Reading Proust: The Captive - Art and Intrigue
The reader enters new territory with The Captive, book five of In Search of Lost Time. This is the first unfinished volume. Proust died before he completed it. However, his habit of writing was such that he wrote through the “basic” narrative structure and story elements by way of his first draft. Then he would go back and fill, fill, fill, fill in between existing paragraphs all kinds of digressions and deeper explorations of what is happening in the story.
This means that, while unfinished, The Captive has a complete narrative structure, just not as expanded and rearranged and even deleted as the final drafts of the previous four volumes. For me, this does not detract much from reading it. I still find it one of the best parts of the novel, with high ideas and several exemplary prose features.
It can be a rather tedious book, however, given that the first 240+ pages cover the narrator’s ever increasingly neurotic relationship with his girlfriend. It is a thorough examination of jealousy and possessiveness with some exciting sexual undertones. While mired in a daily routine often accompanied by either paranoid psychological manifestations or suffering from not really being in love, there are sections of the novel that are, nevertheless, highly erotic even now which makes it all the more remarkable that they were written in the 1920’s.
What I want to focus on first is the non-relationship aspects of The Captive. Proust explores a philosophy of art and aesthetics that is one of the most significant portions of the whole novel. Now we are back in Paris and the narrator, dreaming of traveling especially to Venice, goes nowhere. For the first time, the novel takes place almost entirely indoors; Proust makes very little mention of the natural world compared with the novel’s earlier books. This is an internalized world.
The negative aspect of this is that it is here, inside him, that our narrator practically tortures himself (and sometimes the reader’s patience as well). On the other hand, however, the positive aspect of that internalization is that Proust uses it to explore how art and the artist can replace (or at least complement) nature in our lives as sources of beauty and inspiration. Proust reveals this for the first time far into the volume by turning to the death of his imagined writer Bergotte.
Now an old, sickly man, Bergotte reflects upon how he has showered gifts and generosity during his life upon young women and girls who have, in turn, inspired his writing, making him more money which he can spend on these girls who inspire him. But all this is now passing him. He only gets out of bed for an hour a day and even then he is wrapped in blankets. And yet, when he learns that Vermeer’s View of Delft will be shown in Paris he cannot help but prop himself up well enough to see it. (Side note: This is somewhat autobiographical. Proust actually got up out of his own sick bed in 1921, about 18 months before his death, to visit a Vermeer exhibit, which included View of Delft, in Paris.)
Proust introduces us to how to view a painted work of art with his exquisite prose. As Bergotte walks through the gallery, admiring other works, he becomes dizzy. Then he comes to the Vermeer: “…he noticed for the first time some small figures in blue, that the sand was pink, and finally, the precious substance of the tiny patch of yellow wall. His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious little patch of wall.” (page 244)
The greatness he experiences in this moment fills him with regret that he did not write differently and that his last books were incomparable to what he now witnesses. In a rather romanticized moment, he dies while gazing upon the patch of yellow in the painting. “All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for the atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be forever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer.” (page 245) The almost noble, broadly inspiring, somewhat immortal aspect of the artist (living on through his art) is hinted at here.
News of Bergotte’s death causes the narrator to, at long last, ruminate over the death of Charles Swann, who was also a connoisseur of Vermeer. He says that “Swann’s death deeply distressed me at the time.” As a reader, I am hesitant to accept this from our narrator. He has not mentioned Swann’s death at all. It seems disingenuous for him to give us pages and pages of “distress” over his grandmother’s death and yet not mention Swann at all (it is only mentioned in passing during a conversation he was overhearing at a party) up to this point.
We know that much actually happens in the novel outside of what we are being told, so it is possible that the narrator experienced distress and did not bother to share it with the reader. Yet, given the narrator’s unsettled state of mind, I am more inclined to think he is lying to himself and, hence, to us. He does not even bother to provide us with any emotional context for his supposed “deep distress.” Instead, he dryly quotes from Swann’s obituary. The narrator’s only sense of loss, it seems, is that he regrets not being able to discuss Vermeer or art or other things with Swann any more.
