A Little Phrase

For those who know me well (and even those who don’t), it may comes as no surprise that my favorite writer of all time is Marcel Proust, and that I consider his long novel, In Search of Lost Time, to be the greatest work of art in human history (or at least that I have come across in my humble 28 years on this planet.) The Search encompasses six volumes and more than 3,000 pages, which means that most people who have read Proust haven’t really read him, since you can only appreciate what he was after by making it all the way to the end and coming full circle.

I discovered Proust two winters ago during a unique time in my life, when I had just learned that I was going to be a father, and following a hectic fall semester in which I suffered complete burnout. As life seemed to be closing in on me, I withdrew completely from my obligations, dropping all my courses for the spring semester and canceling my involvement in several projects I had been working on. To fill in my suddenly abundant time, I lost myself entirely in Proust’s strange world of coincidences, characters and obsessions, reading all of The Search in less than two months time. Through the Internet I discovered a whole world of Proust maniacs: a café in San Francisco named after him, a group that celebrated the 75th anniversary of his death by placing a life-sized Proust, made out of papier-mache, into a casket, and holding a “ceremony” for him. (Unfortunately, by the time the casket was opened during the ceremony, Proust’s face had collapsed into an unseemly mess, the organizer of this affair reported.) After reading William Carter’s biography of Proust, a masterpiece in its own right, I also learned about Proust’s strange obsessions: his unhealthy attachment to his mother, how he liked to frequent homosexual brothels to watch others in the act through a peephole.

Proust had obsessions about music as well. He was so in love with a piece by Franck, for instance, that he hired a string quartet to come into his bedroom and play it for him, since he was unwilling to leave his bed (yet another obsession) to attend a concert himself. All of these obsessions make their way into The Search, with perhaps the most memorable one being Swann’s fixation on a piece of music, known as the “little phrase” by a fictional composer named Vinteuil. In the book’s first volume, Swann falls in love with Odette, a beautiful but promiscuous woman with whom he has a relationship that causes him great pain. Vinteuil’s “little phrase,” first heard when his love for Odette was at its most radiant, inevitably places Swann in a state of pure ecstasy. As their relationship begins to crumble, Swann desperately seeks out the “little phrase” at every opportunity in order to relive the love he feels slipping from his grasp, often having Odette herself play the piece for him on piano. Proust writes,

... He would rap on the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer, before going to meet him at the front door. He would find, lying open on the piano, some of her favourite music, the Valses des Roses, the Pauvre Fou of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead, to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that Odette played vilely, but often the most memorable impression of a piece of music is one that has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilled fingers upon a tuneless piano. The little phrase continued to be associated in Swann's mind with his love for Odette. ...

Proust scholars have speculated endlessly on what is the “real life” equivalent of the little phrase, and have generally agreed that it is one of three pieces. Either it is the opening ninth chord of Franck’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in A major, the rising phrases which begin the adagio of Saint-Saen’s Sonata for Piano and Violin no. 1 in D minor, op. 75, or Faure’s ballad in F sharp major op. 19.

One Proust-lover has argued that the little phrase simply can’t be the Saint-Saen piece, as it is too trite and superficial to have possibly inspired Proust to develop a major theme in his book around its notes. I disagree strongly with this view, and suspect that the author has missed Proust’s point, which is that circumstances in our own lives can strongly influence how we receive a work of art, and what might be regarded as ugly or worthless in one context can become profoundly meaningful in another, depending on our emotional state at the time we first encounter the work. Even our "taste" can be overruled by fickle emotions. I often wonder how many cds in my ever-expanding collection I have dismissed out of hand simply because at the time I first heard them I was feeling anxious or cranky or bored or depressed. On the other hand, what might be my “little phrase,” the music that can place me in a trance simply by virtue of its ties to my memory of a specific time, place, or person that I would like to recapture? Can repeated listenings erase a first impression if the associated memory is too strong?

For that matter, might this principle be extended to my ardent love for Proust’s work itself? Two years after reading The Search during a time when I was reeling from stress and at a major crossroads in my life, I wonder if rereading it today it would strike me differently? Or perhaps, by virtue of the moment I happened to come across it, Proust’s work will forever have its grip on me, irrespective of my critical faculties or changing tastes?

For Christmas this past year I gave my best friend, a person whose aesthetic judgments I usually trust, a set of Proust volumes. Tired of searching for an outlet for my enthusiasm for Proust through the Internet, I was sure that she would understand what it was about this novel that made it so extraordinary, and that I would finally have someone to talk with about this book, its quirky world and expansive cast of characters.

She gave up after reading the first 50 pages.