Swann's Way
air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the
ear, as it passes, its invisible message.
As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little
phrase as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would
consent to appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary
to procure, and to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its
apparition, Swann, who was no more able now to see it than if it had
belonged to a world of ultra-violet light, who experienced something
like the refreshing sense of a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness
with which he had been struck as he approached it, Swann felt that it
was present, like a protective goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so
as to be able to come to him through the crowd, and to draw him aside to
speak to him, had disguised herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And
as she passed him, light, soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume
of a flower, telling him what she had to say, every word of which
he closely scanned, sorry to see them fly away so fast, he made
involuntarily with his lips the motion of kissing, as it went by him,
the harmonious, fleeting form.
He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who
addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he
had no longer, as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not
known to the little phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their
joys? True that, as often, it had warned him of their frailty. And
indeed, whereas, in that distant time, he had divined an element of
suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation,
to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was
almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken
to him then, which he had seen it--without his being touched by them
himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and rapid course, of
those sorrows which were now become his own, without his having any hope
of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to him, as once
it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it is all
nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave
of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that unknown,
exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his
life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have
drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that
he could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard
his love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the
little phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short
duration of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as
everyone else saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but,
on the contrary, so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy
of the trouble of expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow,
'twas them that the phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and
even their essence, for all that it consists in being incommunicable and
in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them,
the little phrase had captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it
made their value be confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by
all those same onlookers--provided only that they were in any sense
musical--who, the next moment, would ignore, would disown them in real
life, in every individual love that came into being beneath their eyes.
Doubtless the form in which it had codified those graces could not be
analysed into any logical elements. But ever since, more than a year
before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love
of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann
had regarded musical _motifs_ as actual ideas, of another world, of
another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by
the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one from
another, unequal among themselves in value and in significance. When,
after that first evening at the Verdurins', he had had the little
phrase played over to him again, and had sought to disentangle from his
confused impressions how it was that, like a perfume or a caress,
it swept over and enveloped him, he had observed that it was to the
closeness of the intervals between the five notes which composed it and
to the constant repetition of two of them that was due that impression
of a frigid, a contracted sweetness; but in reality he knew that he
was basing this conclusion not upon the phrase itself, but merely upon
certain equivalents, substituted (for his mind's convenience) for the
mysterious entity of which he had become aware, before ever he knew the
Verdurins, at that earlier party, when for the first time he had heard
the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still
further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field
open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an
immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which,
here and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored
tracts, some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of
passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing
from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been
discovered by certain great artists who do us the service, when they
awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme which they have
found, of shewing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to
us, in that great black impenetrable night, discouraging exploration,
of our soul, which we have been content to regard as valueless and
waste and void. Vinteuil had been one of those musicians. In his little
phrase, albeit it presented to the mind's eye a clouded surface, there
was contained, one felt, a matter so consistent, so explicit, to which
the phrase gave so new, so original a force, that those who had once
heard it preserved the memory of it in the treasure-chamber of
their minds. Swann would repair to it as to a conception of love and
happiness, of which at once he knew as well in what respects it was
peculiar as he would know of the _Princesse de Clèves_, or of _René_,
should either of those titles occur to him. Even when he was not
thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind, in the
same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such
as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the
rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned.
Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we
return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no
more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known
them than we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for
example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in
view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has
vanished even the memory of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase,
like some theme, say, in _Tristan_, which represents to us also a
certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had
endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was
linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one
of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being
that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence;
but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these
conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either.
We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who
shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something
less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.
So Swann was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonata
did, really, exist. Human as it was from this point of view, it
belonged, none the less, to an order of supernatural creatures whom we
have never seen, but whom, in spite of that, we recognise and acclaim
with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one
forth, to bring it down from that divine world to which he has access
to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours. This was what
Vinteuil had done for the little phrase. Swann felt that the composer
had been content (with the musical instruments at his disposal) to
draw aside its veil, to make it visible, following and respecting its
outlines with a hand so loving, so prudent, so delicate and so sure,
that the sound altered at every moment, blunting itself to indicate a
shadow, springing back into life when it must follow the curve of some
more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not mistaken when he
believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that anyone with an
ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected the imposture
had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render its forms,
sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his own
invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand.
The phrase had disappeared. Swann knew that it would come again at the
end of the last movement, after a long passage which Mme. Verdurin's
pianist always 'skipped.' There were in this passage some admirable
ideas which Swann had not distinguished on first hearing the sonata, and
which he now perceived, as if they had, in the cloakroom of his memory,
divested themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty. Swann listened
to all the scattered themes which entered into the composition of
the phrase, as its premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a
syllogism; he was assisting at the mystery of its birth. "Audacity,"
he exclaimed to himself, "as inspired, perhaps, as a Lavoisier's or an
Ampere's, the audacity of a Vinteuil making experiment, discovering
the secret laws that govern an unknown force, driving across a region
unexplored towards the one possible goal the invisible team in which he
has placed his trust and which he never may discern!" How charming
the dialogue which Swann now heard between piano and violin, at the
beginning of the last passage. The suppression of human speech, so far
from letting fancy reign there uncontrolled (as one might have thought),
had eliminated it altogether. Never was spoken language of such
inflexible necessity, never had it known questions so pertinent, such
obvious replies. At first the piano complained alone, like a bird
deserted by its mate; the violin heard and answered it, as from a
neighbouring tree. It was as at the first beginning of the world, as
if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth, or rather in this
world closed against all the rest, so fashioned by the logic of its
creator that in it there should never be any but themselves; the world
of this sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, not yet made perfect, of
the little phrase, was it a fairy, invisibly somewhere lamenting, whose
plaint the piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries were so sudden
that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they
came. Marvellous bird! The violinist seemed to wish to charm, to tame,
to woo, to win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already the
little phrase which it evoked shook like a medium's the body of the
violinist, 'possessed' indeed. Swann knew that the phrase was going to