These wheeling and confused evocations never lasted longer than some seconds; often, my brief uncertainty of where I was wouldn’t single out one or the other of the diverse suppositions it was made from, just as we cannot isolate, watching a running horse, the successive positions a kinetoscope can show us. But I’d review now one, now another of the rooms I’d inhabited in my life, and I’d end up recalling them all in the drawn-out daydreams that followed my waking; winter rooms, where when in bed, I’d nuzzle my head in a nest that I’d braid from the most disparate things; a corner of pillow, the top of the cover, a piece of shawl, the side of the bed, and a pink-papered issue of Débats, all of which I’d end up cementing together per the technique of birds, adding on infinitely; where in an icy cold the pleasure I’d savor was feeling separate from the outdoors (like the sea swallow who has its nest at the base of a tunnel in the heat of the earth), and where, the fire being stoked all night in the chimney, I’d sleep as if under a great cloak of hot, hazy air, lit by the glimmers of embers reigniting, a kind of impalpable alcove, a warm cave dug in the heart of the room itself, a zone with burning, mobile thermal contours, with puffs of air that refreshed the face coming cooled from the corners, from places near the window or far from the fire;—summer rooms, where I’d love to be one with the temperate night, where moonlight, pressed through half-open shutters, cast at the foot of the bed its luminous ladder, where I’d sleep in almost open air, like the chickadee balanced on a breeze at the tip of a sunray—; sometimes the Louis Sixteenth room, so cheerful that even the first evening there I was not too unhappy, and where columns that lightly supported the ceiling stood with great grace to reveal and reserve the place of the bed; this same room sometimes, on the contrary, too tight, with too-high ceilings hollowed in the shape of a pyramid two stories tall, partially clad in mahogany, where from the first second I was morally poisoned by the unknown odor of vetiver, convinced of the hostility of the purple curtains, and of the insolent indifference of the clock clacking harshly, as if I weren’t there;—where a strange and merciless mirror with quadrangular feet, obliquely blocking one corner of the room, gouged into the gentle plenitude of my usual field of vision an unexpected space; where my thoughts, striving for hours to break loose, to stretch high to take on the precise shape of the room and manage to fill to the brim its gigantic funnel, had endured so many hard nights, while I lay in bed, eyes raised, ear anxious, nostril restive, heart hammering; until habit at last changed the color of the curtains, hushed the clock, taught mercy to the oblique and cruel mirror, covered, if not completely cleared, the odor of vetiver, and noticeably lowered the apparent height of the ceiling. Habit!, a clever planner, but so very slow, and who starts by letting the mind suffer for weeks in a temporary settlement; but whom, despite this torture, the mind is glad enough to finally find, for lacking habit and reduced to its own means, it would be powerless to provide a habitable home.
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Ces évocations tournoyantes et confuses ne duraient jamais que quelques secondes; souvent, ma brève incertitude du lieu où je me trouvais ne distinguait pas mieux les unes des autres les diverses suppositions dont elle était faite, que nous n’isolons, en voyant un cheval courir, les positions successives que nous montre le kinétoscope. Mais j’avais revu tantôt l’une, tantôt l’autre, des chambres que j’avais habitées dans ma vie, et je finissais par me les rappeler toutes dans les longues rêveries qui suivaient mon réveil; chambres d’hiver où quand on est couché, on se blottit la tête dans un nid qu’on se tresse avec les choses les plus disparates: un coin de l’oreiller, le haut des couvertures, un bout de châle, le bord du lit, et un numéro des Débats roses, qu’on finit par cimenter ensemble selon la technique des oiseaux en s’y appuyant indéfiniment; où, par un temps glacial le plaisir qu’on goûte est de se sentir séparé du dehors (comme l’hirondelle de mer qui a son nid au fond d’un souterrain dans la chaleur de la terre), et où, le feu étant entretenu toute la nuit dans la cheminée, on dort dans un grand manteau d’air chaud et fumeux, traversé des lueurs des tisons qui se rallument, sorte d’impalpable alcôve, de chaude caverne creusée au sein de la chambre même, zone ardente et mobile en ses contours thermiques, aérée de souffles qui nous rafraîchissent la figure et viennent des