My Years With Proust - Day 667

Walking close behind two zuoaves who seemed hardly to be aware of him, I noticed a tall, stout man in a soft felt hat and a long heavy overcoat, to whose purplish face I hesitated whether I should give the name of an actor or a painter, both equally notorious for innumerable sodomist scandals.  I was certain in any case that I was not acquainted with him; so I was not a little surprised, when his glance met mine, to see that he appeared to be embarrassed and deliberately stopped and came towards me like a man who wants to prove that you have not surprised him in an occupation which he would prefer to remain secret. For a second I asked myself who it was that was greeting me: it was M. de Charlus.  One may say that for him the evolution of his malady or the revolution of his vice had reached the extreme point at which thee tiny original personality of the individual, the specific qualities he has inherited from his ancestors, are entirely eclipsed by the transit across them of some generic defect or malady which is their satellite.  M. de Charlus had travelled as far as was possible from himself, or rather he was himself but so perfectly masked by what he had become, by what belonged not to him alone but to many other inverts, that for a moment I had taken him for some other invert, as he walked behind these zouaves down the wide pavement of the boulevard, for some other invert who was not M. de Charlus, who was not a great nobleman or a man of imagination and intelligence and whose only point of resemblance to the Baron was the look that was common to them all, which in him now, at least until one had taken the trouble to observe him carefully, concealed every other quality from view.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 786-787

M. de Charlus reappears on the scene, although in an unexpected fashion.  Marcel stumbles across him along the street. The Baron has continued his decline, and Marcel also doesn't recognize him. Proust tells us, "M. de Charlus had travelled as far as was possible from himself, or rather he was himself but so perfectly masked by what he had become, by what belonged not to him alone but to many other inverts, that for a moment I had taken him for some other invert . . ."  When last we saw the Baron he was becoming increasingly indiscreet in his romantic liaisons, which, in an age not favorably disposed towards homosexuality, placed him in a delicate situation.  In Marcel's mind, this was the inevitable result of this indiscretion.  Or, as Proust writes, "One may say that for him the evolution of his malady or the revolution of his vice had reached the extreme point at which thee tiny original personality of the individual, the specific qualities he has inherited from his ancestors, are entirely eclipsed by the transit across them of some generic defect or malady which is their satellite."  Considering Proust's own sexuality it's impossible to read his descriptions of M. de Charlus and not view them as either hypocritical or biographical or self-loathing.

Maybe You Can Go Home Again, Or At Least Drive By

On my recent trip back to Cincinnati I was able to carve off several days to spend with my brother Eric and his girlfriend Linda and their family in Indianapolis.  The day after Thanksgiving they dragged me down to Franklin to visit our alma mater, Franklin College. It was a very pleasant experience, but also, not surprisingly, a bittersweet one (which seemed to fit the general mood of the trip).  I had not stepped foot on the campus in twenty-six years, since the time when I left there (I was teaching there while I finished my dissertation) and moved south to Atlanta for the job at Georgia Perimeter (then DeKalb) College.  Truthfully, upon reflection, I think I carried more anger directed at the school than I realized, and maybe the trip there over the break helped me put some of it to bed.  There was a job opening at the school at the time and even though I had been teaching there for three years Franklin didn't even consider me for the position, which caused more than a bit of stress for our little family (my son, Gary, was just turning three at the time, and Brenda and I were poor as church mice).  As it turns out it was all for the best, and I can't believe I would have had anything near the opportunities, and the career, if I had stayed there. That said, I think it bothered me more than I ever was able to articulate. My brother asked if I was being flooded with memories, and I think I disappointed him a bit when I said replied "only partially."  After graduating I went to graduate school and spent twice as much time at UC pursuing my doctorate, but then also came back to Franklin and taught for three years, so I overlaid a lot of the undergraduate memories.  Most of my most lucid memories related to teaching there.  I think it was appropriate that the college was closed for the day, because it served as a fitting metaphor for the almost unbridgeable distance I felt; the unbearable lightness of being.

The statue of Ben Franklin (who had nothing at all to do with the school, obviously) and Old Main, where I both had, and taught, most of my classes. I think Franklin is where I learned to think, and in the classic small liberal arts college approach, to read extraordinary books and to grapple with great questions.  Considering my proclivity to have my students read the Ramayana or the Shahnameh or Winesburg, Ohio or Remembrance of Things Past, I have a little corner of the Champlain College Core Curriculum which will always be Franklin College.

Being the day after Thanksgiving the campus was appropriately empty.  My ex-wife Brenda and I met at Franklin and she used to cross to the other parallel sidewalk when she saw me because her sorority sisters had warned her about "Scary Gary." When I was taking classes there I think the total student population was around 550 students (it's now doubled) so the quiet seemed familiar.

Barnes Hall, where I took a ton of classes during my failed pre-Med days.  I think I received, and doubtless earned, a 9 on my last Organic Chemistry test (and not our of 10) before switching majors.

The Franklin College Chapel, which formed one of the more elegaic and bittersweet moments.  Brenda and I were married at the Chapel, which I remember as a blisteringly hot, but wonderfully happy, July day.

The famous Franklin College wellhouse.  The legend at the time was that you were not really an undergraduate at the school until you kissed someone in the wellhouse, although far more profound acts of depravity were carried out there with regularity.  I love authentic, organic college traditions.  At Champlain we keep "creating" traditions, which is why they never stick.

The building that contained the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which, sadly, no longer exists.  I lived there for four years, and I think I held every conceivable office. My friends from later stretches of my life are always stunned that I was in a fraternity.

Yours truly stopping to talk with Ben Franklin, a statue that did not exist when I attended the school.  He thought my arguments were persuasive, and was pleased that I get up so early.

My Years With Proust - Day 666

The end of the letter was absolutely truthful. "You have no idea what this war is like, my dear friend, or of the importance that a road, a bridge, a height can assume.  How often have I thought of you, of those walks of ours together which you made so delightful, through all this now ravaged countryside, where vast battles are fought to gain possession of some path, some slope which you once loved and which we so often explored together! Probably, like me, you did not imagine that obscure Roussainville and boring Meseglise, where our letters used to be brought from and where the doctor was once fetched when you were ill, would ever be famous places.  Well, my dear friend, they have become for ever a part of history, with the same claim to glory as Austerlize or Valmy.  The battle of Meseglise lasted for more than eight months; the Germans lost in it more than six hundred thousand men, they destroyed Meseglise, but they did not capture it.  As for the short cut up the hill which you were so fond of and which we used to call the hawthorn path, where you claim that as a small child you fell in love with me (whereas I assure you in all truthfulness it was I who was in love with you), I cannot tell you how important it has become.  The huge field of corn up which it emerges if the famous Hill 307, which you must have seen mentioned again and again the bulletins.  The French blew up the little bridge over the Vivonne which you said did not remind you of your childhood as much as you would have wished, and the Germans have thrown other bridges across the river.  For a year and half they held on half of Combray and the French the other."

