I didn’t take my eyes off my mother, for I knew when we were seated I wouldn’t be allowed to stay through all of dinner, and Maman, to avoid vexing my father, wouldn’t let me kiss her repeatedly in front of the guests, as if we were in my bedroom. So I promised myself in the dining room, as everyone started eating and I felt the hour approaching, to do in advance of this kiss, which would be so brief and furtive, the most I could manage on my own, to choose the precise place upon her cheek to aim my kiss, to gather my thoughts and, thanks to this mental preparation, consecrate the entire minute granted me with Maman to feeling her cheek against my lips, the way a painter who has limited sittings with a model must prepare his palette well, must go by memory and follow his notes to accomplish all he can while working alone. But before the dinner bell rang, my grandfather had the unconscious cruelty to say: “The little one looks tired, he should go up to bed. Besides, we’re dining late this evening.” And my father, who didn’t honor the spirit of treaties as scrupulously as my grandmother and mother, said: “Yes, go on then, to bed with you.” I started to kiss Maman, and at that very instant the dinner bell rang. “No, no, see here, let your mother be, you’ve already had your good night. These ‘protests’ of yours are ridiculous. Off with you now, upstairs!” And I had to leave without viaticum; I had to climb each step of the stairway, as the popular expression goes, “against the heart,” climbing up against my heart, which wanted to return to my mother because during the kiss she hadn’t given it leave to follow me. This detested stairway, which I’d always ascend so sadly, exuded an odor of varnish that had somehow absorbed, preserved, this specific sort of misery I felt each night and perhaps made it even crueler to my sensibility, because faced with my sorrow in olfactory form, my intelligence could no longer exert itself. When we sleep and a toothache is dreamed of by us as a young girl whom we entreat two hundred times in a row to draw water, or as a verse of Molière that we repeat without stopping, it’s a great relief to wake and let our intelligence dispense with these symbols of toothache, of any heroic or cadent disguise. That’s the reverse of the relief I felt when my anguish at going to my room invaded me in an infinitely faster way, almost instantly, at once insidious and brusque, via inhalation—much more toxic than mere mental infiltration—with the odor of the particular varnish of this stairway. Once in my room I had to close all the doors, fasten the shutters, dig my own tomb, turn down my blankets, don my shroud of a nightshirt. But before I buried myself in the iron bed, which had been added to the room because in summer I was too hot under the rep curtains of the bigger bed, I staged a revolt, I decided to try out a trick of the condemned. I wrote to my mother, sending for her to come upstairs for something very serious that I couldn’t tell her in my letter.
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Je ne quittais pas ma mère des yeux, je savais que quand on serait à table, on ne me permettrait pas de rester pendant toute la durée du dîner et que pour ne pas contrarier mon père, maman ne me laisserait pas l’embrasser à plusieurs reprises devant le monde, comme si ç’avait été dans ma chambre. Aussi je me promettais, dans la salle à manger, pendant qu’on commencerait à dîner et que je sentirais approcher l’heure, de faire d’avance de ce baiser qui serait si court et furtif, tout ce que j’en pouvais faire seul, de choisir avec mon regard la place de la joue que j’embrasserais, de préparer ma pensée pour pouvoir grâce à ce commencement mental de baiser consacrer toute la minute que m’accorderait maman à sentir sa joue contre mes lèvres, comme un peintre qui ne peut obtenir que de courtes séances de pose, prépare sa palette, et a fait d’avance de souvenir, d’après ses notes, tout ce pour quoi il pouvait à la rigueur se passer de la présence du modèle. Mais voici qu’avant que le dîner fût sonné mon grand-père eut la férocité inconsciente de dire: «Le petit a l’air fatigué, il devrait monter se coucher. On dîne tard du reste ce soir.» Et mon père, qui ne gardait pas aussi scrupuleusement que ma grand’mère et que ma mère la foi des traités, dit: «Oui, allons, vas te coucher.» Je voulus embrasser maman, à cet instant on entendit la cloche du dîner. «Mais non, voyons, laisse ta mère, vous vous êtes assez dit bonsoir comme cela, ces manifestations sont ridicules. Allons, monte!» Et il me fallut partir sans viatique; il me fallut monter chaque marche de l’escalier, comme dit l’expression populaire, à «contre-cœur», montant contre mon cœur qui voulait retourner près de ma mère parce qu’elle ne lui avait pas, en m’embrassant, donné licence de me suivre. Cet escalier détesté où je m’engageais toujours si tristement, exhalait une odeur de vernis qui avait en quelque sorte absorbé, fixé, cette sorte particulière de chagrin que je ressentais chaque soir et la rendait peut-être plus cruelle encore pour ma sensibilité parce que sous cette forme olfactive mon intelligence n’en pouvait plus prendre sa part. Quand nous dormons et qu’une rage de dents n’est encore perçue par nous que comme une jeune fille que nous nous efforçons deux cents fois de suite de tirer de l’eau ou que comme un vers de Molière que nous nous répétons sans arrêter, c’est un grand soulagement de nous réveiller et que notre intelligence puisse débarrasser l’idée de rage de dents, de tout déguisement héroïque ou cadencé. C’est l’inverse de ce soulagement que j’éprouvais quand mon chagrin de monter dans ma chambre entrait en moi d’une façon infiniment plus rapide, presque instantanée, à la fois insidieuse et brusque, par l’inhalation,—beaucoup plus toxique que la pénétration morale,—de l’odeur de vernis particulière à cet escalier. Une fois dans ma chambre, il fallut boucher toutes les issues, fermer les volets, creuser mon propre tombeau, en défaisant mes couvertures, revêtir le suaire de ma chemise de nuit. Mais avant de m’ensevelir dans le lit de fer qu’on avait ajouté dans la chambre parce que j’avais trop chaud l’été sous les courtines de reps du grand lit, j’eus un mouvement de révolte, je voulus essayer d’une ruse de condamné. J’écrivis à ma mère en la suppliant de monter pour une chose grave que je ne pouvais lui dire dans ma lettre.
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N o t e s
To keep this project manageable, I will now begin dividing some long paragraphs into sections of around 500 to 700 words. This will matter especially when we get to certain paragraphs that run several pages (!) long.
As if we were in my bedroom. Compare to paragraph 15, when Proust says he could not ask Maman to give him “one kiss more” in his room.
Viaticum. “Communion given to those in danger of death”; “figuratively … the provision for the journey of life and finally by metaphor the provision for the passage out of this world into the next.”
Against the heart. “Contre-coeur.” This means, as translated, “against [the] heart.” The closest-sounding counterpart in English might be “halfhearted[ly],” with its a repeated initial consonant on each component word, but the meaning is too different to use here, as young Marcel’s entire heart wants to stay behind. Since “contre-coeur” does not include an article, when Proust goes on to write, “contre mon coeur,” the contrast is stronger than in English as he changes the thythm of the expression and personalizes it.
Cadent. Proust wrote “cadencé,” presumably meaning “rhythmic” and related to the throbbing of a toothache.
Infiltration. Proust wrote “pénétration.” I once had a professor who made a big deal of the versatile and common French verb “pénétrer” and its related forms. A person can, for example, “pénétrer dans un pièce” (enter a room), or “pénétrer” can refer to elucidating the meaning of something. The reflexive verb “se pénétrer” can mean to fill one’s mind with an idea.
Rep. Ribbed fabric, generally made of silk, cotton, wool, or linen.
Slava Ukraini.