196
PARTISAN REVIEW
antithesis of the classical hero, no longer feels the world living
around him. He is the world itself before which he must make his
mistress kneel down. Hamlet, before he can enjoy his love (which
remains intact throughout the duration of the work), must make
the world kneel down before his human pride.
It
is true that
Hamlet's action in the world is clear: revenge for murder and
revindication of maternal love. Swann's action in the world is
·diffuse. It is not a world he inhabits, it is a worldliness. Hamlet
breathes deeply while he raises a man up to the measurement of
tragedy. The prince becomes a hero because he surpasses himself
and because he explores a mystery exterior to himself. Swann
stifles and sobs in his effort to diminish ·a tragedy in order to meet
the measurement of a man. The one mystery in his life is his
own heart.
If
the heart of Swann·vows to Odette a sentiment of venera·
tion, his intelligence-however lucid it may be
in
most details–
is unable to comprehend the principal fact that Odette is a
"cocotte." Swann knows it, but he refuses to know the action of
this fact on his life. We see Swann, throughout the long novel of
Proust and especially in the first part, only when his nature is
attenuated. He demands that Odette pay him the homage of
admiration and gratitude, knowing all the time that she is forever
incapable of seizing the complexity of his tastes and his tender·
ness. However, the studious life of an artist which Swann has
always led, discovers its true function in his love. The woman, at
the moments when she is the most loved, remains indifferent and
cold like an object of art, but makes suffer and exist the sensibility
of her lover which until then had been meticulously prepared to
suffer and exist. The lover is no longer the man. His nature is
changed, because suddenly it has found itself attached to a new
experience. And Swann does not dominate this experience as he
had always dominated aesthetic experiences, he undergoes it.
The theory of love developed by Swann appears precisely
the opposite of the one dear to the
Proven~al
poets and Dante. For
these, the mistress symbolizes the light of truth. Love is the new
f acuity susceptible of leading the lover toward all the perfections,
toward God Himself. Swann also considers love an intellectual
pleasure, but the object of his love remains exclusively a woman
and never becomes a symbol of virtue. The light of truth flows
