These notes cover pp. 613 to the end of Volume Two, Within a Budding Grove, in the Modern Library edition (Moncrieff / Kilmartin / Enright).
When we took our seats in the living room I counted and discovered that, here, at the final meeting of the summer, we were 21 people strong! That's pretty good, after some nine months of meetings.
It was comforting to look around and see all the familiar faces. Talking about Proust, we have found, is actually quite revealing -- even more revealing, perhaps, than talking about ourselves. It evades our usual filters... our usual habits of self-presentation.
Anyway, we are gradually getting to know one another, and it feels right.
Once we were all settled, Jeff began his presentation.
1. The "Mental Hygiene" of Experience
Jeff handed out a sheet containing quotations from the month's reading that had spoken to him. The first subject that caught fire from his list was how the Narrator had been disappointed after his first introduction to Albertine at Elstir's party. What, we asked, is the nature of that disappointment?
Of course Albertine is not at all like the Narrator. She is, we might say, a jock, always carrying golf clubs, or throwing her 'diabolo" in the air, or riding her bike around Balbec, even on rainy days. She certainly cannot be said to be a deep thinker (not to say, as Jeff pointed out, that jocks can't be deep thinkers!).
It may be that the Narrator's recurring image of Albertine, standing against the sea, has produced deep longings in him. Yet, predictably, when he encounters her in the flesh for the first time he experiences a considerable sense of disappointment. In this context, Miriam shared with us a passage towards the end of the chapter, in which Proust explores the benefits of testing our imagination against reality:
"[I]t is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to get near enough to the things and people that have appeared to us beautiful and mysterious from a distance to be able to satisfy ourselves that they have neither mystery or beauty. It is one of the systems of mental hygiene among which we are at liberty to choose our own, a system which is perhaps not to be recommended too strongly, but gives us a certain tranquility with which to spend what remains of life, and also -- since it enables us to regret nothing, by assuring us that we have attained to the best, and that the best was nothing out of the ordinary -- with which to resign ourselves to death" (WBG, 721).
"Wow!" I wrote in the margin of my book when I read this. It is so stark a view; it traces the trajectory of our lives from... "mystery and beauty"... to "nothing out of the ordinary"... and finally to a resignation to death. Kind of reminds you of Peggy Lee singing "Is That All There Is?" doesn't it?
And it is true that the Narrator finds that Albertine, in the flesh, is not exactly what he had in his mind, both in general and in particular. I took the occasion to read aloud the passage in which the Narrator, having made a point to finish his coffee éclair, finally approches Albertine for an introduction:
"As I drew closer to the girl and began to know her better, this knowledge developed by a process of subtraction, each constituent of imagination and desire giving place to a notion which was worth infinitely less, a notion to which, it is true, there was added presently a sort of equivalent, in the domain of real life, of what joint stock companies give one, after repaying one's original investment, and call dividend shares" (WBG, 618).
So it seems that, to Proust, the process of letting go of our enchanted, imaginative portrait of someone whom we would like to meet, and replacing it instead with the person as actually experienced ("in the domain of real life" as it were) is one of subtraction, elimination, diminishment.
The girl standing against the sea becomes... a girl with an inflamed pimple on the side of her head... "She presented," the Narrator tells us, "as a target for my line of vision a temple that was somewhat inflamed and by no means attractive to the eye, and no longer the curious look which I had always associated with her until then" (WBG, 619).
Yet our group discussed how, for Proust, this seemingly terrible machinery of subtraction and diminishment contains within it many smaller gears too, which are turning in the opposite direction... towards, well, enhancement and exhilaration.
For example, a few hours after returning to his hotel room after that first meeting, the Narrator remarks that he felt "honor bound to fulfill to the real the promises of love made to the imagined Albertine." But this commitment to fulfilling his honor is not merely a chore to him. For his encounter with her gives him new material with which to begin new imaginative flights of fancy! Or as Proust explains:
"...whatever the inevitable disappointments that it must bring in its train, this movement towards what we have only glimpsed, what we have been free to dwell upon and imagine at our leisure, this movement is the only one that is wholesome for the senses, that whets their appetite" (WBG, 620).
His appetite thus whetted, the Narrator is soon avidly pursuing her again.
