Orbis Litterarum (1978) 33, 301-309

The Middle Ages as a Normative Element

in Proust
Tilde Sankovitch, Northwestern University

The theme of the French Middle Ages, inspired, no doubt , by

Proust’s childhood experiences and memories, and by his readings
of Ruskin, constitute a focal point in A La Recherche du temps
perdu. All manifestations of the medieval presence convey to Proust
images of beauty and moral perfection, connected with the lost
innocence of childhood and the deepest essence of ‘French-ness.’
The medieval element contributes magic and poetry to the objects,
people, places and even words which it affects by contact, and
provides a touchstone for authenticity and worth.
Medieval churches and cathedrals especially establish endur-
ing norms by which to judge individuals and societies. They also
suggest rules of behavior which may impose cohesion, stability and
dignity on the apparently fragmented human experience, and di-
vide people between those who belong to the timeless paradise of
childhood, as symbolized by Combray, and those who fall into the
corrupt hell of worldliness.
The medieval opusfrancigenum,as Proust calls it, may overcome,
through its continued creative impulse, the decaying action of time,
and point to the truth which is the final goal of the Recherche.

A study on Proust and the Middle Ages might well begin with these two open-
ing statements: “In the beginning was Ruskin,” and “In the beginning was
Combray.” The latter is the strictest truth, for as a child Proust spent many
holidays in t h e village of Illiers, near Chartres, where his father’s family had
lived since the sixteenth century. Illiers becomes Combray in A la Recherche du
temps perdu, and Combray in the novel is the beginning as well as the end of
the narrator’s search for redemption from disintegration and meaningless
mortality. Andrt Maurois writes in the concluding paragraph of his Proust-
biography: “Au commencement ttait Illiers, un bourg de deux mille habitants,
.”’
mais B la fin etait Combray. . Germaine Brte and C . Lynes comment: “In
the novel . . . Combray is both the beginning and . . . the end, for the end is
contained within the beginning.”2 Combray, as well as Illiers, bears the sign of
302 Tilde Sankovitch