Then we come to another fine social episode in the novel, returning to the Verdurins’ salon in Paris for an afternoon musical performance. Like most of the other such sections of the novel, this one is about 180 pages in length. This time the stakes are much higher, however, although the reader doesn’t know this beforehand. The Verdurins are not nobility. They have made their wealth and garnered prestige through success in the business world. They have recently reached a status where it is appropriate for the Baron de Charlus to assist with arranging an afternoon affair for both “the little clan” and several of his acquaintances of royalty to receive a never before preformed septet, recently discovered, composed by the late Vinteuil. Having such nobility in her salon is a real coup for Mme Verdurin, or so she thinks.
There is trouble from the beginning. M. de Charlus vetos virtually all of Mme Verdurins’ additions to the invitation list. Instead, he fills her salon with only people of his preference. This infuriates Mme Verdurin. Her “little clan” can still be there, of course, but the larger social event is under the Baron’s control. This doesn’t bode well.
Our narrator arrives amidst all this tension but is more interested in the girls who are in attendance. “I was surrounded by enchantment. For although the little clan included few girls, a fair number were invited on big occasions. There were several present, very pretty ones, whom I knew. The air was thus continually embellished with charming girlish smiles. They are the multifarious scattered adornment of evenings as of days. One remembers an atmosphere because girls were smiling in it.” (page 323) The last sentence makes me think that this could actually be the overarching narrator telling us this memory.
Meanwhile, as people mingle and talk in the salon, M. de Charlus makes no effort to introduce Mme Verdurin to any of his guests. Just then, the music starts and Proust takes flight in a very long paragraph that takes up almost three pages:
“…all of a sudden, I found myself, in the midst of this music that was new to me, right in the heart of Vinteuil’s sonata; and, more marvelous than any girl, the little phrase, sheathed, harnessed in silver, glittering with brilliant sonorities, as light and soft as silken scarves, came to me, recognizable in this new guise. My joy at having rediscovered it was enhanced by the tone, so friendly and familiar, which it adopted in addressing me, so persuasive, so simple, and yet without subduing the shimmering beauty in which it glowed….No sooner was it thus recalled than it vanished, and I found myself once more in an unknown world, but I knew now, and everything that followed only confirmed my knowledge, that this world was one of those which I had never even been capable of imaging that Vinteuil could have created, for when, weary of the sonata which was to me a universe thoroughly explored, I tried to imagine others equally beautiful by different, I was merely doing what those poets do who fill their artificial paradise with meadows, flowers and streams which duplicate those existing qualities already upon earth….Whereas the sonata opened a lily-white pastoral dawn, dividing its fragile purity only to hover in the delicate yet compact entanglement of a rustic bower of honeysuckle against white geraniums, it was upon flat, unbroken surfaces like those of the sea on a morning that threatens storm, in the midst of an eerie silence, in an infinite void, that this new work began, and it was into a rose-red daybreak that this unknown universe was drawn from the silence and the night to build up gradually before me.” (pp. 332 – 333)
This marvelous aesthetic articulation of music’s effect on a person is truly astonishing. Even though the reader might not relate to the exactness of Proust’s musings, it is still possible to feel like one is listening to a piece of classical music. Simultaneously, Proust manages in this section to show us how important art is and its value to our humanity. This section is definitely one of the highlights of the novel for me. As with everything else, Proust continues this aesthetic quest for several more pages.
“Marvelously though Morel played, the sounds that came from his violin seemed to me singularly piercing, almost shrill. This harshness was pleasing, and, in certain voices, one felt in it a sort of moral quality and intellectual superiority. But it could shock.” (page 342)
After fully appreciating the septet as it is performed, Proust comes around to a more general philosophy about art. “…all the residuum of reality which we are obliged to keep to ourselves, which cannot be transmitted in talk, even from friend to friend, from master to disciple, from lover to mistress…are brought out by art, the art of a Vinteuil like that of an Elstir, which exteriorizes the colors of the spectrum the intimate composition of those worlds which we call individuals and which, but for art, we should never know…The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with an Elster, with a Vinteuil; with men like these who really do fly from star to star.” (page 343)
This passage connects all previous pages of the novel involving the artistic processes of Vinteuil and Elster, though over 1,500 pages now separate us from when they were first explored. In this way, the length of the novel begins work in its favor. These past Proustian passages of the artists at work or, certainly, of the sonata being performed for Swann and Odette back in Swann’s Way, show us the nature of art through time. This septet section is a full maturation and mastery of prose compared with the earlier, elegant descriptions of the sonata’s “little phrase.” Also, in passing, it is worth noting that with Proust it is often the smallest of things that mean the most to us. “The little phrase” can be compared to the “little yellow patch” at Bergotte’s death. The death of Bergotte and the life of a newly discovered piece of music from a long dead and obscure composer allow Proust to explore the possibilities of the artist living on through his art.
