21. Le jardin de Proust : le cours d'un dessein

“All of this which is acquiring form and solidarity, emerged, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.” Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), 1913, Marcel Proust.

 

In Marcel Proust’s day, artists, writers, painters and aristocrats were all dancers in a sophisticated ballet on the world stage, drenched in abundance. Throughout his life, the author never stopped writing down his thoughts about this social theatre, this vast human comedy in which he was living. This garden beckons us along the pathway of its thought, its lifecourse, arriving first in a lounge, a fully-fledged interior garden planted with old armchairs, a piano, pedestal tables in bloom and ornamental plants. We then leave the lounge and find ourselves before a meadow strewn with country flowers and planted with fruit trees – reminiscent of the paintings by Claude Monet. A low wall overgrown with rambling plants borders a luminous pathway, running off towards thick vegetation, before turning into a narrow, winding corridor through banana trees, palm trees and other bamboo plants. And right at the end of this path… a lush-green chapel, draped with heavy wall hangings and tropical plants, plunges us into a sombre atmosphere.