12 - C - Hawthorns (031)

entraîner

to fatigue, tire out

l’aubépine

The reference to hawthorns in Bible d’Amien is already a proto-Proustian idea. Proust will develop this in his Recherche, where ordinary sensory experiences (the fragrance and sight of a hawthorn hedge) suddenly open onto something much larger. The pink and white hawthorns along the Méséglise way, the hawthorns in the church, and the narrator’s intense, almost religious-erotic feeling for them are directly descended from his Ruskinian meditation. In the preface to La Bible d’Amiens, Proust is already working out how a flower can function as a complex sign — aesthetic, emotional, and quasi-religious at once. His La Bible d’Amiens functions as a kind of “laboratory” for the Recherche. The hawthorns of the Vierge Dorée, a symbolic reading of nature, migrate from the Ruskin’s text into the novel.

l’aubépine blanche

White hawthorn; longstanding symbolic associations with the BVM in Xn tradition; it blooms in May, the month dedicated to the Virgin, with its white flowers evoking purity. In medieval iconography and folklore, it is sometimes linked to the Virgin (occasionally called “Mary’s thorn” or associated with the crown of thorns; crataegus comes from the term, κρατος, meaning thorn. At Amiens Cathedral, this symbolism is made visible in the famous Vierge Dorée (Golden Virgin). Ruskin (along w medieval sculptors) associated her with flowering hawthorns. Proust quotes Ruskin describing how the porch is “covered with hawthorn.” The hawthorn becomes a kind of living frame of la madone’ (statue), delicate welcoming, and full of grace. (Bible d’Amiens, 24, 98)

un linteau d’aubépines

lintel (horizonal beam spanning a doorway, fireplace) of hawthorns (Bibles d’Amiens, 34)

il n’entraînait pas trop

it did not tire/exert one too much (031)

l’effluve

the scent or fragrance emanating from something

la barrière blanche

the white gate/fence (031)

les panaches

feathery tuft tuft of (lilac) flowers; like elegant headdresses or theatrical crests.

les lilas: « Leurs panaches de plumes mauves ou blanches »

their feathery tufts of mauve and white plumes

son pignon gothique

its Gothic gable

les Nymphes du printemps

Typical mythological figures — graceful, sensual nymphs associated with spring, nature, and fertility (which would have appeared vulgar in comparison with the lilacs)

auprès de ces jeunes houris

beside these young houris (maidens from Persian tradition); here, an eroticization of lilac blossoms

la clôture

the boundary hedge, wall or fence of the estate

au pied de l'allée qui dominait l'étang artificiel

at the foot of the walking path overlooking the artificial pond

un fleur-de-lis

yellow flag iris (heraldric symbol), with dropping ragged yellow-and-violet petals (here used poetically)

les fleurs de lis en lambeaux

the tattered iris flowers

la chance

opportunity, possibility, with emotional overtones (contrasting ‘le hazard’)

la chance terrible

terrifying or overwhelming possibility

un agrément passage

a passing pleasure

un calcul

a scheme, plan

déjouer

to thwart

j'aurais voulu que leurs calculs fussent déjoués

I wished their plans had been thwarted

un couffin

a wicker fishing basket

quand tout d'un coup, j'aperçus sur l'herbe, comme un signe de sa présence possible, un couffin oublié à côté d'une ligne dont le bouchon flottait sur l'eau

when I suddenly noticed on the grass, as if a sign of her possible presence, a forgotten basket beside a fishing line whose bobber was floating on the water,

la solitude environnante

surrounding sollitude

prévenir Mlle Swann que le poisson mordait

to advise Miss Swann that the fish were biting

le petit chemin qui monte vers les champs

the small path that leads up to the fields

« Je le trouvai tout bourdonnant de l'odeur des aubépines. »