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 778

Gilberte writes a letter to Marcel explaining what is happening in the part of France where she was staying, and which was captured by the Germans during World War I.  A few pages ago we found out that the Germans had arrived and took control of the house where she was staying.  She reports, "As for the short cut up the hill which you were so fond of and which we used to call the hawthorn path, where you claim that as a small child you fell in love with me (whereas I assure you in all truthfulness it was I who was in love with you), I cannot tell you how important it has become." Their shared memory, much like the French countryside itself, was violated by the war. Gilberte continues, "You have no idea what this war is like, my dear friend, or of the importance that a road, a bridge, a height can assume.  How often have I thought of you, of those walks of ours together which you made so delightful, through all this now ravaged countryside, where vast battles are fought to gain possession of some path, some slope which you once loved and which we so often explored together!" Their cherished private memory has now been erased by the official collective memory.

My Years With Proust - Day 665

   I do not wish to imply that the "calamity" had raised Saint-Loup's intelligence to a new level.  But just as soldier heroes with commonplace and trivial minds, if they happened to write poems during their convalesce, placed themselves, in order to describe the war, at the level not of events, which in themselves are nothing, but of the commonplace aesthetic whose rules they had obeyed in the past, and talked, as they would have ten years earlier of the "blood-stained dawn," "victory's tremulous wings," and so on, so Saint-Loup, by nature much more intelligent and much more of an artist, remained intelligent and an artist, and it was with the greatest good taste that he now recorded for my benefit the observations of landscape which he made if he had to halt at the edge of a marshy forest, very much as he would have done if he had been out duck-shooting.  To help me to understand certain contrasts of light and shade which had been "the enchantment of his morning," he alluded in his letter to certain painting which we both loved and was not afraid to cite a passage of Romain Rolland, or even of Nietzsche, with the independent spirit of the man at the front, who had not the civilians' terror of pronouncing a German name, and also - in thus quoting an enemy - with a touch of coquetry, like Colonal du Paty de Clam who, waiting among the witnesses at Zola's trial and changing to pass Pierre Quillard, the violently Dreyfusard poet, whom he did not even know, recited some lines from his synbolist play, La Fille aux Mains Coupees.  In the same way if Saint-Loup had occasion in a letter to mention a song by Schumann, he never gave any but the German title, nor did he use his periphrasis to tell me that, when at dawn on the edge of the forest he had heard the first twittering of a bird, his rapture had been as great as though he had been addressed by the bird in that "sublime" Siegfried" which he so looked forward to hearing after the war.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 776-777

It is sometimes pointed out that the American Civil War was the first war since the Peloponnesian Wars where the majority of the soldiers were literate, and in this case literate simply means being able to read and write (I don't know if that's true, but it is often pointed out).  By comparison, World War I is often considered the first war where most of the combatants were truly literate, and in this case literate means well-educated (at least among the officer class) as the European education system had been developed in the last few decades.  This is why there was such extraordinary literature, especially poetry, associated with the First World War.  Check out Paul Fussell's extraordinary The Great War and Modern Memory, which was my favorite book from graduate school (and my friend Craig Pepin's as well). 

As Fussell much more elegantly explains:

"The American Civil War was the first, Theodor Ropp observes, "in which really larger numbers of literate men fought as common soldiers." By 1914, it was possible for soldiers to be not merely literate but vigorously literate, for the Great War occurred at a special historical moment when two 'liberal' forces were powerfully coinciding in England.  On the one hand, the belief in the educative powers of classical and English literature was extremely strong.  On the other, the appeal of popular education and 'self-improvement' was at its peak, and each education was still conceived largely in humanistic terms. It was imagined that the study of literature at Workmen's Institutes and through such schemes as the National Home Reading Union would actively assist those of modest origins to rise in the class system.  The volumes of the World's Classics and Everyman's Library were to be the 'texts.' The intersection of these two forces, the one 'aristocratic,' and other 'democratic,' established and atmosphere of public respect of literature unique in modern times.  It was this respect for literature, unthinkable in today's milieu of very minor poets and journalist-novelists, taht during the war was first nourishing and then ratifying and intellectual and artistic seriousness of James Joyce in Zurich, Ezra Pound in Kensington, and T.S. Eliot in City his City bank. They could be assured of serious readings, like Private John Ball, who at one point takes from his haversack his India Paper edition of Sir Arthur Quiller'Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse and regales himself with bits of William Dunbar's 'Timor Mortis Conturbat Me.'"

It's difficult to imagine that such an age existed, when so few members of the American university system, students and faculty alike, would qualify as "vigorously literate" today.

Soon

I had the great, good fortune to spend some time with my friend Gary Beatrice this weekend, and it absolutely meant the world to me. When I left I told him that I would see him soon.  We both just smiled.

I don't really have anything profound to say about this picture that I hijacked from Facebook, but I wanted to celebrate it nonetheless.  I can remember these two guys: Gary and a very young Anthony (who is the same age as my son).

My Years With Proust - Day 664

All he said was that since 1914 there had in reality been a series of wars, the lessons of each one influencing the conduct of the one that followed.  For example, the theory of the "break-through" had been supplemented by a new idea: that it was necessary, before breaking through, for the ground held by the enemy to be completely devastated by the artillery.  But then it had been found that on the contrary this devastation made it impossible for the infantry and the artillery to advance over ground in which thousands of shell-holes created as many obstacles.  "War," he wrote, "does not escape the laws of our old friend Hegel.  It is in a state of perpetual becoming."

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 774

Marcel receives a letter from Robert, who opines on the shape of the war.  We learn that the war was really a "series of wars," each shaped by the changing conditions.  There is an old saying that the generals always fight the last war, which is why any general (Alexander the Great or Napoleon are great examples) who come up with an innovative approach are, at least initially, so successful.  World War I, because it was a war whose scope was immeasurably larger than anyone had ever considered, is a classic example of that maxim.  At the beginning the generals were basing their strategy on "the last war," that is the great infantry charges of the previous century, which were now useless and incredibly destructive because the changes in technology had given the defenses the advantage; not that this didn't stop both sides from throwing their troops into suicidal charges across no-man's land.  By World War II the French had learned their lesson from the previous war and hid behind the fortified Maginot Line, but then the Germans, throwing in that deadly innovation, used lightning war to gain the advantage while the French fought the last war.  The speed and scope of the First World War was so unprecedented that the changes, as Robert noted, came fast and furious, transforming the experience within months instead of decades or even centuries.  And thus, referencing Hegel, war was "in a state of perpetual becoming."

