Battistessa José Ángel : The infusion of Aunt Léonie-final version and four sketches
is known the giddy way Proust wrote several versions of a page. Versions that are authentic musical variations. We chose for this blog an unforgettable page of "La recherche" with the four sketches that precede it.
La Tante Léonie tisane
Au bout d'un moment, l'j'entrais embrasser, Françoise faisait infuser are thé, ou, if important ma felt restless, she asked her tea instead, and it was I who was responsible for dropping the bag of pharmacy in a plate the amount of lime that was then put in boiling water. The desiccation of the stems had twisted them into a fantastic trellis in which the interlacing pale flowers opened, as if a painter had arranged, had been asked of the most ornamental. The leaves have lost or changed their appearance, seemed the most disparate things, a transparent wing of a fly on the underside of a white label, a rose petal, but had been stacked , crushed or plaited, as in making a nest. A thousand trifling little details - the charming prodigality pharmacist - they had removed a dummy preparation, gave me, like a book where we marvel to meet the name of an acquaintance, the pleasure of understanding that was stems many real limes, like those I saw Avenue de la Gare, altered, precisely because they were not duplicates, but themselves and they had aged. And each new character is there that the metamorphosis of an ancient character, in small gray balls I recognized the green buttons that do not come forward; but especially the pink glow, moon and that was sweet up the blossoms among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden roses - a sign, like the gleam that shows still on a wall instead of a mural erased the difference between the parts of the tree that had been "colored" and those who did not - showed me that these petals were those who flourish before the bag had balmy night pharmacy Spring. The flame rose candle, yet it was their color, but half off and deadened in the diminished life what was now theirs and that is like the twilight of flowers. Soon my aunt could soak in the boiling infusion she savored the taste of dead leaf or flower faded a little madeleine she handed me a piece when it was sufficiently softened.
Sketches
I
was the hour when my aunt took her tea. Françoise shaking the bag was dropped on the pharmacy shelf flowering stems, as drying had retracted, curved, made stiff and fragile. Master drawing ever have, intertwined stems, leaves and flowers of strawberry or purple so let them go along with all their charm, the power of the decorative effect he thinks he can draw from the variety offered and the plant where he thought he could unravel a pattern matching and opposition seemed only decorative and "posed" as was the tea. The drying of the stems had twisted, receding, stiffened in arabesques that could have been deformed without breaking them, and they were the most capricious, the most fragile, but also the best designed, most fixed trellises. Torn and jagged by age, some green, others so white we took them first to a piece of paper, like other roses wild rose petals, leaves seemed put here and there with this disorder full of art that are idle at the pile in a nest where the rods worn, bent imitated, seemed to braid for felting. But what pleased me most was the multitude of flowers as many as in a hawthorn bush. How the rods were bent, had brought in large numbers through the cracks of this small grid where the stem end of each twig, the birth of each leaf green or pink, in all corners of the trellis those provisions bloomed, numerous, flattened, regular, like the drawing of a chasuble which had been painted on a symmetrical, showing the tacking their pistils, their little pink gold. Gold is in fact that in contrast to the stems and leaves, the flowers appeared, but a gold where there was the pink petals at the bottom of this hot freckle held by some old lace, and red and green flowers still not open, especially in the buttons. Because everything had survived, slender pistils of gauze between the petals as the legs of a fly crushed between its wings translucent, hard little buttons that did not come to maturity, abnormal outgrowths of the stem to the failure of the flower, these thousand unnecessary features that had not submitted a design, a reconstruction, a simulation of the plant, all these are traits that the plant itself and that the change in the desiccation and death had caused them and that was even better that it was the plant itself that it was made me say, but it's her. Tel strand twisted but its stalk; such small ball hardened but a button as freckles brighter but the transposition of the yellow petals of the flower is where all wet if it crushes. Because it was so the plant itself as I watched her extended along the Vivonne a hot day, everything that had left its mark, it remained the same color, yet so powerful that it was small shells or crumpled flowers next to the dry stems alabaster.
