Literary Summits

If Proust and Jesus share anything in common, it’s that they both grew up in small towns.

In “Swann’s Way,” Proust has just turned his attention from his quirky family to the town of Combray itself. And that prompts me to ask, for no particular reason:

If Jesus wrote a novel, how would he describe his hometown?

Yesterday, in our weekly “Greek group” at work, we read the passage in Mark 6 about Jesus returning to his home town — and the incredulous townsfolk, being small-town people to the core, say to each other, “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of . . .?” They can’t believe he’d amount to anything because they know where he’s come from, and who “his people” are.

Similarly, in “Swann’s Way,” the narrator’s aunt could have been the one speaking in the Mark passage. Madame Octave is a rare bird who is both hypochondriac and insomniac (read: the life of any party) — who never leaves the house in Combray, the small town where little Marcel and his parents visit on holidays. Even though she’s physically confined herself, that doesn’t keep her from participating in the town gossip. She watches out her window, asking her maid Francoise to find out the latest on this or that person who has just walked by, and she even passes judgment on the dogs in town…

“One knew everybody so well, in Combray, both animals and people, that if my aunt had chanced to see a dog pass by ‘whom she did not know at all,’ she would not stop thinking about it and devoting to this incomprehensible fact all her talents for induction and her hours of leisure” (59).

Ah, so that’s what people did before TV. It reminds me of the few power outages we’ve experienced in Chicago — how people actually come out of their apartments and houses and talk to each other, from porch to porch. Especially on hot nights, it creates a stir. And in those moments, I’ve thought that this kind of thing would make our neighborhood a more cohesive place — people would actually know each other better and keep track of one another.

But when I read this passage about Combray, I also realize that too much time and not enough people can create a community that’s more than tight-knit — it can be downright snug, in an uncomfortable sort of way. The kind of place where Jesus “can do no deeds of power” because expectations are preset based on his class and his family background.

It’s maybe not a coincidence that immediately after describing the exchange between Madame Octave and Francoise that the narrator switches gears to describe the town’s church in great detail, describing the mystery, the power and the wonder that the place holds for him as a small child. He seems predisposed toward some kind of mystical experience. He describes the church in terms that show that it’s already a thing of the past, a relic that has lost it’s power to impress the general public — but it still captivates the young boy.

His grandmother talks about the familiar old stones of the church building as though they were living, and comments on the steeple, “My children, make fun of me if you like, perhaps it isn’t beautiful according to the rules, but I like [the steeple’s] strange old face. I’m sure that if it could play the piano, it would not play dryly.”

This same steeple is the town’s timekeeper — literally, chiming with the hours — and it’s a piece of the time that he’s trying to reclaim in the book. And the steeple becomes his point of navigation, his guide, “the dear departed form.” He writes, “I am still seeking my path, I am turning a corner . . . but . . . I am doing so in my heart . . .”

My point, if there is one, is that at the same time that Combray seems socially constricting, the memory of Combray’s church remains a guidepost. It stands for the things that have passed on, and for the people who are no longer there.

How does the saying go? Something like, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy” (?)