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The Vinteuil SonataAuthor(s): Dorothy AdelsonSource: Music & Letters, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul., 1942), pp. 228-233Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/728218

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THE VINTEUIL SONATABY DOROTHY ADELSON

IT is a Proustian paradox that the apparently hopeless is the mostlikely to happen. At this most unexpected time, from a presumablyincomunicadoFrance, has come a letter which illuminates a twenty-year-old problem with regard to Proust's epoch-making novel, 'Ala Recherche du temps perdu '.(1)The letter is from Toulon, and contains a report of an interview(2)with the man who was admittedly the closest friend of MarcelProust and who, musician and composer in his own right, was thesource and channel for most of Proust's knowledge of music. Thereis no doubt that Reynaldo Hahn is the person best qualified tospeak with authority about the vexed question of the originals ofthe Vinteuil Sonata.The talented and charming Hahn saw Proust daily for a goodpart of the latter's lifetime; he alone among Proust's many friendswas able to adapt himself completely to the eccentric hours anddifficult sensibilities of that cloistered invalid. Yet, apart from anarticle in the 'Hommages a Marcel Proust' published by the' Nouvelle Revue FranFaise' in I923, and very scanty referenceselsewhere(3), Hahn has stood aloof from the flood of Proust reminis-cences which have been pouring forth for a quarter of a century,resulting in a bibliography alone of hundreds of pages; he has noteven published correspondence, as so many of Proust's friends andacquaintances have done. One reason for this reticence, as statedfrankly to his interviewer, is that much of this avalanche of Proustianliterature, in Hahn's opinion, is inaccurate or unilluminating.Anything he might publish would risk being lost in the confusion,and he has been content to wait for the right moment-which, tobe sure, present circumstances seemed to be rather pronouncedlydelaying. The specific questions which were submitted to him atthe interview, however, he answered graciously and at length.Of the item of Proustiana here concerned, the Vinteuil Sonata,we have come to speak as familiarly as of the ' Eroica ' or the over-ture to ' Tannhauser'. For all readers of ' Remembrance ofThings Past' the Vinteuil Sonata has achieved the status of thosegreat creations of literature which step out of the frame that enclosesthem to become separate and independent entities. A host ofconflicting suppositions exists with regard to the possible originalsof this piece of imaginary music; and in the long history of this

(1)The Englishtitle (' Remembranceof ThingsPast') and sub-titlesof C. K. ScottMoncrieff's ranslation reused hereafter.(2) Most grateful acknowledgments re due M. Jacques Rosembaum or personallycommunicatinga letter from the writer to M. ReynaldoHahn at Toulon, and for hisbrilliantand exhaustiveaccountof the interviewwhich wastheinspiration f thisarticle.(3) Reynaldo Hahn, 'Notes. Journal d'un musicien ', 1933.228


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THE VINTEUIL SONATAcontroversy this letter brings us the latest and probably the mostdefinitive instalment.

,Esthetically speaking, the matter of the originals of an artist'screations has an adventitious, a wholly incidental interest whichmay be a subject for literary curiosity but is of no artistic significance.However, if we recognize in Proust's novel an imaginative transcriptor rather reconstruction of the period of French history in which helived, the problem of the models from which he composed hissynthetic and symbolical portraits takes on a more than usualimportance. Especially is this true of the Vinteuil Sonata, whosesignificance in the book is many-faceted.

