut pictura poesis.
Enjoying an astounding popularity, this passage alone which
merely compared various genres in poetry, all equally good,
to different modes of painting gave rise to a great number
of paraphrases and interpretations, chiefly misinterpretations.¹
Many poets tried to parallel painting and express the subjects
3
4
PROUST AND PAINTING
and pastoral moods of landscape artists.2 Eighteenth-century
England showed itself particularly sensitive to the Italian land-
scapes of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa.3
But in no period and no country have relations between men
of letters and men of art been closer than in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century France. There for the past hundred and fifty
years every ism has had its pictorial and literary counterparts,
from Classicism and Romanticism, through Realism, Impres-
sionism, and Symbolism, down to Cubism, Dadaism, and Sur-
realism. In this rich and versatile nineteenth century we see
more than ever before writers who, like Gautier, Baudelaire,
Fromentin, and the Goncourts, were also painters or art critics.5
Under such auspicious circumstances the influence of painting
on French literature has been increasingly noticeable with re-
spect to both subject matter and aesthetics. Indeed the last
century has seen several important instances of the introduction
of the painter as protagonist in the French novel and short
story, such as Charles Nodier's Peintre de Saltzbourg in 1803,
Balzac's Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu in 1831, the Goncourt bro-
thers' Manette Salomon in 1867, and Emile Zola's L'Euvre
in 1886.
6
It is the rôle of painting in the work of a twentieth-century
author that we have chosen to investigate. A work as original
and as complex as that of Marcel Proust calls for analysis
through many fields of endeavor. And although, unlike
Gautier, Fromentin, or Goncourt, Proust never touched a brush,
painting at once suggests itself.
Just what does our investigation hold in store for us? A
painter friend of Proust, Jacques-Emile Blanche, rightly sus-
pects that Proust's writings contain abundant material of great
PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
5
interest to the art critic. Even a cursory reading of Proust
reveals the author's constant awareness of painting and painters.
Let us give a few examples chosen at random.
Swann's desire to visualize Odette's life is compared to
the ardent interest of the aesthetician who examines the extant
documents of fifteenth-century Florence so as to penetrate fur-
ther into the soul of Botticelli's Primavera, of his fair Vanna,
or of his Venus.8 The narrator describes how as an oversen-
sitive child he used to prepare his mind for the brief minute his
mother would grant for his good-night kiss, as a painter pre-
pares his palette for a subject he can have only for short sittings
and does in advance everything that can possibly be done in
the sitter's absence: The moonlight over Combray is pictured
as throwing light on parts of houses and gardens in a manner
which invests them with a Hubert Robert quality: all it reveals
of a telegraph office is a half broken column, thus suggesting
the beauty of an immortal ruin.10 Later if the narrator's
memory reconstructs in Combray some old street that no longer
exists, this "restoration" makes him think of being able to see
Da Vinci's Last Supper or the portico of Saint Mark's preserved
in their original condition in old engravings and in Gentile
Bellini's painting.11

9
Pictorial art is brought up in every possible connection. Med-
itating on the dire results of suffering, the author evokes "ces
terribles figures ravagées, du vieux Rembrandt, du vieux Bee-
thoven de qui tout le monde se moquait."12 The painter Elstir
introduces into his canvases a friend or a patron much in the
same way as Carpaccio, four centuries before, would bring in
contemporary notables of Venice.18 The power of the in-
spired composer Vinteuil, intoxicated with his music, is com-
6
PROUST AND PAINTING
pared to the frenzy of Michelangelo, "haletant, grisé, affolé,
vertigineux, tandis qu'il peignait sa grande fresque musicale,
comme Michel-Ange attaché à son échelle et lançant, la tête
en bas, de tumultueux coups de brosse au plafond de la
chapelle Sixtine."'14 After Albertine's death the Vinteuil sonata
retains for the narrator certain personal associations, certain
overtones, which confer upon the musical passage an additional
value, historical and curious, like that which Van Dyck's por-
trait of Charles I acquires from the fact that it reached the na-
tional collection thanks to Mme du Barry's wish to impress
the king.15
The author is thus led to make constant comparisons with
art. The narrator asks himself what he really knows of Al-
bertine: one or two profiles outlined against the sea, surely
less beautiful than those of Veronese's women, whom, if he had
been governed by purely aesthetic motives, he ought to have
preferred to her.16 In another passage art is viewed as a
religion, as a cult. Just as in the seventeenth century illustrious
ladies entered convent life, so now some women dancers,
touched by art as by divine grace, would live in an apartment
filled with Cubist pictures; a Cubist painter worked solely for
them and they lived only for him.17 The substitution of one
pleasure for another recalls going to the Louvre to see a Titian
that once was in Venice as a consolation for not being able to
take a trip to Venice.18 The marble staircase of a Venetian
edifice built on the edge of the water gives one the same
impression as a similar scene in a Renaissance painting, so
that we question whether it is part of a palace or of a boat.'
19
A few more instances will show the variety of Proust's
allusions to art. The rigidity that comes with arteriosclerosis
Emmotta?

PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
7
i
}
has affected a character's physiognomy so that his features have
acquired the immobility, the intense, almost grimacing sharp-
ness of a study by Mantegna or Michelangelo.20 Albertine
betrays her embarrassment by her facial expression. Her other-
wise mobile features, her nose, mouth, and eyes, became immo-
bilized into a self-sufficient unity, completely isolated from
the surroundings, making her look like a pastel, and giving
the impression that she had no more heard what had just been
told her than if it had been uttered before a Latour portrait.21
The deliberate, artistic simplicity of M. de Charlus' evening
coat suggests a "Harmony" in black and white by Whistler.22
The partial resemblance of Gilberte to her mother gives her
the appearance of a portrait in the making that is not yet a
good likeness of Mme Swann, whom the painter, through some
whim, has portrayed half disguised in Venetian costume.23
Riding in her elegant victoria, Mme Swann is borne along by
a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as those in the
drawings of Constantin Guys.24
The sea forms a background against which the aristocratic
Saint-Loup is drawn full length, as in certain portraits by
painters of today, who, through the choice of a suitable setting
for their modela polo field, a golf or race course, the bridge
of a yacht create the modern equivalent of the practice
of the Primitives who would show the human figure in the
foreground of a landscape.25 Mme de Cambremer suffers
because her consciousness of her Guermantes connection can-
not be made externally manifest in visible characters like the
letters which are set vertically in Byzantine mosaics by the side
of some sacred personage so as to spell out the words he is
supposed to be uttering.26 In the youthful hero's imagination
8
PROUST AND PAINTING
the name of Florence is divided into two sections like certain
paintings by Giotto showing the same person at different mo-
ments of activity, here lying in bed, there ready to mount his
horse.27 A young man in costume, dancing back stage, has
cheeks chalked in red, reminiscent of a page from a Watteau
album.28
In Proust's work even subjects most remote from the world
of art are brought together with it. For instance, a battlefield,
he writes, can no more be made of any ordinary piece of
ground than a painter's studio can be made out of any room
at all.29 The appreciative attention which the otherwise snob-
bish Mme de Villeparisis focused on the narrator's father
seemed to alter the scale of her vision, making this man appear
large beyond proportion and all the others so small, like
Gustave Moreau's Jupiter who was endowed with superhuman
stature when portrayed by the side of a mere mortal.30
Reading Proust is like walking through many art galleries
and museums. Nevertheless, the part played by painting in
Proust's work has not yet received the attention it deserves,
while the rôle of an art like music, for instance, has been
studied at length.31 In the absence of any special study on
the rôle of painting in A la recherche du temps perdu, it is
not surprising to find the art of the painter Elstir interpreted
in terms of literature and even of Bergsonism,32 rather than
in terms of painting. One writer makes the hasty pronounce-
ment that Proust did not have a natural taste for art.33 On the
whole, the influence of painting on Proust's work has been
greatly underestimated, if not ignored. Many have been led
astray with regard to the range and significance of his new
approach, which they too readily believe to be the result of
PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
9
1
}
uniquely literary influences. The view which, on the con-
trary, we expect to establish in this study is that from the very
beginning painting was for Proust not accessory but essential.
However, no sooner have we stated our problem than a
multitude of perplexing questions arise.
In what way does Proust's work reflect the pictorial trends
of his period and in what way does it reveal his preferences
as an individual? How did his rich cultural interests affect
his conception and treatment of painting? Did asthma and
other pathological factors influence his experience of art? He
had the reputation of being a connoisseur and an erudite in
art. But how could Proust, the recluse and invalid, know so
much about it? Young Proust's very first book, Portraits de
Peintres (1896), dealt with painting, yet is it true, as some
claim, that he did not even have an "innate" taste for the visual
arts? We shall indeed have to test the degree of his sensitivity
to light and shade, color, form, and other graphic elements.
At what age did young Proust first express an opinion about
painting? What were his preferences? We shall also have
to inquire into the influences that molded him, what he read
on art, who his friends were among lovers of art, among critics
and painters. The favorite painting of the writer Bergotte
is an old masterpiece, a work by Vermeer. Yet it is a modern
artist, Elstir, who in the novel will epitomize the art of paint-
ing. Did Proust admire new, contemporary artists as much
as those of the past who had already achieved fame? Was he
a follower or a forerunner in his experience of art? How did
his taste develop? Is it true that it was mainly formed and
guided by Ruskin? To what extent did Proust exercise in-
dependence of judgment? What were his limitations?
We should also like to take up Proust's conception of the

10
PROUST AND PAINTING
painter as a character in his novel and point out its differences
from the various conceptions of preceding French novelists.
Whom does Proust's chief painter, Elstir, represent? Is he a
harmonious synthesis or a composite of contradictory elements?
Since Proust was very fond of music, in what way did his love
for and knowledge of this art affect his treatment of painting?
Why are most of Proust's allusions to painting couched in
similes and metaphors?
Many French writers who were affected by pictorial aesthetics
received its impulse rather indirectly, by way of literature.
Only after being convinced that Proust's acquaintance with
painting was, on the contrary, direct and intimate, shall we be
justified in inquiring to what degree his experience of art
and knowledge of pictorial theories are reflected in his
aesthetics and in his literary work. How did he absorb and
transpose painting into the subject matter and inner organiza-
tion of his novel? What is Proust's debt to Impressionist
painting? Could we possibly prove that Proust's experience of
painting molded his style, that it even influenced his syntax?
Being a writer and not a painter, Proust is expected to be-
tray limitations of a technical nature. Nevertheless, in the work
of so unusually creative a writer, the treatment of painting
should appear different and individual. Since the last few
decades have brought significant changes in art criticism
and aesthetics, it would be interesting to consider to what
extent Proust's view of painting is still valid today.
Proust has long been commended, of course, for his un-
common power of analysis. Might not the study of how he
transfused painting into writing reveal a genius for synthesis
that was no less profound and productive?
¡
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CHAPTER II
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
The
HE YEARS of Marcel Proust's boyhood and youth saw
the increasing triumph of Impressionism in art. People
in France had outgrown both the conventional painting of the
Classical school with its stress on mythology or antique sub-
jects¹ and the showy art of the Second Empire with its pictures
of history, of anecdotes, and its flattering portraiture. Having
in common a departure from these traditional modes of ex-
pression, the Impressionist painters, who were a group rather
than a school, directed their efforts, like Manet, at first toward
modern subjects of everyday life, and after 1870, following
Monet and Pissarro, they tried through plein-air painting to cap-
ture fleeting effects of atmosphere and sunlight, which they ren-
dered by means of a light palette and a special technique of
local color contrasts. After 1880, for another decade or so,
artists and critics still quarreled bitterly over the canvases of
Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir.2 Gradually, through the con-
stant efforts of the alert avant-garde, which in its early stages
had included Zola, the official Salons fell into disfavor and in
time the Impressionists became the consecrated artists of the
wider public.
However, while Monet and Pissarro continued the movement
they had launched, the younger generation, instead of follow-
ing in their footsteps, tried to regenerate the art of painting
in their own right. Painting is slower than literature to find
acceptance among the general public. By the time that lay-
11

12
PROUST AND PAINTING
men were beginning to respond to Impressionism, after 1886,
new artistic movements had originated. While Realism had
focused the artist's vision on the objects themselves and Im-
pressionism had diffused it into the atmosphere, that is, be-
tween the objects and the artist's retina, now vision was re-
moved more and more into the artist's inner mind and thought.
With Gauguin we see the growth of pictorial Synthetism and
Symbolism;3 with Seurat, and later Signac, we see the rise of
Neo-Impressionism, which, as much as the contribution of
Cézanne, was destined to become the basis of modern art.
4
The latter part of the nineteenth century thus witnessed
sweeping changes in very rapid succession. After the arrival
and dissemination in France of Japanese prints, in the early
sixties, there started a vogue for Japanism,5 which was ab-
sorbed by Impressionism. This vogue was also reflected in
the growing cult for bibelots, for Japanese curios and other
knick-knacks, which, however, readily suited the rococo style
and the over-adorned furniture of the period. This bibelo-
mania, which lasted approximately from 1875 to 1895, was to
find its apotheosis in Proust's Involuntary Memory. Moreover,
the Symbolist period between 1885 and 1895 renewed interest
in the exotic and the mythological, often in the morbid, as
embodied in the mystic art of Puvis de Chavannes, the dream
world of Redon, and especially the glowing but decadent, al-
most satanic, fantasies of Gustave Moreau. Pictorial Symbol-
ism gave a new impetus to the taste for Italian Primitives, with
whose art people now felt an affinity. The generation of
1890 rediscovered the quattrocento and liked in it preeminently
the refined elegance and morbid grace of Botticelli's frail
figures. It was during this decade that John Ruskin, who
had extolled the Primitives, as well as the English Pre-Raphael-
6

PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
13
9
ites, became even more esteemed, though, to be sure, he had
found ardent admirers in France as early as the sixties. It
was in the late nineties that La Sizeranne wrote his famous
book on Ruskin. In the same year (1898), Emile Mâle pub-
lished his epoch-making work, arousing a fresh interest in
mediaeval architecture and sculpture. We also see a stronger
appreciation of eighteenth-century French masters, which was
continued and further popularized by the Goncourt brothers,
who were passionate collectors of eighteenth-century art. Cé-
zanne is often compared to Chardin, Renoir to Boucher and
Fragonard. People begin to seek in old masters sources for the
most modern art.10 With the ascendancy of the luminous
vision of the Impressionists, Vermeer (1632-1675) rose from
oblivion.¹¹ After nearly three centuries, El Greco (1541-
1614) gradually found more sympathetic response.12
8
"13
The desire to forget the past in order to begin everything
anew is, however, also typical of this period. "Le trait le
plus remarquable du siècle, c'est l'abandon volontaire, puis
l'ignorance et l'oubli des anciens moyens de la peinture.
In fact the record of the entire nineteenth century is a sort of
history of artistic independence proclaimed afresh by each
successive generation.
All these vogues, these movements and characteristic traits
of the nineteenth century, will be reflected in the tastes and
aesthetics of Marcel Proust.
We cannot know, of course, all the books which Proust
used to inform himself on matters of art. Such data as are
available—that is, his published correspondence, his articles
and prefaces, and the testimonials of his friends—give us only
14
PROUST AND PAINTING
1
haphazard glimpses of actual titles of books on art. Yet we
are certain that he read a good deal on the subject, judging
from his general habit of voluminous reading, from his usual
conscientiousness in collecting information,14 and from the
numerous allusions to paintings throughout his novel. Even
when he was sick he would try to borrow books from the
Bibliothèque des Beaux-Arts, to obtain "des prêts de livres à
domicile."'15 Being himself a contributor to such art journals
as La Gazette des Beaux-Arts and Les Arts de la Vie, as well
as to reviews of the intellectual avant-garde such as La Revue
Blanche, he no doubt read them regularly.16 He spent much
time in research at the library of La Gazette des Beaux-Arts.17
To a man of Proust's wide reading and erudition, Diderot's
Salons were no doubt very familar. Despite the unfavorable
comments the Salons have elicited in modern times, they repre-
sent a pioneer endeavor in pictorial criticism, evidencing, for
instance, the interesting application to painting of musical
terms such as chord, or harmony. Diderot's musical phrase-
ology was borrowed and fructified by Baudelaire.18 Besides
having read Baudelaire's writings, a good part of which deal
with painting and art criticism,19 Proust knew by heart his
Phares. These poetic portraits of great painters represent a
genre Proust was soon to emulate. In his art criticism Bau-
delaire already stresses the unique quality of each artist, in the
art of whom the poet envisages the individual above the
universal traits of the age, which is a conception Proust was
to continue. Proust also read Fromentin's Maîtres d'autrefois.
Although at the end of his life he disparaged Fromentin for
not having mentioned Vermeer, he owed him more at first than
he would later have cared to admit. Proust was familiar with
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
15
Zola's collection of articles on art, such as Mes haines.20 Zola's
definition of art as "un coin de la création vu à travers un
tempérament" is akin to Proust's later view of art as the
world seen through the eyes of an artist.21 The Goncourts'
definition of art comes even closer to Proust's future concep-
tion, being nature seen through individual eyeglasses or lenses,
"la nature vue par des lunettes individuelles."22 Whether
out of flattery or admiration, Proust never failed to read every-
thing Montesquiou wrote, including special studies on Gustave
Moreau, on Whistler, Helleu, Monticelli, and on old masters
like Leonardo.23 He not only perused the published works of
his friend Jacques-Emile Blanche, which present interesting
essays on the Impressionists; he would at times even go over
his unpublished manuscripts.24 Proust further mentions hav-
ing enjoyed Vaudoyer's writings, in which are to be found many
allusions to art,25 as also his articles on Raphael and Watteau
and especially the study on Vermeer.26 Whistler's writings
delighted Proust, for he speaks with profound admiration of
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies and of Ten O'Clock.27
Proust knew Maurice Denis's Théories, which contained the
manifesto of the new Synthetist movement in art, or "Néo-
Traditionnisme,” as it was then called (1890). In this mani-
festo Proust found the statement, since accepted as an aphorism,
which he was later to quote: 28
Se rappeler qu'un tableau-avant d'être un cheval de
bataille, une femme nue, ou une anecdote quelconque-
est essentiellement une surface plane recouverte de cou-
leurs en un certain ordre assemblées.
Denis further wrote:
Or s'il arrive qu'on voie, par effort de volonté, la “na-
16
PROUST AND PAINTING
ture" dans les tableaux, la réciproque est vraie. C'est une
tendance inéluctable chez les peintres, de ramener les
aspects perçus dans la réalité, aux aspects de peinture
déjà vues.
29
Denis then expounded the notion, which was to be continued
by Proust, that we constantly see a new "nature," modified and
conditioned by the previous works of art we have experienced.
This is precisely the aesthetic theory expressed in England
by Oscar Wilde at about the same time in his famous Intentions
(1891). Proust's debt to Oscar Wilde has been almost ig-
nored, yet they have much in common. Wilde considered
criticism as a "creation within a creation."30 For him the task
of the critic is even more difficult than that of the artist, for
the former must create, and make us see, a new work out of
the old one, the highest criticism "occupying the same relation
to creative work that creative work does to the visible world
of form and colour, or to the unseen world of passion and of
thought."'31 The critic "will always be reminding us that
great works of art are living things-are in fact, the only things
that live."32 Life imitates Art: an artist like Corot or Millet
fashions his own vision of nature, but soon after that, we will
need only to look at nature to see in it a Corot or a Millet.
As the artist's vision has superseded our own, nature herself
now appears to be producing Corots and Millets and to be
living in terms of them.33 In short, "Things are because we
see them and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the
Arts that have influenced us."34 In The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1891), which Proust read at about the age of twenty-
two,35 he found a novel devoting much importance to painting,
and expressing thoughts akin to his own: "every portrait that
is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
17
sitter."36
Furthermore, Proust made the personal acquaintance
of Oscar Wilde in 1894, when Wilde paid the Prousts a visit.37
He of course read the Intentions and though he did not fully
agree with the great Victorian's aestheticism, which creates
such a dichotomy between art and realistic life,38 he was certain
to remember it when he was ready to form his own views.
Since Proust made a study of Ruskin and translated two of
his books, The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies, for
which he wrote prefaces, he naturally read - or struggled
through most of Ruskin's works.39 By reading and study-
ing them, he familiarized himself with the art of many Italian
masters and some English painters, but more especially with
Turner, as well as Giotto, Carpaccio, Bellini and other Italian
Pre-Raphaelites. He desired to enjoy Ruskin's enthusiasm for
a wealth of masterpieces. In this way he thought that
. . . l'univers s'enrichirait de tout ce que j'ignorais jusque
là, des cathédrales gothiques et de combien de tableaux
d'Angleterre et d'Italie qui n'avaient pas encore éveillé
en moi de désir sans lequel il n'y a jamais de véritable
connaissance.40
Of Ruskin's thought, Proust, continuing, says:
. . . elle nous embellit davantage l'univers, ou du moins
certaines parties individuelles, certaines parties nommées
de l'univers, parce qu'elle y a touché, et qu'elle nous y a
initiés en nous obligeant, si nous voulons la comprendre,
à les aimer.41
A number of Proust's allusions to Italian masters must have
had their origin in the interest aroused and nurtured in the
course of his reading of Ruskin, for, not always satisfied with
what he found there, he was wont to supplement his informa-
18
PROUST AND PAINTING
tion by looking up other authorities, such as Emile Mâle for
architecture,¹² and likewise some books on painting. The
reading of Ruskin served as a convenient stimulus in the
development of his own thought. On the whole, Ruskin
communicated to Proust a sincere and serious attitude toward
Art and the consideration that one's life could be entirely,
unselfishly dedicated to it.
But reading was not enough. During his adolescence and
youth Proust was fortunately able to visit the Louvre frequently.
At the age of thirteen or fourteen he was already expressing
preferences in art. Until about the age of thirty, he visited
museums and galleries, often accompanied by a friend for
whom he was a willing guide. One day it might be the Cluny
museum,43 another time the Durand-Ruel Galleries, where he
admired the canvases of Claude Monet,44 but most of the time it
was the Louvre. Indeed Proust acquired such a thorough knowl-
edge of the Louvre that he soon gained the reputation of being
an incomparable "guide" to its galleries.45
He also had ample
opportunity for studying the paintings to be found in his
friends' private collections, at the house of Montesquiou, who
had Whistlers, Monticellis, and Helleus,46 or of Blanche, who
had Impressionist masters. Moreover, he must have been
familiar with the superb Camondo collection of Impressionist
paintings long before it entered the Louvre, for as early as
1900 he mentioned its "sublime" canvases by Monet, La
Cathédrale de Rouen aux différentes heures du jour,—a con-
ception he was to make his own.
Gradually, however, his visits to museums had to become
rarer, as he was soon to feel the effect of his illness and become
the recluse, the soleil de minuit, as his biographer calls him.48
Į
}
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
19
It was about 1902 that the idea occurred to him of trying to
avoid his asthmatic suffocations by sleeping during the day
and working at night. He consequently had difficulty in see-
ing exhibitions. For instance, he writes: "Je ne pourrai pas
venir dîner mercredi parce que mardi ferme une exposition que
je tiens absolument à avoir vue et je ne peux pas sortir deux
jours de suite comme je suis très souffrant."49 By 1903 Proust
writes: "J'ai passé plus d'un an dans mon lit sans me lever
même une demi-heure par jour "50 He thus misses one
important show after another. Prevented from attending the
Gustave Moreau exhibition, for which his friend Montesquiou
had written the catalogue preface, he says: "Tous les jours j'ai
espéré pouvoir aller à cette exposition et ne l'ai pu."51 This
happened again for the Sargent exhibition. "Quant à Sar-
gent, comme le salon ferme à la tombée du jour, je n'en ai
jamais vu."52 His illness kept him for a long time from seeing
the Whistler retrospective exhibition,53 and when he did he had
to pay a terrible price, for, as he says, "l'expiation physique a
été bien douloureuse."54 He could not go even to the exhibi-
tion of his own portrait by J.-E. Blanche.55 In order to
attend the Dutch show where he was so very eager to see the
Vermeers, he was obliged of course to forego his sleep for the
day; by dint of large doses of narcotics,56 he was able, by
leaning on the arms of friends, to admire for a moment the
immortal pictures of the master of Delft. But soon he was
seized by such a severe stroke that he nearly died.57 This
incident inspired his celebrated description of Bergotte's death.
On account of his secluded life, Proust visited few galleries
outside Paris. However he did make a few trips to The
Hague, where he saw for the first time Vermeer's View of
..
20
PROUST AND PAINTING
Delft,58 in 1900 to Venice in Ruskinian pilgrimage,59 and to
Padua, where he studied Giotto's Vices and Virtues and saw
the Mantegnas.60
During the last few years of his life, his friends received
pathetic letters with constant complaints of his being deprived
of painting and music, of being forced to “ce jeûne de musique
qui durait depuis autant d'années que mon jeûne de peinture.'
61
In fact, Proust had not been able to go to the Louvre for
fifteen or twenty years." 62 What better proof could he offer of
the dire results of his seclusion than that he had to deprive
himself even of his visits to the Louvre, which now seemed
as necessary to him as food? In any event, twenty years is a
long time, almost a generation. It was to be expected that
as a result of his illness, Proust would remain out of touch with
the latest trends, with the art both of modern painters and
of old ones who, by 1900, had not yet achieved widespread
recognition among artists and critics and especially among
writers.
In his youth and long before reaching fame, Proust had the
leisure to cultivate many friends in all circles of society. A
good number of them were painters or were otherwise inter-
ested in art. Among amateurs of painting must be mentioned
his close friends Lucien Daudet, Reynaldo Hahn, Robert de
Billy, and Pierre Lavallée. Lucien Daudet, in fact, liked to
paint and even studied for a while under Whistler.63 Laval-
lée, whom Proust knew at the lycée and further befriended at
the time of his law studies, 64 became in 1908 the curator of
the library and museum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Among art critics Proust counted several friends and ac-
:
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
21
quaintances. At the Daudets' he used to see Edmond de Gon-
court, whose conversation stimulated his interest in eighteenth-
century masters.65 He knew Bernhard Berenson, the authority
on Italian painting, with whom he kept up a copious corres-
pondence. He knew aestheticians, prototypes of Charles
Swann, such as Charles Ephrussi, director until his death
of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, who often gave him informa-
tion in matters of art."
67 A kind, enthusiastic, affable man of
the world, at home in aristocratic salons, yet a sensitive scholar,
the author of a good book on Dürer,68 and a prolific writer of
articles on the most diverse periods of art, from the Renaissance.
to the contemporaries, Ephrussi managed to become also an
art collector of fine taste who owned, among other things,
works by Moreau and by the Impressionists. He was a warm
friend and a stanch supporter of Manet and Renoir. The writ-
er Jules Laforgue served him for many years as secretary. With
Emile Mâle, Proust seems to have had a cordial, respectful
acquaintance, maintained chiefly through an exchange of let-
ters.69
He was fascinated by the works of this grave, austere
scholar, who, though leaving out any discussion on beauty as
such, interpreted architectural sculpture of thirteenth-century
France as a subtle exegete in iconography, who saw conveyed
through every line in the stones a hidden spiritual meaning.
This, no doubt, held an appeal for Proust, who likewise did
not stop at the surface of things: "La matière est réelle parce
qu'elle est une expression de l'esprit."70 Later, Proust con-
ceived a warm friendship for Vaudoyer. In 1910 he wrote
that he would be happy to talk to him about the "saphires de
Vermeer."71
In his usual ingratiating manner he called Vau-
doyer "un esprit merveilleusement nourri d'art,"72 and eagerly
waited for him to interpret some masterpieces. 73
22
PROUST AND PAINTING
The critic whom he knew more intimately and who had
by far the greatest influence on him, however, was the Count
Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1922). Proust made
his acquaintance at about the age of twenty-two, or perhaps
even younger, and he was immediately enchanted by the intel-
lect, wit, and aestheticism of the Count.74 Indeed, besides being
the author of many books, in both verse and prose, which evi-
dence aesthetic preoccupations, Montesquiou made studies of
El Greco - it is to him that Barrès dedicates his book on El
Greco, Le Secret de Tolède — of Whistler, Gustave Moreau,
Paul Helleu, Monticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and many others.75
What Proust admired in Montesquiou's art criticism was, as he
described it,76 the latter's taste, which enabled him correctly to
evaluate various contemporaries, such as Whistler and Moreau,
and to recognize talent at the outset; his uncompromising devo-
tion to high standards of perfection as a sort of sacred mission
in life, a mission that would bring forth his wrath and biting
ridicule for any attempt that was insincere and half-hearted; his
avoidance of the overtechnical terms of atelier used by the
Goncourts, but at the same time also of the too vague, abstract
generalizations to which Fromentin was inclined; his clear,
sharp discernment of details that ordinarily remain unseen;
and especially his uncommon linguistic virtuosity, which readily
matched any pictorial nuance and which, coupled with an en-
cyclopaedic memory, would astound the reader by a wealth of
allusions. Proust was so much under the domination of Mon-
tesquiou that he would often quote Montesquiou's verses and
he admired everything that left his pen: "je me rappelle si
bien,” he writes, "tout ce que vous avez toujours écrit d'Helleu,
et d'ailleurs tout ce que vouz avez toujours écrit." If, for
instance, Montesquiou devotes attention to an insignificant
a
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
23
artist like Gustave Jacquet,78 we should not be surprised to
find it repeated in Proust's novel, where Charlus, who in a
sense is Montesquiou, compares Jacquet to Nattier and even
to Vermeer.79
Montesquiou's personality perhaps even more than his writ
ings would dazzle all who came in contact with him. He
appears to have been a domineering type of man who ex-
pressed himself preeminently in his conversation, which, it is
said, would be intermixed with so many allusions to paintings,
to musical works, and to artists that his friends would become
overawed and often worn out.80 Jacques-Emile Blanche, the
intimate memorialist of men of art, says about him:
Avoir causé une fois avec "Robert", c'était ne plus pouvoir
causer avec les autres; je ne saurais pas citer d'artistes,
qu'ils se nommassent Barrès, Heredia, Leconte de Lisle,
Whistler ou Degas, qui n'étaient pas retenus par la séduc-
tion et l'autorité de sa parole, par le prestige complexe de
sa personne.81
Aesthete extraordinary, original model for Des Esseintes-
the hero of Huysmans' A Rebours Montesquiou would
offer his friends splendid fêtes in high style at his Neuilly
mansion, of which Marcel Proust has left an admiring de-
scription.82 Inspired perhaps by Goncourt and his Maison
d'un artiste,83 Montesquiou transformed his residences into
exotic sanctuaries which but few people were privileged to
enter, in which he continued in lavish manner a fastidious cult
for bibelots and objets d'art. The Count surrounded himself
with artists who worked for his increased aesthetic pleasure:
Meunier would bind his books, Madeleine Lemaire and Bes-
nard would illustrate them, Gallé and Lalique furnished him
C
24
PROUST AND PAINTING
with unique glass works, Georges Klotz with rare perfumes.8
The Japanese landscape artist of the 1889 Paris exhibition was
selected to landscape the grounds of his various mansions.
As for portraits, Montesquiou had himself painted by all the
artists then in vogue, by Helleu, Boldini, Whistler, Laszló,
La Gandara, and others.85
84
Proust was so impressed with Montesquiou's precious style
and mannerisms that he would give imitations of him, mimick-
ing his contemptuous air, his language, even his voice. He
would then speak "à la Montesquiou." "C'était une langue
pleine de recherche, de métaphores, d'images imprévues."86
However, these parodies would naturally displease the dandy
and are said to have been the cause of their estrangement. As
Proust grew in age and fame, his attitude toward Montesquiou
became more and more independent. Yet he always retained
his admiration for Montesquiou's refined taste and judgment
in matters of painting, addressing him as his "master,”87 writ-
ing of him as a "Professeur de Beauté,"88 and even later in life
repeating to his friends that he was the foremost art critic of
the time.89 We must make due allowance here for Proust's
excessive politeness toward his friends, almost all of whom he
would compliment to the point of flattery. Still we can say
that his general artistic education, and perhaps his delight in
alluding so frequently to masterpieces, his taste for lesser
artists like Helleu and Boldini, but also his clearer appreciation
of old masters like Leonardo, Vermeer, and El Greco, as well
as of new masters like Monticelli and Whistler, must owe a
good deal to the atmosphere surrounding Montesquiou and to
Proust's contacts with this hyperaesthete.⁹⁰
The data that are available on Proust's relations with various.
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
25
1
painters may still be very scant,91 yet they are sufficient to re-
veal that he knew more painters than his illness and seclusion
might lead one to expect. Proust's life certainly shows more
contacts with painters than with musicians.92 His seclusion
in later life was indeed more than compensated for by the
social activity of his youth, since at the age of eighteen he
was already haunting the studios of artists and meeting them
in various salons.93 Whereas other authors who treat paint-
ing obtained their experience of this art by struggling with it,
by being painters themselves, or else by mingling with the still
unrecognized artists in cafés, Marcel Proust met artists after
they had already achieved a measure of success, making his
contacts and receiving his education in the fashionable drawing-
rooms. We can say that instead of going from art to society,
Proust went to art through society. Not that this roundabout
approach was a handicap to a man of Proust's hypersensibility
and intelligence, for in an indirect way he could see and retain
far more than the average person could absorb directly."
However, an orientation of this type necessarily leaves its
mark and is therefore worth noting.
94
96
The elegant homes to which Proust was invited as a young
man were quite numerous the salons of Mme Emile Strauss,
Mme Arman de Caillavet, Mme Baignères, the Princesse
Mathilde, the Baronne de Rothschild, to mention but a few.9
Here he would meet all the painters then in vogue, at least
those who had acquired social prestige. At the house of M.
and Mme Ludovic Halévy, for instance, he would meet and
talk with Degas, who was a regular visitor.97 Young Proust
would gallantly accompany society ladies from the drawing-
room to the atelier of their favorite portraitists and watch the
26
PROUST AND PAINTING
fashionable painters of the day at work.98 The artist on
whom Marcel Proust lavished his attentions more particularly
was the flower painter Madeleine Lemaire. He frequented her
atelier, which as he describes it,99 seems to have been more
than anything else an elegant salon, the meeting place for an
endless flow of titled notables, and other members of society,
incidentally interspersed with a few men of letters, musicians
and artists. Still, it also counted among its habitués two out-
standing artists, Puvis de Chavannes and Jean-Louis Forain,
as well as a few lesser painters, Edouard Detaille, Léon Bon-
nat, Jean Béraud, and Georges Clairin.100 It was naturally to
Mme Lemaire that Marcel Proust therefore applied when he
wished to illustrate his forthcoming book, Portraits de Peintres,
although ironically enough this may now be the only thing by
which posterity will remember her.
With his multifarious social contacts, Proust of course met
painters of all types, all schools, all degrees of talent. The
heterogeneous nature of his social relationships is not a reflec-
tion on his taste. It simply reveals the fact that his approach to
painting was through the salon, which would bring him face
to face with all degrees of ability almost indiscriminately. On
the one hand, Proust was friendly with such insignificant
figures in the world of art as Jean Béraud,101 Frédéric de Mad-
razo, 102 and Paul Baignères (who is supposed to have done a
portrait of him);103 on the other hand, he knew more renowned
artists, such as the mouthpiece of pictorial Symbolism, Maurice
Denis, or the friend of Monet and Cézanne, Edouard Vuillard,
also Paul Helleu, Jean-Louis Forain, Jacques-Emile Blanche,
and Pablo Picasso.104 He was likewise acquainted with society
portraitists like Boldini and Antoine de La Gandara, also with
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
27
J. de Traz and many lesser artists.105 With Whistler Proust
had a single but interesting meeting, in which he discussed
the merits of Ruskin.106
But Proust's closer friends among the more important men
of art appear to have been Jean-Louis Forain, Paul Helleu, and
especially Jacques-Emile Blanche. Forain (1852-1931), who
in 1879 had exhibited with the Impressionists, later treated sub-
jects reminiscent of Daumier and Degas and did social and
political satire. Proust became acquainted with Forain very
early, probably at the salon of Mme Lemaire, and met him
also at Auteuil and through the Figaro, whose staff Forain
joined as a contributing artist. Proust's relations with Forain
were not always friendly; they would quarrel, part for several
years, and become reconciled again.107 As for Helleu (1859-
1927), who is so little known today, he was one of the most
admired and successful painters of his time. Even Edmond
de Goncourt praised him, going so far as to call him "notre
Watteau."108 Although Helleu was the portrait painter of
feminine elegance in the salons of the late eighties and the
nineties, he was essentially an eclectic artist. He leaned toward
Impressionism as much as toward the portrayal of Woman
and Femininity. He was further noted for his interest in
Watteau, for his scenes of Versailles, and for his work on the
Reims stained-glass windows, glittering and sumptuous in-
teriors of cathedrals.109 Proust knew his art directly as well as
from the art criticism that he read. He relates that after see-
ing one of Helleu's oils entitled Un Automne versaillais, he told
the artist he had found it "la plus belle chose que je connaissais
de lui," and that Helleu immediately sent him the canvas as a
gift. The over-polite Proust returned it, but Helleu brought
it back with a personal dedication.110
28
PROUST AND PAINTING
Marcel Proust met Jacques-Emile Blanche at the age of
eighteen in the salons,111 and he often saw him during the
summer at Auteuil, where he used to spend part of his vaca-
tion near the house of the Blanches.112 Jacques-Emile Blanche
(1861-1942) had been a close friend of the Impressionists.
In 1886 he was already exhibiting with Claude Monet, Auguste
Renoir, Albert Besnard, J. Boldini, Max Liebermann, Jean
François Raffaelli.113 He became a society figure, a portrait
painter of famous personalities, and, through his books and ar-
ticles, a memorialist of men of art, revealing intimate glimpses
of their character and manner of painting. This friend of
Monet, 114 who at the same time was a man of the world, meet-
ing Proust in salons, was in a good position to inform Proust's
insatiably curious and searching mind and thus to contribute
significantly to the education of his pictorial vision and to his
understanding of Impressionist technique. Besides, Blanche
made two portraits of Proust, one an oil showing a youthful
and worldly Proust in formal attire, and the other a pencil
sketch.115 In later life Proust saw less and less of him. After
several years of "veto" by Montesquiou, who had not been on
speaking terms with Blanche, Proust renewed his friendship.
Blanche was indeed one of the first to write an article in praise
of Du Côté de chez Swann.116 In turn, Proust looked over his
Cahiers d'un artiste, of which he corrected the syntax;
.117 he
also wrote a preface to the first volume (De David à Degas)
of his series of Propos de Peintre, and this naturally occasioned
a copious exchange of letters.
To be sure, Proust's approach to art through the beau monde
had its advantages. For one thing, it offered the memorialist
in the making all the material he needed for portraying French
society. But from the point of view of his aesthetic formation,
•
!
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
29
it brought with it an emphasis on artists who had already
arrived. Café life, which played such a vital part in the
development of French creativity, would no doubt have yielded
Proust greater opportunities to befriend struggling painters
whose art he might have discovered and admired. Instead,
Proust managed to admire the art of the painters he had be-
friended. In the museums he frequented he could choose great
art, but in society he did not have free choice. Great painters
are not always good conversationalists, especially about their
own art, nor do they necessarily have interesting social per-
sonalities. Obviously, one might learn more about the ele-
ments of painting from a talkative second-rate artist than from
a taciturn genius.
In any event, Proust's direct contacts with artists and atelier
life proved fruitful. We should remember that he was no
mere museum visitor, seeing only the finished product, framed
masterpieces on the walls of an art gallery, nor was he a mere
theoretician, viewing art from a distance and so to speak out-
side of its realm. To a man who was not a painter himself,
meeting a great variety of artists at close range and watching
them at work must have given a rich and diversified artistic
background, an intimate insight into the problems facing the
artist before, during, and after execution of a canvas, which
he might compare with his own problems in the literary field.
One can easily imagine the inquisitive Marcel Proust, question-
ing and disputing on all phases of art with the many painters
with whom he mingled, for it was his habit to proceed by in-
terrogation and consult each one on his specialty,118 eagerly
extracting whatever information he could, and consciously or
unconsciously collecting material and forming his point of
view for his future book A la recherche du temps perdu.
མ་ན་་་་གམ*
CHAPTER III
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
W
HAT WAS the character and range of Proust's taste
in painting? In comparison with the minor position
occupied in his work by some arts, such as architecture, sculp-
ture, acting, the dance, it is painting, aside from literature and
music, that unquestionably constitutes the dominant art treated
by Proust. We can therefore expect this dominance to be
apparent also in the degree of his sensitivity to pictorial art.
True, Proust could not even draw.¹ But this is not a serious
handicap, at least not sufficient to prevent the enjoyment of
masterpieces of art, any more than ignorance of musical nota-
tion would make it impossible to derive pleasure from listen-
ing to a symphony. On the contrary, there is evidence for the
fact that Proust had a deep, sincere feeling for painting. In
the opinion of a master like Edouard Vuillard, Proust's interest
in art was more than merely that of a writer: he showed ge-
nuine love for it. He had unusually quick and keen vision,
which amazed his friends. According to Lucien Daudet,
Proust could discern within a few seconds the ultimate beauty
of a setting sun, of the moon's crescent, of a reflection of
trees, which takes the average eye hours to see but imperfectly.*
Coupled with this keen vision was great emotional sensitivity.
Proust appears to have been as moved as a painter might be
by the sight of very simple things, by a roof, a pebble, a path,
a ray of sunlight. He experiences an extraordinary ecstasy
before a rose bush,5 and is thrilled by ordinary hawthorns and
30
↓
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
31
6
7
apple blossoms, just as his hero is enraptured at the sight of
three trees on the road, and at the Martinville spires-an
ecstasy which easily recalls the intense emotion Van Gogh had
for shrubs and olive trees.
9
In the work of few other authors can we find evidence of a
comparable receptivity to the diverse effects of light, ranging
from luminous beams of roaming projectors as they cross each
other in the darkness of a war night, to the intense and un-
relenting glare of streets bathed in. blinding sunlight¹º or, the
subtle, composite light of interiors in which one perceives
falling with different intensities on the objects, on the various
pieces of furniture, and struggling with reflections from the
beach, the broken rays of the morning sun.11 Elsewhere we
see effects of shade, such as the round shadows of apple trees,¹²
the black silhouette produced by a cab on a reddish back-
ground,13 the shadows in a water color by Elstir,14 the inviting
blue shadows of the Creuniers cliffs, which the narrator es-
pecially admires.15 Further differences in the aspect of sun-
light are revealed, for instance, by the sunrays which penetrate
like a momentary smile the stained-glass windows of a church,16
or the sun in the fields,17 the afternoon sun from behind closed
shades,18 the morning sun on the roofs,19 or the sun producing
on the carpet, through the curtains, "comme un effeuillement
d'anémones."20 These and many more effects of sunlight,
scattered more particularly throughout the first few volumes
of A la recherche du temps perdu, all show how crude the
words light and sun are when alone and unqualified by the
delicate nuances out of which Proust creates a finer pictorial
language.
Proust is attentive even to the particular degree of intensity
32
PROUST AND PAINTING
comme
to which outdoor light is "keyed" and which he verifies with
the accurate memory of a musician who would recognize by
absolute pitch how a piano is tuned: ". . . sortant de mon lit,
j'allais écarter un instant le rideau de ma fenêtre.
un musicien ouvre un instant son piano, pour vérifier si, sur
le balcon et dans la rue, la lumière du soleil était exactement
au même diapason que dans mon souvenir."21 One can easily
imagine the pleasure Proust must have felt as he followed the
effects of sunshine lighting up, for instance, the old and worn
stones of a spire
•

