In the third chapter of Albertine disparue, Proust’s narrator is travelling in Venice with his grieving mother. She is waiting for him at the window of their hotel. He has seen her from the outside.
«… derrière ces balustres de marbre de diverses couleurs, maman lisait en m’attendant, le visage contenu dans une voilette en tulle d’un blanc aussi déchirant que celui de ses cheveux pour moi qui sentais que ma mère l’avait, en cachant ses larmes, ajoutée à son chapeau de paille moins pour avoir l’air « habillé » devant les gens de l’hôtel que pour me paraître moins en deuil, moins triste, presque consolée de la mort de ma grand-mère …»
This sounds like the triumph of maternal love. The mother’s devotion to her son appears to be greater than her grief. It may seem even purer, for the mother does not know her son is watching and need not hide behind her habitual gestures and words. Love persists even when the son is not present.
(Still, one must remember that Proust’s narrator is a narcissist. The mother exists only in relation to the son — to kiss him goodnight in childhood, for instance. She has no independent life or needs. The narration itself compels every character to circle around the “I” like satellites.)
At first, the mother does not recognise her son. For him, it must be touching to see her vulnerability in those few seconds when she seems to pass from the land of protective solitude, as though through undergrowth, into the realm of familiar smiles and kisses. Yet even here, maternal love endures.
«… dès que de la gondole je l’appelais elle envoyait vers moi, du fond de son cœur, son amour qui ne s’arrêtait que là où il n’y avait plus de matière pour le soutenir, à la surface de son regard passionné qu’elle faisait aussi proche de moi que possible, qu’elle cherchait à exhausser, à l’avancée de ses lèvres, en un sourire qui semblait m’embrasser, dans le cadre et sous les dais du sourire plus discret de l’ogive illuminée par le soleil de midi …»
The grieving mother, framed by the window, is a natural work of art.
(From the inside, she might remind the narrator of one of Vermeer’s women at a window.)
The window itself seems almost like a living being, a stranger who has witnessed something important to us and whose mere presence will recall it to us again and again, for the rest of our lives.
«… cette fenêtre a pris dans ma mémoire la douceur des choses qui eurent en même temps que nous, à côté de nous, leur part dans une certaine heure qui sonnait, la même pour nous et pour elles ; et, si pleins de formes admirables que soient ses meneaux, cette fenêtre illustre garde pour moi l’aspect intime d’un homme de génie avec qui nous aurions passé un mois dans une même villégiature, qui y aurait contracté pour nous quelque amitié, et si depuis, chaque fois que je vois le moulage de cette fenêtre dans un musée, je suis obligé de retenir mes larmes, c’est tout simplement parce qu’elle me dit la chose qui peut le plus me toucher : « Je me rappelle très bien votre mère ».»
When later the sight of a reproduction of this window at a museum will remind the narrator of his mother, in Venice the image that forms before his eyes is aunt Léonie’s window in Combray. The façade of the Combray house was asymmetrical, as her window stood at uneven distances from its neighbouring windows (« son asymétrie à cause de la distance inégale entre les deux fenêtres voisines »). In addition, the aunt’s window-sill was excessively high (« la hauteur excessive de son appui de bois »), the shutters were opened with a hooked bar (« la barre coudée qui servait à ouvrir les volets »), and the curtains were of glossy blue satin, kept apart by the tieback (« les deux pans de satin bleu et glacé qu’une embrasse divisait et retenait écartés »). All these details apply equally to the window of the Venetian hotel (« l’équivalent de tout cela existait à cet hôtel de Venise »).
But Proust goes on to describe that window further. One might even say that, in the twenty or so pages devoted to the Venetian journey, he describes no other object in such detail.
The window is a pointed arch, decorated at the top, which reminds the narrator of a canopy (« sous les dais du sourire plus discret de l’ogive illuminée par le soleil de midi »). The arch is “still half-Arab” (« l’ogive encore à demi arabe ») and rises in the spring of its broken curves (« l’élan de ses arcs brisés »). Later, he adds that the mullions are full of admirable tracery (« pleins de formes admirables que soient ses meneaux »). The window is ornamented with quatrefoils and foliage motifs, behind which hang blinds (« ils étaient tendus entre les quadrilobes et les rinceaux de fenêtres gothiques »). It also features balusters of differently coloured marble (« ces balustres de marbre de diverses couleurs »).