angles, des parties voisines de la fenêtre ou éloignées du foyer et qui se sont refroidies;—chambres d’été où l’on aime être uni à la nuit tiède, où le clair de lune appuyé aux volets entr’ouverts, jette jusqu’au pied du lit son échelle enchantée, où on dort presque en plein air, comme la mésange balancée par la brise à la pointe d’un rayon—; parfois la chambre Louis XVI, si gaie que même le premier soir je n’y avais pas été trop malheureux et où les colonnettes qui soutenaient légèrement le plafond s’écartaient avec tant de grâce pour montrer et réserver la place du lit; parfois au contraire celle, petite et si élevée de plafond, creusée en forme de pyramide dans la hauteur de deux étages et partiellement revêtue d’acajou, où dès la première seconde j’avais été intoxiqué moralement par l’odeur inconnue du vétiver, convaincu de l’hostilité des rideaux violets et de l’insolente indifférence de la pendule qui jacassait tout haut comme si je n’eusse pas été là;—où une étrange et impitoyable glace à pieds quadrangulaires, barrant obliquement un des angles de la pièce, se creusait à vif dans la douce plénitude de mon champ visuel accoutumé un emplacement qui n’y était pas prévu;—où ma pensée, s’efforçant pendant des heures de se disloquer, de s’étirer en hauteur pour prendre exactement la forme de la chambre et arriver à remplir jusqu’en haut son gigantesque entonnoir, avait souffert bien de dures nuits, tandis que j’étais étendu dans mon lit, les yeux levés, l’oreille anxieuse, la narine rétive, le cœur battant: jusqu’à ce que l’habitude eût changé la couleur des rideaux, fait taire la pendule, enseigné la pitié à la glace oblique et cruelle, dissimulé, sinon chassé complètement, l’odeur du vétiver et notablement diminué la hauteur apparente du plafond. L’habitude! aménageuse habile mais bien lente et qui commence par laisser souffrir notre esprit pendant des semaines dans une installation provisoire; mais que malgré tout il est bien heureux de trouver, car sans l’habitude et réduit à ses seuls moyens il serait impuissant à nous rendre un logis habitable.
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N o t e s
Kinetoscope. This video details the development of the kinetoscope by Thomas Edison and his team, connected to technology created by French photographer Étienne-Jules Marey.
Winter rooms, where I’d lie down. Proust describes the winter and summer rooms using the pronoun on and the present tense. I’ve tried many combinations of options, never completely satisfied. Writing “one” repeatedly in English comes off awkwardly. In French on is wonderfully flexible. It can mean “we,” “they,” “you,” “someone,” “I.” Proust is referring to his own experience in great detail, so substituting “I” is an easy solution, but the impersonal nature of on means that in French, these descriptions impart a feeling of universality. I’m using the past habitual aspect because this quasi-tense brings in some feeling of generalized experience. (After I’d chosen this solution, I noted that Scott Moncrieff used “I” and past habitual, and Davis used “you” and present tense.)
Pink-papered issue of Débats. In his 1976 book The Color-Keys to “À la recherche du temps perdu,” Allan H. Pasco says the evening edition of the newspaper Journal des débats (Journal of Debates) was printed on pink paper; presumably the morning edition used regular newsprint. Once I learned this historical detail, I found the pink paper too fascinating and unforgettable to omit.
Luminous ladder. Proust wrote échelle enchantée, “enchanted ladder.” After some dithering over “magical ladder,” I opted to echo his alliteration pattern and hope some of the feeling of enchantment comes through the sound.
Vetiver. Vetiver is a tropical grass native to India and now grown mainly in Haiti. Writers for GQ magazine call it “one of the finest perfumes known, with a woody earthiness that has made it a favourite since ancient times,” and say that “currently, it is an important ingredient in around a fifth of all male fragrances.” They add that “its smokiness is very masculine and has been likened to incense and cigars.”
A man with the username “Intersport” commented on vetiver on a fragrance forum: “Vetiver is a profoundly French thing: Proust speaks of it,” and it reveals “the complex colonial past of France in Haiti and La Réunion.”
Curious, I ordered an ounce of vetiver oil. Smelling it out of the bottle made me nauseous. On my skin it smells like weak musk, pine needle, and pickle.
Habit / habitable home. Proust writes these exact words, habit and habitable, playing on their similarity. The words do appear to share a common root in the Latin habere, “to have.”