dont le couchant n'éclairait plus que le faîte et qui, à
partir du moment où elles entraient dans cette zone enso-
leillée, adoucies par la lumière, paraissaient tout d'un
coup montées bien plus haut, lointaines, comme un chant
repris "en voix de tête" un octave au-dessus.22
One cannot render full justice to the following passage
without quoting it in its entirety. It dramatizes the life of
a humble ray of sunshine, describing the gradations of flutter-
ing light created by its play on a balcony. These fluctuations
are observed with a sensitivity and a refinement worthy of the
most practised eye of an Impressionist or luminarist painter:
Devant la fenêtre le balcon était gris. Tout d'un coup,
sur sa pierre maussade je ne voyais pas une couleur moins
terne, mais je sentais comme un effort vers une couleur
moins terne, la pulsation d'un rayon hésitant qui voudrait
libérer sa lumière, et mille reflets de la ferronnerie de son
treillage étaient venus s'y poser. Un souffle de vent les
dispersait, la pierre s'était de nouveau assombrie, mais,
comme apprivoisés, ils revenaient; elle recommençait im-
perceptiblement à blanchir et par un de ces crescendos con-
tinus comme ceux qui, en musique, à la fin d'une Ouver-
ture, mènent une seule note jusqu'au fortissimo suprême
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
33
en la faisant passer rapidement par tous les degrés in-
termédiaires, je la voyais atteindre à cet or inaltérable et
fixe des beaux jours, sur lequel l'ombre découpée de
l'appui ouvragé de la balustrade se détachait en noir
comme une végétation capricieuse, avec une ténuité dans
la délinéation des moindres détails qui semblait trahir une
conscience appliquée, une satisfaction d'artiste, et avec
un tel relief, un tel velours dans le repos de ses masses
sombres et heureuses qu'en vérité ces reflets larges et
feuillus qui reposaient sur ce lac de soleil semblaient
savoir qu'ils étaient des gages de calme et de bonheur.23
Proust's sensitivity to gradations of light and shade, which
prepares him admirably for the experience of painting, is
coupled with a sensitivity for color which is equally unusual.
He speaks of buttercups as of "boutons d'or . . . jaunes comme
un jaune d'œuf": "le plaisir que leur vue me causait, je l'accu-
mulais dans leur surface dorée, jusqu'à ce qu'il devînt assez
puissant pour produire de l'inutile beauté."24 In another vol-
ume he shows his feeling for the quality of intensity in blue:
Le ciel tout entier était fait de ce bleu radieux et un peu
pâle comme le promeneur couché dans un champ le voit
parfois au-dessus de sa tête, mais tellement uni, tellement
profond, qu'on sent que le bleu dont il est fait a été
employé sans aucun alliage et avec une si inépuisable
richesse qu'on pourrait approfondir de plus en plus sa
substance, sans rencontrer un atome d'autre chose que de
ce même bleu.25
Proust was sufficiently aware of color harmony and the effect
of complementary colors to write to a friend:
J'ai rencontré, sur la digue de Cabourg, Lucy Gérard.
coucher de soleil n'avait
Or sa robe était toute
C'était un soir ravissant où le
oublié qu'une couleur: la rose.
34
PROUST AND PAINTING
rose et de très loin mettait sur le soleil orangé la couleur
complémentaire du crépuscule. Je suis resté très long-
temps à regarder cette fine tache rose, et je suis rentré
enrhumé quand je l'ai vue se confondre avec l'horizon à
l'extrémité duquel elle fuyait comme une voile enchantée.26
At times he is satisfied with simply mentioning basic colors
without degrees of differentiation in tinge, shade, or tint; on
other occasions he makes more specific references, noting not
a mere gray, but a silvery transparent gray: "Le jour gris,
tombant comme une pluie fine, lissait sans arrêt de trans-
parents filets dans lesquels les promeneurs dominicains sem-
blaient s'argenter."27 In fact he clearly discerns in a color
even its degree of transparency or opaqueness: "la partie
vitrée était translucide et bleue, d'un bleu de fleur, d'un bleu
d'aile d'insecte . . ."28 In another passage Proust's hero waits
all night long in front of apple blossoms for the first rays of
dawn to give them the same tinge of red as he remembers
having seen on them at Balbec.29
What characterizes the modern painter's trained vision is
precisely his ability first to distinguish, then to remember, em-
ploy, and harmonize, in their countless combinations, the four
"dimensions" of color: hue, value, intensity, and transparency.
Though numerical classifications have been attempted of ten
thousand or more different color combinations in hue, value,
and intensity, we do not possess adequate linguistic symbols to
designate all these distinctions. Now Proust, being a writer
and an introspective rather than a descriptive writer at that,30
naturally cannot be expected to show in these matters as much
discrimination as a painter. Yet to a remarkable degree Proust
is equal to this task. He seems to have a trained eye for seek-
ing fine differences, for instance, between various pinks and
1
Ľ
༔
?
Proust's RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
35
reds, such as "vieux rose, cerise, rose Tiepolo,' "31 "rose pâle des
aubépines,"32
"32 "rose de cierge,"33 "rose vif de la balsamine,”³4
"carnation de géranium,"35 or "teinte cuivrée qui évoque l'idée
de géranium,"
"36 "couleur capucine," 37 "rose d'un cuir ancien
de Cordoue,"38 "le rose violacé du cyclamen,"39 "une couleur
rose, presque violette, de framboises mûres,"40 "le sombre
pourpre de certaines roses d'un rouge presque noir."41 His
palette of blues ranges from royal blue,2 "nuance de tur-
quoise, "Mediterranean" blue, and dark azure,¹5 down
to more complex shades, a transition in stained glass from
"vert chou au bleu prune,"46 as well as evening clouds reflecting
"un bleu plus floral qu'aérien, un bleu cinéraire."47
'43
The sounds of names of cities appear to him in various
combinations of color, of which he gives us the subtlest render-
ing. Compared to this passage, Rimbaud's "Sonnet des
voyelles" sounds most elementary. The name of Parma ap-
pears to him as "compact, lisse, mauve et doux."48 The names
of other towns inspire even more complex associations and
vie with each other in synaesthetic "local color":
inter-
mais j'avais beau les comparer, comment choisir plus
qu'entre des êtres individuels, qui ne sont pas
changeables, entre Bayeux si haute dans sa noble den-
telle rougeâtre et dont le faîte était illuminé par le vieil
or de sa dernière syllabe; Vitré dont l'accent aigu losan-
geait de bois noir le vitrage ancien; le doux Lamballe qui,
dans son blanc, va du jaune coquille d'œuf au gris perle;
Coutances, cathédrale normande, que sa diphtongue finale,
grasse et jaunissante couronne par une tour de beurre;
Lannion avec le bruit, dans son silence villageois, du coche
suivi de la mouche; Questambert, Pontorson, risibles et
naïfs, plumes blanches et becs jaunes éparpillés sur la
route de ces lieux fluviatiles et poétiques; Benodet, nom
36
PROUST AND PAINTING
à peine amarré que semble vouloir entraîner la rivière au
milieu de ses algues, Pont-Aven, envolée blanche et rose
de l'aile d'une coiffe légère qui se reflète en tremblant dans
une eau verdie de canal; Quimperlé, lui, mieux attaché
et, depuis le moyen âge, entre les ruisseaux dont il ga-
zouille et s'emperle en une grisaille pareille à celle que
dessinent, à travers les toiles d'araignées d'une verrière,
les rayons de soleil changés en pointes émoussées d'argent
bruni ?49
Here Proust distinguishes between an egg-shell white and a
pearl gray, between a yellowish tinge and the shade of butter,
between the grisaille akin to the gray of a spider web and that
of a brownish silver.
1 While some painters convey objects by drawing their sharp
outlines, others suggest their shapes by modelling in terms of
color only. The following passage, describing the girls at
Balbec, shows how much Proust was aware of the effect of
color in modelling the human face and determining its size
and shape:
Entre ceux [les visages] de mes amies la coloration met-
tait une séparation plus profonde encore, non pas tant par
la beauté variée des tons qu'elle leur fournissait, ... mais
surtout parce que les différences infiniment petites des
lignes se trouvaient démesurément grandies, les rapports
des surfaces entièrement changés par cet élément nouveau
de la couleur lequel tout aussi bien que dispensateur des
teintes est un grand régénérateur ou tout au moins modi-
ficateur des dimensions. De sorte que des visages peut-
être construits de façon peu dissemblable, selon qu'ils
étaient éclairés par les feux d'une rousse chevelure, d'un
teint rose, par la lumière blanche d'une mate pâleur,
s'étiraient ou s'élargissaient, devenaient une autre chose
comme ces accessoires des ballets russes, consistant parfois,
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
37
1
s'ils sont vus en plein jour, en une simple rondelle de
papier et que le génie d'un Bakst, selon l'éclairage incar-
nadin ou lunaire où il plonge le décor, fait s'y incruster
durement comme une turquoise à la façade d'un palais
ou s'y épanouir avec mollesse, rose de bengale au milieu
d'un jardin. Ainsi en prenant connaissance des visages,
nous les mesurons bien, mais en peintres, non en arpen-
teurs.50
On other occasions, Proust resorts to the use not only of
exact colors, but of colors in combination with precise lines,
forms and features, for instance in order to record the ravag-
ing effects which by the end of his novel Time has inflicted
upon his characters. Becoming as observant as a Naturalistic.
painter, he follows the changes in the features and epidermis, as
if looking through a magnifying glass, enjoying the view pro-
duced by focusing it nearer to or further away from their oily
circles, which he can view from various planes.51 Most of
these people appear
... comme d'assez mauvais portraits d'eux-mêmes réunis
dans l'exposition où un artiste inexact et malveillant dur-
cit les traits de l'un, enlève la fraîcheur du teint ou la
légèreté de la taille à celle-ci, assombrit le regard.52
As Jacques-Emile Blanche writes, Proust here becomes a
painter reminding one of Goya's Caprices and Rouveyre's
drawings.58 He depicts the progress of Time through a general
masquerade at which one sees walking about in the drawing-
room not people but plaster masks, comic, trembling puppets
with false or snow white hair and beard, sparkling white in
some and stained white in others a group of grimacing,
swollen faces, covered with brown and greasy spots, display-
ing wrinkled and hardened features, their complexions faded
38
PROUST AND PAINTING
to yellow or gray, if not smeared with make-up-sad phantoms,
indeed, already bent down toward their not-too-distant grave.
Dans les joues de la Duchesse de Guermantes, restées si
semblables pourtant et pourtant composites maintenant
comme un nougat, je distinguais une trace de vert de gris,
un petit morceau rose de coquillage concassé, une grosseur
difficile à définir, plus petite qu'une boule de gui et moins
transparente qu'une perle de verre.54
In these external descriptions Proust seems to apply elements
of color with verbal brush strokes and play with forms in a
scale of hues, "toute une gamme de colorations verdâtres,
saumâtres, oxydées, cadavériques.
"155
Only a person who has admired in masterpieces of still life
the poetic effects produced by the play of light on transparent
substances, liquids, and textures would focus his attention, as
Proust does, on napkins, glasses, and fruit:
Depuis que j'en avais vu dans les aquarelles d'Elstir, je
cherchais à retrouver dans la réalité, j'aimais comme quel-
que chose de poétique, le geste interrompu des couteaux
encore de travers, la rondeur bombée d'une serviette dé-
faite où le soleil intercale un morceau de velours jaune,
le verre à demi-vidé qui montre mieux ainsi le noble
évasement de ses formes et au fond de son vitrage trans-
lucide et pareil à une condensation du jour, un reste de
vin sombre, mais scintillant de lumières, le déplacement
des volumes, la transmutation des liquides par l'éclairage,
l'altération des prunes qui passent du vert au bleu et du
bleu à l'or dans le compotier déjà à demi dépouillé . . .
j'essayais de trouver la beauté là où je ne m'étais jamais
figuré qu'elle fût, dans les choses les plus usuelles, dans
la vie profonde des "natures mortes."58
In many passages Proust shows a keen feeling for effects of
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
39
foreshortening and perspective. For instance, as the narrator
bends to kiss Albertine, in a fraction of a second he sees not
one but ten Albertines:
D'abord au fur et à mesure que ma bouche commença à
s'approcher des joues que mes regards lui avaient proposé
d'embrasser, ceux-ci se déplaçant virent des joues nouvelles;
le cou aperçu de plus près et comme à la loupe, montra,
dans ses gros grains une robustesse qui modifia le carac-
tère de la figure.
qui
Les dernières applications de la photographie
couchent aux pieds d'une cathédrale toutes les maisons
qui nous parurent si souvent de près, presque aussi hautes
que les tours, font successivement manœuvrer comme un
régiment, par files, en ordre dispersé, en masses serrées,
les mêmes monuments, rapprochent l'une contre l'autre
les deux colonnes de la Piazzetta tout à l'heure si distantes,
éloignent la proche Salute et dans un fond pâle et dé-
gradé réussissent à faire tenir un horizon immense sous
l'arche d'un pont, dans l'embrasure d'une fenêtre, entre
les feuilles d'un arbre situé au premier plan et d'un ton
plus vigoureux, donnent successivement pour cadre à une
même église les arcades de toutes les autres, — je ne vois
que cela qui puisse, autant que le baiser, faire surgir de
ce que nous croyons une chose à aspect défini, les cent
autres choses qu'elle est tout aussi bien, puisque chacune
est relative à une perspective non moins légitime. Bref,
de même qu'à Balbec, Albertine m'avait souvent paru
différente, maintenant, comme si, en accélérant prodi-
gieusement la rapidité des changements de perspective et
des changements de coloration que nous offre une per-
sonne dans nos diverses rencontres avec elle, j'avais voulu
les faire tenir toutes en quelques secondes pour recréer
expérimentalement le phénomène qui diversifie l'indivi-
dualité d'un être et tirer les unes des autres comme d'un
étui toutes les possibilités qu'il enferme, dans ce court
M
40
PROUST AND PAINTING
trajet de mes lèvres vers sa joue, c'est dix Albertines que
je vis; cette seule jeune fille étant comme une déesse à
plusieurs têtes, celle que j'avais vue en dernier, si je
tentais de m'approcher d'elle, faisait place à une autre.57
The problems facing the portrait painter involve also the
sharp discernment of character. In this Proust is constantly
interested. He takes great delight in noting the lines of re-
semblance between mother and daughter or father and son, and
in general the special features that characterize every person
as a unique individuality:
Quand je causais avec une de mes amies, je m'apercevais
que le tableau original, unique de son individualité, m'é-
tait ingénieusement dessiné, tyranniquement imposé aussi
bien par les inflexions de sa voix que par celles de son
visage et que c'était deux spectacles qui traduisaient, cha-
cun dans son plan, la même réalité singulière.58
Proust is, however, less aware of other aspects of the
painter's art. He seems less preoccupied with what may be
called the musical element of painting, which has become
increasingly important in modern art and taste: the factors of
pure composition, of decorative line, of pattern and structure,
of balance or symmetry of forms for their own meaning. But
this is to be expected of a man of Proust's generation, who was
formed before twentieth-century trends in criticism and aes-
thetics had made their appearance.59
A certain composer, upon being asked what symphony he
preferred, is said to have replied: "The last one I heard."
One's taste, that is, one's preferences for certain composers or
for certain painters, varies from year to year. Delacroix, for
instance, in his youth was fond of Michelangelo's art, which,
1.
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
41
however, he later criticized severely. It is only near the end
of his life that he grants Rubens and Titian their true value;
and it is only after the age of fifty-three that he finally becomes
interested in Rembrandt.60
What do we know of Proust's early tastes? On his prefer-
ences at the age of thirteen or fourteen we happen to have a
valuable document, his confession in a page from an album
"to record thoughts, feelings."61 As a boy he answered the
question of “Your favorite painters and composers" by writing
down "Meissonier. Mozart. Gounod." Meissonier then is the
painter whom Proust preferred at thirteen. Portrayer of bat-
tles, painter of the momentous, yet an artist who was constantly
servile to minute detail, Meissonier represented, after all, no-
thing more than a mediocrity whose work was not difficult to
understand.
Was it about this time, or perhaps earlier, that Proust cared
for the paintings which he ascribes to the childhood of his semi-
autobiographical hero of Swann? These, in a way, were art
"multiplied" by art: the Chartres Cathedral by Corot, Leo-
nardo's Last Supper as reproduced before its deterioration in
an engraving by Morghen, a view of Vesuvius by Turner, and
a view of Venice after a drawing by Titian.62 He also liked
landscapes by Gleyre where the moon "découpe nettement sur
le ciel une faucille d'argent." Moreover, as a boy he had a
reproduction of Botticelli's Spring. These naturally were all
accepted "masters." The academic Gleyre, who was once the
teacher of Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, retained a certain repu-
tation.
64
Was it also at this age that the young Marcel was given
reproductions of Giotto's Vices and Virtues?65 In any event,
42
PROUST AND PAINTING
we know that at seventeen Proust was interested in some Italian
masters at the Louvre, such as Bernardino Luini and especially
Botticelli, both of whom he preferred to Raphael.66 He liked
the naive charm of Luini's and Botticelli's maidens and a
characteristic feature, the peculiar expression of their lips.
67
A year or so later we find him composing the stanzas that
were to make up his first book, Portraits de Peintres,68 which
several years afterwards he was to publish with music by
Reynaldo Hahn and illustrations by Madeleine Lemaire. He
composed the lines on Cuyp and possibly also the others at
about the age of eighteen, "avant une classe à Condorcet, en
sortant du Louvre où je venais de voir les cavaliers qui ont une
plume rose au chapeau." These verses point to his interest
during these years in two Dutch artists, Cuyp and Potter, as
well as in Van Dyck and Watteau. His taste in art seemed
somewhat influenced by the reading of Baudelaire and Fro-
mentin, and his emphasis here, besides Watteau, on lesser fig-
ures such as Cuyp and Potter, recalls the similar taste of the
author of Les Maîtres d'autrefois, for whom Potter was a
genius and Cuyp a great master.70 The lines on these two
painters are transpositions into verse of the subjects of two
paintings, the stanza on Cuyp being clearly the Promenade at
the Louvre, already treated by Fromentin.7¹ In rather impassive
and Parnassian style-in fact Proust dedicates his verses to
Heredia he describes the external subject and life of the
painting, leaving, however, some impression of its general at-
mosphere. This he does also for L'Embarquement pour
Cythère, which lends itself better to such treatment, not losing
as much as the others by being reduced to the mere iconography
of a dramatic setting. It was at this time that, at the Louvre,
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
43
Proust could hardly stop before the Embarquement pour Cy-
thère or before a Rubens without immediately reciting Baude-
laire's verses on these painters.72 As for Van Dyck's portrait
of the Duke of Richmond, it aroused Proust's imagination
mainly through the contrast between the Duke's proud, almost
defiant, pose and the tragic fate he was to meet only a few
years afterwards at the hands of Cromwell.73 If he brings out
chiefly the haughtiness of the bearing, the elegance of the
attitude and the calm look, he nevertheless does penetrate a
little into the spirit of the subject, conceiving this mood as
"une élégance pensive," "une élégance morale."74
At about twenty Proust was drawn to Leonardo da Vinci's
mysterious faces,75 as well as to Claude Lorrain's landscapes.
A few years later he admired pastels by Chardin and La Tour.78
But it was especially the Monets at the Durand-Ruel Galleries
that captured his fancy. He immediately called them to the
attention of his close friend Reynaldo Hahn, with whom he
then seemed to have many likes and dislikes in common.
Probably at the time, in the same way as Hahn, Proust must
have passed by the Renoirs without caring much for them, and,
too, he probably did not appreciate Manet, for as late as about
1917 Proust expressed his preference for the Monet side of
Manet." Reynaldo Hahn found Manet rather dry.78 On the
other hand, Proust's growing admiration for Claude Monet
is shown in the numerous allusions to the art of this painter
in his correspondence and even in his literary criticism.79
Proust's predilection for Claude Monet was to culminate in his
creation of the painter Elstir.
At about the age of twenty-five or twenty-six Proust ex-
pressed to his young friend Lucien Daudet, whom he often
44
PROUST AND PAINTING
guided through the Louvre, his enthusiasm for Rembrandt's
two "Philosophes"-two canvases of Le Philosophe en médi-
tation—noting ingenious, subtle differences between them;
also his admiration for Fra Angelico, whose pink and yellow
colors he called "crémeuses et comestibles"; and his wonder
at Ucello, whom he compared to certain Japanese artists. On
the other hand, a Ghirlandaio merely reminded him of the
features of some personal acquaintance: "Mais c'est le portrait
vivant de M. du Lau! C'est d'une ressemblance incroyable!"80
Proust liked to play with his friends a subtle game of aesthetic
7 experience, which consisted in identifying persons in terms of
museum masterpieces. Relating such an incident, Marie Nord-
linger (Reynaldo Hahn's English cousin, who was to prove so
helpful later in his translations of Ruskin), writes:
On eût dit que l'auteur des Plaisirs et des Jours pressentait
déjà les passe-temps de Swann. Comme Swann, nous nous
amusions à désigner à nos amis des portraitistes dont la
manière convenait à leur genre. On m'attribua de suite
le Titien, en réservant les mains à Germain Pilon. Pour
Madrazo, rien de plus facile: El Greco. On chercha long-
temps pour Marcel. Ricard? Carrière? Courbet première
manière? Peut-être Pisanello! Et pourquoi pas Whistler ?81
Proust was attracted to both old and modern masters and by
frequent, repeated visits to the same museums and galleries he
gradually developed a rich artistic experience. The same friend
further relates:
Avec quelle joie nous revenions aux musées, au Louvre
surtout, non seulement parce que cela faisait plaisir, mais
pour mieux comprendre, contrôler nos impressions et peut-
être vérifier ce qu'avait dit Goncourt, la veille, chez les
Daudet, à propos de tel maître du XVIIIe. Aux prome-
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
45
nades dans les salles de dessins italiens succédaient quel-
quefois des visites chez Durand-Ruel où on découvrait tan-
tôt un Manet, tantôt un Lautrec ou un nouveau Monet.
Les écoles anciennes et modernes nous attiraient, nous
passionnaient par le jeu de leurs contrastes et leur pro-
fonde unité. On se méfiait tant des idées reçues, des suf-
frages publics! "Chaque fois que quelqu'un regarde les
choses d'une façon un peu nouvelle, les quatre quarts des
gens ne voient goutte à ce qu'il leur montre. Il faut au
moins quarante ans pour qu'ils arrivent à distinguer." Et
ce fut au gré de ces pèlerinages sans cesse renouvelés à
travers les formes changeantes de l'art que se forma l'ex-
périence esthétique de Proust et qu'il arriva à son tour à
"distinguer."'82
In his late twenties Proust began his study of Ruskin,'
which renewed his interest in Italian Pre-Raphaelites, an in-
terest further stimulated by his trips in 1900 to Padua and
Venice. As evidenced in his novel, he was moved particularly
by Giotto, whose work can express symbols without removing
them from an earthly realism, and by Botticelli, whose art
occupies an important place in Swann's love for Odette. By
1902, Proust could no longer bear the painter who had been
the admiration of his childhood. "Le nom de Meissonier ap-
proché de celui de Ruskin m'a serré le cœur comme une
ressemblance entre une personne laide et une personne qu'on
a beaucoup aimée."84 In 1905 we notice his unbounded enthu-
siasm for Whistler's art, especially after he had seen the Freer
Collection at the Whistler retrospective exhibition, in which
he admired, among other things, the Plage d'Opale and Mer
d'Opale of the American master: "J'avoue que je suis curieux
de savoir quelle est cette plage bénie et aimerais aller y vivre."85
At this time, in his room, whose walls he would leave deliber-
46
PROUST AND PAINTING
ately bare of ornament, he kept only one art reproduction
that of Whistler's Carlyle, "au par-dessus serpentin comme 1
robe de sa Mère."88
An important master among Proust's favorites was Vermee
of Delft, whom he claims to have admired from his youth on
"Vous savez," he writes, "que Vermeer est mon peintre préfér
depuis l'âge de vingt ans . . ."'87 The author of A la recherch
du temps perdu was drawn not only to the Dutch artist
Dentellière at the Louvre, but, as soon as he saw it in Th
Hague, to the View of Delft,88 as well as to all the reprodu
tions he could possibly find.89 In his correspondence we notic
his interest in Vermeer as early as 1910.90 He seems eager t
gather copious information on this artist. Twelve years late
he will defy illness to see the Vermeer exhibition. The mast
of Delft becomes the favorite painter of two important cha
acters, Charles Swann the aesthete and Bergotte the writer.
What do we know of Proust's tastes during his very la
years? In February 1920, two and a half years before Proust
death, L'Opinion fortunately conducted an "enquête" or i
quiry among writers to find out which eight paintings each on
would choose "pour une Tribune française au Louvre."91 In
hastily written letter, which is nevertheless useful evidenc
Proust first remarks that he is not "très partisan de l'Art alla
au-devant des commodités de celui qui l'aime, plutôt que d'ex
ger qu'on aille à lui," yet he is willing to designate twel
paintings, three of which are Chardins:
Portrait de Chardin par lui-même, Portrait de Mme
Chardin par Chardin. Nature morte, de Chardin. Le Prin-
temps de Millet. L'Olympia de Manet. Les Falaises
d'Etretat, de Monet (si c'est au Louvre). Un Renoir ou la
Proust's resPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
Barque de Dante ou la Cathédrale de Chartres, de Corot.
L'Indifférent de Watteau, ou l'Embarquement. Puis-je dire
que si on demande aux Austro-Allemands des tableaux je
préférerais à quelques Watteau de plus le Vermeer de
Dresde et le Vermeer de Vienne.92
47
Before deducing Proust's tastes from these selections we should
bear in mind that his choice was limited to the French collec
tion available at the Louvre and to such pictures as would be
more or less representative of French art. Except for Renoir,
we find in his choice again most of the admirations of his youth.
As for Chardin, it was this master, as he says elsewhere, who
made him see the beauty of still life.93 We also recall that
in his early twenties Marcel Proust already admired Chardin's
pastels. Manet's Olympia Proust probably felt he could
not but include as a picture that typified a milestone in
the history of art.⁹5 The other leader of Impressionist painting,
Claude Monet, is naturally included with a selection which is
also to be found in Elstir's art, the Falaises d'Etretat, although
Proust was not certain that Monet's work was so well repre-
sented at the Louvre. As in the days of his youth, some thirty
years before, Proust again selects Watteau's Embarquement
pour Cythère. But of course we are not surprised to read that
instead of several more Watteaus he would prefer some
Vermeers.
95
We therefore note among Proust's predilections only two
mediocrities, Meissonier and Gleyre. Even these interested
him only for a short time; he outgrew them after his boyhood.
Likewise lesser masters such as Cuyp and Potter were soon for-
gotten. Otherwise his taste seems orthodox; he appears from
his boyhood on to have been drawn essentially to masters. If
his taste did evolve so as to place added stress later on Renoir
48
and Chardin, still, in view of his seclusion, it could be ex-
pected not to undergo fundamental changes. On the whole,
it seems to have crystallized early, by the first years of the
1900's. Among the artists he admired a few figures must
necessarily stand out as being of the first importance. Such
figures were Claude Monet and Vermeer. This is also attested
by his friend Robert de Billy, who singles out Monet and Ver-
meer as the painters Proust loved most.⁹ Lesser favorites were,
earlier in life, Giotto, and throughout his life Rembrandt. In
treating Monet, Proust must be considered as treating a con-
temporary-Monet indeed was born before him and died after
him—although, to be sure, by the time Proust was beginning
his novel Claude Monet had been fully acclaimed. On the
other hand, his attraction to Vermeer must be considered more
unusual. In comparison with Monet, Vermeer represented,
and in a lesser measure still represents today, the admiration
of a relatively small aesthetic élite.
PROUST AND PAINTING
Although strongly drawn to the work of a few favorite
painters, Proust was nevertheless sufficiently impressed by
many other masters to show an interest in them. Indeed, a
mere glance at the list of painters with whose art Proust was
familiar, or to which he alluded, shows an amazingly wide
range and diversity of response. Throughout his writings—in his
novel, articles, and correspondence-we find several hundred
allusions to different painters. These cover almost the entire
history of art, beginning with ancient art, Assyrian and Per-
sian,97 Greek painting, and coming down to mediaeval pic-
tures,⁹⁹ Byzantine, Renaissance, and finally modern art.
Proust knew Italian art rather well. Though he omits the
98
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
49
Sienese artists, he mentions almost all the others: the Floren-
tines, Giotto, Fra Angelico,100 Orcagna,101 Botticelli, Ghirlan-
daio, the Venetians, Bellini, Carpaccio, and painters of other
schools such as Pisanello, Gozzoli and Mantegna. As for
later, Renaissance art, Proust alludes to Giorgione,102 Luini,
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Fra Bartolommeo, Bronzino,¹
108
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael. For the eighteenth
century, he mentions Tiepolo, Guardi, and the engraver J. B.
Piranesi.¹
104
Proust refers to nearly all leading Flemish and Dutch mas-
ters: Van der Weyden,105 Memling, Peter Breughel, Rubens,
Frans Hals, Van Dyck, Cuyp, Potter, Rembrandt, Ruysdael,108
Nicolas Maes,107 De Hooch, Vermeer, Van der Meulen, Adriaen
and Willem van de Velde, and Wouwerman.108
Allusions are also made to Spanish art, to El Greco, Velas-
quez, Goya; to the English, Hogarth, Lawrence, Bonnington,109
Turner, Hunt,110 Rossetti, Millais;111 to Whistler; to the Ger-
mans Dürer¹12 and Winterhalter; to the Russian artist and
ballet designer Bakst; finally to Chinese¹¹s and Japanese
art.114
French art is fairly well represented, from the fifteenth
century with Jean Fouquet;115 the sixteenth with Clouet;116 the
seventeenth with Claude Lorrain,117 Poussin and Mignard;118
the eighteenth with Watteau, Nattier, Chardin, Boucher, La
Tour,119 Perronneau,120 Fragonard,121 Hubert Robert. The nine-
teenth century includes David,122 Ingres, Delacroix, Couture,
Chenavard,123 Courbet, 124 Constantin Guys, Decamps, 125 Fro-
mentin, Gérôme,126 Meissonier, Corot, Millet, Gustave Moreau,
Fantin-Latour,127 Puvis de Chavannes,128 Gleyre, Bougue-
reau,129 Redon,130 Detaille,181 Hébert,132 Tissot,133 Boldini; the
50
PROUST AND PAINTING
Impressionists, Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, as well as Monti-
celli,134 Helleu and Carrière. Among the moderns are included
Cézanne, Forain, Edouard Vuillard, J.-E. Blanche, Maurice
Denis, Besnard,135 Picasso and the Cubists,136 as well as the
Futurists.137 We need not dwell on the lesser figures such as
Le Sidaner, Cotte, Chaplin,138 La Gandara, Jacquet, Doucet,
Dethomas, Lemaire, Sem, and others.
139
Proust left out only a few important masters, such as Masa-
ccio, Castagno, Verrocchio, and especially the entire Sienese
school: Duccio, the Lorenzettis, Simone Martini, Sassetta.
This, however, is understandable in view of the fact that even
the Louvre did not possess anything by Masaccio, Castagno, or
Verrocchio, that it had no Duccio, Lorenzetti, or Sassetta and
had only one Simone Martini. However, other omissions are
less explicable, since the works of these artists were on view
at the Louvre: Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli,
Perugino, Pinturicchio, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto. Other
important masters left out were, among the Dutch and Flemish,
Van Eyck, Hobbema, Jordaens, David Teniers, Jan Steen;
among other schools, Holbein and Cranach; Ribera and Muri-
llo; Reynolds and Gainsborough. (But the Louvre had no
Reynolds, just as it had not Turner.) Among the French: Le
Nain, Le Sueur, Charles Le Brun, Greuze, Gros, Géricault,
Théodore Rousseau, Daubigny, Daumier, Le Douanier Henri
Rousseau, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Ma-
tisse and other contemporaries. However, such omissions are by
no means to be construed as indicating painters Proust did not
know, rather only those he did not mention in the writings
and correspondence published thus far. It is inconceivable,
for instance, that he should not have known the work of such
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
51
celebrities as Daumier and Gauguin. On the other hand, it
is reasonable to assume that the work of an artist like Van
Gogh was unfamiliar to him, since for a long time this painter
considered too violent was esteemed only by a rare few.140
In conclusion, we can say that while Proust's taste favored
a few masters, it was essentially eclectic, embracing a diversity
of schools, periods, and countries, such as is hardly paralleled
by any other novelist. His keen eye, unusually sensitive to effects
of light and shade, color, perspective, texture, and other graph-
ic elements, equipped him for a rich experience of painting.
Yet by the early 1900's his taste was set. His was substantially
an orthodox, museum taste, molded by the painters recognized
in his period, whose works were to be found in the museums.
and the leading art galleries which he was still able to visit
without much traveling and within the limitations imposed
by a protracted illness.
CHAPTER IV
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
UNI
NLIKE Diderot, Baudelaire, the Goncourts, or Huys-
mans, Marcel Proust did not write criticism of salons
d'art. We will never know all his thoughts on a given master,
for, with few exceptions, he left us only isolated fragments
interspersed throughout his novel, each giving us a bare
glimpse of the painter in question and even then, not directly
but in connection with other aspects of life. How is this
individual approach to be explained?
Just as cognition for Proust was primarily re-cognition, so
too the experience of painting became for him essentially a re-
experience. While a few of Proust's pictorial allusions express
the views of his characters, most of them hinge on resemblances
between life and art. Proust drew from himself Charles Swann's
particular tendency to look for analogies between living people
and portraits in galleries. At times Swann saw living per-
sons in terms of paintings; at other times in old portraits he
recognized contemporaries. For example, in a bust of the
Doge Loredano by Antonio Rizzo he would see the prominent
cheekbones, the slanting eyebrows, the very image of his coach-
man Rémi; in a portrait by Ghirlandaio, M. de Palancy's nose;
in a Tintoretto portrait, the whiskered cheeks, the peculiar nose,
the penetrating stare, the swollen eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon.¹
Proust offers several justifications for Swann's mania-and
perhaps his own passion as well-for seeking pictorial like-
52
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
53
nesses. One explanation involves the problem of Platonism
versus nominalism, the reality of universals as against that of
particulars. No matter how much we would like to believe
in the real existence of the individual, even what we call in-
dividual expression, Proust maintains, is something universal
that may well be found again and again throughout the ages.
And so Benozzo Gozzoli's procession of the Kings of the
East, already anachronistic enough by including among them
the Medicis, would have been even more so, for, according to
Swann, not a single contemporary Parisian of note was missing
from their midst.2 Proust further explains Swann's aesthetic
attitude as follows. Regretting the time he had lost in society,
in mundane conversation, Swann found consolation and excul-
pation in the knowledge that the great masters of the past too
had contemplated with pleasure precisely the same facial
types which, incorporated in their works, now give the latter
to such an unusual degree the stamp of real life, a kind of
present-day flavor. Perhaps he had so succumbed to the super-
ficial attitude of society people that it became natural for him
to see in an old masterpiece merely a modern touch, an anti-
cipatory reference to specific people of his day. Or else, on the
contrary - and here Proust identifies Swann's feeling with his
own — he had retained enough of his artistic self to take
pleasure in seeing particular features assume more universal
meaning as soon as he discerned them in disengaged form,
released from art into life through the resemblance of an
ancient portrait to a modern model that had not inspired it.³
3
Art will thus be released and repeated in life. Paris at
night during the war, with a Senegalese soldier passing by,
recalls the picturesque orient of Decamps, Fromentin, Ingres,
54
PROUST AND PAINTING
5
6
7
8
and Delacroix.4 The intimate interiors visible from the court
of a building and framed by their windows are like an ex-
hibition of a hundred juxtaposed Dutch paintings. Soldiers,
their faces reddened by cold, resemble Peter Breughel's gay and
frozen reddish-faced peasants. Proust likens the influx of
guests at the beach hotel to the throngs at Bethlehem as ren-
dered by the Flemish painters. The bed of a sick youth,
embellished with a carved siren, recalls the siren of Gustave
Moreau's picture Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. Albertine's
hair, neatly tied at the side of her ear, is likened to the knot
of an Infanta by Velasquez; a queue of hair to that of a
sacristan depicted by Goya. The "diabolo" with which Al-
bertine played made her look like Giotto's Idolatry.¹º A girl
of darker complexion stands out in contrast to the others like
an Arabian type in some Renaissance pictures of the Epiphany.
A footman with ferocious mien suggests the executioner in
certain Renaissance paintings.12
9
11
We could easily multiply examples of even closer and more
complete resemblance, where the allusion is equivalent to a
portrait. An "Anglaise," or English governess, resembles
Hogarth's portrait of Jeffries, "le tein rouge comme si sa
boisson favorite avait été plutôt le gin que le thé, et pro-
longeant par le croc noir d'un reste de chique une moustache
grise, mais bien fournie."13 Bloch looks like Bellini's portrait
of Mohammed II,14 as he also recalls a Jew painted by De-
camps,15 or some Assyrian scribe.16 The Princesse Mathilde
bears similarity to a portrait by the society painter Winter-
halter.17 Mme Blatin would seem like a horror except for the
fact that she happens to be the image of Fra Bartolommeo's
Savonarola.18
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
55
1
mere
Do such allusions represent only simple pictures
illustrations to accompany the text? Or do they involve
critical appreciation? True, the colors are not always indi-
cated nor are they necessary. These allusions might just as
well have been chosen from drawings or engravings, as was
done in the passage, for instance, where the narrator's father
in night attire recalls the Abraham, more precisely the gesture
of Abraham, in an engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli.19 We must
nevertheless distinguish between two kinds, two degrees of
pictorial parallel. It is one thing, when facing a magnificent
Rembrandt, merely to see in it one of our acquaintances of
everyday life; it is quite another thing to consider an acquaint-
ance as a picture painted by Rembrandt, to look at him so to
speak with a "Rembrandt" eye. It would, of course, be absurd
to pretend that Proust was capable of seeing pictorially like
Rembrandt; we should admit, however, that he was able to
catch a glimpse of this master's world. The first type of
parallel, the resemblance of a masterpiece to a prosaic acquaint-
ance, is in the nature of a curiosity and recalls the ridiculous
character in Anatole France's Lys rouge,20 who, in every mu-
seum masterpiece that she sets her eyes on, insists on recog-
nizing one of her personal friends. On the other hand, the
second type of parallel reveals a purely aesthetic sensitivity
and memory, already displayed by John Ruskin as a child,
when he stubbornly refused to study under any teacher who
did not bear a sufficient resemblance to Holbein's Erasmus or
Dürer's Melanchthon.21 But even considered in this light the
allusions are only types of pictorial "quotations." Such quota-
tions presuppose, of course, a sufficient assimilation of the
paintings recalled to permit the author to bring up from the
inexhaustible well of his memory the vision of any work of
56
PROUST AND PAINTING
art as appropriately and as freely as would a well-read author
quoting from the classics of literature. Such references also
assume an unusual artistic background on the part of the
average reader.
Still, the foregoing quotations express only an elementary
degree of judgment. On the other hand, passages abound
from which the experience of art stands out more sharply,
passages which are more than visual quotations. Like the
subtle descriptions of Aloysius Bertrand in Gaspard de la
Nuit (1842), they are rather synthetic reconstructions of paint-
ings, one might say pictorial imitations or pastiches, which in-
stead of being done with the brush, are painted with words.
Although one can write literary criticism along conventional
lines, one might also evaluate an author from within, by writ
ing a representative imitation of his style. That is precisely
what Proust did in his pastiches in the manner of Saint-Simon,
Renan, Flaubert, and others.22 It is likewise in the form of
literary pastiches, this time of paintings, that we may consider
these allusions of Proust as being indirectly critical apprecia-
tions of masterpieces. We find, for instance, an allusion to
an observatory around which the clouds gather against the blue
sky in the manner of Van der Meulen, "dans le style de Van
der Meulen."23 Proust here has reconstructed in a corner of
nature his own Van der Meulen painting, and by so doing, has
brought out even though only in passing what Van der
Meulen paintings have in common in their cloud arrangements,
what one might call the Van der Meulen manner, or one of
its laws.
G
In the same way Proust has creatively evaluated the Boucher
and Fragonard genre in an allusion which notes that for these
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
57
painters the setting showing a girl reading a letter was merely
a pretext for bringing out a certain expression, "une moue,” a
feeling of regret or of jealousy; he is sorry that none of the
contemporary Bouchers and Fragonards should have chosen a
modern scene that might be most significant, "Devant le télé-
phone," which he imagines painted with the charm of these
eighteenth-century masters.
24
Placing himself every morning at the window, at Balbec, his
hero looks at the crests of the ocean:
. . . souvent ce n'était qu'après une longue plaine sablon-
neuse que j'apercevais à une grande distance leurs pre-
mières ondulations, dans un lointain transparent, vaporeux
et bleuâtre comme ces glaciers qu'on voit au fond des
primitifs toscans.25
Here is a discerning observation which makes relive in nature,
in a seascape, the background of the Tuscan masters, back-
grounds which do indeed look so distant through the aerial
perspective that obscures their bluish shades.
Proust finds a felicitous comparison to an El Greco painting
for a night scene of a Paris air raid, in which civilians watch
invading enemy planes, which are detected by the sharp beams
of searchlights:
. . . il aurait pu, tout en contemplant l'apocalypse dans le
ciel, voir sur la terre comme dans l'enterrement du comte
d'Orgaz du Greco où ces différents plans sont parallèles,
un vrai vaudeville joué par des personnages en chemise de
nuit . . .26
Here one sees not only a similarity of subject, of two spheres
of interest - one scene upon the ground, the other in the sky
one feels also the movement, as turbulent as it is typical,
58
PROUST AND PAINTING
of the grave figures or of the sinister, sharply contrasting
lights and shadows which El Greco stages in his backgrounds.
Proust can well compare the light viewed from an elevator,
rising from floor to floor, to Rembrandt effects:
la lumière se veloutait, se dégradait, amincissait les
portes de communication ou les degrés des escaliers in-
térieurs qu'elle convertissait en cette ambre dorée, incon-
sistante et mystérieuse comme un crépuscule, où Rem-
brandt découpe tantôt l'appui d'une fenêtre ou la mani-
velle d'un puits.27
We ful
It is truly a golden amber, ethereal and mysterious, this sub-
stance of Rembrandt, whose art without being realistic is so
real, whose work is all poetry. Having absorbed what is
characteristic in Rembrandt, it is with great finesse
going to say it is by casting the look of a master—that Proust
re-creates for us a wretched bric-à-brac shop under the aspect of
a painting by Rembrandt, the artist whose only ancestors are
said to have been old things and old armor:
Dans un petit magasin de bric-à-brac, une bougie à demi
consumée, en projetant sa lueur rouge sur une gravure, la
transformait en sanguine, pendant que luttant contre l'om-
bre, la clarté de la grosse lampe basanait un morceau de
cuir, niellait un poignard de paillettes étincelantes, sur des
tableaux qui n'étaient que de mauvaises copies déposait
une dorure précieuse comme la patine du passé ou le vernis
d'un maître, et faisait enfin de ce taudis où il n'y avait que
du toc et des croûtes, un inestimable Rembrandt.2
28
Sometimes it is merely the feelings experienced by Proust's
characters and their typical traits that he analyzes through
allusions to paintings. If Swann resembles Luini's "roi mage,
it is due not only to a physical likeness but also to his non-
""
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
59
chalant generosity.29 One can tolerate this ingenious identifica-
tion, but when Swann feels a very cordial sympathy with
Mohammed II, whose portrait by Bellini he liked,30 one can
see in this affinity only a psychological or emotional similarity,
the maddening love that Swann and Mohammed II experienced
alike. On the other hand, Proust is more convincing when he
compares Albertine's hooked nose to certain caricatures of
Leonardo which seem to express evil and greed for gain.31
This observation derives from various types in Leonardo's
drawings a common, essential characteristic.
Analogies can thus bear on the essence of the traits which
the figures of a master all have in common, that is, on the
conception of a type. Morel looks like a kind of Bronzino.32
A Venetian girl is referred to as a real Titian, “un vrai Titien
à acquérir avant de s'en aller."33 A certain blond woman is
"follement Giorgione."34 Odette is a Botticelli. In fact, Swann's
love for Odette crystallizes when he discovers her to be the
living incarnation of an aesthetic Botticelli type which permits
him to ennoble her in a dream world of Florentine art.
Instead of Odette's photograph, it is naturally a reproduction
of Botticelli's Zipporah that Swann would keep.36
35
Il élevait son autre main le long de la joue d'Odette; elle
le regarda fixement, de l'air languissant et grave qu'ont
les femmes du maître florentin avec lesquelles il lui avait
trouvé de la ressemblance; amenés au bord des paupières,
ses yeux brillants, larges et minces, comme les leurs, sem-
blaient prêts à se détacher ainsi que deux larmes. Elle
fléchissait le cou comme on leur voit faire à toutes, dans
les scènes païennes comme dans les tableaux religieux.
37
Even years later, when Odette tried to assume a different and
factitious type of beauty, she still appeared to Swann to incline
60
PROUST AND PAINTING
her head like Botticelli's women and at times her hands
seemed to reproduce the fine and somewhat stylized move-
ment of the Virgin of the Magnificat.38 Swann's adoration of
Odette was so identified with his artistic sentimentality that
he wished to push the similarity further and tried to reconstruct
to the very last detail even the accessories to be seen in the
paintings of the Florentine master. He thus bought Odette
a scarf identical with the one worn by the figure in the Mag-
nificat and a gown all covered with daisies, forget-me-nots,
and campanulas after the Primavera figure of Spring.39 These
aesthetico-amorous analogies evidence Proust's intense, enthu-
siastic feeling for Botticelli's art, for the characteristic type he
created, the neck line and the particular movement of his
women, in short some of the leading traits that mark his style.
Most of the pictorial references we have just treated set off
scenes, situations, resemblances, and types that re-create or re-
stage the art of the masters. It remains for us now to examine
some rarer passages dealing not with the scene of a painting,
but with something far more evanescent, a unique feeling
which, like a delicate flavor too subtle to define, Proust uses
to translate certain fleeting impressions of life and art.
Referring to the Duc de Guermantes, Proust writes: “... tout
en lui respirait cette gravité douce qui fait le charme onc-
tueux et large de certains personnages de Rembrandt, le bourg-
mestre Six par exemple."40 The days he was going to spend in
Florence are expressed as ". . . la vie non vécue encore, la vie
intacte et pure que j'y enfermais donnait aux plaisirs les plus
matériels, aux scènes les plus simples, cet attrait qu'ils ont dans
les œuvres des primitifs . . . By using the vivid textures in
Carpaccio's interiors, flooded with cheerful sunlight, he re-
''41
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
61
•
creates a charming atmosphere of festivity:
. . . le soleil . . . donnait une carnation de géranium aux
tapis rouges qu'on y avait étendus par terre pour la solen-
nité et ajoutait a leur lainage un velouté rose, un
épiderme de lumière, cette sorte de tendresse, de sérieuse
douceur dans la pompe et dans la joie qui caractérisent
certaines pages de Lohengrin, certaines peintures de Car-
paccio, et qui font comprendre que Baudelaire ait pu
appliquer au son de la trompette l'épithète de délicieux. 42
It is through the delicate reverberations of a Watteau painting,
with its dainty, almost misty quality, with its distant mood of
love, light gaiety, and sadness, that Proust explains the
stuff that dreams are made of which in turn helps him
understand the subconscious aspect of love:
Quelquefois quelque chose de plus précieux se dissipe,
aussi tout un tableau ravissant de sentiments, de ten-
dresse, de volupté, de regrets vaguement estompés, tout un
embarquement pour Cythère de la passion dont nous
voudrions noter pour l'état de veille, les nuances d'une
vérité délicieuse, mais qui s'efface comme une toile trop
pâlie qu'on ne peut restituer.43
The movement of Vinteuil's little phrase, which the violinist
played, appeared in different planes, as if it had been modu-
lated by the contrasting lights of a dimmer and a brighter
room as depicted in Pieter de Hooch's interiors:
Il commençait par la tenue des trémolos de violon que
pendant quelques mesures on entend seuls, occupant tout
le premier plan, puis tout d'un coup ils semblaient s'écarter
et comme dans ces tableaux de Pieter de Hooch, qu'appro-
fondit le cadre étroit d'une porte entr'ouverte, tout au loin,
d'une couleur autre, dans le velouté d'une lumière inter-
posée, la petite phrase apparaissait, dansante, pastorale,
intercalée, épisodique, appartenant à un autre monde.
62
PROUST AND PAINTING
It is also in pictorial terms that Proust expresses the difference
between the joy in Vinteuil's septuor and that in his sonata:
Enfin le motif joyeux resta triomphant; ce n'était plus un
appel presque inquiet lancé derrière un ciel vide, c'était une
joie ineffable qui semblait venir du Paradis, une joie aussi
différente de celle de la sonate que d'un ange doux et grave
de Bellini, jouant du théorbe, pourrait être, vêtu d'une
robe d'écarlate, quelque archange de Mantegna sonnant
dans un buccin. Je savais bien que cette nuance nouvelle
de la joie, cet appel vers une joie supra-terrestre, je ne
l'oublierais jamais.
45
This passage shows the degree to which Proust discerned dis-
tinctions of types, tones, attitudes, and atmosphere created by
two different masters.
Without confusing the opinions Proust ascribes to his char-
acters with his personal judgments, we can to some extent
deduce from their views his own critical experience of art.
Only a few characters are well versed in matters of art: Swann,
Charlus, Elstir, and later in the novel, M. Verdurin. Although,
when among society people, Swann does not like to set himself
up as an authority, he is really more than an aesthete who sees
in Odette the incarnation of a Botticelli; he is a scholar who
is making a study of Vermeer.46 He has discovered that a work
formerly attributed to Nicolas Maes, Toilette de Diane, is
really a Vermeer.47 When challenged by laymen, Swann is
reluctant to render an opinion on a painting, preferring in-
stead to furnish an indication as to the museum where it is
located or the date at which it was painted.48 In fact, to an
Impressionist exhibition he would rather take a little servant-
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
63
girl than a society woman, being convinced that while the latter
would not understand it any better than the servant-girl, she
would not manage to keep quiet as prettily.49
The Baron Palamède de Charlus is an aesthete of a different
feather, somewhat haughty and vain, patterned in part after
the Count Robert de Montesquiou. The word "fête" brings
up in his mind "le sens luxueux, curieux qu'il peut avoir si
cette fête est donnée non chez des gens du monde, mais dans un
tableau de Carpaccio ou de Véronèse."50 However, to his aes-
thetic feelings the author adds esoteric elements which are
rather peculiar, being probably taken from Proust's eccentric
friend. For instance, as his violent rage subsides, he declares:
"'51
"Comme dans les Lances de Velasquez . . . le vainqueur
s'avance vers celui qui est le plus humble, comme le doit
tout être noble, puisque j'étais tout et que vous n'étiez rien,
c'est moi qui ai fait les premiers pas vers vous.
And after this condescending gesture of the victor in the
Surrender of Breda, he points to a rainbow by Turner: "Si
vous aimez davantage ce genre de beauté, voici un arc-en-ciel de
Turner qui commence à briller entre ces deux Rembrandt en
signe de notre réconciliation.' "52 What we have here is a kind
of pictorial animism resulting from Charlus' association of art
with life. If he deigns to show some kindness toward Jews
and their section of the city, it is because he admires Rembrandt
too much to ignore the beauty to be found at the synagogue.
To the painter Elstir Proust naturally attributes discriminat-
ing sensitivity along with unusual erudition, as evidenced by
his comments on architectural sculpture. M. Verdurin too
displays aesthetic interests, particularly in his profound esteem
for Elstir's art, although this is not disclosed until later in the
64
PROUST AND PAINTING
novel. In fact, Verdurin's death seems to grieve Elstir most
of all, for with it he sees disappear the last eyes of his own
generation that could still value his art in its proper back-
ground.54
Proust delineates the attitudes of the other characters more
sketchily, but sufficiently to show that many are, in one way
or another, art conscious. Beside the rather insignificant paint-
er and sculptor, Ski, a member of the Verdurin circle, there is
Mme de Villeparisis who, like Mme Lemaire in real life,
paints flowers, particularly roses,55 and Albertine who paints
in Elstir's manner,56 but of course does not know Vermeer.57
We are told in passing that the narrator's father is an admirer
of El Greco,58 and that Brichot is an enthusiast of Watteau,
whom he esteems above Raphael,59 but critical analysis of their
opinions is absent.
The attitude of the other characters is either doubtful or
clearly ridiculous. Proust takes interest in art so much for
granted that everyone even a character who does not care
for painting
is pictured from the point of view of his ex-
perience of art. Saint-Loup offers a blundering analysis of
the portrait of his aunt by Carrière: "C'est beau comme du
Whistler ou du Velasquez, ajouta Saint-Loup, qui dans son
zèle de néophyte ne gardait pas toujours très exactement l'é-
chelle des grandeurs.' "60 As for Odette, she promptly shows
her disappointment with art when Swann tries to show her
what it really implies. She knows nothing about Vermeer and
expresses her utter indifference to his work in as much as we
