In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Review

The second volume of In Search of Lost Time won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, which seems in retrospect both perfectly appropriate and slightly comic — appropriate because the book deserved major recognition, slightly comic because what Proust had written was not a prize-winning novel in any conventional sense but the second instalment of a work of such ambitious strangeness that the jury can barely have known what they were awarding. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is, among other things, the volume in which Proust finds his full range.

The volume divides into two large parts. The first takes place in Paris: the narrator attends a performance by the actress Berma, which he has anticipated so intensely that the real performance can only disappoint; he becomes acquainted with the writer Bergotte, whose prose he has idolised, and discovers that the man is not the work; and above all he begins to move in the orbit of the Guermantes family, whose aristocratic splendour will become the next volume’s obsession. These Paris chapters are primarily about the gap between imagination and reality — the way that the mind, in loving something, creates a version of it that no actual encounter can satisfy.

The second and greater part moves to Balbec, a fictional seaside resort in Normandy, where the narrator travels with his grandmother. The Balbec sequences contain some of the most extraordinary descriptive prose in the Search: the sea as experienced from a hotel room, the early morning light on the bay, the restaurant with its walls of glass through which the fishing community outside can observe the wealthy diners within. Huxley’s best writing is occasionally compared to Proust’s, but what Proust does at Balbec — the way he renders the experience of a place as a total, shifting, temporally unstable thing — is something else entirely.

At Balbec, the narrator encounters the petite bande, a group of young women cycling along the seafront, and above all Albertine, whose face and manner will occupy him for the next three volumes. The encounter is managed with extraordinary psychological precision: the narrator does not fall in love with a woman but with a series of impressions of a woman, each slightly different, none of them finally adding up to a stable person. This is not a flaw in his perception but its most accurate feature — Proust’s fundamental argument about love is that its object is always partly a creation of the lover’s consciousness, which is why possession never satisfies.

The Volume Where Proust Finds His Range

The Prix Goncourt that crowned this second volume in 1919 is one of the stranger episodes in the history of literary prizes — appropriate because the book plainly deserved major recognition, faintly comic because what the jury had honored was not a novel in any conventional sense but the second instalment of a work whose ambitions exceeded anything the prize had previously rewarded. Yet the recognition was earned, because In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is the volume in which Proust’s full range first becomes visible: the social comedy, the descriptive lyricism, the relentless psychological analysis, and the meditation on art are all present and working in concert.

The structure divides cleanly into two large movements. The Paris chapters concern themselves above all with the gap between imagination and reality — the way the mind, in loving something, builds a version of it that no encounter can satisfy. The narrator’s long-anticipated experience of the actress Berma can only disappoint, precisely because he has anticipated it so intensely; his idolized writer Bergotte turns out not to resemble his work; and his first movement into the orbit of the Guermantes foreshadows the obsession that will drive the next volume. These reflections on theatrical performance and artistic reputation do ask patience of readers unfamiliar with the period’s culture, and the pace is unhurried even by Proust’s standards. But they establish the volume’s governing idea: that desire creates its object, and that the created object can never quite be met.

Balbec and the Sea

The second and greater movement carries the narrator and his grandmother to Balbec, the fictional Normandy resort that gives the volume its most celebrated prose. The descriptions here — the sea seen from a hotel room, the early light on the bay, the glass-walled restaurant through which the fishing community outside watches the wealthy diners within — are among the most beautiful passages in any novel. What Proust achieves at Balbec is not simply pretty description but the rendering of a place as a total, shifting, temporally unstable experience, perceived differently at every hour and remade by every mood. The seaside resort becomes a social crucible as well, a concentrated space in which class, desire, and performance interact with unusual intensity, and in which the friendship with Saint-Loup — one of the most affectionately drawn relationships in the entire Search — takes its warm and lasting form.

Albertine and the Architecture of Desire

It is at Balbec that the narrator first encounters the petite bande, the group of young women cycling along the seafront, and above all Albertine, whose face and manner will preoccupy him for three further volumes. Proust manages this first encounter with extraordinary precision. The narrator does not fall in love with a woman; he falls in love with a series of impressions of a woman, each slightly different, none of them finally resolving into a stable person. This is not a defect in his perception but its most accurate feature, and it states the central argument of the whole work in miniature: the object of love is always partly a creation of the lover’s consciousness, which is why possession can never satisfy and why the beloved remains, in the end, unknowable. Adolescent desire, Proust shows, is never simple — it is projection and idealization and the constant transformation of its object, and the volume lays down the emotional architecture on which the rest of the Search will build.