I found it all buzzing with the scent of the hawthorns. Synesthesia: Proust constantly blends senses. The heavy, heady fragrance of hawthorns feels vibrating, alive, and overwhelming — almost audible. The word makes the invisible scent palpable and dynamic, as if the air itself is trembling and humming with perfume.

une jonchée

a layer of strewn flowers

« La haie formait comme une suite de chapelles qui disparaissaient sous la jonchée de leurs fleurs amoncelées en reposoir ; »

“The hedge (of hawthorns) formed as it were a series of chapels, which disappeared under the strewn mass of their flower, heaped up like a reposoir.”  An architectural metaphor: each section of flowering bush looks like a little chapel or shrine. The blossoms are so abundant they almost hide the structure of the hedge. The hawthorn flowers are piled like offerings on a sacred altar.

une verrière

stained-glass window (un vitrail)

un quadrillage de clarté, comme s'il venait de traverser une verrière ;

a dappled pattern of light as if it had passed through a stained-glass window

au-dessous d'elles, le soleil posait à terre un quadrillage de clarté, comme s'il venait de traverser une verrière ;

“below them, the sun cast a pattern of dappled light on the ground, as if it had just passed through a stained-glass window”; Gothic cathedral in miniature. quintessential Proust turns a natural, humble thing into something religious, artistic, and transcendent. The hawthorns become a living cathedral, blending nature, Catholic ritual, and medieval art in one ecstatic vision.

onctueux

unctuous, creaming, oily (evoking holy oils and anointing before a statue of the Virgin)

les nervures

the ribs of the staments of a flower, stone ribs of flamboyant Gothic windows

le fraisier

wild strawberry plant, associated with lushness and natural beauty, symbolizing sweetness and fertility

less meneaux

mullions narrow vertical bars that divide Gothic windows into smaller panes

la rampe du jubé

the balustrade of the rood screen

leur parfum s'étendait aussi onctueux, aussi délimité en sa forme que si j'eusse été devant l'autel de la Vierge, et les fleurs, aussi parées, tenaient chacune d'un air distrait son étincelant bouquet d'étamines, fines et rayonnantes nervures de style flamboyant comme celles qui à l'église ajouraient la rampe du jubé ou les meneaux du vitrail et qui s'épanouissaient en blanche chair de fleur de fraisier.

Their fragrance spread as unctuous, as clearly outlined, as if I had been standing before the altar of the Virgin, and the flowers, equally adorned, each held with an air of absentmindedness its sparkling bouquet of stamens, fine and radiant veins in a flamboyant style like those that, in the church, pierced the rood screen or the mullions of the stained-glass window and that blossomed into the white flesh of strawberry flowers.” Proust fuses together religious devotion, Gothic architecture and sensual, almost erotic nature. The hawthorns are simultaneously a cathedral, a Virgin’s altar, and a living, breathing, flesh-like organism.

les églantines

wild rambling roses that grow wild along hedges.

les paysannes

country girls

« monteraient elles aussi en plein soleil le même chemin rustique »

“they too would climb the same rustic path in the full sun.”

en la soie unie de leur corsage rougissant 

in the plain silk of their blushing bodices: Beautiful personification: the wild rose is imagined as a young peasant girl wearing a plain, smooth silk bodice (“corsage unie”) that is blushing (pink).

« qu’un souffle défait »

“which a single breath undoes” — a phrase capturing the fleeting nature of beauty and life.

Combien naïves et paysannes en comparaison sembleraient les églantines qui, dans quelques semaines, monteraient elles aussi en plein soleil le même chemin rustique, en la soie unie de leur corsage rougissant qu'un souffle défait.

“How naive and rustic, in comparison, would seem the wild roses that, in a few weeks, would also climb the same rustic path in full sunlight, their smooth, silken bodices reddening as if undone by a breath of wind.” By comparison, the hawthors will make the wild roses seem simple, innocent, and rustic. The hawthorns bloom first, then the wild roses a few weeks later) and Proust’s constant blending of botanical observation with erotic and social metaphors (clothing, blushing, breath as a caress).