These wonderful musings are sandwiched in the narrative by the growing anger of Mme Verdurin toward M. de Charlus. After the music has finished the Baron continues to interact among his own class without any effort to include Mme Verdurin or, perhaps even worse, to credit her with anything at all about the affair taking place in her own salon. Several guests are impressed with Morel’s violin performance in the septet and invite him to their residences. No one bothers to invite Mme Verdurin. To make matters worse, she was the one who first gave Morel a chance to perform. In that regard she sees him as one of her social possessions.
M. de Charlus becomes even more full of himself and tells of his former relationship with Swann’s widow, Odette. He was aware of all her lovers. “She used to force me to get up the most dreadful orgies for her, with five or six men,” he boasts. He himself had to write all of her letters for her, including the ones she wrote to Swann, as “she couldn’t spell the simplest word.”
Meanwhile, the Verdurin’s hatch a plot against M. de Charlus. M. Verdurin takes Morel aside and begins to slander the Baron, going on about how he doesn’t see how Morel can continue to put up with the Baron. Morel is told that the Baron is holding him back. That he could be making far more money with his performances. Mme Verdurin then joins in, telling Morel that the Baron “tells everybody…that he’s got you under his thumb.” In a book full of lies, the Verdurins tell Morel that the Baron’s desire to see him win the Cross of the Legion of Honor due to his musicianship is nothing more than a ploy that will never happen. So cleverly do the Verdurins weave these falsehoods with intimate facts that it astonishes Morel, who was already becoming indifferent in his relationship to M. de Charlus.
Soon after, the Baron approaches his “Charlie” (as he affectionately refers to Morel) in the salon. The violinist responds coldly in front of the assemblage, “I’m not the first person you’ve tried to pervert!” Observing all this, the narrator, who has previously shared with the reader the Baron’s rage on more than one occasion, expects all hell to break loose. “Instead of which, an extraordinary thing happened. M. de Charlus stood speechless, dumbfounded, measuring the depths of his misery without understanding its cause, unable to think of a word to say, raising his eyes to gaze at each of the company in turn, with a questioning, outraged, suppliant air, which seemed to be asking them not so much what had happened as what answer he ought to make.” (page 425)
It should be noted that the Baron’s bad behavior was not intentionally directed at the Verdurins. It was simply his natural, snobby air while among his class to more or less ignore anyone outside the class. His error was not bad manners so much as the consequences of adhering to the arrogance of aristocracy.
The Queen of Naples is among those present when this occurs, without Morel knowing who she is. Before the performance, it was hoped that an introduction to her by the Baron would further Morel’s career, even though she is “queen” only in title. She doesn’t actually rule anything anymore except for her immense wealth. Morel, upon realizing who has overheard his challenge to M. de Charlus, instantly regrets what he said because, in his anger, he has made the introduction impossible.
But Mme Verdurin, full of herself after successfully humiliating M. de Charlus, decides to introduce Morel herself. This does not turn out so well, as she runs abruptly into the "wall" of the noble class. Instead of meeting Morel, the Queen comes to the aid of the Baron, who is her cousin. She escorts him from the room. Shortly thereafter, he is stricken with septic pneumonia and lays bedridden, seemingly near death, for many months.
