My Years With Proust - Day 507

   I shall set apart from the other days on which I lingered at Mme de Guermantes's one that was marked by a trivial incident the cruel significance of which entirely escaped me and was not brought home to me until long afterwards.  On this particular evening, Mme de Guermantes had givfen me, knowing that I was fond of them, some branches of syringa which had been sent to her from the South.  When I left her and went upstairs to our flat, Albertine had already returned, and on the staircase I ran into Andree, who seemed to be distressed by the powerful smell of the flowers that I was bringing home.

   "What, are you back already?" I said.

   "Only a moment ago, but Albertine had some letters to write, so she sent me away."

   "You don't think she's up to any mischief?"

   "Not at all, she's writing to her aunt, I think.  But you know how she disliked strong scents, she won't be particularly thrilled by your syringa."

   "How stupid of me! I shall tell Francoise to put them out on the service stairs."

   "Do you imagine that Albertine won't notice the scent of them on you?  Next to tuberoses they've the strongest scent of any flower, I always think.  Anyhow, I believe Francoise has gone out shopping."

   "But in that case, as I haven't got my latchkey, how am I to get in?"

   "Oh, you've only got to ring the bell.  Albertine you let you in.  Besides, Francoise may have come back by this time."

   I said good-bye to Andree.  I had no sooner pressed the bell than Albertine came to open the door, which she had some difficulty in doing since, in the absence of Francoise, she did not know where to turn on the light.  At last she managed to let me in, but the scent of the syringa put her to flight.  I took them to the kitchen, so that meanwhile my mistress, leaving her letter unfinished (I had no idea why), had time to go to my room, from which she called me, and to lie down on my bed.  Once again, at the actual moment I saw nothing in all this that was not perfectly natural, at the most a little confused, but in any case unimportant.*

   *She had nearly been caught with Andree and had snatched a brief respite for herself by turning out all the lights, going to my room so that I should not see the disordered state of her bed, and pretending to be busy writing a letter.  But we shall see all this later on, a situation the truth of which I never ascertained.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 49

This is an odd little section, and not simply because for one of the few times in Remembrance of Things Past that Proust includes a footnote commenting on his own writing.  He will come back to this section in greater detail later on so I don't want to say too much about it now.  Essentially, what has happened is that Marcel is returning from a soiree and runs into Andree, who is supposed to be helping to keep tabs and keep Albertine out of "mischief," who tells him that her friend is writing a letter to her aunt.  Clearly there is a lot more to the story, which Marcel will find out in the fullness of time, but which I'm surprised he didn't sense at the time (especially considering how naturally jealous he is).  I'm really amused by the linguistic game within a game that Proust is playing in this section, while also freely admitting that I'm perpetually guilty of reading too much into literature.  That said . . .

Proust could have picked any plant to have Marcel bring home with him, but he chose a syringa, scientific name syringa vulgaris.  Here in the US we normally just refer to it as lilac.  I believe syringa is derived from the Greek and means something like tube, so syringa vulgaris could be translated as "common tube."  Consequently, I can't believe that Proust wasn't winking at his reader when he has Andree tell Marcel that Albertine "won't be particularly thrilled by your syringa" - essentially Albertine "won't be particularly thrilled by your tube" or Albertine "won't be particularly thrilled by your common tube" or, even better, Albertine "won't be particularly thrilled by your vulgar tube" -  especially after Marcel's arrival had interrupted a stolen moment between the two women. Plus, the syringa, like many plants I suppose, is bisexual.  Like I said, I'm all too often guilty of reading way too much into literary passages.

But still . . .

We'll revisit this scene later in Remembrance of Things Past and discuss it in greater detail.