My Years With Proust - Day 663

   "Are we in for a long war?" I said to Saint-Loup.  "No, I believe it will be very short," he replied.  But here, as always, his arguments were bookish.  "Bearing the mind the prophecies of Moltke, re-read," he said to me, as if I had already read it, "the decree of the 28th of October, 1913, about the command of large formations; you will see that the replacement of peace-time reserves has not been organised or even foreseen, a thing which the authorities could not have failed to do if the war were likely to be a long one." It seemed to me that if the decree in question could be interpreted not as a proof that the war would be short, but as a failure on the part of its authors to foresee that it would be long, and what kind of war it would be, the truth being that they suspected neither the appalling wastage of material of every kind that would take place in a war of stable fronts nor the interdependence of different theatres of operations.

   Outside the limits of homosexuality, among the men who are most opposed by nature to homosexuality, there exists a certain conventional idea of virility, which the homosexual finding at his disposal proceeded, unless he is a man of unusual intelligence to distort.  This ideal - to be seen in certain professional soldiers, certain diplomats - can be singularly exasperating.  In its crudest form it is simply the gruffness of the man with the heart of gold who is determined not to show his emotions, the man who at the moment of parting from a friend who may very possibly be killed has a secret desire to weep, which no one suspects because he conceals it beneath a mounting anger which culminates at the actual moment of farewell, in a sort of explosion: "Well, now, damn it!  Shake hands with me, you old ruffian, and take this purse, it's not use to me, don't be an idiot." . . . And the reader understands that this "sharp tone" is simply grief showing itself in men who do not want to appear to feel grief, an attitude which might be ridiculous and nothing more but is in fact also sinister and ugly, because it is the manner of feeling grief of whose who think that grief does not matter, that there are more serious things in life than being parted from one's friends, etc., so that when someone dies they give the same impression of falsehood, of nothingness, as on New Year's Day the gentleman who hands who a present of marrons glaces and just manages to say with a titter: "With the compliments of the season!"

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 766-767

Marcel is reflecting on a discussion that he had with his friend Robert de Saint-Loup from 1914 when he was visiting Paris.  It's sad to think of how many people had the same view in 1914 that Robert had. A very typical saying from French soldiers was, "Berlin by Christmas." They believed that they would roll through the German lines, win a glorious victory, and get to spend Christmas in Berlin.  Of course,the corresponding popular statement among young German soldiers was, "Paris by Christmas."  Saint-Loup was based his view on statements by the German general Moltke, while others simply believed that the European economies were so interlinked that no one would allow the war to go on for too long - and of course others were simply blinded by nationalistic fervor. No matter the cause, few prophesied the long nightmare that was to follow.  There were those, such as the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, who remarked, "The lamps are going out all of Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time," but they were in the minority.

My Years With Proust - Day 662

   I saw a lot of Andree at this time.  We did not know what to say to each other, and once there came into my mind that name, Juliette, which had risen from the depths of Albertine's memory like a mysterious flower.  Mysterious then, but now it no longer stirred any feeling in me: many subjects that were indifferent to me I discussed but on this subject I was silent; not that it meant less to me than others, but a sort of supersaturation takes places when one has thought about a thing too much. Perhaps the epoch in my life when I saw so many mysteries in that name was the true one.  But as these epochs will not last for ever, it is a mistake for a man to sacrifice his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries which one day will no longer interest him.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 752-753

"Perhaps the epoch in my life when I saw so many mysteries in that name was the true one.  But as these epochs will not last for ever, it is a mistake for a man to sacrifice his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries which one day will no longer interest him."  We've talked a lot about what makes The One The One, at least in regards to what made Albertine so central to Marcel's life.  And, as I've proposed repeatedly, I wish we knew more about her, and not simply recounts of her adventures told by intermediaries after her death.  When I read this line all I can think about is whether Proust is having doubts about having devoted so much of "his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries," not simply of Albertine (or her equivalent in Proust's own life) but the entirety of Remembrance of Things Past itself.  Was that the mystery that dominated his life, his own desire to recapture the past.  Or, more likely, at least to me, was the novel the one thing that he didn't regret pursuing?

Discography Year Two - Week 12

One of my favorite old movies is the Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire classic Holiday Inn, which is simply much better than the later semi-remake, White Christmas.  If you don't know the movie (and shame on you if you don't) it's about Bing retiring from his act with Astaire and buying a farm in Connecticut, which he eventually turns into an inn that is only open on holidays.  This allows him to do what he loves, but only as much as he wants to, but it also requires him to come up with a new song for every holiday.  Some of the songs are pretty lame, but it also features lovely versions of Easter Parade and White Christmas.  The Thanksgiving song, I've Got Plenty to Be Thankful For,  is certainly not a great song, but it's OK.  Lately I've been in a pretty dreadful mood, marked by the usual wretched irreconcilable mixture of self-loathing and self-pitying - which I normally deal with by making myself scarce and spending as little time with my friends as possible.  Essentially, I know what poor company I am so I just make myself disappear until I sort through my demons.  All of this got me thinking about Thanksgiving.  I know that as part of the knee jerk role that we liberals often play (and as my long-time friends know, I'm usually left of Left, often crossing into LEFT) we're supposed to be dismissive of Thanksgiving and pass our liberal litmus test by posting a snarky comment about Thanksgiving on Twitter (and you know I normally live for Twitter, and especially snarky Twitter) as part of a self-referential wink at the world.  But you know, fuck that noise.  Any holiday, no matter the origin, that urges us to stop and reflect upon our blessings is alright by me.  A while ago the esteemed Gary Beatrice posted Lucinda Williams's Blessed and I can't match his sentiments, but I do believe that the world would be a better place if occasionally reflected upon what we have instead of whining about what we don't.

Gary Beatrice

Cat Power, Manhattan

And so we plow senselessly back from George Jones to New York City.

When I become nuts about a musician one of the first things I do is track who referred him, her, or them to me. Usually that answer is Dave Wallace, but in the case of "Cat Power" I sincerely haven't a clue where or how I first heard her. Given that her sound is unlike that of anyone I listen today today or even in the past couple decades, I find that surprising. But I enjoy her music thoroughly and not just this song (although there would be no shame in just liking this song: the rhythm section alone is brilliant.)

Anyway, you don't need to tell me why I love Cat Power or Manhattan in particular. The answer is that she and this song are brilliant. The question is where I find more music in her genre.

Dave Wallace

Cracker - Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)

David Lowery kicked off the life of his second (and IMO better) band with this classic.  It's not always clear whether the lyrics reflect the viewpoint of the teen protagonist, or Lowery, or both.