Returning home to Albertine following this bizarre social gathering, with its mix of high-art and intrigue, the narrator continues to revel in his contemplation of Art and Life. “…to lay bare the truth – two hypotheses which recur in all important questions, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them; and, in the case of Vinteuil’s music, this choice was constantly presenting itself under a variety of forms…It is inconceivable that a piece of sculpture or a piece of music which gives us an emotion that we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality, or life would be meaningless. Thus nothing resembled more closely than some such phrase of Vinteuil the peculiar pleasure which I had felt at certain moments in my life, when gazing, for instance, at the steeples of Martinsville, or at certain trees along the road near Balbec, or, more simply, the beginning this book, when I tasted a certain cup of tea.” (pp. 503 - 505)
Against this spiritual hypothesis of Art: “…I thought once more of Vinteuil, it was the other, the materialist hypothesis, that of there being nothing, that in turn presented itself to my mind. I began to doubt again; I told myself that after all it might be a case that, if Vinteuil’s phrases seemed to be the expression of certain states of soul analogous to that which I tasted the Madeleine soaked in tea, there was nothing to assure me that the vagueness of such states was a sign of their profundity rather than of our not having yet learned to analyze them, so that there might be nothing more real in them than in other states. And yet that happiness…was not an illusion. In any case, whispered the spirit of doubt, even if these states are more profound than others that occur in life, and defy analysis for that very reason, because they bring into play too many forces of which we have hitherto been unaware, the charm of certain phrases of Vinteuil’s music makes us think of them because it too defies analysis, but this does not prove that it has the same profundity; the beauty of a phrase of pure music can easily appear to be the image of or at least akin to an unintellectual impression we have received, but simply because it is unintellectual.” (pp. 513 – 514)
Proust touches upon a source of wonder in how Bergotte experienced the Vermeer painting, and in how the septet affects the narrator, his intimate impressions, but he is also skeptical of the feelings. A more reasoned approach might trivialize the aesthetic, but would that be necessarily justified? More truthful? How can Vinteuil’s music or Vermeer's painting be experienced as profound at all? Does it make it profound to feel that it is so? These are difficult questions of aesthetics and meaning. Proust does not solve this puzzle in The Captive but he does perform a most marvelous service to world literature by capturing in words and ideas the significance of relating to a piece of art within human experience. He conveys this upon the reader with a passionate expertise in the fundamental issues of the artist and of Art as a possible Platonic ideal.
This means that, while unfinished, The Captive has a complete narrative structure, just not as expanded and rearranged and even deleted as the final drafts of the previous four volumes. For me, this does not detract much from reading it. I still find it one of the best parts of the novel, with high ideas and several exemplary prose features.
It can be a rather tedious book, however, given that the first 240+ pages cover the narrator’s ever increasingly neurotic relationship with his girlfriend. It is a thorough examination of jealousy and possessiveness with some exciting sexual undertones. While mired in a daily routine often accompanied by either paranoid psychological manifestations or suffering from not really being in love, there are sections of the novel that are, nevertheless, highly erotic even now which makes it all the more remarkable that they were written in the 1920’s.
What I want to focus on first is the non-relationship aspects of The Captive. Proust explores a philosophy of art and aesthetics that is one of the most significant portions of the whole novel. Now we are back in Paris and the narrator, dreaming of traveling especially to Venice, goes nowhere. For the first time, the novel takes place almost entirely indoors; Proust makes very little mention of the natural world compared with the novel’s earlier books. This is an internalized world.
The negative aspect of this is that it is here, inside him, that our narrator practically tortures himself (and sometimes the reader’s patience as well). On the other hand, however, the positive aspect of that internalization is that Proust uses it to explore how art and the artist can replace (or at least complement) nature in our lives as sources of beauty and inspiration. Proust reveals this for the first time far into the volume by turning to the death of his imagined writer Bergotte.
Now an old, sickly man, Bergotte reflects upon how he has showered gifts and generosity during his life upon young women and girls who have, in turn, inspired his writing, making him more money which he can spend on these girls who inspire him. But all this is now passing him. He only gets out of bed for an hour a day and even then he is wrapped in blankets. And yet, when he learns that Vermeer’s View of Delft will be shown in Paris he cannot help but prop himself up well enough to see it. (Side note: This is somewhat autobiographical. Proust actually got up out of his own sick bed in 1921, about 18 months before his death, to visit a Vermeer exhibit, which included View of Delft, in Paris.)
