Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion

Use this topic thread for all The Fugitive discussions through page 708 / location 47760.

Just finished this week's reading. I really enjoyed the analogy he made of memories that keep coming back to our minds while we're trying to forget someone and the sun peeking through the curtains and lightening up a room where we're laying in the dark. Reminded me of that one in the end of Volume 2:

"And after Françoise had removed her pins from the mouldings of the window-frame, taken down her various cloths, and drawn back the curtains, the summer day which she disclosed seemed as dead, as immemorially ancient as would have been a sumptuously attired dynastic mummy from which our old servant had done no more than pre-cautionally unwind the linen wrappings before displaying it to my gaze, embalmed in its vesture of gold"

So after wondering in the beginning of this week if Albertine would end up dying abruptly like Agostinelli did, we soon learn she did! I'm surprised he didn't think it was all a plot on her side to be left alone - I know I did!

Instead, he wished she had suffered the accident but faked her death in order to fully recover before coming back to him...

He spent so long trying to find out all about Albertine's actions when she was away from him, and imagining the worse things she could possibly be doing, only to start trying to find something to make it seem it was all lies and to have reasons to doubt his findings after he sent Aimé to investigate (by the way, such a creepy thing to do after someone has just died...) I found this desire to know vs. fear to suffer clash to be very realistic and in line with jealousy acts I've encountered in my life.

His musings about death so far have been very emotional for me: grandmother's and Bergotte's, particularly.

But there was something different this time when he was dealing with Albertine's death, didn't it? It seemed more distant somehow... colder... I found it interestingly curious... I wonder why is that...

There was also humour this week: I had a good laugh with Aimé sleeping with the young laundress just so he could be of better service to the narrator... and well, his sacrifice actually paid off for both the narrator and Aimé, "for the girl is really a very good performer"!!! LOL!

And still no news about Charlus... I keep waiting... I might send Dave to investigate on him for me...

Insightful comments Renato. I won't elaborate on the comments I made that are in the last week of the volume. Charlus will be back eventually....

I've been delayed with this week's reading. I hope to read it soon, maybe tomorrow, if not, then Monday...no time for re-reading last week's either....

Renato wrote: "So after wondering in the beginning of this week if Albertine would end up dying abruptly like Agostinelli did, we soon learn she did! I'm surprised he didn't think it was all a plot on her side to..."

I'd inadvertently read that Albertine died so I knew what was coming but I didn't realise that it was going to happen so soon after fleeing from the narrator.

So, the narrator's feelings are mixed; he'd thought that he was trapped by Albertine's presence and that if she wasn't there he'd be off travelling to Venice etc. But as he admits:

...my separation from her did not in the least throw open to me the field of possible pleasures which I had imagined to be closed to me by her presence.

I think the narrator's observations in this section are a bit more 'human' than in other sections, though he still can't stop feeling jealous of Albertine as he says 'in my imagination now, Albertine was free'. Oh, dear!

I had no idea until I read a piece about Agostinelli... so I was almost completely took by surprise! If I had waited just one more week...!

Something I've been feeling in this book is that his observations are a bit more 'human' as you said... maybe even a bit mature... while still bordering on completely madness though!

Renato wrote: "He spent so long trying to find out all about Albertine's actions when she was away from him, and imagining the worse things she could possibly be doing,.."

He admits that what he really wanted to do with any evidence of Albertine's misdeeds was to confront her so it is a bit odd that he still wants to find out after her death what she did or didn't get up to. Even when Aimé does uncover the business with the laundress he soon starts to wonder how much he can trust this information; was she bragging or fantasising?

Isn't it amazing how he just gets people to run around doing errands for him, particularly St-Loup and Aimé?

I must admit I was dumbstruck when I read this:

Why had she not said to me: "I have those tastes"? I would have yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them.

Would you Marcel? Would you really?

I agree that he is human, to the degree that it takes all sorts. Just how far past the death have you folks read? What specifically is the last "action" this week. I have a comment to make, but I'm a little gun shy since I think I gave away things I should not have in the last two weeks.

Jonathan wrote: "I must admit I was dumbstruck when I read this:Why had she not said to me: "I have those tastes"? I would have yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them.Would you Marcel? Would you really?"

I found that quite realistic. In my own interior monologue I am always reasonable and gallant! ;)

LOL! Good point, Dave. I thought the same when I read that, Jonathan!

Dave, it ended right after where the narrator read Aimé's letter about the young laundress.

I feel that Proust is directly addressing us, the readers of ISOLT, in a couple of sections. Firstly the bit where he recounts a novel that he'd read where the protagonists don't do what the reader expects of them, and secondly, the bit where he's trying to remember whether Albertine blushed when the narrator mentioned her suspected relations with Andrée:

...for it is often only long afterwards that we long to know what attitude a person adopted at a moment when we were paying no attention to it, an attitude which, later on, when we think again of our conversation, would elucidate an agonising problem.