the Middle Ages. The center of Illiers is the church of Saint-Jacques (Saint-
Hilaire in the novel’s Combray), built at the end of the eleventh century,
restored in the fifteenth. The whole village is tranquilly arranged around its
clocktower, in a country-side dotted with ancient calvaires, castles, and
steeples, and it has given Proust his first vision of what he describes in the
Recherche as a little medieval universe, a small town similar to those one sees in
a Flemish primitive painting,’ and his attachment to this particular medievally
flavored universe was deep and lasting enough to make it the focal point of
the Recherche.
As a second beginning there was also Ruskin. Around 1893 Proust started
reading Ruskin, who was in vogue in certain Parisian groups of esthetes, and
the young man’s reaction was one of immediate and fervent e n t h ~ s i a s mIn. ~an
article written in 1900, after Ruskin’s death, Proust evokes in retrospect the
expectations and the hopes which the contact with Ruskin had created in him:
“I1 fera entrer mon esprit 18 oh il n’avait pas d’accks, car il est la porte. I1 me
purifiera, car son inspiration est comme le lys de la vallte. 11 m’enivrera et me
vivifiera, car il est la vigne et la vie.”’ In particular, Ruskin guided him to the
cathedrals of Amiens, Bourges, Rouen, Vtzelay, and gave him a new
awareness, not only of the evident architectural beauty of these churches, but
also of their immense value as structures full of a meaning which transcends
the esthetic and even the religious element. The meaning gives sense and
continuity to a vast time-defying, medieval-born but infinitely repeated human
experience of which the churches are the outward signs. When Ruskin died in
1900, Proust published the first of his pieces on the English writer in the Figaro,
his “Pklerinages Ruskiniens en France,” in which he invited his countrymen to
celebrate the author’s memory by “des pklerinages aux lieux qui gardent son
Bme,”6 namely Rouen, Amiens, Beauvais, Chartres .. the great medieval
cathedrals. Several articles on Ruskin followed, and Proust had already started
to work on his translation of the Bible of Amiens, published in 1904 at the
Mercure de France. By that time, however, Proust had gotten over his
infatuation with the master, he had seen the flaws in some of Ruskin’s
interpretations, and ceased being a disciple. Having, in any case, gotten from
Ruskin the precious living contact with the cathedrals, as well as many
important concepts of art-appreciation, he was ready to move on.
It is interesting to note that the letters which Proust wrote to his friend
Reynaldo Hahn during this period are full of hasty little scrawls, quick
sketches of a cathedral, of a detail of medieval sculpture or of a stained glass
The Middle Ages as a Normative Element in Proust 303
window; of curious, impish figures plucked from some sculpted facade or
other.7 The same little medieval apparitions pop up throughout the Recherche,
peppering the book with gargoyle- or angel-like bit-players. Proust was also
reading, as early as 1900, Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire de I’Architecture and
Emile Male’s L’Art religieux au XIIIe siicle, and a few years later would
correspond with Male to ask him, for instance, about details of the cathedral of
Bayeux, in order to lend the greatest possible authenticity to his descriptions of
churches in the Recherche. As Male prolongs Ruskin, so Ruskin had without
doubt prolonged in Proust the childish experience of Illiers, bringing to it a
conscious thoughtful consideration of the medieval church as sign of medieval
society and embodiment of an ideal. The childhood experience was an
emotional one, and therefore, according to Proustian tenets, a lasting one, for
only what one has endowed with affectivity can escape forgetfulness and death,
and the Ruskin-encounter had touched the same emotion and given it form,
shape and intellectual expression. In the Recherche emotion and reflection will
join to give each reference to the Middle Ages a vibrantly alive and quick
actuality, and the churches, composed of Ruskin’s cathedrals and Illiers’s
beloved memories, play a central role.
The depth of Proust’s feeling for the French cathedrals is nowhere better
manifested thain in an article he published in the Figaro in 1904, entitled “La
Mort des cathkdrales: une conskquence de projet Briand,” in answer to a
proposal by the socialist deputy Aristide Briand, that the cathedrals, which
were un-economic to retain as such, should be secularized and used as
museums or lecture-halls. Proust opposed this idea indignantly, calling the
cathedrals “probablement la plus haute mais indiscutablement la plus originale
expression du gtnie de la France,”’ and “non seulement les plus beaux
ornements de riotre art, mais les seuls qui vivent encore leur vie intkgrale, qui
soient restks en rapport avec le but pour lequel ils furent con~truits.”~
He exalts
the living beauty and symbolism of the cult celebrated in these structures: “On
peut dire qu’une reprtsentation de Wagner B Bayreuth est peu de chose auprts
de la ckltbration de la grand‘messe dans la cathtdrale de Chartres.”” He goes
on to say that to take this living function away would be to kill the cathedrals’
souls, and to leave France “transformte en une grtve dtsstchte oh de gtants
coquillages ciselks sernbleraient comme Cchouts, vides de la vie qui les
habita.”“ Proust was an a-religious man, but he saw the religion which had
found such a grave, strong, beautiful expression in the Middle Ages as part of
the energy and inventiveness of French art and life.
304 Tilde Sankovitch