Proust introduces us to how to view a painted work of art with his exquisite prose. As Bergotte walks through the gallery, admiring other works, he becomes dizzy. Then he comes to the Vermeer: “…he noticed for the first time some small figures in blue, that the sand was pink, and finally, the precious substance of the tiny patch of yellow wall. His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious little patch of wall.” (page 244)
The greatness he experiences in this moment fills him with regret that he did not write differently and that his last books were incomparable to what he now witnesses. In a rather romanticized moment, he dies while gazing upon the patch of yellow in the painting. “All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for the atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be forever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer.” (page 245) The almost noble, broadly inspiring, somewhat immortal aspect of the artist (living on through his art) is hinted at here.
News of Bergotte’s death causes the narrator to, at long last, ruminate over the death of Charles Swann, who was also a connoisseur of Vermeer. He says that “Swann’s death deeply distressed me at the time.” As a reader, I am hesitant to accept this from our narrator. He has not mentioned Swann’s death at all. It seems disingenuous for him to give us pages and pages of “distress” over his grandmother’s death and yet not mention Swann at all (it is only mentioned in passing during a conversation he was overhearing at a party) up to this point.
We know that much actually happens in the novel outside of what we are being told, so it is possible that the narrator experienced distress and did not bother to share it with the reader. Yet, given the narrator’s unsettled state of mind, I am more inclined to think he is lying to himself and, hence, to us. He does not even bother to provide us with any emotional context for his supposed “deep distress.” Instead, he dryly quotes from Swann’s obituary. The narrator’s only sense of loss, it seems, is that he regrets not being able to discuss Vermeer or art or other things with Swann any more.
Then we come to another fine social episode in the novel, returning to the Verdurins’ salon in Paris for an afternoon musical performance. Like most of the other such sections of the novel, this one is about 180 pages in length. This time the stakes are much higher, however, although the reader doesn’t know this beforehand. The Verdurins are not nobility. They have made their wealth and garnered prestige through success in the business world. They have recently reached a status where it is appropriate for the Baron de Charlus to assist with arranging an afternoon affair for both “the little clan” and several of his acquaintances of royalty to receive a never before preformed septet, recently discovered, composed by the late Vinteuil. Having such nobility in her salon is a real coup for Mme Verdurin, or so she thinks.
There is trouble from the beginning. M. de Charlus vetos virtually all of Mme Verdurins’ additions to the invitation list. Instead, he fills her salon with only people of his preference. This infuriates Mme Verdurin. Her “little clan” can still be there, of course, but the larger social event is under the Baron’s control. This doesn’t bode well.
Our narrator arrives amidst all this tension but is more interested in the girls who are in attendance. “I was surrounded by enchantment. For although the little clan included few girls, a fair number were invited on big occasions. There were several present, very pretty ones, whom I knew. The air was thus continually embellished with charming girlish smiles. They are the multifarious scattered adornment of evenings as of days. One remembers an atmosphere because girls were smiling in it.” (page 323) The last sentence makes me think that this could actually be the overarching narrator telling us this memory.