The narrator emphasises that the window is not simply illustrious (« cette fenêtre illustre »), but that the entire façade is a masterpiece of medieval domestic architecture, with reproductions displayed in well-known museums as well as in art books (« une façade qui est reproduite dans tous les musées de moulages et tous les livres d’art illustrés, comme un des chefs-d’œuvres de l’architecture domestique au Moyen Âge »). The text also notes the narrator’s regular opportunity to see a copy of that window in museums — Parisian museums, perhaps? — (« chaque fois que je vois le moulage de cette fenêtre dans un musée »).
The narrator also describes the hotel’s location. Right at the beginning of the chapter, he recounts how, every morning at ten, when the servant came to open the shutters, he could see the Golden Angel of the campanile of Saint Mark’s ablaze in the sunlight (« Quand à 10 heures du matin on venait ouvrir mes volets, je voyais flamboyer […] l’Ange d’or du campanile de Saint-Marc. »). The hotel stood beside a canal: his mother waited for him, gazing at the water (« ma mère m’attendait en regardant le canal »), and the narrator could call to her from a gondola (« de la gondole je l’appelais »). He also notes that he was able to see the window from a great distance, when he had barely passed San Giorgio Maggiore (« de bien loin et quand j’avais à peine dépassé Saint-Georges-le-Majeur, j’apercevais cette ogive »).
The fact that Proust describes the appearance and location of the window in such detail suggests that it exists beyond the pages of the novel, in the physical world. A reader visiting Venice might feel encouraged by the text to seek it out.
I lingered over the quoted lines at Caffè Florian, in a room with portraits of Eastern women. Then, the book in hand, I walked through the Renaissance arcades of the Biblioteca Marciana towards the canal. To find the window, I had to follow the Riva degli Schiavoni, keeping San Giorgio Maggiore in sight. The mention of the church, designed by Palladio and standing on the other side of the Giudecca Canal, suggests that the narrator and his mother’s hotel lay either along that canal or at the mouth of the Grand Canal. Nor could I stray too far from the campanile.
At first, I was drawn to the right, towards the beginning of the Grand Canal, because the centre of gravity of Venice appeared to lie rather in that direction than behind the Doge’s Palace, where I believed the suburbs might already begin. Considering Proust’s and his narrator’s social standing, it seemed likely that the hotel would be situated more on that side. Yet, to my disappointment, the embankment ended soon after the Royal Gardens and the vaporetto stop opposite it, without a single pointed-arch window to be seen along the way. I had no choice but to turn back from Harry’s Bar towards the inner town and return to the piazza.
To discover Proust’s Venice, I would not, in truth, have needed to leave the Piazza San Marco at all. His first visit to the city took place in April and May 1900, at the height of his Ruskin enthusiasm. Apart from his mother, he was accompanied by Reynaldo Hahn and Hahn’s cousin, Marie Nordlinger. In the mornings, they visited the churches Ruskin had described in The Stones of Venice. In the evenings, with the help of his mother and Marie Nordlinger, he would sit at Florian’s, or at the Quadri on the opposite side of the square, attempting to translate Ruskin’s Bible of Amiens into French. It was, in every sense, a true pilgrimage. Marie Nordlinger recalls, for instance, Marcel’s numinous ecstasy when he read to her passages from The Stones of Venice about Saint Mark’s Basilica, on one occasion when they were forced to take shelter there from a thunderstorm.
(The image of a young male writer, a friend of the same sex with whom he maintains a sexually ambivalent relationship, and a woman he knows through that friend — the three of them eagerly searching for something in the side streets of Venice or drinking coffee on Florian’s terrace, at a time when the old world had not yet wholly collapsed — reminded me of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, or rather of its 1981 television adaptation; it brought to my ears that romantic soundtrack, conjured before my eyes Stéphane Audran as Cara, in her beige-and-white striped, turbaned suit, sewing, and made me ponder her famous words about “romantic friendships” between men.)
I made my way back to the Piazzetta and, this time, turned left by the Doge’s Palace. A few dozen metres on, I noticed a hotel with a rose-coloured, asymmetrical façade, rows of Gothic windows and, between them, its name spelled out in capital letters — Danieli. I examined its windows closely, for the place where I stood and the character of the façade suggested the possibility that Proust might once have been here. San Giorgio Maggiore, across the canal, lay to one side. Although the neighbouring buildings were of the same height as the palazzo under observation, I imagined that perhaps the golden angel of the campanile might appear in some left-hand or corner window. In front of the hotel, gondoliers in blue-and-red striped polo shirts were waiting for customers.