What the world needs now

What the world needs now is another folk singer

Like I need a hole in my head

What the world needs now

What the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra

So I can get you in bed

Kathy Seiler

Carbon Leaf – Life Less Ordinary 

“Live a life less ordinary. Live a life extraordinary with me.

Live a life less sedentary. Live a life evolutionary with me.”

You had me at “live a life less ordinary.”

This is my all-time favorite Carbon Leaf song. The lyrics express what many of us want to believe we can give another person – an extraordinary life, together. I had no idea how much an extraordinary life was something that I wanted – I daresay, needed, until sometime close to the end of my grad school days, although I had inklings of it before then. I have since realized, accepted, and celebrated that I’m one of those strange people that not only loves but actually needs almost constant change. I get restless and bored very easily, which drives me to live a life evolutionary.

The message of this song is that the singer is freely offering to share their life with another person (with the implication that the other person is “the one”), but they need that person to understand that a life with them isn’t going to be typical and boring. It’s an appeal to their beloved – come, be with me. We will play together in this life, but we won’t live a boring life. I’m going to confess my feelings for you and ask you to be with me, but I also won’t wait around forever for you. I’ll move on if you don’t want to join me in the adventures we could make together.

The acknowledgement that they won’t wait forever for the other person is so unusual. How many songs imply that they will love that person forever, do whatever is needed to stay with that love, at any cost, and that our love will never change? That’s a promise made in the dopamine-induced insanity of new love, and isn’t sustainable. Reality sets in and conflict arises. Love changes over time. The lyrics imply that change is going to be the norm in a life together, which I find refreshingly honest in a love song. And just plain true.

The saddest part of the song, for me, is that the implication is that the object of the singer’s love was scared away by the expression and confession of love by the singer. The lyrics say,

“By the way,

I do know why you stayed away

I will keep tongue-tied next time”

I don’t think the beloved has any idea what they are missing.

Dave Kelley

I write this as I prepare to leave for North Carolina to be with my family for Thanksgiving.  By the time we are all reading the blog, I hope you good people have enjoyed a healthy and happy holiday.  I am thankful for this small online community.

"I Am Your Tambourine"  Tift Merritt

Merritt is a singer/songwriter from North Carolina in the early 2000's.  This song comes off by far her best record, "Tambourine".  I encourage everyone to check it out.  The tune I selected is the best song off the record and is basically just about sex.  Turn it up! 

In the words of Patti Smith, "Love each other mother fuckers!"  :)

Kevin Andrews

We’re going a little off-topic this week for the holiday. It’s on Youtube and it has music but it’s 53 minutes long. For a smaller sample, here is the trailer. 

This is episode 8 from Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music, I Am My Music. Here’s a condensed list of topics:

78, 45, 33 1/3

Frank Sinatra

Bob Dylan

Marvin Gaye

Miles Davis

The Grateful Dead

The Walkman

Compact Disk

Suzanne Vega and the MP3

Maybe you’re waiting for a plane, need a break from the family, or want the kids to stop playing video games. Here’s your solution. Almost all 8 episodes and the extra content are there, search for Soundbreaking. Youtube wants you to pay for it, don’t bother most of it is there for free. Here is the full playlist.

I chose #8 because, while it follows the arc of technology over seventy years, it showcases how the artists apply it to their craft. It’s probably the most accessible episode too. If you’re interested in more, I bought the DVD just to lend it out so everyone can see it.

Alice Neiley

While I know the holiday season is stressful for many, sometimes even sad, and while I try to keep my insane joy about this time of year slightly at bay for their benefit, most of the time I can’t help myself. Though I do believe in God, said insane joy has little to do with that belief. I don’t go to church unless I’m taking Karen’s mother (who has never missed a Sunday), or attending with both Karen’s parents when we’re in Saskatchewan for a visit – going anywhere with them is completely lovely. Anyway, I digress (surprise, surprise). I’m a sucker for Christmas. I love the lights, the music, the chilly air, the hot beverages, the groups of people with red cheeks and bright colored sweaters and heavy coats. I also love the music…within reason. For example, I do NOT love that the 92.9 radio station plays Christmas carols from Halloween through New Years. I do love The Muppet Christmas Carol, and the music from that movie is welcome in my ears from Thanksgiving onward. Thus my musical choice for this week (forgive me): “Bless Us All” sung by the tiny frog Muppet, Robin, who played Tiny Tim in The Muppet Christmas Carol. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw4ZL6YByrk

The song couldn’t BE more perfect with the video and story line, but I’d argue it’s also quite heartwarming standing alone on both a musical and lyrical level. The lyrics, especially lines like “No place on earth, compares with home/And every path will bring me back from where I roam” and “Bless us all, that as we live/ We always comfort and forgive” embody the holiday spirit for me, no matter what religion or atheism to which you subscribe, and they’re only made better by that little froggy voice. The other thing is the musicality, though. First of all, it’s in the key of D major, the key of triumph, of rejoicing—“First Noel” is often in D major, as is “Joy to the World”. But the chord changes are what really bring on ‘the feels’, as our students would say. 

For example, the chord progression of my favorite line, musically and lyrically: “The sun comes up and I can feel it lift my spirit” is G-major D-major A-minor D-major. Now, I remember from a music theory class that G major chords (and key) represents satisfaction, calm, gentleness and peacefulness, while D major, as I mentioned above, is triumphant and confident. What’s interesting is the choice of A-minor – tender melancholy – which in the context of the lyrics and other chords floods the song with longing and nostalgia, as well as that blessed, beautiful happiness and gratitude. I just can’t get enough of that feeling combo, or this song. Happy season, everyone. 

Phillip Seiler

Christine Lavin

Doris& Edwin: The Movie

I learned about Christine Lavin from my father who heard her on NPR's All Things Considered one night in the late 80s/early 90s. This is significant for a couple reasons. 1) My dad was always Republican and pretty conservative but he loved NPR and the stories they told 2) He and I had some shared interests but I always felt best when we connected over music 3) This year will be my first family holiday gathering without him and I needed to be reminded of our shared sense of silly.

Christine Lavin is a folk singer with just enough talent to recognize she will never be a great talent. And that is charming. She spins most of her songs with a touch of humor and self-awareness that one does not find in most music. Doris & Edwin is nothing if not silly. But it will always hold a special place in my heart because I remember, after Dad had introduced me to her music, playing this song for him and the laugh, his infectious laugh. You will know as you listen when it happened. And that memory is etched on my brain. 

We may not have agreed on much but music and laughter with our family were sacrosanct. Happy Holidays all. 

Gary Scudder

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!