do not know whether it was inspired by a love affair.61 Other
people snobbishly display the fact that they own portraits of
themselves or of their ancestors painted by the masters. Mme
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
65
de Villeparisis has a portrait of one of her forebears by
Titian;62 Charlus has portraits of his ancestors painted by
Raphael and Velasquez.63 At the Guermantes' there is a por-
trait by Carrière.64 The Guermantes own some Elstir paintings
which the narrator stops to admire, but the Guermantes them-
selves seem little affected by his art.65 Indeed, Mme de Guer-
mantes does not like her portrait by Elstir, as it is not suf-
ficiently realistic for her. This betrays rather backward taste:
"Ce n'est pas ressemblant, mais c'est curieux . . . Il m'a fait
comme une espèce de vieillarde. Cela imite les Régentes de
l'hôpital de Hals.'"'66 But her snobbishness is mercilessly ex-
posed:
"Comment! vous avez fait le voyage de Hollande et vous
n'êtes pas allé à Haarlem, s'écria la duchesse. Mais quand
même vous n'auriez eu qu'un quart d'heure, c'est une
chose extraordinaire à avoir vue que les Hals. Je dirais
volontiers que quelqu'un qui ne pourrait les voir que du
haut d'une impériale de tramway sans s'arrêter, s'ils étaient
exposés dehors, devrait ouvrir les yeux tout grands." Cette
parole me choqua comme méconnaissant la façon dont se
forment en nous les impressions artistiques.67
The Marquis de Norpois also exhibits that kind of taste that
makes him prefer Hébert and Dagnan-Bouveret to Elstir.68
Mme Verdurin's criterion conveniently shifts with selfish social
values: she judges art only insofar as it affects her immediate
circle and is therefore very severe with Elstir when he no longer
mingles with her "petit clan."69 Another character insists on
admiring Le Sidaner, rating him above Monet, and says that be-
fore forming any view on Poussin he must first ask Le Sidaner's
opinion.70 But the height of the ridiculous is reserved for Mme
Cottard and Mme de Cambremer-Legrandin. "Ah! vous avez
66
PROUST AND PAINTING
été en Hollande, vous connaissez les Ver Meer?' demanda im-
périeusement Mme de Cambremer et du ton dont elle aurait
dit: 'Vous connaissez les Guermantes', car le snobisme en
changeant d'objet ne change pas d'accent."71 Mme de Cambre-
mer likes to bring up the names of artists in vogue and recount
the changing phases of her taste as if they were as important as
the successive periods of a great artist, of Claude Monet.72 She
does not consider Poussin a worthy topic for conversation.
The only way of rehabilitating Poussin in her eyes is to tell her
that he is again the fashion.73 As for Mme Cottard, she be-
lieves it to be the first rule of etiquette to discuss with every-
one she meets the most talked of painter in her circle, how-
ever mediocre he may be:
"Etes-vous dans le camp de ceux qui approuvent ou dans
le camp de ceux qui blâment? Dans tous les salons on
ne parle que du portrait de Machard, on n'est pas chic, on
n'est pas pur, on n'est pas dans le train, si on ne donne
pas son opinion sur le portrait de Machard."74
As Swann simply replies he has not seen this portrait, she is
utterly dumbfounded at having "humiliated" Swann into such
a "confession":
"Hé bien, moi je l'ai vu, les avis sont partagés, il y en a
qui trouvent que c'est un peu léché, un peu crême fouettée,
moi, je le trouve idéal. Evidemment elle ne ressemble pas
aux femmes bleues et jaunes de notre ami Biche . . . Mon
Dieu je reconnais les qualités qu'il y a dans le portrait de
mon mari, c'est moins étrange que ce qu'il fait d'habitude
mais il a fallu qu'il lui fasse des moustaches bleues. Tandis
que Machard! . . . j'ai une autre amie qui prétend qu'elle
aime mieux Leloir. Je ne suis qu'une pauvre profane et
Leloir est peut-être encore supérieur comme science. Mais
je trouve que la première qualité d'un portrait, surtout
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
67
quand il coûte 10.000 francs, est d'être ressemblant et
d'une ressemblance agréable."
"75
In all these opinions the reader feels Proust's bitter social
satire, ridiculing the ignorance and false standards of the
society snobs who as a matter of etiquette inject into their
conversation such names of painters as they hear who happen
to be in fashion.
Proust's own experience is opposed to art that is merely
imitation of life. Besides Rembrandt and Botticelli, his in-
terest is directed to Giotto, to Vermeer, and to the Impression-
ists, especially Claude Monet. His admiration for Giotto's
allegoric frescoes at Padua is centered particularly on the fig-
ures of Charity, Justice, and Envy. In bringing out the
similarity between a character and a work of art, he no longer
contents himself with giving the name of the painter or the
title of the masterpiece as in the case of Bellini or Luini. He
now analyzes the resemblance in much greater detail and in
a long explanation, quoted below, he suggests the character
of Giotto's art. If the pregnant kitchen maid recalls the figure
of Giotto's Charity, as also in general Giotto's "vierges fortes
et hommasses, matrones plutôt,"76 there may be a physical, not
to say biological, analogy that relates them, but there are also
more profound affinities.
Et je me rends compte maintenant que ces Vertus et ces
Vices de Padoue lui ressemblaient encore d'une autre ma-
nière. De même que l'image de cette jeune fille était
accrue par le symbole ajouté qu'elle portait devant son
ventre, sans avoir l'air d'en comprendre le sens, sans que
rien dans son visage en traduisît la beauté et l'esprit,
comme un simple et pesant fardeau, de même c'est sans
68
PROUST AND PAINTING
paraître s'en douter que la puissante ménagère qui est
représentée à l'Arena au-dessous du nom "Caritas" et dont
la reproduction était accrochée au mur de ma salle d'é-
tudes, à Combray, incarne cette vertu, c'est sans qu'aucune
pensée de charité semble avoir jamais pu être exprimée par
son visage énergique et vulgaire. Par une belle invention
du peintre elle foule aux pieds les trésors de la terre, mais
absolument comme si elle piétinait des raisins pour en
extraire le jus ou plutôt comme elle aurait monté sur des
sacs pour se hausser; et elle tend à Dieu son cœur en-
flammé, disons mieux, elle le lui "passe", comme une
cuisinière passe un tire-bouchon par le soupirail de son
sous-sol à quelqu'un qui le lui demande à la fenêtre du
rez-de-chaussée. L'Envie, elle, aurait eu davantage une
certaine expression d'envie. Mais dans cette fresque-là
encore, le symbole tient tant de place et est représenté
comme si réel, le serpent qui siffle aux lèvres de l'Envie
est si gros, il lui remplit si complètement sa bouche grande
ouverte, que les muscles de sa figure sont distendus pour
pouvoir la contenir, comme ceux d'un enfant qui gonfle
un ballon avec son souffle, et que l'attention de l'Envie,
et la nôtre du même coup, tout entière concentrée
sur l'action de ses lèvres, n'a guère de temps à donner à
d'envieuses pensées.77
The important point in the parallel is therefore that both seem
ingenuously unaware of the symbolic significance inherent in
them, so direct and unaffected is their attitude. In Giotto's
art spiritual symbols are one with a naturalistic realism, in-
stead of being mutually exclusive. Thanks to his skill in
portraiture, this realism departs from the representation of
conventional faces and for the sake of physiognomic truth
admits even commonness and vulgarity of features:
Malgré toute l'admiration que M. Swann professait pour
ces figures de Giotto, je n'eus longtemps aucun plaisir
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
69
à considérer dans notre salle d'études, où on avait accroché
les copies qu'il m'en avait rapportées, cette Charité sans
charité, cette Envie qui avait l'air d'une planche illustrant
seulement dans un livre de médecine la compression de la
glotte ou de la luette par une tumeur de la langue ou par
l'introduction de l'instrument de l'opérateur, une Justice,
dont le visage grisâtre et mesquinement régulier était
celui-là même qui, à Combray, caractérisait certaines jolies
bourgeoises pieuses et sèches que je voyais à la messe et
dont plusieurs étaient enrôlées d'avance dans les milices
de réserve de l'Injustice. Mais plus tard j'ai compris que
l'étrangeté saisissante, la beauté spéciale de ces fresques
tenait à la grande place que le symbole y occupait, et que
le fait qu'il fut représenté non comme un symbole puisque
la pensée symbolisée n'était pas exprimée, mais comme
réel, comme effectivement subi ou matériellement manié,
donnait à la signification de l'œuvre quelque chose de plus
concret et de plus frappant. Chez la pauvre fille de
cuisine, elle aussi, l'attention n'était-elle pas sans cesse
ramenée à son ventre par le poids qui le tirait; et de
même encore, bien souvent la pensée des agonisant est
tournée vers le côté effectif, douloureux, obscur, viscéral,
vers cet envers de la mort qui est précisément le côté
qu'elle leur présente, qu'elle leur fait rudement sentir et
qui ressemble beaucoup plus à un fardeau qui les écrase,
à une difficulté de respirer, à un besoin de boire, qu'à ce
que nous appelons l'idée de la mort.
Il fallait que ces Vertus et ces Vices de Padoue eussent
en eux bien de la réalité puisqu'ils m'apparaissaient comme
aussi vivants que la servante enceinte, et qu'elle-même ne
me semblait pas beaucoup moins allégorique. Et peut-
être cette non-participation (du moins apparente) de l'âme
d'un être à la vertu qui agit par lui, a aussi en dehors de
sa valeur esthétique une réalité sinon psychologique, au
moins, comme on dit, physiognomique.78
70
PROUST AND PAINTING
While presenting at full length the psychological resem-
blance between a character in real life and a painting, Proust
points out also the essential characteristic of Giotto's robust art,
which lies in the dramatic, lifelike humanization of the con-
ventional subjects or symbols of his time. Giotto's allegories
can truly appear to him as living, as breathing, as touchable,
as something "effectivement subi ou matériellement manié,'
for they somehow all have the convincing power and fresh-
ness of actual existence.
Proust finds Giotto's daring realism also in his angels of
the Arena at Padua, who appear to him so convincingly real,
so different from the artificially winged children of the Renais-
sance painters, that they remind him of birds and aviators:
Dans ce ciel, sur la pierre bleuie, des anges volaient avec
une telle ardeur céleste, ou au moins enfantine, qu'ils sem-
blaient des volatiles d'une espèce particulière ayant existé
réellement, ayant dû figurer dans l'histoire naturelle des
temps bibliques et évangéliques on les voit s'élevant,
décrivant des courbes, mettant la plus grande aisance à
exécuter des loopings, fondant vers le sol la tête en bas
à grand renfort d'ailes qui leur permettent de se maintenir
dans des conditions contraires aux lois de la pesanteur, et
ils font beaucoup plutôt penser à une variété d'oiseaux ou
à de jeunes élèves de Garros s'exerçant au vol plané
qu'aux anges de l'art de la Renaissance et des époques
suivantes, dont les ailes ne sont plus que des emblèmes . . .79
Proust makes a few comments on Giotto's colors: "La voûte
entière et les fonds des fresques sont si bleus qu'il semble que
la radieuse journée ait passé par le seuil . . ."'80 One would have
liked to see more observations on Giotto's capacity for compo-
sition and decoration, on the dramatic staging of his figures, the
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
71
variety and appropriateness of their gestures, on his judicious
massing and scattering of groups and the dignity and charm
of his design. Still, Proust was sufficiently impressed by Giot-
to's art to be inspired to entitle a section of Le Temps retrouvé,
as originally conceived and announced in 1913, "Les 'Vices et
les Vertus' de Padoue et de Combray."
"'81
Proust expresses as follows his admiration for Vermeer:
"Depuis que j'ai vu au Musée de la Haye la Vue de Delft,
j'ai su que j'avais vu le plus beau tableau du monde."82 And
writing to another friend, he urges that France take over the
Vermeers of Dresden and Vienna: "Le plus grand peintre du
monde est inconnu des Français (la Dentellière du Louvre est
exquise mais insuffisante...)"83 Just why did Marcel Proust
judge Vermeer to be the greatest painter in the world?
In the first place, he must have liked the idea of expressing
enthusiasm about a painter who for centuries had been ignored,
who was almost unknown in France. Proust was incensed at
Fromentin's failure to recognize Vermeer's genius among the
many Dutch masters he treated: "le plus grand d'entre eux,
Ver Meer de Delft, n'est même pas nommé."8* In fact, it was
only in 1866 that a French critic, Etienne Thoré, writing under
the pseudonym of W. Bürger, rescued Vermeer from oblivion.85
One of the reasons for Vermeer's obscurity is the fact that he
appears to have left very few works. Even to this day, there
have been found only about forty authentic paintings in all.
Proust therefore must have been fascinated by the effect of
time, by the sudden turn of opinion on the part of posterity.
Moreover, Vermeer may have attracted him because of his
affinity with the Impressionists. As we have seen, Proust was
very fond of Claude Monet. A few centuries before Monet,
72
PROUST AND PAINTING
Vermeer had touched on the problem of light in the open air,
departing from the seventeenth-century Dutch painters who had
not dared to paint a landscape of light background without
adding dark shadows in the foreground to balance it.86 Critics
have therefore chosen to see in the master of Delft a luminarist
painter, a forerunner of Monet.87
In addition, Proust appreciated Vermeer's vision, which
renders things neither photographically nor too imaginatively
and seems to make them reflect the artist's own soul. He may
therefore have felt, as has been suggested, secret affinities with
this painter:
Du réalisme . . . Vermeer et Proust s'écartent par cette
commune conviction que l'on peut remplacer l'imagination
par la sensibilité. Ils ont tous deux une vision vraie,
c'est à dire ressentie et non imaginée, et pourtant distincte
de la vision commune, collective, qui pour la plupart con-
stitue le réalisme.88
What fascinates Proust even more is the hidden metaphysical
fundamental of every great artist's aesthetics, namely the unique
world which is created by this master's sensibility:
"Vous m'avez dit que vous aviez vu certains tableaux de
Vermeer, vous vous rendez bien compte que ce sont là les
fragments d'un même monde, que c'est toujours, quelque
génie avec lequel ils soient recréés, la même table, le même
tapis, la même femme, la même nouvelle et unique beauté,
énigme, à cette époque où rien ne lui ressemble ni ne
l'explique si on ne cheche pas à l'apparenter par les sujets,
mais à dégager l'impression particulière que la couleur
produit . . . Comme chez Vermeer, il y a création d'une
certaine âme, d'une certaine couleur des étoffes et des
lieux. '89
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
73
It is to Marcel Proust's credit to have been able to disregard
the master's subject matter and feel instead the stamp of his
unique, inimitable character. Vermeer's own "local color"
of materials and of places, this unique vision with which he
conceives things, critics have rightly compared to the texture of
a pearl.⁹⁰ Not only does one find pearls represented in most of
his pictures, but it is also the pearl shade of white that one
sees in his people's faces. It is through a layer of pearl that
he paints
the very delicacy, the somewhat blurred vague-
ness of pearl.
Proust took delight in the perfection of Vermeer's art, a
finished quality which in the opinion of many critics is to be
found more among the Dutch than among the Italian masters.91
He admired the sheer finish of matter painted, of the cloths,
of the gables of houses, which are "comme de précieux objets
chinois."'92 Proust always extolled the art of hiding art, seeking
instead of an obvious display of virtuosity, the apparently
effortless execution of a masterpiece.93 Vermeer's fused tone
which renders form and matter as one, though lacking the
finish of Van Eyck's art, leaves hardly any trace of the tech-
nique employed and has precisely the degree of transparency
that must have pleased Proust.
In the View of Delft Marcel Proust liked the famous Ver-
meer yellow, a color which this master had already used
even in his very first canvases. He can truly admire this
yellow, for Vermeer is a great colorist, in whose art colors.
are the real protagonists: the master of Delft makes yel-
low pass through many gradations from a dull shade to a
brilliant gold to move us with a dramatic crescendo. Ver-
meer's yellow, with which in his cult for Art Bergotte com-
74
PROUST AND PAINTING
munes in supreme ecstasy, recalls the importance attached to
this color by Van Gogh who later saw in it "une couleur apte
à charmer Dieu."94 The writer Bergotte goes to look at the
View of Delft in order to contemplate its "petit pan de mur
si bien peint en jaune" before he is struck down forever by
death:
"C'est ainsi que j'aurais dû écrire, disait-il. Mes derniers
livres sont trop secs, il aurait fallu passer plusieurs couches
de couleur, rendre ma phrase en elle-même précieuse,
comme ce petit pan de mur jaune." Cependant la gravité
de ses étourdissements ne lui échappait pas. Dans une
céleste balance lui apparaissait, chargeant l'un des pla-
teaux, sa propre vie, tandis que l'autre contenait le petit
pan de mur si bien peint en jaune. Il sentait qu'il avait
imprudemment donné le premier pour le second.95
In this dying writer, staggering toward Vermeer's art, we
recognize Marcel Proust himself. As has been mentioned.
after his visit to the Dutch exhibition, he was seized by such
spasms that he thought the end to be very near. And a few
hours before his death, which actually occurred several months
later, Proust is said to have dictated revisions for this episode.
It is therefore he, who, putting on one side of the scale his
life, on the other Vermeer's small patch of yellow wall, be-
lieved the reality of this art to outweigh his life and transcend
it. Haunted like Bergotte by approaching death, Marcel
Proust tried to participate for a moment in the absolute by
communing with the ideal perfection of a work that seemed
to be the very manifestation of immortality.
96
If we are to avoid repetition, we cannot treat in detail at this
point Proust's enthusiastic feeling for the art of Claude Monet
and other Impressionists, Manet, Pissarro, Whistler. These
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
75
artists so fascinated him that out of their composite art he
created the figure in the novel which represents the greatest
contemporary painter, Elstir, to whom we must devote a sepa-
rate chapter. It is easy to understand why Claude Monet's name
occurs so rarely in the novel, if we bear in mind that he is al-
ready embodied in Elstir, and that Proust takes Monet's art fun-
damentally for granted. It is not through mere coincidence that
he brings in scenes along the shores of the Vivonne river, and
he need not mention Monet's name for us to recognize the
landscapes this master loved to paint. He describes meadows
near the Vivonne, covered with yellow buttercups, also the
water plants and leaves floating on the river, particularly the
water lilies made so famous by the great Impressionist master.
Mais plus loin le courant se ralentit, il traverse une pro-
priété dont l'accès était ouvert au public par celui à qui
elle appartenait et qui s'y était complu à des travaux d'hor-
ticulture aquatique, faisant fleurir, dans les petits étangs
que forme la Vivonne, de véritables jardins de nymphéas.
Comme les rives étaient à cet endroit très boisées, les
ombres des arbres donnaient à l'eau un fond qui était
habituellement d'un vert sombre mais que parfois, quand
nous rentrions par certains soirs rassérénés d'après-midi
orageux, j'ai vu d'un bleu clair et cru, tirant sur le violet,
d'apparence cloisonnée et de goût japonais.
97
This immediately recalls Impressionist painting which, partly
under the influence of vividly colored Japanese prints, did away
with black and painted even shadows as bright colors.
Çà et là, à la surface, rougissait comme une fraise une fleur
de nymphéa au cœur écarlate, blanc sur les bords. Plus
loin, les fleurs plus nombreuses étaient plus pâles, moins
lisses, plus grenues, plus plissées, et disposées par le hasard
en enroulements si gracieux qu'on croyait voir flotter à
76
PROUST AND PAINTING
la dérive, comme après l'effeuillement mélancolique d'une
fête galante, des roses mousseuses en guirlandes dénouées.
Ailleurs un coin semblait réservé aux espèces communes
qui montraient le blanc et rose proprets de la julienne,
lavée comme de la porcelaine avec un soin domestique,
tandis qu'un peu plus loin, pressées les unes contre les
autres en une véritable plate-bande flottante, on eût dit des
pensées des jardins qui étaient venues poser comme des
papillons leurs ailes bleuâtres et glacées, sur l'obliquité
transparente de ce parterre d'eau; de ce parterre céleste
aussi; car il donnait aux fleurs un sol d'une couleur plus
précieuse, plus émouvante que la couleur des fleurs elles-
mêmes; et, soit que pendant l'après-midi il fît étinceler
sous les nymphéas le kaléidoscope d'un bonheur attentif,
silencieux et mobile, ou qu'il s'emplît vers le soir, comme
quelque port lointain, du rose et de la rêverie du couchant,
changeant sans cesse pour rester toujours en accord, autour
des corolles de teintes plus fixes, avec ce qu'il y a de plus
profond, de plus fugitif, de plus mystérieux,
qu'il y a d'infini, - dans l'heure, il semblait les avoir
fait fleurir en plein ciel.98
avec ce
In this landscape we recognize a subtle restaging of Claude
Monet's colorful world where the hues assumed by the flowers
interpenetrate the evanescent reflections of the insubstantial
water, both being subject to the fleeting effects of the atmos-
phere and of the light which alter their harmonies every hour.
Proust seems sensitive to the reverie, the mystery, the feeling
of infinity suggested by this frail, kaleidoscopic garden that
partakes of both water and sky. We notice here his predilec-
tion for the later stages of Monet and Impressionism, where
the illusory nature of the phenomenal world is expressed with
a kind of melancholy solipsism.
In another volume of Proust we read: "Justement le soleil
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
77
1
s'abaissait, les mouettes étaient maintenant jaunes, comme les
nymphéas dans une autre toile de cette même série de Monet."99
He understood quite well the significance of these "series”, in
which the artist painted a different canvas of the same view
every hour. In an earlier work he refers to Monet's series
of Cathedrals:
... la façade occidentale d'Amiens, bleue dans le brouil-
lard, éblouissante au matin, ayant absorbé le soleil et
grassement dorée l'après-midi, rose et déjà fraîchement
nocturne au couchant, à n'importe laquelle de ces heures
que ses cloches sonnent dans le ciel et que Claude Monet
a fixées dans des toiles sublimes où se découvre la vie de
cette chose que les hommes ont faite, mais que la nature
a reprise en l'immergeant en elle, une cathédrale, et dont
la vie comme celle de la terre en sa double révolution
se déroule dans les siècles, et d'autre part se renouvelle et
s'achève chaque jour . . .100
Experiencing a seascape at nightfall as if it were a "Har-
mony in Gray and Pink" by Whistler, the author re-stages for
us the delicate touch and the signature of the Chelsea master:
Et parfois sur le ciel et la mer uniformément gris, un peu
de rose s'ajoutait avec un raffinement exquis, cependant
qu'un petit papillon qui s'était endormi au bas de la
fenêtre semblait apposer avec ses ailes au bas de cette
"harmonie gris et rose" dans le goût de celles de Whistler,
la signature favorite du maître de Chelsea.101
Proust ordinarily speaks little of a painter's palette, but
when it comes to Impressionist art, he seems to have grasped
very clearly its language, its technique, the divisionism of
color, and the bright palette. He absorbed these notions suf-
ficiently to use them in 1907 in his literary criticism:
78
PROUST AND PAINTING
Enfin, si grâce à la protection de M. Jean Baugnies je puis
voir un jour le jardin de Claude Monet, je sens bien que
j'y verrai, dans un jardin de tons et de couleurs plus
encore que de fleurs, un jardin qui doit être moins l'ancien
jardin-fleuriste qu'un jardin-coloriste, si l'on peut dire,
des fleurs disposées en un ensemble qui n'est pas tout à fait
celui de la nature, puisqu'elles ont été semées de façon que
ne fleurissent en même temps que celles dont les nuances
s'assortissent, s'harmonisent à l'infini en une étendue bleue
ou rosée, et que cette intention de peintre puissamment
manifestée a dématérialisées, en quelque sorte, de tout ce
qui n'est pas la couleur. Fleurs de la terre, et aussi fleurs
de l'eau, ces tendres nymphéas que le maître a dépeints
dans des toiles sublimes dont ce jardin (vraie transposi-
tion d'art plus encore que modèle de tableaux, tableau
déjà exécuté à même la nature qui s'éclaire en dessous du
regard d'un grand peintre) est comme une première et
vivante esquisse, tout au moins la palette est déjà faite et
délicieuse où les tons harmonieux sont préparés.102
Additional aspects of Monet and the Impressionists will be
taken up in the following chapters.
How much independence did Proust show in his opinions on
art? To be sure, he did not have the accurcy or the originality
of judgment of Baudelaire, who, in this respect, was such
an infallible art critic that he holds a unique position in
the history of French literature. On the other hand, Proust
was no slavish imitator of other people's views, which he never
read merely to echo: his attitude was always critical. He
often took a definite stand of his own and differed sharply with
people who had a greater claim than he to expertness in the
field. He challenged, for example, Jacques-Emile Blanche's
view that a given city at a given period facilitates the creation
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
79
of art by leaving to the artist only the task of copying a ready-
made beauty, that "le Paris de Manet était plus pictural que le
nôtre, que la féerique beauté de Londres est la moitié du génie
de Whistler."103 At the time that Whistler's art was experienc-
ing a set-back in the taste of the day, Proust expressed his in-
dependence of the trend of general opinion:
Vous savez qu'il y a en ce moment dans l'élite artistique
de la France un terrible recul d'opinion pour Whistler.
On le considère comme un homme d'un goût exquis qui a
pu laisser croire par là qu'il était un grand peintre, bien
qu'il n'en soit rien. Jacques Blanche, dans la Renaissance
Latine. . ., a, au fond, exprimé avec plus de justice, et
même de ferveur, la même opinion. Ce n'est pas du tout
la mienne. Si celui qui a peint les Venise en turquoise,
les Amsterdam en topaze, les Bretagne en opale, si le por-
traitiste de Miss Alexander, le peintre de la chambre aux
rideaux semés de bouquets roses, et surtout des voiles dans
la nuit à MM. Vanderbilt et Freer (pourquoi voit-on la
voile seule et pas le bateau?) n'est pas un grand peintre,
c'est à penser qu'il n'y en eut jamais.104
It is in this light that Proust's study of Ruskin should be
envisaged. Of course he esteemed most of the latter's works,
for he found in them many aspects that were close to his own
sensibility and views. He was moved by Ruskin's serious,
lifelong consecration to a divine plan, an eloquent discourse
on universal Beauty from pebble to mountain, from leaf to
tree, from mammoth to man, a transcendental motive carried
out with numerous digressions in some fifty long volumes.
Ruskin's fervent devotion to this cause, which, as Proust writes,
the English critic conceived as a reality much more important
than life itself, something in fact for which he would have
given his own life,105 may well have helped Proust to crystallize
80
PROUST AND PAINTING
his own views on the superiority of the realm of Art. Fur-
thermore, in Ruskin's works Proust could feel an ardent ad-
miration for cathedrals and mediaeval architecture. He could
find there the same love he himself had for hawthorns, and
generally a keen delight in the beauty of nature, as well as
an unusual sharp sense for visual details.106 Above all he found
a boundless, ever-flowing enthusiasm by which he could not
but be affected, not only for Turner but for the Italian Prim-
itives and Renaissance painters: Giotto, Fra Angelico, Car-
paccio, Bellini, Mantegna. It was the English critic's recurrent
discussions of these Italian masters, it was his emphasis, for
instance, on Giotto in his book Giotto and His Works at Padua,
that called Proust's attention to them.
However, despite this admiration for Ruskin's good points,
Proust never lost his faculty for thinking and judging for him-
self. He was not blind to Ruskin's defects. In fact the atti-
tudes of Proust and Ruskin differ sharply in many respects.
For instance, the artist's submission to an inner necessity and
the abdication of intellect in the experience of beauty are very
differently conceived by the two writers.107 Ruskin subordinates
his judgment to religion, placing aesthetic values and intellect
below divine values which are not to be questioned. For Proust
the artist subordinates himself to the depths of his inner being
and the abdication of intellect represents a voluntary abdication
of preconceived, habitual ideas, in keeping with the practice
of the Impressionists. Moreover, if both writers sought the
spiritual reality behind the external appearance of things, if
both conceived art as a reality superior to life, it was not at
all for the same reason. For the theologian and moralist that
was Ruskin, though life was secondary to art, art itself was
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
81
already subordinate to morality and religion. Proust bitterly
criticized his view that a work of art is greater in the same
proportion that it expresses a greater number of spiritual ideas
independent of the idiom of pictures. He rightly says, "la
peinture ne peut atteindre la réalité une des choses, et rivaliser
par là avec la littérature, qu'à condition de ne pas être litté-
raire."'108 Proust emphatically rebelled against what he called
Ruskin's "idolâtrie" in subject matter,109 an idolatry that made
him approach art with preconceptions. Unlike Ruskin, for
whom life and art were subservient to Religion and Morals,
Proust subordinates life and morals to the Religion and Moral-
ity of Art.
It was architecture and architectural sculpture, perhaps more
than painting, that absorbed Proust deeply in Ruskin's works.110
Indeed the first book he selected for translation was one on
architecture: The Bible of Amiens. On his own admission, it
was for architectural sculpture, and not painting, that Proust
went "en pèlerinage ruskinien" to Amiens to look at "la petite
figure inoffensive et monstrueuse,"111 and also later to Venice,
". . . afin d'avoir pu, avant de mourir, approcher, toucher, voir
incarnées en des palais défaillants mais encore debout et roses,
les idées de Ruskin sur l'architecture domestique au moyen
âge."112 However, even here Proust read Ruskin very cautiously
and critically; as his translator's notes testify, he had more
confidence in Emile Mâle's judgment than in Ruskin's. In the
final analysis, Proust was concerned more with the development
of his own thought. As he writes in his preface to La Bible
d'Amiens, “Il n'y a pas de meilleure manière d'arriver à prendre
conscience de ce qu'on sent soi-même que d'essayer de recréer
en soi ce qu'a senti un maître. Dans cet effort profond, c'est
}
82
PROUST AND PAINTING
notre pensée elle-même que nous mettons, avec la sienne, au
jour.
"113
An author's experience of art is further defined by the pictori-
al elements he leaves out and by the painters he ignores or
grasps only incompletely. For instance, Proust did somewhat
appreciate the unconventional subjects and poses of Manet's
models. Manet's Olympia had shocked the artistic world and
been the subject of interminable disputes: it depicted not a
classical beauty or some mythological goddess, but simply a
nude courtesan reclining on a couch, with a black cat at her
feet, receiving flowers brought by her negro servant. Proust
repeatedly alludes to this work to show how time marks the
evolution of the public's taste, since what had previously been
considered outrageous was now venerated as a masterpiece,
as much as anything by Ingres, so that a social arbiter like
the Duchesse de Guermantes could refer to it with open
admiration.114 On the other hand, of the earlier Manet, of
Manet's Spanish period, of his Goya side, Proust seems not to
have appreciated the full significance, preferring, instead, his
"Monet" side,115 the unrestrained fluidity and extreme misti-
ness typical of Claude Monet's work.
Renoir's name is mentioned only late, in the volumes pub-
lished in 1920,116 and in the posthumous ones. It would
therefore appear that Proust became interested in Renoir's art
only near the end of his life. Nevertheless he came to value
Renoir, but not without certain limitations and not without
viewing this artist in the perspective of time so dear to Proust:
I1
y eut un temps où on reconnaissait bien les choses quand
c'était Fromentin qui les peignait et où on ne les recon-
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
83
naissait plus quand c'était Renoir.
Les gens de goût nous disent aujourd'hui que Renoir
est un grand peintre du XVIIIe siècle. Mais en disant
cela ils oublient le Temps et qu'il en a fallu beaucoup,
même en plein XIX, pour que Renoir fût salué grand ar-
tiste. Pour réussir à être ainsi reconnu, le peintre original,
l'artiste original procèdent à la façon des oculistes. Le trai-
tement par leur peinture, par leur prose, n'est pas toujours
agréable. Quand il est terminé, le praticien nous dit:
Maintenant regardez. Et voici que le monde (qui n'a pas
été créé une fois, mais aussi souvent qu'un artiste original
est survenu) nous apparaît entièrement différent de l'an-
cien, mais parfaitement clair. Des femmes passent dans
la rue, différentes de celles d'autrefois, puisque ce sont des
Renoir, ces Renoir où nous nous refusions jadis à voir des
femmes. Les voitures aussi sont des Renoir et l'eau, et
le ciel: nous avons envie de nous promener dans la forêt
pareille à celle qui le premier jour nous semblait tout ex-
cepté une forêt, et par exemple une tapisserie aux nuances
nombreuses mais où manquaient justement les nuances
propres aux forêts.117
Proust might have characterized the Renoir type more fully
and referred to the softness, the silky texture of Renoir's sen-
suous, sumptuous figures. Nor did he mention the diffused
effect, which we might call the ostrich feather quality, of
Renoir's mellow vision, or the delicate purplish tones, partic-
ularly in his trees, and the tender, caressing brush lines which
predominate in all his paintings.
Cézanne's name does not appear in the novel and Degas is
barely alluded to. Did Proust really understand Degas's ad-
mirable draughtsmanship? Proust, who should have had af
finities with Degas, since in a sense he was himself the Degas
of French society, failed to refer to the unsympathetic view of
84
PROUST AND PAINTING
women to be found in this master's studies. In any event, it
appears that Cézanne, Degas, and Renoir were artists whose
work, as he himself admits, he grasped but late in life and in-
completely at that, since in 1919 they still remained among the
"peintres que je devine à peine."118 However, very few Degas
canvases had circulated before the 1900's. And Cézanne's popu
larity began rather late; he received his consecration with the
retrospective exhibition organized by the Salon d'Automne in
1907. In view of Proust's early invalidism, which after 1902
kept him out of touch with the outside world,119 he cannot be
expected to have treated Cézanne and other important contem-
poraries, such as the entire group of the Fauves, Matisse, De-
rain, Vlaminck, not to speak of Fernand Léger, Chagall, or
Rouault.
Marcel Proust was criticized by a friend for paying more
attention to mediocre society painters than to the greater fig-
ures of art: “La peinture de Helleu, les portraits de Boldini,
de La Gandara, voire de Carolus, tout ce qui a l'air si médiocre,
autour des Manet, des Degas, des Lautrec, des Renoir, dans
les nouvelles salles de nos Musées, l'enchantait."120 The society
memorialist in Proust was inevitably fascinated by the social
notables whom he was thinking of incorporating in his novel.
An apparently insignificant though fashionable portrait by
Tissot of Charles Haas, because the latter was the prototype
of Swann,121 could easily be as interesting to him as the multi-
tude of ordinary photographs of people he knew personally or
of people merely related to them, pictures which had no special
virtue other than to help him visualize the forthcoming char-
acters of his future novel.122
Yet Proust's critical experience of art had its limitations.
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
85
One would have liked to see him treat painting more in terms of
painting proper and analyze the art of one painter by comparing
it with or differentiating it from that of another. True, on a
few occasions he does this, in a way, for example when he
compares Bellini with Mantegna,123
123 Raphael with Japanese
art,124 Bellini with his Chinese imitators, 125 Vermeer with his
contemporaries, 126 or Renoir with Cotte and Chaplin. About
the latter, for instance, he writes:
La poésie d'un élégant foyer et des belles toilettes de notre
temps ne se trouvera-t-elle pas plutôt, pour la postérité,
dans le salon de l'éditeur Charpentier par Renoir que dans
le portrait de la princesse de Sagan ou de la comtesse de La
Rochefoucauld par Cotte ou Chaplin? Les artistes qui nous
ont donné les plus grandes visions d'élégance en ont
recueilli les éléments chez des gens qui étaient rarement les
grands élégants de leur époque, lesquels se font rarement
peindre par l'inconnu porteur d'une beauté qu'ils ne peu-
vent pas distinguer sur ses toiles, dissimulée qu'elle est par
l'interposition d'un poncif de grâce surannée qui flotte
dans l'œil du public comme ces visions subjectives que le
malade croit effectivement posées devant lui.127
These are valid contrasts or analogies, but we find in them
few technical analyses. It is true that Proust himself never
professed to be an authority. He modestly states to Blanche:
"Je ne me crois aucune autorité en rien, mais je sais que j'en
manque surtout en matière de peinture," 128 and elsewhere he
protests that he sees nothing unless it is pointed out to him.
In his usual ingratiating manner, he would proclaim to his
friends his readiness and eagerness to discover a new interpreta-
tion of the art of a given master, with an article and book of
reproductions in his hand, such as Vaudoyer's version of Ver-
meer or Blanche's view of Renoir, for he considered art, like
86
PROUST AND PAINTING
1
nature, to be the starting point for as many views as there are
critics.
If therefore Proust refers to some points of technique, it is
only superficially. He may allude to a reliquary like the one
Carpaccio or Memling would paint, divided into several sec-
tions,129 hence a simple matter of division or framing. We
find hardly any allusion to the painter's craft
proper. Proust,
it is true, was aware of the fact that originality in painting
might to some extent consist in a new relationship of tones or in
a new way of preparing and juxtaposing colors on canvas. As
he says of the average writer's reaction to the painter's craft,
quoting Blanche,
"... les opérations intellectuelles du peintre restent tou-
jours assez impénétrables. La nouveauté, l'invention, en
peinture, se décèlent souvent en un simple rapport de ton,
en deux valeurs juxtaposées ou même en une certaine
manière de délayer la couleur, de l'étendre sur la toile.
Qui n'est pas sensible à la technique, n'est pas né pour les
arts plastiques, et telle intelligence très déliée passera à
côté d'un peintre pur sans s'en douter."130
It is easy for us today to censure Proust for not realizing that
in painting one should look for "significant form" for the
organization of lines and masses, for structure, composition,
pictorial counterpoint, for elements imparting movement, direc-
tion, struggle or rest. In this respect, however, Proust's limita-
tions were those of his age rather than of his personal taste.
He must have been familiar with the Synthetist manifesto of
his friend Maurice Denis, who espoused decorative art, since he
quotes it.131 Yet when Proust refers to the decorative element
in a painting, it is rarely for its value in the composition; it is
rather in relation to the content, as in the following example,
96
PROUST AND PAINTING
friend Cézanne that Zola selected, Cézanne whose art he
never understood, for whom he wished the same facility in art
which he himself possessed in literature.20 Proust, however, has
more fundamental reasons for portraying the painter. He wants
to present an artist whose work, whose particular vision and
sensibility, had profoundly influenced his own way of ex-
periencing life and provided the mode which was to guide
his literary efforts. The introduction of the painter therefore
bears an essential, an organic relation to the entire novel and
to the author's view of life. Moreover, for Proust Art repre-
sents a kind of religion, the supreme experience, the sine qua
non of life, its raison d'être, something more important, even
more real than life itself, dominating and outlasting everything
else. It is typical of Proust to write: "l'art est ce qu'il y a de
plus réel, la plus austère école de la vie, et le vrai jugement
dernier." And so in his novel each major art is embodied in
a character: the painter is symbolized by Elstir, the composer
by Vinteuil, the writer by Bergotte but more especially by the
narrator, who is more or less the author himself.
21
Like the other characters of Marcel Proust, all of whom
evidence a multiple personality, Elstir is composed of a suc-
cession of heterogeneous aspects. The many facets of Proust-
ian characters as they appear, vanish, and re-emerge on the
scene, are visible at various intervals of time but only after
long periods of absence. Although it is in the light of their
evolution that the author envisages his people, he necessarily
can let us see only one abrupt glimpse at a time rather than
a gradual unfolding. Thus we do not meet them in the actual
process of change. However, each time the characters re-
appear, they have sufficiently evolved and moved in an un-
ELSTIR
95
in treatment by the five novelists stand out even more markedly
when we examine the motive which prompted each author in
his own way to choose an artist for the hero of his work. In
the case of Nodier, the choice of a painter was made for
purely sentimental reasons. The "painter" of Saltzbourg is
none other than the author himself, presented in the guise of
a painter only in order to do homage to the memory of a
woman painter he had befriended, Lucile Francque, who had
just recently died.10 For the author of the Comédie Humaine,
the painter represents one of the important vocations of life,
the mastery of which, requiring as it does such painstakingly
gained perfection, he associated with the search for the ab-
solute. For the Goncourt brothers, écrivains de mœurs, who
chose to remain free of attachments, the topic not only in-
volved the depiction of a given class or profession but may
also have implied the unavowed fear or suspicion of woman,
of whose victims the artist serves here as another convenient
example. Perhaps the novel expresses in addition the secret
frustration of the two brothers in the field of painting, in
which they had never fulfilled themselves. As for Zola's
novel, it is another attempt to expound his favorite theory of
heredity through his roman expérimental, the predestined
tragedy of a family of degenerates, the Rougon-Macquarts.
It is combined here with his disillusionment in Impressionist
art, which he had at first so eloquently defended, but of which
he had later grown tired," and more especially his complete
misunderstanding of Cézanne, whom in this novel he practi-
cally condemned to death. "Avec Claude Lantier," Zola writes,
"je veux peindre la lutte de l'artiste contre la nature . . . C'est
le génie incomplet." As the incomplete genius unfairly held
back at the outset by insufficient potentialities,19 it is his old
94
PROUST AND PAINTING
(1886). It is the tragedy of an incomplete genius, Claude
Lantier, who through some hereditary shortcoming does not
succeed in fulfilling himself. A somewhat paradoxical, con-
tradictory figure, Claude Lantier is on the one hand a renovator
of art, one of the initiators of plein-air, a bold and gifted
leader of artists. On the other hand, he is an artist who
wastes his talent in an effort to produce pictures beyond his
strength. He starts canvases of enormous dimensions that
oblige him to attempt the impossible, such as plein-air within
a studio, and he stubbornly ignores the advice of everyone in
choosing scandalous subjects, a naked woman in the streets
of Paris or the head of a dead child. As if under the power
of an hallucination, he is driven by a sort of demon to ruin
everything he has successfully started. The artist thus expe-
riences the frustration of conceiving an original vision but
lacking the genius to carry it out. And so his best works
are his unfinished sketches. When exhibited, his art is natu-
rally the object of the critics' mockery and the jeers of the popu-
lace. Only a few painters, who are inspired by his art and
freely use it to further their own success, know his true value.
His wife, who in comparison with his art does not matter
to him, is jealous of the many hours which his work de-
nies her and is of course unhappy and bitter about all the
misery that it has brought down upon her and her child. In
his tenacious struggle for the kind of art he is seeking to
achieve, Claude Lantier is so uncompromising that he usually
destroys his canvases in mad rage. His frustration finally
leads him to suicide.
As could be expected, Proust's portrait of the painter would
depart radically from those of his predecessors. The differences.
ELSTIR
93
"'14
The main character is the painter Coriolis. "Il rapportait
un Orient tout différent de celui que Decamps avait montré aux
yeux de Paris, un Orient de lumière aux ombres blondes, tout
pétillant de couleurs tendres."13 Gifted, but lacking sufficient
will power and perseverance to succeed, Coriolis kills his talent
because of a woman, Manette Salomon. He adores her not
only as a lover but as an artist, for she represents to him a
ready-made masterpiece of the Eternal Feminine. The Cult
of Beauty here elevates somewhat the Cult of Woman. Ma-
nette, however, reduces Coriolis to spiritual enslavement and he
finally loses his mind, obsessed by the red and glowing colors
of the spectrum, "toute la gamme du rouge, des mercures sul-
furés, carmins saignants, jusqu'au noir de l'hématite . .
This lack of will power, typical of the period, is a characteristic
trait in the Goncourts' writings, as the novel depicting the
thwarted career of the painter follows by a few years the one
representing the failure of the writer, Charles Demailly. The
picture the Goncourt brothers have given us of the painter and
of studio life is possibly the most realistic in treatment in all
French literature, but it is also a study of a mediocre artist,
for in order to remain characteristic of his environment the
hero of Realistic literature cannot very well surpass the average.
However, the Goncourts' picturesque style overflows with
chromatic energy, dazzling us with its strokes of vivid colors,15
as if it had been executed with the brush as well as with the
pen. Though not penetrating the surface of what otherwise
might have been a psychological study, the Goncourts' work
is still the most sensitive professional studio novel yet written.
The Naturalistic portrayal of the painter is found in one
of Zola's novels of the Rougon-Macquart series, L'Euvre
92
PROUST AND PAINTING
have retouched it in its technical parts, but more probably
Eugène Delacroix, whose art and ideas have closer affinities
with Balzac's hero.12
The Goncourt brothers approached professional painting
even closer than Balzac, for from childhood they had wanted
to become painters themselves, Edmond preferring portraits
and Jules taking to drawing and later to etching. It is there-
fore from first hand experienrce that they knew atelier life
and some of the painters of their period: Fromentin, Millet,
Constantin Guys, Gavarni and others.
Manette Salomon (1867) is not only the study of a painter
of some ability, Coriolis, who allows himself to be dominated
and crushed by a woman, it is also the picture of an entire
class, with its manifold variations, its diversified talents and
schools. These are represented chiefly by Coriolis, who is an
an orientalizing painter seeking new paths in art; by Garno-
telle, a follower of the school of Rome, whose work is dry
but is crowned with easy success; by Crescent, who is supposed
to be a great landscape painter of the Barbizon group; finally
by Anatole, who has only a slight impulse toward art itself,
being attracted to it more by its Bohemian mode of life. The
book delineates the manners of a particular class at a definite
period: the painter in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Goncourts show us the life and trade of artists in their
Bohemian environment, their troubles and their struggles for
livelihood as much as, if not more than, their struggles for
fulfilment in art. Necessity forces some to do degrading
work, and the weaker ones are naturally destined to a slow
but certain descent into obscurity.
ELSTIR
91
7
ally this story was favorite reading, as he liked to identify
himself with Balzac's hero. "Frenhofer, c'est moi!" he would
say. The resemblance has some basis in fact, for Frenhofer
makes the futile attempt to achieve Classical ideals with
Romantic means and Cézanne tried to attain Classical ends
with Impressionist means. But while Frenhofer failed, Cé-
zanne succeeded.
"18
In his vividly descriptive and realistic style Balzac gives a
detailed picture of the painter and of his art. It is in an
entirely professional tone that he speaks of colors, of palette,
using all the terms of the atelier, such as "demi-teinte,”
"glacis," "pâte." Indeed Balzac's characters speak like emi-
nent masters of an art school: "La mission de l'art n'est pas
de copier la nature, dit maître Frenhofer, mais de l'exprimer!'
One must paint more true than nature and transmit to the
work of art a living quality, a soul, for which technique alone
does not suffice.9 ""Vous êtes devant une femme et vous
cherchez un tableau . . . l'air y est si vrai, que vous ne pouvez
plus le distinguer de l'air qui nous environne. Où est l'art?
perdu, disparu!' "10 Not only does Balzac show us the artist
at work, but he astonishes us by his comprehension of tech-
nique and by his modern views, giving us a sort of course in
painting and drawing: "C'est en modelant qu'on dessine,
it is by modeling that one draws, for in nature drawing does
not exist, "'c'est en modelant qu'on détache les choses du
milieu où elles sont, la distribution du jour donne seule l'ap-
parence au corps! Aussi n'ai-je pas arrêté les linéaments...'"11
Here can be recognized the hand of some outside colla-
borator, possibly Théophile Gautier, to whom legend as-
cribes this short story in its entirety, and who might at least
Dr.
90
PROUST AND PAINTING
all the seasons, winter. Never do we perceive a strong feeling
for his particular vocation, never a sense of duty to his art,
indeed hardly any awareness of it. The one or two allusions
to the words brush and palette are there to remind us that he
is a painter after all, but so disheartened that he does not care
to touch his brush any more." We know nothing of his art or
style, for this "painter" writes rather than paints, pouring out
his grieving heart in his diary. In the final analysis, the hero
might just as well have been a musician or a poet. Instead of
being colored by the eyes of a painter, everything here is
dominated by a nostalgic Weltschmerz, everything is engulfed
in this maelstrom of unrealized love, of regrets, of despair, of
suicide all less real than conventionally Romantic.
4
What a contrast between this pale, Romantic self-portrait
and the living figure of Maître Frenhofer rendered by Balzac
in Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (1831-1837). Frenhofer is a kind
of Mallarmé in painting, a super-artist, who sees beyond his
powers of execution, who wants to attempt the absolute, and
by protracting his search for perfection too long, finally comes
to doubt his own genius. For ten years he has secretly been
working at a canvas, showing it to no one. Like Pygmalion,
he falls in love with the woman he has created to the point of
becoming jealous: "Voilà dix ans que je vis avec cette femme,
elle est à moi, à moi seul, elle m'aime." He finally consents
to show his masterpiece to two painters, Pourbus and the young
Poussin, on condition that the latter allow his beautiful fiancée
to pose for him. But when he learns of their disappointment
in his work, he completely breaks down, burning all the paint-
ings he has created. The figure of this solitary, unknown and
misunderstood giant foreshadows Cézanne, for whom incident-
CHAPTER V
ELSTIR
N ORDER to view Proust's painter in a wider perspective,
we shall briefly survey the painter as he has been treated in
French literature before Marcel Proust, in such representative
works as give him a leading rôle. Taken up in turn by Nodier,
Balzac, the Goncourt brothers, Zola, and Marcel Proust, the
painter as a character in fiction appears respectively under Ro-
mantic, Realistic, Naturalistic, and Impressionistic aspects.¹
1
I the
In his youth Charles Nodier wrote Le Peintre de Saltzbourg
(1803), whose subtitle, rather characteristic of the period, is
worth mentioning: Journal des émotions d'un cœur souffrant.
This solitary painter is quite a romantic, being in fact more
of a Wertherian figure than a painter. Banished and separat-
ed forever from the woman he loves, he takes refuge in
nature, where he finds reflections of his grief. At rare in-
tervals we notice touches of color in descriptions of various
hours of the day or of the seasons. The author occasionally
uses pictorial terms such as "croissant noir" to indicate a
bridge, or "sillon d'argent" to denote a river. While con-
demning the blind people who fail to see nature's beauty,³ he
himself scarcely creates a painter's vision of it. Not one pre-
cise nuance in color do we see, for everything in the descrip-
tions seems to float in a rather vague melancholy. Choosing
those aspects of nature that provide the proper background for
his mood, he prefers the sad evening, the pale moon, and of
2
89
88
PROUST AND PAINTING
*
vital realm that had to be so thoroughly absorbed into one's
sensibility as to be freely re-experienced. With all the limita-
tions of his generation, Proust was therefore much more than
an amateur. He sensed the poetry of painting and admirably
used the individual atmosphere generated by various master-
pieces of art so as to re-create them in tableaux vivants in life.
He achieved particularly a more penetrating comprehension of
Impressionist art, to whose representative, Elstir, we shall
now turn our attention.
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
87
active: "
where a "decorative" figure happens to be disturbingly in-
inutile, comme ce guerrier purement décoratif
qu'on voit dans les tableaux les plus tumultueux de Mantegna,
songer, appuyé sur son bouclier, tandis qu'on se précipite et
qu'on s'égorge à côté de lui."132
•
At least Proust did not err in the opposite direction and he
rightly reproved Ruskin for measuring the greatness of a work
of art by the number of its unpictorial ideas. He likewise re-
buked those who see in art profound subjects, moral, sociolog-
ical or philosophical values, who thus renew "l'erreur des David,
des Chenavard, des Brunetière, etc."133 A more basic compre-
hension of subject matter in painting takes full cognizance of
the intimate organization of substance with form — a con-
ception which Proust applied brilliantly in the field of litera-
ture and which he suggested even in painting, as in the case
of Elstir's composition where land and sea blend in interde-
pendent motifs.134
On the whole, however, Proust did not - in fact, as
a writer of his generation he scarcely could visualize
every masterpiece as being essentially a theme and variations:
an intimate interlacing of subject, characters, objects, decorative
elements, forms, colors, textures, planes, movements, directions,
all expressing in a thousand and one echoes, reverberating
each in its own way, the main motif of the painting. He was,
on the contrary, ready to disengage certain features from their
compositional context. He would see in a picture essentially
the transmissible and self-perpetuating qualities of beauty, those
features that had taught him some new aspect a type, a
pose, a color, a characteristic shape which he could now re-
discover and re-experience elsewhere. Painting to him was a
ELSTIR
97
predictable direction to become quite different, different to the
point of contrast, sometimes to the point of contradition.
We first meet Elstir as the favorite painter of the Verdurin
circle, where he is known under the name of Biche.22 In the
company of Mme Verdurin's faithful but insipid adherents,
he amuses himself by indulging on every possible occasion in
rather vulgar and indelicate jokes.23 Although his art departs
from the conventional, it is difficult to surmise that this frivo-
lous and shallow mind can have any unusual talent. Mme
Cottard complains of his predominant use of blues and yellows,
which gives her husband's portrait a somewhat blue mustache,24
and Mme Verdurin's appreciation can be summarized by her
request for a “smiling" portrait of Cottard, "le portrait de son
sourire."'25