II
was the hour when my aunt took her tea. Françoise while the water heated in the kettle took a packet of the pharmacist. I was instructed to take myself how much it had dried stems and flowers. The desiccation of the stems, giving them the most capricious curves, then by making these curves so steep and so fragile that the had broken rather than redress, the mingled in a kind of trellis, in the foliage which flowers bloomed in folded as many as in a hawthorn bush, with this symmetry, this stylization in the truth as we could not get more of a great painter, which ask to get the maximum effect decorative leaves, stems and flowers [interrupted]
Desiccation of stems had twisted into arabesques and he then cured by a kind of graceful trellis where the development of symmetrical flowers folded reminded to drawings in which a teacher tries to put the stem, leaves and flowers of the same plant as the finest and most decorative. Here and there a piece of rod was so yellow it looked like a straw so frayed that we would have thought a piece of string, and attached to the perforated sheets together, the others remained oval, became white to believe that a pharmacist's label had fallen para error in the bag, and all other roses, wild rose petals as giving the idea of different materials stacked to the bird to nest, they imitated by how they felting stems here and there, under the guise of art ingenious hidden disorder. But what gave the small forest of alabaster, transparent, intricate and fragile clarity of dawn were the flowers. At first they seemed to be painted on a gold chasuble, with tacking their pistils. But again had any differential drying, showed some pistils between black translucent petals like antennae and legs fly crushed between their wings, others still in bud, depending on the degree of maturation where were the surprises death were as yellow broom, green like a green fruit, red like an anemone, some like cherries were forming small clumps approaching soft, caressing posing coaxingly head on one another like children who laugh and we want to embrace, and most strawberry like flowers that we have killed at sunset and would have kept the saffron-ray decline, were like a golden antique lace, a little crumpled, almost red, with all the clothes, all added their stamens openwork.
III
was the hour when my aunt took her tea, Françoise put water in the kettle to heat and if I then I had the privilege to overthrow the package where the pharmacist were the dried stems and flowers and take what was needed for brewing. I've never seen anything more charming than this package of pharmacy. Curved rods and formed a hardened fantastic trellis in the tracery of which bloomed like flowers in a drawing master who tried to ask stems, leaves and flowers, the most beautiful and most decorative possible the different aspects that the degree of dryness gave yellow rods here looked like a straw and then a frayed piece of string, and leaves as one white an oval label fell backwards by mistake in the package plant to pharmacy, the other pink as a wild rose petal, all assembled, stockpiled in its diversity as does a bird to its nest, and the persistence of a mile small features and unnecessary plant weathered but recognizable, which showed that it was not a preparation plant, a reconstruction of the plant, a simulation of the plant, but the plant itself, as you can 'was regarded in the shade when we were lying under the trees on a hot day, every twig, every size, every nuance was that the current form a stalk, a tail and a button that had not matured, the deeper color where it would have crushed the flower out without making an orange liqueur, these little flowers that if looked more closely were based on the degree of hatching they were dead, yellow as gorse, dressed like flowers with stamens of strawberry, red as anemones, red like old lace, like a strawberry flower that we have killed at bedtime and would have kept her on the cup Saffron declining rays in clusters whose grains were caressing, bent their heads pensively against each other ; Some translucent petals kept between their dark pistils like a fly with legs and antennae are crushed between the wings, but all of which contrasted so vividly on the stems and leaves that they all seemed the same, gold , rose gold, as painted on a jumpers, basting with their stamina and I knew nothing more charming than this infusion, this small grove of alabaster, inextricable, translucent and fragile these sweet pink gold ; was decorative as a design of a master who is posed this way both the most ornamental and most natural, stems, flowers and leaves reduced to one over the others was sweet like a nest woven of the most diverse things, but mostly it was where it was like a flowery glade was like a rose gold setting, and that gold was only the survival of petal color, brightness difference with its alabaster stem meant transposed the immense difference there is between the rest of the plant when she saw and flesh color of the flower of the flower that is said incorrectly that 'there is nothing left, it loses its colors, since when I was all dried thrown into boiling water to which they would give a taste faded, they still kept just as necessary in a kind of twilight the warm colors whereby their bouquets bloomed this bag of tea as a summer afternoon.
