"I looked that the photograph of his aunt, and the thought that, since Saint-Loup had this photograph in his possession, he might perhaps give it to me, made me cherish him all the more and long to do him a thousand services, which seemed to me a very small exchange for it. For this photograph was like a supplementary encounter added to all those that I had already had with Mme de Guermantes; better still, a prolonged encounter, as if, by a sudden stride forward if our relations, she had stopped beside me, in a garden hat, and had allowed me for the first time to gaze at my leisure at that rounded cheek, that arched neck, that tapering eyebrow (veiled from me hitherto by the swiftness of her passage, the bewilderment of my impressions, the imperfection of memory); and the contemplation of them, as well as of the bare throat and arms of a woman whom I had never seen save in a high-necked and long-sleeved dress, was to me a voluptuous discovery, a priceless favour, Those forms, which had seemed to me almost a forbidden spectacle, I could study there as in a text-book of the only geometry that had any value for me. Later on, looking at Robert, it struck me that he too was a little like the photograph of his aunt, by a mysterious process which I found almost as moving, since, if his face had not been directly produced by hers, the two had nevertheless a common origin. The features of the Duchess de Guermantes, which were pinned to my vision of Combray, the nose like a falcon's beak, the piercing eyes, seemed to have served also as a pattern for the cutting out - in another copy analogous and slender, with too delicate a skin - of Robert's face, which might almost be superimposed upon his aunt's. I looked longingly at those features of his so characteristic of the Guermantes, of that race which had remained so individual in the midst of a world in which it remained isolated in its divinely ornithological glory, for it seemed to have sprung, in the age of mythology, from the union of a goddess with a bird."
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 77-78
In this section Proust becomes fascinated with a photograph of Mme de Guermantes, and begins to fantasize about convincing his friend Robert to just give him the picture of his aunt. It's strange to, in today's world of technological sufficiency, what a photograph would have meant a hundred years ago. As Freeland reminds us in Portraits & Persons, a photograph or maybe even a portrait, could have potentially possessed the subject's "air" and allowed for contact with the viewer. I think I would argue that one of the reasons why it contained such power then was the rarity of its possession. If I was in love with a woman she might give me a photograph in a frame, and it was a gift for me alone. By definition it denoted the magical exclusivity of our relationship. Now with my smart phone I can snap a picture of anyone - or, for that matter, simply run a Google search and capture the image - and save it on my phone. For that matter, instead of giving my framed photograph a place of honor of my desk or mantle place, now I can hide it inside of files for no one but me. The stolen and hidden image doesn't celebrate the reality of our relationship but represents the imaginary nature of our imagined love/lust.
For a while I've been trying to decide whether Proust loves Robert or his aunt more, but I'm beginning to think that he doesn't love either, but instead simply what they represent: the purity of their rare existence as a line of almost mythological aristocrats. "I looked longingly at those features of his so characteristic of the Guermantes, of that race which had remained so individual in the midst of a world in which is remained isolated in its divinely ornithological glory, for it seemed to have sprung, in the age of mythology, from the union of a goddess with a bird." There are times when Remembrance of Things Past reminds me of Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams (which I really need to re-read) with its hearkening after an imagined beautiful age that is fading away in the harsh and unfeeling light of a new day.
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