Il leur semblait . . . que le peintre jetait au hasard des、
couleurs sur ses toiles. Quand, dans celles-ci, ils pou-
vaient reconnaître une forme, ils la trouvaient alourdie et
vulgarisée (c'est-à-dire dépourvue de l'élégance de l'école
de peinture à travers laquelle ils voyaient dans la rue même,
les êtres vivants), et sans vérité, comme si M. Biche n'eût
pas su comment était construite une épaule et que les
femmes n'ont pas les cheveux mauves.26
His painting may be somewhat unconventional but his vulgar,
idiotic character is not calculated to win our admiration. When
the occasion presents itself for praising the good work of a
recently deceased painter, Biche prefers, instead, to delight
the Verdurins by displaying his coarse wit, naturally to the
detriment of his late colleague.2
L
27
Many years later the narrator meets the painter at Balbec,
and we are unaware that he is the same man, for he is now a
sage, a genius. "Serait-il possible que cet homme de génie, ce

98
PROUST AND PAINTING
sage, ce solitaire, ce philosophe à la conversation magnifique et
qui dominait toutes choses fût le peintre ridicule et pervers,
adopté jadis par les Verdurin?"28 Upon being asked whether
he was Biche, the artist of the Verdurins, Elstir is not ashamed
to admit it, and instead of retorting in bitter words, is broad-
minded enough to give the narrator a lecture on how every
man can grow only in stages of experience, there being no one
who does not at some time regret the foolish words and deeds
of his youth.29 By those who do not understand his art, his
reserve is mistaken for aloofness, for posing, for selfishness.
He is in reality a very kind, affable person, taking art very
seriously, and always ready to instruct the narrator when the
latter visits his studio.
30

Marcel Proust does not "describe" the external actions of
the artist, or the technical means at his disposal. Instead of
picturing a character from without, as do the Goncourts, de-
scribing his profession and his struggles in terms of his milieu,
Proust presents a character from within and combines Im-
pressionism with the analytical approach. Elstir appears to us
through the successive impressions produced on various people,
in dramatic stages of development, as the reflection of other
people's reactions: first in the Verdurin circle, then in Swann's
life, later in that of the narrator, who gradually builds up his
conception of him, then on and off in the opinion of various
other characters, Mme Cottard, the Guermantes, Mme Ver-
durin, finally M. Verdurin. We are also given some insight
into the psychological processes of the artist at work; we are
shown, for instance, how he must obliterate the "type" to
which a woman makes her appearance conform, so that he may
re-create his own visualization of her:

ELSTIR
99
La génie artistique agit à la façon de ces températures
extrêmement élevées qui ont le pouvoir de dissocier les
combinaisons d'atomes et de grouper ceux-ci suivant un
ordre absolument contraire, répondant à un autre type.
Toute cette harmonie factice que la femme a imposée à ses
traits et dont chaque jour avant de sortir elle surveille la
persistance dans sa glace, changeant l'inclinaison du cha-
peau, le lissage des cheveux, l'enjouement du regard, d'en
assurer la continuité, cette harmonie, le coup d'œil du
grand peintre la détruit en une seconde, et à sa place il
fait un regroupement des traits de la femme, de manière
à donner satisfaction à un certain idéal féminin et pictural
qu'il porte en lui 31
However, we never see Elstir actually struggle, as Maître
Frenhofer, as Coriolis, as Claude Lantier struggled, either for
existence or at least for his art. We know nothing of the
manner in which he solves the problems of daily living. He
may have been misjudged, "méconnu ou froissé,"32 but if he
was, it is all a matter of the past, for now, though not yet in
his full glory, his renown is great enough to win him the ad-
miration even of people who do not understand him fully.33
In this, Proust, who himself was economically carefree, was
possibly influenced by the society painters he would meet in
the fashionable drawing-rooms who had attained social pro-
minence and were living at ease. At any rate, Elstir does not
appear worried about selling his paintings, which are already
being collected by the select and snobbish aristocracy repre-
sented by the Guermantes, nor is he harrassed by any attacks
on the part of art critics, conspicuous by their absence. We
hear only feeble echoes of disagreement in the conversation
of the salons at the time when he has already achieved success
and when only a few backward society dilettantes do not as

Um
…………..
100
PROUST AND PAINTING
MU
yet esteem him.34 Unlike Frenhofer, Coriolis, or Claude Lan-
tier, Elstir is never misunderstood to the point of becoming dis-
couraged. He is recognized, he has arrived, but how we do
not know.
Seeking to surprise us, Proust preferred to sacrifice the pic-
ture of the complete and gradual evolution of Elstir in favor
of the first impression which we often have of an unknown man
of genius before he has reached fame. In keeping_with_his
taste for the unexpected and for deceptive first judgments, he
made Bergotte, Vinteuil, and Elstir initially rather uninteresting.
As he explained to a friend: "Aussi j'ai trouvé plus frappant de
montrer d'abord Vinteuil vieille bête sans laisser soupçonner
qu'il a du génie, et dans le 2º chapitre de parler de sa sublime
sonate que Swann n'a même pas un instant l'idée d'attribuer à
la vieille bête."35
ܚ
Und
In the original manuscript version completed in 1912 Proust
had already conceived Elstir and his art as very significant; if
in the six years between 1912 and 1918 he appears to have ex-
panded the space devoted to the painter, he did so only in the
same proportion as he expanded the rest of the novel.36 Al-
though Elstir's commentary on the church of Balbec, showing
the narrator the beauty of that façade,37 was characteristic of
Ruskin and Emile Mâle, Elstir's dominant character in that
first version was almost without admixture that of an Impres-
sionist painter, being a composite of Manet, Pissarro, Whistler,
and especially Claude Monet.

38
In this first manuscript, which has remained partly unpub-
lished, Elstir's art reveals to the narrator the beauty of natural
scenes to which he had previously paid no attention. A water
ELSTIR
101
color instills in him the desire to see again in real life scenes
of the ocean where the bathers and the yachts are an integral
part of the view.39 Manet, Monet, and the other Impressionists
have pictured seascapes exactly like these, where men and boats
are one with the ocean and the multicolored passengers are
treated as if they were part of a landscape or of a colorful
still life. Furthermore, Elstir's studies render the narrator
less restricted in his tastes by bringing out the charm of a pro-
vincial French town, such as "des scènes pittoresques de la vie
populaire familièrement dominées au-dessus du marché, du
magasin de bonneterie ou du grand café, par deux vieilles
tours abbatiales. "40 Here Proust may have thought of
Pissarro's pictures, for the latter painted market scenes and fairs
in village squares in Rouen and elsewhere that show a perfect
knowledge of provincial life.41 Another painting of Elstir
represented a "Dégel à Briseville" with an equivocal effect:
“. . . la dissimulation de toutes limites sous la glace cas-
sée en mille morceaux et au milieu de laquelle s'élevaient
des arbres presque entièrement défeuillés, empêchait de
savoir si on avait devant soi le lit d'un fleuve ou une
clairière dans les bois." Ce dernier tableau, en particulier,
révélait au narrateur "la beauté qu'il y a dans cette im-
mense équivoque des reflets où l'œil ébloui est incertain
s'il voit briller un morceau de glace azurée ou une lueur
de soleil sur l'eau, tandis que les feuilles mortes mêlées à
la neige et aussi à la rousseur des cimes des arbres rever-
bèrent dans le ciel et son miroir glacé les lueurs roses
comme un coucher de soleil qui dure du matin au soir."42
One recognizes here the illusory effects of Claude Monet's
paintings, such as Bras de Seine près Giverny, Débâcle sur
la Seine, Vétheuil. Another canvas also suggests Monet:
102
PROUST AND PAINTING
(t
1
•
au bord de la mer, pâlie, vaporisée par le soleil et où
les ailes blanches de quelques bateaux semblaient engour-
dies de chaleur . . . il avait vu en contraste dans l'eau .
au pied da la falaise rose, gigantesque, friable et dentelée
comme les arc-boutants d'une cathédrale les ombres qui
étaient mises à l'abris et au frais."43
•
These pale scenes, vaporized by excessive sunlight, as well as
the arched pink cliff, are definitely by Claude Monet, for he
so often painted precisely such cliffs at Etretat, at Pourville
and at Varengeville.44 On the other hand, a still life repre-
senting a half open oyster is most likely by Edouard Manet, and
one of the "variations en opale," depicting fireworks at night,
seems to be a night scene rendered by Whistler.45
But the main point about Elstir's art was the fact that
although he was very learned, he deliberately started with a
tabula rasa in order to paint things as they appeared at the
first moment, "le seul vrai, où notre intelligence n'était pas
encore intervenue pour nous expliquer ce qu'elles sont, nous
ne substituons pas à l'impression qu'elles nous ont donnée les
notions que nous avons d'elles."46 This is truly a fundamental
of Impressionist art.
47
Some accused Elstir of merely seeking "effects" in his pic-
tures, in which he was close to the Impressionists, and satis-
fying himself with a "material" art; they failed to perceive
that no art was really more spiritual. Indeed, not only Ma-
net,48 but all the Impressionists were held up to scorn for
aiming at effects purely material. Gauguin, for instance, spoke
of Impressionist art as of "un art purement superficiel, tout de
coquetterie, purement matériel; la pensée n'y réside pas.
fact, however, Monet really renders nature lyrically, creating
››49 In
ELSTIR
103
what has been called a "pantheistic poem,
"'50 a transposition of
nature into a rare key of hues.51 For the Impressionists color
in itself played a vital part, creating, as it were, a spir-
itualization of matter: "Ce sont comme de grands poèmes et là
encore le réalisme, la contemplation minutieuse de la réalité
touche à l'idéalisme et au rêve lyrique par la splendeur du
thème choisi, par l'orchestration des frissons de clarté, par le
parti pris symphonique des couleurs."52
Moreover, Elstir would compose his pictures entirely "avec
des parcelles de réalité, qui toutes avaient été personnellement
senties,"53 so that everything from the architectural masterpiece
down to the poor but useful structure seemed uniformly pro-
duced by the same vision, responding furthermore to that unity
of nature which was imposing at that hour its optic law.54
These are all purely Impressionist concepts. The cathedral
as well as the construction are by Monet, who painted the fa-
mous series of Cathedrals, and the perhaps less known pictures
of cottages, the Cabanes du douanier 55
In the first version Elstir's work already comprised land-
scapes, seascapes, portraiture, water colors, still life, scenes of
villages markets. But above all, the first version is important
in proving that from the very beginning of his conception
Proust had grasped the essentials of Impressionist art.
Though Elstir's medium was slightly expanded to include
drawing, its main elements, depicted in Proust's original view,
are again to be found, with more variations, in the final version.
No subject is too humble for Elstir, no material can be
"less" beautiful or "less" precious, since the Impressionist
104
PROUST AND PAINTING
painter does not view things for themselves but only in so far
as they serve to reflect light. Proust also attributes to the
original artist didactic value, for the latter discovers and re-
veals the previously unperceived charm of simple things. He
thus teaches the narrator to see things anew:
La dame un peu vulgaire qu'un dilettante en promenade
éviterait de regarder, excepterait du tableau poétique que
la nature compose devant lui, cette femme est belle aussi,
sa robe reçoit la même lumière que la voile du bateau, et
il n'y a pas de choses plus ou moins précieuses, la robe
commune et la voile en elle-même jolie sont deux miroirs
du même reflet, tout le prix est dans les regards du peintre.
Or celui-ci avait su immortellement arrêter le mouvement
des heures à cet instant lumineux, où la dame avait eu
chaud et avait cessé de danser, où l'arbre était cerné d'un
pourtour d'ombre, où les voiles semblaient glisser sur un
vernis d'or. Mais justement parce que l'instant pesait sur
nous avec tant de force, cette toile si fixée donnait l'im-
pression la plus fugitive, on sentait que la dame allait
bientôt s'en retourner, les bateaux disparaître, l'ombre
changer de place, la nuit venir . . .
56
This expresses well the fugitive sensation, the instant which
Impressionist art arrests and perpetuates. Remy de Gour-
mont writing on Claude Monet states similarly:
C'est la nature fixée dans le moment même de la sensation,
comme on la subit à un premier regard large et envelop-
pant. Le mécanisme semble photographique, mais, en cet
éclair, le génie a collaboré avec l'œil et avec la main, l'in-
stantané est une œuvre personnelle d'une absolue origina-
lité . . .57
Elstir abdicates his intellect and learning so as to abandon
himself more completely to pure sensation:
ELSTIR
105
L'effort qu'Elstir faisait pour se dépouiller en présence de
la réalité de toutes les notions de son intelligence était
d'autant plus admirable que cet homme qui, avant de
peindre, se faisait ignorant, oubliait tout par probité, car
ce qu'on sait n'est pas à soi, avait justement une intel-
ligence exceptionnellement cultivée.58
This is precisely what an Impressionist painter does. Monet
writes to a friend:
Je sais seulement que je fais ce que je pense pour exprimer
ce que j'éprouve devant la nature, et que le plus souvent,
pour arriver à rendre ce que je ressens, j'en oublie totale-
ment les règles les plus élémentaires de la peinture s'il en
existe toutefois.59
Elstir will therefore see things not as they are but as they
appear during that split second of his first glance at them.
Objects will thus produce the effect of optical illusions rather
than of things as such, and these illusions might further in-
crease with the laws of perspective:
Or, l'effort d'Elstir de ne pas exposer les choses telles
qu'il savait qu'elles étaient mais selon ces illusions op-
tiques dont notre vision première est faite, l'avait précisé-
ment amené à mettre en lumière certaines de ces lois de
perspective, plus frappantes alors, car l'art était le premier
à les dévoiler. Un fleuve, à cause du tournant de son
cours, un golfe à cause du rapprochement apparent des
falaises, avaient l'air de creuser au milieu de la plaine
ou des montagnes un lac absolument fermé de toutes parts.
Dans un tableau pris à Balbec par une torride journée d'été,
un rentrant de la mer semblait enfermé dans des murail-
les de granit rose, n'être plus la mer, laquelle commençait
plus loin. La continuité de l'océan n'était suggérée que
par des mouettes qui tournoyant sur ce qui semblait au
106
PROUST AND PAINTING
spectateur de la pierre, humaient au contraire l'humidité
du flot.6
60
It is likewise of Claude Monet's rendition of the Pourville
cliffs that a critic wrote: "De grands ciels se lèvent des eaux,
aspirent la masse océanique: c'est un échange et une confusion
qui aboutissent à l'admirable unité.61
D'autres lois se dégageaient de cette même toile comme,
au pied des immenses falaises, la grâce lilliputienne des
voiles blanches sur le miroir bleu où elles semblaient des
papillons endormis, et certains contrastes entre la profon-
deur des ombres et la pâleur de la lumière. Ces jeux des
ombres, que la photographie a banalisés aussi, avaient
intéressé Elstir au point qu'il s'était complu autrefois à
prendre de véritables mirages, où un château coiffé d'une
tour apparaissait comme un château circulaire com-
plètement prolongé d'une tour à son faîte, et en bas
d'une tour inverse, soit que la pureté extraordinaire d'un
beau temps donnât à l'ombre qui se reflétait dans l'eau
la dureté et l'éclat de la pierre, soit que les brumes du
matin rendissent la pierre aussi vaporeuse que l'ombre.62
The study of sharp contrasts between deep shadows and the
blinding spaces of sunlight interested Monet and all the Im-
pressionists, in whose work light was the chief character, since
its decomposition into vibrant local contrasts was the basis of
their technique. As for the effects of "mirage," they are due
to the fact that the Impressionist artist can grasp in his first
impression no details but rather a broad view of the ensemble
which necessarily renders the scene somewhat vague, making
objects look confused and blurred not only in their outlines
but also in their mass. For instance, in a bridge of London
painted by Claude Monet it is practically impossible to tell
passers-by from lamp posts. As the painter records the flux

ELSTIR
107
of appearances that strike his eye, no one part stands out more
sharply than another: through this soft focus the details are
submerged in the whole. Since the brush stroke here serves
no longer to designate form but merely optic value, it naturally
makes forms appear indefinite and easily interchangeable.
Hence the Impressionists' preference for mist, by which all
forms are naturally dissolved into undefined aspects akin to
equivocal illusions.
The "équivoques" of Elstir are of two kinds. One is of the
mirage type which makes us wonder whether we see a real
tower or its reflection in the water, an effect which so fascinated
Claude Monet that, as his art progressed, the element of water
became less and less visible as such and was there only to
reflect the sky. Monet was indeed unusually sensitive to the
interpenetrability of all elements, water, air, earth, stone. The
other kind of "équivoque" is one of natural staging, where
the deceptive illusion is due to the odd angle of perspective
from which the scene is viewed, a winding river thus giving
at first the unexpected appearance of a closed lake. A com-
plex effect combining the two types of illusion is rendered for
instance by Edouard Manet in Le Bar des Folies-Bergères,
where the entire café seems strangely staged until one realizes
that most of the objects in it are really seen as reflections from
the mirror, and are thus deceptive with regard to distance and
location. It is the second type of optical illusion that Proust
elaborates in his last version of Elstir. He has found a
felicitous epithet for both types of deceptive effects, which he
now calls "métaphore".63
It is this unexpected staging and overlapping of elements
in an odd perspective due to the relative position of the ob-

108
PROUST AND PAINTING
1 server which characterizes Elstir's masterful canvas Le Port
de Carquetbuit. This painting may be imaginary, but it is
described to the reader in such skilful sequence as to reconstruct
the visual experience of the spectator as he moves from one
surprising aspect to another:
J
Dans le premier plan de la plage, le peintre avait su
habituer les yeux à ne pas reconnaître de frontière fixe, de
démarcation absolue entre la terre et l'océan. Des hommes
qui poussaient des bateaux à la mer, couraient aussi bien
dans les flots que sur le sable, lequel souillé, réfléchissait
déjà les coques comme s'il avait été de l'eau. La mer
elle-même ne montait pas régulièrement, mais suivait les
accidents de la grève, que la perspective déchiquetait en-
core davantage, si bien qu'un navire en pleine mer, à
demi-caché par les ouvrages avancés de l'arsenal semblait
voguer au milieu de la ville; des femmes qui ramassaient
des crevettes dans les rochers, avaient l'air, parce qu'elles
étaient entourées d'eau et à cause de la dépression qui,
après la barrière circulaire des roches, abaissait la plage
(des deux côtés les plus rapprochés de la terre), au niveau
de la mer, d'être dans une grotte marine surplombée de
barques et de vagues, ouverte et protégée au milieu des
flots écartés miraculeusement. Si tout le tableau donnait
cette impression des ports où la mer entre dans la terre, où
la terre est déjà marine, et la population amphibie, la force
de l'élément marin éclatait partout; et près des rochers,
à l'entrée de la jetée, où la mer était agitée, on sentait
aux efforts des matelots et à l'obliquité des barques cou-
chées en angle aigu devant la calme verticalité de l'entre-
pôt, de l'église, des maisons de la ville, où les uns ren-
traient, d'où les autres partaient pour la pêche, qu'ils trot-
taient rudement sur l'eau comme sur un animal fougueux
et rapide dont les soubresauts, sans leur adresse, les eût
jetés à terre.
64

ELSTIR
109
Here land and sea are so intimately merged that where one
might expect the ocean one is confronted with the shore and
where one believes the land to be one suddenly finds the sea.
C'était une belle matinée malgré l'orage qu'il avait fait.
Et même on sentait encore les puissantes actions qu'avait
à neutraliser le bel équilibre des barques immobiles, jouis-
sant du soleil et de la fraîcheur, dans les parties où la mer
était si calme que les reflets avaient presque plus de so-
lidité et de réalité que les coques vaporisées par un effet
de soleil et que la perspective faisait s'enjamber les unes
les autres. Ou plutôt on n'aurait pas dit d'autres parties
de la mer. Car entre ces parties, il y avait autant de dif-
férence qu'entre l'une d'elles et l'église sortant des eaux,
et les bateaux derrière la ville. L'intelligence faisait en-
suite un même élément de ce qui était, ici noir dans un
effet d'orage, plus loin tout d'une couleur avec le ciel et
aussi verni que lui, et là si blanc de soleil, de brume et
d'écume, si compact, si terrien, si circonvenu de maisons,
qu'on pensait à quelque chaussée de pierres ou à un champ
de neige, sur lequel on était effrayé de voir un navire
s'élever en pente raide et à sec comme une voiture qui
s'ébroue en sortant d'un gué, mais qu'au bout d'un mo-
ment, en y voyant sur l'étendue haute et inégale du plateau
solide, des bateaux titubants, on comprenait, identique en
tous ces aspects divers, être encore la mer.65
are accustomed
the sea
into
Like a painter, Proust breaks up what we
rationally to envisage as a single element
many disparate units: here a dark portion in a storm effect,
there something that matches the color and smoothness of the
sky, and elsewhere a light patch, bright with sunshine, mist,
and foam, and encompassed by land structures. This divisional
approach reveals a remarkable understanding of the nature of
painting and pictorial vision. The description also shows

110
PROUST AND PAINTING
Proust's keen appreciation and analysis of the organic inter-
lacing, the multiple unity, of the picture's double motif
land and sea.
Just as the little phrase of Vinteuil's sonata is according to
Proust a fusion of parts from works of Saint-Saëns, Wagner,
and Fauré,66 so Le Port de Carquethuit can be expected to be a
fusion of several paintings. It seems to be based at least in part
on Edouard Manet's Port de Bordeaux, where we find a similar
setting, a semicircular shore in perspective, and a similar pro-
jection of land elements (the church and other buildings) far
into what seems to be the sea. Few have equalled Manet
in rendering the sea in its many moods; seascapes, ac-
cording to the catalogue raisonné of his works, constitute by
far the largest category of the scenes he painted. Having
been a cabin boy before he took to art, Manet retained his
love for the ocean and the keen eye of a seaman. Though
the effects of mirage in the painting remind one of Claude
Monet, they are less apparent and less numerous. The ocean
still retains substantiality the fishermen are "riding on the
rough water as they might on a swift and fiery animal"
and recalls the relative firmness with which, in spite of his
Impressionism, Manet molds his elements. Although Proust
does not mention Eugène Boudin, painter of French harbors
and beaches, several elements in the Port de Carquethuit, such
as the bustling activity at the harbor, the accumulation of
masts, the women gathering sea food, as well as the general
precision of descriptive detail, all suggest typical aspects de-
picted by this forerunner of Impressionism.
In another picture, a water color, Elstir disintegrates matter
by rendering sheer sunlight in the manner of Claude Monet.
ELSTIR
111
67
It is a sketch depicting pink cliffs arched like a cathedral,
painted on such a bright and torrid summer day that they had
become volatilized and misty through the decomposition of
light. Their shadows are blue, as can be seen in the work of
the Impressionists, who no longer used black, not considering
it a color, but regarding it technically speaking only as the
absence of light.
Elstir's studio seemed the laboratory of a new world in
creation, in which the simple experiences reflected on the
many canvases the sight of an angry wave smashing its
lilac foam on the sand, or a young man in a white jacket
leaning on a boat had acquired a new dignity in artistic
life.68 The parts of the walls at the Guermantes' home covered
by Elstir's paintings were fragments of the new world he had
projected outside of himself, like the luminous images flashed
by some magic lantern which would correspond to the artist's
brain but whose strangeness one could never have guessed if
one had known only the man without his art.69 Ten portraits
of different people rendered by Elstir all had distinctive traits
that made one recognize them at once as Elstirs.70 Likewise
the roses he painted resembled only in part their original
models, for he had first transplanted them into his "jardin
intérieur," his inner garden, whence like an ingenious horti-
culturist he had produced new species of roses which would
forever have remained unknown without him.71 This is true
even of the various Impressionists, for a flower by Monet is
distinctly different from the same flower by Degas or Renoir.
However, the charm of Elstir's work lay essentially in his
metamophorsis of the world in terms suggesing poetic meta-
phors, not by some artificial symbolism, but simply through
112
PROUST AND PAINTING
+
natural optical illusions that would make it difficult to identify
objects. His work was made up of those rare moments when
instead of looking at things with the eye that merely discerns
already preconceived identities, one views nature poetically,
"as it really is."72 If Elstir transforms one thing into another,
it is therefore by virtue of the same type of experience which,
in the flash of a first glance, may make us see, for example, a
street where there was only a wall:
Que de fois en voiture ne découvrons-nous pas une longue
rue claire qui commence à quelques mètres de nous, alors
que nous n'avons que devant nous un pan de mur violem-
ment éclairé qui nous a donné le mirage de la profondeur.
Dès lors n'est-il pas logique, non par artifice de symbolisme,
mais par retour sincère à la racine même de l'impression,
de représenter une chose par cette autre que dans l'éclair
d'une illusion première nous avons prise pour elle? Les
surfaces et les volumes sont en réalité indépendants des
noms d'objets que notre mémoire leur impose quand nous
les avons reconnus. Elstir tâchait d'arracher à ce qu'il
venait de sentir ce qu'il savait, son effort avait souvent
été de dissoudre cet agrégat de raisonnement que nous
appelons vision.73
In his metaphoric creations Elstir therefore does not merely
see differently, he actually perceives different things: "si Dieu
le Père avait créé les choses en les nommant, c'est en leur ôtant
leur nom, ou en leur donnant un autre qu'Elstir les recréait."74
This parallels what Remy de Gourmont has written about
Monet: "Quand on a regardé avec attention une série de
tableaux de Claude Monet, on éprouve comme une peur; il
semble qu'on se trouve en présence des créations d'un Dieu, et
c'est vrai."75 It recalls also the words of Leonardo da Vinci:
"Painting is not only a science, it is even a divinity, because
ELSTIR
113
it transforms the painter's mind into something similar to the
mind of God."76
While Proust divulged to his friends the identity of some of
his characters," he did not reveal that of Elstir. It has
been suggested that Elstir might be the anagram of Whistler;78
also that the letters of his name stand for Helleu.79 But
superficial anagrammatic or alliterative similarities here are
not significant. There is scarcely a name among the fictitious
characters in Proust's work that does not stand for some "sixty
names" of people he has seen.80 Marcel Proust's characters,
like his names of places, are complex composites of real and
imaginary elements that often defy precise identification, dis-
concerting the curious reader who might be tempted to disen-
tangle them. They were perhaps fashioned so as to retain a
certain mystery, or else, in keeping with his aesthetic theory,
were so created as to leave to each reader the possibility of
suggesting his own interpretation. They might also be ex-
plained in terms of practical considerations. Composite char-
acters would free the author of the danger of possible law-
suits,81 besides permitting him to create as he progressed. What
is of primary interest to us here is the art that Elstir typifies and
Proust's understanding of that art. At the same time we
may well ask whether an author can, in all fairness to art, give
the artist the composite treatment that he grants to ordinary
people. That is, to what extent can the synthesis of many
artists into one be really successful? Insofar as Elstir repre-
sents the Impressionist painters, this synthesis seems effective;
on the other hand, insofar as he reaches beyond them, it is of
lesser value.
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PROUST AND PAINTING
While each retained his individuality, all the Impressionists
bore a close resemblance. They worked together and influ-
enced one another, every man contributing to and sharing in
the discoveries of the group. At a given stage of development,
Claude Monet's canvases could hardly be distinguished from
those of Edouard Manet. The idea of building a composite
painter out of this group is therefore a felicitous one.
Elstir's first period dealt with mythological subjects.82
Now most of the Impressionists did their first work under
masters of the academy: Monet, Whistler, Renoir, and Sisley
under Gleyre, Edouard Manet under Couture, and Degas at
the Beaux-Arts. Did Proust have in mind Manet, who painted
a nymph, La Nymphe surprise,83 or Renoir, who portrayed a
Diane Chasseresse,84 or Degas, who copied Ingres's Bacchanale
and painted La Naissance des Muses? The water colors of
Elstir's mythological period depict muses, poets, and centaurs
wandering about together in a mountainous landscape, rendered
at a precise moment of sunset and with the convincing sin-
cerity that one might see if these creatures belong to a race
apart, now extinct but nevertheless historical.85 These muses,
poets, and centaurs are most likely by Gustave Moreau. Al-
though Odilon Redon too has depicted centaurs,86 it is improb-
able that Proust meant him, for in one of his articles he men-
tions water colors by Gustave Moreau of surprisingly similar
subject, described in nearly the same terms and with almost
the same background.87 There is also a possibility that Proust
intended not to limit himself to a single painter but in a wider
symbolism to represent the entire acadamic school that preceded
Impressionism, that is, the mythological art of the School of
Rome.
P
ELSTIR
115
!
Elstir's second manner, the Japanese period,88 is also well
chosen, for it is rather typical. Almost all Impressionist art
underwent the influence of Japan, not only in the matter of sub-
jects, but in points of daringly bright color, general decorative
quality, and angles of perspective, viewing, for example, a scene
from above.89 The sixties witnessed the growing popularity of
Japanese prints by Hokusai, Utamaro, Kiyonaga, Hiroshige.
In 1864 and 1865 Whistler began to do Japanese scenes, paint-
ing for instance The Princess of the Land of Porcelain. In
Manet's portrait of Emile Zola one sees a print of Utamaro.
In 1876 Claude Monet painted La Femme en robe japonaise,
and his garden at Giverny, the bridge, the lake, were all of
Japanese design.
Miss Sacripant, Elstir's portrait of an actress disguised as a
young man-who is really Odette de Crécy-of a beautiful
but peculiar type, is also a composite. Like Whistler's Miss
Alexander, she is holding a broad-brimmed hat level with her
knee,⁹⁰ but is probably only in part a Whistler. The costume
disguising her sex recalls the work of Manet, who painted so
many portraits of this kind, where he would use the same
model, Victorine Meurend, who posed in men's attire in Le
Toréador, Le Fifre, Mlle V. en costume d'Espada, Jeune femme
couchée en costume d'Espagnol, and others.91 Besides, Proust
himself refers to Miss Sacripant specifically as "contemporain
d'un des nombreux portraits que Manet ou Whistler ont
peints."92
Elstir's picture showing a Botte d'asperges also
appears to be a Manet.93 Elstir seems to have been in America,
in Florida.94 Does Proust mean to allude to Degas's stay in
New Orleans, or to Whistler, who was born in the United
States? Or does he simply wish to baffle the reader? Elstir's
116
PROUST AND PAINTING
pictures giving intimate glimpses of women at their daily tasks
bring more definitely to mind the work of Degas. Regarding
Elstir's enthusiasm for horse races, boat contests, and yachting
parties,95 many names occur as possibilities, for, practising
plein-airism, the Impressionists all tended to depict outdoor life
and sports. Monet, Manet, Renoir, Whistler, painted sailboats;
Manet and especially Degas were experts in the representation
of running horses; Helleu also pictured horse races and boat
contests. Likewise, flower painting is rather general. On the
other hand, Elstir's picture of nude girls bathing, where one is
pushing the other into the water,96 recalls Renoir's Bai-
gneuses. His mountain landscape of the heights of the Saint-
Gothard is compared specifically to a Turner.97 But Turner, who
of course was an important forerunner of Impressionism and
whose technique inspired Monet and Pissarro during their stay
in London in 1870, can easily be fitted into the Impressionist
group. Already advocating the painting of one's "impressions,"
Turner is said to have replied to some critics: "my business is
to draw what I see, not what I know is there."98 Proust in an
earlier work alludes to this anecdote.99 Other characteristics
of Elstir are again more general. He is so severe and exacting
that he is never satisfied. Claude Monet of course was called.
"l'éternel mécontent,"100 but this trait applies to all great artists
rather than to a single painter. Whistler was not satisfied with
a canvas until the last brush stroke had effaced the last traces
of technique. For a portrait he might require over a hundred
sittings. Edouard Manet sometimes required fifty sittings.
Thus far, we have shown Elstir as a synthesis of the Impres-
sionist painters. However, as we have already intimated, El-
stir's traits are not limited to those of a purely Impressionist
ELSTIR
117
artist. As the learned scholar in architecture and sculpture,
discoursing on the church of Balbec as on a "Bible historiée”
reminiscent of Persian work,101 he suggests at the same time,
John Ruskin and Emile Mâle. And with this love for the
intrinsic value of old monuments which he examines not in his
"impression globale" but as an archaeologist, Elstir, as Proust
admits,102 seems to contradict Impressionism:
Et pourtant je trouvais que le grand impressionniste était
en contradiction avec lui-même; pourquoi ce fétichisme at-
taché à la valeur architecturale objective, sans tenir compte
de la transformation de l'église dans le couchant ?103
Whereas on the one hand Elstir's art implied " 'Il n'y a pas de
gothique, il n'y a pas de chef-d'œuvre, l'hôpital sans style vaut
le glorieux portail,' "104 on the other Proust thought fit to asso-
ciate with it also the norm of ideal Beauty, which the artist
consciously emulates and which later he conveniently finds.
ready-made in the person of his wife, 105 a trait which Proust
might have borrowed from the life of Helleu.
Je compris qu'à certain type idéal résumé en certaines
lignes, en certaines arabesques qui se retrouvaient sans
cesse dans son œuvre, à un certain canon, il avait attribué
en fait un caractère presque divin, puisque tout son temps,
tout l'effort de pensée dont il était capable, en un mot toute
sa vie, il l'avait consacrée à la tâche de distinguer mieux
ces lignes, de les reproduire plus fidèlement.'
This is a feature that can more fittingly be ascribed to the
Classical school of Ingres. This academic trait is introduced
not merely for Elstir's first or mythological period, where it more
properly belongs, but particularly in his last and declining
stage, when his creative energy was too exhausted to make new
efforts and he would be satisfied with rendering a faithful or
THIS THE BACK

118
PROUST AND PAINTING
TEN TWEE
...
slavish copy of a certain type corresponding to his Ideal, a cer-
tain stock pose or formula which he knew he could rely upon
because it had been successful in his prime.107 Proust further re-
inforces this Classical element by referring to Elstir's "tableaux
raphaëlesques. "108 Although some critics have mentioned the in-
fluence of Raphael on Manet, for instance in his composition of
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe,109 it is especially Ingres, with the entire
academic school, who consecrated himself to the art of Raphael,
to drawing, to a rigid ideal of Beauty-which is precisely the
opposite of the Impressionist attitude advocating a tabula rasa
of all previous concepts of art in favor of the visual impression
of the moment.
rou 4 an
writer also
nesion & periods. Or should we rather think that in Elstir Proust
hill to a stripherence.
cheal, the
Platoni
Olerderte
Though Elstir remains essentially an Impressionist artist
representing particularly Claude Monet, Proust appears to have
intermixed here rather diverse, almost contradictory, painters
and school, thus removing from Elstir the basic unity which he
might otherwise have possessed. While expecting a "typical"
artist to be representative of more than a single painter, rather
of a whole period, or of an entire group such as the Impression-
group, we would have liked to see him free of any inco-
herence, devoid of any confusion with other schools and other