IV
Here and there broken parts of the stems and yellowed leaves or shredded white and pink seem intertwined as to felt a nest, be the most diverse things, a straw, a piece of string, a label oval stumbled in the package plant, a rose petal, the smallest features of the plant weathered but recognizable, showed that it was not a reconstruction, a development, a simulation of the plant itself but itself as it was and what she had become. Without too much trial and error was recognized in a small yellow hull a button that would open when the plant was dead, in a capsule like a red anemones, fruit that had not come to maturity, this small bunch of small balls with capsules as red anemones pose dreamily his head against each other as the heads of tender children are seeds that have not come to maturity. These black son squashed between the petals like antennas and pasta fly between their wings are the pistils and stamens But especially this bright flowers that makes them separate from everything else, painted in gold on a jumper with the foliage of their stamens, is the survival of the meaning, the abstract-like gold is rising replaces the bright colors of the dawn-of these colors that were so essentially different from the rest of the plant and that even now they shine in the same forest translucent and fragile like little golden roses parted, hardly tarnished by a kind of twilight, like scorched shells of old lace and made this bag of Pharmacy (where I was going to plunge into boiling water to which they would a Fané goût) où les bouquets jouaient rêveurs, où les coupes s'ouvraient ébréchées de rose et d'or, fleurissant et doux comme un jour d'été.
Marcel Proust (Du côté de chez Swann)
The infusion of Aunt Léonie
After
a while I went to kiss him, Françoise he made tea, or, if my aunt was agitated, he asked his tea instead, and I was in charge of turning the pharmacy bag on a plate the amount of lime which then had to throw in boiling water. The stems, when dried, had curved, forming a lattice whose whimsical entanglement would have the flowers pale, as if the painter had been provided, the had placed in the most ornamental. The leaves, which had changed its appearance or had lost, seemed like the most dissimilar the transparent wing of a fly, back, blank label, the petal of a rose, but they had been stacked, flattened or twisted as in making a nest. Mil-lovely little things useless prodigality pharmacist, which had been abolished in artificial preparation, gave me, like a book in which we wonder to find the name of someone you know, the pleasure of understanding that stems of lime trees were really authentic, like the ones I saw in the Avenue de la Gare, altered, precisely because they were not imitations but themselves and because they aged. And as each new feature was not in them than the metamorphosis of an ancient trait, I recognized in the gray ball of green buds have not developed, but above all the rosy glow, soft lunar and brought out the flowers in the fragile forest of stems that were hung like little golden roses-sign, as el claror que sigue revelando en un muro el sitio que ocupaba un fresco borrado, de la diferencia entre las partes del árbol que habían sido “en color” y las que no lo habían sido— me mostraba que aquellos pétalos eran realmente los que, antes de adornar la bolsa de la farmacia, habían perfumado las noches de primavera. Esa llama rosada de cirio seguía siendo su color, pero a medias apagado y adormecido en esa vida disminuida que era ahora la suya, y que es como el crepúsculo de las flores. Poco después mi tía podía mojar en la infusión hirviente, cuyo gusto a hoja muerta o a flor marchita saboreaba, una pequeña madalena, de la que me tendía un pedacito cuando ya estaba lo bastante blando.
