"... I would reflect sadly that the love one feels, insofar as it is love for a particular person, may not be a real thing, since, although an association of pleasant or painful fancies may fix it for a time on a woman, and even convince us that she was its necessary cause, the fact is that if we consciously or unconsciously outgrow those associations, our love, as though it was a spontaneous growth, a thing of our own making, revives and offers itself to another woman."
After reading the second section of Proust's In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, I feel that I am beginning to gain some clarity as to where Proust may be leading us. Still reveling word-drunk in the prose, the occasional lucid thought presents itself. I wrote myself this note half way through:
Love creates works of art. The object of one's affections takes on a life of their own within one's heart, re-written by one's mind to conform to an ideal that has been created through one's experiences. Love is a composite of our memories edited and woven together just as a writer crafts his stories.
The quote at the top of the post hints at this same line of thinking in the words "may not be a real thing" and "a thing of our own making." I joked at the end of the first section of this book that Marcel might actually need to write a bit more before he considers himself a writer, but I may have been a bit premature. Proust also viewed the young man's lack of effort as humorous, but perhaps, Marcel was actually collecting memories in preparation for writing. Are the years he spends not writing lost time or a necessary period of introspection to define the world around him in his mind before he conveys those thoughts to paper?
So art transports one into one's own depths as well as through time here with the only possible obstacles presented being those of class or a lack of imagination, an inability to write oneself. The perfect story of adolescence when we were all a clean slate of sorts waiting to see if the words on that slate would be written by us or others. And set on a beach. Ebbing and flowing at that languid Proustian pace we all keep discussing.
Just as adolescence is a transition from childhood to adulthood, I think this volume of Proust's great work must be a transition to the next level of thoughts of love, art, class, etc. Luck would have it that this story sat in our hands during the summer because it is a perfect summer read full of love and drama. I have yet to actually see anyone reading Proust on the beach, but will stick by my great beach book opinion. So lovely and so consuming. And yet I feel so disinclined to write about it at any great length. Blame it on Marcel's influence. I am not a lazy writer, just gathering the necessary groundwork in Proust to write this story at a later date. So what have I learned from Proust this summer? The fine art of rationalization.
And on to The Guermantes Way. But there are a whole lot of fabulous fall releases coming out soon, and I feel the need to step back a bit from the shared reads after this summer, and enjoy the offerings from my current book lust list for a while. Any objections to Friday, November 6 for The Guermantes Way? Three months or so to take a break from the rarified air of Proust before we return?
