Near the beginning of Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, after stating at the outset that "for a long time" he "went to bed early," the narrator observes that sometimes, after having gone to bed:

… my sleep was so heavy … [that] when I awoke in the middle of the night … I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence … an animal’s consciousness …

Proust ‘s narrator is describing here what the experience of waking in the middle of the night is like for him, what happens when he emerges from a deep sleep in which, as he puts it, his "consciousness" is "completely relaxed."

When this happens, he says, he lost all sense of place, especially of the place "in which [he] had gone to sleep," so that "not knowing where [he] was, [he] could not be at first sure who [he] was."

And he helps the reader to understand what this experience was like by suggesting that at that moment he had " only the most rudimentary sense" of his own existence, indeed, such a sense as "may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness."

Proust will be interested throughout  ISOLT in the different ways in which the world is experienced, and from time to time, he’ll use reference to animals as one way of elaborating his understanding.

Here, in our first selection, animal consciousness is offered as a kind of limit for human consciousness: the least degree of self-awareness that a person can have, in certain circumstances, is understood to be roughly what animals inherently have.

The narrator, neither here nor elsewhere, states what he understands as the essence of an "animal;" but this needn’t be seen as a deficiency, since the connection between animal and human consciousness is offered in this selection as a metaphorical analogy.

We can’t get into the narrator’s head; but he assumes that we can roughly comprehend what he means by the "consciousness of an animal," and that thereby we can gain an enhanced understanding about his experience, what waking up in the middle of night is like beyond its involving not knowing where one is, and consequently who one is.

I’ll be returning later to Proust’s use of this kind approach to animals, but first I want to briefly look at what is perhaps the classic reflection on animals in fiction.

Bruce Boehrer, in his Shakespeare Among the Animals, surveys what he describes as:

… three of the most ubiquitous … ways in which early modern English authors wrote and thought about the relations between people and animals.

And Boehrer’s first perspective is what he calls absolute anthropocentrism.

This is basically the point of view of Genesis 1.27-28, with which we are all familiar:

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Boehrer takes as the central principle of absolute anthropocentrism:

... that human beings are radically—at the root of their nature—different from all other life on earth

and that consequently, humankind is to be understood as superior to the rest of earthly creation; and "this superiority" legitimately makes the natural world "an exploitable resource …"

There are glimmers of absolute anthropocentrism in ISOLT, but they are characteristically tempered in comparison with Genesis:

Thus, at one point in Swann’s Way, at a gathering at the Verdurins, we are told, with respect to a piece of music, composed by a certain M. Vinteuil, that:

The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected in certain passages in the sonata.

This remark … puzzled Swann, the narrator says.

For, since a purely musical work contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of these. (SW: 302)

Just as expression in logical sequence can be seen as a distinctive feature of humanity, Swann is thinking, so the interruption or confusion of such expression – i.e., insanity – is also a distinctive feature; and neither seems to clearly be a property of either musical expression or the expressions of (non human) animals.

Of course, how we should understand the sequences in a piece of music as being other than a logical sequence remains to be seen; but a conception of animals is used here to underline that, when do come to such a consideration, at least one direction – that of logical ordering - might well not prove fruitful.

We have to notice, however, that a discomfort with absolutes makes the narrator add that, nevertheless, perhaps we can’t be entirely sure of this, since a Genesis-like distinction between logical and non-logical expression has been belied with respect to insanity even in animals – one could think here of the Native American name, Crazy Horse – so it might apply atypically in music also.

A fuller discussion of music, in any case, will be elaborated later in the book

Boehrer calls the second way that English dramatists thought and wrote about animals relative anthropocentrism, and "the only real difference" that he sees between absolute and relative anthropocentrism is that the former distinguishes between humanity and the animal world without qualification, whereas the latter posits "certain subsets of the human community" as sharing to a greater or lesser extent in what is essential to human nature.

In other words, some folks just aren’t as human as other folks.

In Shakespeare, relative anthropocentrism might be seen, for example, in The Tempest, in the incomplete transformation of Caliban’s bestial nature.

This is starkly depicted when, in response to Miranda’s charge to Caliban that:

When thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but would’st gabble like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes with words that made them known

- or in other words: When you were so inhuman that you couldn't express your thoughts intelligently, when you uttered only meaningless chatter, I taught you language so as to know yourself -

to which Caliban responds:

You taught me language and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse.