Through the medium of a " little phrase " which occurs in oneof its movements the Vinteuil Sonata becomes the symbol, the" national anthem ", of the two most important love-affairs in thebook, namely that of Swann for Odette and of the narrator forAlbertine. After love has proved a disappointment, both Swann andthe " I " are led beyond it by the music of the Sonata (and later onby a Septet which represents Vinteuil's art in a more mature stage)to a realization of the meaning and value of art. For the narrator,this revelation is of fundamental importance, for it leads directlyto the recovery of his vanished past, the tempsperdu,which Vinteuil'smusic teaches him can be found only in that which is above timeand therefore timeless ; only in that which is for ever preserved bybeing incarnated in a work of art. Thus the quest for something inlife which should be real and worth-while, something of permanentvalue, in short, the search for reality, is ended when Marcel finds inthe music of Vinteuil the supra-terrestrial, extra-temporal, eternalessence of things, only glimpses of which had been vouchsafed himin rare moments of contemplation, as of the steeples of Martinvilleor of the taste of a madeleine soaked in tea. By the end of the book,with the help of Vinteuil's music, the narrator has discovered hisvocation-to compose a work of art; and accordingly there iscatalysed in him the determination to write a novel. This is, need-less to say, the novel we have, of which the decision to write it isthe climax.

Art, thought Proust, was the only reality, and rarely has a workof literature been so steeped in the sister arts as is ' Remembrance ofThings Past '. Of all the arts, music, as exemplified by the VinteuilSonata, he considered the purest and most perfect, and even theform of his book shows its influence.(4) Proust's novel has been com-pared to a fugue, in which all the possibilities of the themes of timeand memory are played on to the full; to a symphonic poem,which begins with a long, slow silence, grows to a loud crescendo fmany voices, and dies away again to a solitary meditation. Moststriking of all, the composition of the novel has been explained asbeing similar to that of a Wagnerian opera-which is not surprising


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MUSIC AND LETTERSin view of the enormous vogue of Wagner in Proust's impressionableyouth and of his own admiration for that composer's genius. All themultifarious themes played with variations over and over again inthe course of the novel are, if not developed, at least stated in thevery first volume of ' Swann's Way'.Who was Vinteuil ? If you subscribe to Proust's theory that thegreatest artists of each generation are the most profound and inconsequence the most revolutionary; if you believe that the repre-sentatives of the arts in his novel illustrate his thesis that the trueartist is an innovator who is at first uncomprehended and ignoredby the public, which only in time learns to appreciate him, then youmust agree with those who declare that Bergotte, the writer, isAnatole France; Elstir, the painter, Cezanne; la Berma, theactress, Sarah Bernhardt; and Vinteuil, the musician, CesarFranck-which last supposition gains greatly from the resemblancebetween the simple, modest character and life of Vinteuil, asdescribed in the novel, and that of Franck. However, if we lookat the materials of Proust's experience out of which he fashioned hiscreations, we find matters not quite so uncomplicated and schematic.For example, the artists with whom Proust was acquainted andwho presumably furnished the models for the figure of Elstir, were,first of all, Monet, then Turner, Whistler, Vuillard, Bonnard andpossibly Degas ; with Cezanne (as also with Renoir), a letter writtenby Proust in one of the last years of his life tells us, he was almostcompletely unfamiliar.(5) So it was not the fundamentally upsettingrevolution of Post-Impressionism but the much milder Impressionismthat Proust had in mind when he composed the figure of thepainter;not Cezanne, but Monet. Yet, although the technique of Elstir asdescribed is impressionist, in strength of innovation and importancehe corresponds more to Cezanne. Therefore, if we speak symbolicallyand broadly, we may still say that he is Cezanne.Similarly, in that broad sense, Vinteuil is Cesar Franck. Actu-ally, the sources of the character are not so simple. There has beenmuch scurrying hither and yon in search of these, and it is Prousthimself, considerably annoyed by the imbecility of people's wantingto know the originals of personages he rightly regarded as inde-pendent artistic creations having no prototypes in life, who hasdrawn most of the red herrings across the trail. The harassedauthor expressed himself very forcibly on this point in one of hisletters : " [How] annoyed [I am] to hear people tell me: 'Don't

