It seems, according to both the
Yale Modernism Lan and other sources, that Swann is based on a couple
people. One of whom is Charles Haas and
the other Charles Ephrussi. Charles
Ephrussi seems to have supported Proust.
Part of me seems to feel this is a subtle attempt at revenge or
snarkiness.
Why
Giotto? Swann does like the Italians and
the Renaissance. The saints and the
virgins and the biblical wives. Odette
isn’t one of them at all, though Swann thinks she looks like them. Perhaps because why I know the artwork to
which he is referring to, but I haven’t seen it in person. I get that.
I firmly believe that Kathleen Newton steps down from October dances
around the room every night in the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal. I get it.
But it seems that Odette is the whore in the body of the virgin.
She was a courtesan, basically
still is. And a slightly lower case one
that the ones that the Narrator’s uncle hangs with. Is her dressmaker really her dressmaker or something
else. But I can see why Swann loves
Odette, or at the very least is entranced by her. Though by the end of the book he loves her
far less than he hates her. Yet, that is
not the end of their love affair. Odette
might represent the new class, the changing of the ways, and the twilight, or
the seemingly twilight of the higher classes.
The narrator is strange because
there is a certain snobbery about him, but it is a class snobbery and we can
see Swann repeating to a degree with him.
The narrator doesn’t seem to love Gilberte as much as the idea of
Giberte or to be more exact the idea of the writers she gets to hang out
because of Swann.
Of course, Odette doesn’t like
Holland. I think she would like it now,
but would Holland like Odette?
I wish I had enough money to rent the
Bavarian’s king’s castle like Swann can.
What is it about men and building
or renting castles for women? Swann and
Aiden Brody.
Citations from:
Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. Trans. Lydia Davis. Penguin, 2002.
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