preparatory versions
I
was the time when my aunt took her tea. Françoise, shaking the bag from the pharmacy, did fall into the tray than flowering stems, when dried, had shrunk, curved, becoming rigid and brittle. Never has a picture of a great artist, to have at crisscrossing the stems, leaves and flowers of strawberry or violet so that they can express at the same time that all his natural charm all the power he decorative effect thinks he can get the variety that gives the plant and where he thought he could distinguish one element from similarity and opposition, it seemed as ornamental and "armed" as it was that tea. The stems, when dried, were bent, shriveled, hardened forming arabesques that were not able to deform without breaking, were the most capricious, the most fragile, but also the best drawn, the strongest of the trellis. Broken and worn by age, some green, others as white which I took for a piece of paper, others in pink as briar rose petals, the leaves seemed placed here and there, so artistic that mess that the birds piled in a nest in which the spent stems, twisted, imitated, seemed braid for plush. But what I liked most was the many flowers, so like a hawthorn. The way in which the stems had bent the had gathered in large numbers in the interstices of the small grid of the stems where the tip of each twig, at the birth of each leaf green or pink, all angles of the lattice, were opened, numerous, flattened, regular, and the design of a chasuble in which they had been painted symmetric intervals, revealing the interwoven with their pistils, their little pink gold. Gold, in effect, in contrast to the stems and leaves seemed to be flowers but gold in that there was some pink on the bottom of the corolla, the warm red with some old lace, and red and green flowers not completely open, especially in the buds. Because everything had survived, pistils thin gauze between the petals as a fly's legs crushed between its wings translucent, hard pimpollitos had not reached maturity, abnormal growths of the stem instead of the flower, those thousand useless peculiarities not had submitted a design, a reconstruction, a simulation of the plant, all those traits that are the plant itself and that under the change desiccation and death had caused them, and showed even better than it really was the plant itself, made me say, but if she is. Some twisted blade, but if your plumule; some ball hard, but it is a bud, a more vivid red, but yellow is the transposition of the flower petals where it is very wet if it is crushed. Since it was so much the same ground as I watched her lying on the banks of the Vivonne on a hot day, all she had left their mark, and which persisted even its color, was so intense that even the flowers gold small wrinkled shells beside the dry stalks of alabaster.
II
was the time when my aunt took her tea. Françoise, while boiling water, took a package from the pharmacist. I was responsible for removing the needed amount of dried stems and blossoms. The drying of the stems, giving them more whimsical curves, and then returning those curves so rigid and fragile that one could've broken before straightening, the mixing in a kind of lattice, in which ornamental flowers opened in bent number as large as in a hawthorn bush, with a symmetry, a stylization in truth I could not have overcome a great painter, providing for maximum effect decorative leaves, stems and flowers [here is interrupted]
The drying of stems forming curved arabesques had then had hardened, making them a kind of delicate trellis bent the flowers, opening the way symmetrical, suggested in the drawings in which a teacher tries to provide the stem, leaves and flowers of the same plant as more beautiful and decorative. Here and there the tip of a stem was so beige that looked like a straw so frayed that it had taken over a piece of string, and attached to the leaves, a few puffs, others retained their oval shape, so that white that had become could believe that a pharmacist's label had fallen by mistake into the bag, and other entirely rosy, as briar rose petals, giving the idea of the diverse materials that piles up the bird to its nest, whose witty and hidden art mimicked by the way cake stems here and there, under the appearance of disorder. But what gave the grove of alabaster, transparent, inextricable and frail, their clarity of dawn, were the flowers. At first glance looked like gold, and painted in a chasuble, with interwoven with their pistils. But there also had differential drying everything from black pistils showed some petals translucent as antennae and legs of flies crushed between his wings, others still in bud, depending on the degree of maturation in which death had caught were yellow as the Broom, green as green fruit, red as an anemone and some like cherries soft clusters were gathered, they caressed, resting her head affectionately on one another like children who make us laugh and we feel like kissing, and most, like strawberry flowers had been plucked from the sunset and they had preserved saffron shrinking ray, were golden as old lace, a little crumpled, almost red, with all the dapper, all the adornment of their stamens drafts.