Caliban, we might say, has incompletely incorporated humanity into his being and his retort shows that he has been legitimately castigated.

In ISOLT, we might see a more gentle application of a similar kind of relative anthropocentrism in one of the ways in which the narrator understands the intelligence of the peasant Françoise, the family housekeeper and cook.

For he observes, at one point, in Within a Budding Grove, that:

… Françoise, … knew nothing, in that absolute sense in which to know nothing means to understand nothing, save the rare truths to which the heart is capable of directly attaining.

The vast world of ideas existed not for Françoise.

But when one studied the clearness of her gaze … [which in] … people of culture … would … have signified a supreme distinction, the noble detachment of a chosen spirit, one was disquieted, as one is by the frank, intelligent eyes of a dog, to which, nevertheless, one knows that all our human concepts must be alien …

One experienced in Françoise’s gaze both a presence and an absence with respect to intelligence in the way that one sometimes can with the probing] look of one’s animal companion.

However, in this peasant, what the narrator senses is not the malevolence of a misdirected humanity, as one can experience with Caliban, but rather, the tragedy of an incipient humanity that has not been able to be expressed.

For he continues:

… [One] was led to ask oneself whether there might not be, among … our peasant countrymen, creatures who … like the great ones of the earth …[were] doomed … to live among the simple-minded, deprived of heavenly light, [but who] were yet more naturally … akin to the chosen spirits than most educated people … to whom—as is apparent from the unmistakable light in their eyes, although they can concentrate that light on nothing—there has been lacking, to endow them with talent, only knowledge.

Françoise’s "dog-like" gaze points to a human possibility that hasn’t been able to be fully exercised, and one might even suggest, to an unjust social order that limited the potential completeness of some of those subject to it.

Finally, Boehrer understands, as his third way that early English dramatists used animals, what he calls anthropomorphism, an emphasis on humankind's unique capacity, as he puts it, to "sink below type" - to become degenerate by an act of will.

Anthropomorphist writing focuses on human beings as creatures that are uniquely endowed with the capacity for moral choice; and consequently, as beings that uniquely have the ability to rebel against their better natures, such rebellion being understood as a sort of devolution into animal nature.

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, for example Shylock’s plea – "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hand, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions," etc. – might be seen as the merchant’s attempt to reassert his essential humanity, and this in response to the various anthropomorphic canine epithets that Boehrer points out are directed at him," – "cut-throat dog," "stranger cur," and the like.

In In Search of Lost Time, anthropomorphic devolution might be seen in The Captive, when the narrator experiences the aftermath of an ugly scene involving the violinist Morel and his fiancée, the niece of the tailor, Jupien.

The narrator had passed by Jupien’s shop earlier in the afternoon and had heard Morel screaming at his betrothed, calling her, over and over," "grand pied de grue, grand pied de grue." "dirty slut, dirty slut."

And later, in the evening, leaving his house to attend a concert, the narrator will reflect on what he had overheard that afternoon, "a scene," he thinks,

… of disappointed love, of jealous love, perhaps, but if so, as bestial as the scene to which (minus the words) a woman might be subjected by an orangutan that was, if one may say so, enamored of her

But then, as he is about to hail a cab, the narrator comes upon a man sitting upon a curbstone, sobbing, and he will find, to his surprise, that it is the same Morel, who, after "checking his tears with effort," will explain that he had stopped for a moment because he was in such anguish, adding:

"I have grossly insulted this very day … a person for whom I had the strongest feelings. It was a vile thing to do, for she loves me … I feel such a sense of shame, I’m so disgusted with myself."

If, the narrator observes, during the afternoon he had witnessed "the amorous rage of an infuriated animal,"

… this evening, [he says,] within a few hours, centuries had elapsed and a new sentiment, a sentiment of shame, regret, [and] grief, showed that an important stage had been reached in the evolution of the beast destined to be transformed into a human being.

Morel is regaining the humanity which he had willed away by grossly insulting an innocent young woman. But nevertheless, as the narrator leaves Morel, he notes - reflecting, perhaps on the ever-present possibility of anthropomorphic devolution - :

I still heard ringing in my ears … "grand pied de grue, grand pied de grue."

Love, for Proust, is certainly an aspect of existence that can lead a person to be experienced as an animal; but it’s not the only aspect.

Our complexity – perhaps better, the indeterminate character of our existence – can lead us to be seen as unintentionally expressing thoughts and feelings that seem to belie our human nature.

