Hopefully, I am not the only person who has made the following mistake. An event occurs in life, scale of importance not being vital to this example, and as time passes, it begins to be difficult to remember which major players in one's life were present or a part of it. Granted, there are certain exceptions to this (significant others, family members, or "A-level players,"), but in the general, for lack of a better word, B-level players in life (below which are the other 24 levels of importance in social interaction with people, so don't fret, you B-players) there is a rather embarrassing blurring that can occur over the stretch of time, especially when regarding recurrent events, or events with very similar parallel events that occur throughout one's life.
In Proust's work, now closing in on the final pages of Cities, I have found what appear to be recurring, or at least very parallel, events occurring in the life of the narrator as to the life of M. Swann from the first book. Granted, the expanse of narration that is necessary to demonstrate these parallels is vast in comparison to that first book. These parallel events, though, were beginning to confuse me. I was attempting to reconcile them either as wholly new events without precedent in the plot, or as parallel events, but without attempting to find the initial plot thread from earlier in the series. This led to mixing up characters and, in some cases recently, interactions between epochs in the story and its various subplots.
Recently, I decided to nut up and go back and make some connections and get my shit straight, for lack of a better turn of phrase. I found a very interesting construct developing by the end of the second novel. Where M. Swann was living in a world, to me, foreign in many ways, I had begun to feel a part of Proust's world as narrator. The elements that confused me in Swann's life were commonplace by part three of the novel. I am finding, then, that the expose on Swann's life may very well have been used as a sort of large scale foreshadowing for the life of the narrator. While I cannot say this conclusively yet, as about a thousand pages remain in the entire series (yes! I am in the final leg as of tonight!), I am sensing very related threads being woven through time in this series of novels.
To anyone who has actually finished these novels, what I'm saying is rather cute and obvious. For me, though, it is a thrilling thing to realize how the lives of tangential players to our own can be so profoundly similar in character and, in some ways, taste, to our own. While I will not delve into specifics and examples until I can firmly argue my case across the entire work, I will say that there are some mighty convincing parallels that lead me to believe that, perhaps unwittingly, Proust prepared his readers for what was to come via M. Swann's life.
Of course, there is a magnifying glass held over the narrator's own experiences compared to Swann's, but the skeleton appears to be quite similar in size and build. Hopefully, though, the narrator escapes some of the heartbreaks and concessions of Swann, who to me, is an absolutely tragic character. I, thus, suspend my sorrow for the narrator currently, though I am afraid for what his future holds. He has not set himself up well at this point.
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