Here's a song that everyone is familiar with, although probably not in this format (unless you're Alice, who doubtless knows it because of her love of Adderley).  The song has been covered many times, including a pretty dreadful, but popular, one by the Buckinghams. However, it started off as a great jazz performance from Cannonball Adderley, based on a song written by pianist Joe Zawinful.  It's from a wonderful live album, also entitled Mercy, Mercy Mercy!, featuring a top notch group:  Adderley (alto saxophone), Nat Adderley (cornet), Joe Zawinful (piano), Victor Gaskin (bass) and Roy McCurdy (drums).  OK, I am now no longer in a bad mood.

My Years With Proust - Day 661

   These ideas, tending on the one hand to diminish, and on the other to increase, my regret that I had no gift for literature, were entirely absent from my mind during the long years - in which I had in any case completely renounced the project of writing - which I spent far from Paris receiving treatment in a sanatorium, until there came a time, at the beginning of 1916, when it could no longer get medical staff.  I then returned to a Paris very different from the city to which, as we shall see presently, I had come back once before in August 1914 for a medical consultation, after which I had withdrawn again to my sanatorium.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 743

I'm including this section mainly because it gives us a sense of the flow of time, especially concerning the time that Proust spent in the sanatorium.  It's interesting that he never gives us any details of his life inside the sanatorium.  Instead, he always focuses on life in the outside world, which could reflect his own fascination or a refusal to dwell on his medical condition; a condition that was his greatest rival in his race to finish Remembrance of Things Past.  These were the terrible years of the First World War, and it will play a role as we go forward, although not as much as one might think. During this period Proust informs us that he had "renounced the project of writing."  Again, it's difficult to say whether this is a further expression of the lack of confidence he expressed earlier, or just the strain of his poor health.

My Years With Proust - Day 660

   I closed the Journal of the Goncourts.  Prestige of literature!  I wished I could have seen the Cottards again, asked them all sorts of details about Elstir, gone to look at the shop called Little Dunkirk, if it still existed, asked permission to visit the Verdurin mansion where I had once dined.  But I felt vaguely depressed.  Certainly, I had never concealed from myself that I knew neither how to listen nor, once I was not alone, how to look.  My eyes were blind to the sort of necklace an old woman might be wearing, and the things I might be told about her pearls never entered my ears.  All the same, I had known these people in daily life, I had dined with them often, they were simply the Verdurins and the Duc de Guermantes and the Cottard, and each one of them I had found just as commonplace as my grandmother had found that Basin of whom she had no suspicion that he was the darling nephew, the enchanting young hero, of Mme de Beausergent, each one of them had seemed to be insipid . . .

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 737

Proust quoted a very long section from the Journal of the Goncourts, which may or may not be an actual work (I should look that up), which I left out (for the obvious reason).  I talked yesterday about Proust's comments disparaging his talents as a writer, and, for that matter, the validity of literature itself.  Here on the other side of the section from the Journal of the Goncourts he continues enough self-deprecation to qualify as a Hoosier (or enough sand-bagging to merit membership in my fantasy baseball league).  "My eyes were blind to the sort of necklace an old woman might be wearing, and the things I might be told about her pearls never entered my ears."  It's difficult to imagine that any author ever possessed a greater eye for detail than Proust, so, again, either he's being ironic or modest, or he's sharing with us the challenges of becoming a writer, or learning to acquire these skills.  I would add that one of the most valuable skills would be to get over your own skepticism and be able to discover, or at least express, the magic in the seemingly mundane.  Proust had, at least according to this narrative, found so many of the characters who populated  Remembrance of Things Past "insipid," but in the pages of this work they are hardly that.  Today in class I was talking about magic realism; and it later occurred to me that maybe all literature is a form of magic realism.

My Years With Proust - Day 659

   I did not want to borrow Gilberte's copy of La Fille auz Yeux d'Or as she was reading it herself.  But she lent me to read in bed, on that last evening of my stay with her, a book which produced on me a strong but mixed impression, which did not, however, prove to be lasting.  It was a volume of the unpublished Journal of the Goncourts.  And when, before putting out my candle, I read the passage which I am about to transcribe, my lack of talent for literature, of which I had had a presentiment long ago on the Guermantes way and which had been confirmed during the stay of which this was the last evening - one of those evenings before a departure when we emerge from the torpor of habits about to be broken and attempt to judge ourselves - struck me as something less to be regretted, since literature, if I was to trust the evidence of this book, had no very profound truths to reveal: and at the same time it seemed to me sad that literature was not what I had thought it to be.  At the same time, the state of ill-health which was soon to shut me up in a sanatorium seemed to me also less to be regretted, if the beautiful things of which books speak were not more beautiful than what I had seen myself.  And yet, by an odd contradiction, now that they were being spoken of in this book I had a desire to see them.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 728

As I've shared previously I'm notoriously guilty of writing all over my books (and I always tell my students than unless they write all over theirs then they don't really own them).  Next to this paragraph I had scrawled, "This entire paragraph is absurd."  Proust is trying to express that Marcel still has profound doubts about his abilities as a writer, and about the validity of literature as well.  However, you can only stretch the truth so far before it simply takes on the light of grand farce.  If Marcel was someone undeniably different than Proust himself then statements such as "my lack of talent for literature" and that literature "had no very profound truths to reveal" would have more power.  Here they just read as if Proust is trying to hard, or is simply trying to be ironic and sinking at the audience.

Proust mentions that he would soon be shut up in a sanatorium in an attempt to recapture his health.  It's difficult to read Remembrance of Things Past, and especially the latter portion, and not be constantly reminded of the death sentence that hung over Proust, but also his refusal to surrender, rest up, and try to stretch out his life.  Rather, the work had to be finished, and sacrifices had to be made, and those would include his own life.

My Years With Proust - Day 658

   "As a matter of fact the book I'm reading at the moment talks about that sort of thing," Gilberte said to me.  "It is an old Balzac which I am swotting up so as to be as well-informed as my uncles, La Fille aux Yeux d'Or.  But it is absurd, improbable, nightmarish.  For one thing, I suppose a woman might be kept under surveillance in that way by another woman, but surely not by a man." "You are wrong, I once knew a woman who was loved by a man who in the end literally imprisoned her; she was never allowed to see anybody, she could only go out with trusted servants." "Well, you who are so kind must be horrified at the idea. By the way, we were saying, Robert and I, that you ought to get married.  Your wife would improve your health and you would make her happy." "No, I have too bad a character." "How absurd!" "I mean it.  Besides, I was engaged once.  But I couldn't quite make up my mind to marry the girl - and anyhow she thought better of it herself, because of my undecided and cantankerous character." This was, in fact, the excessively simple light in which I regarded my adventure with Albertine, now that I saw it only from outside.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 725-726

I love this exchange between Gilberte and Marcel, where he keeps trying to admit that he's a horrible person, and she's not buying it.  She tells a story, which she finds unbelievable, from a novel: "For one thing, I suppose a woman might be kept under surveillance in that way by another woman, but surely not by a man." "You are wrong, I once knew a woman who was loved by a man who in the end literally imprisoned her; she was never allowed to see anybody, she could only go out with trusted servants."  He is admitting that he imprisoned Albertine, although he's really only making the admission to the reader.  Marcel also shares, "This was, in fact, the excessively simple light in which I regarded my adventure with Albertine, now that I saw it only from outside."  Yes, the relationships always make sense on the far side of their painful/comical/disastrous endings.  I think it's because we can then tie it all up with a narrative which was impossible to impose when you were in the middle of the chaos.