I knew nothing about that building. I was, of course, aware that the Danieli is a famous hotel, yet it seemed doubtful to me that it could be regarded, architecturally, as one of Venice’s most celebrated medieval dwellings. Its trefoil windows struck me as no more remarkable than hundreds of others nearby. This façade, certainly, could not compare with Ca’ d’Oro, which is truly distinctive and widely admired.
Palazzo Dandolo / Hotel Danieli (late 14th century), Riva degli Schiavoni
Comparing the Danieli windows with the text required more effort. The central windows of the first and second piano nobile are indeed mullioned — the first six-light, the second eight-light. The tracery of the first floor’s windows is particularly striking, adorned with quatrefoil rings supported by slender mullions. Venetian blinds do lie behind the foils, yet I can discern nowhere the requisite foliage motifs. Nor do I observe, from the exterior, that the balustrades in front of the windows are of marble in differing colours.
All the windows on that hotel’s façade are typically Venetian ogee arches — that is, arches formed by two S-shaped curves. This arch shape is indeed of eastern origin: such arches were widespread in Muslim architecture several centuries before the Gothic style Europeanised them. Yet I found it doubtful that any of these windows could be described as “still half-Arab”. The trefoils of the arches and the extravagant quatrefoils of the tracery of the central window belong, rather, to the principal elements of Christian symbolism. Ruskin, they say, was meticulous in his architectural analyses; it could hardly be that Proust was not faithful to Ruskin in his description of the window. Observing this façade, one cannot say — as with many Venetian windows — that the spirit of the East shines through the Gothic style.
I had to continue my search, knowing that I needed to find a window that would correspond fully to the description in the text.
I did not suspect, at the time, that of all the Venetian windows I would try to associate with Proust, it would be those of the Danieli that came closest to his description. Had I known then that, according to some scholars, Proust had stayed here on his first trip to Venice, I would probably have attributed all the considerations above — which had led me to deem the Danieli windows unsuitable — to my own inattention or incompetence in matters of architecture, and would have declared the task accomplished. (Although Proust’s name does not appear in the Danieli register, he must at least have been acquainted with the building, since Ruskin had also stayed here.)
I was not the first to attempt this task. From the edition of Albertine disparue I had with me, I had read the footnote stating that scholars had been unable to identify the described window with complete certainty. I knew, therefore, that just as the Vinteuil Sonata cannot be reduced to a single real musical work, so too could this window probably not be determined with address-level precision. It occurred to me that it was perfectly possible that Proust had assembled his window from several Venetian examples — perhaps keeping one in mind initially, then abandoning it, and beginning to describe another, yet leaving traces of the first. He may even have invented certain features of the window.
I realised that I had approached the matter from the wrong end. Of course, it was possible to identify which window Proust meant only in Venice itself, and since I was already here, it seemed self-evident that I should undertake the task. Yet such determined research had never been an end in itself for me. What had brought me to Venice was not so much the possibility of discovering something new about that window as the simple desire to look for it, to spend time with Proust here and think of him, without any achievement to crown it. Established facts tend to be thankless and spoil the joy of the search that produced them. What would I later do with the address of that window? That address would be something like the “grand remembrances” and “historical shivers” of guidebooks, which tourists use as keys to access the spirit of a place — keys that hold no interest for the flâneur, because he knows that to make the place come alive for himself, nothing need come from the outside. (Walter Benjamin)
I wanted to be in a city that was not my home, as if I were at home — that is to say, reading.
My trip was like a pilgrimage. At the reliquaries of saints, one may pray. At the grave of an artist, one may lay flowers, light a candle, or sweep away the leaves or snow. I had previously visited Proust’s grave in Père‑Lachaise, Aunt Léonie’s house, the Méséglise and Guermantes ways in Combray — not to mention many other Proust-related places in Paris. But this time, my homage was not tied to any particular physical object, nor could it be crowned by any defined gesture. My entire search was the gesture.
My trip was an adventure, in the spirit of Antonioni. While making L’Avventura, the director sought a new cinematic language — and found it. His alienated characters, in that and subsequent films, sought new forms of human connection but generally failed. I tried to travel differently.
I had been attempting to trace Proust’s Venice in the physical Venice, and vice versa. Now I began to construct, on the piles of my imagination, my very own Venice. I no longer allowed myself to be ensnared by the text. The images that rose before my eyes as I read, and the feelings that seized me, had become paramount.
