Apart from the most recent applications of photography - which huddle at the foot of a cathedral all the houses which so often, from close ot, appeared to us to reach almost to the height of the towers, drill and deploy like a regiment, in file, in extended order, in seeried masses, the same monuments, bring together the two columns on the Piazzetta which a moment ago were so far apart, thrust away the adjoining dome of the Salute, and in a pale and toneless background manage to include a whole immense horizon within the span of a bridge, in the embrasure of a window, among the leaves of a tree that stands in the foreground and is portrayed in a more vigorous tone, frame a single church successively in the arcades of all the others - I can think of nothing that can so great a degree as a kiss evoke out of what we believed to be a thing with one definite aspect, the hundred other things which is may equally well be, since each is related to a no less legitimate perspective. In short, just as at Balbec Albertine had often appeared different to me, so now - as if, prodigiously accelerating the speed of the changes of perspective and changes of colouring which a person presents to us in the course of our various encounters, I had sought to contain them all in the space of a few seconds so as to reproduce experimentally the phenomenon which diversifies the individuality of a fellow-creature, and to draw out one from another, like a nest of boxes, all the possibilities that it contains - so now, during this brief journey of my lips towards her cheek, it was ten Albertines that I saw; this one girl being like a many-headed goddess, the head I had seen last, when I tried to approach it, gave way to another. At least so long as I had not touched that head, I could still see it, and a faint perfume came to me from it. But alas - for in this matter of kissing our nostrils and eyes are as ill-placed as our lips are ill-made - suddenly my eyes ceased to see, then my nose, crushed by the collision, no longer perceived any odour, and, without thereby gaining any clearer idea of the taste of the rose of my desire, I learned these obnoxious signs, that at last I was in the act of kissing Albertine's cheek.
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 378-379
You can see why I would like to use some of Proust for my COR 110, Concepts of the Self, class, which all first year students take at Champlain College. It is amazing how prescient Proust seems in regard to the full bloom of psychology and later rise of neuroscience. However, I think that statement gives more credit to psychology and science than they deserve because it makes it seem that literature just hinted at things that, thank God, the harder and hard sciences revealed. Rather, I think the opposite is true; the other fields were finally catching up to literature. I always tell my students if they want to learn how to think they should read poetry, and I think I would definitely now include Proust (although the thought of making my students read all of Proust is somewhere between a pipe dream and an action that would inspire a lengthy prison sentence). That would be the ultimate Trigger Warning: students, we're going to read Proust, so get ready for an unfamiliar tingling behind your eyes. In this section Proust, as he finally prepares to kiss Albertine, struggles to see the "real" Albertine. " . . . it was ten Albertines that I saw; this one girl being like a many-headed goddess, the head I had seen last, when I tried to approach it, gave way to another." It reminds me of a student self-portrait from a few years ago, which I'm sure that I've mentioned, where a students photographed herself nude (probably not actually nude, but that is what she was trying to convey artistically) in front of a well-lit window. The result was that she was in total dark silhouette, with the obvious message begin that even if you saw me nude, or I was with a lover in that ultimate moment, you would only see what I wanted you to see, and I still might be hiding everything.
Proust also reflects on the power and limitations of a kiss. In an earlier passage, and resulting post, he talked about the limitations of the kiss, but here I think he is giving way to the power of a kiss. " . . . I can think of nothing that can so great a degree as a kiss evoke out of what we believed to be a thing with one definite aspect, the hundred other things which is may equally well be, since each is related to a no less legitimate perspective." Maybe a kiss is so limiting because it is so powerful and so overwhelming; it reduces us perception to that moment and that emotion, and thus it tells us less than watching a woman from across the street.
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