In Swann’s Way, for example, we first meet M. Legrandin, someone who the narrator says, is a snob, who inveighed against snobs, not being aware that he was one.

Then, in The Guermantes Way, the narrator comes upon Legrandin in a Paris salon and he makes an innocent remark about being surprised to see him there, to which Legrandin responds in an unexpected way.

The narrator relates:

"You might at least have the civility to begin by saying how d’ye do to me," [Legrandin] replied, without offering me his hand and in a coarse and angry voice which I had never suspected him of possessing, a voice which, having no rational connection with what he ordinarily said, had another more immediate and striking connection with something he was feeling.

… [The fact is, the narrator goes on] since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them

And then, suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary … communication of one’s defect or vice as would the sudden avowal … by a criminal … to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty. (GW: 275)

Legrandin’s snobbish feelings of self-worth are ordinarily left unexpressed; but when they involuntarily come out, he appears as a person who has momentarily devolved into a beast.

There are, then, places in ISOLT which reflect something like what Boehrer sees as significant ways that Shakespeare and his contemporaries made use of animals in their art.

These ways, however, are not exhaustive of Proust’s literary relation to animals.

And I want to suggest that when Proust moves among nonhuman creatures in his work, he is typically more akin to the ancient Greek Bard, than to the Elizabethan, i.e., that his use of animals is usually more Homeric than Shakespearean.

It’s beyond the scope of the present occasion to elaborate on how Homer uses animals in his epics, but an example might at least prove suggestive.

In the Iliad, after Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus, we are told:

… All through the whole night, the Achaeans mourned Patroclus, and the son of Peleus led them in their lament. He laid his murderous hands upon the breast of his comrade, groaning again and again as a bearded lion when a man who was chasing deer has robbed him of his young in some dense forest; when the lion comes back he is furious, and searches dingle and dell to track the hunter if he can find him, for he is mad with rage

I’m going to want to suggest that often, when Proust uses animals, and especially when he does so to indicate something of what is being experienced, he employs a technique that is not unlike that which Homer is using when he tells us of Achilles’ anger.

Zoomorphism is a term used in classical studies to refer to the representation of gods in the form, or with attributes, of non-human animals, and also to the transformation of humans into beasts.

Applying this term to humans and to human things, rather than to gods - and with its application understood as analogical - as in the Achilles example - rather than transformative –– I’ll want to suggest – in parity with Boehrer’s distinctions – that Proust’s use of animals is very often zoomorphic.

But before moving to this, we can notice how sometimes animals populate ISOLT in a more straightforward manner, as part of the environment in which people act.

In fact, animals appear in this way only very occasionally, but when they do, they are helpful for delineating something about how we are to perceive the human personages.

In The Guermantes Way, for example, we are told that Rachel, the mistress of Robert Saint-Loup:

And this helps us to understand the kind of person that Rachel is, including perhaps why she – the keeper of such a menagerie – is a rather difficult, self-absorbed love object for the narrator’s friend.

And similarly, in Swann’s Way, we can come to understand something of the cramped perspective of the narrator’s Aunt Leonie - who spends much of her time in self-imposed semi-isolation, watching the world of the little village of Combray go by, through her bedroom window – by the following incident:

Through the little dog, we get a glimpse of the little world that the aunt inhabits, and - as her solicitous companion - by Françoise as well.

Françoise, in fact, is the figure most directly related to animals in ISOLT, perhaps because she is a cook, and indeed, is no vegetarian.

And an incident in Swann’s Way is especially interesting because it will inform the narrator’s view of the family servant elsewhere in the overall work.

… [Once, the narrator tells us] I saw [Françoise]… in the process of killing [a] chicken, which by its desperate and quite natural resistance, accompanied by Francoise, beside herself with rage as she attempted to slit its throat beneath the ear, with shrill cries of "Filthy creature! Filthy creature!" made the saintly meekness and unction of our servant rather less prominent than it would do, next day at dinner, when it made its appearance in … gold-embroidered [skin]...

When it was dead, Françoise collected its streaming blood, which did not, however, drown her rancor, for she gave vent to another burst of rage, and gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, uttered a final "Filthy creature!" (SW: 169-170)

The narrator tells us that he crept out of the kitchen and climbed up to his room "trembling all over" and "could have prayed then for Françoise’s instant dismal," but then finds himself asking: "But [if she left] who would have baked me such hot rolls, made me such fragrant coffee, and even … roasted me such chickens?"