When Proust spoke of a window that was “still half-Arab”, he probably meant the influence of the Islamic ogee arch on Venetian Gothic architecture. I had overlooked the word still, forgotten the Christian quatrefoils mentioned in the text, and pictured the arch as more oriental than it ought to have been. The window I sought could, therefore, have been, for example, a Byzantine stilted arch or a Moorish horseshoe arch.
At that time, I was not familiar with Ruskin’s classification of Venetian arches, according to which the Danieli windows represent the “pure” Venetian Gothic. The window Proust described might instead have belonged to Ruskin’s first (the stilted arch), second (the stilted arch transitioning toward the pointed arch), or third (the full pointed arch) order.
Proust had not specified how many parts the window consisted of. I had set my mind on a four‑part window.
It was highly unlikely that the intimate scene between the narrator and his mother should play out in such an open and populous place as the Riva degli Schiavoni, where the Danieli stands, and which must have been similarly busy in Proust’s time. I imagined instead a small, almost deserted square.
All this lay at the back of my mind when, a few hundred metres past the Danieli, I turned down a narrow street leading into the city. I knew that the windows that might henceforth remind me of Proust could certainly not claim, factually, the title of his window. But that no longer mattered…
Palazzo Gritti Badoer (late 14th century), Campo Bandiera e Moro
The piano nobile window of the Palazzo Gritti Badoer, with its columns of pink Verona marble, struck me as Proustianly intimate because, when seen from a distance, it lay partly in the shade of overhanging tree branches. The palazzo stands on the more deserted side of a small square. Here, the son and mother are isolated from the world. The son can look at his mother free from external distractions; the mother can kiss her son undisturbed.
Palazzo Priuli all’Osmarin (early 14th century), Fondamenta de l’Osmarin
A mother wearing a veil of bright white tulle would have fitted perfectly, with her book, between the curtains of the four-light window of the Palazzo Priuli all’Osmarin. Here, maternal love would seem even more powerful, as it would have to overcome an additional physical barrier between her and her son — the San Provolo canal.
Palazzo on Campo San Zaccaria
At this unknown palazzo, what caught my attention were the windows set between the balconies. The stilted arches give them a half-Byzantine character, while their pointed shape hints at the influence of Arab architecture. The predominance of the East over the West here made these windows seem suitably Proustian to me.
Palazzo Barbaro Curtis (1425), Grand Canal
The second‑floor mullioned window of the Palazzo Barbaro Curtis seemed perfectly fitting, divided into four parts, with pure, unfilled ogee arches framed by polychrome marble.
Hotel Bauer (1880), Grand Canal
When I saw the Hotel Bauer from the vaporetto on the Grand Canal, my trip was already drawing to a close. I felt I had to sum up my search, my pilgrimage, and my adventure somehow, and the Hotel Bauer served well as a final gap-filler, meeting several of the criteria set by Proust’s text and by my imagination, which had not yet been fully satisfied. The springs of its arches, seen from the canal, appeared slightly turned outwards in a horseshoe-like manner, rendering them sufficiently “still half-Arab”. The building lies quite close to Piazza San Marco, so it is possible that the golden angel atop the campanile might be visible from here. I had instinctively placed the narrator’s hotel in this area from the start, and it was around here that I took my first steps in the search. Most important, however, was the small, intimate terrace beside the hotel by the canal, which in my imagination suited better than any of the squares, embankments, or streets I had seen as the background for the son’s need for love and the mother’s manifestation of it.
Finally, it should be mentioned that a few hundred metres from the Grand Canal lies Palazzo Giustiniani, which at the turn of the century served as the Hotel Europa. On 28 April 1900, Proust registered there after a twenty‑hour train journey from Paris with his mother. Without that historical fact, I would not dare associate this palazzo with Proust. Its characteristics fit the text far less well than those of the Hotel Danieli, it looks too large and robust to have interested him, and it failed to arouse any particular curiosity in me.
Palazzo Giustinian (late 15th century), Grand Canal
Proust was in Venice alone for the second time in the autumn of 1900. No evidence of that trip survives, except his signature in the register of the Armenian monastery on San Lazzaro, dated 19 October. He probably visited the monastery island because Ruskin had praised the view of Venice from there.
I imagine him looking out from there over the watery expanse of Venice — a Venice he has made his own — with the eye of God.
December 2016 — February 2017