But all other work will soon be superseded by the immense work of the
Recherche. It is here that the medieval idea runs like a leitmotiv through all the
parts, not only as a structurally unifying theme, but as a constant statement of
moral and esthetic norms, as a yardstick against which to measure the worth of
people, places, societies.
The Middle Ages first and enticingly reveal themselves to the Narrator of the
Recherche when he is a child in Combray - the later lost and sought paradise -,
and it is under the guise of fairy tales that they enter into his imagination and
possess it forever. When the child is feeling sad, the grown-ups try to amuse
him with a magic lantern show, and, as by enchantment, he gees projected on
the walls of his room “d’impalpables irisations, de surnaturelles apparitions
multicolores” (Recherche, I, 9), apparitions which tell the touching legend of
the innocent Genevikve de Brabant and the villainous Golo, “qui semblaient
tmaner d’un passt mtrovingien et promenaient autour de moi des reflets
d’histoire si anciens” (I, 10). Later on, the Narrator will love the Duchess of
Guermantes because she is a descendant of Genevikve de Brabant, and there is
already a moralising effect too: Golo’s dire crimes induce the child to examine
his conscience carefully before going to bed that night! The same fairytale
ambiance engulfs the young narrator when he visits the church of Combray,
filled with treasures, such as the cross in hammered gold wrought for King
Dagobert by the saintly goldsmith Ely. In the cript may be seen “le tombeau de
la petite fille de Sigebert, sur lequel une profonde valve avait CtC creuste . . . par
une lampe de cristal qui . . . s’ttait dttachie d’elle-m&medes chaines d’or oG
elle ttait suspendue.. . et, sans que le cristal se brisat, sans que la flamme
s’eteignit, s’ktait enfoncte dans la pierre et l’avait fait mollement cider sous
elle” (I, 62). This poetic aspect of the Middle Ages pervades the whole book
and weaves a strand of innocent beauty in the middle of corruption, of magic
in the middle of prosaic reality, keeping alive the enchanting, strong, clear
voice of a higher reality.
In many instances throughout the Recherche the medieval image conveys
either beauty of moral worth, or both, and both culminate in the very
numerous descriptions of medieval churches. A few of these churches take on a
special importance: Saint-Hilaire of Combray, of course, “un Cdifice occupant
. . . un espace A quatre dimensions - la quatrikme Ctant celle du Temps -
dtployant A travers les sikcles son vaisseau qui . . . semblait vaincre et franchir
. . . des Cpoques successives dont il sortait victorieux, dtrobant le rude et
farouche XIe sikcle dans l’tpaisseur de ses murs . . .” (I, 61), unforgettable
The Middle Ages as a Normative Element in Proust 305
image forever entered in the Narrator’s imagination, invested with “toute une
partie profonde de ma vie,” (I, 66) forever an object of nostalgia, the essence of
childhood. Of particular importance is also the church of Balbec, which the
painter Elstir calls “un gigantesque potme thtologique et symbolique” (I, 841)
and which is described with tenderness and appreciation for the numerous deli-
cate inventions of the old sculptor, for his profound ideas, his delicious sense of
poetry and gentle reverence. As Saint-Hilaire embodies Proust’s childhood
experience in Illiers, so Balbec seems to echo his life-giving contact with
Ruskin. But one church in particular resumes in itself all the sign-values of the
others to become an almost pure essence, much more than a stone structure,
but a code, an exemplum and norm of excellence and extra-temporality. In his
book Marcel Proust et les signes Gilles Deleuze points out that the central
problem of the Recherche is a problem of signs, and that “les signes constituent
difftrents mondes, signes mondains vides, signes mensongers de l’amour ,
signes sensibles mattriels, enfin signes d’art essentiels, qui transforment tous
les autres.”12 These last signs refer, according to Deleuze, to an ideal essence,
incarnated in the material meaning, and “ce que l’art nous fait retrouver, c’est
le temps tel qu’il est enroult dans l’essence, tel qu’il naPt dans le monde
enveloppt de l’essence, identique A 1’tternitt.”*3Of all art-signs, the sign which
best represents eternity and defeat of destructive time, and which also signifies
value and victory over purposelessness, is the medieval church, the most
triumphant sign of the Recherche; sign, as we have already seen, of childhood
and innocence, of beauty without decay, of valor and redemption, all of which
are most perfectly represented by another childhood-connected church: Saint-
Andrt-des-Champs. During family-walks in the country around Combray, the
young narrator would sometimes see, across the wheatfields, its twin-spires,
and sometimes, when the walkers were surprised by rain, they would seek
shelter in its porch, among the stone saints and patriarchs. Its foremost quality
is its ‘French-ness’. We have already seen that, at least since the article on “La
Mort des cathtdrales,” and probably even from his first contact with Illiers.
Proust established a link between the concepts “medieval” and “French.”
Anything medieval expresses ‘French-ness’ in a unique, profound way, as if the
essence of France were forever embodied in its first exceptional flowering, and
connected with qualities implicitly and explicitly demonstrated in the churches.
There is a “spirit” of Saint-Andrt-des-Champs which dictates certain rules of
behaviour, models France’s most endearing and enduring faces, and teaches
eternally important lessons. The first lesson is one of a continuity which was
306 Tilde Sankovifch