possibly aimed at epitomizing the Creative Painter of the nine-
teenth century in excelsis, soaring above all schools, transcend-
ing all vogues and movements? This is hardly probable, for he
would have made him a more evenly balanced artist symbol-
izing all schools equally, whereas the artist is more than nine-
tenths Impressionist. However, when we approach Proust we
must forget the old aesthetic notions of unity. There is a
strong likelihood, in our opinion, that Proust deliberately avoid-
ELSTIR
119
M
ed too simple a unity, for he realized that life, which he en-
visaged pluralistically - just as he did the human personality
in a multiplicity of selves is a complex and often contradict-
ory experience. He scrupulously tried to convey this truth also
in the composition of his characters, including Elstir, and even
in Elstir's art.
Despite these inconsistencies arising from Proust's complex
view of life and his attempt to generalize unduly, his painter
bears favorable comparison with the artists created by Balzac,
the Goncourts, or Zola. In Proust's novel art remains a vital,
organic force that comes to full fruition. The pessimism and
tragic dénouement that accompany or await the other painters,
Nodier's Wertherism, the vain quest for ideal perfection and
the absolute on the part of Balzac's hero, the mediocrity of the
average found in Goncourts' people, the predestined doom of
faulty heredity in Zola's abnormal character, his abortive at-
tempts at self-expression all these are absent from Proust's
work. Here on the contrary art reveals the beauty of life in
its supreme apotheosis. Art spells immortality. Hence this
optimism, this heavenly joy in the creation and contemplation
of beauty that we find in A la recherche du temps perdu, whose
painter, Elstir, is the only artist of the five shown in the full
mph of his genius.
CHAPTER VI
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
TH
HE PART played by music in Proust's work has been ex-
haustively studied.¹ Music is treated at great length by
the author and musical allusions abound in the novel. It is
furthermore through music, as well as painting, that Proust con-
veys his belief in the absolute existence and superiority of art
and his conceptions of immortality and of time recaptured. Of
even greater importance, however, is the fact that he chose to
"compose" his novel in the form of theme-and-variation. As
has been noted,² all of his themes, such as Time, Memory, Sleep,
appear at the very beginning and reappear at intervals through-
out the work with such development and interlacing as to recall
a Wagnerian opera. Proust's organic novel can indeed be
viewed as the interplay of so many motifs, disappearing here,
rejoining each other later on in short of themes and variations
orchestrated in the length and breadth of the book.
Painting too is treated in the same fashion. Vermeer's art,
for example, appears as a leitmotif associated with the main
characters and situations. Like the little phrase of Vinteuil's
sonata, so Vermeer's art, almost unnoticed at first, gradually
gains in strength, disappears, returns, and grows in the story.
It reaches a climax with Bergotte's death. As a critics has
pointed out, the name of Vermeer shares the vicissitudes, the
trials and tribulations, of "Un amour de Swann." At first inter-
woven with the Botticelli theme, the Vermeer motif later dis-
3
120
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
121
4
6.
7
engages itself. At the very beginning, we find a sweet and
reserved Odette, whose invitation Swann declines, alleging that
he is busy with his study on Vermeer. The Botticelli's motif
makes its appearance and dominates the scene, as Botticelli's
art crystallizes Swann's love for Odette. Their relationship
then becomes established and soon Odette is the first to be
disillusioned with reality, as well as with the true meaning of
art, of which she had a romantic conception. She comes to
see Swann at times, to interrupt his daydreaming or his work
on Vermeer. In keeping with her entire approach to life and
art, she drops all interest in Vermeer as soon as she learns that
nothing is known of the romantic part of this master's life.
And she likewise loses interest in her lover and begins to de-
ceive him. Shrewdly enough, it is by pretending a solicitude
for Vermeer that she goes about allaying his suspicions: "Avez-
vous laissé seulement ici votre essai sur Ver Meer pour pouvoir
l'avancer un peu demain. Quel paresseux! Je vous ferai tra-
vailler, moi!"8 Gradually Swann's unreciprocated love dimin-
ishes, fades. When, much later, Swann has married Odette,
their intimacy becomes more banal and Vermeer, like their love,
is a thing of the past. As the narrator is surprised to hear Mme
Swann speak of Vermeer, she replies: "C'est que je vous dirai
que Monsieur s'occupait beaucoup de ce peintre-là au moment
où il me faisait la cour. N'est-ce pas, mon petit Charles?"⁹
By now Odette takes Vermeer as much for granted as any house-
hold servant or object: "le nom de Ver Meer lui était aussi
familier que celui de son couturier."10 Though not representing
the end of Swann's love, this marks its declining stage,¹¹ the
disappearance of its tormenting aspects and the beginning of
a serene period. It may be the end of Odette's love, but not
of Swann's feeling for her, as Vermeer is now eclipsed by the
5
122
PROUST AND PAINTING
Botticelli motif, the Botticellian glamour with which he still
likes to invest her.12 Upon Swann's death, the Vermeer leitmotif
reappears, as the narrator feels a thousand questions arise which
he has wanted to ask of Swann on Vermeer and other topics.13
Later the narrator replaces Swann in continuing the Vermeer
leitmotif, since his love for Albertine is a sort of repetition of
Swann's jealous love for Odette and as he too uses Vermeer
to explain to her the aesthetics of works of art.14 Linked to the
two loves of the novel, the Vermeer motif is also associated
with death with Swann's death, with Bergotte's death,15
as well as with the death of Proust himself, whose last thoughts
appear to have been directed toward Vermeer's art.16
But of all leitmotifs in Proust's work by far the most im-
:
ANA
portant is that of Time. Nothing at first seems more remote
from the idea of Time than an art apparently as static as paint-
ing. Painting actually is far from static. It is remarkable,
however, to note to what degree Proust could visualize this art
in dynamic terms. We have already pointed out how his
graphic tastes were often directed toward the "optics" of Time
and now we note how pictorial references, spaced like leit-
motifs, represent a musical Time. The painter Elstir, like all
Proustian characters, is in constant evolution and his art too
comprises several successive manners or periods. In Elstir's
art special emphasis is placed on temporal elements: atmos-
pheric Time, fleeting Time, instantaneous Time. The enduring
aspect of art, its triumph over death, finds its apotheosis in the
perfection of Vermeer's art which is linked with Time as im-
mortality and eternity.
Proust's notion of time is further emphasized in the con-
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
123
ception of the painter as a memorialist depicting an epoch and
its society with which his art is indissolubly linked. Thus as
Verdurin dies, Elstir regrets the disappearance with him of an
entire period which his art mirrored, just as a painter of the
Fêtes galantes might regret the changes brought about by the
French Revolution, or Renoir might be sad over the disappear-
ance of Montmartre and of the Moulin de la Galette.17 Proust
praises Renoir's portrait of Mme Charpentier because it will
endure and will remain more representative of an elegant
home in the society of the period than the pretentious work of
official portraitists like Cotte and Chaplin.18 Proust is aware of
the characteristic mood which a given period imparts to all
portraits painted at that time. He compares the people we
knew at a given moment of our distant past to portraits of a
given epoch, as if our life were a series of galleries in which
all portraits of any one period have a family resemblance, a
sort of similar tonality.19
Proust also treats Time from the point of view of the cyclical
renewal of art from epoch to epoch, which he admirably un-
derstands. He alludes to the opposition that arose against
Delacroix, later against Monet and his colleagues, hated in
turn with the same intensity and attacked with the same claims
of justification. Proust did not agree with those who, like
Monet's critics, conveniently thought that this time the situation
was not the same, that all prior revolutions in painting and
music had nevertheless respected certain rules, while whatever
happened to be in the immediate present or future - whether
Impressionism, the search for dissonance, the exclusive use of
the Chinese scale, Cubism, or Futurism was outrageously
lawless and different from all preceding revolutions.20 One
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PROUST AND PAINTING
must, on the contrary, be prepared to see and accept perpetual
changes.
Proust thus notes the evolution in Time of taste, not only
the taste of an artist but also the taste for an artist. Time
consecrates a former "horror," L'Olympia, as a museum master-
piece.21 Today it is easy for people of taste and refinement to
tell us that Renoir is a great artist, but we forget how much
Time was needed before he could be recognized.22 To Jacques-
Emile Blanche Proust writes: "Quant à la révolution de votre
talent autour de vous-même, et à celle que pendant ce temps-là
il accomplissait autour du 'public,' je vois bien que vous niez
au moins la seconde."23 In this comparison of an artist to a
planet that turns on its axis while revolving around the sun as
its public, we see applied to painting the relativity, so dear to
Proust, of astrophysical time and space. Proust envisages the
individual sensibility of each artist in the aspect of space-time.
The unique universe of a master becomes a planet which is still
sending us its characteristic light. Our experience today of the
pictorial world of Vermeer or Rembrandt is likened to the light
radiated by a planet many light-years away, a planet that might
have been extinguished centuries ago, yet one that will con-
tinue to send us its rays for years to come.24
However, are not all these aspects of Time somewhat contra-
dictory? Critics have looked in vain for a logical unity in
Proust's conception of Time.25 Indeed in his gigantic novel
Proust really embraces not one, rather all aspects of Time, all
the notions of Time which he could find in life, in philosophy,
in art, in science, in music. He appears to play with Time as
a composer does with a musical theme to be developed in its
manifold variations. He even stresses the atmospheric notion
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
125
·
of Time, that of temps meaning weather. The unity that
emerges from Proust's apparently contradictory conception is
not a logical unity, but a musical unity which could be termed
aesthetic pluralism.
Painting is integrated into Proust's work in still another
manner through that very element in his style which is most
characteristic of him the simile. One of Proust's basic
merits is to have renewed the value of the simile and the
metaphor. What in other authors is already significant enough
becomes in Proust even more vital; from a mere figure of
speech it is transformed into a deeply felt reality. Aristotle
was not mistaken in observing that the most important trait of
a writer is his power to create metaphors, for, as he maintained,
it is a gift that one cannot acquire and the mark of genius.
Schopenhauer, one of Proust's favorite authors, said: "Meta-
phors and analogies are of great value in so far as they explain
an unknown relation by a known relation."26 For Proust too the
metaphor is a cognitive instrument, a means of gaining knowl-
edge, a window facing and revealing the artist's sensitive world.
The Symbolist poets, of course, stressed the creation of meta-
phors, the search for equivalents and synaesthetic parallels, the
"démon de l'analogie," which made them see things without
as symbols of the world within. Mallarmé said: "tout objet exis-
tant n'a de raison que nous le voyons... sinon de représenter
un de nos états intérieurs: l'ensemble de traits communs avec
notre âme consacre un symbole."27 Yet with Proust the simile
and metaphor acquire a significance that almost borders on the
supernatural, for he writes, "Je crois que la métaphore seule
peut donner une sorte d'éternité au style.”28
Of course many writers before Proust, Balzac, for instance,
126
PROUST AND PAINTING
have used comparisons alluding to paintings. But in Proust's
work graphic analogies achieve a new depth. Balzac makes use
of them only in moderation, cautiously preferring well-known
works that can easily be recognized, taken mostly from ancient
art and High Renaissance art29 and obviously intended for the
average reader. He seldom creates, like Proust, a poetic at-
mosphere about them. Balzac's allusions to illustrious master-
pieces are rather superficial additions to the physical description
of some of his characters. As a certain critic remarks: "le ta-
bleau nommé à plume courante n'a manifestement servi en rien
à l'élaboration du personnage. Référence a posteriori, référence
de lecture et de culture, il n'est à aucun degré participant
interne à la fabrication physique du héros qui lui est com-
paré."
"30
Proust, on the other hand, writing in the twentieth century
and also for a more exclusive public, alludes to artists of all
ages and schools, often to more obscure works than the average
reader can absorb, so long as these felicitously represent the
particular impression he wishes to convey. We now find a
closer agreement, a more intimate and organic unity between
the character and his pictorial analogy, also a greater power of
suggestiveness. Proust thus leaves to each reader a wide
range of possibilities for appreciating the pictorial comparison
in ways and degrees commensurate with the individual's artistic
experience. To some, Goya and even El Greco or Rembrandt
may be mere names; to others, each may recall a definite pic-
ture with its particular charm; in still other readers the allusion
may bring to life a vibrant and profound artistic cosmos.
There is a Chinese proverb which says that a picture is
worth a thousand words. Substituting the pictorial analogy for
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
127
verbal description, using paintings framed in with sentences as
he would quotations, Proust creates a medium for depicting
characters and suggesting moods, a medium which is both vivid
and poetic. He builds, as it were, a mosaic of paintings, mount-
ing them like jewels on his phrases, where they are so firmly
cemented as to become an integral part of his style. The
picture of sleep, for instance, is "painted" as follows:
Tel les yeux aveugles, les lèvres scellées, les jambes liées,
le corps nu, la figure du sommeil que projetait mon som-
neil lui-même avait l'air de ces grandes figures allégori-
ques où Giotto a représenté l'Envie avec un serpent dans
la bouche, et que Swann m'avait données.
31
.
The face of a depraved character trying to conceal his moral
decay under a devout expression is subtly linked to a Grand
Inquisitor by El Greco: ". . . le baron [de Charlus] baissait
dévotement les cils noircis qui, contrastant avec ses joues
poudrerisées, le faisaient ressembler à un grand inquisiteur peint
par le Greco."32 The silhouettes of trees are described through
comparison with the delicacy of those in Raphael's back-
grounds: "Les silhouettes des arbres se reflétaient nettes et
pures sur cette neige d'or bleuté, avec la délicatesse qu'elles
ont dans certaines peintures japonaises ou dans certains fonds
de Raphaël."33 Combray's houses were enclosed here and
there by a fragment of mediaeval ramparts of circular outline,
"d'un trait aussi parfaitement circulaire qu'une petite ville dans
un tableau de primitif."34 Albertine Simonet's name is asso-
ciated with the beauty of antique art and the art of Giotto:
"Cet être, une fois de plus je le fabriquais en utilisant pour
cela le nom de Simonet et le souvenir de l'harmonie qui
régnait entre les jeunes corps que j'avais vus se déployer sur
128
PROUST AND PAINTING
.
...
*.
,
la plage, en une procession sportive, digne de l'antique et de
Giotto."'35 M. de Palancy's odd appearance, produced by his
monocle, is pictured in terms of Giotto's allegoric art:
M. de Palancy avait l'air de transporter seulement
avec lui un fragment accidentel, et peut-être purement
symbolique, du vitrage de son aquarium, partie destinée
à figurer le tout qui rappela à Swann, grand admirateur
des Vices et des Vertus de Giotto à Padoue, cet Injuste
à côté duquel un rameau feuillu évoque les forêts où se
cache son repaire.36
•
Swann's mental picture of a "kept woman" is interwoven with
diabolic elements as in some scintillating fantasy or apparition
by Gustave Moreau: ". . . la femme entretenue, chatoyant
amalgame d'éléments inconnus et diaboliques, serti, comme
une apparition de Gustave Moreau, de fleurs vénéneuses entre-
lacées à des joyaux précieux 37 Social and psychological
values are brought out likewise by an indissoluble pictorial
allusion:
Mais comme Elstir quand la baie de Balbec ayant perdu
son mystère étant devenue pour moi une partie quelconque
interchangeable avec toute autre des quantités d'eau salée
qu'il y a sur le globe, lui avait tout d'un coup rendu une
individualité en me disant que c'était le golfe d'opale de
Whistler dans ses harmonies bleu argent, ainsi le nom de
Guermantes avait vu mourir sous les coups de Françoise
la dernière demeure issue de lui, quand un vieil ami de
mon père nous dit un jour en parlant de la duchesse: "Elle
a la plus grande situation dans le faubourg Saint-Ger-
main . . ."'38
However, pictorial comparisons woven into the text have
more than a decorative function, for, as we have said, the
simile is the essence of Proust's style. We may well ask
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
129
therefore if his frequent use of the analogy does not hold the -
innermost key to his art. Indeed, are not Proust's extra-tem-
poral experiences basically sensory analogies: the taste of the
madeleine that recalls Combray, the feeling of the uneven
paving stone that brings back Venice, in short, the few guid
ing points on which his entire work hinges? Not only do
these extremely sharp analogies serve him to recapture his
past. It is also such analogies, in addition to other factors,
which will give his art its dominant tone and form: a style
of similes and metaphors. These comparisons have nothing
merely decorative and ornate, that is, superfluous about them,
nor are they an external artifice of symbolism. They represent
the direct re-creation of an experience, the reconstruction of
an impression. For Proust the reality of things means their
life in terms of analogies:
Et je plaignais un peu tous les dîneurs parce que je sen-
tais que pour eux les tables rondes n'étaient pas des
planètes et qu'ils n'avaient pas pratiqué dans les choses un
sectionnement qui nous débarrasse de leur apparence cou-
tumière et nous permet d'apercevoir des analogies.39
It is therefore mainly through comparisons that reality is to
be expressed:
la vérité ne commencera qu'au moment où l'écrivain
prendra deux objets différents, posera leur rapport
et les enfermera dans les anneaux nécessaires d'un beau
style, ou même, ainsi que la vie, quand en rapprochant une
qualité commune à deux sensations, il dégagera leur es-
sence en les réunissant l'une à l'autre pour les soustraire
aux contingences du temps, dans une métaphore, et les
enchaînera par le lien indestructible d'une alliance de
mots . . . le rapport peut être peu intéressant, les objets
•
{
•
130
PROUST AND PAINTING
médiocres, le style mauvais, mais tant qu'il n'y a pas eu
cela il n'y a rien eu.40
We must remember that Proust is opposed to merely "de-
scribing" objects: it is his "impressions" he wishes to convey,
since for him an abstract thought is less valuable, less profound
than a truth or an image derived from one's impressions. Is
there a better syntactical formula than the simile to express
the component parts of an impression, that is, the relation of
sensations and memories, or, as Proust defines reality, "un
certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs qui nous
entourent simultanément" ?41 Proust's search for his impres-
sions and their recapture in literary imagery will therefore
proceed by juxtaposing in an analogical relation the sensations
of the present with the memories of the past. Thanks to
comparisons, these elements from different periods of time.
are harmonized in the sentence almost simultaneously, just like
notes in a broken chord. Thus the vague notion Swann has of
Odette's life outside him is rendered by juxtaposing it with a
Watteau study:
La vie d'Odette pendant le reste du temps comme il n'en
connaissait rien, lui apparaissait semblable à ces feuilles
d'étude de Watteau où on voit ça et là, à toutes les places,
dans tous les sens, dessinés aux trois crayons sur le papier
chamois, d'innombrables sourires.42
The impression of sea foam is expressed through the works of
Pisanello and Gallé:
alors, dans le verre glauque et qu'elle boursoufflait
de ses vagues rondes, la mer, sertie entre les montants de
fer de ma croisée comme dans les plombs d'un vitrail,
effilochait sur toute la profonde bordure rocheuse de la
baie des triangles empennés d'une immobile écume liné-
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
131
amentée avec la délicatesse d'une plume ou d'un duvet
dessinés par Pisanello, et fixés par cet émail blanc, inal-
térable et crémeux qui figure une couche de neige dans
les verreries de Gallé.4
43
The view of a certain section of Paris is sketched by means of
Piranesi's prints:
Même à Paris, dans un des quartiers les plus laids de la
ville, je sais une fenêtre où on voit après un premier, un
second et même un troisième plan fait des toits amoncelés
de plusieurs rues, une cloche violette, parfois rougeâtre,
parfois aussi, dans les plus nobles "épreuves" qu'en tire
l'atmosphère, d'un noir décanté de cendres, laquelle n'est
autre que le dôme Saint-Augustin et qui donne à cette
vue de Paris le caractère de certaines vues de Rome par
Piranesi.44
A few flowers make the ploughed fields appear more real,
giving them a stamp of "authenticity," as would the flower
signature in the works of some of the old masters:
Parfois, comme la voiture gravissait une route montante
entre des terres labourées, rendant les champs plus réels,
leur ajoutant une marque d'authenticité, comme la pré-
cieuse fleurette dont certains maîtres anciens signaient
leurs tableaux, quelques bleuets hésitants pareils à ceux
de Combray suivaient notre voiture.45
The mere juxtaposition of a type of painting is enough to
characterize a gesture as ridiculously pompous:
... le digne et lent capitaine dont on amenait à ce mo-
ment le cheval et qui, avant de se préparer à y monter,
donnait quelques ordres avec une noblesse de gestes étu-
diés comme dans quelque tableau historique et s'il allait
partir pour une bataille du Ier Empire alors qu'il rentrait
simplement chez lui. . .48
132
PROUST AND PAINTING
The impression created by hearing the name of Gilberte Swann,
hitherto apparently inaccessible to the young narrator and now
suddenly called out by her friend, is subtly pictured:
laissant déja flotter dans l'air l'émanation délicieuse
qu'il avait fait se dégager, en les touchant avec précision,
de quelques points invisibles de la vie de Mlle Swann, du
soir qui allait venir, tel qu'il serait, après le dîner, chez elle,
—formant, passager céleste au milieu des enfants et des
bonnes, un petit nuage d'une couleur précieuse, pareil à
celui qui, bombé au-dessus d'un beau jardin du Poussin,
reflète minutieusement comme un nuage d'opéra, plein de
chevaux et de chars, quelque apparition de la vie des
dieux. 47
The charm of girls' voices is analyzed into its component parts:
il y avait dans le gazouillis de ces jeunes filles des notes
que les femmes n'ont plus. Et de cet instrument plus
varié, elles jouaient avec leurs lèvres, avec cette applica-
tion, cette ardeur des petits anges musiciens de Bellini,
lesquelles sont aussi un apanage exclusif de la jeunesse.48
Rembrandt and Carpaccio help to recompose the impression
produced by the special type of woman found in Dostoyevsky's
work:
"Eh! bien cette beauté nouvelle, elle reste identique dans
toutes les œuvres de Dostoïewski, la femme de Dosto-
ïewski (aussi particulière qu'une femme de Rembrandt)
avec son visage mystérieux, dont la beauté avenante se
change brusquement, comme si elle avait joué la comédie
de la bonté, en une insolence terrible (bien qu'au fond
il semble qu'elle soit plutôt bonne), n'est-ce pas toujours
la même... Grouchenka, Nastasia, figures aussi originales,
aussi mystérieuses non pas seulement que les courtisanes de
Carpaccio mais que la Bethsabée de Rembrandt . .
Further on Proust continues the analogy with Rembrandt:
''49
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
133
"Tous ces bouffons qui reviennent sans cesse, tous ces
Lebedeff, Karamazoff, Ivolguine, Segress, cet incroyable
cortège, c'est une humanité plus fantastique que celle qui
peuple la Ronde de Nuit de Rembrandt. Et peut-être
n'est-elle fantastique que de la même manière, par l'éclai-
rage et le costume, et est-elle au fond courante."50
It therefore seems that just as the original books of the
narrator's childhood acquire above and in addition to their
ordinary value a special worth, that of evoking his past-like
those illuminated books "que l'amateur n'ouvre jamais pour
lire le texte mais pour s'enchanter une fois de plus des cou-
leurs qu'y a ajoutées quelque émule de Fouquet et qui fait tout
le prix de l'ouvrage" 51 so Proust's comparisons possess be-
sides their graphic value an additional beauty, that of commu-
nicating impressions, a beauty easily transmissible to the reader
through the common grounds of painting, music, psychology,
and other universal vehicles. In painting, as in every other
province of art and life, Proust sees personal associations ex-
tending beyond painting proper, reaching his inner self and
at the same time linking it with the emotions of the reader.
Painting thus figures prominently in serving to render the
impressions of his past beautifully explicit. Here a master-
piece of art plays only the part of a single note in a compo-
sition, where one note signifies little when alone, but in a
musical context, orchestrated with other notes, forms a rich
chord or melody. These basic elements are harmonized with
each other to become a literary compound the Proustian
sentence. In this dynamic, spiritualized treatment of painting,
pictorial comparisons are both form and content, means and
end, cause and effect. They seem indeed to be the ethereal
texture, the very substance of Proust's poetic vision.
CHAPTER VII
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
Dag 2-
ROUST transposed painting into his novel not only by
filling his work with hundreds of allusions to pictorial
masterpieces and with countless tableaux vivants, not only by
making the painter as important a character as Elstir, but he
accomplished the transposition even more organically. From
the very beginning of his literary career Proust was keenly
aware of the importance of painting in his work. Indeed, he
viewed his own literary effort as a complex process involving
the synthesis of multiple arts. In connection with his Pastiches
he thought of the student of painting who makes "copies" of
the masters: "ce sont de bonnes 'copies' comme on dit en
peinture." A few years before he began to write A la re-
cherche du temps perdu he revealed in various connections an
almost haunting interest in painting as a mode of expression
parallel to writing. He would often use pictorial terms to
praise the literary work of his friends,2 and in his correspond-
ence he frequently alluded to the painter's psychology.³
149.32
When Proust came to express his own literary views and
aesthetics, he necessarily had to refer to pictorial art. Com-
paring his autobiographical narrator to an artist who had been
trying to reach a scene to be painted but who arrived at sun-
down, too late, he writes:
134
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
135
J'avais vécu comme un peintre montant un chemin qui
surplombe un lac dont un rideau de rochers et d'arbres lui
cache la vue. Par une brèche il l'aperçoit, il l'a tout entier
devant lui, il prend ses pinceaux. Mais déjà la nuit où
l'on ne peut plus peindre et sur laquelle le jour ne se
relèvera plus!*
The magnitude of the task confronting him he expresses as
"la transposition d'un univers qui était à redessiner tout
entier." He might depict the illusions of our senses, but this
approach should not prove to be any more disconcerting than
what painters have already done. At every stage of his ex-
position pictorial art is alluded to, sometimes even for the
purpose of analyzing its distinctions from his own art:
6
Le littérateur envie le peintre, il aimerait prendre des cro-
quis, des notes, il est perdu s'il le fait. Mais quand il
écrit, il n'est pas un geste de ses personnages, un tic, un
accent, qui n'ait été apporté à son inspiration par sa mé-
moire, il n'est pas un nom de personnage inventé sous
lequel il ne puisse mettre soixante noms de personnages
vus, dont l'un a posé pour la grimace, l'autre pour le
monocle, tel pour la colère, tel pour le mouvement avanta-
geux du bras, etc. Et alors l'écrivain se rend compte que
si son rêve d'être un peintre n'était pas réalisable d'une
manière consciente et volontaire il se trouve pourtant avoir
été réalisé et que l'écrivain lui aussi a fait son carnet de
croquis sans le savoir..
7
And a little further on he adds: "les êtres qui furent les plus
chers à l'écrivain n'ont fait en fin de compte que poser pour
lui comme chez les peintres." Moreover:
Et plus qu'au peintre, à l'écrivain, pour obtenir du volume,
de la consistance, de la généralité, de la réalité littéraire,
comme il lui faut beaucoup d'églises vues pour en peindre
·
!
•
136
PROUST AND PAINTING
une seule, il lui faut aussi beaucoup d'êtres pour un seul
sentiment. 9
In his earliest work, Les Plaisirs et les Jours (1896), Proust
already gives intimations of his tendency to refer to painting
for clarifying his aesthetic theories: "nous avons certains sou-
venirs qui nont comme la peinture hollandaise de notre mé-
moire . . ."'10 In the famous Elie-Joseph Bois interview of
Le Temps, in 1913, Proust explains his art by referring to
painting.¹¹ Similarly in his letter to René Blum of the same
year we read: "la mémoire de l'intelligence et des yeux ne
nous rendent du passé que des facsimilés inexacts qui ne lui
ressemblent pas plus que
pas plus que les tableaux des mauvais peintres res-
semblent au printemps."12 A few years later, in his literary
criticism Proust explains literary processes in terms of pictorial
devices. To convey the importance of Flaubert's innovations in
the use of certain tenses, he resorts to the words of a painter
and alludes to pictorial precedents. How Flaubert's use of
an old stylistic means like the imperfect tense can achieve a
totally new effect is illustrated in terms of lighting: the im-
perfect as used by Flaubert changes the aspect of things and
people just as the appearance of a room is changed by the
mere shifting of a lamp.13 Furthermore, he writes: "Jacques
Blanche a dit que dans l'histoire de la peinture, une invention,
une nouveauté, se décèlent souvent en un simple rapport de
ton, en deux couleurs juxtaposées."14 Flaubert's fate he like-
wise compares to the fate of Monet, Renoir, Velasquez, Goya,
Boucher, Fragonard, Rubens, who were found "communs"
by their contemporaries.15
These and numerous other passages point to the fact that
Proust viewed himself as a literary "painter" who might do
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
137
in literature what painters had done in art. And though he
did not understand painting as a professional, he tried never-
theless to extract everything from it that could possibly serve
him in his own work. An analysis of the rôle of painting
and pictorial theories in his aesthetics bears this out very
strikingly.
The visual world, particularly the pictorial realm, has af-
finities with Proust's involuntary memory:
Certains esprits qui aiment le mystère veulent croire que
les objets conservent quelque chose des yeux qui les regar-
dèrent, que les monuments et les tableaux ne nous appa-
raissent que sous le voile sensible que leur ont tissé l'amour
et la contemplation de tant d'adorateurs pendant des siècles.
Cette chimère deviendrait vraie s'ils la transposaient dans
le domaine de la seule réalité pour chacun, dans le do-
maine de sa propre sensibilité.16
Proust was convinced of the spiritual quality of art, of its be-
ing the supreme reality, a conviction which he derived in no
small measure from painting. As previously stated, Ver-
meer's masterpiece represented to him a symbol of Immortality,
the perfection of its little patch of yellow wall far outweighing
Bergotte's life. In this connection, pictorial realism and sym-
bolism may also have had a part. Giotto's art reinforced
Proust's tendency to represent spiritual symbols paradoxically
through earthly, sometimes common material forms. An
otherwise vulgar or unsympathetic face may be that of an
angel of mercy, just as an apparent imbecile may be a genius.
To clarify an impression, to render it explicit, already im-
plies for Proust the creation of a work of art. This conception
suggests Leonardo da Vinci's doctrine, with which Proust was
138
PROUST AND PAINTING
}
familiar,¹7 regarding painting as cosa mentale, a mental thing.
Claude Monet, who invented a new art of "looking" at
nature, likewise said:
On n'est pas artiste si l'on ne porte son tableau dans la
tête avant de l'exécuter et si l'on n'est pas tout à fait sûr
de son métier, de sa composition . . . Les techniques va-
rient, l'Art reste identique; il est la transposition, à la
fois volontaire et due à la sensibilité, des aspects de la
nature.18
Proust realized that his new literary art was basically like
pictorial art a new sensibility, a new mode of experiencing
life. With painting as his basis, he therefore states that style
is a matter of vision: "Le style n'est pas une question de
technique, c'est comme la couleur chez les peintres, une
qualité de la vision.' "19 This recalls, for instance, Corot's
statement to Pissarro: "Nous ne voyons pas de la même façon;
vous voyez vert, et moi je vois gris et blond."20
L
Our author's aesthetics emphasizes the transformation of
life through some creative individuality. His hero was in-
terested in finding out Bergotte's attitudes toward every aspect
of life.21 This notion was strengthened and impressed upon
Proust by art: Elstir could look at a flower only "en la trans-
plantant d'abord dans ce jardin intérieur, où nous sommes
forcés de rester toujours."22 Proust had no patience with sup-
posedly intelligent people who valued accepted taste above
creative genius and who thereby denied in advance whatever
the art of future generations has in store: "Si Courbet, si
Manet, si Renoir avaient été pénétrés d'une telle esthétique,
nous n'aurions que Bouguereau. Ils ont fait classique parce
qu'ils ont fait nouveau."23 Since art represents the particular
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
139
vision and cosmos of the artist, "Le monde n'a pas été créé
une fois mais aussi souvent qu'un artiste original est sur-
venu."24 As the most important source of this typically Proust-
ian aesthetic doctrine, we must consider the pictorial theory
which was popularized more particularly by Oscar Wilde in
his Intentions, where it is pointed out that "A great artist in-
vents a type and life tries to copy it . . .”25 that through his art
the painter discovers, unveils nature and makes us all see it
in the visual terms he has created.26 In addition, mention
should be made of the similar aesthetic trends formulated by
Zola and Maurice Denis.27 Every painter is like a philosopher,
a metaphysician of his own pictorial world. So is every writer
the creator of a unique world, whether it be Hardy's or Dosto-
yevsky's. As each artist discovers his share of the unknown,
slowly the entire universe unfolds for us. In this sense there
is progress in the arts, progress being a matter of gradual
didactic revelation. This conception Proust applied to all
arts, not only to that of the writer Bergotte but also to that of
the composer Vinteuil:
Quand la vision de l'univers se modifie, s'épure, devient
plus adéquate au souvenir de la patrie intérieure, il est
naturel que cela se traduise par une altération générale
des sonorités chez le musicien, comme la couleur chez le
peintre,28
It is so often painting that Proust stresses in this connection
that it is pictorial art to which must be ascribed one of the
chief influences responsible for Proust's aesthetic theory:
. . . le style pour l'écrivain aussi bien que pour le peintre
est une question non de technique, mais de vision. Il est
la révélation, qui serait impossible par des moyens directs
et conscients, de la différence qualitative qu'il y a dans
140
PROUST AND PAINTING
BARRA DADI Telada
PROPERT
la façon dont nous apparaît le monde, différence qui s'il
n'y avait pas l'art, resterait le secret éternel de chacun.
Par l'art seulement nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir
ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n'est pas le même
que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi
inconnus que ceux qu'il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce
à l'art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le
voyons se multiplier et autant qu'il y a des artistes origi-
naux, autant nous avons de mondes à notre disposition,
plus différents les uns des autres que ceux qui roulent dans
l'infini, et qui bien des siècles après qu'est éteint le foyer
dont ils émanaient, qu'il s'appelât Rembrandt ou Ver
Meer, nous envoient leur rayon spécial.29
S
SPOT GA
ܥܫܐ
And following Oscar Wilde's doctrine, for Proust too this
process does not end with art but continues with the view of
the critic, who treats art as the artist does nature, and finally
with the spectator or reader, who also creates his vision of the
work as he reads himself into it. "L'ouvrage de l'écrivain
n'est qu'une espèce d'instrument optique qu'il offre au lecteur
afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que sans ce livre, il n'eût
peut-être pas vu en soi-même."30 This didactic aspect of
Proust's aesthetics accordingly has an important basis in theo-
ries about painting.
Proust's work is far too complex to be assigned to any single
school. He has been called a Classicist and rightly so. With-
out contradiction, however, he can with equal justification be
called an Impressionist, for while absorbing the most diverg-
ent, mutually exclusive currents, he knew how to give to each
one the widest possible function. In many ways Proust may
depart from Impressionism. He does not use this form of
writing consistently, since the Impressionist mode takes in
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
141
only a fraction of his work and is generously mixed with
other modes.31 As a critic has aptly remarked, in Proust the
mundus sensibilis and the mundus intelligibilis meet in perfect
interpenetration.32 On the one hand, Proust could say that
sensations had to be interpreted as manifestations of underly-
ing laws and ideas,33 on the other hand, he claimed that the
impression alone, no matter how weak its substance, or how
implausible its vestige, is a criterion of truth.34 Though he de-
velops psychological analysis and interpretation, in short all
the correcting activity of the intellect, the starting point, the
foundation upon which he builds these un-Impressionist ele-
ments is still Impressionism.
More than any other mode of painting, Impressionism repre-
sents for the author of A la recherche du temps perdu an early,
deep-rooted, and pervasive influence. That Proust was over-
whelmed very early by pictorial Impressionism is evident from
the fact that, as previously described, he characterized the
Painter, Elstir, beginning even with his first manuscript ver-
sion, in terms that reveal a thorough understanding of Im-
pressionist traits.35 Other clues come from Proust's corres-
pondence during the years preceding and following the begin-
ning of his long work, as well as from his literary criticism.
Writing in 1904 to the Comtesse de Noailles, he finds her
poems "impressionnistes" and compares them to Claude
Monet's work with regard to color, lighting, atmosphere, re-
flections, tone.36 In truth, his comments betray his own state
of mind and preoccupations, for he was soon to adopt Impres-
sionism as his dominant tone. He sought out impressionistic
traits even in Dostoyevsky, in Flaubert,37 and in Mme de
Sévigné, whom he admired for introducing effects before
142
PROUST AND PAINTING
explaining their causes and thus being of the same school as
Elstir:
... Mme de Sévigné est une grande artiste de la même
famille qu'un peintre que j'allais rencontrer à Balbec et
qui eut une influence si profonde sur ma vision des choses,
Elstir. Je me rendis compte à Balbec que c'est de la
même façon que lui, qu'elle nous présente les choses dans
l'ordre de nos perceptions, au lieu de les expliquer d'abord
par leur cause 38
This reference to the most "profound" influence of the Im-
pressionist artist on Proust's own vision of things is to be
taken quite literally. There is hardly a feature of Impression-
ist art which is not present in Proust's monumental work as
well, for it is essentially a fusion of Impressionism with psy-
chological analysis.
Pictorial Impressionism was a rich movement which intro-
duced many features and practices, some of them direct inno-
vations, others continuations of previous trends now applied
in more extreme degree. One of these typical elements was
plein-air painting. Impressionism of course did not originate
plein-airism, but because Impressionism pushed plein-air paint-
ing to a logical conclusion in a fashion all its own, it became
practically identified with it. In contrast with the academic
artists who worked in the studio, and composed conventional,
mythological or classical "subjects," the Impressionist artists
took their easels out of doors, preferably in bright sunlight,
and painted natural scenes in the fields, in the garden, near
a river, or at the seashore. Hence the predominance of works
dealing with vacation and leisure life picnics, holidays,
promenades, yachting, horse races, beach scenes, views at
Can
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
143
summer resorts like Etretat, Trouville, Pourville.39 This fea-
ture is equally marked in Proust's novel.
Since he wrote so much of A la recherche du temps perdu
while lying on his back, practically an invalid, it is the more
remarkable to find besides of course the treatment of
salon life — so great a portion of the novel emphasizing out-
door, vacation life, at the seashore of Balbec, or in the country-
side at Combray. Like Elstir, Proust himself devotes much of
his work, particularly Du Côté de chez Swann and A l'ombre
des jeunes filles en fleurs, to plein-air, to the description of
landscapes, trees, flowers, beach scenes, cliffs, boats, and other
favorite subjects of Manet and Monet: reflections of sunlight
and seascapes. His eyes, "instruits par Elstir," show the un-
mistakable influence of Impressionist art. Of the numerous
passages on the sea, only a few can be cited here.
A tous moments... je retournais près de la fenêtre jeter
encore un regard sur ce vaste cirque éblouissant et mon-
tagneux et sur les sommets neigeux de ses vagues en pierre
d'émeraude çà et là pâlie et translucide, lesquelles avec
une placide violence et un froncement léonin, laissaient
s'accomplir et dévaler l'écoulement de leurs pentes aux-
quelles le soleil ajoutait un sourire sans visage.40
Moreover, he looks at these "collines de la mer" as would an
Impressionist painter, that is, with an eye to the effects of
sunlight:
D'autres fois, c'était tout près de moi que le soleil riait
sur ces flots d'un vert aussi tendre que celui que conserve
aux prairies alpestres (dans les montagnes où le soleil
s'étale çà et là comme un géant qui en descendrait gaie-
ment, par bonds inégaux, les pentes), moins l'humidité
du sol que la liquide mobilité de la lumière. Au reste,
dans cette brêche que la plage et les flots pratiquent au
144
PROUST AND PAINTING
milieu du monde pour du reste y faire passer, pour y ac-
cumuler la lumière, c'est elle surtout, selon la direction
d'oû elle vient et que suit notre œil, c'est elle qui déplace
et situe les vallonnements de la mer. La diversité de
l'éclairage ne modifie pas moins l'orientation d'un lieu,
ne dresse pas moins devant nous de nouveaux buts qu'il
nous donne le désir d'atteindre, que ne ferait un trajet
longuement et effectivement parcouru en voyage.
Another of the many passages reads:
41
Les jours, assez rares, de vrai beau temps, la chaleur avait
tracé sur les eaux, comme à travers champs, une route
poussiéreuse et blanche derrière laquelle la fine pointe
d'un bateau de pêche dépassait comme un clocher villa-
geois. Un remorqueur dont on ne voyait que la cheminée
fumant au loin comme une usine écartée, tandis que seul
à l'horizon un carré blanc et bombé, peint sans doute par
une voile mais qui semblait compact et comme calcaire,
faisait penser à l'angle ensoleillé de quelque bâtiment
isolé, hôpital ou école. Et les nuages et le vent, les jours
où il s'en ajoutait au soleil, parachevaient sinon l'erreur
du jugement, du moins l'illusion du premier regard, la
suggestion qu'il éveille dans l'imagination. Car l'alter-
nance d'espaces de couleurs nettement tranchées, comme
celles qui résultent dans la campagne, de la contiguïté
de cultures différentes, les inégalités âpres, jaunes, et
comme boueuses de la surface marine, les levées, les talus
qui dérobaient à la vue une barque où une équipe d'agiles
matelots semblait moissonner, tout cela par les jours ora-
geux faisait de l'océan quelque chose d'aussi varié, d'aussi
accidenté, d'aussi populeux, d'aussi civilisé que la terre
carrossable sur laquelle j'allais autrefois et ne devais pas
tarder à faire des promenades.42
This conception of the sea, this experience of nature in terms
of visual illusions, Proust transposed from Impressionist paint-
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
145
ing, which treats the ocean as though it were a landscape
in a series of vivid, sharply contrasting spaces and spots of
bright color.
But Impressionist plein-air painting carried with it certain
necessary implications. Outdoor light changes so rapidly
that every hour things assume new colors. Therefore to catch
the fleeting effects of the moment before they had an oppor-
San Pa
tunity to change, became as we have seen in connection
with Elstir 43 the typical preoccupation of the Impressionist
artists. Claude Monet "donne la sensation de l'instant éphé-
"
mère, qui vient de naître, qui meurt, et qui ne reviendra
plus..."** For Proust too art consisted in capturing the casual
arrangements, the odd, accidental, fugitive effects in nature
seen as an ever-changing flux, and he applied this not only
to visual sensations but also to auditory, to gustatory, olfactory,
kinaesthetic, and other fleeting experiences. Impressionism is
an art of movement, first in point of the subject matter itself
which is caught in the act of moving, and further with regard
to the movement of light and atmosphere arrested on a canvas
as perceived at a given instant, that is, altogether different in
aspect from its appearance at the following moment. As we
recall, Claude Monet painted his Cathedrals and Poplars in
fifteen consecutive views, one for every hour,45 and went even
further, painting Haystacks not only at different hours of the
day but even through a complete cycle of the various seasons
of the year.46 Marcel Proust was interested in depicting similar
changes: "Car chacune de ces Mers ne restait jamais plus d'un
jour. Le lendemain il y en avait une autre qui parfois lui
ressemblait . . . Mais je ne vis jamais deux fois la même."47
Further on he states:
ܐ ܐ
***N
AME
متن
ه لي
t="cha a "plan"
D
146
PROUST AND PAINTING
Comme la première année, les mers, d'un jour à l'autre,
elles étaient rarement les mêmes. Mais d'ailleurs elles
ne ressemblaient guère à celles de cette première année,
soit parce que maintenant c'était le printemps avec ses
orages, soit parce que même si j'étais venu à la même date
que la première fois, des temps différents, plus chan-
geants, avaient pu déconseiller cette côte à certaines mers
indolentes, vaporeuses et fragiles que j'avais vues pendant
les jours ardents dormir sur la plage en soulevant im-
perceptiblement leur sein bleuâtre, d'une molle palpita-
tion, soit surtout parce que mes yeux instruits par Elstir
à retenir précisément les éléments que j'écartais volontaire-
ment jadis, contemplaient longuement ce que la première
année ils ne savaient pas voir.48
From his hotel window, facing the ocean, Proust's narrator
carefully follows the gradual metamorphosis of light and
nature as the season and the hour change:
Au fur et à mesure que la saison s'avança, changea le
tableau que j'y trouvais dans la fenêtre. D'abord il
faisait grand jour, et sombre seulement s'il faisait mauvais
temps.
Bientôt les jours diminuèrent et au moment où j'entrais
dans la chambre, le ciel violet semblait stigmatisé par la
figure raide, géométrique, passagère et fulgurante du
soleil... Quelques semaines plus tard, quand je remontais,
le soleil était déjà couché . une bande de ciel rouge
au-dessus de la mer compacte et composite comme de la
gelée de viande, puis bientôt sur la mer déjà froide et
bleue comme le poisson appelé mulet, le ciel du même
rose qu'un de ces saumons que nous nous ferions servir
tout à l'heure à Rivebelle ravivaient le plaisir que j'allais
avoir à me mettre en habit pour partir dîner. Sur la mer,
tout près du rivage, essayaient de s'élever, les unes par-
dessus les autres, à étages de plus en plus larges, des
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
147
vapeurs d'un noir de suie mais aussi d'un poli, d'une
consistance d'agate, d'une pesanteur visible, si bien que
les plus élevées penchant au-dessus de la tige déformée
et jusqu'en dehors du centre de gravité de celles qui les
avaient soutenues jusqu'ici, semblaient sur le point d'en-
traîner cet échafaudage déjà à demi-hauteur du ciel et de
le précipiter dans la mer . . .
Une fois c'était une exposition d'estampes japo-
naises: à côté de la mince découpure de soleil rouge et rond
comme la lune, un nuage jaune paraissait un lac contre
lequel des glaives noirs se profilaient ainsi que les arbres
de sa rive, une barre d'un rose tendre que je n'avais jamais
revu depuis ma première boîte de couleurs s'enflait comme
un fleuve sur les deux rives duquel des bateaux semblaient
attendre à sec qu'on vînt les tirer pour les mettres à
flot. . .
49
Japanese prints emphasized a high degree of intensity, which
the Impressionists soon adopted in their coloring. Proust
seems likewise aware of it. Continuing to view the same scene
from his window, the narrator paints its gradual changes:
J'avais plus de plaisir les soirs où un navire absorbé et
fluidifié par l'horizon tellement de la même couleur que
lui, ainsi que dans une toile apparaissait impressionniste,
qu'il semblait aussi de la même matière, comme si on n'eût
fait que découper son avant, et les cordages en lesquels
elle s'était amincie et filigranée dans le bleu vaporeux du
ciel. Parfois l'océan emplissait presque toute ma fenêtre,
surélevée qu'elle était par une bande de ciel bordée en
haut seulement d'une ligne qui était du même bleu que
celui de la mer, mais qu'à cause de cela je croyais être la
mer encore et ne devant sa couleur différente qu'à un
effet d'éclairage. Un autre jour la mer n'était peinte que
dans la partie basse de la fenêtre dont tout le reste était
rempli de tant de nuages poussés les uns contre les autres
148
PROUST AND PAINTING
par bandes horizontales, que les carreaux avaient l'air par
une préméditation ou une spécialité de l'artiste, de pré-
senter une "étude de nuages," cependant que les diffé-
rentes vitrines de la bibliothèque montrant des nuages
semblables mais dans une autre partie de l'horizon et
diversement colorés par la lumière, paraissaient offrir
comme la répétition, chère à certains maîtres contempo-
rains, d'un seul et même effet, pris toujours à des heures
différentes mais qui maintenant avec l'immobilité de l'art
pouvaient être tous vus ensemble dans une même pièce,
exécutés au pastel et mis sous verre.50
These are but a few of the passages which are to be found
