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becoming reality: Mme de Guermantes invites the Narrator to dinner, something akin to ‘making acquaintance with a dream’ (G, 433; 1037). After a series of vivid memories he has shortly before the day of the dinner, he remarks proleptically that had he remained alone, the enthusiasm he was experiencing ‘might have borne fruit’ and saved him ‘the detour of many wasted years through which [he] was yet to pass before the invisible vocation of which this book is the history declared itself’ (G, 459; 1053). Even before dining with the Guermantes he recognizes that time spent in society is ‘temps perdu’ – time lost or wasted – for the artist, who requires solitude to achieve his or her goals. Nevertheless, youthful curiosity prevails and he presses onwards to his first dinner chez Guermantes.

As he ponders their collection of Elstirs, further memories of Balbec emerge, alongside another reflection on perspective and artistic creation (G, 483–7; 1069–72). And just as perspective has its laws, so does society. The Duc rushes to introduce the Narrator to the Princesse de Parme not motivated by graciousness but because form dictates that ‘the presence … of anyone not personally known to a royal personage is an intolerable state of things’. Gradually the Narrator realizes the paradoxical effect of this slavery to etiquette: in society ‘it is the surface that becomes essential and profound’ (G, 492; 1074). Social players are expected to provide the right lines, respond to the right cues. Mme de Guermantes’ witticisms are legendary and her quip about Charlus, an inveterate tease (‘taquin’ in French), being ‘Taquin le superbe’ (a pun on the Roman King ‘Tarquinius Superbus’, beautifully transmuted in English as ‘Teaser Augustus’; G, 537; 1104) is such a hit that ‘it would be served up again cold the next day at lunch … and would reappear under various sauces throughout the week’ (G, 538; 1104). Puns and facile anecdotes circulate in the salons, discussed with no less fervour than matters of politics and art, yet most mondains set little store by personal judgement, instead proffering conditioned responses which will gain the approval of those listening.

The Narrator comments on being mistaken for someone else, reflects on the ‘numberless mistakes … which accompany one’s name in the file which society compiles about one’ (G, 575, trans. mod.; 1128), and arrives at the conclusion, anticipating by several decades Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of ‘being-for-others’, that we are powerless to control the conception of ourselves constructed by those around us. The Narrator, seeking fulfilment beyond the stultifying vanities of society, strikingly describes his time there as ‘les heures mondaines où j’habitais mon épiderme’ [those hours in which I lived on the surface] (G, 610; 1150), his deeper self quite dormant. After long imagining such parties, first-hand experience underlines merely their ‘barren frivolity’ (G, 636; 1167).

With a mixture of exhilaration and melancholy he makes his way to his appointment with Charlus, described earlier by Mme de Guermantes, in keeping with the ambiguities of his identity thus far revealed, as being ‘kind and sweet, [with] a delicacy, a warmth of heart that you don’t find as a rule in men’ (G, 587; 1135). These traits are scarcely evident, however, as Charlus, with almost uncontrolled emotion, launches a raging verbal assault on the Narrator. His pride is hurt (the Narrator did not write and may have spoken inappropriately of him) but he will not admit it: ‘Do you imagine’, he asks ‘that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type … would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?’ (G, 646; 1173). Charlus’s eloquent fury is a joy to read; it draws us closer to his insecurities, further exhibits his erudition, exposes how his character is shaped by his class. Ultimately his rage subsides but he states that their relations are ‘cut short … for all time’ (G, 651; 1177), leaving the bemused Narrator to puzzle out why the baron should have prized so highly his reciprocated