My Years With Proust - Day 657

Perhaps, too, she might not have remembered, or she might have lied.  In any case I was no longer interested to know, since my heart had changed even more than Gilberte's face.  This face gave me little pleasure, but above all I was no longer unhappy, and I should have been incapable of conceiving, had I thought about it again, that I could have been so unhappy of Gilberte tripping along by the side of a young man that I had said to myself: "It's all over, I shall never attempt to see her again." Of the state of mind which, in that far-off year, had been tantamount to a long-drawn-out torture for me, nothing survived.  For in this world of ours where everything withers, everything perishes, there is a thing that decays, that crumbles into dust even more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself, than Beauty: namely Grief.

Marcel Proust, Times Regained, p. 713

With the death of Albertine, and the reemergence of Gilberte in his life, Marcel now gets to fret about the latter once again.  In this case, as we saw yesterday, he gets to fret about what might have been if he had acted on his earlier fascination with Gilberte - or, for that matter, simply responded to her advances.  Except, he's not actually suffering that much, especially by Proustian standards.  This might be because he's grown and has greater perspective, or maybe he's still numb from Albertine's death.  Apparently nothing survives the ravages of time: "For in this world of ours where everything withers, everything perishes, there is a thing that decays, that crumbles into dust even more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself, than Beauty: namely Grief."  If beauty fades with the passing of time, then at least we have the consolation of knowing that so does grief.

My Years With Proust - Day 656

Before descending into the mystery of a deep and flawless valley carpeted with moonlight, we stopped for a moment like two insects about to plunge into the blue calyx of a flower.  Gilberte then uttered, perhaps simply out of the politeness of a hostess who is sorry you are going away so soon and would have liked to show you more of a countryside which you seem to appreciate, an avowal of the sort in which her practice as a woman of the world skilled in putting to the best advantage silence, simplicity, sobriety in the express of her feelings, makes you believe that you occupy a place in her life which no one else would fill.  Opening my heart to her suddenly with a tenderness born of the exquisite air, the fragrant evening breeze, I said to her: "You were speaking the other day of the little footpath.  How I loved you then!" She replied: "Why didn't you tell me?  I had no idea.  I loved you too.  In fact I flung myself twice at your head." "When?" "The first time at Tonsonville.  You were going for a walk with your family, and I was on my way home.  I'd never seen such a pretty little boy.  I was in the habit," she went on with a vaguely bashful air, "of going to play with little boys I knew in the ruins of the keep of Roussainville.  And you will tell me that I was a very naughty girl, for there were girls and boys there of all sorts who took advantage of the darkness.  The altar-boy from Combray church, Theodore, who, I must admit, was very nice indeed (goodness, how handsome he was!) and who has become quite ugly (he's the chemist now at Megeglise), used to amuse himself with all the peasant girls of the district.  As I was allowed to go out by myself, whenever I was able to get away, Used to rush over there.  I can't tell you how I longed for you to come there too; I remember quite well that, as I had only a moment in which to make you understand what I wanted, at the risk of being seen by your people and mine, I signalled to you so vulgarly that I'm ashamed of it to this day.  But you stared at me so crossly that I saw that you didn't want to."

   And suddenly I thought to myself that the true Gilberte, the true Albertine, were perhaps those who had at the first moment yields themselves with their eyes, one through the hedge of pink hawthorn, the other on the beach.  And it was I who, having been incapable of understanding this, having failed to recapture the impression until much later in my memory after an interval in which, as a result of my conversation, a dividing hedge of sentiment had made them afraid to be as frank as in the first moments, had ruined everything by my clumsiness.  I had "botched it" more completely - although in fact the comparative failure with them was less absurd - and for the same reasons as Saint-Loup with Rachel.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 711-712

Is there anything worse than the pain of a lost love?  Doubtless, and the most obvious choice would be a "botched" lost love.  Gilberte and Marcel are on a walk when he admits to her, "How I loved you then!"  Classically, she replies: "Why didn't you tell me?  I had no idea.  I loved you too." She continues on with an amusing anecdote about her own youthful adventures, and other boys and girls who "took advantage of the darkness."  Not surprisingly, Marcel hears little of her story because he's immediately saddened by this lost opportunity: "And it was I who, having been incapable of understanding this, having failed to recapture the impression until much later in my memory after an interval in which, as a result of my conversation, a dividing hedge of sentiment had made them afraid to be as frank as in the first moments, had ruined everything by my clumsiness."  We've all been in exactly the same situation, although doubtless in our memories we've built a much more dramatic and definite and romantic narrative than the moment actually held.

My Years With Proust - Day 655

   I should have no occasion to dwell upon this visit which I paid to the neighbourhood of Combray at perhaps the moment in my life when I thought least about Combray, had it not, precisely for that reason, brought me what was at least a provisional confirmation of certain ideas which I had first conceived along the Guermantes way, and also of certain other ideas which I had conceived on the Meseliglise way.  I repeated every evening, in the opposite direction, the walks which we used to take at Combray, in the afternoon, when we went the Meseglise way.  One dined now at Tansonville at any hour at which in the past one had long been asleep at Combray. And because of the seasonal heat, and also because Gilberte spent the afternoon painting in the chapel attached to the house, one did not go out for one's walk until about two hours before dinner.  The pleasure of those earlier walks, which was that of seeing, on the way home, the crimson sky framing the Calvary or mirroring itself in the Vivonne, was now replaced by the pleasure of setting forth at nightfall, when one encountered nothing in the village save the blue-grey, irregular and shifting triangle of a flock of sheep being driven home.  Over one half of the fields the sun had already set; above the other half the moon was already alight and would soon bathe them in their entirety.  It sometimes happened that Gilberte let me go without her, and I set off, trailing my shadow behind me, like a boat gliding across enchanted waters.  But as a rule Gilberte came with me.  The walks that we took thus together were very often those that I used to take as a child: how then could I help but feel much more acutely even than in the past on the Guermantes way the conviction that I would never be able to write, reinforced by the conviction that my imagination and my sensibility had weakened, when I found how incurious I was about Combray?  I was distressed to see how little I relived my early years.  I found the Vivonne narrow and ugly alongside the towpath.  Not that I noticed any great physical discrepancies from what I remembered.  But, separated as I was by a whole lifetime from places I now happened to be passing through again, there was lacking between them and me that contiguity from which is born, even before we have perceived it, the immediate, delicious and total deflagration of memory. Having doubtless no very clear conception of its nature, I was saddened by the thought that my faculty of feeling and imagining things must have diminished since I no longer took any pleasure in these walks.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 709-710