Meanwhile, as people mingle and talk in the salon, M. de Charlus makes no effort to introduce Mme Verdurin to any of his guests. Just then, the music starts and Proust takes flight in a very long paragraph that takes up almost three pages:
“…all of a sudden, I found myself, in the midst of this music that was new to me, right in the heart of Vinteuil’s sonata; and, more marvelous than any girl, the little phrase, sheathed, harnessed in silver, glittering with brilliant sonorities, as light and soft as silken scarves, came to me, recognizable in this new guise. My joy at having rediscovered it was enhanced by the tone, so friendly and familiar, which it adopted in addressing me, so persuasive, so simple, and yet without subduing the shimmering beauty in which it glowed….No sooner was it thus recalled than it vanished, and I found myself once more in an unknown world, but I knew now, and everything that followed only confirmed my knowledge, that this world was one of those which I had never even been capable of imaging that Vinteuil could have created, for when, weary of the sonata which was to me a universe thoroughly explored, I tried to imagine others equally beautiful by different, I was merely doing what those poets do who fill their artificial paradise with meadows, flowers and streams which duplicate those existing qualities already upon earth….Whereas the sonata opened a lily-white pastoral dawn, dividing its fragile purity only to hover in the delicate yet compact entanglement of a rustic bower of honeysuckle against white geraniums, it was upon flat, unbroken surfaces like those of the sea on a morning that threatens storm, in the midst of an eerie silence, in an infinite void, that this new work began, and it was into a rose-red daybreak that this unknown universe was drawn from the silence and the night to build up gradually before me.” (pp. 332 – 333)
This marvelous aesthetic articulation of music’s effect on a person is truly astonishing. Even though the reader might not relate to the exactness of Proust’s musings, it is still possible to feel like one is listening to a piece of classical music. Simultaneously, Proust manages in this section to show us how important art is and its value to our humanity. This section is definitely one of the highlights of the novel for me. As with everything else, Proust continues this aesthetic quest for several more pages.
“Marvelously though Morel played, the sounds that came from his violin seemed to me singularly piercing, almost shrill. This harshness was pleasing, and, in certain voices, one felt in it a sort of moral quality and intellectual superiority. But it could shock.” (page 342)
After fully appreciating the septet as it is performed, Proust comes around to a more general philosophy about art. “…all the residuum of reality which we are obliged to keep to ourselves, which cannot be transmitted in talk, even from friend to friend, from master to disciple, from lover to mistress…are brought out by art, the art of a Vinteuil like that of an Elstir, which exteriorizes the colors of the spectrum the intimate composition of those worlds which we call individuals and which, but for art, we should never know…The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with an Elster, with a Vinteuil; with men like these who really do fly from star to star.” (page 343)
This passage connects all previous pages of the novel involving the artistic processes of Vinteuil and Elster, though over 1,500 pages now separate us from when they were first explored. In this way, the length of the novel begins work in its favor. These past Proustian passages of the artists at work or, certainly, of the sonata being performed for Swann and Odette back in Swann’s Way, show us the nature of art through time. This septet section is a full maturation and mastery of prose compared with the earlier, elegant descriptions of the sonata’s “little phrase.” Also, in passing, it is worth noting that with Proust it is often the smallest of things that mean the most to us. “The little phrase” can be compared to the “little yellow patch” at Bergotte’s death. The death of Bergotte and the life of a newly discovered piece of music from a long dead and obscure composer allow Proust to explore the possibilities of the artist living on through his art.
These wonderful musings are sandwiched in the narrative by the growing anger of Mme Verdurin toward M. de Charlus. After the music has finished the Baron continues to interact among his own class without any effort to include Mme Verdurin or, perhaps even worse, to credit her with anything at all about the affair taking place in her own salon. Several guests are impressed with Morel’s violin performance in the septet and invite him to their residences. No one bothers to invite Mme Verdurin. To make matters worse, she was the one who first gave Morel a chance to perform. In that regard she sees him as one of her social possessions.
M. de Charlus becomes even more full of himself and tells of his former relationship with Swann’s widow, Odette. He was aware of all her lovers. “She used to force me to get up the most dreadful orgies for her, with five or six men,” he boasts. He himself had to write all of her letters for her, including the ones she wrote to Swann, as “she couldn’t spell the simplest word.”
Meanwhile, the Verdurin’s hatch a plot against M. de Charlus. M. Verdurin takes Morel aside and begins to slander the Baron, going on about how he doesn’t see how Morel can continue to put up with the Baron. Morel is told that the Baron is holding him back. That he could be making far more money with his performances. Mme Verdurin then joins in, telling Morel that the Baron “tells everybody…that he’s got you under his thumb.” In a book full of lies, the Verdurins tell Morel that the Baron’s desire to see him win the Cross of the Legion of Honor due to his musicianship is nothing more than a ploy that will never happen. So cleverly do the Verdurins weave these falsehoods with intimate facts that it astonishes Morel, who was already becoming indifferent in his relationship to M. de Charlus.