And perhaps, we concluded, it is the alternation of these two modes -- private flights of the imagination giving way to actual public encounters with flesh-and-blood people, giving way to private flights of the imagination again -- that results in our strengthening attachment to other people, friend and lover alike, over time. Proust seems to be suggesting, quite hopefully, that we are not isolated in our enchantments, since they overlap with others'!
If one looks at it in this light, we may say that Albertine and the Narrator are disenchanting and enchanting each other in turns, and, along the way, establishing some common points of reference that strengthen their relationship. When they later discuss that first meeting at Elstir's party, she too remembers the coffee éclair he made a point to finish, though "in a version," the Narrator observes, "of which I had never suspected the existence" (WBG, 620-21). He is growing from their differences, but also finding new bonds that tie them together.
Perhaps our group is drawing closer in a similar alternation, an ascending spiral, of enchantment and disenchantment?
And to think: still two more years to go!
2. The Curious Ways of Young Love
Next we discussed the way that the Narrator turns from one girl (Albertine) to another (Gisèle) to yet another (Andrée) and back to Albertine again.
Proust captures so well the way that adolescent love surges and subsides and then recovers in an instant. The Narrator's budding love for Albertine's friend Gisèle is suddenly abandoned due to... traffic, when he can't make it to the train station in time to confess his feelings to her. His love for Andrée is stymied by her very similarities to himself -- she is "too intellectual, too neurotic, too sickly..." And so he returns to Albertine.
Yet when she rebuffs him, he bounces back from Albertine's rejection so quickly! He finds ways to protect himself. For example, he explains that in the days that followed, going over their encounter, he came to wonder whether, just maybe, she rejected his kiss "due to some reason of vanity, a disagreeable odour, for instance, which she suspected of lingering about her person..." (WBG, 711).
Ha! Keep telling yourself that, Marcel.
A boy's appreciation for girls' physical beauty is described so vividly in this section that I was prompted to ask the women in the group if this description strikes them as gender-specific. Do women, like men, have a qualitatively different experience when gazing at the beauty of the body of the opposite sex than they do when they gaze at other examples of beauty (e.g. sunsets, vases, paintings, animals)? For men, I submitted to the group (and I am confident I was speaking for the other men as well), looking at a woman is unlike anything else in the world. With this question floating in the air, I read the following quotation from Proust:
"The men, the youths, the women old or mature, in whose society we think to take pleasure, exist for us only on a flat, one-dimensional surface, because we are conscious of them only through visual perception restricted to its own limits; whereas it is as delegates from our other senses that our eyes direct themselves towards young girls; the senses follow, one after another, in search of the various charms, fragrant, tactile, savorous, which they thus enjoy even without the aid of hands and lips; and able, thanks to the arts of transposition, the genius for synthesis in which desire excels, to reconstruct beneath the hue of cheeks or bosom the feel, the taste, the contact that is forbidden them, they give to these girls a honeyed consistency as they create when they go foraging in a rose-garden, or in a vine whose cluster their eyes devour" (WBG, 645).
The answer from the women in our group came back loud and clear: Yes. We feel this too. What Proust is describing is not gender-specific, then; it is the function of desire mixing with beauty in this "genius of synthesis," whether man for woman, or woman for man (or sometimes man for man, or woman for woman, no doubt).
I actually had forgotten that this quote was about young girls when I read it -- that wasn't my angle. I was saying that the experience of looking at women is qualitatively different, for a heterosexual man, than looking at anything else in the world. And the answer I got was -- same goes for women looking at men!
3. The Question of Youth and Beauty
But the introduction of this question of age into the discussion triggered a different discussion anyway.
Renée mentioned that she recognized in younger boys, teenagers, a bloom and a vitality and a heedlessness that is attractive. Yet at the same time she appreciates the self-understanding, and even the caution, she sees in (some) older men. Lucie indicated the same. Anne spoke up to say that she remains convinced that age is not the issue: women and men alike could keep their bodies "cut" and gorgeous -- she denied that age had much to do with physical attraction. Miriam rebutted this with a simple sentence: there's nothing you can do about your face!
