My Years With Proust - Day 475

I had not got there yet.  I had to face only the despairing entreaties of the manager.  I ushered him out of the room, for I was afraid that, although he kept his voice low, he would end by disturbing Mamma.  I remained alone in my room, that room with the too lofty ceiling in which I had been so wretched on my first arrival, in which I had thought with such longing of Mlle de Stermaria, had watched for the appearance of Albertine and her friends, like migratory birds alighting upon the beach, in which I had possessed her with such indifference that I had sent the lift-boy to fetch her, in which I had experienced my grandmother's kindness, then realised that she was dead; those shutters, beneath which shone the early morning light, I had opened the first time to look out upon the first ramparts of the sea (those shutters which Albertine made me close in case anybody should see us kissing).  I became aware of my own transformations by contracting them with the unchangingness of my surroundings.  One grows accustomed to these as to people, and when, all of a sudden, one recalls the different meanings that they used to convey to one and then, after they had lost all meaning, the events, very different from those of to-day, which they enshrined, the diversity of the acts performed beneath the same ceiling, between the same glazed bookshelves, the change in one's heart and in one's life which that diversity implies, seem to be increased still further by the unalterable permanence of the setting, reinforced by the unity of the scene.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1163-1164

"I became aware of my own transformations by contracting them with the unchangingness of my surroundings." Marcel is leaving Balbec for a return to Paris and suddenly an incredible flood of memories, most, not surprisingly, related to love and loss and longing: "I had thought with such longing of Mlle de Stermaria, had watched for the appearance of Albertine and her friends, like migratory birds alighting upon the beach, in which I had possessed her with such indifference that I had sent the lift-boy to fetch her, in which I had experienced my grandmother's kindness, then realised that she was dead . . ." He is made more melancholy by the realization of the utter transience of life, the unbearable lightness of being, is only re-enforced by the "unchangingness" of the room itself: "One grows accustomed to these as to people, and when, all of a sudden, one recalls the different meanings that they used to convey to one and then, after they had lost all meaning, the events, very different from those of to-day, which they enshrined, the diversity of the acts performed beneath the same ceiling, between the same glazed bookshelves, the change in one's heart and in one's life which that diversity implies, seem to be increased still further by the unalterable permanence of the setting, reinforced by the unity of the scene." As the Sufi Junayd reminds us, "Whosoever is between the two vanishings is now vanishing." I think of places, whether they are apartments or hotel rooms or busy street corners or tropical beaches or well-worn sylvan paths where I had similar realizations, and the more romantic side of my nature thinks that they are still populated by our ghosts.  I wonder if we return to these spots to recapture memories or to free the ghosts, ours certainly, but also those of the friends and lovers trapped there?