And so we've now passed into Time Regained, the seventh and final volume of Remembrance of Things Past.  I suppose I should do some research into how the last few volumes were published posthumously after Proust's death and the role that others played in finalizing the novel, but at this point I'm mainly concerned with the final copy as it exists and my response to it.  As I've said from the beginning, this isn't meant to be a scholarly examination of Remembrance of Things Past, a task I'm eminently unqualified to bring about.  Still, before my first re-read of the novel, which I'm guessing will be in about three years, I'm hoping to read a biography of Proust and some more scholarly work on Remembrance of Things Past, or, maybe I won't, and instead I'll just happily exist within the confines of the novel. 

As we begin Marcel seems a little sad and struggling with some elegiac memories, but there doesn't seem to be the almost crushing pain that marked so much of The Fugitive.  Instead he's involved with Gilberte, herself very unhappy, in a relationship that has yet to be defined, although it's difficult to read an account of their time together without assuming that they're lovers.  It's not the mad passion of new love, but instead the comfortable relationship that a man would have with an ex-mistress when they get together years later, more of an homage to the past than a celebration of the present or the future.  Essentially, Marcel feels numb, which in its own way is a process of healing.  In these early days of the novel he seems mainly concerned about his lack of connection to the past: "But, separated as I was by a whole lifetime from places I now happened to be passing through again, there was lacking between them and me that contiguity from which is born, even before we have perceived it, the immediate, delicious and total deflagration of memory. Having doubtless no very clear conception of its nature, I was saddened by the thought that my faculty of feeling and imagining things must have diminished since I no longer took any pleasure in these walks."  I suppose most of us feel this pain, and fear, on some level, the loss of the past, but it must have been particularly haunting to Proust since his driving force was to recapture the past, and how was he even to write without this inspiration?

My Years With Proust - Day 654

But when did the change date from?  If from the year of my return to Balbec, hwo was it that he had never once come to see the lift-boy, had never once mentioned him to me?  And as for the first year, how could he have paid any attention to the boy, passionately enamoured as he then was of Rachel? That fist year, I had found Saint-Loup unusual, as was every true Guermantes.  Now he was even odder than I had supposed.  But things of which we have not had a direct intuition, which we have learned only through other people, are such that we no longer have the means, we have missed the chance of conveying them to our inmost soul; its communications with the real are blocked and so we cannot profit by the discovery, it is too late.  Besides, upon any consideration, this discovery distressed me too deeply for me to be able to appreciate it intellectually.  Of course, after what M. de Charlus had told me in Mme Verdurin's house in Paris, I no longer doubted that Robert's case that of any number of respectable people, to be found even among the best and most intelligent of men.  To learn this of anyone else would not have affected me, of anyone in the world save Robert.  The doubt that Aime's words had left me in my mind tarnished all our friendship at Balbec, and Doncieres, and although I did not believe in friendship, or that I had ever felt any real friendship for Robert, when I thought about those stories of the lift-boy and of the restaurant in which I had had lunch with Saint-Loup and Rachel, I was obliged to make an effort to restrain my tears.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 705-706

And so we draw to the close of The Fugitive, and, as has been my habit, I always include the last passage of each separate novel - as I will also include the beginning of the next one.  And the next one will be the last of the seven volumes that make of Remembrance of Things Past.  While I have enjoyed all of the volumes of Proust's masterpiece, I think that The Fugitive has been my favorite, although Swann's Way would also be in the running (I'm already looking forward to my re-read, when I won't be taking such extensive notes and just give myself over to the flow of the words).  I suspect I like The Fugitive the best simply because it is the one which shows the most transformation in Marcel's personality. By the end of The Captive I was growing annoyed with him, and in this volume the tragedy of Albertine's death if clearly leading him to do an immense amount of self-reflection (not that he doesn't do that throughout the entirety of the novel, of course), but in this case he seems to be actually changing.  Marcel is clearly a changed man, as he sadly tells us, "I did not believe in friendship."

My Years With Proust - Day 653

Personally, I found it absolutely immaterial from a moral point of view whether one took one's pleasures with a man or with a woman, and only too natural and human that one should take it where one could find it.  If, therefore, Robert had not been married, his liaison with Charlie ought not to have caused me pain. And yet I realised that the pain I felt would have been as acute if Robert had been a bachelor. In anyone else, his conduct would have left me indifferent.  But I wept when I reflected that I had once had so great an affection for a different Saint-Loup, an affection which, I sensed all too clearly from the cold and evasive manner which he now adopted, he no longer felt for me, since men, now that they were capable of arousing his desires, could no longer inspire his friendship. How could these tastes have come to birth in a young man who had loved women so passionately that I had seen him brought to a state of almost suicidal despair because "Rachel when from the Lord' had threatened to leave him? Had the resemblance between Charlie and Rachel - invisible to me - been the plank which had enabled Robert to pass from his father's tastes to those of his uncle, in order to complete the physiological evolution which even in the latter had occurred fairly late?

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 704

Last time we asked the question of whether Robert could no longer be friends with men because he now viewed them as potential sex objects.   Proust appears to answer the question in the affirmative: "But I wept when I reflected that I had once had so great an affection for a different Saint-Loup, an affection which, I sensed all too clearly from the cold and evasive manner which he now adopted, he no longer felt for me, since men, now that they were capable of arousing his desires, could no longer inspire his friendship."  Nevertheless, Marcel still finds is mysterious, especially considering how desperately sad, almost suicidally so, that Robert had grown when Rachel had broken things off with him.  However, as we've discussed, aren't all love affairs about self-love and vanity, and that transcends the shape and function of your naughty bits.

What I find more interesting about this section is Proust's statement that Robert's sexuality means nothing morally.  "Personally, I found it absolutely immaterial from a moral point of view whether one took one's pleasures with a man or with a woman, and only too natural and human that one should take it where one could find it."  It's appropriate that he opens the sentence with the word "personally," because this is just about the most personal statement Proust ever uttered in Remembrance of Things Past.  It's also important to remember that Proust wrote this novel over a century ago, and how progressive, if not revolutionary, that statement was then.  Today it constitutes, or should constitute, the very definition of a "duh" statement, but yet think of how much time and anguish and anger are devoted to this non-issue?