And he notes, that, "as it happened, everyone else in the family had already made the same cowardly reckoning."

This incident with the chicken can be seen as nice example of what the narrator much later on, in Time Regained, will say is his intention in writing, i.e., to:

… bring out the opposed facets of ... characters   … without neglecting ... mysteries ... the presentiment of which ... moves us most deeply in life and in art …

And people’s relation to animals as food – sentient creatures whose suffering is accepted as necessary for certain human pleasures – is perhaps especially well-adapted to bring out such oppositions in our nature.

Moreover, "opposed facets" of character will appear elsewhere in the text in the narrator’s perception of Francoise, with the chicken incident serving to enhance his understanding.

Thus, in The Fugitive, when the narrator is mourning the loss of his lover Albertine, he will observe:

Françoise was bound to rejoice at Albertine’s death, and … she made no pretence of sorrow.

But the unwritten laws of her immemorial code and the tradition of the medieval peasant woman, who weeps as in the romances of chivalry, were older than her hatred of Albertine …

And so … one … afternoon …, as I was not quick enough in concealing my distress, she caught sight of my tears, prompted by her instinct as a former peasant girl, which at one time had led her to catch and maltreat animals [and] to feel nothing but merriment in wringing the necks of chickens and in boiling lobsters alive …

But her Combray" unwritten law" did not permit her to treat tears and sorrow lightly - things which in her judgment were as fatal as shedding one’s flannels in spring or toying with one’s food.

… And in trying to stem my tears she looked as anxious as if they had been torrents of blood. (CF: 648-649)

Francoise is someone who can often be oblivious to suffering, but also - as a being with multiple facets - is someone whose is guided by an "unwritten law" that requires sympathizing with suffering; and Proust here uses her relation to animals to elaborate on this feature of her human nature.

But, now, finally, in the time I have left, I want to look at some examples of what I’ve called Proust’s literary zoomorphism.

Such an approach is often - although by no means only – to be found the depiction of characters. And we can begin with a last look, for the present, at Francoise.

At Combray, the narrator tells us, the kitchen-maid – the woman who assisted Françoise in food preparation – was

a permanent institution to which were [attached] an invariable set of functions … throughout the succession of transitory human shapes in which it was embodied …

for the same girl never held the post two years running.

And a notable feature of the summer that the narrator describes in the Combray section of Swann’s Way was the consumption of fresh asparagus, a delight that Francoise chose to serve with almost everything.

The year, the narrator says,

And he notes that:

Eventually, however, Francoise surprising behavior is explained, and it’s ultimately done so in a zoomorphic manner.

Francoise, we learn, in her concern for the well-being of the household, lived by:

… one unvarying maxim, which was to never let any [of the other servants] set foot in my aunt’s room … preferring … [even] when she herself was ill, to get out of bed … to administer [to my aunt] in person, rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry into her mistresses presence.

However, the narrator says:

Françoise’s kindness, her compunction, her numerous virtues, concealed many … kitchen tragedies, just as history reveals to us that the … kings … who are portrayed … in prayer in the windows of churches were stained by oppression and bloodshed. (SW: 170-171

And he goes on to observe that:

… [T]he burrowing wasp … in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty …

[H]aving made a collection of weevils and spiders, [the wasp] proceeds … to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralyzed insect, beside which she lays her eggs, will furnish the larvae, when hatched, with a docile, inoffensive quarry, incapable neither of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder …

In the same way, the narrator goes on,

Françoise had adopted, to minister to her unfaltering resolution to render the house uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of stratagems … cunning and … pitiless …

… [For] many years later we discovered that we had been fed on asparagus day after day throughout that summer … because their smell gave the poor kitchen-maid who had to prepare them such violent attacks of asthma that she was finally obliged to leave my aunt’s service. (SW: 171-173)

Here, opposing facets of character are at least eventually comprehended with the assistance of entomology.

But it’s time to leave the kitchen. And a character who inhabits a very different realm is Baron de Charlus, the haughty aristocratic uncle of the narrator’s friend, Robert Saint-Loup.

Early on, when the narrator greets the Baron at a social gathering, he notices that

… his eyes, which were never fixed on the person to whom he was speaking, strayed perpetually in all directions, like those of certain frightened animals …. (BG: 463)

And the animal analogy helps to elaborate for us the narrator’s experience of the Baron, whose eyes, when they had earlier set upon him out in the open air, and before he knew who he was, had been described as "staring with extreme attentiveness" and as:

… shot through with a look of restless activity such as the sight of a person they do not know excites only in men whom, for whatever reason, it inspires thoughts that would not occur to anyone else – madmen, for instance, or spies.

