November Verse 9 & Proust Progress Report 15

November verse 9: Paraphrasing Proust
To dump or not to dump, or rather
when to dump my Albertine.
How boring is our life together
when I'm not jealous? Yet how keen
my pain when jealousy arouses.
Time has come to cut my losses.
The memory I want to keep
is of a parting moment's deep
and sweet vibration. Dramas
aren't the way to say we're done.
So do it sweet, but do it soon.
No repeat of when my mama
left me there, alone in bed
without a kiss to soothe my dread.

This was prompted by a passage* from:

Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (text established under the direction of Jean-Yves Tadié ©1987–1992): La prisonnière (1919), p 1817 to the end (page 1915).

So much has happened in this month’s three-pages-of-Proust-a-day. The bourgeois Mme Verdurin wreaked her revenge on the Baron de Charlus by warning his beloved protégé Charlie that he had to cut the baron loose or his career would be ruined. There are huge all-night quarrels between the narrator and Albertine: he’s still obsessed with keeping her away from other women, especially but not exclusively from known Lesbians, and has decided to call an end to the relationship – but with characteristically convoluted reasoning, he’s going to wait until things are going well, so that he’ll be left feeling good about it all, rather than having a sour aftertaste. Among other twists and turns, he pretends to call it off, as a way of manipulating her to recommit to the relationship. It’s excruciating, and also – when you can remember to keep some perspective – hilarious.

There are, of course, moments that may or may not contribute to the story arc. The narrator gives Albertine a lecture about pervasive themes in the works of, among others, Dostoyevsky. They go on a day trip to Versailles where a very tall waitress rudely ignores Albertine. He ruminates on whether it’s right to think of Albertine as a work of art he has created – thankfully, he decides it isn’t. He acknowledges his double standard: he himself looks with lust at other women, while going to extraordinary lengths to stop Albertine from doing the same.

In the last few pages he wakes up one morning feeling at peace with the world and wanting to go off on adventures. The time is ripe to kick Albertine out. He rings for the servant Françoise, who (not really a spoiler, since the next book is Albertine disparue – literally Albertine the disappeared, and the Moncrieff English translation of this chapter has a spoilertastic chapter heading, ‘Flight of Albertine’) tells him that she has packed her bags and left that morning. He is astonished at his own distraught reaction to the news.

The wonderful Tegan Bennett Daylight was talking about something completely different on the ABC recently, when she mentioned that she had recently read Proust, and loved the way there is so much detail. She may be the first person I’ve heard talk about Proust while I’ve been reading him who seems to have read the same books as I am reading.

* Je sentais que ma vie avec Albertine n’était, pour une part, quand je n’étais pas jaloux, qu’ennui, pour l’autre part, quand j’étais jaloux, que souffrance. À supposer qu’il y eût du bonheur, il ne pouvait durer. … Seulement, maintenant encore, je m’imaginais que le souvenir que je garderais d’elle serait comme une sorte de vibration, prolongée par une pédale, de la dernière minute de notre séparation. Aussi je tenais à choisir une minute douce, afin que ce fût elle qui continuât à vibrer en moi. Il ne fallait pas être trop difficile, attendre trop, il fallait être sage. Et pourtant, ayant tant attendu, ce serait folie de ne pas attendre quelques jours de plus, jusqu’à ce qu’une minute acceptable se présentât, plutôt que de risquer de la voir partir avec cette même révolte que j’avais autrefois quand maman s’éloignait de mon lit sans me redire bonsoir …
(page 1899)