III
was the time when my aunt took her tea. Françoise put water to boil in the kettle and I, if there, had the privilege of dumping the contents of the package pharmacist who were the dried stems and blossoms and take from it the amount required for infusion. I've never seen anything more charming than this package of pharmacy. The stems were bent and hardened a whimsical interweaving lattice in which flowers were open and in the drawing of a great artist who has tried to have stems, leaves and flowers of the most beautiful and decorative as possible, the various aspects that the degree of drying gave the stems, yellow here, looked like a piece of straw and frayed beyond a piece of string, and leaves one as a white oval label, seen upside down, falling by plant bug in the package of pharmacy pink the other as a briar rose petal, all that together in their diversity as a bird makes its nest, the persistence of thousand small and useless traits of the plant, altered but recognizable, and showed that it was an elaboration of plant, a reconstruction of the plant, a simulation of the plant but the plant itself, as we had looked in the shade, lying under the trees on a hot day; every twig, every thickness, every nuance was but the current form of a stalk, an outgrowth of a bud that had not matured, deeper color where there have been possible without crushing the flower out of it a liquid orange, those flowers which, if looked at more closely, were, according to the degree of hatching they had to die, such as broom yellow, stamens and flowers adorned with strawberry-red anemones, red and old lace, as strawberry flower that had been torn from the sun and had kept in his cup saffron shrinking ray in the form of branches whose fruit is cherished and bent dreamily heads toward each other, some of whose petals, pistils his dark translucent like a fly whose legs and antennae are crushed between the wings, but all of which highlighted so clearly on the stems and leaves that looked all the same, gold , rose gold, as painted on a chasuble, with interwoven with their stamina, I do not know anything more adorable than that infusion, that this small leaved alabaster, inextricable, translucent and fragile, these roses dusted with gold, was something decorative and a picture of a great artist who has as at once more natural and more ornamental, stems, leaves and flowers piled upon each other, it was something soft as a nest composed of various things, but it was there, especially where it looked like undergrowth flourished, it was a sunset pink gold, and that gold was only the survival of the color of the petals, the difference brightness between him and alabaster stem meant transposing the immense difference between the rest of the plant when it is alive and flesh colored the flower of the flower, with inaccuracy, it is said that there is nothing left to lose color, because in the time, dried, I would put them into the boiling water, which was going to get a taste faded, still preserved, just outlined, as a kind of twilight, the warm colors with their blooming bouquets that bag of tea as a summer afternoon.
IV
Here and there, broken parts or frayed yellow stems and leaves appeared to be white or pink quilting intertwined to a nest, things seemed to be more diverse, a blade straw, a piece of string, a label oval fall by chance in the package plant, a rose petal, the lower features of the plant, altered but recognizable, showed that it was not a reconstruction, a development, a simulation plant but herself, she same as it had been and what had changed. Without hesitating too could be recognized in a yellow peel a bud that would open at the time the plant was dead in a red capsule as an anemone, a fruit that had not reached the time, this bunch of balls whose red capsules pose dreamily as anemones heads on each other, as the heads of tender children are seeds that did not reach the time. They crushed black wires from the petals like antennae and legs of flies its wings are the pistils and stamens, but above all, the brightness of the flowers that makes stand out from all the rest, painted with gold as a chasuble with the foliage of the stamens, is subsistence, meaning, short-and gold of the dawn replaces the bright colors of the aurora, "of those colors that were so fundamentally different from the rest of the plant and that now shines in the same forest still translucent and fragile as gold roses ajar, just overshadowed by a sort of twilight, as Reddish buds of old lace, and became the pharmacy bag (which I was going to rush into the boiling water , which would give him a taste faded), which moved the branches dreamers, which opened the cups chipped pink and gold, flourishing and warm como un día de verano.
Traducción of
Carlos Cámara y Miguel Ángel Frontana
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