MARCEL PROUST
evidence now available belong mostly to Part VIII and begin in
August 1897, we may reasonably assume that the interval between
October 1896 and August 1897 was occupied with the com-
position of Parts IV, VI and VII, which describe the summer at
Reveillon, the visit to Beg-Meil, and the second, winter stay at
Reveillon.
With the exception of the Dreyfus Case episodes in Part V,
Chapters V -IX and a few episodes in Parts VIII-X, the plot of
Jean Santeuil is the story of Proust's own life up to the end of
- It is probable, therefore, that he foresaw and planned the
greater part of his novel during the first few months of its com-
position. The material is the same as that used in the first half of
A la Recherche, up to the end, say,~ of the Princesse de Guer-
mantes's soiree in Sodome et Gomorrhe. But Proust's selection of
it is often different: Charlus and Sodom appear only briefly in
Jean Santeuil, for they were not fit reading for his mother in her
lifetime; the Narrator's schooldays are rarely mentioned in A la
Recherche; and the story of Swann and Odette is told of Jean and
F ran~oise S. Proust had not yet discovered the master-theme of
Time, which would enable him to bring creative imagination to
bear upon reality. Because the novel is supposed to be the middle-
aged novelist Co's story of his own youth, there is a basic in-
consistency in the time-scheme, far more serious than those in
A la Recherche,! which the reader accepts as mysterious but
credible loops in the dimension of Time. Jean is born in 1859,
Henri meets the Dutch nun in 1866 (at least ten years too early);
yet otherwise the time-scale is that of Proust's own life, and when
Jean is in his early twenties he takes part in the events of the
Dreyfus Case which belong to 1898. But it is more important to
note that Proust is already wrestling with Time, than to complain
that he does so without success.
The narrative opens, like Confession d'une jeune jille and Du
~ Cote de chet Swann, with the crucial incident of the moonlit
garden at Auteuil^2 and the mother's kiss refused and exacted.
Then Grandfather Weil as M. Sandre deplores, one evening at
1 E.g. the Narrator's encounter with the Lady in Pink, who is Odette
before she met Swann, although Odette's affair with Swann happened before
the Narrator's birth; the immense age of Odette and Mme Verdurin in Le
Temps Retrouve, etc.
- Here called Saint-Germain, but later (vol. ), )"7) A uteuil.