throughout Proust's novel descriptive of the visual and other
sensory realms. The flux, the perpetual movement, in which
Proust's ever changing characters live, owes a good deal to
Impressionist painting, as much as — and perhaps more than
to Bergson's dynamic philosophy. The successive views
we have of Proustian characters as we read through the novel
recall the successive canvases of Claude Monet, whose devices
Proust never tired of employing. "Chaque être," he writes,
"est détruit quand nous cessons de le voir; puis son apparition
suivante est une création nouvelle, différente de celle qui l'a
immédiatemet précédée, sinon de toutes."51 The Proustian per-
sonality finds a new self every day, nay every hour:
Ce n'était pas Albertine seule qui n'était qu'une succession
de moments, c'était aussi moi-même . . . Je n'étais
pas
un seul homme, mais le défilé heure par heure d'une
armée compacte où il y avait selon le moment des passion-
nés, des indifférents, des jaloux-des jaloux dont pas un
n'était jaloux de la même femme.52
Albertine is thus evoked in terms of "numerous fragments."53
She consists of a "collection de moments,"54 hundreds of dif-
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
149
ferent beings, even in the memories left of her after she dies,
and the successive break-up of the Proustian multiple per-
sonality is pursued Impressionist fashion, through the cycle
of the hours, days, and seasons:
Emiettement d'ailleurs qui ne fait pas seulement vivre la
morte mais la multiplie. Quand j'étais arrivé à suppor-
ter le chagrin d'avoir perdu une de ces Albertines, tout
était à recommencer avec une autre, avec cent autres.
Alors ce qui avait fait jusque-là la douceur de ma vie, la
perpétuelle renaissance des moments anciens, en devint
le supplice (diverses heures, saisons). J'attendis que l'été
finisse, puis l'automne. Mais les premières gelées me
rappellent d'autres souvenirs si cruels, qu'alors comme un
malade . . . je sentis ce que j'avais encore de plus à redou-
ter pour mon chagrin, pour mon cœur, c'était le retour
de l'hiver. Lié à toutes les saisons pour que je perdisse
le souvenir d'Albertine, il aurait fallu que je les oubliasse
toutes . . . etc.55
ܐ ܐ ܐ
Often when working on a scene, Monet would suddenly
stop. Le soleil n'y est plus,' disait-il...
Tout à coup,
Claude Monet ressaisissait sa palette et ses brosses. 'Le soleil
A
D
est revenu,' disait-il."56 We have quoted elsewhere Proust's
treatment of the play of sunlight disappearing and reappear-
ing on a balcony.57 It is striking to see in Proust such serious
preoccupation hardly found in any other author with
the slightest changes in weather, an attitude comparable only
to that of the great Impressionist painters: "un changement de
temps," he writes, "suffit à recréer le monde et nous-mêmes."'58
This concern was very apparent to those about him:
****
He never noticed things at all apart from some quality of
interest or beauty he found in them. When, for instance,
the sun, casting its rays into the corner of the room, illu-
150
PROUST AND PAINTING
minated it in some fashion that pleased him, or touched
with fantastic colour an object - a jug or a coffee-cup or
a half-emptied glass of beer - then his eyes, falling on
whatever object it was, would remain fixed upon it, even
for an hour or more, and whether it was day or night, he
would not allow it to be moved. Sometimes he insisted
on its remaining indefinitely because he wanted to renew
the sensation it had given him, so it often happened that
in different parts of the room there were articles left for
days in quite unsuitable places in case the light or the
atmosphere should again consent to transmute them into
something other than they were.59
The Impressionist painters rendered not so much the subjects.
as the atmosphere between them and the subjects, and so
Proust carries within him a meteorological self. He becomes,
as it were, a "baromètre vivant,"60 experiencing his environment
in meteorological terms. However, in addition, he extends
atmosphere to a wider range of experience: "une lueur est un
vase rempli de parfum, de sons, de moments, d'humeurs
variées, de climats."61
In Impressionist art it is light that becomes the main char-
acter, the main subject. Light of course was rendered before,
but not with the same wide implications. Now Monet sup-
pressed altogether the local tone of a scene, replacing it by the
reflections from the ambient air: "Ces meules, dans ce champ
désert, ce sont des objets passagers où viennent se marquer,
comme à la surface d'un miroir, les influences environnantes, les
états de l'atmosphère, les souffles errants, les lueurs subites."62
In the last years of the nineteenth century Claude Monet
reached the stage where it was not even the atmosphere of the
sky that he rendered but the shimmering water reflection of the
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
151
lilies mirroring the sky-in a sense, reflections of reflections
to the nth power. Marcel Proust admirably understood this
aspect of Impressionism, which he transposed literally and
extensively. In the strict sense, we find numerous passages
dealing with the multiplied refulgence of light and atmos-
phere, such as the remarkable pages on the Vivonne water
lilies already quoted,63 in which Proust vies so well with Monet,
or the description of the subtle reflections of the sky mirrored
in the glass panes of his library,64 or the radiation of light
before dawn "où toutes les couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel se ré-
fractent sur les rochers."65
The luminarist painter's vision of nature is expressed in
Proust's brighter color vocabulary, in his "outdoor" literary
palette keyed to render sunlight: "ces taffetas gorge de pi-
geons," "le magnifique manteau couleur pensée,"67 "leur rou-
gissants boutons,"68 "une petite bande . . . couleur d'hélio-
trope, "69 "les jaunes ocreux,"70 "une ruine de pourpre presque
de la couleur de la vigne vierge," "rose soufré,"72 "jupe
prune,
"73 "jupe hortensia,"74 Especially in the passages re-
staging the vision of Monet, some of which have already been
cited, he evokes vivid spots of color: "Çà et là . . . rougissait
comme une fraise une fleur de nymphéa."75 As previously
pointed out, Impressionist shadows are not black or gray, but
rather in the complementary color, blue or violet, and this
naturally affects Proust's vision accordingly: "les grandes
ombres des arbres donnaient à l'eau un fond que parfois . .
j'ai vu d'un bleu clair et cru, tirant sur le violet";76 "la route
où bleuissaient les falaises."77 Just as Proust sees shadows
in terms of brighter tones, so he sees sunlight not convention-
ally as white or yellow, but as it happened to appear at the
152
PROUST AND PAINTING
time and place, for instance through open windows facing
the shimmering Venetian waters of the Canal, as greenish:
"le soleil verdâtre."78 This bold stroke is definitely borrowed
from the modern painter's experience, particularly from Im-
pressionist art, in which the color of light is determined by
the reflections of the ambient atmosphere.
cra
SEMASALANG
Avocetuba SV
Even more interesting is Proust's application of the concept
of reflections to the realm of psychology. He does away with
the "local tone" of the social personality and substitutes the
study of environmental reflections. A person becomes the
sum total of other people's opinions which he reflects. We
do not know what he is per se; we can see only the lighted
side of him, composed of the numerous reflections created
by these opinions. "Notre personnalité sociale est une cré-
ation de la pensée des autres.'
"79 And so Proust will show us
characters mirrored through other characters, just as he pro-
jects emotions as seen through other people's emotions. When
little Marcel gets lost in a crowd, he does not fear for his own
safety but rather for the anxiety the incident might cause his
grandmother were she to become alarmed at the thought of
his fear:
<= ན
*
The
KA
Je palpitais de la même angoisse que bien loin dans le
passé, j'avais éprouvée autrefois, un jour que petit enfant,
dans une foule, je l'avais perdue [ma grand'mère], an-
goisse moins de ne pas la retrouver que de sentir qu'elle
me cherchait, de sentir qu'elle se disait que je la cher-
chais . . .80
M
Proust thus writes of wishing to render though not being
always able to realize his wish faces as reflections of our
desires, "à la place du nez, des jouees et du menton, il ne
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
153
devrait y avoir qu'un espace vide sur lequel jouerait tout au
plus le reflet de nos désirs."81 Since he expected to extend
Impressionist lighting even to psychological analysis, he adds
that he will not always be able to introduce as many changes
as required in the "light" of the subjective "sky," "faire varier
aussi la lumière du ciel moral, selon les différences de pression
de notre sensibilité. 82
Similarly a simple object appears to Proust not per se but
rather in as much as it is the intermediary agent for mirroring
surroundings. To what extent he thought of Impressionist
reflections and environmental color and atmosphere is evident
from the following passage:
la moindre parole que nous avons dite à une époque
de notre vie, le geste le plus insignifiant que nous avons
fait était entouré, portait sur lui le reflet, des choses qui
logiquement ne tenaient pas à lui, en ont été séparées par
l'intelligence qui n'avait rien à faire d'elles pour les be-
soins du raisonnement, mais au milieu desquelles ici
reflet rose du soir sur le mur fleuri d'un restaurant cham-
pêtre, sensation de faim, désir des femmes, plaisir du luxe
- là volutes bleues de la mer matinale enveloppant des
phrases musicales qui en émergent partiellement comme
les épaules des ondines le geste, l'acte le plus simple
reste enfermé comme dans mille vases enclos dont chacun
serait rempli de choses d'une couleur, d'une odeur, d'une
température absolument différentes; sans compter que
ces vases disposés sur toute la hauteur de nos années
pendant lesquelles nous n'avons cessé de changer, fût-ce
seulement de rêve et de pensée, sont situés à des altitudes.
bien diverses, et nous donnent la sensation d'atmosphères
singulièrement variées.83
Here by a stroke of genius Proust adapts the Impressionist
154
PROUST AND PAINTING
concept so as to include reflections not merely from the outer
environment but from the inner environment as well.
JEL
"'86
Since the essence of this form of art lies in the mode of
representation, not in the thing represented, the Impressionist
painters might depict very simple, humble subjects, flowers, a
Cup of Tea,84 a cliff, or a hovel - as readily as a cathedral.
As Georges Rivières stated in 1877: "Traiter un sujet pour les
tons et non pour le sujet lui-même, voilà ce qui distingue les
impressionnistes des autres peintres."85 To repeat what Proust
writes of Elstir's art: "Il n'y a pas de gothique, il n'y a pas
de chef-d'œuvre, l'hôpital sans style vaut le glorieux portail"
and “il n'y a pas de choses plus ou moins précieuses, la robe
commune et la voile en elle-même jolie sont deux miroirs du
même reflet, tout le prix est dans les regards du peintre.
Proust describes how he had long sought a profound philo-
sophic subject,87 until he finally realized that the smallest,
the least significant thing could constitute great subject matter,
since his entire past could miraculously arise from a cup of
tea. As in Impressionist art, so in Proust's work there is no
formal subject to be treated in the grand manner, there are
only thousands of impressions, produced by the humblest
things, a few trees, some spires, a piece of cake, a napkin, a
paving stone, all of which may, however, be pregnant with
meaning and may link the outer environment with the magic
portals of inner sensibility.
S
MAY_
To rival the strong exterior sunlight, the Impressionist
painters necessarily had to brighten their palette. Dispensing
with ready-mixed colors as well as with all blacks, browns,
and dull tones, they used colors in numerous local contrasts
to produce vibrancy in a technique which developed into
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
155
divisionism. This consisted in imitating the scientific decom-
position of prismatic light by juxtaposing dabs and dashes of
bright colors, preferably complementary ones, and integrating
their recomposition through "optical fusion." When viewed at
a distance these bold dabs fuse in the spectator's eye to produce
a brighter hue than if a ready mixture had originally been used.
Marcel Proust transposed pictorial divisionism in many ways.
To give one example:
Et à cette heure où des rayons venus d'expositions, et
comme d'heures différentes, brisaient les angles du mur,
à côté d'un reflet de la plage, mettaient sur la commode
un reposoir diapré comme les fleurs du sentier, suspen-
daient à la paroi les ailes repliées, tremblantes et tièdes
d'une clarté prête à reprendre son vol, chauffaient comme
un bain un carré de tapis provincial devant la fenêtre de
la courette que le soleil festonnait comme une vigne,
ajoutaient au charme et à la complexité de la décoration
mobilière en semblant exfolier la soie fleurie des fauteuils
et détacher leur passementerie, cette chambre que je tra-
versais un moment avant de m'habiller pour la promenade,
avait l'air d'un prisme où se décomposaient les couleurs
de la lumière du dehors, d'une ruche où les sucs de la
journée que j'allais goûter étaient dissociés, épars, eni-
vrants et visibles, d'un jardin de l'espérance qui se dissol-
vait en une palpitation de rayons d'argent et de pétales
de rose.
89
However, in Proust's hands pictorial Impressionism soon be-
comes transformed into literary Impressionism, for he applies
the notion of decomposition of spectral rays to the externali-
zation of his sensations. "Comme le spectre extériorise pour
nous la composition de la lumière, l'harmonie d'un Wagner, la
couleur d'un Elstir nous permettent de connaître cette essence
156
PROUST AND PAINTING
qualitative des sensations d'un autre. 90 What he writes
here of Elstir is true of his own art. For example, he exter-
nalizes into several parts the sensation he has from a name;
the successive periods of his past he treats like "juxtaposed"
colors, so that they now glow in their true vibrancy instead of
appearing in the dull gray of their former "mixed" state:
les noms ont perdu toute couleur comme une toupie
prismatique qui tourne trop vite et qui semble grise, en
revanche quand, dans la rêverie, nous réfléchissons, nous
cherchons, pour revenir sur le passé, à ralentir, à suspendre
le mouvement perpétuel où nous sommes entraînés, peu
à peu nous revoyons apparaître, juxtaposées, mais entière-
ment distinctes les unes des autres, les teintes qu'au cours
de notre existence, nous présenta successivement un même
nom.91
•
Here Proust clearly extends divisionism to subjective time,
giving to the various elements of time the same function which
an Impressionist painter gives to the different colors of which
light is composed.
MAKANA TA
ܼ
Proust further applies divisionism to one's conception of
emotions. Just as Impressionist art does not draw the sharp
outlines of an object, but instead merely suggests its appear-
ance through vibrating color spots, so Proust pictures emotions
not through the clear-cut, Ingres-like delineations of Stendhal,
but in terms of psychological pointillism.92 As described in
Du Côté de chez Swann, love appears to be anything but love.
It is a rainbow of colors: juxtaposed patches here of sensuality,
there of jealousy, of aesthetic sentiment, of languor. Love is
the resultant of all the emotional colors waiting to vibrate
together and to become fused in the reader's own mind.
Proust systematized this type of psychological pointillism into
a literary method.
--
P
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
157
It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove conclusively that
a given syntactical element derives directly from non-literary
sources. And it is therefore difficult to establish with any
degree of accuracy whether it was as a source, as a starting
point, that painting affected Proust's style, or whether it was
merely as the reinforcement of a tendency which it helped to
crystallize. One should be careful not to attribute dogmatically
to Proust's syntactical Impressionism an outright filial rela-
tionship to pictorial Impressionism. Both forms have indi-
vidual characteristics which are inherent in, and typical of,
two different media, literature and painting, and appear to be
large extent two independent manifestations, independent
products of the same culture. Nevertheless, since Proust was
passionately interested in painting and was well aware of
paralleling in prose what painters had already done in art,
one cannot help thinking that in his mind painting was not
altogether unrelated to literary style. By providing a pre-
cedent in an art for which he had such a great admiration,
pictorial Impressionism must have played a decisive part in
clarifying his own thoughts regarding syntactical Impression-
ism.
Moreover, we have seen to what extent Proust transcribed
pictorial Impressionism into the subject matter of his novel.
Why should he not have transposed it also in his style? To
admit the influence of Impressionist painting on the content,
on the mode of presentation, on the ideology of his novel and
refuse to recognize this influence on his style is to deny all
organic connection between an author's content and his ex-
pressive system. Style is not an external appendage, not
merely a superficial addition to be viewed apart from an
158
PROUST AND PAINTING
author's work. This is especially true of Proust: his style
is closely, intimately patterned after the
Indeed Proust himself was keenly aware
critics have agreed
message he conveys.
of this relationship.93
STAR
Insofar as pictorial Impressionism was a deep-rooted and
extensive influence which affected Proust's Impressionist ap-
proach and choice of subject matter, we can also expect it to
have been one of the contributing factors that determined his
system of expression. For one thing, pictorial Impressionism
predisposed Proust to become receptive to stylistic and syntac-
tical devices of previous literary Impressionism and thus pre-
pared him to make profuse use of them himself. As a result
of the general influence of painting and particularly of pictorial
Impressionism on nineteenth-century French prose, there was
a growing use in French syntax of means for rendering pic-
torial sensations.94 To quote Lanson:
Au XIXe siècle, un phénomène nouveau se produit.
Entre le modèle objectif ou subjectif et l'œuvre, quelque
chose s'interpose: non pas un idéal, mais l'idée d'une
manière, d'un procédé d'art auquel la littérature s'efforce
de s'assimiler, dont elle veut exciter les sensations spéciales.95
As early as 1879 Brunetière spoke of "literary" Impressionism
and even defined it as a systematic "transposition" of the
painter's medium into the writer's medium.96 The tradition
of literary Impressionism to which Proust fell heir happened
to have such stylistic devices as were suited to his general
Impressionist mode. His organic assimilation of pictorial
Impressionism could not but reinforce his use of these devices.
Yet in this, Proust did not merely imitate the constructions of
previous writers; he employed and created whatever syntax
was best for the expression of his complex ends.
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
159
ܗܚܕܛ ܢ 138
A
**-
What stylistic devices of literary Impressionism did he adopt
and extend? Proust found it convenient to convert adjectives
into abstract substantives on the pattern of "blancheur de
colonnes" in the place of "colonnes blanches."97 This form of
expression places primary emphasis on the sensory quality of
the experience. To give a few instances, Proust writes of
"des fadeurs de crème," "des fraîcheurs de fruits,"98 and like-
wise of "la nudité de ses tendres couleurs,"99 "la rougeur d'une
pomme mûre,"100 "la blondeur des cheveux,"101 "la blancheur
bleue d'un lait,"102 "la plénitude lumineuse de la plage,
"la dureté et l'éclat de la pierre,'"'10 "l'ensoleillement blanc
de l'avenue,"105 "la rotondité du ciel pâle,"106 "l'indécision
d'une forme, dans la fluidité d'un transparent et mobile
azur. "107 In the same way Proust refers to abstract adjectives:
"aux rouges des feuilles d'arbres, aux rouges et aux bleus des
affiches électorales."108 In keeping with precedents of literary
Impressionism,109 Proust places even color adjectives before
their nouns. This position stresses the synthetic, instead of
the analytic approach: "la mauve agitation des flots,"110 "les
blanches fourrures," "un vert aquarium,"112 "la rose carna-
tion,"113 la blonde vapeur,"114 "les noires ombres,"115 "la
rouge combustion.”116
FAUNAMAS DE
''103
A favorite device of literary Impressionism is the descriptive
use of the imperfect tense, which prolongs the pictorial ele-
ment in a scene and depicts the action as already and still in
progress, rather than only in its preliminary or last stages.
To quote Brunetière, "c'est un procédé de peintre: l'imparfait
ici sert à prolonger la durée de l'action exprimée par le verbe,
et l'immobilise en quelque sorte sous les yeux du lecteur."117
And according to Lanson, "l'imparfait compose un réalisme
160
PROUST AND PAINTING
artistique et fait voir les actions comme sur la toile d'un pein-
tre."118 The imperfect is also Proust's favorite tense, as is
evident on every page of his novel.
LACK GAAS.
LASTUS
LEGADA GENEAL
The Impressionist sentence calls for a more supple construc-
tion, for a syntax in which an apparent subject might suddenly
turn out to be the unexpected object of the sentence:119 "lui,
[Swann,] cette angoise..., c'est l'amour qui la lui a fait con-
naître... "120 Another instance:
Pla
ܤܫܘܘ
H
Mais ma grand'mère, elle, par tous les temps, même
quand la pluie faisait rage et que Françoise avait précipi-
tamment rentré les précieux fauteuils d'osier de peur
qu'ils ne fussent mouillés, on la voyait dans le jardin vide
et fouetté par l'averse
l'averse. 121
Andypher natynky
In his impulsive word order the literary Impressionist likes to
separate words that logically would belong together.122 To
quote Goncourt: "avec, sur sa douce figure qui avait désappris
le sourire, quelque chose d'inexprimablement douloureux."123
Proust writes likewise: "avec, dans le profil, la pureté, la
décision de contour de quelque dieu grec";124 "avec, sur ses
cheveux noirs, son polo abaissé";125 "avec, dans la voix, la
vivacité du premier Empereur."126 This procedure is adopted
to separate other prepositional phrases as well as any parts of
sentences: "le cristal successif, lentement changeant et traversé
de feuillages, de vos heures silencieuses...";127 "l'atmosphère
froide, lavée de pluie électrique, - d'une qualité si différente,
à des pressions tout autres, dans un monde si éloigné de
celui, virginal et meublé de végétaux, de la sonate . . .
fact, Proust likes to add parenthetical insertions or correc
tions,129 just as might some informal eyewitness who was
conveying his impressions of the moment directly, hastily,
128 In
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
161
spontaneously, without taking the trouble to organize them
into logical, rationally constructed sentences.130 With Marcel
Proust the type of insertion that thus gradually corrects and
completes his thought becomes, as has been pointed out,
a manner, a style:
131
Swann trouvait en lui, dans le souvenir de la phrase
qu'il avait entendue, dans certaines sonates qu'il s'était
fait jouer, pour voir s'il ne l'y découvrirait pas, la présence
d'une de ces réalités invisibles auxquelles il avait cessé
de croire et auxquelles, comme si la musique avait eu sur
la sécheresse morale dont il souffrait une sorte d'influence
élective, il se sentait de nouveau le désir et presque la
force de consacrer sa vie.132
**
WARRA
As has been remarked,133 Proust views life as extremely com-
plex and irrational, and he makes no attempt to solve its
complexities to facilitate the reader's understanding. On the
contrary, he follows the spontaneous word order, with the
result, for example, that an element which should normally
appear only in the last part of the sentence is expressed at
the beginning.
LA
F
TOURIST
•
**
The correcting type of insertion may also be viewed as an
impressionistic attempt to parallel linguistically a growing pro-
cess, a state of becoming:134 il voyait Odette en rire,
".135 "il fallait que je le
en rire avec lui, presque en lui
prisse [ce baiser], que je le dérobasse brusquement, publique-
. . les lieux où l'être veut se trouver
"'.136 "
ment . .
et
cacher qu'il veut se trouver "137 "je ne voyais pas une
couleur moins terne, mais je sentais comme un effort vers une
couleur moins terne. "138 These correcting insertions convey
to the reader a heightened sense of becoming, of experiencing.
They produce the feeling that an impression is forming right
ing Fla
܀܀
•
i
162
PROUST AND PAINTING
before him and that he is required to participate in the process
to the very last detail. Proust employed profusely the effect
which he so admired in Flaubert the identification of the
author with the subject, whether people or inanimate things.
In their spontaneity the added corrections are comparable to
speech, corresponding to style indirect libre,139 or what may be
called "virtual speech."
Mi
میت
PRETT
KAZAN• de
In virtual speech, too, the point of view is not that of an
all-knowing and all-seeing author, but that of some fictitious
eyewitness reacting to impressions of the moment.140 And here
the author becomes detached to the point of identifying himself
with the thought of his character:
... il [Swann] se plongeait dans . . . l'indicateur des
chemins de fer, qui lui apprenait les moyens de la rejoindre
.. Le moyen? presque davantage: l'autorisation. Car en-
fin l'indicateur et les trains eux-mêmes n'étaient pas faits
pour des chiens.141
kat. M
This attitude of considering things as would a character in
the book or an eyewitness was already prominent in the work
of Flaubert, who because he systematically discarded his per-
sonal "self," has been regarded by some as the founder of
literary Impressionism.142 Proust himself pointed out this atti-
tude in Flaubert and admired it among the latter's innovations
as a literary Impressionist.143 Flaubert, indeed, often prefers to
"ignore" facts and to convey the conjectures of a character or
of the supposed bystander, using expressions like "sans
doute."'144 Proust of course makes use of a narrator who is not
necessarily the author and who serves as a convenient spectator
through whose day-by-day experiences the entire novel is pre-
sented, with little regard for the totality of events and to the
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
163
frequent surprise and bewilderment of the reader. In this
spirit Proust will introduce conjectures like the frequent "soit
soit" or "parce que . . . parce que" clauses, comparable to
Flaubert's "sans doute": ". . . la concierge, toujours les yeux
rouges, soit chagrin, soit neurasthénie, soit migraine, soit rhume,
ne vous répondait jamais .
"145 A more complex example
follows:
... la marquise de Gallardon, occupée à sa pensée favorite,
l'alliance qu'elle avait avec les Guermantes et d'où elle
tirait . . . beaucoup de gloire avec quelque honte, les plus
brillants d'entre eux la tenant un peu à l'écart, peut-être
parce qu'elle était ennuyeuse, ou parce qu'elle était mé-
chante, ou parce qu'elle était d'une branche inférieure, ou
peut-être sans aucune raison.146
When the narrator addresses the elevator operator at the Balbec
hotel, he receives no answer:
Mais il ne me répondit pas, soit étonnement de mes paroles,
attention à son travail, souci de l'étiquette, dureté de son
ouïe, respect du lieu, crainte du danger, paresse d'intel-
ligence ou consigne du directeur.147
Proust thus likes to assume the attitude of some detached per-
son, becoming a sort of passive spectator, instead of remaining
the all-knowing author who must commit himself one way
or the other:
elle [ma mère] inclinait vers ma grand'mère toute sa
vie dans son visage comme dans un ciboire qu'elle lui ten-
dait décoré en reliefs de fossettes et de plissements si pas-
sionnés, si désolés et si doux qu'on ne savait pas s'ils y
étaient creusés par le ciseau d'un baiser, d'un sanglot ou
d'un sourire.148
This syntax sounds very much like Proust's Impressionist trans-
164
PROUST AND PAINTING
149
cription of a scene in terms of an "équivoque": . . .l'escalier
de marbre dont on ne savait pas plus que dans une peinture
de la Renaissance, s'il était dressé dans un palais ou sur une
galère. This is perhaps more clearly illustrated by a
passage from Proust's first manuscript, where he deals with
Elstir's art. There he already used this syntactical device in
referring to the equivocal effect which "empêchait de savoir si
on avait devant soi le lit d'un fleuve ou une clairière dans les
bois," and explaining "la beauté qu'il y a dans cette immense
équivoque des reflets où l'œil ébloui est incertain s'il voit briller
un morceau de glace azurée ou une lueur de soleil sur
l'eau.
"150
Thus far we have surveyed such syntactical devices of
Proust's Impressionism as he found in preceding writers and
merely continued and extended. It may be argued here that
literature is the influence, not painting. However, literature
was only one factor, essential but not sufficient, and the mere
presence of literary precedents does not account for Proust's
abundant use of these devices, unless we also consider the forces
that made him particularly receptive to them.151 It is our con-
tention that even with respect to these stylistic elements, paint-
ing must be regarded as a contributing influence: the least that
can be said is that painting made Proust keenly aware of them
and thus facilitated his disposition to use them in the expression
of his own Impressionist mode.
In this connection it is interesting to note Proust's individual-
ity. He did not simply repeat the syntactical and stylistic
patterns of the previous Impressionists. Indeed he rejected the
most important and most frequent of their devices, the verbless
nominal construction. This construction, fundamental to the
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
165
**
152 is
deserJet
SOSIAAita
S
style of the Goncourts and other literary Impressionists,
relatively rare in Proust. Another favorite device is likewise
rare here, the suppression of conjunctions.153 These rejections
are significant, for they are related to Proust's typical tendency
for long sentences; and long sentences necessarily involve the
use of many verbs and conjunctions. But the need itself for
using long periods arises as the result of Proust's departure from
the methods of previous Impressionist writers. He is no longer
content with presenting merely impressions. Though his start-
ing point is the naive or primitive impression, his conception
extends to a large part of the world within, directing his Im-
pressionism first toward a mnemonic, then toward an intellectu-
alized form.154 Unlike past Impressionist authors, Proust is
equally original in two different, in fact two opposite capacities:
sensibility and intellect. He tries first to be as passively recep-
tive as possible to the primitive sensation, and then attempts an
intellectual analysis of his sensations which is more profound
than that of any writer before him.'
DANI
Je
155
S
...
Proust's individuality as a literary Impressionist is indicated
by typical stylistic structures imposed not only by the complex.
elucidation and self-analysis characteristic of his work, but also
by the attempt to parallel more closely the effects of painting.
These pictorial devices will be taken up after showing first how
Proust further transcribed aspects of Impressionist art into
elements other than language and then how these aspects are
reflected even in his style.
One of the most vital characteristics of pictorial Impression-
ism and one that constitutes perhaps the greatest link between
its art and Proust's is the emphasis on aconceptual sensa-
tion. As has already been described in connection with Elstir,156
166
PROUST AND PAINTING
this instantaneous first impression involves the reaction which
A
• _E_ •••• =
is experienced before the intellect has had time to intervene and
interpret things in conventional, rational, causal terms. Whether
depicting a quiet street scene such as Manet's Rue de Berne or
or a scene full of movement like Courses à Longchamp or even
a simple portrait, the Impressionist artist renders his subject as
a visual illusion perceived during the split second of this first
impression and not as it actually is according to his knowledge
of its permanent color and form.
...
ܘܐܕ ܝܦ
The optical illusions are transcribed literally in many of
Proust's impressions, such as the illusions of seeing in the ocean
elements of landscape, houses, and terrestrial activities.157 They
are also transcribed in distance perception and kinetic experi-
ences, for instance in such descriptions as the Martinville spires
and the three trees on the road, which are seen from the point
of view of the traveling narrator in a constantly shifting per-
spective. The spires therefore appear to move, rise, or vanish, to
signal to the narrator, and to thrust themselves suddenly at
him.158 The three trees on the road likewise seem to motion
to him, gesticulating, waving their branches pathetically, when
in reality they are motionless and it is he who is shifting his
point of view 159
A
A
227
• Baja. ་་
Marcel Proust's foremost preoccupation in his aesthetics and
throughout his novel is, like Elstir, Monet, or Manet, to capture
and fix forever fleeting sensory illusions. His novel might have
been entitled In Quest of First Impressions of the Past, for it
is one long quest to recapture impressions in their original,
vivid sensation. They may be important but rare experiences
such as Combray's coming to life from the taste of the
madeleine, or less outstanding, but nevertheless numerous, im-
R
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
167
pressions such as the sound of the wind at a given time of the
season,160
a song associated with past memories,161 the sound
of rain,162 the sight of chrysanthemums,163 the touch of a scarf
placed in a certain way,164 and the thousands of analogies
scattered throughout the novel and composed partly in imitation
of Involuntary Memory, the Proustian form of reality that
simultaneously links present with past sensations. Proust will
therefore try as often as he can to give a faithful transcription
of life and present such deceptions of the senses as make him
feel one thing in the place of another, one moment at the time
of another:
Mais enfin je pourrais, à la rigueur, dans la transcription
plus exacte que je m'efforcerais de donner, ne pas changer
la place des sons, m'abstenir de les détacher de leur cause
à côté de laquelle l'intelligence les situe après coup, bien
que faire chanter la pluie au milieu de la chambre et tomber
en déluge dans la cour l'ébulition de notre tisane, ne doit
pas être en somme plus déconcertant que ce qu'ont fait si
souvent les peintres quand ils peignent près ou très loin de
nous, selon que les lois de la perspective, l'intensité des
couleurs et la première illusion du regard nous les font
apparaître, une voile ou un pic que le raisonnement dé-
placera ensuite de distances quelquefois énormes.165
If Proust justifies his most fundamental theory by the illusory
effects of Impressionist painting, it is because he extends to
mnemonic and temporal relations, to temporal "optics," the
aconceptual impression which the painters had used in spacial
relations and spacial optics.
The Impressionist painter's illusions, which make space, dis-
"tance, and form deceptive, are extended not only to all the
senses but even to the psychological realm, to the disguised,
168
PROUST AND PAINTING
1
equivocal manner of presenting characters. This is done for
example when Proust shows the disappointment experienced in
the first impression of Elstir, of Vinteuil, of Bergotte, or of the
Berma. We must make due allowances for these “optical”
illusions if we wish to correct them and mentally to compensate
for them: "ce n'est qu'en reconnaissant les erreurs d'optique du
début qu'on pourrait arriver à la connaissance exacte d'un être
si cette connaissance était possible."166 And the Impressionist
illusion is transposed into Proust's very style and sentence
structure.
The length of his sentences may often be due to his desire
to include the entire impression in one long unit:
WE
Une fois dans les voitures qui nous attendaient, on ne
savait plus du tout où on se trouvait; les routes n'étaient pas
éclairées; on reconnaissait au bruit plus fort des roues qu'on
traversait un village, on se croyait arrivé, on se retrouvait
en pleins champs, on entendait des cloches lointaines, on
oubliait qu'on était en smoking, et on s'était presque assou-
pi quand au bout de cette longue marge d'obscurité qui à
cause de la distance parcourue et des incidents caractéris-
tiques de tout trajet en chemin de fer, semblait nous avoir
portés jusqu'à une heure avancée de la nuit et presque à
moitié chemin d'un retour vers Paris, tout à coup après
que le glissement de la voiture sur un sable plus fin avait
décelé qu'on venait d'entrer dans le parc, explosaient, nous
réintroduisant dans la vie mondaine, les éclatantes lumières
du salon, puis de la salle à manger où nous éprouvions un
vif mouvement de recul en entendant sonner ces huit heures
que nous croyions passées depuis longtemps, tandis que les
services nombreux et les vins fins allaient se succéder autour
des hommes en frac et des femmes à demi-décolletées, en
un dîner rutilant de clarté comme un véritable dîner en
ville et qu'entourait seulement, changeant par là son carac-
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
169
tère, la double écharpe sombre et singulière qu'avaient
tissée, détournées par cette utilisation mondaine de leur
solennité première, les heures nocturnes, champêtres et
marines de l'aller et du retour.167
BALANCE*.~
•hene
Proust's sentences are quite supple and diversified: he uses a
wide range of tones, from the sententiousness of proverbs to
the familiarity of colloquialisms in conversational characteriza-
tions. Yet one of his recurrent devices is the Impressionist
order of presentation, showing things "dans l'ordre de nos per-
ceptions, au lieu de les expliquer d'abord par leur cause."168
When we are conventionally prepared, when we are informed
by rational explanations, we are forced to understand what hap-
pens in much too logical a sequence to be really moved, whereas
in reading Proust it is often as an unexpected surprise that we
receive the full and direct impact of occurrences. To give a
few examples among the many to be found in A la recherche
du temps perdu:
Saska
I='Just
A ce moment je vis Saint-Loup lever son bras verticalement
au-dessus de sa tête comme s'il avait fait signe à quelqu'un
que je ne voyais pas, ou comme un chef d'orchestre, et en
effet, - sans plus de transition que, sur un simple geste
d'archet, dans une symphonie ou un ballet, des rythmes
violents succèdent à un gracieux andante -
après les
paroles courtoises qu'il venait de dire, il abattit sa main,
en une giffle retentissante, sur la joue du journaliste.169
९९
Here we first feel that something violent is happening but not
before the very end do we actually understand. Proust's word
order imitates, in a way, the unfolding of the sensory impression,
which the reader is compelled to experience in the very same
sequence:
quand il ouvrait la porte, au visage rosé
d'Odette, dès qu'elle avait aperçu Swann, venait —, changeant
170
PROUST AND PAINTING
M
la forme de sa bouche, le regard de ses yeux, le modelé de ses
jouesse mélanger un sourire."170 Recognition or discernment
of the actual stimuli - whether of sounds or sights
is only
gradually arrived at:
pasta
Dans l'ensoleillement qui noyait à l'horizon la côte dorée,
habituellement invisible, de Rivebelle, nous discernâmes, à
peine séparées du lumineux azur, sortant des eaux, roses,
argentines, imperceptibles, les petites cloches de l'angelus
qui sonnaient aux environs de Féterne.171
People are presented to the reader with the same transition from
vague, out-of-focus vision to a gradually clear perception. In
the following sentence it is not until the end that we recognize
who is coming:
je m'étais, en attendant de pouvoir saluer la maîtresse
de maison, assis sur une bergère vide dans le deuxième
salon, quand du premier où sans doute elle avait été assise
tout à fait au premier rang de chaises je vis déboucher,
majestueuse, ample et haute dans une longue robe de satin
jaune à laquelle étaient attachés en relief d'énormes pavots
noirs, la duchesse.172
Zeno MariMERI
Inversion of word order is often the natural result of this type
of presentation and serves to produce the required sequence for
Wh
the reader: “Tandis que la Princesse causait avec moi, faisaient
précisément leur entrée, le duc et la duchesse de Guermantes!"173
Grammatical agreement between words at the beginning and
end of the long period as well as repetition of key words, pre-
pare the reader and facilitate his grasp of the entire impression
as one integral unit:
M
Et sous tous les souvenirs les plus doux de Swann . . . il
sentait (dissimulée à la faveur de cet excédent de temps
qui dans les journées les plus détaillées laisse encore du jeu,
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
171
de la place, et peut servire de cachette à certaines actions),
il sentait s'insinuer la présence possible et souterraine de
mensonges . . .174
1
At first glance the Impressionist painter could necessarily see
no details, no sharp edges or outlines. Through a blurred, soft
focus, he would render a comprehensive, all-embracing view of
the scene, preferably from a remote or high vantage point.
The distance which Proust portrays may be literal, as in the
ocean scenes pictured from far or from the height of a hill,175
or it may be figurative, as when the remoteness is that of time.
In any event, just as in the work of Impressionist painters, so
in Proust, there are no sharp outlines and few descriptive de-
tails, there is never the precise naturalistic rendering of a per-
son's face: "Pas une seule fois un de mes personnages ne ferme
une fenêtre, ne se lave les mains . . ."176 Though Impressionism
is an art of movement with respect to what is seen, it is an art
of passivity with regard to the onlooker and passivity is also
a trait of Proust's characters. This is especially true of the
narrator, who appears to be a mere spectator almost throughout
the novel. This feature lends itself to the intercalation of mo-
ments of reflection and meditation, of passive receptivity and
passive vision, to a sort of melancholy solipsism. It also leads
to the introduction of preliminaries, of fêtes that may take up
the length of an entire volume. Consequently the intrigue is
reduced to a minimum. In Proust's novel there is hardly any
plot, at least in the accepted term. There is no dramatic evo-
lution of events all leading to a dénouement. "La littérature qui
se contente de 'décrire les choses,' de donner un misérable relevé
de leurs lignes et de leur surface est malgré sa prétention réaliste
la plus éloignée de la réalité. . .177 On the other hand, Impres-
sionist art is characterized by a general sketchiness: replacing
$20.
172
PROUST AND PAINTING
the former mode of detailed external description so finished,
so léché, we find a few bold strokes they are enough and say
more. What counts is the presentation of sensations and im-
pressions, in comparison with which the rest does not matter.
Proust likewise expressed his willingness to subordinate other
elements in order to stress one element in particular the
metaphor or simile which relates for him the sensations pro-
duced by two objects so as to bring out the quality common
to both: "Le rapport peut être peu intéressant, les objets
médiocres, le style mauvais, mais tant qu'il n'y a pas eu cela
il n'y a rien eu."178
LASERS ANATO
W
GOON #ESTER
' *KAN! PA
* YERL
Impressionist painting may be one of the factors179 which con-
tributed to Proust' general impulse and fundamental aim to
suggest rather than to copy, to render subtle impressions rather
than to give sharp, minute descriptions. But there may also be
a more organic parallel between the art of Proust and the art
of painting. Style, Proust tells us, is, as in painting, a matter
of vision and not of technical artifice.180 Proust's imagery really
parallels a form of expression found in painting, particularly
Impressionist painting, in as much as this imagery is felt rather
than devised: it is the product of sensibility rather than of
imagination or ingenious adornment. To quote Proust: “je
trouve les images nées d'une impression supérieures à celles
qui servent seulement à illustrer un raisonnement."IT While
content becomes style, style becomes a mode of seeing: "tout le
prix est dans les regards du peintre."182 Just as the individual
"lens," the "inner" palette and tone of a Monet project directly
on canvas the visual sensibility with which he experiences nature,
so Proust's metaphoric style lays bare for us his unique way of
feeling his surroundings.
site ma
*2+-+7)
16:
C
F
TRANSPOSING PAINTING INTO LITERATURE
173
His metaphors and analogies are the necessary result of an
attempt to reveal to us his impressions explicitly and precisely.
For instance, when Proust wants to convey to us how as a boy
he was thrilled at the sight of a new type of hawthorn, a mere
adjective, short and trite, like "happy" or "overjoyed," could
not possibly characterize the particular, distinctive feeling which
he, Proust, and no one else, experienced. He therefore renders
his emotion of joy in its essential quality by analyzing it into
its personal elements and reintegrating it as follows:
ALTERNA
FUGEES -24%26
**
Alors me donnant cette joie que nous éprouvons quand
nous voyons de notre peintre préféré une œuvre qui diffère
de celles que nous connaissons, ou bien, si l'on nous mène
devant un tableau dont nous n'avions vu jusque-là qu'une
esquisse au crayon, si un morceau entendu seulement au
piano nous apparaît ensuite revêtu des couleurs de l'or-
chestre, mon grand-père m'appelant et me désignant la
haie de Tansonville, me dit: "Toi qui aimes les aubépines,
regarde un peu cette épine rose; est-elle jolie!"'183
سے
Replacing logical and causal relations by analogical and
Impressionist relations, the comparison brings the reader face
to face with the component sensory elements of the impression
and makes him re-experience it with the same individual pe-
culiarities. This type of expression has a twofold character:
it analyzes the feeling and at the same time reconstructs it
synthetically in terms of past associations from the experience
of the writer and the prospective reader. Proust's most fre-
quent device for thus reconstructing his impressions is the
comparison and its stylistic forms, simile and metaphor.
Nothing therefore is so typical of Proustian syntax as his
amazing variety of conjunctions serving to link his compari-
sons: ainsi que, comme, tels, pareil à, même . . .
S
que, aussi
jappen H
ގ
174
PROUST AND PAINTING
bien que, si, comme si, sans plus de... que si, aussi différents
de toute autre que
There will be found even subtler links,
verbs like paraître, sembler, avoir l'air, or simply avoir; also
tenses, present and past conditionals, such as on aurait dit and
eût fait croire; at times, prepositions such as avec, demonstra-
tives like cette . . . que, and even adjectives such as digne de.
In 1879 Brunetière, while illustrating the transposition of
pictorial Impressionism into the literary medium, had come to
question some of its extreme applications. One of his doubts
was due to the difficulty he believed writers would have in
finding precise analogies with which to translate adequately
all essential thoughts and emotions into corresponding sensa-
tions. 184 A generation later Proust took up this challenge and
gave it an admirable answer with a wealth of comparisons that
combine precision with completeness. A comparison must be
all that or nothing at all. The nearly successful is synonymous
with failure: at 211 degrees water is still mere water, but at
212 degrees it becomes a different element, it boils.185
•
The decisive originality and value of Proust's work may be
due to several factors: his systematic creation of a new world,
his new style and aesthetics, his rare sensitivity, his use of
Involuntary Memory, his play on the manifold aspects of Time
and other philosophic concepts, the musical composition of
themes and variations, the penetrating analysis of normal and
abnormal psychology, the presentation of autobiographical
memoirs, and the social picture of a given period. Yet per-
meating all of them is a factor that will remain one of Proust's
chief claims to originality, namely his successful and all-em-
bracing transposition of pictorial Impressionism into the sub-
ject matter, atmosphere, style, and aesthetics of the novel in
a fashion and to a degree that are surprisingly unprecedented.
4
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUDING REMARKS
PRO
ROUST revitalized the writer's use of painting through
the freshness of an approach which he derived less from
literary predecessors than directly from his own magic alchemy
of the art experience. We have thought it desirable to stress
in the present study the organic relation between pictorial art
and Proust's life and works. We have attempted to collect,
examine, and correlate objectively all the data available on
Proust and painting so as to be able to interpret the facts in
their relationships, that is, in a sort of reciprocal illumination,
even if this meant departing sharply from previously accepted
opinion.¹ Just as Proust's writings represent an absorption of
all his literary, artistic, social, philosophical, psychological, and
scientific interests, so the rôle that painting plays in them is
an outgrowth of his formative influence, his wide cultural
background, his interests in many arts, his eclectic taste richly
nourished by contacts with painters and museums. In his
novel this rôle reaches a culminating point because of his
aesthetic, contemplative mood, his sensitivity to minute varia-
tions, his unrelenting search for the "immediate” sensation and
finally, his unusual power of transmutation. In the light of
this wider view, Proust's use of painting as literary material,
far from being an artificial pose or a pretentious affectation,
can be said to have been a deeply creative and sincere ex-
perience.
175
>
176
PROUST AND PAINTING
It was essential to reveal the various factors responsible for
the character of Proust's taste and erudition: on the one hand,
his many friends among critics, aesthetes, and artists, his
familiarity with ateliers, his voracious reading; on the other
hand, the illness which after 1900 gradually prevented his
making new contacts with advancing trends in art, causing his
taste to crystallize at about the turn of the century. Likewise
noteworthy is Proust's approach to art through the beau monde,
his attraction not only to the giants of art, but also to the
painters of his own immediate circle -
worldly artists and
society portraitists, like Lemaire, Blanche, Helleu, Boldini. In
the light of the facts, Proust's taste and conception of painting
should not appear limited but simply that of an individual
with an intense personality, reflecting his period and his social
sphere.
Conceptions of art have undergone a profound evolution.
From the time of Plato, who saw in art but the image of an
image, down to our own day with its complex analyses of
visual forms, countless conceptions have appeared, as different
from one another as the cumulative cultures upon which they
were based. Let us expect each man to be his true self and
in Proust let us praise that which is typically Proustian.
It is of course no easy matter to detach the contribution of
one writer from the long chain of which his was but the last
link. Proust's general attitude toward painting is the culmina-
tion of a modern literary tradition which pointed the path
and which can be summarized as the fusion or confusion of
the arts.2 With Proust, painting comes to be viewed not as
a separate realm outside of literary or musical experience:
rational demarcations no longer set apart one art from another.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
177
This extremist attitude springs from the general trend already
apparent in Diderot, but promoted chiefly by Baudelaire and
Wagner, continued by the Symbolist poets, developed in prose
by the Goncourts, Fromentin, Daudet, and favored by an ever
closer rapprochement between men of letters and men_of_art
in nineteenth-century France. This point of view happens to
be consonant with the Impressionist mode of experience which