(5)Roger Allard, ' Hommages A Marcel Proust ', 1923, p. 2 of., lists-as the originalsof Elstir-Monet, Turner, Whistler, Vuillard, Bonnard and Degas. Recently, in ' TheArtistic Vision of Proust', 'Horizon', August I941, R. Ironside, using as evidence thedescriptions of Elstir's paintings in ' Remembrance of Things Past', deduces as probablemodels for Elstir the following: Gustave Moreau, Whistler, Monet, Renoir and Degas;of these he accords the greatest influence to Monet. These suppositions should bequalified by comparison with a letter from Proust toJacques-tmile Blanche (January 25thI919) : " . . . Czanne, Degas, Renoir, peintres que je devine a peine et dont j'eusseete passionne de connaitre les ceuvres. ... Que je suis impatient de connaitre votreRenoir et votre Cezanne "

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THE VINTEUIL SONATAtry to contradict, the Duchess of Guermantes is Madame C(when the Duchess of Guermantes, who is both everyone and no one,is in any case exactly the opposite of Madame C ) ". Besides,in his constant desire to give pleasure to his friends he would makethem each the repository of exclusive confidences as to the originalof such-and-such a theme or character in his book-confidenceswhich, as now reported to posterity, embarrassingly fail to agree.Thus, to return to the Vinteuil Sonata, Robert de Montesquiou,on asking Proust for its original, was told that it was a sonata byFaure which gave all those who heard it an irresistible desire " devioler un enfant de choeur dans la sacristie "(6)-which audaciousremark does more credit to Proust's ability to adapt his conversationto the person to whom he was talking, in this case the bizarre,extravagant Montesquiou who fancied the out,e', the shocking, theparadoxical, than to his own sensibility.Mme. Sheikevitch, another of Proust's good friends, has her ownstory to tell. She quotes the following from Proust's conversationat Cabourg in September I912: "Do you like Borodin ? Youknow that it was one of the themes of his third Symphony whichgave me the idea of the ' little phrase ' of the Vinteuil Sonata ..Might we not explain this charming confidence as inspired by thewish to compliment the Russian connections of this lady, especiallysince discussion and praise of things Muscovite had tactfully beenmade by Proust the keynote of his conversation on this occasion ?(7)We may take much more seriously a dedication written by Proustin Jacques de Lacretelle's copy of 'Du Cote de chez Swann ':Dear friend, there are no cles for the characters of this book;or rather there are eight or ten for each ; similarly for the Combraychurch, my memory loaned me as " models " (posed for me) many

churches.. . . My recollections are more precise for the Sonata.To the extent (very slight, to be sure) that I made use of reality,the little phrase of that Sonata, and I have never told it to anyone[ ] is (to begin at the end), in the Saint-Euverte soiree,the charmingbut really mediocre phrase of a sonata for piano and violin bySaint-Saens, a musician of whom I am not fond. (I shall indicateexactly to you the passage which recurs several times . . . ) Atthe same soiree,a little farther on, I should not be surprised that inspeaking of the little phrase I might have thought of the Good-FridaySpell music. In that same soireeagain (page 241), when the pianoand the violin sigh like two birds which are calling to each other, Ithought of the Sonata by Franck, whose Quartet will appear in oneof the succeeding volumes. The tremolos which cover the littlephrase at the Verdurins' were suggested to me by a prelude to' Lohengrin ', but the phrase itself at that moment by something ofSchubert's. The same evening at the Verdurins' the phrase is aravishing piano composition by Faure.(8)(8) E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, ' Robert de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust', p. 288.(7) Marie Sheikevitch, ' Croquis de Marcel Proust', 'La Revue hebdomadaire',March i7th 1928. Here, as elsewhere in this article, I have translated in a bald andliteral fashion from the French.(8)Jacques de Lacretelle, ' Hommages a Marcel Proust', p. I88f.

