“Gomorrah, dispersed”

“Gomorrah, dispersed” is the narrator’s name for a scattered social world of women whose desire and prior connections become visible through looks, gestures, and chance encounters. The phrase turns a fleeting exchange in the Balbec Casino into a larger image of dispersed members finding one another, while leaving the narrator’s suspicions about Albertine uncertain rather than confirmed.

The Phrase and Its Scene

The phrase arises from the narrator’s observation of an unknown young woman watching Albertine in the Casino. He first compares the woman’s gaze to signals sent by a lamp and fears that its repeated flashes may arrange an assignation. He imagines that she and Albertine might have shared experiences in earlier years, but this remains conjecture: Albertine stays motionless, and the woman eventually stops looking at her.

The narrator’s interpretation changes when the same woman encounters Bloch’s cousin. Her attention conveys desire, but, unlike the look directed at Albertine, it does not suggest an established familiarity. The cousin sits with a magazine; the woman joins her, and their closeness develops into conversation and plans for the evening. She introduces the cousin to her husband as a childhood friend, then they address each other as if they had known one another at school. The contrast gives the narrator grounds to distinguish a possible recognition of Albertine from a new attraction to someone else.

Recognition Across Separation

The narrator describes these encounters as a kind of luminous passage between women: a sign that crosses the space between them before their connection is made explicit. He imagines such signs as gathering dispersed members in towns and villages, briefly rebuilding Gomorrah even where its people remain separated. The phrase therefore names not a single organized group or a permanent meeting place, but the intermittent appearance of connection within ordinary public settings.

That image depends on a difference between recognition and desire. The woman’s attention to Bloch’s cousin appears new; her gaze at Albertine seems to carry the surprise of someone returning to a familiar place and finding it altered. The scene does not establish the history the narrator suspects. Instead, the uneven certainty of the two encounters shows how he reads small changes of attention as clues to a hidden past.

Suspicion and the Limits of What Is Known

The phrase belongs to the narrator’s effort to interpret Albertine through incomplete evidence. A young woman’s glances become possible signals; Albertine’s stillness becomes open to competing explanations; and the narrator imagines previous meetings and future arrangements that he cannot verify. The episode reveals his fear that Albertine may have relationships beyond his knowledge, but it does not prove that she has a past with the unknown woman.

That uncertainty is central to the expression’s force. “Gomorrah, dispersed” gives the narrator a name for a network he believes can reassemble itself through recognition and desire, yet the observed scene offers only fragments: a glance, a pause, a new conversation, and the narrator’s interpretation of them. The phrase makes dispersed social ties imaginable while preserving the gap between what he sees and what he can know.