Is this the situation we find ourselves in with regards to the characters of the novel?

Dave wrote: "I agree that he is human, to the degree that it takes all sorts. Just how far past the death have you folks read? What specifically is the last "action" this week. I have a comment to make, but I'm..."

This week's section ends with Aimé's letter about his adventures with the laundress.

Dave wrote: "I found that quite realistic. In my own interior monologue I am always reasonable and gallant! ;) ..."

Ha! Ha! I know what you mean. Although I find certain aspects of the narrator's views surprising, it is realistic the meandering, torturous thought patterns, the self-deception, the contradictions, the lying, etc. We're all guilty of these things. I found his reactions to Albertine's death very interesting in that it was very unemotional.

Whilst skimming through the Penguin synopsis to try to find something I just noticed that in the paragraph before we hear about the telegram announcing Albertine's death, the narrator contemplates whether he would recover the 'freedom to live' if Albertine were to die.

Jonathan wrote: "Whilst skimming through the Penguin synopsis to try to find something I just noticed that in the paragraph before we hear about the telegram announcing Albertine's death, the narrator contemplates ..."

I was reminded of this section when rereading Swann's Way. Aunt Leonie's fantasy of the house burning down and the whole family killed except her. How all friends and townsfolk would admire her noble suffering and her piety in remembering those killed in her prayers.

When I was in the Navy I had to take lie detector tests a few times for counter espionage. One of the standard questions was "Have you ever thought of killing someone?" Almost everyone lies and says "no" although almost everyone has had such a casual thought. When you lie on the question then they ask you the "real" question "Do you have something to hide"? I never realized Proust invented the lie detector test.

Ok, what I was going to comment on is back near the beginning of the volume. What did you think of the Narrator's involvement with the Sûreté?

Do you think the info provided by Saint Loup, Aime (about both letters) and the various letters from Albertine and her Aunt? Irregardless of what the Narrator thinks at this point, I'm interested in what you think has been disclosed and why?

Dave wrote: "Ok, what I was going to comment on is back near the beginning of the volume. What did you think of the Narrator's involvement with the Sûreté?"

I thought that the whole incident with the little girl and her parents was sinister really, but also it seemed 'added on'. It seemed that the narrator was already known by the authorities. I thought it was the initial act of finding a little girl and taking her home more important than the subsequent brush with the law as that seemed quite a reasonable consequence of his actions.

I thought it was a little pointless... but maybe I missed something?

Dave wrote: "Irregardless of what the Narrator thinks at this point, I'm interested in what you think has been disclosed and why?"

It seems all this info came to prove he was right in being crazy and obsessively jealous... I'm don't know, though. It's hard to figure out what's really going on...

Concerning the Sûreté, I didn't pay much attention until they came back and put him under surveillance (I forget the exact term, maybe they were just keeping tabs on him) but then I went back and reread that part. Some of the things that I thought about: a) Mrs Verdurin's final point to Morel to warn him off Charlus was that Charlus was being watched by the police. b) At some point the Narrator thinks to himself that he didn't see anything wrong with hiring "young girls"(I'm not going to look up the quote, but I was not favorably impressed).

I didn't think further about it but I don't think anything, however small, is "just there", so I concluded it was a disclosure to color my impression of the Narrator.

For those of you who are going to dig into the biographies later, it would be interesting to know if this "brush with the law" was similar to something in Proust's life.

Dave wrote: "Do you think the info provided by Saint Loup, Aime (about both letters) and the various letters from Albertine and her Aunt? Irregardless of what the Narrator thinks at this point, I'm interested i..."

I was wondering your thoughts on this because for every messenger and every message I found reason to be skeptical of either the veracity or motive (sometimes both). I also got caught up in the frequent repetition of the phrase "Albertine was dead" either as a statement or in a longer sentence. Then that morphs into alternating with the phrase "Albertine was alive" - not a direct statement about her vitality, but interwoven with parts of sentences or hypotheticals. All this made me very skeptical, I just wondered if anyone else felt that way.

I wondered if she was really dead until it was mentioned by the woman who talked to St Loup... and I thought that it was too extreme of me to think about that possibility...

Dave wrote: "Dave wrote: "Do you think the info provided by Saint Loup, Aime (about both letters) and the various letters from Albertine and her Aunt? Irregardless of what the Narrator thinks at this point, I'm..."

I'm sorry Dave, I didn't have time to reply yesterday as it was getting late here in the UK. I found the letters between the narrator and Albertine the weirdest as they were just playing games with each other. The letters from Aimé seemed to suggest that he used the opportunity to have a bit of a spree at the narrator's expense. But I didn't have any other suspicions.

I'm just going to re-read some of the letters and see what I think now that I've progressed a bit further in the novel.

