Swann's Way and Orval — Much Abrew About Nothing

The idea for this blog was born on a recent trip to Europe, sipping a Welde Bräu Pilsner in a lovely little cafe called La Fée on a cold night in Heidelberg, Germany. From Germany, I headed west, to Strasbourg, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In addition to Bastogne, I visited Belgium in order to make a pilgrimage to the Orval Abbey, where monks brew my long-time favorite international beer. So it seems fitting to start the blog by pairing Orval off to Proust, and perhaps a little bit to Swann.

Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, is most famous for its madeleine passage. In the book’s first section, “Combray,” Proust is having tea with his mother, when, suddenly, a bite of a small pastry, a madeleine, transports him back to his childhood, and does so with unmatched vividness. Proust writes:

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray [...], when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ window, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because, of those memories so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

I would ask you to forgive me for quoting at such length - but how can you begrudge me giving you lines and lines of Proust’s bubbling syntax? (Note that the whole passage above is only four sentences, and most of that is its last two sentences.) Each sentence is delicate, intricate, layered like the trails of lace that Orval leaves down the side of your glass. Doesn't that parallelism kill you ("perhaps because... perhaps because...", "after...after...after...", "more...more...more")? What a perfect way to structure sentences that are all about the moments when time folds back on itself.

Proust’s language and syntax can be flowery, and flowers are everywhere in Swann’s Way. Little Marcel weeps when he has to leave his beloved hydrangeas to return to the city. Swann makes his first move on Odette by adjusting the corsage of cattelya orchids nestled in her bosom; “having cattelyas” is forever after his euphemism for sex with Odette. (In the next volume of In Search of Lost Time, flowers move still further into the foreground: it is titled In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.) However flowery, Proust’s style is never merely ornamental, and neither are flowers in the text.

The abbey at Orval. You can't actually go in the brewery but you can tour the ruins, visit a little beer museum, and sit at the brewpub, A l'Ange Gardien.

In Orval, too, nature prevails: flowers and countryside everywhere as you sip it. There is plenty of flower and fruit as you first taste Orval. The citrus tends more towards lemon rind than the lime tea in which Proust dips his madeleine, but the biscuity citrus is still there. After the fruit and flowers, a different sort of countryside: the barnyard brought on by the brettanomyces that the abbey adds before bottle-conditioning.

As Proust’s sentences wash over you, imagine yourself in Combray, and in the Valle d’Or. According to Orval legend, many centuries ago, Countess Matilde lost her wedding ring in a fountain at Orval. When she prayed to God to return it to her, a magical trout emerged from the fountain with her ring in its mouth. This miracle inspired her to christen the site the “Valley of Gold.” (Matilde is the reason that Goose Island calls its Orval-inspired Belgian Pale Ale "Matilda.") You can see that gold glinting through the rich amber in your cup of Orval Vert, a version of Orval that is kegged before it's bottle-conditioned. (You can get this version only at the abbey’s brewpub, À l’Ange Gardien. I like it even better than Orval, and I really like Orval, so that's saying something. It's lighter, lower ABV, hoppier, less funky.) As you sip, linger over Proust and consider how easily emblems of love are won and lost and won again, like the widow Matilde’s wedding ring. Swann, too, experiences this sort of emotional whiplash in his jealous obsession, loss, and eventual renunciation of the courtesan Odette.

If you get the chance to visit the abbey, take it. And take Proust with you.