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PROUST’S CONCEPTION OF NATURE

27


ingenious, but it also introduces the theme of time; the eternal sea lifts
the flowers outside of ordinary time and transports them into duration.
But the scene ends on a theme of decay: “ .
. . une écume creuse, sèche et
sans parfum.” His childhood, and its innocence, is also approaching its
end; he is about to embark on his journey of disillusionment. The note on
which the scene ends impresses upon us the extreme fragility of his child-
hood paradise and eventually the fragility of life itself.

Proust, however, merely suggests the disenchantment of all dreams and
quickly passes on to a new group of hawthorn in full bloom.” The white
hawthorns of the road bring with them all the associations which their
“sisters” have awakened in the church. The hedge forms a group of chapels,
leading to a street-altar composed entirely of strewn flowers, the rays of
the sun outline the pattern of a stained glass window on the ground, and
the whole is enveloped in a soothing perfume recalling incense. The vein
structure of each flower plays its part in the flamboyant altar architecture.
It is possible to say here that the hawthorn has grown to such proportions
in the mind of young Marcel that it has overtaken the actual structure of
St. André des Champs in order to become the church itself.

Marcel remains spellbound before the hawthorn, he tries to mingle with
their rhythm, their odor, their color, but the time is not yet ripe, and they
resist his efforts. Their resistance is so strong that the boy has to turn away
in order to summon up more strength to face them again. Their haunting
power draws him back, yet the secret which he knows they contain will not
yet be his. “. . . Ie sentiment qu’elles éveillaient en moi restait obscur et
vague, cherchant en vain à se dégager, à venir adhérer à leurs fleurs. Elles ne
m’aidaient pas à l’éclaircir, et je ne pouvais demander à d’autres fleurs de le
satisfaire.”10 But suddenly when he sees a pink hawthorn the anguished joy
which Marcel experiences because of the white hawthorns is transposed into
the exuberant joy that one would feel upon seeing the finished work of art
seen hitherto only in its preliminary stages, or upon hearing the orchestrated
piece of music known previously only on the piano: “En effet c’était une
épine, mais rose, plus belle encore que les blanches.”11 It is the
color of the
pink hawthorn which gives rise to this joy and to the relief, for white in its
purity is a difficult, austere color and the hardest to comprehend.

The mention of painting and music, two mediums of art, introduces them
as means of perceiving nature and as themes important to the book, where
they are personified by Elstir, the painter, and Vinteuil, the musician. The
former teaches the young boy in Balbec to perceive nature as it really is,
merely through his senses so as not to obstruct it with his intellect full of
prejudices, while the latter’s music plays an important role in the love-
relationships. The septet will liberate Marcel from those bounds that Swann
cannot break; the joy which Marcel experiences upon seeing the pink haw-



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