This is the level of paranoia Proust had reduced me to (not unlike the Narrator which also troubled me - I was turning into a "Marcelwolf"!!!!)
a) how do we know what "that woman" said to Saint Loup. Maybe he just made her up. He was "suspect" because he had not explained his surprise on seeing Albertine's picture.
b) Aime was suspect because we found out in Balbec II that he "stayed overnight" with men and women at the hotel to suppliment his family's income. Obviously someone who will do what is necessary to "please the customer." He clearly knew what the "correct" answer was on both trips. His involvement with the laundress complicated matters but not for the better in my view.
c) and then the Narrator remembers Aunt Leonie's gossip about the Balbec bathhouse attendant -that she was a lier etc. so even if Aime reported that conversation accurately it was "under suspicion.

As for Albertine's letters, seemed to me they were calculated to "mess with his head." The Aunt's letter announcing her death I dismissed as a fraud. Why did he not send flowers?, why did he not visit her grave? All the questions I wondered about. None of this reflects one way or the other in what goes on in the book, I'm just giving you "where I was at at this point in the story. Most, if not all is reflected in my comments at the end of the volume.

I also thought about Aimé answering what he knew the narrator wanted to hear... and good point about him not going to visit her grave! I'm still not sure she's dead, but I think it's too paranoid of me... not even the narrator suspected this, come on, Renato!

I found it odd that there was no mention of a funeral etc.

Something I pocked up on at about this point, the narrator never attends funerals, marriages, or christenings for that matter. Social interaction only occurs at dinners or receptions or plays/concerts. All deaths (except grandmother) occur offstage. Again, something I wonder if the detailed biographies have anything to say about this "absence". Also almost nothing about the Narrator's education.

Renato wrote: "I also thought about Aimé answering what he knew the narrator wanted to hear... and good point about him not going to visit her grave! I'm still not sure she's dead, but I think it's too paranoid o..."

We start to doubt everything don't we? I did think to myself: Given that St-Loup acted strangely when he saw the picture of Albertine and given that he went to see Mme Bontemps on his own, is it possible that St-Loup & Mme Bontemps, possibly with Albertine's connivance, have colluded to stop the narrator's infatuation with Albertine? The solution: tell him she's dead. There's a problem when she reappears though :-)

Well if that was to happen, when she reappeared, he'd write long pages about being indifferent and not caring about her anymore, and comparing it to the ache he felt back when he really loved her and wished her to be alive, and how a wound after it's healed is nothing more but a small sign that reminds us of our pain, it's just the idea of pain, but not the pain itself. And then everything would be fine! :-)

Whats the problem when she reappears?

Your becoming quite the Proustian mimic Renato! ha, ha.

This is not a spoiler and refers to nothing specifically but will be useful thinking about after the book is finished. Take time to generally compare/ contrast the course and nature of the Narrator's relationship with Albertine to his relationship with Gilberte and Swann's relationship with Odette.

Yes, that's why I joked about it. I remember him talking there would come a day he would be indifferent to Gilberte, and while at the time he didn't wish this, he knew it'd be inevitably... or something along those lines.

Oh, I was just looking at the beginning of this week's section which continues with St-Loup's report back to Marcel which displeases him, he then ponders:

...was it not better for me to go down in person, now that I had discovered Saint-Loup's hitherto unsuspected duplicity? Might he not, for all I knew, have organised a plot to separate me from Albertine?

I think the narrator's paranoia is infiltrating my mind.

Welcome to the club!

He then goes on to say:

Ah! if some accident had happened to her, my life, instead of being poisoned for ever by this incessant jealousy, would at once regain, if not happiness, at least a state of calm through the suppression of suffering.

Once again, he's wishing pain on others so that his own suffering can be assuaged....though we know it isn't in this case, because he's still racked with jealousy even when she is dead.

In reading B G Rogers book "Proust's Narrative Techniques" I have come across a detailed explanation of what Proust "reveals" in the scene where Saint Loup is surprised by Albertine's photo. This is one of many examples in Rogers' book of how Proust invented his own techniques to say what he had to say in the book.
I'm glad I've got this book to share when we collectively finish. I've been struggling with how to concisely summarize the big white rabbit pulled out of the hat. If you're reaction is like mine, I expect you'll say "What the hell! A big white rabbit! But then will struggle for weeks trying to comprehend the significance of the rabbit. Rodgers' book has great "rabbit hunting" quotes.

That book is nowhere to be found here in Brazil, so I'll be counting on you to help us with understanding Proust's techniques and the big white rabbit for sure :-)

It seems to be semi-rare. I'll share it with quotes and we can use it to look up specific points. It is hard to find. The Author was from South Africa and educated at Cambridge. He taught at the Sorbonne also. He wrote the essay on "the Narrator" in the Cambridge Companion to Proust"

Jonathan wrote: "I must admit I was dumbstruck when I read this:Why had she not said to me: "I have those tastes"? I would have yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them.Would you Marcel? Would you really?"

Hysterical! I somehow doubt he would have.

I hope you're enjoying it Sunny? The second half of the book contains loads of revelations - so brace yourself!