already well established when the medieval artists and peasants who created
Saint-Andrt-des-Champs displayed in its stone-work their ideas concerning
classical and early Christian history, ideas derived, not from books, but
descended “d’une tradition A la fois antique et directe, ininterrompue, orale,
dtformte, mtconnaissable et vivante” (I, 151). The same organically living and
changing, but essentially identical, tradition continues in the gestures and the
faces of France, which echo the gestures of the carved angels in the bas-reliefs,
and the sculpted faces of saints, and are expressions of “le vtritable opus
francigenum” (11, 409). This genius is not merely traditional but also still
creative, so that it keeps flowering, inventing, varying its watermark rather
than just repeating it.
Other rules taught by Saint-Andrt-des-Champs concern fidelity to familial
relationships, courtesy towards guests and strangers, galantry under difficult
circumstances, a certain moral elegance and integrity, stubbornness too, a lack
of sentimentality, an unwavering certainty about one’s patterns of behaviour.
Proust talks about “la France de Saint-Andre-des-Champs” (111, 573) and
about “les Francais de Saint-Andre-des-Champs” (111,739);he talks about “un
bon Frangais selon la regle de Saint-Andrt-des-Champs” (111, 842), and about
the code taught and illustrated by Saint-Andrt-des-Champs. It is clear that this
code constitutes a norm by which to judge people and divide them between
those who belong to the timeless paradise of Combray, and those who fall into
the hell of self-defeating worldliness.
Connected with Saint-Andrt-des-Champs are above all two names which
one encounters from one end of the Recherche to the other: that of FranGoise,
and that of the Guermantes. Francoise, Aunt Ltonie’s cook in Combray,
accompanies the Narrator’s family to Paris after the Aunt’s death. The Dukes
of Guermantes, also hailing from Combray, where they have their lands and
castle, are at the very heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the Narrator
spends much of his later life. As Proust talks in the Recherche about different
c M s , so one could in this sense, too, talk about Franqoise’s way and the
Guermantes’ way, but both radiate from Saint-Andrt-des-Champs, and, on
different social levels, obey norms which are the same - deeply medieval and
French. Both spring from the same ancient race. The Guermantes were
glorious even before Charlemagne, the mystery of Merovingian times
surrounds them, and their war cry, their descendance from Gilbert le Mauvais,
their ancient arms and tombs, all testify to their venerable history. On the other
end of the social scale, FranCoise, too, reflects a real distinction of race, an old
The Middle Ages as a Normative Element in Proust 307
and noble French past. Across time, which she defeats, she is a true
contemporary of the medieval French, dressing in a way which reminds the
Narrator of a character straight out of a Zivre d‘heures. She holds on to certain
social conventions, concerning the rites of mourning for example, which seem
to go all the way back to the Chanson de Roland. Both the Guermantes and
FranGoise have kept certain ancient ways of expressing themselves, so that
their language is reminiscent of medieval tapestries, and the speech of
FranGoise demonstrates the genius of the French language at work, just as the
voice and the vocabulary of the Duchess of Guermantes retain the flavor, the
accents, and the peculiarities of the past. Both FranGoise and the Guermantes
accompany the writer on his Search, and though they may, and do, become
contaminated - especially the Guermantes - with elements alien to their true
soul, the presence of their sign-names and their abiding association with Saint-
Andrt-des-Champs keep alive the flowing well-spring of the beliefs in all-
sufficient beauty and essential value. In spite of their own failings and faults
they remain the representatives of the essential sign embodied in Saint-Andrt-
des-Champs, and establish, through all the Narrator’s adventures, many of
them disheartening, demeaning, distressing, a continuity of possible truth and
meaning. Their presence follows and strengthens the circle which the Narrator
describes, from Combray back to Combray, with Saint-Andrt-des-Champs
always, even if dimly, even if waveringly, visible on the horizon.
Apart from the importance of this unifying presence, the reconciliation
effected by Saint-Andrt-des-Champs between widely divergent classes on the
ground of their common ‘French-ness’, is seen by Proust as the norm of a
desirable society. The triangle Church-Castle-People is one he evokes with
longing and respect as the prototype of a perfect social harmony. He dreams
about “la France ecclksiastique d’autrefois,” (111, 1 16) where cathedrals and
mansions alike were surrounded by little shops and workplaces built onto their
very walls, in the nooks and crannies of their flanks, in a total symbiosis of
interrelated meaning and dependency. Between Church and people a current
should flow, so that the colorful street life becomes “la contre-partie bon
enfant, foraine et pourtant B demi liturgique” (111, 116) of the Offices
celebrated inside the church, as when the pious people of the Middle Ages
enacted their farces and sorties in the squares in front of the sanctuaries. The
street vendors of Paris sing their wares in quasi-gregorian chants which signify
this possible subterranean flow. Sometimes the harmony between the church
and the surrounding life embraces the landscape itself, so that, in Balbec, the
308 Tilde Sankovitch

