My Year With Proust - Day 68

"He would ask himself: 'What does it mean, after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who Odette de Crecy is? Reputations of that sort, even when they're true, are always based on upon other people's ideas'; he would reflect that this legend - even if it were authentic - as something external to Odette, was not inherent in her like a mischievous and ineradicable personality; that the creature who might have been led astray was a woman with frank eyes, a heart full of pity for the sufferings of others, a docile body which had had pressed tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers, a woman of whom he might one day come into absolutely possession if he succeeded in making himself indispensable to her.  There she was, often tired, her face left blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish preoccupation with the unknown things which made Swann suffering; she would push back her hair with both hands; her forehead, her whole face would seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some worthy sentiment such as are to be found in all creatures when, in a moment of rest of meditation, they are free to express themselves, would flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold.  And immediately the whole of her face would light up like a grey landscape, swathed in clouds which, suddenly, are swept away and the full scene transfigured, at the moment of the sun's setting.  The life which occupied Odette at such times, even the future which she seemed to be dreamily regarding, Swann could have shared with her.  No evil disturbance seemed to have left any effect on them.  Rare as they became, those moments did not occur in vain.  By the process of memory, Swann joined the fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity . . ."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 331-332

Once again, Proust provides a lovely example that works perfectly for, on the micro level, our first year Concepts of the Self students, but, more importantly, on the macro level, for the rest of humanity.  If the self is truly a negotiated concept - and perception and memory are deeply flawed instruments - then how in the hell do we every truly know anything?  Seriously, love is a dicey proposition even if we know what's going on, but what small percentage of the time do we possess any great certainty about our own actions and emotions, let alone those of the ones we love?  I've always told my students that I have an instant, clear understanding of why everyone in the world does everything, with the obvious exception of myself.  Of course, none of us actually truly understand the other people in our lives.  Here Swann, a worldly and experienced man, by "the process of memory . . . joined the fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast as in molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity." Don't we all do exactly the same thing.  And aren't we, in the end, glad that we can?