And now we reach the tricky part of In Search of Lost Time. The part that an ailing Proust never found time to edit in the obsessive compulsive manner with which he treated the first four volumes. And we are back to the obsession with Albertine who Marcel will never fully possess in the way he requires. He loves her fully only when she is asleep, when she once again becomes object and ideal. Marcel spends many hours just watching her sleep.
"By shutting her eyes, by losing consciousness, Albertine had stripped off, one after another, the different human personalities with which she had deceived me ever since the day when I had first made her acquaintance. She was animated now [when asleep] only by the unconscious life of plants, of trees, a life more different from my own, more alien, and yet one that belonged to me. Her personality was not constantly escaping, as when we talked, by the outlets of her unacknowledged thoughts and of her eyes. She had called back into herself everything of her that lay outside, had withdrawn, enclosed, reabsorbed herself into her body. In keeping it in front of my eyes, in my hands, I had an impression of possessing her entirely which I never had when she was awake. Her life was submitted to me, exhaled towards me its gentle breath."
We will, uh, have much to discuss as you can see. This time around I will be reading a volume from the Folio Society set translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin and revised by D.J. Enright. For all those interested in reading along or in joining the conversation, we will post and chat on August 31. Will Albertine submit to her beautiful prison? Well, that seems highly unlikely especially as the next part of the story is titled "The Fugitive." Please join us?
Lovely photo from voxtheory's photostream on Flickr.