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MUSIC AND LETTERSTo recapitulate, in this dedication Proust suggests the followingoriginals of the " little phrase " :I. A piano and violin sonata by Saint-Saens (of whom at thesame time he speaks slightingly),2. Wagner's Good-Friday Spell music,3. a theme from Schubert,4. a piano composition by Faure (who often was the chiefornament of the parties given by Proust, at whose request he wouldfrequently seat himself at the piano and play for the assembledguests. (9)Franck is mentioned also, but only in connection with a contra-

puntal passage for piano and violin which is not that of the " littlephrase ". More importantly, the Quartet by Franck, which was toappear in one of the later volumes (not published at the time of theletter to de Lacretelle), can only be the Septet by Vinteuil soenchantingly described in 'The Captive '.Let us return now to Reynaldo Hahn, who begins by being verymuch astonished at Mme. Sheikevitch's explanation of the " petitephrase ". He even doubts Proust's acquaintance with Borodin'sthird Symphony, of which he had never spoken. At any rate, Hahnadmits no influence of Borodin on Vinteuil's " little phrase " andseems to regard the entire incident as pure conversation.As to his musical influence on Proust, Hahn is delightfullyexplicit.Contrary to popular opinion, Proust was not in the least amusician. Almost all the music he knew he heard through me.He went out very little, and, as I went to see him every evening, Ioften sat down at the piano and played for him something I wantedhim to hear or that he wanted me to play.

Now follows Hahn's explanation of the Vinteuil Sonata:It happened in this way-and I am now coming to the VinteuilSonata-that the Sonata in D minor for piano and violin by Saint-Saens had pleased him very much, and particularly a singing phraseof the first movement. He asked me hundreds of times: " Playfor me that bit I like, you know, that . . . ' little phrase' bySaint-Saens." Another musical phrase, also singing, very melodious,but more vibrant, of the last part of Cesar Franck's Sonata for pianoand violin, he also liked very much. That is why, although I neverquestioned him on the subject and he never said anything explicitto me, I suppose there is no single" cle " for the Vinteuil Sonata anymore than for any of the characters of' Remembrance of ThingsPast'. . To return to the " little phrase ", I am almost certainthat in Proust's mind it was composed in reality of an amalgam, of afusion of two musical phrases, Saint-Sains's and Franck's.Hahn thus confirms Proust's statement about the Saint-SaensSonata with the important added detail that it is the one in D minor,and ascribes some influence on the "phrase " to the piano andviolin Sonata by Franck. He also mentions in passing the baseless-(9)' Lettres A la Comtesse de Noailles ', p. 174-5, note.

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THE VINTEUIL SONATAness of another theory often advanced, namely that Proust'sinspiration was a Sonata by Lekeu.(lo) Hahn indicates that thistheory was dictated by snobbery alone, inasmuch as Lekeu was amusician with a very esoteric and limited appeal and

people must have found it more elegant to attribute the "littlephrase " to him rather than to the man who was probably ts chiefauthor,(l)at that moment scorned by " people of taste " and under-going the inevitable eclipse which overtakes all genius. Besides," if Proust could have heard Lekeu, it could only have been when Iwas away at war (about 1917), which was after the publication of'Swann's Way', at which time he used to have musicians coming tohim regularly to play chamber music.Just as the great artist Elstir is not Cezanne but Monet, so thecreator of the music that inspired the " little phrase " of Vinteuil'sSonata turns out to be not the great Cesar Franck but Saint-Saens,who was so far from being considered a decisive innovator or anoutstanding genius that even Proust, in the letter to de Lacretelle,practically apologizes for making use of his music. However,cut-and-dried formulae have no place in discussions of art; and wemust make the reservation that in the glorious passage describingthe Septet which was the expression of the mature genius of Vinteuil,

it was definitely from Cesar Franck's Quartet that Proust derived hisinspiration.When asked to jot down in musical notation the phrases he hadmentioned, Reynaldo Hahn very properly declined, with thesewords, which might well be borne in mind in any discussion ofProust's models: " If I made a note of these phrases for you, Ishould be betraying Proust by seeming to furnish a definite cluewhere there is, after all, nothing but a strong presumption."Although nothing is more fascinating for an admirer of Proust'sgenius than to examine the environing influences which shaped itsdevelopment, one hesitates before the final mystery of the work ofart which he created whole out of the shreds and patches of hisexperience.

(10)Guillaume Lekeu, I870-1894, whose untimely death cut short a musical careerof great promise.(11) Italics mine.

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