The title Du côté de chez Swann was a bold one for readers of 1913. Common in "Combray" to signify the family nucleus, the fixed phrase "chez nous" is a doubly popular expression, since it is a colloquialism and designates a community. Proust was sensitive to the abuse of "chez nous" in a patriotic, chauvinistic sense, as several passages in the Recherche show(RTP, I, 456, II, 543, IV, 373).
With regard to the preposition "du côté de", we find an enigmatic example at the beginning of "Combray", where the narrator describes the father "with the gesture of Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli that [he] had given M. Swann, telling Sarah that she has to divest herself ofIsaac 's side"(RTP, I, 36). Was Proust confusing this scene with the sacrifice of Isaac, as has been claimed? In any case, there would be no semantic ambiguity in the expression "se départir de", despite what some have argued(se séparer de ou aller en direction de). On the other hand, a similar and highly interesting occurrence - which does not, however, solve the mystery of Proust's text - can be found in George Sand's François le Champi (1850), which the mother reads to the hero just after the passage in question(RTP, I, 41): " se départir de l'enfant de son cœur" ("to part with the child of one's heart"). The coincidence seems never to have been noted.
Further on, in "Un amour de Swann", we read: "having warned M. de Charlus that on leaving Mme de Saint-Euverte' s he would go straight home"(RTP, I, 337). Again, this is a slightly old-fashioned or colloquial way of meaning "to leave", of which there are a few rare examples in contemporary language. In Céline's Mort à crédit (1936), for example, we read: "En quittant de chez lui".
