My Years With Proust - Day 482

   When I reflect now that, on our return from Balbec, Albertine had come to live in Paris under the same roof as myself, that she had abandoned the idea of going on a cruise, that she was installed in a bedroom within twenty paces of my own, at the end of the corridor, in my father's tapestried study, and that late every night, before leaving me, she used to slide her tongue between my lips like a portion of daily bread, a nourishing food that had the almost sacred character of all flesh upon which the sufferings that we have endured on its account have come in time to confer a sort of spiritual grace, what I at once call to mind in comparison is not the nights that Captain de Borodino allowed me to spend in barracks, favour which cured what was after all only a passing distemper, but the night on which my father sent Mamma to sleep in the little bed beside mine.  Life, when it chooses to deliver us once more, against all expectation, from sufferings that seemed inescapable, does so in different, at times diametrically opposed conditions, so much so that it seems almost sacrilegious to note the identical nature of the consolations vouchsafed!

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 2

OK, first off, although my friends would doubtless disagree, I didn't choose this section simply because Proust used the word "vouchsafed."  As my friends will lament, I have the peculiar habit of, in showing my support of proposed soirees, that writing, "I vouchsafe this as an event of excellence," which usually happens after I've used the used the word "plenipotentiaries" in the greeting.  Why, who knows?  I'm sure it began as some self-deprecating, utterly Hoosier-worthy, dig at my own vanity and utterly failed aspirations at culture.

More importantly, Proust continues to wake up, adjust to his new surroundings, and introduce us to his new world, a world he's sharing with Albertine.  She is staying "at the end of the corridor, in my father's tapestried study," which seems appropriate since Marcel had as much trouble connecting with his father as he does with Albertine.  Several times I've noted Proust's use of religious metaphors, which certainly would have been more natural a century ago than they are now (when they seem more forced in our increasingly secular and sadly illiterate age).  This passage is no exception.  Proust shares that every night "she used to slide her tongue between my lips like a portion of daily bread, a nourishing food that had the almost sacred character of all flesh upon which the sufferings that we have endured on its account have come in time to confer a sort of spiritual grace . . ."  As we'll see, he also manages to use the word "sacrilegious" to re-enforce the religious symbolism.  In the end we're brought back to the extraordinary opening scene from the beginning of the novel where he waits in his little room for his mother to steal away from her social obligations and see him, and he reflects again upon the night when "my father sent Mamma to sleep in the little bed beside mine."  Joseph Campbell talked about the goal, so prevalent in mythology, of recapturing the oneness with the mother figure, to recreate that serenity that was lost at birth and never regained in this life.

At this point it seems that Marcel is actually happy.  He reports: "Life, when it chooses to deliver us once more, against all expectation, from sufferings that seemed inescapable, does so in different, at times diametrically opposed conditions, so much so that it seems almost sacrilegious to note the identical nature of the consolations vouchsafed!" Sadly, I don't think this happiness will last too long.