My Years With Proust - Day 652

But I was convinced that Saint-Loup's physiological evolution had not begun at that period and that he had then been still exclusively a lover of women.  More than by any other sign, I could tell this retrospectively by the friendship that Saint-Loup had shown me at Balbec.  It was only while he still loved women that he was really capable of friendship.  Afterwards, for some time at least, to the men who did not attract him physically he displayed an indifference which was to some extent, I believe, sincere - for he had become very curt - but which he exaggerated as well in order to make people think that he was interested only in women. . . . That Robert's love may have hovered at times on the boundary which divides the love of a man for a woman from the love of a man for a man was quite possible.  In any case, the memory of Rachel now played only an aesthetic role in this context.  It is indeed improbable that it could have played any other.  One day Robert had gone to see her to ask her to dress up as a man, to leave a lock of hair hanging down, and nevertheless had contended himself with gazing at her, unsatisfied.  He remained none the less attached to her and paid her scrupulously, though without pleasure, the enormous income which had had promised her and which did not prevent her from treating him in the most abominable fashion later on.  This generosity towards Rachel would not have distressed Gilberte if she had known that it was merely the resigned fulfilment of a promise which no longer bore any trace of love.  But love was, on the contrary, precisely what he pretended to feel for Rachel.  Homosexuals would be the best husbands in the world if they did not put on an act of loving other women.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 700-701

Marcel continues to process the discovery that his friend Robert is gay or is bisexual - or at the least is not the womanizer that he appears (and apparently promotes).  His theory is that Robert underwent a "physiological evolution" and at one time he was "still exclusively a lover of women."  More likely, obviously, Robert was simply being more honest with himself or at least more honest with those around him, or if not more honest with those around him then just a little sloppy in attempts to hide his sexuality (which we also saw with M. de Charlus).  What Marcel is struggling with is how close friends they were at Balbec, which also takes the form of a regret that they were no longer as close.  Writing about Robert, Proust proposes, "It was only while he still loved women that he was really capable of friendship." So, when Robert admitted to himself that he loved men he would then hold men at a distance.  Would this be because men had suddenly switched categories and were now in the Possible Sex Partner category, much like teenage boys who suddenly drop girls as friends because they've entered that same category?

My Years With Proust - Day 651

   Some time later, I went to spend a few days at Tansonville.  This excursion was something of an inconvenience, for I was keeping a girl in Paris who slept in a bachelor flat which I had rented.  As other people need the aroma of forests or the ripple of a lake, so I needed her sleep by my side during the night and, by day, to have her always by my side in the carriage.  For even if one love has passed into oblivion, it may determine the form of the love that is to follow it.  Already, even in the midst of the previous love, daily habits existed, the origin of which we did not ourselves remember; perhaps it was a moment of anguish early on that had made us passionately desire, then permanently adopt, like customs the meaning of which has been forgotten, the habit of those homeward drives to the beloved's door, or her resistance in our home, our presence or the presence of someone we trust during all her outings.  All these habits, which are like great uniform high-roads along which our love passes daily and which were forged long ago in the volcanic fire of an ardent emotion, nevertheless survive the woman, survive even the memory of the woman.  They become the pattern, if not of all our loves, at least of certain of our loves which alternate with the others. And thus my home had demanded, in memory of a forgotten Albertine, the presence of my mistress of the moment whom I concealed from visitors and who filled my life as Albertine had filled it in the past.  And in order to go to Tansonville I had to obtain her consent to being looked after for a few days by one of my friends who did not care for women.  But I had heard that Gilberte was unhappy, because Robert was unfaithful to her, though not in the fashion which everyone believed, which perhaps she herself still believed, which in any case she alleged.  A belief that could be explained by pride, by the desire to hoodwink other people and to hoodwink oneself, not to mention the imperfect knowledge of infidelities which is all that betrayed spouses ever acquire, all the more so as Robert, a true nephew of M. de Charlus, went about openly with women whom he compromised, whom the world believed and whom Gilberte on the whole believed to be his mistresses.  It was even thought in society that he was too barefaced, never stirring, at a party, from the side of some woman whom he afterwards accompanied home, leaving Mme de Saint-Loup to return as best she could.  Anyone who had said that the other woman whom he compromised thus was not really his mistress would have been regarded as a fool, incapable of seeing what was staring him in the face; but I  had been pointed, alas, in the direction of the truth, a truth which caused me infinite distress, by a few words let fall by Jupien.  A few months before my visit to Tansonville I had gone to acquire after M. de Charlus, in whom certain cardiac symptoms had been causing his friends great anxiety, and having mentioned to Jupien, whom I found alone, some love-letters addressed to Robert and sign Bobette which Mme de Saint-Loup had discovered, I was stupefied to learn from the Baron's former factorum that the person who used the signature Bobette was none other than the violinist who had played so important a part in M. de Charlus's life.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 694-695

Much earlier in Remembrance of Things Past Proust had talked of the dangers of habit, which is ironic if you think about his later life and how he lived his life in an endless loop of hiding out in his apartment during the day and writing all night and never seeing anyone except in the middle of the night when we would walk to a local cafe. His entire life was dictated by habit.  To be fair, he was rushing against death to finish his life's work, and maybe I need to aspire to some measure of that habit so I wouldn't waste so much of my dwindling time.  I would argue that, in addition, women were a habit for him.  As he admits, "For even if one love has passed into oblivion, it may determine the form of the love that is to follow it."  His trip to Tansonville threw his schedule for a loop, and he was "keeping a girl in Paris" and he, after failing to arrange for her to come along, had to arrange for someone to look after her: "And in order to go to Tansonville I had to obtain her consent to being looked after for a few days by one of my friends who did not care for women." He needed her to sleep next to him and he needed to have her ride in the carriage next to him, and apparently he also needed, as he had with Albertine, to control her.  As usual, Proust is spot on in his observation that the love affair that we just had shapes the ones to follow, for good or bad.

In this passage we also learn that Gilberte and Robert de Saint-Loup are already unhappy, which helps explain her being drawn back into Marcel's orbit.  The popular perception is that Robert is sleeping many women, but instead Marcel learns that his friend Robert was "a true nephew of M. de Charlus," meaning, of course, that he was actually gay.  He disguised his love affairs with many men, including Morel who is apparently sleeping with everyone in Remembrance of Things Past, by using a series of women as beards. Marcel reports that the news caused him "infinite distress," which I would theorize was because he wanted Robert to himself, both emotionally and sexually.