Why is the narrator, and the rest of his family, so preoccupied at hiding sadness at the face of death? This death scene is almost funny! His own grandmother is dying, and the narrator is trying to hide Francois' tears. Why isn't he feeling sad himself, rather than being aware of the social implications of her death? Perhaps this is performativity at its peak, at its most absurd and at its most inane. Not even death can detract the social wall or the social barrier that divides us from reality.

Perhaps this is also circumstance of class. On page 315 on the new translation, Proust writes that "the impulsive reactions of uneducated people who make up no attempt to hide the impression, or even the painful alarm, aroused in them by the sight of a physical change... and the insensitive brutishness of the peasant woman... who lacks the sense of modesty to make her conceal interest she feels at the sight of suffering flesh" This is one of the times I feel at most divided with the narrator. Isn't Francois in the present, expressing genuine emotion? Why is the narrator judging her, despite her authenticity?

By thinking back on the steeples, the narrator deconstructs their reality into an involuntary memory that has some meaning hidden within them. By deconstruction, we mean that the narrator picks apart specific aspects of the steeple (the outlines, the rind) and strips apart their physicality into a sort of fictional memory. Moreover, as the narrator gets physically further away from them, the more their meaning seems to reach out to the narrator. This suggests that the hidden meaning (truth?) to any sort of reality lies in the (deconstructed?) memory.

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It's funny that Proust references Michaelangelo's Last Judgement in describing the feeling of love. The Last Judgement is a "depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. The souls of humans rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints." This frescoe is surprisingly dark, in juxtaposition with the fleeting and ecstatic experience of love.

This line, spoken by Odette, highlights the comical (and somewhat desperate) pretensiosity of these social parties. Mme Cottard and Mme Bontemps are worried about appearing wealthy or socially apt to Odette. Both try to show off that they know about the silliest things: the most exquisite iced dessert in Paris. In a sort of social competition, they throw out names like Rebattet and Bourbonnex to demonstrate their status; but really, it was Odette who made these little cakes.

This scene also puts Odette in a more "sincere" light than the rest of these women.

Swann realizes that his attempts at possessing Odette will never be succesful because the idea of possessing another being, of being completely in control of the other, is impossible.

This moment recalls the other similar moment where Swann looks for Odette in that small French town, unable to find her, until it gets dark and he gives up, only to cross paths with her by accident.

Love, in other words, is not deliberate.

The realization that Odette is a real person, really making "orangeade" in the lamplight, rather than some sort of theatrical artificiality, comes as a shock to Swann. It is the revelation that Odette is not a doll with theatrical properties, but a woman, with legs and arms, breasts and eyes, thoughts and anxieties.

This revelation of the "real" is similar to last week's discussion of real allegory: the conflict between the imaginary and the perceived. In this case, Swann realizes that he has cast some sort of terrible, infidel shadow onto his lover.

Projections, the imaginary, and shadows seem to be motifs in this section of the novel. Swann struggles to see Odette without projecting a distasteful picture of her in his mind. It is the struggle to see things for what they really are.

The Proustian idea that objects are in motion, moving, have a certain "mobility" that is reaching out to us. Objects have something hidden within them that is hard to tap into; their full meaning and resonance lays "contained" and "concealed." As a writer, the narrator feels a responsibility to "penetrate" through these objects, to fully get within them and find their meaning.

The word "penetrating" carries a sexual connotation

Proust is full of paradoxes. This sentence alone, which concludes the elongated memory that opens the novel, is packed with contradiction – perhaps because time and memory are incomprehensible paradoxes themselves.

The first paradox we come across in this concluding sentence (that simultaneously opens the novel) is that our narrator is "inhaling through the noise of falling rain" the smell of the lilac-trees. How can we inhale through the noise of something happening? Moreover, the narrator is not smelling through the sound of water droplets hitting the ground; he is smelling through the sound of falling rain, that is, something that makes no noise. Falling rain does not make noise. Falling rain is a liminal state, the action of something that is in the process of happening. This sentence also demonstrates how Proust evokes all our senses at once – smell and hearing are infused as one, sometimes being latched onto a single memory.

The second paradox in this sentence is the "odour of invisible and persistent lilac-trees." How can smell be both "invisible," that is, non-existent, and meanwhile also "persistent," continuing firmly, obstinately?

Last week, we debated whether Proust was a romantic and if his work, In Search of Lost Time, was romanticist. In the most simple terms, as defined by WikiPedia, romanticism was a "a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual." Writers such as Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and William Wordsworth are characteristic of the romantic movement. These writers emphasized the vitality of nature, the individual, and beauty – both in humans and their creations. There are definitely multiples parts in the novel where Proust's writing may evoke similar elements that romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and John Keats may evoke, and there are parts where the narrator appears to be a romantic himself. However, the mocking depiction of Lengrandin in the novel – Lengrandin being a romantic – particularly in this section, demonstrates the light in which Proust views romanticism/romantics: with scorn.

Here, our narrator catches Lengrandin lying about his true social status and his social relationships. The French upper class at this time look down upon aristocrats (because of the French Revolution). The Guermantes Family are considered part of the French aristocracy, and as such, Lengrandin is ashamed to be associated with them. As a way to evade the narrator's question, Legrandin goes off on a romantic tangent, telling our narrator that "In my heart of hearts I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, books, two or three, pictures; rather more, perhaps, and the light of the moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens..."

To which our narrator immediately laughs off, calling Lengrandin a snob.