« Mais j'avais beau rester devant les aubépines à respirer, à porter devant ma pensée qui ne savait ce qu'elle devait en faire, à perdre, à retrouver leur invisible et fixe odeur, à m'unir au rythme qui jetait leurs fleurs… »

“But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in, holding them before my mind, which didn't know what to do with them, losing and regaining their invisible and fixed scent, uniting myself to the rhythm that scattered their flowers”; M walks with his family near Tansonville where he encounters a flowering hawthorn hedge. He becomes entranced by its beauty, scent, and religious/artistic associations (likened to chapels, altars, the Virgin Mary, and flamboyant Gothic style), and then sees a rarer pink hawthorn. This scene intertwines with his first glimpse of Gilberte Swann.

…ici et là, avec une allégresse juvénile et à des intervalles inattendus comme certains intervalles musicaux, elles m'offraient indéfiniment le même charme avec une profusion inépuisable, mais sans me le laisser approfondir davantage, comme ces mélodies qu'on rejoue cent fois de suite sans descendre plus avant dans leur secret.

…here and there with youthful exuberance and at unexpected intervals like certain musical interludes, they offered me the same charm endlessly with inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve into it further, like those melodies that are played a hundred times in a row without ever descending deeper into their secret.

le talus

an embankment or slope, often covered with vegetation, that supports a path or road.

« l'immense étendue où déferlent les blés »

the vast expanse where the wheat rolls in waves.

« où moutonnent les nuages »

where the clouds billow

« le première barque échouée »

the first beached rowboat

« Puis je revenais devant les aubépines comme devant ces chefs-d'oeuvre dont on croit qu'on saura mieux les voir quand on a cessé un moment de les regarder »

Then I would return to the hawthorns as to those masterpieces which one believes one will see better when one has stopped looking at them for a moment,

mais j’avais beau me faire un écran de mes mains

“but no matter how much I made a screen with my hands…”  A very touching, childlike gesture: he cups his hands around his eyes to block out everything else and see only the hawthorns.

« le sentiment qu’elles éveillaient en moi restait obscur et vague… »

“the feeling they awakened in me remained obscure and vague, seeking in vain to detach itself, to adhere to their flowers.” Despite this intense concentration) the feeling they awaken in him remains obscure and vague.

« cherchant en vain à se dégager, à venir adhérer à leurs fleurs » 

“seeking in vain to detach itself, to to come and adhere/cling to their flowers.” The emotion is trying in vain to free itself (“se dégager”) and to attach itself (“adhérer”) to the visible flowers. There’s a powerful feeling, but it floats between him and the hawthorns — it cannot fully connect with their physical beauty.

« Elles ne m’aidaient pas à l’éclaircir, et je ne pouvais demander à d’autres fleurs de le satisfaire » 

“They did not help me to clarify it, and I could not ask other flowers to satisfy it.”  The hawthorns themselves offer no explanation. And he cannot turn to any other flowers to fulfill or satisfy this mysterious longing. The narrator experiences an overwhelming, almost mystical emotion in front of the hawthorns, but he cannot grasp what that emotion really is. The beauty is intense, yet it remains just out of reach — a perfect early example of the Proustian theme of the gap between sensation and understanding. This passage marks one of the first major aesthetic revelations** in the novel: beauty that is deeply moving but still incomprehensible to the young Marcel. It will take the entire Recherche (and involuntary memory, art, and time) for such feelings to finally become clear.

une parure de fête

festive outfit

un jour quelconque

a day like any other

un caprice contingent

a fleeting whim

une toilette pour une grande fête

an outfit for a grand celebration

rien à leur gourmandise

nothing to their taste or appetite

ces petits rosiers aux pots

these small rose bushes in pots

Intercalé dans la haie

interspersed in the hedge

en souriant dans sa fraîche toilette rose

smiling in her fresh pink attire/outfit