Gothic church, springing from the savage rocks, indicates the beginning of
social structures tentatively undertaken by the rude fishermen of those shores
and, as the rocks have come to resemble the cathedral, so the cathedral has
taken on the aspect of the cliffs. The important element, always, is one of
cohesiveness, of conciliation, against the disparities and deadly dispersion
which are such a large part of human life. The other, equally important,
element is the necessary uninterrupted contact with the human reality and
dignity which the monuments symbolize and enhance. This is the cornerstone
of the continued normative power of the Middle Ages, for, as Proust asserts
towards the end of the Recherche, the beauty of the stones “vient d’avoir un
moment fixt des vtritts humaines” (111, 795).
Truth is what his Search is all about, and Gilles Deleuze is right when he
writes that “LaRecherche du tempsperdu, en fait, est une recherche de la vkritt.
Si elle s’appelle recherche du temps perdu, c’est seulement dans la mesure oc la
vtritt a un rapport essentiel avec le t e m p ~ . ” ’It~is clear that Proust links the
idea of Truth with the medieval signs, since, throughout the Recherche, they
serve as touchstones of spiritual wholeness and grace, as well as of beauty and
authenticity. These values, which are connected, over and over again, with
images grounded in medieval art and literature, and in the childhood
experience of the Middle Ages as cadre of the narrator’s innocence, escape the
deadly action of time, the enemy. This corroding, annihilating time is the
“Temps perdu” which Gilles Deleuze distinguishes from the “Temps retrouvt.”
The latter may give access to eternity, since it is, in fact, “un temps original
absolu, veritable CternitC qui s’affirme dans 1’art.”l5The possibility of finding
Truth is, above all, inherent in the persistent medieval theme which combines
art and moral value, and, through its normative and poetic importance, points
constantly to the end of the Search. The end, as we have already repeatedly
seen, is Combray, the picture, as the Narrator says, “. . . des pays oh j’aimerais
vivre . . . et trouver au milieu des blCs, ainsi qu’ttait Saint-AndrC-des-Champs,
une tglise monumentale, rustique et dorte comme une meule,” (I, 184) sign of
the hidden paradise, of a possible pre-Fall world.

NOTES
1. Andre Maurois, A la Recherche de Marcel Proust (Paris: Hachette, 1949), p. 331.
2. In the Introduction to Proust’s Combray, ed. Germaine Brke and Carlos Lynes, Jr.
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), p. 31.
The Middle Ages as a Normative Element in Proust 309
3. Marcel Proust, A la Recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Bibliothtque de la Pltiade.
Gallimard, 1954, 3 vols.), I, p.48.
4. George D. Painter, Marcel Proust: A Biography (London: Chatto and Windus, 2
vols. 1965-66), I, chap. 14: “Salvation through Ruskin.” See also: Jean Autret, L’In-
fluence de Ruskin sur la vie, les idkes et I a w r e de Marcel Proust (Gentve: Droz,
1955).
5 . Marcel Proust, “Ruskin i Notre-Dame d’Amiens,” Mercure de France, 34 (April-
June 1900), p. 87.
6. Marcel Proust, “Ptlerinages Ruskiniens en France,” Le Figaro, 13. Febr. 1900. Re-
printed in Chroniques (Paris: Gallirnard, 1927), p. 145.
7. Pierre Clarac, Andre FerrC, Album Proust (Paris: Gallimard, 1965) pp. 198-201.
8 . Marcel Proust, “La Mort des cathkdrales: une consequence du projet Briand,” Le
Figaro, 16 August 1904. Reprinted in Chroniques, p. 151.
9. Zbid., p. 153.
10. Ibid., p. 159.
11. Zbbid., p.. 162.
12. Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Proust et les signes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1964), p. 11.
13. Zbid., p. 41.
14. Ibid., p. 12.
15. Zbid., p. 14.