I read aloud a passage in which Proust shows how brutal he can be on this question of aging (strange, because he is usually so generous to his characters):
"I had seen them, in the form of old ladies, on this Balbec shore, those shrivelled seed-pods, those flabby tubers, which my new friends would one day be. But what matter? For the moment it was their flowering-time" (WBG, 644).
This struck me, I said, as a passage that is just as cruel and off-handed as anything written by the contemporary poet Frederick Seidel, who comes in for a lot of criticism for his misogyny in poems (such as his "Climbing Everest"; click to hear him read it).
But then maybe Proust is just trying to be accurate, as I suppose he is in the following passage:
"[O]ne had ony to see, by the side of any of these girls, her mother or her aunt, to realize the distance over which, obeying the internal gravitation of a type that was generally frightful, these features would have travelled in less than thirty years, until the hour when the face, having sunk altogether below the horizon, catches the light no more" (WBG, 643).
I mean, when you think about it, if we get past our hurt feelings, it is funny how much our faces have aged in the past five years or so, isn't it? (For the record, I speak for myself only, Anne). It is fascinating, this "internal gravitation" of which Proust writes. Yet I do disagree on one point: I don't see the light going -- just lines, wrinkles, sags, blotches. We can still be beautiful in this different form, can't we? Can't we?
4. Proust's Technique of Close Observation
At some earlier point in the evening, we had discussed Proust's observation that even if we get to know the characteristics of someone, if we move past our first impressions, we still will never know anyone definitively. This is for the simple reason that the person is always changing in time. As Proust explains:
"[W]hile our original impression of [a person] undergoes correction, the person himself, not being an inanimate object, changes his part too: we think that we have caught him, he shifts, and, when we imagine that at last we are seeing him clearly, it is only the old impressions which we had already formed of him that we have suceeded in clarifying, when they no longer represent him" (WBG, 619-620).
This plunged us into a brief discussion of the Uncertainty Principle and even Schrodinger's Cat.
I mentioned that I found Proust's ability to gain insight by simply paying close attention to his subjective mental states -- in all of their specificity -- to be absolutely astonishing. Miriam pointed out that, unlike Descartes, who thought in grand conceptual terms about consciousness and existence, Proust sat alone but thought with extreme precision about specific details of his thinking process. Always staying with the specifics, just as a visual artist does when painting the ocean (see, we heard you Miriam!).
And it worked.
I read aloud to the group a passage that blew my mind when I read it, in which Proust describes the workings of our dogged, determined will. Getting dressed on the morning of the day he would meet Albertine, the Narrator remarks that his "brain assessed this pleasure at a very low value now that it was assured." He goes on:
"But, inside, my will did not for a moment share this illusion, that will which is the persevering and unalterable servant of our successive personalities; hidden away in shadow, despised, downtrodden, untiringly faithful, toiling incessantly, and with no thought for the variability of self, to ensure that the self may never lack what is needed. While, at the moment when we are about to start on an eagerly awaited journey, our intelligence and sensibility begin to ask themselves whether it is really worth the trouble, the will, knowing that those lazy masters would at once begin to consider that journey the most wonderful experience if it became impossible for us to undertake it, leaves them arguing outside the station, vying with each other in their hesitations; but it busies itself with buying the tickets and putting us into the carriage before the train starts... but since it is silent, gives no account of its actions, it seems almost non-existent" (WBG, 614).
This description of the will strikes me as a very accurate observation of the workings of what we now know is the limbic brain system, quite separate from our conscious thoughts, which arise in our pre-frontal cortex. Proust, it seems, was generating insights that presage the insights of neuroscience a century later. He is doing it outside of a laboratory, but using a process not unlike science, utilizing the values of parsimony, truth, reliance on evidence, close observation, etc.
5. Why Do Some of Us Have an Affinity for Proust and Some Do Not?
We got into an interesting discussion towards the end of the meeting, after Don mentioned that a number of his students at S.F. State express an extreme dislike for Proust. These are extremely literate students, usually in the creative writing program, so it always surprises him to discover the intensity of their distaste for this author.
Yann spoke up to say that he is qualified to speak on this question. He personally does not resonate with Proust; he finds it tedious to read and marginally interesting to listen to our discussions. Still, he did not have an answer as to why. Perhaps, he suggested, it is merely that the subjects that Proust chooses to address do not appeal to him.
