Summary
At night, with electricity economised, the place is entirely dark, and at first, among the many entrances that open on all sides of the courtyard, I would always become confused and have to summon the portiere. You need matches to achieve the ascent of the shallow and wide and deep interminable marble stairs, made for unimaginable grandeur, that the proportionately lofty arched windows illuminate only faintly; and by the glimmer, beneath the stone vaults and among the great funeral vases and the flower-carved entablatures, one has glimpses of Roman relics that appear, on their heroic scale, in a completely Surrealist key; the conventionally statuesque pose of a white naked hero with a sword would be followed by a similar figure in an unexpected half-squatting posture; a single finger from an ancient colossus, standing upright on a pedestal, loomed as tall as an ordinary statue; and a bearded man, seated … and leaning forward intent on a book, had the appearance of reading in the toilet. As the staircase goes on so long that you finally lose count of the landings, you are likely to try wrong apartments and get the rooms of some lurking nobleman whose old butler peers out through the crack of a door apprehensively secured by a chain.
From ‘Rome in Midsummer’ in Europe without Baedeker by
Edmund Wilson (1948)Slipshod though this writing is, it also represents a style and a vision of things which is hardly to be found before the influence of Proust began to spread. As an example of that influence it is more important than examples from writers who announce an intention of paying homage to it, and who address themselves to explicitly Proustian themes - important just because it is almost a random choice from a not very literary work by an author of wide culture but only moderate distinction. We can say with confidence that ‘we’ have learned to see in this way because Edmund Wilson is not unlike most educated readers. We may guess that in seeing the Roman stairway as he does, he is directly if not consciously influenced by the ‘Giants’ Staircase’ comparison in Un Amour de Swann (see p. 103) above).
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- Information
- Proust: Swann's Way , pp. 119 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989