Soon after, the Baron approaches his “Charlie” (as he affectionately refers to Morel) in the salon. The violinist responds coldly in front of the assemblage, “I’m not the first person you’ve tried to pervert!” Observing all this, the narrator, who has previously shared with the reader the Baron’s rage on more than one occasion, expects all hell to break loose. “Instead of which, an extraordinary thing happened. M. de Charlus stood speechless, dumbfounded, measuring the depths of his misery without understanding its cause, unable to think of a word to say, raising his eyes to gaze at each of the company in turn, with a questioning, outraged, suppliant air, which seemed to be asking them not so much what had happened as what answer he ought to make.” (page 425)
It should be noted that the Baron’s bad behavior was not intentionally directed at the Verdurins. It was simply his natural, snobby air while among his class to more or less ignore anyone outside the class. His error was not bad manners so much as the consequences of adhering to the arrogance of aristocracy.
The Queen of Naples is among those present when this occurs, without Morel knowing who she is. Before the performance, it was hoped that an introduction to her by the Baron would further Morel’s career, even though she is “queen” only in title. She doesn’t actually rule anything anymore except for her immense wealth. Morel, upon realizing who has overheard his challenge to M. de Charlus, instantly regrets what he said because, in his anger, he has made the introduction impossible.
But Mme Verdurin, full of herself after successfully humiliating M. de Charlus, decides to introduce Morel herself. This does not turn out so well, as she runs abruptly into the "wall" of the noble class. Instead of meeting Morel, the Queen comes to the aid of the Baron, who is her cousin. She escorts him from the room. Shortly thereafter, he is stricken with septic pneumonia and lays bedridden, seemingly near death, for many months.
Returning home to Albertine following this bizarre social gathering, with its mix of high-art and intrigue, the narrator continues to revel in his contemplation of Art and Life. “…to lay bare the truth – two hypotheses which recur in all important questions, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them; and, in the case of Vinteuil’s music, this choice was constantly presenting itself under a variety of forms…It is inconceivable that a piece of sculpture or a piece of music which gives us an emotion that we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality, or life would be meaningless. Thus nothing resembled more closely than some such phrase of Vinteuil the peculiar pleasure which I had felt at certain moments in my life, when gazing, for instance, at the steeples of Martinsville, or at certain trees along the road near Balbec, or, more simply, the beginning this book, when I tasted a certain cup of tea.” (pp. 503 - 505)
Against this spiritual hypothesis of Art: “…I thought once more of Vinteuil, it was the other, the materialist hypothesis, that of there being nothing, that in turn presented itself to my mind. I began to doubt again; I told myself that after all it might be a case that, if Vinteuil’s phrases seemed to be the expression of certain states of soul analogous to that which I tasted the Madeleine soaked in tea, there was nothing to assure me that the vagueness of such states was a sign of their profundity rather than of our not having yet learned to analyze them, so that there might be nothing more real in them than in other states. And yet that happiness…was not an illusion. In any case, whispered the spirit of doubt, even if these states are more profound than others that occur in life, and defy analysis for that very reason, because they bring into play too many forces of which we have hitherto been unaware, the charm of certain phrases of Vinteuil’s music makes us think of them because it too defies analysis, but this does not prove that it has the same profundity; the beauty of a phrase of pure music can easily appear to be the image of or at least akin to an unintellectual impression we have received, but simply because it is unintellectual.” (pp. 513 – 514)
Proust touches upon a source of wonder in how Bergotte experienced the Vermeer painting, and in how the septet affects the narrator, his intimate impressions, but he is also skeptical of the feelings. A more reasoned approach might trivialize the aesthetic, but would that be necessarily justified? More truthful? How can Vinteuil’s music or Vermeer's painting be experienced as profound at all? Does it make it profound to feel that it is so? These are difficult questions of aesthetics and meaning. Proust does not solve this puzzle in The Captive but he does perform a most marvelous service to world literature by capturing in words and ideas the significance of relating to a piece of art within human experience. He conveys this upon the reader with a passionate expertise in the fundamental issues of the artist and of Art as a possible Platonic ideal.
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