Proust so cultivated, a mode which deliberately ignores the
delimitations of various objects or various realms, a life view
in which everything is in a state of undetermined flux expe-
rienced by the passive but receptive observer as a free flow
of sensations. Correspondance between the arts - or fusion
of the arts - so severely rebuked in Lessing's Laokoon and
more recently in Irving Babbitt's New Laokoon, is now carried
to its extreme phase. In this modern answer to Lessing, paint-
ing becomes the stuff that literature is made of, music orches-
trates painting, art interprets music, and so on. Proust here
cannot be considered as merely an emulator of Baudelaire and
the Symbolists who would apply in more extreme measure the
theories of the Correspondances. It is rather through a fresh
contact with painting or music, the contact being personal and
intimate, that he re-creates the experience of transposing
the arts.
If Proust's conception of painting is "literary," it is there-
fore not in the old passive meaning of its being infused with
anecdotal, story-telling elements, but in the active sense of
joining the domain of literature, becoming part and parcel of
a writer's creative process, a literary means to be incorporated
in the novel, precious pictorial gems to be applied profusely
in composing a huge literary mosaic. What stands out in
1-
CONSE
A
--
..
178
PROUST AND PAINTING
Proust's attitude toward painting is his predominant use of
masterpieces for communicating his impressions to the reader.
This he practises with far greater frequency than his predeces-
sors. Before presenting any critical, technical treatment of
light, color, and form, or any psychological or literary idea, a
painting to Proust meant a new visual sensibility, an atmos-
phere of poetry, a certain individual charm springing from
the depths of the artist's creativeness, that could readily serve
the novelist in analyzing or expressing a poetic mood, in depict-
ing a colorful character, a picturesque atmosphere or situation.
We have seen how often Proust alluded to pictorial master-
pieces throughout A la recherche du temps perdu. What
strikes the reader is the overwhelming proportion of similes
and metaphors the essential device for rendering his im-
pressions — that are drawn from the world of painting rather
than from other realms.
Another important element in Proust's conception of paint-
ing, present also in his general view of all Art, is the unique
"vision" of each artist, which he drives to its logical conclu-
sion and widest applicability, even if he is not always capable
of clearly analyzing technical differences. To Proust each
artist represents a planet, a world unto himself. Style, he
explains, is like the color used by each individual painter, a
quality of his vision: the tone of a given master therefore
permits us to know the essential quality of the sensations. pecu-
liar to him alone. The original painter proceeds in the same
manner as an oculist, bidding us to see through new glasses
and giving us a new optics to which we may at first find it
difficult to adjust ourselves.3 Proust sees art as a means of
cognition having didactic value. For him the world has been
--
ܠܐ ܫܫ.
sağ tak
CONCLUDING REMARKS
179
created again and again as many times as there are original
artists: with every great painter we have the privilege of re-
discovering it. Proust therefore likes the ultimate style of
an artist pushed to its extreme, the later stages of his evolution
in which his vision attains more and more individuality, as
Claude Monet's later though not necessarily his last -
work, where one sees no longer anything but mist, or Rem-
brandt's, where in contrast to the dark backgrounds one sees
chiefly strong light. He recognizes the inimitable and char-
acteristic stamp of painting that has been envisaged by the same
eye, the eye of Monet, or the eye of Vermeer. In a gallery
of portraits by Rembrandt, Proust would notice a certain re-
semblance, the essential quality common to them all, which
is the image of Rembrandt's own character.5
4
Le seul véritable voyage, le seul bain de Jouvance, ce ne
serait pas d'aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d'avoir
d'autres yeux, de voir l'univers avec les yeux d'un autre,
de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d'eux
voit, que chacun d'eux est; et cela, nous le pouvons avec
un Elstir, avec un Vinteuil; avec leurs pareils, nous volons
vraiment d'étoiles en étoiles.e
Once our eyes have been opened to the wonders of a new art,
we cannot go back, we must inevitably see what we could not
see before. Art thus appears to live not merely in paintings,
but in the absolute. It continues to exist in life itself, as
Proust beautifully demonstrates through his many tableaux
vivants. Rembrandt, Proust shows us, lives today, every day,
not alone in museums, but in the appearance of some bric-à-
brac shop we may pass in the street at night; Fragonard and
Boucher live in a modern boudoir scene; the art of Claude
Monet, of Whistler, of Manet, reappears every time we look
180
PROUST AND PAINTING
DAR
at an outdoor scene, at cliffs, the beach, the ocean. Proust took
painting out of the museums and brought it into every day
experience, making of it something that is with us every day
and everywhere. If art thus enriches life, life in turn en-
riches, extends, multiplies art. Though this conception was,
of course, generated in theory by others before Proust, it is
Proust's merit to have developed it and made us more aware
of it, for he not merely expounded this attitude but gave it
wide application in A la recherche du temps perdu.
Q
*****
It is interesting to note to what extent Proust's view of
painting is still valid today, to what extent it was pointing
toward our contemporary theories. There is something so
fundamentally true about Proust's conception of experiencing
the individual world, the unique vision and optics of each great
painter, that despite the changing currents of art in the last few
decades, this conception has grown rather than diminished in
significance and will in all probability stand the test of time.
Proust himself may not — in fact as a writer of his generation
he could not have fully realized all its implications, but
what really matters is the general direction and that has proven
to be amazingly valid. A leading art critic and historian of
today still finds the best definition of pictorial form ever given
to have been: "the painter forms without form, that is, with
form deforms the apparent form of things and thus achieves pic-
torial art." Proust states almost the same view when he
refers to Elstir's art as representing one thing by another:
surfaces and volumes being independent of the names our
memory applies to them, Elstir's effort consisted in dissolving
from his experience of the appearance of things this aggregate
of conventional knowledge which we call vision and replacing
* P
na
CONCLUDING REMARKS
181
it by a different visual reconstruction. Although modern art
criticism and theories of pure visibility delve in this direction
more deeply, they only serve to confirm it.
8
Câu C3 => $agrind SPO
af
KE
The interpretation of qualitative differences in vision has
developed and will continue to evolve. Some distinctions of
course are obvious and easily perceptible. One readily recog-
nizes that painters of the type of Ingres are essentially draughts-
men, who see more particularly the linear quality of objects or
people; and that others, on the contrary, are colorists, who
see drawing through color, who model like Delacroix or
Cézanne in terms of color. On the other hand, there are
painters who see in almost monochrome values: Corot prefers
his well known grisaille. Others may see in monochrome but
in terms of even stronger contrasts and chiaroscuro: such are
Rembrandt and Daumier. There is the sharp, universally
focused type of perception, for instance Van Eyck's or Dürer's,
that renders details clearly in all planes, and there is the vague,
softly focused type that blurs out all details and outlines, like
the Impressionists'. There is a type of vision that brings out fig-
ures in their full relief, in their depth, their roundness, for in-
stance Courbet's, or on the contrary, a vision that emphasizes
the flat, decorative surface of things, such as that of Manet and
the Impressionists, of Gauguin, Matisse, and more especially the
Cubists. The art which concerns itself primarily with the
decorative aspect will often sacrifice to it other elements. This
is true of Japanese art or even of Impressionist pictures, where
a figure might be shown with his face partly cut off by the
frame; also of Synthetist art, which is subject to decorative
deformations; later of Cubism, and of course all the so-called
non-objective art. Moreover, there is an art that directs the
N
182
PROUST AND PAINTING
eye to vertical lines in a calm, serene world, the mood of
Puvis de Chavannes, or one that leads it to turbulent move-
ments or vibrant dynamism in the dramatic worlds poignant
each in its own way of Delacroix and Van Gogh. Pic-
torial vision may furthermore be "closed," stressing the
centripetal movement that places the center of gravity in the
middle of the picture — as in the greater part of painting
- or, on the contrary, be "open," emphasizing the centrifugal
movement found in some large frescoes, also in the work of
Tintoretto, El Greco, and Baroque art, and thus directing
the eye of the spectator away from the center of the picture to
the corners of the canvas, sometimes pointing even beyond
them. In other cases, the painter's vision may be ubiquitous,
as in Cubism and Surrealism, and attract the eye to all parts
of the canvas equally. While such differences in modes of
seeing are not explicitly developed by Proust, these and many
more to be discovered in days to come are implicit in his basic
conception that every great painter reveals to us a characteristic
quality of vision and thus projects on canvas the world anew.
Novelist in excelsis of Time, Proust could modulate the
"static" domain of painting in all the "dynamic" variations of
a profound leitmotif. In the conception of a great artist as a
planet still radiating its special light we have the astrophysical
view of space-time. In Elstir's art we find the search for
atmospheric Time, also fleeting Time, instantaneous Time.
Does not Vermeer's art in its absolute perfection stand for
Time as Eternity? In addition, we have Time as the evolution
of social tastes, in the supersession of one school of art by an-
other; also Time as a pictorial chronicle or history of a period.
In the pictorial analogy the main form of Proust's reference
to painting - we have Time as memory and Time as impres-
A
CONCLUDING REMARKS
183
sion. Finally, there is Time as music: framed and interwoven
as they are throughout A la recherche du temps perdu, espe-
cially in the Vermeer leitmotif, are not Proust's pictorial allu-
sions treated as though they were subject to musical Time?
In the final analysis, Proust repeats in every field his pluralistic
vision of things in terms of leitmotifs, one of which consists
in conceiving painting, like all life, sub specie temporis.
"Le génie," writes Proust, "même le grand talent, vient moins
d'éléments intellectuels et d'affinement social supérieurs à ceux
d'autrui, que de la faculté de les transformer, de les trans-
"10 This is true of Proust himself. An outstanding
poser .
characteristic of his work is the genius for synthesis which leads
to his successful transposition of painting into the literary me-
dium, his assimilation of the art of painting, of its pictorial
wealth, its psychology, its theories, into his own life view, his
own sensibility and aesthetics. From Impressionist art he de-
rived his mode of experiencing nature, of seeing like a painter,
depicting for example the body of water in a seascape not as
a single, uniform, easily recognizable element, but as a highly
diversified series of vivid, apparently unrelated color patches
that might convey the equivocal aspect of a crowded land-
scape. What rendered painting, and above all Impressionist
painting, so dear and significant to Proust is the fact that he
did not regard the experience of art merely as an amusing
pastime, as presenting pictures simply pleasant to look at and
then forget which is the attitude of the average writer.
Marcel Proust was in earnest about Impressionism. The
latter fascinated him not only because of its temporal emphasis,
its relation to his concept of Time. To Proust Impressionism
was a life style, which he organically incorporated into his
Kalau
TEL
184
PROUST AND PAINTING
entire scheme of things. A major part of his work deals with
Impressionism, with the fleeting sensations of the phenomenal
world, or else treats the process of recapturing, analyzing, and
recording them in the enduring realm of art.
Agla da se me ta
Critics have been stressing Proust's power of analysis. Yet
his genius for synthesis is no less profound. This genius is
apparent in the regenerating treatment he applied to previous
currents, to the numerous, often divergent influences which
he put to task, chief among them Impressionist art. With his
uncommon hypersensitivity and his contemplative, introspective
temperament, Proust brought to light the psychological world
of the infinitely minute, but this discovery as well as the ex-
perience of Involuntary Memory which, however, he had
readily found in Chateaubriand, Baudelaire, Nerval, and Mal-
larmé, he fitted into and fused with the Impressionist painter's
concept of "first" sensation. Examples of literary Impression-
ism, as practised by forerunners like Flaubert, Proust likewise
assimilated and interpreted in terms of pictorial Impressionism.
He even managed to blend opposites, Impressionism with
Classicism, in almost imperceptible degrees. Proust's origi-
nality resides not so much in the creation of any single idea or
concept of his complex aesthetics as in the organic application
of them all, a fusion attained as intangibly as if he had drawn
the elements from himself, rather than from Schopenhauer
and Bergson, from Saint-Simon and Balzac, from Baudelaire,
Mallarmé, or Montesquieu, from Flaubert, the Goncourts and
Zola, from Wilde and Ruskin, from Monet, Manet, or Whist-
ler. To communicate the magic force of a theme in Vinteuil's
music, Proust describes it as profound, internal, almost organic
and visceral.11 Proust's themes too can be said to be visceral,
HARM ELa Zan zuen at
ནས་
1943
CONCLUDING REMARKS
185
for there is a compelling, almost a fanatical intensity about all
of his conceptions, as he forces them into an all-embracing
fusion, with the necessity of a person who has made them
self-sufficient and now no longer dominates them but is
dominated by them, instead. The same furious intensity
characterizes his experience and treatment of Impressionist
painting.
S
CA
S CA
...
*****
Whatever he did understand and feel in art Proust applied
more abundantly than most writers before him. He trans-
ferred whatever impressed him more organically into his novel
than did authors who no doubt possessed a more professional
grasp of the painter's craft. In this connection Proust, who
could neither paint nor draw, is a unique example in the
history of French literature. Thanks to his genius for syn-
thesis, painting molded Proust's subject matter, his presentation
of material and of characters, his analysis of personality and
of emotions, his intricate style, his very attitude toward life.
He saw himself as a literary painter wielding the pen instead
of the brush. He constantly referred to pictorial art as a sort
of criterion for the writer, a criterion in the light of which he
could explain or justify a literary effect and even transpose it
directly from a painter's device. His literary use of painting,
especially of Impressionism, therefore, seems almost inex-
haustible.
-;";
Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism were reflected
more or less contemporaneously in both French literature and
French art. Not so Impressionism. It was not until more
than a generation later, with the publication of A la recherche
du temps perdu, that the Impressionist painter and aesthetics
can be said to have found their belated but culminating ex-
pression in French literature.
:
-
ABBREVIATIONS
P.
S
JF
G
SG
P
AD
TR
PM
Corr. gén. Correspondance générale (de Marcel Proust), 6 vols.
Hommage Hommage à Marcel Proust.
Proust.
Du Côté de chez Swann.
A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.
Le Côté de Guermantes.
Sodome et Gomorrhe.
La Prisonnière.
Albertine disparue.
Le Temps retrouvé.
Pastiches et mélanges.
186
NOTES
!
E
!
1
1
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
1. Cf. W. G. Howard, "Ut Pictura Poesis," PMLA, XXIV (1909),
40-123.
2. Interest in the parallelism between poetry and painting was
further stimulated by numerous works, such as Du Fresnoy's treatise,
De Arte Graphica (1641-1665), which concluded that painting and
poetry had similar aims, and which was translated in 1668 into
French, with the addition of Remarques, by Roger de Piles. The same
work by Charles Du Fresnoy and Roger de Piles was also rendered
into English in 1695, "with a parallel betwixt painting and poetry,"
by Dryden. Other milestones in the parallelism of the arts were the
Abbé Du Bos's Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture
(1719-1733), which was translated into English in 1748, and Lessing's
attempt in 1766 to end the overlapping of the arts by his Laokoon, oder
über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie.
For studies on the relationship between art and literature, see infra,
notes 3, 4, 5, and 6.
3. This is treated in detail in the serviceable work of Elizabeth
Wheeler Manwaring, Italian Landscape in Eighteenth Century England,
New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1925. For a general review of
English taste, particularly in architecture and the decorative arts, see
Beverly S. Allen, Tides in English Taste (1619-1800)-A Background
for the Study of Literature, Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1937.
4. We can refer the reader to several surveys, some of which,
however, may be rather sketchy. On Classicism, see Paul Des-
jardins, La Méthode des classiques français (Corneille, Poussin, Pascal),
Paris, Colin, 1904. On Romanticism, see Léon Rosenthal, La Peinture
romantique; essai sur l'évolution de la peinture française de 1815 à
1830, Paris, A. Fontemoing, 1903. Relations between pictorial and
literary Realism as well as aspects in the transition from Realism to
Impressionism are discussed in Meyer Schapiro's "Courbet and Popular
Imagery," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, IV
(1941-2), 164-191. Among general or cursory surveys, should be
mentioned S. Rocheblave, Le Goût en France-Les arts et les lettres de
1600 à 1900, Paris, Colin, 1914; Prosper Dorbec, Les Lettres françaises
189
190
PROUST AND PAINTING
dans leurs contacts avec l'atelier de l'artiste, Paris, Les Presses Univer-
sitaires de France, 1929; René König, Die naturalistische Aesthetik in
Frankreich und ihre Auflösung, Leipzig, R. Noske, 1931; Georges
Lemaître, From Cubism to Surrealism in French Literature, Cambridge,
Harvard Univ. Press, 1941. The reader interested in comparative arts
and literature will find further material in Paul Maury's brief but
pioneering essay, Arts et littérature comparés, Paris, Les Belles Lettres,
1934.
5. The problem deserves to be given systematic scrutiny from
various angles. One approach would take up authors as artists. A
leading instance here is Raymond Escholier's Victor Hugo artiste,
Paris, Crès, 1926. Another approach would study artists as authors.
See, for example, Prosper Dorbec, "La Sensibilité de l'artiste dans
Dominique," Revue Bleue, 1920, pp. 645-649. A third point of view
would inquire into the relations between painters and writers. This
is done, for example, by John Rewald, in Cézanne et Zola, Paris, A.
Sedrowski, 1936. Another significant approach would analyze the treat-
ment of art and artists in the works of a given author. Here we can
cite the brief studies of François Fosca, "Les Artistes dans les romans
de Balzac," Revue critique des idées et des livres, XXXIV (1922),
133-152, and of Mary W. Scott, Art and Artists in Balzac's Comédie
Humaine, Chicago, University of Chicago Libraries, 1937, 46 pp.
ence.
१९
6. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Théophile Gautier
was saying: "je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe."
Soon Realism was to aim at limiting art to the external, the "visible"
world. Thanks to the achievements of contemporary painters, writers
came to regard the visual as the sense par excellence of direct experi-
Critics now became aware that painting had also contributed
to the direction in which literature was moving: on peut dire
que Courbet a inspiré l'école d'où sont sortis MM. de Goncourt,
Daudet, et Zola" (Comte A. d'Ideville, Gustave Courbet, Paris, Alcan-
Lévy, 1878, p. 107). Indeed, Daudet himself admitted: "La peinture
a tout envahi” (A. Daudet, Trente ans de Paris, p. 135). And basing
himself on Daudet's work, Brunetière was led to analyze literary
Impressionism in pictorial terms. (See infra, Chapter VII, p. 158.)
By 1881 this conception is so ingrained that Taine can already think
of praising Anatole France for not having been "misled" like many
contemporaries "par l'imitation de la peinture" (Jeanne Maurice
Pouquet, Le Salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet, Paris, Hachette,
•
NOTES: I. PEN, PALETTE, AND PROUST
191
1926, p. 63). Not only paintings but also engravings had their effect.
For a study of the influence of lithographic art on Balzac and other
writers between 1815 and 1865, see M. Mespoulet, Images et romans,
Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1939.
7. Blanche writes: "Dans son œuvre gigantesque, ciselée, laquée,
comme un cabinet chinois aux tiroirs secrets, on trouverait épars de
quoi faire des volumes d'articles par le plus original des critiques
littéraires, par un bien curieux critique d'art." Blanche, Mes Modèles,
p. 139.
8. Cf. S, II, 139.
9. Cf. S, I, 45.
10. Ibid., p. 167.
11. Cf. ibid., p. 239.
12. TR, II, 63.
13. G, II, 102.
14. P, II, 71.
15. Cf. AD, II, 10.
16. JF, III, 129.
17. Cf. TR, II, 116-117.
18. Cf. AD, II, 216.
19. Cf. AD, II, 142-143.
20. TR, II, 109-110.
21. P, II, 201.
22. Cf. SG, II (1), pp.33-34.
23. Cf. JF, I, 189.
24. Cf. S, II, 289.
25. JF, II, 178.
26. Cf. S, II, 161. However, it is more usual for such letters to
denote the name of the given personage.
27. S, II, 248.
28. Cf. G, I, 159.
29. Ibid., p. 100.
30. Cf. JF, II, 140. This is an allusion to Moreau's painting
Jupiter et Sémélé, at the Gustave Moreau Museum. See p. 2 of the
Catalogue sommaire des peintures, dessins, cartons et aquarelles . du
Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris, L. Portail, 1926.
•
31. The various aspects of music in Proust's work have been sub-
jected to repeated scrutiny in numerous studies: J. Benoist-Méchin,
"De la musique considérée par rapport aux opérations du langage
192
PROUST AND PAINTING
dans l'œuvre de Marcel Proust," Intentions, Jan. 1923; André Cœuroy,
Musique et Littérature, Paris, Bloud et Gay, 1923 (the section on
Proust, pp. 228-262, is a reprint, with few additions, of Cœuroy's
article "La Musique dans l'œuvre de Marcel Proust," in La Revue
musicale, Jan. 1, 1923, pp. 193-212, appearing also in English, with
a few modifications, as "Music in the Work of Proust," Musical
Quarterly, XII [1926], 132-151); Dyneley Hussey, "M. Vinteuil's
Sonata," Saturday Review, March, 1923; J. Benoist-Méchin, La
Musique et l'Immortalité dans l'œuvre de Marcel Proust, Paris, Kra,
1926; H. Laurent, "Marcel Proust et la musique," Le Flambeau, 1927,
I, pp. 241-256, II, pp. 49-64; Armand Pierhal, "Sur la composition
wagnérienne de l'œuvre de Proust," Bibliothèque Universelle et
Revue de Genève, June 1929, pp. 710-719; Kurt Jäckel, Richard
Wagner in der französischen Literatur, Breslau, Priebatsch, 1932,
Part II, ch. VII, pp. 209-242; Florence Hier, La Musique dans l'œuvre
de Marcel Proust, New York, Pub. of the Institute of French Studies,
1933; Louis Abagantel, Marcel Proust et la musique, Paris, 1939;
Dorothy Adelson, "The Vinteuil Sonata," Music and Letters, London,
July 1942, pp. 228-233; etc. In sharp contrast with this prolific litera-
ture on music in Proust, the rôle of painting in Proust has hitherto
received but scanty attention and in no wise systematic scrutiny.
32. Cf. Etienne Burnet, Essences, pp. 187-190; Kurt Jäckel,
Bergson und Proust, p. 39.
33. André Maurois, "Proust et Ruskin," Essays and Studies,
English Association, XVII (1932), 26.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
PROUST'S BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
1. However, there was also a renewed interest in mythological
art as part of the exotic trend of the Symbolist generation. See supra,
P. 12.
2. It was not until 1890, seven years after Manet's death, and not
without disheartening tribulations, such as the disaffection of Zola
and Antonin Proust, that Manet's unconventional Olympia, which in
1865 had called forth such an outburst of abuse, became the first
NOTES: II. BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
193
painting of the new group to be finally permitted to enter France's
national collection. But only as late as 1907, upon the insistence of
Claude Monet, was it transferred from the Luxembourg and exhibited
at the Louvre proper.
3. On pictorial Symbolism consult: Maurice Denis, Théories,
1890-1910. Du Symbolisme et de Gauguin à un nouvel ordre classique,
Paris (1912), 4th ed., 1920; G.-Albert Aurier, "Le Symbolisme en
peinture," Mercure de France, Mar. 1891, pp. 155-165; Emile Bernard,
"Le Symbolisme pictural, 1886-1936," Mercure de France, June 15,
1936, pp. 514-530; André Mellerio, Le Mouvement idéaliste en
peinture, Paris, Floury, 1896.
4. On Neo-Impressionism consult: Signac, De Delacroix au Néo-
Impressionnisme, Paris (1899), 3rd ed., Floury, 1921.
5. Cf. H. Focillon, La Peinture aux XIXe et XXe siècles, pp. 207-
208.
6. See Maurice Denis, op. cit., p. 169.
7. Cf. H. Focillon, op. cit., p. 262.
Robert de La Sizeranne, Ruskin et la Religion de la Beauté,
Paris, Hachette, 1898.
9. L'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France; étude sur l'ico-
nographie du moyen âge et sur ses sources d'inspiration, Paris (1898),
7th ed., Colin, 1931.
10. Cf. Focillon, op. cit., p. 304.
11. It was in 1866 that W. Bürger (pseudonym of Etienne Thoré)
brought out Vermeer's importance in his article "Van der Meer de
Delft," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXI (1866), 297-330, 458-470,
542-575. In 1888 Henry Havard published his book Van der Meer
de Delft, Paris, Librairie de l'Art.
12. El Greco was admired by Gautier and Champfleury as early
as 1850. In 1884 Huysmans made Theotocopouli the favorite painter
of the hero of A Rebours. Even then this great master was liked by a
relatively limited circle of aesthetes, among whom Montesquiou
figured prominently. Barrès published his book in 1912.
13. H. Focillon, op. cit., p. 478.
14. For instance, as Lucien Daudet tells us, "il avait lu entièrement
Faculté motrice dans les plantes, de Darwin, avant de terminer une
page magnifique de Sodome et Gomorrhe" (cf. Hommage, p. 44).
15. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 24.
16. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 63, footnote 2; Corr.
j
I
:
194
PROUST AND PAINTING
gén., I, 42, 152, 182, 199. About Les Arts de la Vie Proust writes:
"Les Arts de la Vie sont lus par tous les artistes vraiment intelligents
de France. Besnard et Carrière et Rodin y collaborent souvent et les
lisent assidûment . . ." (cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 91). To the Revue
Blanche Proust contributed four articles, in 1893 and 1896.
17. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 14.
18. See Jean Pommier, La Mystique de Baudelaire, pp. 4-5.
19. Baudelaire's works comprise such art criticism, for instance,
as monographs on Eugène Delacroix and on Constantin Guys (Le
Peintre de la vie moderne: Constantin Guys), evaluations on the
Salons of 1845, 1846, 1859.
20. Cf. Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxiv.
21. See infra, ch. VII, pp. 138-140.
22. Goncourt, Journal, V, p. 121.
23. Cf. Corr. gén., I, passim.
24. Cf. Blanche, Mes Modèles, p. 125; Corr. gén., III, 106-110.
25. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 48-49.
26. Cf. ibid., pp. 83, 86, 87, 90, 91.
27. Cf. Lettres à une amie, pp. 30, 32, 82, 85.
28. Cf. Proust's Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxxii.
29. Maurice Denis, Théories, p. 2.
30. Oscar Wilde, Intentions, New York, Putnam, p. 139.
31. Ibid., p. 153.
32. Ibid., p. 158.
33. Ibid., p. 40.
34. Ibid., p. 39.
35. Or even earlier. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 234-235. As early as 1893
Proust made one of his characters, Leslie, read The Picture of Dorian
Gray: cf. "Avant la nuit," one of Proust's six "Etudes" in the Dec.
1893 issue of La Revue Blanche.
36. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, pp. 16-17.
37. Cf. Robert de Billy, Lettres et conversations, p. 89.
38. As is easily understood, Proust could not follow Wilde in his
more extreme trends, comme Oscar Wilde disant que le plus
grand chagrin qu'il avait eu, c'était la mort de Lucien de Rubempré
dans Balzac, et apprenant peu après, par son procès, qu'il est des
chagrins plus réels . . . (Corr. gén., IV, 234-235). Proust would
have objected to such statements as "The only beautiful things are
the things that do not concern us" (Intentions, p. 53). Proust, on
""
Ce
NOTES: II. BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
195
the contrary, did not escape from himself nor did he shrink from
treating realistic subject matter.
39. Proust had a very meager knowledge of English and had to
depend on La Sizeranne's published translations, the encouraging
help of his mother, the generous use of dictionaries, the frequent
collaboration of Marie Nordlinger, and the expert assistance of
Robert d'Humières, the French translator of Kipling.
In his translator's footnotes or in his prefaces, Proust quotes from
almost all of Ruskin's works. He thus mentions time and again
Modern Painters (PM, 109, 152, 187, etc.), The Seven Lamps of Archi-
tecture (cf. PM, 152, 159, 160, 162, 176, etc.), The Stones of Venice
(cf. PM, 115, 135, 137, 151, 183-186, etc.), Saint Marks Rest (cf.
PM, 101, 164, 165, 167, etc.), Mornings in Florence (cf. PM, 101,
116), Lectures on Art (cf. PM, 180, 141, etc.), Praeterita (cf. PM,
106, 107, 109, 129, 167, 170, etc.), Val d'Arno (cf. PM 128, 151,
159, 164, 172, etc.), The Relations between Michel Angelo and
Tintoret (cf. PM, 116, 164, etc.), The Eagles Nest (cf. PM, 169,
etc.) and others.
40. PM, 192-193.
41. Ibid., p. 193.
42. With Mâle Proust corresponded and often consulted.
Robert de Billy, Lettres et conversations, pp. 111-122.
43. Cf. ibid., p. 30.
44. Reynaldo Hahn, who was a close friend of Proust, records
these impressions in his Notes, p. 31.
45. Cf. Ernest Seillière, Marcel Proust, p. 252.
46. Montesquiou owned a superb portrait of himself by Whistler,
which is one of Whistler's outstanding works. It is now in New
York, at the Frick Collection.
Cf.
47. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 32, footnote 2. The
Preface first appeared in an article in Le Mercure de France, April
1900.
At the home of Mme Emile Strauss, Proust was able to see, besides
several harbor and beach scenes by Boudin, another important Monet
painting, Bras de Seine, près Giverny (1897), which was soon to
serve him in good stead in his description of Elstir's art. See infra,
p. 101. The Monet picture in question is No. 59 in the Collection
Emile Straus-Catalogue des tableaux modernes ..., Paris, G. Petit,
1929.
196
PROUST AND PAINTING
-
48. Cf. Léon Pierre-Quint, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris,
Kra, 1928, p. 81.
49. Clermont-Tonnerre, Robert de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust,
PP. 13-14.
50. Corr. gén., IV, 24-25.
51. Corr. gén., I, 165.
52. Ibid., p. 159.
53. Corr. gén., II, 124.
54. Corr. gén., I, 246-247.
55. Cf. Lettres à la NRF, p. 217.
In 1908 Proust similarly complained of having to miss an exhibition
of El Greco and Monticelli: "Aujourd'hui ferme l'exposition qu'entre
toutes j'aurais voulu voir, des deux peintres dont je suis le plus
'amoureux', Greco et Monticelli, au Salon d'automne et je n'ai pu y
aller." Cf. G. de Lauris, "Marcel Proust d'après une correspondance
et des souvenirs. Lettres de Marcel Proust," Revue de Paris, XLV
(1938), 763.
56. This was his only remedy for preventing or delaying his
asthmatic attacks.
57. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, ii-iii.
58. Cf. ibid., p. 86.
59. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 91.
60. Cf. Corr. gén., I, 12.
61. Corr. gén., III, 119.
62. In 1919 Proust writes to Souday: "Il y a vingt ans que je
n'ai été au Louvre" (Corr. gén., III, 66); in 1920 to Jacques
Boulanger: "Je n'ai pas été au Louvre depuis vingt-six ans." (Corr.
gén., III, 206); and again in 1920 to Vaudoyer: ". . . je n'ai pas
été au Louvre depuis plus de quinze ans" (Corr. gén., IV, 81). Yet
in 1921, Paul Morand writes, Proust did make a visit to the Louvre,
his last (Hommage, p. 81).
63. Cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 84.
64. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 4.
65.
See Marie Nordlinger's foreword to Lettres à une amie,
P. vi.
66. Charles Haas and Charles Ephrussi are said to have served.
Proust as models for his character Charles Swann. Cf. Robert de
Billy, Lettres et conversations, pp. 64-65; Clermont-Tonnerre, Robert
de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust, p. 223; R. Dreyfus, Souvenirs sur
NOTES: II. BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
197
Marcel Proust, pp. 248-249.
67. Cf. R. de Billy, op. cit., p. 65; Corr. gén., I, 65; Preface to
La Bible d'Amiens, p. 14.
68. Charles Ephrussi, Albert Dürer et ses dessins, Paris, A.
Quantin, 1882.
69. Cf. R. de Billy, op. cit., pp. 112-120.
70. PM, 156.
71. Corr. gén., IV, 36.
72. Ibid., p. 49.
73. Ibid.
74. Cf. the statement of his brother, Robert Proust, in Corr. gén.,
I, Introduction, p. i.
75. All of these are mentioned admiringly by Proust. Cf. Corr.
gén., I, passim.
See his article on Montesquiou, "Un Professeur de Beauté,"
Les Arts de la Vie, IV (Aug. 1905), 67-79.
77. Corr. gén., I, 239. On Helleu, Montesquiou wrote two
monographs: the descriptive text for La Femme par Helleu, Paris,
Boussod, Manzi, Joyant, 1899, which became the basis of his en-
larged book, Paul Helleu, peintre et graveur, Paris, Floury, 1913.
78. Montesquiou, Catalogue des tableaux, aquarelles, pastels, dessins
par Gustave Jacquet, Paris, Petit, 1909, Preface by Montesquiou-
Fezensac.
79. Cf. SG, II (1), 109.
80. Proust wrote in 1921 that he was glad he and Montesquiou
had parted, for his health could hardly bear now "la fatigue de sa
conversation étourdissante, mais exténuante" (Corr. gén., III, 240).
Cf. also Clermont-Tonnerre, op. cit., p. 55.
81. Jacques-Emile Blanche, Preface to Dates, p. xxviii.
82. "Fête chez Montesquiou à Neuilly," Le Figaro, Jan. 18, 1904.
83. Cf. W. L. Schwartz, The Imaginative Interpretation of the Far
East in Modern French Literature, pp. 70 ff, and 91 ff.
84. Cf. Clermont-Tonnerre, op. cit., p. 56.
85. Cf. J.-E. Blanche, op. cit., pp. xxxi-xxxii.
86. Cf. Lucien Aressy, A la recherche de Marcel Proust, p. 156.
87. Cf. Corr. gén., I, passim.
88. See supra, note 76.
89. Cf. Corr gén., I, 287; III, 253. Proust writes for instance
"aujourd'hui je songe que le meilleur critique d'art de notre époque
198
PROUST AND PAINTING
est Robert de Montesquiou et que personne ne lui demande d'articles.”
Ibid., III, 240.
90. Cf. Corr. gén., I, 246, about Whistler and pp. 203-204, 244,
about Leonardo da Vinci. Cf. also Clermont Tonnerre, op. cit., p. 217.
91. Most of Proust's correspondence is still unpublished. The
only letters he wrote to painters which have been printed thus far
are those to Blanche and to Lucien Daudet. The latter, however,
could hardly be considered a professional painter.
92. Although one of his best friends was Reynaldo Hahn and
he also met Gabriel Fauré, he knew comparatively few other musicians
such as Risler, Polignac, the Comtesse Potocka, and these were not of
great importance. Cf. F. Hier, La Musique dans l'œuvre de Marcel
Proust, pp. 12-14.
93. Cf. J.-E. Blanche, in Hommage, p. 46.
A noteworthy exception, however, was the Restaurant Weber,
to which Proust went from time to time. See Léon Daudet, Salons et
Journaux, Paris, Grasset, 1932, pp. 254-259.
95. Pierre-Quint relates an incident about Proust at the theatre,
where Proust chatted throughout the performance and seemed to do
anything but pay attention to the stage. Yet after the performance
he surprised his friends by repeating everything important in the
play. See Pierre-Quint, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, pp. 60-61.
96. Other salons that Proust frequented were those of the Com-
tesses de Chévigné, Greffulhe, de Briey, de Broissia, Cahen d'Anvers;
of Lady Lytton, of the Duc de Guiche, of the Daudets, etc.
Blanche, in Hommage, pp. 48-49, footnote.
Cf.
97. Cf. Blanche, Mes Modèles, pp. 100-101.
98. Ibid., p. 109. Hommage, p. 47.
99. In an article reprinted in Chroniques, pp. 28-38.
100. Ibid., p. 30.
101. Jean Béraud and Gustave Borda were his seconds at the duel
he fought with Jean Lorrain. Cf. R. Dreyfus, Souvenirs sur Marcel
Proust, p. 152.
102. On Madrazo as "ami dévoué de Proust," see Lettres à une
amie, p. 117, also pp. vi, 34, 59.
103. Cf. R. de Billy, op. cit., pp. 45, 103.
104. Proust refers to his familiarity with Denis and Vuillard,
Corr. gén., III, 157. On Proust's acquaintance with Degas, see Blanche,
Preface to Dates, p. xiii and Mes Modèles, p. 100; on his knowing
61
NOTES: II. BACKGROUND AND FORMATION
199
Picasso, see Corr. gén., III, 158 and V, 40.
105. Including such obscure names as Ochoa and Louis Bouwens
(cf. R. Dreyfus, op. cit., p. 122). On Proust's acquaintance with
Boldini, cf. Corr. gén., I, 86 and infra, note 106. On J. de Traz, see
Billy, op. cit., p. 45.
106. Cf. Lettres à une amie, pp. 84-85: "Moi je n'ai connu
Whistler qu'un seul soir, où je lui ai fait dire un peu de bien de
Ruskin! et où j'ai gardé ses jolis gants gris, que j'ai perdus depuis. Mais
j'ai entendu beaucoup parler de lui par Robert de Montesquiou et par
Boldini."
107. In 1918 Proust was writing that he was not on speaking
terms with Forain (Corr. gén., V, 96) and in 1919 he became recon-
ciled with him (ibid., p. 171), only to part once more in 1921 (ibid.,
p. 96).
108. Cf. p. 133, J.-E. Blanche's chapter on Helleu in De Gauguin
à la Revue Nègre, pp. 115-149. See Edmond de Goncourt's catalogue
preface, Helleu-Catalogue des pointes sèches. Préface, Paris, Lemer-
cier, 1897.
109. Proust too speaks of them, in his Preface to Propos de
Peintre, p. viii, and in his Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 32, note
2, where he writes: Comme 'intérieurs' de cathédrales je ne connais
que ceux, si beaux, du grand peintre Helleu.”
१९
110. Corr gén., III, 143.
111.
Cf. Blanche, in Hommage, p. 46.
112. See Proust's Preface to Propos de Peintre and Blanche's own
Preface to Dates.
113. Cf. G. Geffroy, Monet, p. 108.
114. Cf. Blanche, De Gauguin à la Revue Nègre, pp. 26-27.
115. Cf. Preface to Propos de Peintre, pp. iv-v and Blanche in
Hommage, p. 51. The oil portrait, shown at the "Interalliée" exhibi-
tion in May 1922, was reproduced in black and white in a special
limited edition of A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs in 1920 and
later in Pierre Abraham's book on Proust, Plate XV. The other
portrait, a pencil sketch, remained in the possession of Reynaldo
Hahn.
116. Blanche, "Du Côté de chez Swann," Echo de Paris, Dec.
16, 1913, a few weeks after the publication of the book.
117. Cf. Blanche, Mes Modèles, p. 125.
118. Cf. Billy, op. cit., pp. 89-91; Blanche, in Hommage, p. 48.
200
PROUST AND PAINTING
NOTES TO CHAPTER III
PROUST'S RESPONSIVENESS TO PAINTING
1.
Cf. Lettres à la NRF, p. 139.
2.
In a letter to the author of the present study, dated December
6, 1936, Vuillard expressed his views on Proust and art: "Sous des
façons mondaines qui n'enlevaient rien à son charme, on arrivait vite
à croire à la sincérité de son intérêt pour les arts. Je crois qu'il aimait
la peinture autrement qu'en littérateur seulement. Il me semble qu'il
goûtait vraiment Vermeer et des quelques lignes que j'ai eues de lui
j'ai conservé le souvenir d'un être attentif et beaucoup plus désireux
de connaître que d'ironiser comme le monde qu'il fréquentait . . .”
3. His close friend, Lucien Daudet, relates: "Tous les amis de
Marcel Proust ont pu constater la rapidité de sa vision” (L. Daudet,
Autour de soixante lettres, p. 32, footnote).
4. Cf. ibid., p. 32.
5. Cf. Reynaldo Hahn, in Hommage, pp.33-34. Cf. also S, I,
200.
6. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 88; see also Corr. gén.,
IV, 126.
7. Cf. JF, II, 164.
8.
Cf. S, I, 258.
9. Cf. TR, I, 45.
10.
Cf. P, II, 281.
11. Cf. JF, II, 144.
12. Cf. S, I, 211.
13. Cf. G, II, 11.
14. Cf. JF, III, 187.
15. Ibid.,
Ibid., p. 219.
16. Cf. S, I, 91.
17. Ibid., p. 76.
18. Ibid., p. 123.
19. Cf. JF, II, 96.
20. Cf. JF, III, 258.
21. P, I, 35.
22. S, I, 97.
23. S, II, 257-258.
NOTES: III. RESPONSIVENESS
201
24. S, I, 241.
25. P, II, 274-275.
26. Corr. gén., V, 180.
27. G, II, 36-37.
28. AD, I, 105.
29. Cf. JF, II, 148.
30. Proust's narrator, that is, Proust himself, modestly states that
he has no gift for external observation, "aucune espèce d'esprit
d'observation extérieure" (P, II, 246; S, I, 204). Though, to be
sure, Proust emphasizes introspective observation and psychological
analysis, this is one of his gigantic understatements which should
be interpreted in reverse.
31. JF, I, 157.
32. S, I, 258.
33. Ibid., p. 79.
34. Ibid., p. 103.
35. Ibid., p. 258.
36. JF, III, 37.
37. TR, I, 27.
38. S, I, 203.
39. JF, III, 249.
40. G, I, 169.
41. JF, III, 249.
42. G, I, 118.
43. TR, I, 94.
44. SG, II (1), 193.
45. S, II, 251.
46. S, I, 247.
47. Ibid., p. 189.
48. Cf. S, II, 246.
49. Ibid., p. 247.
50. JF, III, 247-248.
51. Cf. TR, II, 115-116.
52. Ibid., p. 105.
53. Cf. J.-E. Blanche, Mes Modèles, p. 131.
54. TR, II, 108.
55. Blanche, op. cit., p. 133.
56. JF, III, 144-145.
57. G, II, 53.
202
PROUST AND PAINTING
"
58. JF, III, 197.
59. Our modern experience of painting in terms of "significant
form," the formulations of Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and others, came
about as result of the impetus or at least of the confirmation
given by Expressionism, Cubism, and abstract art. Before 1900 art
critics in France seldom described such elements as being of total im-
portance. There were, however, some exceptions, such as, earlier, for
example, Baudelaire, and, later, academic critics like Charles Blanc.
60. Cf. Eugène Delacroix, Journal, 3 vols.; see Gustave Varenne,
"Variations du goût de Delacroix," Mercure de France, Aug. 15,
1936, pp. 9-23.
61. This document, discovered by André Berge cf. "Autour
d'une trouvaille. (Confession de Marcel Proust enfant)," Cahiers du
Mois, Dec. 1924 — is reproduced in facsimile in Pierre Abraham's
book, Proust, Plate VIII.
62. Cf. S, I, 63-64.
63. Ibid., p. 212.
64. Cf. Preface to Sésame et les Lys, p. 17.
65. Cf. S, I, 119-122.
66. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 178.
67. Ibid.
68. Published several years later, in 1896, and reprinted in Les
Plaisirs et les Jours.
69. Corr. gén., IV, 89.
70. See Eugène Fromentin, Les Maîtres d'autrefois, Paris, Plon,
1912, pp. 195-207 devoted to Potter, whom he describes as "Du
génie et pas de leçons" (p. 200). Cuyp he includes among the four
painters in Holland that really matter: "Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Paul
Potter, Cuyp peut-être" (pp. 341-342).
71. Cf. ibid., pp. 345-346.
72. Cf. Robert de Billy, Lettres et conversations, p. 29.
73. Robert de Billy relates how in the course of a visit at the
Louvre Marcel Proust "s'arrêta longtemps devant le duc de Rich-
mond, et je lui dis que toute cette belle jeunesse dont on voit les
portraits en Angleterre, à Dresde, à l'Hermitage, avait été fauchée
par les Côtes de Fer de Cromwell. Nous philosophâmes sur la mort
des 'cavaliers' et de leur roi Charles, et l'écho de nos pensées se
retrouve dans ses vers charmants dont Reynaldo Hahn écrivit l'accom-
pagnement sonore." R. de Billy, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
NOTES: III. RESPONSIVENESS
203
74. Cf. Les Plaisirs et les Jours, p. 12.
75. Ibid. About Claude Lorrain, see R. de Billy, op. cit., p. 29.
76. Cf. Reynaldo Hahn, Notes, pp. 19-20.
77. Cf. Proust's Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxxi. The
preface was written a year or two before the book appeared in 1919.
78. Cf. R. Hahn, op. cit., pp. 31-32.
79. Cf. Corr. gén., II, 84-85, and Chroniques, pp. 185-186.
80. The entire incident is related by Lucien Daudet, Autour de
soixante lettres, p. 16.
81.
See Marie Nordlinger's foreword (Au lecteur) to Lettres à
une amie, p. v.
Madrazo refers to Frédéric Madrazo, a painter
friend of Proust.
82. Ibid., pp. vi-vii.
83. Proust became absorbed in Ruskin probably at about the age of
twenty-seven or twenty-eight, after reading La Sizeranne's works.
84. Corr. gén., I, 123.
85.
Lettres à une amie, p. 94. Compare this with the passage in
which Elstir invests the bay of Balbec with a new individuality by
telling the narrator that it is "le golfe d'opale de Whistler" (G, I,
26). See infra, p. 128.
86. Cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 85.
87. Corr. gén., IV, 87.
.
88. Ibid., p. 86.
89. Ibid., pp. 90-91.
90. Ibid., p. 36.
91.
See L'Opinion, Feb. 6, 28 and March 6, 13, 1920.
92. This reply was reprinted in Corr. gén., IV, 81-82.
93. Cf. Corr. gén. V, 40.
94. See supra, p. 43.
95. Cf. G, II, 188.
96. Cf. Robert de Billy, Lettres et conversations, p. 13.
97. Cf. G, I, 171; SG, II (1), 106. We have not deemed it
necessary to indicate here references for those painters whose names
have already been indexed by R. Celly in Répertoire des thèmes de
Marcel Proust and by P. Raphael in Introduction à la correspondance
de Marcel Proust.
98. Cf. G, I, 171-172.
99. Cf. P, II, 214.
100. Cf. S, II, 243; L. Daudet, Autour de soixante lettres, p. 18.
204
PROUST AND PAINTING
101. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 62.
102. Cf. S, II, 252; G, II, 107; SG, II (1), 93; P, II, 246..
103. Cf. P, II, 21.
104. Cf. S, I, 99.
105. Cf. Preface to Sésame et les lys, p. 256, footnote.
106. Cf. PM, 98.
107. Cf. S, II, 195.
108. The last three are referred to in PM, 97-98.
109. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 68.
110. Ibid., p. 61.
111. Ibid.
112. Cf. S, II, 154.
113. Cf. G, II, 187.
114. Cf. S, I, 244; JF, III, 57; SG, II (1), 211; TR, I, 62.
115. Cf. TR, II, 37.
116. Cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 47.
117. Cf. R. de Billy, Lettres et conversations, p. 29.
118. Cf. G, II, 221.
119. Cf. P. II, 201; TR, II, 38.
120. Cf. G, II, 101.
121. Cf. P, I, 134; Chroniques, p. 203.
122. Cf. TR, II, 45, 229.
123. Ibid., P. 45.
124. Cf. Hommage, p. 81.
125. Cf. G, I, 171; TR, I, 156.
126. Cf. JF, I, 112.
127. Cf. Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xi; also Blanche, Mes
Modèles, p. 137; TR, I, 31.
128. Cf. Chroniques, p. 30.
129. Cf. S, I, 212, for Gleyre, and Hommage, p. 81, for Bougue-
reau.
130. Cf. Bibesco, Au Bal avec Marcel Proust, p. 37. In one of his
letters to Emmanuel Bibesco, Proust mentions the "ancolies de Redon,"
a painting owned by the Bibescos.
However, the reference to Redon in JF, III, 107, is due to a
typographical error. It occurs in the passage where Elstir shows the
narrator some of the sculptures of the Balbec church: "le type qui a
sculpté cette façade-là, croyez bien qu'il était aussi fort, qu'il avait des
idées aussi profondes que les gens de maintenant que vous admirez
NOTES: IV. EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
205
le plus .
Il y a certaines paroles de l'Assomption qui ont été traduites
avec une subtilité qu'un Redon n'a pas égalée." This clearly refers to
the sculptor Auguste Rodin and not to the painter Odilon Redon.
Yet this typographical mistake, which escaped Proust's eagle-eye, was
repeated even through several editions of Scott-Moncrieff's English
translation.
131. Cf. SG, II (1), 10; Chroniques, p. 30.
132. Cf. G, I, 200; Chroniques, p. 30.
133. Cf. P, I, 273.
134. Cf. Chroniques, p. 64.
135. Cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 91.
136. Cf. JF, I, 145; TR, II, 117.
137. Cf. JF, I, 145.
138.
Cotte and Chaplin are mentioned in TR, I, 42.
139. Cf. SG, II (1), 91-92, 109.
140. A noteworthy exception was the Symbolist poet G.-Albert
Aurier, who as early as 1890 devoted to Van Gogh an enthusiastic
article in the Mercure de France.
78
It is interesting to compare Proust's omissions with the omissions
of Reinach's Apollo, a book which can be said to represent the average
taste in France at about 1900. Reinach's work enjoyed great popu-
larity; it went through several editions and was translated into many
languages. Sassetta, Le Nain, Le Sueur, Henri Rousseau, Van Gogh,
Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, and even Daumier were left out
by Reinach.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
PROUST'S EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
1. S, II, 13-14.
2. JF, I, 149-150.
3. S, II, 14.
4. Cf. TR, I, 156-157.
5. Cf. G, II, 231.
6. Cf. G, I, 88.
7. Ibid.
8. Cf. G, II, 186.
206
PROUST AND PAINTING
9. Cf. P, II, 231; S, II, 156.
10.
Cf. JF, III, 167-168.
11. Cf. ibid., p. 37.
12. Cf. S, II, 153.
13. JF, III, 90.
14. Cf. S, I, 143
15. Cf. G, I, 171.
16. Ibid.
17. Cf. JF, I, 158.
18. Cf. ibid., p. 149.
19. Cf. S, I, 58.
20. Namely, Madame Marmet.
21. Cf. Robert de la Sizeranne, Ruskin et la Religion de la Beauté,
pp. 20-21.
22. Cf. Proust, Pastiches et mélanges.
23. G, II, 71.
24. Cf. P, I, 134.
25. JF, II, 101.
26. TR, I, 88.
27. JF, III, 51-52.
28. G, I, 87.
29. Cf. JF, I, 201.
30. Cf. S, II, 197.
31. Cf. P. I, 106-107.
32. Cf. P, II, 21.
33. AD, II, 135.
34. SG, II (1), 93.
35. "Le mot d' 'œuvre florentine' rendit un grand service à Swann.
Il lui permit, comme un titre, de faire pénétrer l'image d'Odette dans
un monde de rêves, où elle n'avait pas eu accès jusqu'ici et où elle
s'imprégna de noblesse" (S, II, 16).
36. Cf. ibid.
37. Ibid, p. 28.
38. Cf. JF, II, 27.
39. Cf. JF, II, 27.
40. SG, II (1), 70.
41. S, II, 248.
42. S, I, 255-256.
43. TR, II, 71.
NOTES: IV. EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
207
44. S, I, 313.
45. P, II, 79.
46. S, II, 37, 195.
47. Cf. ibid., p. 195.
48. S, I, 30.
49. Cf. S, II, 46-47.
50. SG, II (1), 28.
51. G, II, 216.
52. Ibid., p. 222.
53. Cf. SG, II (3), 204.
54. Cf. ibid., pp. 104-105.
55. Cf. S, I, 192.
56. Cf. SG, II (3), 77.
57. Cf. SG, II (2), 34.
58. Cf. JF, II, 140.
59. Cf. TR, I, 117.
60. JF, II, 213.
61. Cf. S, I, 285; S, II, 39.
62. Cf. JF, II, 150.
63. Cf. ibid., p.215.
64. Cf. ibid., p. 213.
65. Cf. G, II, 100-103, 235.
66. Ibid., p. 189.
67. Ibid.
68. Cf. G, I, 200.
69. Cf. SG, II (2), 203-207.
70. Cf. ibid., pp. 23, 29, 31.
71. SG, II (2), 34
72. Cf. ibid., p. 30.
73. Cf. ibid., p. 32.
74. S, II, 224-225.
75. Ibid., p. 225.
76. S, I, 120.
77. Ibid., pp. 120-121.
78. Ibid., pp. 121-122.
79. AD, II, 144.
80. Ibid., pp. 144-145.
81. The headings outlining Proust's work as originally planned
can be seen in L. Pierre-Quint, Comment travaillait Proust, p. 49.
208
PROUST AND PAINTING
.
82. Corr. gén., IV, 86.
83. Ibid., V, pp. 65-66.
84. Cf. Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxii.
See supra, note 11 of chapter II.
85.
86. Cf. W. Weisbach, Impressionismus; ein Problem der Malerei
in der Antike und Neuzeit, II, 136-137.
87. Cf. Alexandre, Claude Monet, pp. 17, 57.
88. René Huyghe, "Affinités électives: Vermeer et Proust," Amour
de l'Art, Jan. 1936, p. 13.
89. P, II, 238.
90. Cf. René Huyghe, loc. cit., p. 14.
91.
See for instance B. Berenson, The Italian Painters of the
Renaissance, London, Oxford University Press, 1932, pp. 23-24.
92. Corr. gén., IV, 90.
93. Cf. G, I, 43.
Cf. R. Rey, La Renaissance du sentiment classique, Paris, 1921,
94.
p. 65.
95.
P, I, 255.
96. Cf. François Mauriac, in Hommage, p. 239; also L. Pierre-
Quint, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, p. 122.
97. S, I, 243-244.
98. Ibid., pp. 244-245.
99. SG, II (2), 29.
100. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 32.
101. JF, III, 58-59.
102. Passage from Proust's review "Les Eblouissements par la
Comtesse de Noailles," first printed in Le Figaro, July 15, 1907, and
later reprinted in Chroniques, pp. 185-186.
103. Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxiv.
104. Lettres à une amie, pp. 88-89, letter xxxiv, presumably of
June 1905.
105. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 55.
106. Regarding the influence of Ruskin on Proust, which has been
