A year of reading Proust – Day 13

I’ve had a melody in my head for some time now and have been trying to find lyrics to fit, but nothing has been forthcoming. This morning – beneath ground again – I was struck by the image of Swann staring up at Odette’s window, seeing her light still on and torturing himself with thoughts of the betrayal taking place inside, and suddenly some words for the song suggested themselves to me.

I wonder how many bedrooms and lights and betrayals and restless re-imaginings there are out there in the world? Proust never flinches from the bitter truth of the jealous mind. Swann relentlessly pries into Odette’s past liaisons; he questions and questions; he cannot help himself:

Already he had begun to put further questions. For his jealousy, which had taken an amount of trouble, such as no enemy would have incurred, to strike him this mortal blow, to make him forcibly acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known, his jealousy was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to expose his bosom to an even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy was inspiring Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction.

The jealousy is so pernicious, so profound that personification is required; the jealousy is demonaic; it takes on the mantle of a demon. Swann is consumed in a hell of his love’s making.

The life of Swann’s love, the fidelity of his jealousy, were formed out of death, of infidelity, of innumerable desires, innumerable doubts, all of which had Odette for their object.

Have we not, in varying degrees, all been subject to this madness in our lives at some point? The life of our loves is beset by such perils, something the narrator comes to an early awareness of, when in a deft move, Proust carries us forward in time in the chapter following “Un amour de Swann”, to chime the corrosive emotions of the middle-aged Swann with the burgeoning pangs of desire of the juvenile narrator.

And what makes this juxtaposition even more brilliant? The fact that the subject of the narrator’s infatuation, is Gilberte, the daughter of Swann and Odette…