Swann

Summary

What Dominique Pagani chiefly returns to in Swann is one scene from Swann in Love: the one where, caught at a society evening, he suffers from the loss of Odette and receives the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata "right in the heart"12. He discusses it in sessions on amnesia, on romantic irony and on Schubert. The little phrase makes Swann relive the whole time of his happiness even though his love is over, and it makes him recognise himself as an unhappy man34. It tells him that this love is nothing, but in the sense that it is worth more than life5. In a session on worldliness in Clouscard, he sees Swann as an idealised double of Proust, suffering among people who know nothing of his love6. He also notes that Swann loves Odette for qualities, such as making good tea, and is thus already trapped without knowing it7. He further mentions the anguish of sensing the beloved in a place of pleasure one cannot reach, and links Swann to the unhappiness caused by Albertine.

1. 1#1 Benefits and harms of amnesia…8 Oct 2020 · 1:16:24
2. 2#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge7 Apr 2022 · 1:16:38
3. 3#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata15 Jan 2021 · 1:00:08
4. 4Schubert: the divine captives3 Aug 2022 · 3:57
5. 5Schubert: the divine captives3 Aug 2022 · 10:18
6. 6Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”26 Apr 2023 · 55:51
7. 7Q for Quality31 Dec 2014 · 7:52

Summary produced automatically from 12 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.