Perhaps the Baron’s motives, which are free to be reflected by a restless gaze when he is in a situation of relative anonymity, must be hidden when he is among familiars; but their possible baseness is nevertheless revealed by the animal-like fearfulness in his eyes when he is in the latter situations.

My examples up to this point might suggest that Proust is only inclined to use animals to elaborate on the less desirable, the darker, aspects of human nature as it is experienced; but this would be untrue.

For example, Albertine, the narrator’s lover, is described at one point as springing:

… into the car by my side with the light bound of a young animal rather than a girl.

And it was like a dog too [he says] that she would begin to caress me interminably. (SG: 569-570)

Moreover, Albertine’s animal-like behavior is seen as being as much a facet of her character as the delighted perception of a paramour.

For he tells us,

… [Albertine] would … lie down beside me on my bed, making a place … from which she never stirred, without disturbing me as a person would have done. (CF: 8)

… [And she] would never think of shutting a door … no more hesitat[ing] to enter a room if the door stood open than would a dog or a cat.

… [Her] charm, [he says,] was … like [that of] a domestic animal which … is to be found wherever one least expects to find it … (CF: 9)

Nevertheless, there is almost always in Proust, an opposing facet that informs how one experiences another.

At one point, for example, the narrator mentions that, in a social situation at a seaside resort, in which Albertine wasn’t sure how to react:

But later, his delight in Albertine, having been poisoned by an insatiable jealousy, when he is looking out at the sea from his bedroom window, instead of the rising sun, whose spectacle has been just been pointed out to him:

… beyond the beach… the sea, [and] the sunrise … [he says] … I saw … a room [in which] Albertine … rosy and round like a great cat, with her rebellious nose ….. [was] taking her place with [another lover] …amid peals of …voluptuous laughter …

Zoomorphism, we might say, is a two-edged sword, for jealousy had transformed the narrator’s memory image of an unassuming animal-like Albertine into a lascivious animal-like Albertine, one which he couldn’t help seeing, he says, "with movements of despair … beyond the scene that was [actually] framed in the open window. (SG: 722)

Moreover, such transformation of feeling, and consequently of the imagery that delineates it, Proust seems to suggest, is especial likely in the experience of love.

Relatively early in his relationship with Odette de Crecy, for example, Charles Swann will continually enjoy the pleasure of having his lover on his mind. and we are told:

If he were dining out … [Swann] would be [thinking], all the time, about Odette, and in this way was never alone, for the constant thought of Odette gave to the moments in which he was separated from her the same peculiar charm as to those in which she was at his side.

[Swann] would get into his carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had jumped in after him and had settled down upon his lap, like a pet animal which he might take everywhere …

… [He] would keep [it] with him at the dinner-table, unobserved by his fellow-guests … [and] would stroke and fondle it … (SW: 382-383)

But things change.

And as the relationship goes on, Swann’s thoughts about Odette will lose their domestic animal-like comfort; and finally he will have only brief moments of respite from the pain of being unable to be sure of his lover’s fidelity, of being desperately jealous when she isn’t with him:

… [O]lder … in-dwellers in his soul, [the narrator tells us,] absorbed all Swann's strength … in that obscure task of reparation which gives one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence, or after an operation.

This time it was not so much … in Swann’s brain that the slackening of tension due to exhaustion took effect, it was rather in his heart.

Even the pangs of jealousy aren’t continuous, we are being told; there are period of respite in which on thinks one is cured. But, alas, recuperation is never final. For,

… [A]ll the things in life that have once existed tend to recur, [the narrator says,] and, like a dying animal that is once more stirred by the throes of a convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon Swann’s heart, spared for a moment only, the same agony returned of its own accord to trace the same cross again. (SW: 518)

Thoughts of Odette, once a companion pet, now convulse like a dying beast.

ISOLT is very much a work about love, and especially about facets of human experiencing, like jealousy, that make loving painful.

But even when jealousy is absent, Proust will suggest, love, as true communion, is problematic.

In Within a Budding Grove, the narrator tells us:

I knew, when I was with my grandmother, that, however great … [my] misery, it would be received by her with a pity still more vast; that everything that was mine, my cares, my wishes, would be, in my grandmother, supported upon a desire to save and prolong my life …

… [M]y thoughts were continued in her without having to undergo any deflection, since they passed from my mind into hers without change of atmosphere or of personality.

