"But to a great extent our astonishment springs from the fact that the person presents to us also a face that is the same as before. It would require so immense an effort to reconstruct everything that has been imparted to us by things other than ourselves - were it only the taste of a fruit - that no sooner is the impression received that we begin imperceptibly to descend the slope of memory and, without realising it, in a very short time we have come a long way from what we actually felt. So that every fresh glimpse is a sort of rectification, which brings us back to what we in fact saw. Already we no longer had any recollection of it, to such an extent does what we call remembering a person consist really in forgetting him. But as long as we can still see, as soon as the forgotten feature appears we recognise it, we are obliged to correct the straying line, and thus the perpetual and fruitful surprise which made so salutary and invigorating for me those daily outings with the charming damsels of the sea short consisted fully as much in recognision as in discovery. When there is added to this the agitation aroused by what these girls were to me, which was never quite what I had supposed, and meant that my expectancy of our next meeting resembled not so much my expectancy the time before as the still throbbing memory of our last encounter, it will be realised that each of our excursions brought about a violent change in the course of my thoughts and not at all in the direction which, in the solitude of my own room, I had traced for them at my leisure. That plotted course was forgotten, had ceased to exist, when I returned home buzzing like a beehive with remarks which had disturbed me and were still echoing in my brain. Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creation, different from that which immediately preceded it, if not from them all. For the minimum variation that is to be found in these creations is twofold. Remembering a strong and searching glance, a bold manner, it is inevitably, next time, by an almost languid profile, a sort of dreamy gentleness, overlooked by us in our previous impression, that at the next encounter we shall be astonished, that is to say almost uniquely struck. In confronting our memory with the new reality it is this that will mark the extent of our disappointment or surprise, will appear to us like a revised version of the reality by notifying us that we had not remembered correctly."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 978-979
Remember (no pun intended) a few posts ago when I was lamenting how I wasn't as blown away by the end of Within a Budding Grove as I had been by earlier sections of Remembrance of Things Past? Well, this current section has rectified that problem because it is wonderful. Two short passages really jumped out to me:
"So that every fresh glimpse is a sort of rectification, which brings us back to what we in fact saw. Already we no longer had any recollection of it, to such an extent does what we call remembering a person consist really in forgetting him."
"Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creation, different from that which immediately preceded it, if not from them all."
Do we in fact actually destroy someone as soon as we cease to see them? As we've discussed previously, neuroscience and especially psychology seems to tell us that there are no pristine original memories. Our memories actually only go back as far as the last time they were recalled, and doubtless every time they're accessed they're modified before being stored away again. So I guess our original memory of the person was, by definition, destroyed a long time ago. However, if reality is only perception, then shouldn't that person actually be more real resting comfortably in our imagination? I guess I would have no, and thus agree with Proust, because our perception of that person, and thus our reality, is different every day, so we really are destroying that version of the person when we cease to see him. Our memory of even that perceived version of the person is different than what we felt when they were standing right in front of us, and it will be different again once we see them again, so for all intents and purposes that person is destroyed.
I know this is not what Proust had in mind, but I can't stop reflecting back on a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "The wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we cease to exist."
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