Fundamental Notes

 This was the Venice that I explore in the afternoons, if I did not go out with my mother. For this was where I found it easier to meet women of the people, march-sellers and bead-stringers, glass- or lace-workers, young working-girls whose long black, fringed shawls were no barrier to my love, since I have nearly forgotten Albertine, yet some were more attractive than others, for I did still remember her a little.  I wonder if anyone could have told me exactly how far, in this passionate perusal of Venetian women, what was due to them, and what to Albertine, or my former desire to travel to Venice. Our slightest desire, although striking its own, unique chord, contains within it the fundamental notes on which our whole lives are based. And if perchance we suppressed one or other of these notes, even unheard, even unconscious, a note absolutely no relation to the object of our pursuit, we would none the less feel our whole desire for this object fade away. There was much that I did not attempt to elucidate in the midst of my excited pursuit of Venetian girls. My gondola followed the side canals, as if the mysterious hand of a genie were guiding me through the byways of this oriental city, the more I advanced along the canals the more they seemed to show me the way, slicing through a neighborhood that they divided as their narrow and arbitrarily traced furrows barely perturbed the tall houses and their small Moorish windows; and like a magical guide holding a candle between his fingers to light my passage, they cast ahead of them a ray of sunlight and opened a pathway for it.  You could sense that between the humble dwellings that the little canal had just divided and which otherwise could have formed a compact whole, there was so little space available that a church bell-towers or a garden trellis would directly overhand the rio, as in a flooded city.  But for the churches, as for the gardens which underwent the same process of transposition as occurred in the Grand Canal, the seas was so willing to act as a means of communication, like a side or main street, that on either side of the Canaletto, churches rose out of the water in this old, crowded and poor neighborhood. 

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 228-229 (tr. Peter Collier)

I told myself that I was not going to delve into the new translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but I guess that promise didn't last long. Janet and I are headed to Venice for our Thanksgiving break. For some reason she's never been to Italy, although she's also actively trying to attain Italian citizenship through her grandfather (that is, if the Boston Consulate ever decides to actually do its job and schedule her appointment). I've only been to Italy twice, and I loved it both times. That said, I've never been to Venice, and it's the part of Italy that I've most wanted to visit. Venice is the magic place that Proust mentions so often. This section is drawn from the end of The Fugitive, the sixth volume of In Search of Lost Time, shortly after the death of Albertine. We're thinking of staying at the Hotel Metropole, which is so far out of our price range (although less expensive since we're heading there far out of the tourist season, which makes me happy, more for the space than for any money saved). The Metropole is where both Proust and Thomas Mann stayed, so how could we not stay there? I think my declining health makes us, or at least me, more willing to spend money; essentially, who knows when my last trip will be? My dream is a less-crowded Venice, and plenty of ethereal fog masking the ancient and mysterious city - although hopefully a sinister woman in a red raincoat won't pop up to slit my throat.