SWANN'S WAY - PROUST

SWANN'S WAY

OVERTURE

0001 For a long time I used to go to bed early

0002 Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam

0003 These shifting and confused gusts of memory

0004 At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time

0005 But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma

0006 My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night

0007 For many years, albeit — and especially before his marriage

0008 One day when he had come to see us after dinner

0009 But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann’s

0010 I never took my eyes off my mother

0011 As for the agony through which I had just passed

0012 I could hear my parents’ footsteps as they went with Swann

0013 Mamma spent that night in my room

0014 Mamma sat down by my bed

0015 And so it was that, for a long time afterwards

COMBRAY

0016 Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius

0017 In the next room I could hear my aunt talking

0018 Françoise, who had been for many years in my aunt’s service

0019 While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Françoise

0020 On our way home from mass we would often meet M. Legrandin

0021 When, on our reaching the house

0022 At length my mother would say to me

0023 And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room

0024 Then while the kitchen-maid—who

0025 Sometimes I would be torn from my book

0026 Except on such days as these

0027 For the first few days, like a tune

0028 While I was reading in the garden

0029 In this way life went by for my aunt Léonie

0030 The day had yet another characteristic feature

0031 Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier

0032 One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits

0033 Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of

0034 We used always to return from our walks

0035 When we had decided to go the ‘Méséglise way’

0036 The absence of Mlle. Swann

0037 “Léonie,” said my grandfather on our return

0038 That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris

0039 It was along the ‘Méséglise way,’ at Montjouvain

0040 Since the ‘Méséglise way’

0041 And it is perhaps from another impression which I received

0042 If the ‘Méséglise way’ was so easy

0043 The great charm of the ‘Guermantes’ way

0044 But farther on the current slackened

0045 One day my mother said: “You are always talking about

0046 How often, after that day, in the course of my walks

0047 All day long, during these walks

SWANN IN LOVE :

0048 And so I would often lie until morning

0049 To admit you to the little nucleus

0050 Now there was no connection whatsoever

0051 Occasionally a couple of my grandparents’ acquaintance

0052 But while each of these attachments, each of these

0053 Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann

0054 It so happened that my grandfather had

0055 In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely smart

0056 Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann’s

0057 After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed

0058 D’you know; we like your friend so very much

0059 But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette

0060 He would escort her to her gate, but no farther

0061 More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid

0062 It was not only Odette’s indifference

0063 But one evening, when, irritated by the thought

0064 Among all the methods by which love is brought into being

0065 The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her

0066 He went to her only in the evenings

0067 Except when he asked her for Vinteuil’s little phrase

0068 Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality

0069 Like everything else that formed part of Odette’s

0070 He might have reminded himself, all the same

0071 Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened

0072 One day, when reflections of this order had brought him

0073 In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was

0074 One evening, when Swann had consented to dine with the

0075 One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon

0076 When he proposed to take leave of Odette

0077 A month after the evening on which he had intercepted and

0078 In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins

0079 And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and

0080 On other occasions he had assured himself

0081 Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet her

0083 And yet he was inclined to suspect

0084 But at other times, grief would again take hold of him

0085 Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette

0086 And so, by the chemical process of his malady

0087 Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann

0088 If he was obliged to make excuses to his fashionable

0089 My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days

0090 Even when he could not discover where she had gone

0091 Since Odette never gave him any information

0092 It sometimes happened, again, that, when, after meeting

0093 These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable

0094 But his so meticulous prudence was defeated

0095 He speedily recovered his sense of the general ugliness

0096 Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure

0097 At this moment the Princesse des Laumes

0098 The pianist, who was ‘down’ to play two pieces by Chopin

0099 Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed

0100 Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes

0101 Swann now wished to go home

0102 Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann

0103 From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling

0104 Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly

0105 One day he received an anonymous letter

0106 One day, after the longest period of calm

0107 Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities

0108 “My darling,” he began again

0109 But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things

0110 But, often enough, the things that he did not know

0111 Besides, her very admissions—when she made any—of faults

0112 On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him

0113 Sometimes he repaired to ‘gay’ houses

0114 The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard

0115 In former times, having often thought with terror

PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME :

0116 Among the rooms which used most commonly

0117 I should have liked to take, the very next day

0118 But if their names thus permanently absorbed

0119 Had my health definitely improved

0120 One day, as I was weary of our usual place

0121 Only, would she come again to the Champs-Elysées?

0122 The first of these days—to which the snow

0123 This day, which I had begun with so many misgivings

0124 But when I arrived at the Champs-Elysées

0125 Another time, being still obsessed by the desire

0126 But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate

0127 I dragged Françoise, on the way towards Gilberte

0128 On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes

0129 While I waited I read over again a page

0130 I had always, within reach, a plan of Paris

0131 As for Swann, in my attempts to resemble him

0132 On the days when Gilberte had warned me

0133 But most often of all, on days when I was not to see

0134 I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic

0135 That sense of the complexity of the Bois