treated at great length, see: André Maurois, "Proust et Ruskin,"
Essays and Studies, XVII (1932), 25-32; J. Murray, "Marcel Proust
et John Ruskin," Mercure de France, CLXXXIX (1926), 100-112;
S. de Souza, L'Influence de Ruskin sur Proust, Montpellier, 1932.
107. The differences are much greater than J. Murray cares to
admit. See J. Murray, loc, cit., p. 110.
NOTES: IV. EXPERIENCE OF PAINTING
209
E
108. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 57.
109. See ibid., pp. 78-79. Proust writes for instance: "la beauté
d'un tableau ne dépend pas des choses qui y sont représentées" (ibid.,
p. 89).
110. Cf. Lettres à une amie, p. 14.
Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, pp. 71 ff.
111.
112. Ibid., p. 91.
113. Ibid., p. 93.
114. G, II, 188; see also p. 101.
re
115.
un Monet que je trouve le plus beau des Manet"
(Preface to Propos de Peintre, p. xxxi).
116. Cf. G, II, 19 and TR, I, 42. Le Côté de Guermantes II was
published in 1920. Cf. also Proust's preface to Tendres Stocks (1921),
p. 34, which had already appeared before as "Pour un ami, remarques
sur le style," in Revue de Paris, Nov. 15, 1920. In his correspondence
published thus far, Renoir's name is first mentioned in 1919 (Corr.
gén., III, 156, 158).
The name Leloir, which appears early, in the second volume of the
series (cf. S, II, 225, and supra, p. 66), is not, as one might at first
suppose, an ignorant mispronunciation of Renoir, but a reference to
one of the Leloir painters, probably Jean-Baptiste Leloir (1809-1892),
who did historical painting and portraiture.
117. G, II, 19-20.
118. Corr. gén., III, 156.
119. See supra, p. 19.
121.
120. Lucien Aressy, A la recherche de Marcel Proust, p. 55.
"Si dans le tableau de Tissot représentant le balcon du cercle
de la rue Royale où vous êtes entre Gallifet, Edmond Polignac et
Saint-Maurice, on parle tant de vous, c'est parce qu'on sait qu'il y a
quelques traits de vous dans le personnage de Swann." P, I, 273. The
fourth person portrayed by Tissot is Charles Haas. In a letter to Paul
Brach, Proust thanks the latter for sending him a clipping reproducing
this painting by Tissot (cf. La Revue Universelle, XXXIII, April 1928,
p. 9).
122. His fascination for such photographs is described by Jacques
de Lacretelle in Hommage, pp. 188-189.
Cf. P, II, 79.
123.
124. Cf. TR, I, 62.
125. Cf. G, II, 187.
210
PROUST AND PAINTING
¿
126.
127.
128. Corr. gén., III, 155-156.
129. G, II, 200.
Cf. P, II, 238.
Cf. TR, I, 42.
130. Cf. Preface to Propos de Peintre, pp. xxxi-xxxii.
131. Cf. ibid., p. xxxii. See also supra, p. 15.
132. S, II, 154.
133. Cf. TR, II, 45.
134. See infra, chapter V, pp. 108-110.
NOTES TO CHAPTER V
ELSTIR
1. A number of other French writers before Proust have treated
the painter, for example, Henri Murger in his Scènes de la vie de
bohème (1847-1849), which enjoyed great popularity, Champfleury in
Aventures de Mademoiselle Mariette (1857), Ernest Feydeau in
Catherine d'Overmeire (1860). Especially noteworthy is the early,
though little known, novel dealing with an Impressionist painter,
written by the art critic Philippe Burty: Grave imprudence, Paris,
Charpentier, 1880. See Lionello Venturi, Archives de l'impression-
nisme, II, 293-296.
2. Cf. Charles Nodier, Le Peintre de Saltzbourg (Euvres, II),
Paris, E. Renduel, 1832, pp. 67 and 45.
3. Cf. ibid., p. 65.
4. Cf. ibid., pp. 84-85.
5. Cf. ibid., pp. 65, 82.
6. Honoré de Balzac, Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (Œuvres com-
plètes [edited by Bouteron and Longnon], XXVIII), p. 30.
7. Cf. Gasquet, Cézanne, p. 42.
8. Balzac, op. cit., p. 9.
9. Ibid., p. 7.
10. Ibid., p. 30.
11. Ibid., p. 18.
12. The Vicomte de Spalberch de Lovenjoul thinks that it is
Théophile Gautier who wrote the revisions of the story. Cf. Lovenjoul,
NOTES: V. ELSTIR
211
P
Etudes Balzaciennes-Autour de Balzac, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1897,
pp. 13, 17, 22 ff. On the other hand, François Fosca favors the view
that Delacroix was responsible for it. Cf. F. Fosca, "Les Artistes dans
les romans de Balzac," Rev. Critique des idées et des livres, XXXIV
(1922), 133-152. Mary W. Scott concludes that if anyone outside
collaborated in the work it was Delacroix rather than Gautier, but
advances the view that the insertions and changes are only an indirect
result, "the outcome of conversation between Balzac and some critic
or painter." Cf. M. W. Scott, Art and Artists in Balzac's Comédie
Humaine, Chicago, The University of Chicago Libraries, 1937, p.
41.
13. Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon, Paris, Flam-
marion, 1925, p. 161.
14. Ibid., p. 458.
""
15. For instance, Coriolis writes: "Figure-toi que ton ami habite
une ville où tout est rose, bleu clair, cendre verte, lilas tendre . . .
(ibid., p. 50).
16. Cf. M. Henry-Rosier, La Vie de Charles Nodier, pp. 100-102.
17. See Emile Zola's later views on the Impressionists, published
in Le Figaro, May 1896. Cf. John Rewald, Cézanne et Zola, Paris,
Sedrowski, 1936, pp. 152-154.
18. Cf. J. Rewald, op. cit., pp. 129-130 and L. Venturi, Cézanne,
son œuvre, I, 17-20.
son art
28. JF, III, 136.
29. Cf. ibid., p. 137.
19. "Sans doute, il souffrait dans sa chair, ravagé par cette lésion
trop forte du génie, trois grammes en moins ou trois grammes en plus,
comme il le disait, lorsqu'il accusait ses parents de l'avoir si drôlement
bâti." Zola, L'Euvre, Paris, Charpentier, 1921, I, p. 217.
20. See Rewald, op cit.
21. TR, II, 26.
22. In later volumes his name is written "Tiche" instead of
"Biche": SG, II (2), 203, 206; TR, I, 39.
23. Cf. S, I, 272; S, II, 58; also P, I, 276.
24. S, II, 255.
25. S,I, 292.
26. Ibid, pp. 306-307.
27. Cf. S, II, 58.
30. Ibid., p. 88.
31. Ibid., pp. 133-134.
212
PROUST AND PAINTING
32. Ibid., p. 89.
33. For instance, the narrator and his friend are enthusiastic about
Elstir even before they have seen anything of his art. "Mais un grand
talent, même quand il n'est pas encore reconnu, provoque nécessaire-
ment quelques phénomènes d'admiration, tels que le patron de la ferme
avait été à même d'en distinguer dans les questions de plus d'une
Anglaise de passage. . ." (JF, III, 86).
34. See supra, pp. 65-66.
35. Cf. Lucien Daudet, Autour de soixante lettres, p. 71.
36. Du Côté de chez Swann was completed in 1912 and A l'ombre
des jeunes filles en fleurs was printed only six years later, in 1918,
although it was actually released the following year. Cf. Léon Pierre-
Quint, Comment travaillait Proust, p. 50.
In Comment Marcel Proust a composé son roman Albert Feuillerat
expresses the view that Proust expanded Elstir beyond the proportions
of the first version and gave him added importance. If, however, the
author enlarged him from 15 to 36 pages-as Feuillerat states, pp. 54,
58-he really did it only in the same proportion in which he increased
his novel from 1500 to over 4000 pages. In other words, Elstir was
relatively as important in the first manuscript as he is in the last
edition.
37. Cf. A. Feuillerat, op. cit., pp. 54-55.
38. We have only disconnected fragments of the original version,
as published by Feuillerat from the galley proofs of its anonymous
owner. It is unfortunate that the late Professor Feuillerat should not
have been allowed to print the entire MS verbatim.
39. Cf. A. Feuillerat, op. cit., p. 55.
40. Ibid.
41. Feuillerat asserts that the painting refers to Claude Monet's
work (op. cit., p. 61). However, we think it to be really more typical
here of Pissarro, who painted such scenes as Le Marché and La Foire à
Dieppe (cf. G. Lecomte, Camille Pissarro, Paris, 1922, pp. 31-32), as
well as "les élancements de tours et de flèches hors de l'agglomération
des vieilles rues, des vieilles places, des vieilles maisons de Rouen."
See Geffroy, Monet, p. 159. In the other cases, however, Feuillerat
has correctly identified the art of Elstir with the works of Monet, Manet
and Whistler.
42. Cf. A. Feuillerat, op. cit., pp. 56-57.
43. Ibid., p. 55.
NOTES: V. ELSTIR
213
44. Cf. A. Alexandre, Monet, p. 83.
45. Cf. Feuillerat, op. cit., p. 62.
46. Ibid., p. 56.
47. Ibid.
48. Cf. C. Mauclair, L'Impressionnisme, son histoire, son esthé-
tique, ses maîtres, Paris, L'Art ancien et moderne, 1904, p. 5. Claude
Monet was likewise criticized: cf. G. Geffroy, Claude Monet, sa vie,
son temps, son œuvre, p. 319.
64.
49. Cf. R. Rey, La Renaissance du sentiment classique, p.
50. Cf. Geffroy, op. cit., p. 301; also p. 110.
51. Cf. A. Alexandre, Monet, p. 111; also pp. 86, 115.
52. C. Mauclair, op. cit., p. 74.
53. Cf. Feuillerat, op. cit., p. 56.
54. Ibid.
55. Cf. A. Alexandre, op. cit., pp. 102-103.
56. G, II, 102.
57. Remy de Gourmont, "L'Œil de Monet," in Promenades philo-
sophiques, le série, pp. 223-224.
58. JF, III, 105.
59. From a letter of Monet to Geffroy, June 7, 1912. See Geffroy,
op. cit., p. 248.
60. JF, III, 103.
61. Geffroy, op. cit., p. 306.
62. JF, III, 103.
63. We must disagree with Feuillerat's conclusions concerning
the significance of Proust's revisions of Elstir. Even granting that in
his last version Proust did develop more explicitly his notions of Elstir's
art, applying to it now a more literary label "métaphore," still the
term "équivoque" of his original version was pointing basically in the
same direction, being already the first stage of a "metaphor." From
such additions it by no means follows, as Feuillerat would like
to maintain, that Proust at first saw no clear kinship between the art
of certain painters of the period represented by Elstir-chiefly the
Impressionists—and his own literary art. To quote Feuillerat: ". . . il
semble qu'au début l'auteur n'ait pas vu aussi clairement que pour la
musique en quoi les théories de certains peintres du moment
s'accordaient avec celles que lui-même essayait d'élaborer" (op. cit.,
p. 54). However, if Proust applied a new epithet to an old kinship he
did not thereby make the kinship more recent.
214
PROUST AND PAINTING
64. JF, III, 100-101.
65. Ibid., pp. 101-102.
66. See Proust's letters to Antoine Bibesco and Jacques de La-
cretelle, in Bibesco, Au bal avec Marcel Proust, p. 190, and Hommage,
pp. 190-191. Cf. also TR, II, 242.
67. Cf. JF, III, 187, 189.
68. Cf. JF, III, 103.
69. Cf. G, II, 100-101.
70. JF, III, 120.
71. SG, II (2), 210.
72. JF, III, 99.
73. G, II, 101.
74. JF, III, 98.
75. Remy de Gourmont, "L'Eil de Monet," in Promenades philo-
sophiques, le série, p. 223.
76. Cf. L. Venturi, History of Art Criticism, p. 91.
77. See Jacques de Lacretelle, "Les Clefs de l'œuvre de Proust," in
Hommage, pp. 190-191. Cf. also supra, note 66.
78. Feuillerat, op. cit., p. 62. This does not prevent Feuillerat
from identifying Elstir with the main body of the Impressionist
painters. In fact, of the various attempts to identify Elstir thus far
-with suggestions running from Vuillard to Cézanne-his view
offers more plausible results.
79. By the same token that BERma might denote Sarah BERnhardt,
BERGotte BERGeret, VINteuil VINcent d'Indy, so ELstir might re-
present HELleu. This is suggested by Cattaui, in L'Amitié de Proust,
p. 208.
80. Cf. TR, II, 54-55.
81. A fate which befell Anatole France, for example, as result of a
resemblance which someone in actual life had found to a character
in La Révolte des anges.
82. Cf. JF, III, 98.
83. Cf. Jamot-Wildenstein, Manet, II, Nos. 64 and 66 of the
catalogue raisonné.
84. Cf. R. Rey, La Renaissance du sentiment classique, p. 81.
85. Cf. G, II, 103.
86. Cf. A. Mellerio, Odilon Redon, e.g. No. 53 in his catalogue
raisonné, which depicts a centaur.
87. See Proust, Chroniques, pp. 178-179.
NOTES: V. ELSTIR
215
88. Cf. JF, III, 98.
89. Cf. Th. Duret, Les Peintres impressionnistes, Paris, 1878, p. 13;
H. Focillon, La Peinture aux XIXe et XXe siècles, Paris, 1928, pp. 174,
193.
94. Cf. JF, III, 124.
95. JF, III, 182-186.
96. AD, I, 178.
97.
98.
90. JF, III, 115-118.
91. Cf. P. Jamot, Manet, I, 31-33, 37.
92. JF, III, 136.
93. Cf. G, II, 170. See Feuillerat, op. cit., p. 64, note 17. It is
interesting to note that the canvas by Manet called Asperges was first
owned by Charles Ephrussi, at whose home it might easily have been
seen by Proust.
G, II, 231-232.
Cf. Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, VI, 276, footnote;
and XXXVII, 13.
99. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, p. 67.
100. Cf. G. Geffroy, Claude Monet, sa vie, son temps, son œuvre,
Préface, p. ii.
101. JF, III, 105 ff.
102. See P, I, 228.
103. SG, II (3), 78.
104. G, II, 102.
105. Compare also TR, II, 179: "Comme Elstir aimait à voir incar-
née devant lui, dans sa femme, la beauté vénitienne, qu'il avait si
souvent peinte dans ses œuvres
106. JF, III, 118-119.
107. Cf. JF, III, 119-121.
""
108. P, I, 94.
109. Besides, of course, that of Giorgione. Raphael's influence
is referred to by Paul Jamot, Manet, I, 26-27. G. Pauli showed the
dependence of Manet's work on a drawing after Raphael, engraved by
Marcantonio, entitled The Judgment of Paris.
!
216
PROUST AND PAINTING
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI
THE ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
1. See supra, chapter I, note 31.
2. See Armand Pierhal, "Sur la composition wagnérienne de
l'œuvre de Proust," Bibliothèque Universelle et Revue de Genève, June
1929, pp. 710-719. But whereas Pierhal is usually credited with
pointing out the conception of Wagnerian leitmotifs and composition
in Proust's work, it should be borne in mind that six years before him
Cœuroy had written: "Il n'y a pas, dans toute l'œuvre de Wagner, de
leitmotif employé avec plus de conséquence et plus d'habileté que cette
petite phrase de Vinteuil." (Cf. La Revue Musicale, Jan. 1, 1923, p.
200.) And Proust himself of course often called his friends' atten-
tion to his "themes" and "composition." Speaking of the composition
in his work, Proust wrote, "elle est si complexe qu'elle n'apparaît
que très tardivement quand tous les "Thèmes' ont commencé à se
combiner." (Cf. L. Pierre-Quint, Comment parut "Du Côté de chez
Swann," Paris, Kra, 1926, p. 45.)
3. This is very well brought out by René Huyghe - in "Affinités
électives: Vermeer et Proust," Amour de l'Art, XVII (1936), 7-15 —
to whose article we are indebted for using this example of a pictorial
leitmotif.
4. Cf. S, I, 285.
5.
See supra, p. 59, and note 35 of chapter IV.
6. Cf. S, II, 37.
7. Ibid., p. 39.
8. Ibid., p. 119.
9. JF, I, 148.
10. Ibid., p. 58.
11. René Huyghe seems unaware of the fact that Swann's feeling
for Odette continues in the subsequent volumes (cf. JF, II, 26, 27)
and that in this connection Botticelli too plays an important rôle.
M. Huyghe writes: "L'amour de Swann est scandé de deux thèmes
qui évoluent avec lui: la sonate de Vinteuil et Vermeer." (Huyghe,
loc. cit., p. 8.) But to these two should really be added a third and
lasting motif, that of Botticelli, which appears both at the beginning
and at the end of Swann's love.
NOTES: VI. ORCHESTRATION OF PAINTING
217
12. See supra, pp. 59-60.
13. Cf. P, I, 274.
14. Cf. P, II, 238.
15. See supra, p. 74.
16. See F. Mauriac, in Hommage, p. 239; Pierre-Quint, Marcel
Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, p. 122.
17. Cf. TR, I, 104-105.
18. Ibid., p. 42. See supra, p. 85.
19. Cf. S, I, 34.
20. Cf. JF, I, 145; see also TR, I, 112.
21.
Cf. G, II, 101; 187-188. See also supra, chapter II, note 2.
22. Cf. G, II, 19.
23. Cf. Corr. gén., III, 141.
24. Cf. TR, II, 49.
25. Various futile attempts have been made to unify Proust's
treatment of time by limiting it to a single philosophic point of view,
but at the cost of suppressing or evading essential contradictions.
For instance Jäckel's attempt to limit Proust's conception of time to
ideas compatible with Bergson's philosophy conveniently disregards
all anti-Bergsonian concepts in Proust, like time viewed as a dimen-
sion. See remarks of the present author in Romanic Review, XXVII
(1936), 45-50. Even Armand Pierhal, while envisaging Time as a
leitmotif that appears, vanishes and reappears, fails to distinguish
between the various shades of meaning of time as used by Proust.
But the significance of Proust's treatment lies precisely in the con-
ception of Time in terms of a hundred and one meanings which are
different and even contradictory.
26. Cf. Schopenhauer, "On Some Forms of Literature," in The Art
of Literature, London, Allen & Unwin (1891), 1926, p. 82.
27. Cf. A. Barre, Le Symbolisme, p. 199.
28.
"A Propos du 'style' de Flaubert," Chroniques, p. 193.
29. See Pierre Abraham, Créatures chez Balzac, pp. 294-314. Out
of 120 pictorial allusions noticed in Balzac, 36 refer to Greek or
Roman art and 33 to Italian Renaissance art. Cf. ibid., p. 297.
30. Ibid., p. 300.
31. G, I, 131.
32. P, II, 9.
33.
TR, I, 62.
218
PROUST AND PAINTING
34. S, I, 74.
35. JF, III, 61.
36. S, II, 159.
37.
38. G, I, 26.
Ibid., p. 76.
39. JF, III, 66.
40. TR, II, 40.
41. Ibid., p. 39.
42. S, II, 38.
43. JF, III, 55.
44. S, I, 99.
45. JF, II, 153.
46. G, I, 66.
47. S, II, 255.
48. JF, III, 197.
49. P, II, 238.
50. Ibid., p. 241.
51. TR, II, 37.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII
TRANSPOSING PAINTING
INTO LITERATURE
1. Corr. gén., II, 181.
2.
For instance, he praises Montesquiou's successful treatment
of a subject as rendered by an "incomparable peintre que vous êtes
pour le fixer." Cf. Corr. gén., I, 264-265.
3. As in the following passage: "cette ressemblance, comme la
mémoire apporte à un peintre le souvenir d'une 'vue,' est fugitive."
Ibid., p. 284. See also pp. 210, 225, 230, 246.
4. TR, II, 243.
5. Ibid., p. 257.
6. Cf. ibid., p. 256.
7. Ibid., pp. 54-55.
8. Ibid., p. 62.
9. Ibid., p. 65.
10. Les Plaisirs et les Jours, p. 209.
NOTES: VII. TRANSPOSING INTO LITERATURE
219
11. See Elie-Joseph Bois's interview in Le Temps, Nov. 12, 1913,
quoted by Robert Dreyfus, Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust, p. 289.
12. Cf. Léon Pierre-Quint, Comment parut "Du Côté de chez
Swann" (lettres à René Blum, Bernard Grasset et Louis Brun), p. 60.
13. Cf. "A Propos du 'style' de Flaubert," Chroniques, p. 198.
14. Ibid., p. 197.
15. Ibid., p. 203.
16. TR, II, 33.
17. Cf. JF, I, 102.
18. Quoted by Jacques-Emile Blanche, De Gauguin à la Revue
Nègre, pp. 25-26.
19. Robert Dreyfus, op. cit., p. 292, quoting the E.-J. Bois inter-
view of Le Temps, Nov. 12, 1913.
20. Quoted by A. Alexandre, Claude Monet, p. 38.
21. Cf. S, I, 140.
22. SG, II (2), 210.
23. From a letter to Paul Morand, in Hommage, p. 81.
24. G, II, 20.
25. Cf. Oscar Wilde, Intentions, New York, Putnam, p. 31.
26. See supra, p. 16.
27. See supra, pp. 15-16.
28. P, II, 74.
29. TR, II, 48-49. Cf. P, I, 217; P, II, 75-76.
30. Ibid., p. 70.
31. We find many passages where the rational element is placed
first and only later is supplemented by the Impressionist element of
illusion or surprise. In other sentences the two modes are inextricably
intertwined. The following is a typical example of Proust's attempt
to combine Impressionism with intellectualism, showing us experi-
ences as they first appear and yet correcting the impression by telling
us at the same time how its illusory appearance differs from reality:
"Une fillette d'un blond roux qui avait l'air de rentrer de promenade
et tenait à la main une bêche de jardinage, nous regardait, levant son
visage semé de taches roses. Ses yeux noirs brillaient et comme je ne
savais pas alors, ni ne l'ai appris depuis, réduire en ses éléments
objectifs une impression forte, comme je n'avais pas, ainsi qu'on dit,
assez 'd'esprit d'observation' pour dégager la notion de leur couleur,
pendant longtemps, chaque fois que je repensai à elle, le souvenir de
leur éclat se présentait aussitôt à moi comme celui d'un vif azur,
220
PROUST AND PAINTING
puisqu'elle était blonde: de sorte que, peut-être si elle n'avait pas
eu des yeux aussi noirs, ce qui frappait tant la première fois qu'on
la voyait —, je n'aurais pas été, comme je le fus, plus particulièrement
amoureux, en elle, de ses yeux bleus" (S, I, 203-204).
•
P
32. Cf. E. R. Curtius, Marcel Proust, p. 79.
Ce
33.
signes d'autant de lois et d'idées . . .” (TR, II, 24).
34. "Seule l'impression, si chétive qu'en semble la matière, si
invraisemblable la trace, est un critérium de vérité . . .” (ibid., p. 26).
il fallait tâcher d'interpréter les sensations comme les
35. See our exposition supra, chapter V, pp. 100-103.
36. Cf. Corr. gén., II, 80, 84, 87, 91, etc.
37. About Dostoyevsky, Proust writes: "Il arrive que Mme de
Sévigné, comme Elstir, comme Dostoïewski, au lieu de présenter les
choses dans l'ordre logique, c'est-à-dire en commençant par la cause,
nous montre d'abord l'effet, l'illusion qui nous frappe. C'est ainsi
que Dostoïewski présente ses personnages. Leurs actions nous appa-
raissent aussi trompeuses que ces effets d'Elstir où la mer a l'air d'être
dans le ciel." (Cf. P, II, 239-240.)
For Flaubert, cf. "A Propos du 'style' de Flaubert," Chroniques,
pp. 193-211.
38. JF, II, 75.
39. For the importance of the vacation and holiday content of
Impressionism, see Meyer Schapiro, "The Nature of Abstract Art,”
Marxist Quarterly, I, No. 1, 1937.
40. Ibid.,
Ibid., p. 101.
41. Ibid., pp. 101-102.
42. SG, II (1), 215-216.
43. See supra, pp. 104 ff.
Cf. Geffroy, Claude Monet, sa vie, son temps, son œuvre,
44.
p. 297.
45. Cf. Geffroy, op. cit., pp. 299-301.
46. Cf. A. Alexandre, Claude Monet, p. 95.
47. JF, II, 144-145.
48. SG, II (1), 215.
49. JF, III, 54-57.
50. Ibid., p. 58.
51. Ibid., p. 209.
52. AD, I, 118.
53. Cf. ibid., p. 181.
NOTES: VII. TRANSPOSING INTO LITERATURE
221
54. Cf. Corr. gén., V, 238.
55. Ibid., p. 239.
56. Cf. Geffroy, Claude Monet . . ., p. 309.
57. See supra, chapter III, pp. 32-33.
58. G, II, 36.
Remarks
59.
of Proust's servant, Céleste, quoted by Stephen
Hudson, in Céleste and Other Sketches, pp. 20-21.
60. P, I, 105.
61. TR, II, 33-34.
62. Geffroy, op. cit., p. 296.
63. See supra, chapter IV, pp. 75-76. (Cf. S, I, 243-245.)
64. Cf. S, II, 239; JF, III, 58, etc.
65. SG, II (3), 206.
66. JF, II, 29.
67. G, I, 242.
68. S, I, 211.
69. S, II, 255.
70. P, II, 10.
71. S, I, 95.
72. JF, III, 247.
73. S, I, 22.
74. G, I, 159.
75. S, I, 244. See supra, p. 75.
76. S, I, 244.
77. SG, II (2), 47.
78. AD, II, 143.
79. S, I, 33.
80. G, I, 122.
81. TR, II, 256-257.
82. Ibid., p. 257.
83. The italics are ours. TR, II, 12.
84.
85. Georges Rivière's formulation appeared in L'Impressionniste,
Journal d'Art, April 1877.
86. G, II, 102.
Cf. A. Alexandre, Claude Monet, p. 69.
87. Cf. S, I, 248.
88. Cf. ibid., pp. 69, 72, 79.
89. JF, II, 144.
90. P, I, 217.
222
PROUST AND PAINTING
91. G, I, 12; cf. also JF, II, 86.
92.
This is brought out by José Ortega y Gasset, in Hommage,
p. 293.
93. See supra, pp. 138-139. Proust clearly stated that style is not
a matter of technique that is, not a question of technical artifice
but, as in the art of painting, primarily of vision. And we recall that
when mentioning the Impressionist painter Elstir, Proust speaks of
him as an artist who was to have "such a profound influence on his
general vision of things" (see supra, p. 142.)
The author of the present study wishes, at this point, to express his
indebtedness to Meyer Schapiro, who kindly directed his attention to
the complex problem of Impressonist syntax and prose style, its rela-
tionship to painting, and the literature on this question.
94. By merely naming literary predecessors, we cannot minimize
the importance of painting as a factor in nineteenth-century literary
Impressionism. Of course, many literary forerunners can be named
in both prose and poetry, who although not all were impressionistic,
were decidedly picture and color minded and thus helped pave the way
for the main current which culminated in literary Impressionism.
We might mention, among others, Chateaubriand, Gautier, Baudelaire,
Joubert, Champfleury, Sainte-Beuve, Banville, Rimbaud, Laforgue.
Lerch mentions more definitely impressionistic authors, such as
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and especially La Fontaine, and traces typical
impressionistic means like the nominal construction to periods long
before the appearance of the so-called Impressionist painters, tracing
other devices even as far back as the Chanson de Roland. (See Lerch's
valuable Historische französische Syntax, III, 90 ff., 100, 370, 466;
I, 42.) But just as one is able to find old pictorial precedents for any
single trait of pictorial Impressionism, so of course one should easily
be able to find old literary precedents for any modern syntactical
device, especially when the latter has been isolated from the expressive
system from which it was drawn. This procedure can only prove the
limited number of basic linguistic means at our disposal, but it in no
way disproves the infinite variety of effects that can be produced with
them. The influence of painting on syntax should be considered not
in the light of a series of isolated syntactical details, but rather from
the point of view of a general attitude toward life and art which
applies any literary resources, old or recent, in order to create a new
effect. What counts here is not the use of a single element, but the
NOTES: VII. TRANSPOSING INTO LITERATURE
223
manner in which, and the purpose for which, it is employed. The
frequency of certain devices and their particular organization in an
expressive system can create a chord that is totally new, a general tone
entirely unknown in preceding centuries. When one views the totality
of a style and inquires why certain elements become important at a
given moment in preference to other elements, then the question of
content, ideology, values, relation to other arts, becomes more
pertinent.
95. Gustave Lanson, L'Art de la prose, p. 277.
**
96. '. . . une transposition systématique des moyens d'expression
d'un art, qui est l'art de peindre, dans le domaine d'un autre art, qui
est l'art d'écrire.” F. Brunetière, "L'Impressionnisme dans le roman,”
La Revue des Deux Mondes, 1879, reprinted in his book, Le Roman
naturaliste, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1893, p. 94.
97. For precedents see: Charles Bally, "Impressionnisme et
grammaire," Mélanges d'histoire littéraire et de philosophie offerts à
M. Bernard Bouvier, Genève, Editions Sonor, 1920, pp. 261-279;
Lanson, op. cit., pp. 239-240; G. Loesch, Die impressionistische
Syntax der Goncourt, Nürnberg, B. Hilz, 1919, pp. 46-47, pointing
out "ces ivresses d'hommes," etc.
98. Cf. JF, III, 191.
99. JF, II, 52.
100. S, I, 219.
101. G, II, 111.
102. SG, II (2), 147.
103. SG, II (1), 186.
104. JF, III, 103.
105. JF, II, 58.
106. SG, II (1), 186.
107. JF, III, 46.
108. G, I, 73.
109. Cf. Loesch, op. cit., pp. 88 ff, especially p. 91.
110. S, I, 300.
111. JF, I, 241.
112. JF, III, 69.
113. JF, III, 213.
114. P, I, 227.
115. JF, III, 43.
116. S, II, 299.
224
PROUST AND PAINTING
117. Brunetière, op. cit., p. 90.
118. Lanson, op. cit., p. 267.
119. Cf. Loesch, op. cit., p. 74. An example from Goncourt,
quoted by Loesch, is: "La fille, la sage-femme, la sachant une coureuse
de barrières, .. la sage-femme lui répétait qu'elle ne s'avisât pas
de faire un enfant."
120. S, I, 49.
121. Ibid., p. 22.
122. Cf. L. Spitzer, who calls this modern form of expression
"Spreizstellung," in Stilstudien, I, 146 ff. Cf. also Eugen Lerch,
Historische französische Syntax, III, 364-379.
123. Quoted by Lerch, op. cit., III, 374.
124. G, I, 201.
125. JF, III, 109-110.
126. G, I, 118.
127. S, I, 123.
128. P, II, 65.
129. Cf. Spitzer, Stilstudien, II, 402. The student of Proust will
be indebted to Spitzer's significant study of Proust's syntax (Stilstudien,
II, 365-497).
130. Cf. E. Lerch, op. cit., III, 364.
131. Ibid., pp. 364-365.
132. S, I, 303. This example is quoted by Lerch.
133. See Lerch, op. cit., III, 365.
134. Cf. L. Spitzer, op. cit., II, 401-402.
135. S, II, 102.
136. S, I, 39.
137. P, I, 123.
138. S, II, 257.
139. Cf. Lerch, op. cit., III, 375. This device is also known as
Erlebte Rede, as well as Rede als Tatsache.
140. Ibid.
141. S, II, 111.
142. Namely by Lerch and his school. Cf. Lerch, op. cit., III, 65,
100, 104, 465.
143. Particularly in connection with Flaubert's new use of the
imperfect to express indirectly the thoughts of his characters. See
Proust's article "A Propos du 'style' de Flaubert," in Chroniques,
pp. 193-211.
ป
NOTES: VII. TRANSPOSING INTO LITERATURE
225
144. Flaubert writes, for example, ". . . et l'on voyait à côté d'eux
[des gamins], ne soufflant mot dans la robe blanche de sa première
communion rallongée pour la circonstance, quelque fillette de quatorze
ou treize ans (leur cousine ou leur sœur sans doute)." Quoted from
Madame Bovary by Lerch, op. cit., III, 465.
145. SG, II (1), 169.
146. S, II, 161.
147. JF, II, 91.
148. G, II, 16.
149. AD, II, 142. For Elstir's "équivoques," see supra, pp. 101,
104-107.
150. See supra, p. 101.
151. For an elaboration of this view, see supra, note 94, ch. VII.
152. See Brunetière, Le Roman naturaliste, p. 92; G. Lanson,
L'Art de la prose, p. 264; and especially Georg Loesch's study, Die
impressionistische Syntax der Goncourt, pp. 34 ff.: "Die Haupteigenart
der impressionistischen Stiltechnik liegt in der nominalen Ausdrucks-
weise."
153. Cf. Brunetière, op. cit., p. 92; Lanson, op cit., p. 265; Loesch,
op. cit., pp. 49 ff.
154. "Une condition de mon œuvre telle que je l'avais conçue
tout à l'heure dans la bibliothèque était l'approfondissement d'im-
pressions qu'il fallait d'abord recréer par la mémoire." (TR, II, 243.)
Proust therefore writes: "La réalité ne se forme que dans la mémoire,
les fleurs qu'on me montre aujourd'hui pour la première fois ne
semblent pas de vraies fleurs." (S, I, 265.)
""
155. Proust thus states, "toute impression est double, à demi
engainée dans l'objet, prolongée en nous-même par une autre moitié
que seuls nous pourrions connaître . (TR, II, 43). He takes
unusual pains to elucidate and crystallize his feelings in enduring
intellectual terms: "L'impression est pour l'écrivain ce qu'est l'ex-
périmentation pour le savant avec cette différence que chez le savant,
le travail de l'intelligence précède et chez l'écrivain vient après. Ce
que nous n'avons pas eu à déchiffrer, à éclaircir par notre effort
personnel, ce qui était clair avant nous, n'est pas à nous." (TR, II,
26-27.) Cf. also ibid., p. 50.
156. See supra, chapter V, pp. 101, 104-107; also p. 145.
157. See, for instance, the second passage on the sea quoted on
p. 144, supra.
226
PROUST AND PAINTING
"
158.
quand, tout à coup, la voiture ayant tourné, elle nous
déposa à leurs pieds [des clochers]; et ils s'étaient jetés si rudement
au-devant d'elle, qu'on n'eut que le temps d'arrêter pour ne pas se
heurter au porche." S, I, 260-261.
•
159. Cf. JF, II, 164.
160. Cf. JF, I, 84; G, II, 36; AD, I, 101; S, II, 242, etc
161. Cf. P, I, 77; SG, II (3), 106.
162. Cf. AD, I, 101.
163. Cf. JF, I, 234, II, 13.
164. Cf. AD, I, 184.
165. TR, II, 256.
166. JF, III, 151.
167. SG, II (3), 189-190. Note the frequent use of the imperfect
-almost the only tense in the passage to express the instantaneity
of the illusions. Note also the Impressionist use of the indefinite
pronoun "on," which is more vague, more irrational than "nous," and
which, in addition, serves here as a convenient means for making the
reader share the impression.
168. JF, II, 75.
169. G, II, 162.
170. S, II, 37-38.
171. SG, II (2), 45.
172. G, II, 58-59.
173. SG, II (1), 43.
174. S, II, 220.
175. Cf. JF, II, 148-149.
176. Corr gén., IV, 260.
177. TR, II, 40.
178. Ibid., p. 40.
179. Of the various literary factors here the most important per-
haps is the tradition of the Symbolist poets and their forerunners,
chiefly Baudelaire. Cf. Jean-Albert Bédé, "Marcel Proust. Problèmes
récents," Le Flambeau, XIX (1936), 324. Proust was formed to a
great extent by the Symbolist background of his generation, although
his complex originality has won him an independent and unique
position which cannot easily be ascribed to any single school or factor.
180. See supra, pp. 138-139.
181. Corr. gén., III, 109. We could clarify further this parallel
NOTES: VIII. CONCLUDING REMARKS
227
१९
with Impressionist painting. Proust's imagery is comparable to the
illusory vision introduced by Impressionist art and later popularized by
photography, presenting a picture from an unusual angle, a picture
which is new but none the less true: . . . image singulière d'une
chose connue, image différente de celle que nous avons l'habitude de
voir, singulière et pourtant vraie et qui à cause de cela est pour nous
doublement saisissante parce qu'elle nous étonne, nous fait sortir de
nos habitudes, et tout à la fois nous fait rentrer en nous-même en
nous rappelant une impression." (JF, III, 102.) Though distinctly
individual, Proust's visual comparisons and literary images are, like
Elstir's "équivoques," impressions based directly on experience. They
are so inevitably true they can almost be "photographed."
182. G, II, 102.
183. S, I, 205.
184. See Brunetière, Le Roman naturaliste, pp. 93-94, 106-107.
Quoting Brunetière: "C'est pourquoi, dans un tel système, l'effet
n'est atteint et ne peut être atteint, on l'a vu, qu'autant que l'on a
trouvé la sensation qui correspond à tel ou tel sentiment, à telle ou
telle pensée qu'il s'agit d'exprimer. Or il arrive souvent qu'on ne le
trouve pas. Il arrive plus souvent encore que l'on trouve à côté; car,
si d'un homme à l'autre le sentiment varie, que dirons-nous de la
sensation?" (ibid., p. 107).
185. Proust uses this expression in criticizing the quality of Paul
Morand's metaphors which do not quite reach the desired effect: "tous
les à-peu-près ne comptent pas. L'eau (dans des conditions données)
bout à 100 degrés. A 98 ou 99 degrés le phénomène ne se produit pas.
Alors mieux vaut pas d'images" (Preface to Tendres Stocks, p. 32).
NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUDING REMARKS
1. Some prevalent views on Proust and painting may be account-
able as due to the omission of essential data, which of course casts
an incomplete and hence a false light, also to the postulation of
conjectures difficult to substantiate or of statements based on lack of
sympathy, sometimes on false rumor. To mention only a few instances,
René Huyghe has an important contribution to the subject, but not
228
PROUST AND PAINTING
examining all the required data, he is unfortunately led to discard
Rembrandt as a farovite artist of Proust. Cf. R. Huyghe, "Affinités
électives: Vermeer et Proust," Amour de l'Art, XVII (1936), 11-13.
This is contrary to fact. Basing himself on a rumor probably started
by J.-E. Blanche's wife, André Maurois repeats that Proust had no
feeling for painting and hastily concludes that Proust acquired his
pictorial taste only from Ruskin. Cf. André Maurois, "Proust et
Ruskin," Essays and Studies (English Association), XVII (1932), 26
ff. For lack of sympathy for the subject, Baldensperger interprets
Proust's constant reference to painting as a rather artificial pose:
*
'. . . l'esthétisme, assez artificiel qui ne fait voir les êtres à part la
servante Françoise qu'à travers Gozzoli ou Botticelli, Vermeer,
Rembrandt ou Dürer, n'a pas grande prise sur des sensibilités moins
dilettantes." Cf. Fernand Baldensperger, La Littérature française entre
les deux guerres, 1919-1939, Los Angeles, Lymanhouse, 1941, p. 25.
Lamandé goes so far as to state that Proust cannot be considered an
Impressionist writer at all, since Impressionist art implies the intensi-
fication of light, whereas Proust's manner so he thinks results too
often in the production of dark shadows! Cf. André Lamandé,
L'Impressionnisme dans l'art et la littérature, Monaco, 1925, p. 27.
2. Regarding the trend toward correspondence of the senses
(synaesthesia) and of the arts before Proust, see Marie-Antoinette
Chaix, La Correspondance des arts dans la poésie contemporaine, Paris,
Félix-Alcan, 1919; also Jean Pommier, La Mystique de Baudelaire,
Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1932.
3. Cf. G, II, 19.
4. Cf. Corr. gén., IV, 224, where Proust alludes to the extreme
stages of Monet and Rembrandt.
5. Cf. Preface to La Bible d'Amiens, pp. 9-10.
6. P, II, 75-76.
7. This definition by Boschini (17 century) is brought to light
by Lionello Venturi in his History of Art Criticism, p. 130.
8. See JF, III, 133-134 and G, II, 101.
9. Namely works like Wölfflin's Principles of Art History,
emphasizing factors of pure visibility.
10. JF, I, 176.
11. P, II, 78.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In every case the edition consulted is the last one mentioned. When the date
of the first edition differs from that of the edition consulted, the first-edition
date appears in parentheses.
1. WORKS BY MARCEL PROUST IN BOOK FORM:
Portraits de Peintres, Paris, Au Ménestrel, 1896. (Quatre pièces pour
piano de Reynaldo Hahn; illustrations de Mme Madeleine Lemaire.)
Les Plaisirs et les jours (Illustrations de Mme Madeleine Lemaire.
Préface d'Anatole France et quatre pièces pour piano de Reynaldo
Hahn), Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1896; new edition, Gallimard (1921),
1924 (without illustrations and music).
A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, 1913-1927.
Du Côté de chez Swann, Grasset, 1913, 1 vol.; new edition: Galli-
mard (1919), 1927, 2 vols.
A l'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Gallimard (1919), 1927, 3
vols.
Le Côté de Guermantes, I, Gallimard (1920), 1928.
Le Côté de Guermantes, II; Sodome et Gomorrhe, I, Gallimard
(1921), 1927.
Sodome et Gomorrhe, II, Gallimard (1922), 1927, 3 vols.
La Prisonnière, Gallimard (1923), 1927, 2 vols.
Albertine Disparue, Gallimard (1925), 1926, 2 vols.
Le Temps Retrouvé, Gallimard (1927), 1927, 2 vols.
Pastiches et mélanges, Paris, Gallimard (1919), 1927.
Chroniques, Paris, Gallimard, 1927.
2. PROUST'S TRANSLATIONS AND PREFACES:
John Ruskin, La Bible d'Amiens (Traduction, Notes et Préface par
Marcel Proust), Paris, Mercure de France (1904), 1926.
John Ruskin, Sésame et les Lys (Traduction, Préface et Notes de Marcel
Proust), Paris, Mercure de France (1906), 1935.
Jacques-Emile Blanche, Propos de Peintre, I, De David à Degas
(Préface de Marcel Proust), Paris, Emile-Paul, 1919.
Paul Morand, Tendres Stocks (Préface de Marcel Proust), Paris,
Gallimard, 1921.
231
232
PROUST AND PAINTING
3. ARTICLES BY PROUST NOT REPRINTED IN HIS BOOKS:
"Etudes. . . Portrait de Mme X.", Le Banquet (No. 6), Nov. 1892.
"Etudes. . . II. Avant la nuit; III. Souvenir," La Revue Blanche,
Dec. 1893.
"Un dimanche au conservatoire," Le Gaulois, Jan. 14, 1895.
"Figures parisiennes, Camille Saint-Saëns," Le Gaulois, Dec. 11, 1895.
"Adieux à Alphonse Daudet," La Presse, Dec. 19, 1897.
"Fête chez Montesquiou à Neuilly," Le Figaro, Jan. 18, 1904.
"Un Professeur de Beauté," Les Arts de la Vie, IV (Aug. 1905),
pp. 67-79.
"John Ruskin. Les Pierres de Venise," Chronique des Arts et de la
curiosité (supplément de La Gazette des Beaux-Arts), May 5, 1906.
Elie-J. Bois, "A la recherche du temps perdu, Variété littéraire"
[Interview accordée à Elie-Joseph Bois], Le Temps, Nov. 12, 1913.
"Sommes-nous en présence d'un renouvellement du style? Convient-il
de dénoncer une crise de l'intelligence? Réponse de Marcel Proust,”
La Renaissance politique, littéraire et artistique, July 22, 1922.
André Berge, "Autour d'une trouvaille (Confession de Marcel Proust
enfant)," Cahiers du Mois, Dec. 1924, pp. 5-18.
4. CORRESPONDENCE OF MARCEL PROUST:
Correspondance générale (vols. 1-5 publiés par Robert Proust et Paul
Brach; vol. 6 par Suzy Proust-Mante et Paul Brach), Paris, Plon,
1930-1936, 6 vols.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, Aventures de l'esprit, Paris, Emile-Paul, 1929,
pp. 59-74.
Bibesco, Marthe Lucie, Au Bal avec Marcel Proust, Paris, Gallimard,
1929.
Billy, Robert de, Lettres et conversations, Paris, Edition des Portiques,
1930.
Clermont-Tonnerre, E., Robert de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust, Paris,
Flammarion, 1925.
Crémieux, Benjamin, Du Côté de Marcel Proust, Paris, Lemarget,
1929.
Daudet, Lucien, Autour de soixante lettres de Marcel Proust, Paris,
Gallimard, 1929.
Hommage à Marcel Proust, Paris, Gallimard, 1927.
Lauris, Georges de, "Marcel Proust d'après une correspondance et des
BIBLIOGRAPHY
233
}
souvenirs. Lettres de Marcel Proust à G. de Lauris," Revue de Paris,
XLV (1938), 734-776.
"Lettres à Maurice Duplay," La Revue Nouvelle, XLVIII (1929),
1-13.
Lettres à la Nouvelle Revue Française, Paris, Gallimard, 1932.
Lettres à une amie (Recueil de quarante-et-une lettres inédites adressées
à Marie Nordlinger, 1899-1908), Manchester, Editions du Calame,
1942.
Pierre-Quint, Léon, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris, Kra
(1925), 1928.
Pierre-Quint, Léon, Comment travaillait Proust, Paris, Editions des
Cahiers Libres, 1928.
Pierre-Quint, Léon [Editor], "Lettres inédites de Marcel Proust à
Paul Brach...," La Revue Universelle, XXXIII (April 1, 1928),
pp. 1-13.
Pierre-Quint, Léon, Comment parut "Du Côté de chez Swann,"
(Lettres à René Blum, Bernard Grasset et Louis Brun), Paris, Kra,
1926.
Pouquet, Jeanne Maurice, Le Salon de Mme Arman de Caillavet, Paris,
Hachette, 1926.
Robert, Louis de, "Comment débuta Proust," Revue de France, Jan. 1
and 15, 1925.
Robert, Louis de, De Loti à Proust, Paris, Flammarion, 1928.
5. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES ON PROUST:
Alden, Douglas W., Marcel Proust and His French Critics, Los Angeles,
Lymanhouse, 1940.
Pierre-Quint, Léon, Comment travaillait Proust, Paris, Editions des
Cahiers Libres, 1928.
Silva Ramos, G. de, "Bibliographie proustienne," in Lettres à la NRF,
Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1932, pp. 13-86.
Talvar, Hector, La Fiche bibliographique française (No. 17), Paris,
1928.
6. CRITICAL STUDIES ON PROUST:
Abagantel, Louis, Marcel Proust et la musique, Paris, 1939.
Abraham, Pierre, Proust; recherches sur la création intellectuelle,
Paris, Rieder, 1930.
234
PROUST AND PAINTING
Ames, Van Meter, Proust and Santayana, the Aesthetic Way of Life,
Chicago, Willet, Clark & Co., 1937.
Aressy, Lucien, A la recherche de Marcel Proust (Préface de Sylvain
Bonmariage), Paris, Editions du Triptyque, 1930.
Bédé, Jean-Albert, "Marcel Proust. Problèmes récents," Le Flambeau,
XIX (1936), 311-324, 439-452.
Benoist-Méchin, J., "De la musique considérée par rapport aux opéra-
tions du langage dans l'œuvre de Marcel Proust," Intentions, Jan.
1923.
Benoist-Méchin, J., La Musique et l'Immortalité dans l'œuvre de
Marcel Proust, Paris, Kra, 1926.
Billy, Robert de, Lettres et conversations, Paris, Editions des Portiques,
1930.
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, "Du Côté de chez Swann," Echo de Paris, Dec.
16, 1913.
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, Mes Modèles, Paris, Stock, 1928.
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, Propos de Peintre, Paris, Emile-Paul, 1919-
1928, 3 vols.: De David à Degas, 1919; Dates, 1921; De Gauguin à
la Revue Nègre, 1928.
Blondel, Charles A., La Psychographie de Marcel Proust, Paris, Vrin,
1932.
Brasillach, Robert, Portraits, Paris, Plon, 1935.
Burnet, Etienne, Essences, Paris, Editions Seheur, 1929.
Cattaui, Georges, L'Amitié de Proust (Préface de Paul Morand),
Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1935.
Celly, Raoul, Répertoire des thèmes de Marcel Proust, Paris, Librairie
Gallimard, 1935.
Chernowitz, Maurice E., "Bergson's Influence on Marcel Proust,"
Romanic Review, XXVII (1936), 45-50.
Clermont-Tonnerre, E., Robert de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust,
Paris, Flammarion, 1925.
Cochet, Marie-Anne, L'Ame proustienne, Bruxelles, Imprimerie des
Etablissements Collignon, 1929.
Cœuroy, André, Musique et littérature, études de musique et littérature
comparées, Paris, Bloud et Gay, 1923.
Crémieux, Benjamin, Du Côté de Marcel Proust, Paris, Lemarget, 1929.
Crémieux, Benjamin, XXe Siècle, Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1924.
Curtius, Ernst Robert, Marcel Proust (traduit de l'allemand par
Armand Pierhal), Paris, Les Editions de la Revue Nouvelle, 1928.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
235
J
--
Dandieu, Arnaud, Marcel Proust; sa révélation psychologique, Paris,
Firmin-Didot, 1930.
Daudet, Charles, Répertoire des personnages de "A la recherche du
temps perdu," Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1928.
Daudet, Léon, Salons et journaux, Paris, Grasset, 1932.
Daudet, Lucien, Autour de soixante lettres de Marcel Proust, Paris,
Gallimard, 1929.
Dreyfus, Robert, Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust, Paris, Grasset, 1926.
Dreyfus, Robert, De M. Thiers à Marcel Proust, histoire et souvenirs,
Paris, Plon, 1939.
Fernandez, Ramon, Messages (Première série), Paris, Librairie Galli-
mard, 1926.
Fernandez, Ramon, "Note sur l'esthétique de Proust," Nouvelle Revue
Française, XXXI (1928), 272-280.
Ferré, André, Géographie de Marcel Proust, Paris, Sagittaire, 1939.
Feuillerat, Albert, Comment Marcel Proust a composé son roman,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934.
Fiser, Emeric, L'Esthétique de Marcel Proust (Préface de Valery
Larbaud), Paris, A. Rieder, 1933.
Germain, André, De Proust à Dada, Paris, Kra, 1924.
Hahn, Reynaldo, Notes, Paris, Plon, 1933.
Hier, Florence, La Musique dans l'œuvre de Marcel Proust, New York,
Publications of the Institute of French Studies, 1932.
Hommage à Marcel Proust, Paris, Gallimard (1923), 1927.
Hudson, Stephen, Céleste and Other Sketches, London, The Blackmore
Press, 1930.
Huyghe, René, "Affinités électives: Vermeer et Proust," Amour de
l'Art, XVII (1936), 7-15.
Ironside, R., "The Artistic vision of Proust," Horizon, IV, No. 19
(1941), 28-42.
Jäckel, Kurt, Bergson und Proust, Breslau, Priebatsch, 1934.
Jäckel, Kurt, Richard Wagner in der französischen Literatur, Breslau,
Priebatsch, 1932.
Kolb, Philip, "Inadvertent Repetitions of Material in A la recherche
du temps perdu," PMLA, LI (1936), 249-262.
Krutch, Joseph Wood, Five Masters, a Study in the Mutations of the
Novel, New York, Cape and Smith, 1930.
Laurent, Henri, "Marcel Proust et la musique," Le Flambeau, 1927, I,
241-256, II, pp. 49-64.
236
PROUST AND PAINTING
Le Bidois, Robert, "Le Langage parlé des personnages de Proust,"
Français Moderne, Paris, 1939, pp. 197-218.
Lemaître, Georges, Four French Novelists, London, Oxford University
Press, 1938.
Lindner, Gladys Dudley [compiler], Marcel Proust-Reviews and Esti-
mates in English, Stanford University Press, 1942.
Massis, Henri, Le Drame de Marcel Proust, Paris, Grasset, 1937.
Mauriac, François, Proust, Paris, Marcelle Lesage, 1926.
Maurois, André, "Proust et Ruskin," Essays and Studies (English
Association), XVII (1932), 25-32.
Montesquiou, Robert, Les Pas Effacés; Mémoires, Paris, Emile-Paul,
1923, 3 vols.
Mourey, Gabriel, "Proust, Ruskin et Walter Pater," Le Monde Nou-
veau, Aug.-Sept. and Oct. 1926, pp. 702-714, 896-909.
Murray, J., "Marcel Proust et John Ruskin," Mercure de France,
CLXXXIX (1926), 100-112.
Murray, J. Middleton, "Marcel Proust: A New Sensibility,” Quarterly
Review, New York, 1922, 86-100.
O'Brien, Justin M., "La Mémoire involontaire avant Proust," Revue
de Littérature Comparée, XIX (1939), 19-36.
Pierhal, Armand, "Sur la composition wagnérienne de l'œuvre de
Proust," Bibliothèque Universelle et Revue de Genève, June 1929,
pp. 710-719.
Pierre-Quint, Léon, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris, Kra
(1925), 1928.
1
Pierre-Quint, Léon, "Une nouvelle lecture dix ans plus tard," Europe,
Oct. 15 and Nov. 15, 1935, pp. 185-198 and 382-399.
Pommier, Jean, La Mystique de Proust, Paris, Droz, 1939.
Pouquet, Jeanne Maurice, Le Salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet,
Paris, Hachette, 1926.
Raphael, Pierre, Introduction à la correspondance de Marcel Proust.
Répertoire de la correspondance de Proust, Paris, Sagittaire, 1938.
Saurat, Denis, Tendances, Paris, Editions du Monde Moderne, 1928.
Scott-Moncrieff, Charles Kenneth [Editor], An English Tribute, New
York, T. Seltzer, 1923.
Seillière, Ernest-A., Marcel Proust, Paris, Editions de la Nouvelle
Revue Critique, 1931.
Souday, Paul, Marcel Proust, Paris, Kra, 1927.
Souza, Sybil de, L'Influence de Ruskin sur Proust, Montpellier, 1932.
1
F
BIBLIOGRAPHY
237
2
Souza, Sybil de, La Philosophie de Marcel Proust, Paris, Rieder, 1939.
Spire, André Quelques juifs et demi-juifs, Paris, Grasset, 1928, II,
47-61.
Spitzer, Leo, "Zum Stil Marcel Prousts," Stilstudien, Munich, M.
Hueber, 1928, II, 365-497.
Tiedke, Irma, Symbole und Bilder im Werke Marcel Prousts, Hamburg,
Evert, 1936.
Vettard, Camille, "Proust et Einstein," Nouvelle Revue Française,
Aug. 1, 1922.
Vigneron, Robert, "Genèse de Swann," Revue d'histoire de la philoso-
phie et d'histoire générale de la civilisation, Jan. 15, 1937, pp. 67-
-
115.
Vigneron, Robert, "Marcel Proust et Robert de Montesquiou
Autour de Professionelles Beautés," Modern Philology, XXXIX
(1941), 159-195.
Wegener, Alfons, Impressionismus und Klassizismus im Werke Marcel
Prousts, Frankfurt, Carolus-Druckerei, 1930.
Zaeske, Kaethe, Der Stil Marcel Prousts, Emsdetten, Lechte, 1937.
7. MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES (DEALING CHIEFLY WITH
AESTHETICS, ART AND LITERATURE, AND IMPRES-
SIONISM IN PAINTING AND LANGUAGE):
Abraham, Pierre, Créatures chez Balzac, Paris, Gallimard, 1931, pp.
297-301.
Alexandre, Arsène, Claude Monet, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, 1921.
Alonso, Amado and Lida, Raimundo, El Impresionismo en el lenguaje,
Buenos Aires, Instituto de Filología (Universitad de Buenos Aires),
1936.
Aurier, G.-Albert, "Le Symbolisme en peinture," Mercure de France,
March 1891, pp. 155-165.
Babbitt, Irving, The New Laokoon, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co.,
1910.
Bally, Charles, "Impressionnisme et grammaire," Mélanges d'histoire
littéraire et de philologie offerts à M. Bernard Bouvier, Genève
Editions Sonor, 1920, pp. 261-279.
Balzac, Honoré de, Euvres complètes (Edited by Marcel Bouteron
and Henri Longnon), Paris, L. Conard, 1912-1940, 40 vols.
Barre, A., Le Symbolisme, Paris, Jouve, 1911.
238
PROUST AND PAINTING
the it
Baudelaire, Charles, Euvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire (edited
by F.-F. Gautier and Y. G. Le Dautec), Paris, Gallimard, 1918-1937,
13 vols.
Berenson, Bernhard, The Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1894,
1896-7, 1907), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1930.
Berenson, Bernhard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1932.
Bergson, Henri, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,
Paris (1889), Alcan, 1908.
Bergson, Henri, Matière et Mémoire, Paris (1896), Alcan, 1900.
Bergson, Henri, Le Rire, Paris (1900), Alcan. 1914.
Bergson, Henri, L'Evolution créatrice, Paris (1907), Alcan, 1909.
Bernard, Emile, Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne, Paris, Messein, 1912.
Bernard, Emile, "Le Symbolisme pictural, 1886-1936," Mercure de
France, June 15, 1936, pp. 514-530.
Bertrand, Aloysius, Gaspard de la nuit-fantaisies à la manière de
Rembrandt et de Callot, Paris (1842), Payot, 1925.
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, Propos de Peintre, Paris, Emile-Paul, 1919-
1928, 3 vols.
Bode, Wilhelm von, Sandro Botticelli (trans. by F. Renfield and F. L.
Rudston Brown), London, Methuen, 1925.
Bodkin, Thomas, The Paintings of Jan Vermeer, New York, Phaidon
Edition, Oxford Univ. Press, 1940.
Bosanquet, Bernard, A History of Aesthetics (1892), New York, Mac-
millan, 1934.
Bourget, Paul, Essais de psychologie contemporaine, Paris, Plon, 1912,
2 vols.
Brunetière, Ferdinand, Le Roman naturaliste, Paris, Calmann-Lévy,
1893.
Bürger, W. (pseudonym of Etienne Thoré), "Van der Meer de Delft,”
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXI (1886), 297-330; 458-470; 542-575:
Burty, Philippe, Grave imprudence, Paris, Charpentier, 1880.
Catalogue sommaire des peintures, dessins, cartons et aquarelles .
du
Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris, L. Portail, 1926.
Chaix, Marie Antoinette, La Correspondance des arts dans la poésie
contemporaine, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1919.
Champfleury, Les Aventures de Mademoiselle Mariette, Paris (1853),
M. Lévy, 1857.
Champfleury, Le Réalisme, Paris, Michel Lévy, 1857.
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239
Chandler, Albert Richard and Barnhart, Edward N., A Bibliography
of Psychological and Experimental Aesthetics, 1864-1937, Berkeley,
Univ. of California Press, 1938.
Charlier, Gustave, Le Sentiment de la nature chez les romantiques
français, 1762-1830, Bruxelles, Hayez, 1912.
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F
VITA
Born January 6, 1909, at Odessa, Russia. Emigrated
with parents at age of two. Settled in 1913 in
Lausanne, Switzerland. Received education in French
schools at Lausanne, from kindergarten and ele-
mentary school to part of secondary school. Studied
at the Collège Classique Cantonal de Lausanne,
1919-1923. Came to United States in 1924. Gradu-
ated from College of the City of New York, B.A.,
1932. Pursued graduate studies at Columbia Uni-
versity, M.A., 1933. Taught French at City and
Brooklyn Colleges, 1932-1940. Managing editor of
Bitzaron since 1939. Received degree of Ph.D. at
Columbia University in 1943.
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