And—… like a dog that chases along the ground the dancing shadow of an insect in the air—misled by her appearance in the body, as we are apt to be in this world where we have no direct perception of people’s souls, I threw myself into the arms of my grandmother and clung with my lips to her face as though I had access thus to that immense heart which she opened to me. (BG: 335)

The connection between the narrator and his grandmother was a deeply spiritual one, and his throwing herself into her arms, while perfectly understandable in a world in which can’t we perceive other people’s souls directly, was nevertheless, he tells us, rather like a dog chasing a shadow.

Up until this point, today, I’ve mainly been focusing on Proust’s use of animals to elaborate our experience of the feelings of others, phenomena comparable to the rage of Achilles.

But this isn’t exhaustive of the ways in which animals are used in ISOLT.

For example, relationships between people, as well as individual persons, are sometimes experienced as zoomorphic,.

The marriage between the Duke and the Duchess de Guermantes, to take an instance, is largely one of convenience in which the independent spirit of a wife is sometimes checked by the dominating spirit of her spouse.

And this especially tends to happen in social situations.

Thus, we are told, in Sodom and Gomorrah, that, at a gathering at the home of the Guermantes’,

A little lady with a slightly lost air, in a black dress so simple that you would have taken her for a pauper, [made] a deep bow [to the Duchess … [who] did not recognize the lady, [a]nd in her insolent way, drew herself up as though offended, and stared at her without responding.

"Who is that person …?" [the Duchess] asked [her husband] …

"Why, it’s Mme de Chaussepierre, you were most impolite …" [he responded, "you know the family perfectly well] … They’re excellent people."

"Oh, do stop," cried the Duchess, who, like a lion-tamer, never cared to give the impression of being intimidated by the devouring glare of the animal. (SG: 100)

The Duchess, admittedly, doesn’t come off very well in this incident, perhaps suggesting her need of taming in some circumstances; however, toward the end of ISOLT we may be reminded of this incident and see it as indicative of the Duke’s typical relation to women.

In Time Regained, the duke is quite old, and we see him in another social situation, accompanied by his then current - and very likely his last – mistress, the former Odette de Crecy, who is referred to here by an earlier appellation, "the lady in pink," and who is now Mme de Forcheville:

The Duke leonine outlook can’t be completely suppressed, even by age, but a change in circumstances has the effect of taming its expression.

Animals are also sometimes used to expand our perception of places, including their social significance. Thus:

… [T]he Bois de Boulogne … [the narrator says] was to me like one of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled together a variety of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape… but knows [nevertheless,] that [this landscape is] there to enable the hippopotamus, zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport themselves in a natural or a picturesque setting …

(Chicagoans might think here of the natural settings at the Lincoln Park and Brookfield zoos.)

And the narrator goes on to say:

… [T]he Bois, equally complex, uniting a multitude of little worlds, distinct and separate—placing a stage set with red trees … next to a fir-wood by the edge of the lake, or [next] to a forest grove from which would suddenly emerge, in her lissome covering of furs, with the large, appealing eyes of a dumb animal, a hastening walker—[this Bois] was the Garden of Woman … thronged by the famous Beauties of the day.

Just as the landscapes of a zoological garden – or a zoo – are to be experienced as a setting whose function is to highlight the "disporting" of hippopotamus, zebra, and the like, the narrator experiences the Bois as a place in which the flora serve as a backdrop for the pedestrian disporting of the famous female Beauties of his time.

And finally, Proust – indeed, very possibly with his own activity in mind – will sometimes think about the work of the artist in relation to animals, and I want to end today’s consideration with a zoomorphic passage in which an animal appears that just might be on our own minds today, in this Holiday Season.

We find the creature in The Guermantes Way where the narrator is musing about Baron de Charlus and is thinking about how people can sometimes serve as a subject for an artist.

The Baron, the narrator observes, did nothing, did not write, did not paint, did not even read anything in a serious and thorough manner, " but, nevertheless,

The gifts brought by reindeer are manifold, and metaphorically may even point to the gift that is art.

It’s been a pleasure today to share with you some connections between two of what I've found to be among the finer things in life:  Proust and animals.

And I leave you now to enjoy, on your own, in the coming days, either, or preferably, both of them.

Thank you very much.

© copyright. Joel Rich. 2005-2008. All rights reserved.