šļø āThat smell I suddenly notice as I step into this house, where I certainly hadnāt come looking forā¦
Translated from French.
šļø āThat smell I suddenly catch as I step into this house ā a place where, admittedly, I wasnāt looking for beauty, but I recognise it! Itās the smell of a certain house we used to live in by the sea, an irritating all-wooden villa where, as soon as I walked in, Iād smell that particular scent, and where I was so sad, where everything seemed so devoid of beauty to me. Yet it enveloped my life in its rather unpleasant aroma. As soon as, having pushed open the little door and crossed the shabby little garden by the sea, I entered the house, it was greeted by that smell, followed by it, that I would climb the wooden steps that creaked beneath my feet, that I would change my clothes in my room, that by the lampāwhich our disoriented cook, who did everything, didnāt quite know how to light properlyā I would read, and then have dinner alone with my mother. All that life, all its expectations, its troubles, its hunger, its sleep, its insomnia, her plans, her attempts at aesthetic pleasure and their failure, her attempts at sensual pleasure and their abrupt end, her attempts to win over someone she fancied and their pitiful stalemateāthat smell enveloped it all.ā š”š¬ļø
It is so curious to come across, here and there, in a third-person narrative, a few passages that use āIā and already bear such a resemblance to the Search, without actually being part of it. When reading āJean Santeuilā, one sometimes gets the impression of reading previously unpublished pages from āIn Search of Lost Timeā. šāØ
ā Marcel Proust, āJean Santeuilā (the Beg-Meil section), @quarto_livres, pp. 462ā463
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