I offered that perhaps it has something to do with the way different people experience emotion. Whereas the Narrator's responses to other people and situations are very familiar to me -- his alternation of ecstatic states with despair, for example -- I wondered if Yann is more direct and goal-oriented in his approach to a typical day's experiences. I know him to be a very emotional and engaged person, so I pointed out that I was not suggesting that I am somehow more emotional than he is; rather, perhaps we simply experience emotions in different ways.
Yann rejected this, however, reminding us that he weeps frequently when listening to music, and that can be very sensitive to what people do and say around him. (We need to start a music appreciation group, but a very supportive one.) Pascale spoke up here, confirming what we were already gathering, that it is far more complicated than a mere question of our relationship to our emotions. She shared that her father, an extremely cerebral person, rarely showed emotion when she was growing up, but nevertheless adored Proust.
Someone else -- was it Florence? Miriam? -- suggested that the difference may have something to do with how visual-minded our approach to experience is. Perhaps Yann thinks in more rational, or concrete terms -- hence his sharp mind for business. Perhaps that is why some of the extended visual descriptions in Proust leave him cold? Suzy mentioned that she had not found Proust so interesting when she had to read it in school, but that now, at this moment in her life, she found it profoundly interesting to her. Perhaps it has to do with your state of mind, the quesitons you happen to be asking in your life when you read it.
Heather shared with us that reading Proust this year has already changed her life; that it has reminded her to stay present to details and those rich and layered moments, however fleeting, during the day, rather than rushing through things and checking off items on her busy list. Miriam suggested that she had enjoyed Proust so much as a younger artist, in her studio, thrilling particularly with the passages about art, but that now she does not have the space to enjoy it as keenly. She reads it but doesn't get enough of a chance to think about it. Renée and I rejected this explanation; you think about it while you read it! we argued. Not so for me, Miriam said.
"I read this month's reading in three hours!" shouted Renée. "So what's your problem? Huh? What?"
No, actually, Renée did not say anything like this, I was just thinking we needed a little drama at this point in my notes. In truth, we all agreed that we had no easy answers as to why or how different people read Proust, but we are glad that we are all reading and meeting to discuss it -- and that even Yann, working on three hours of sleep, is still gracing us with his presence.
6. A Question About Our Fundamental Relationship to Our Emotions
It was getting late, but the discussion was so interesting that we kept at it a little while longer.
I shared with the group how I had found myself in a conversation with an older man, a month or so ago, who had insisted that his goal, each day, is to contain his emotions better. I was struck by this. I responded that my goal, each day, is to feel more emotion not less. Isn't it curious how diametrically opposed our aspirations are?
I asked the group: which do you lean towards? Both are sanctioned by society in different contexts (a contestant on American Idol is urged to feel more; a soldier is instructed to contain himself more). Dirk insisted that, in his assessment, there are four different modes of dealing with our emotions: suppression, repression, expression and containment. He aspires to containment -- that is, trying to feel everything but not indulge it or get distracted by it. Don said, "That's a cop-out." I piled on, agreeing with Don. Containment, I insisted, sounds to me like a euphemism for muting, buffering, controlling. We aren't unstable teenagers. Why can't we feel more? Not indulgently, but placing it out there in the world for others, as a kind of language? Other than the certain social disapproval it would bring down on us, wouldn't it be beautiful if we wept often and copiously, glowed with empathy and love, pumped our fists with excitement, stood strong in our fervent convictions, doubted ourselves and laughed uproariously? Why are we so pent up?
Alex observed that "emotion" is a slippery word, and it is difficult to say whether it is good to have more or less emotion, unless we define the terms of the conversation better. Sage advice. We had started to get that feeling, so often experienced in group settings when there's a point of dispute, that although enjoying ourselves immensely, we were speaking in unhelpful generalities. Life is always more specific.
7. Breaking for the Summer
We ended at that point, agreeing to hold off on reading Proust over the summer and to reconvene in September. But we will continue to communicate on the blog. We'll miss you!
Be safe everyone, and may your summers be... Balbecian in all the best ways.
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