"So, completely unrelated to the models of beauty which I was wont to conjure up in my mind when I was my myself, this handsome girl gave me at once the taste for a certain happiness (the sole form, always different, in which we may acquire a taste for happiness), for a happiness that would be realised by my staying and living there by her side. But in this again the temporary cessation of Habit played a great part. I was giving the milk-girl the benefit of the fact that it was the whole of my being, fit to taste the keenest joys, which confronted her. As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live; most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services. But on this morning of travel, the interruption of the routine of my existence, the unfamiliar place and time, had made their presence indispensable. My habits, which were sedentary and not matutinal, for once were missing, and all my faculties came hurrying to take their place, vying with one another in their zeal, rising, each of them, like waves, to the same unaccustomed level, from the basest to the most exalted, from breath, appetite, the circulation of my blood to receptivity and imagination. I cannot say whether, in making me believe that this girl was unlike the rest of women, the rugged charm of the locality added to her own, but she was equal to it. Life would have seemed an exquisite thing to me if only I had been free to spend it, hour after hour, with her, to go with her to the stream, to the cow, to the train, to be always at her side, to feel that I was known to her, had my place in her thoughts. She would have initiated me into the delights of country life and of early hours of the day. I signalled to her to bring me some of her coffee. I felt the need to be noticed by her. She did not see me; I called to her. Above her tall figure, the complexion of her face was so burnished and so glowing that it was as if one were seeing her through a lighted window. She retraced her steps, I could not take my eyes from her face which grew larger as she approached, like a sun which it was somehow possible to stare at and which was coming nearer and nearer, letting itself be seen at close quarters, dazzling you with its blaze of red and gold. She fastened on me her penetrating gaze, but doors were being closed and the train had begun to move. I saw her leave the station and go down the hill to her home; it was broad daylight now; I was speeding away from the dawn."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 706-707
OK, so I'm only 707 pages into writing on Proust (I just passed 900 pages reading last night; only 2300 to go) but this is shaping up as my defining, and one of my favorite, sections in Remembrance of Things Past; at least so far, although I know there will be many more. Why? Well, partially this is true because it is so completely and totally Proustian. He devotes three dense pages, in one meandering but exquisitely constructed paragraph (also very Proustian), to describing a transcendent moment, centered around a woman he almost talks to at a small train station in the mountains. It is, per usual, beautifully written and speaks to delicate subtleties of the human experience. It also is so complex and moving that I am devoting four separate blog posts to exploring the deeper meanings of one paragraph, where he almost talked to one woman. And this is why I love Proust. You know, and here's the thing, I really do love Proust. When I started this project I viewed it, in many ways, essentially as that, a project, an interesting intellectual exercise. I had always wanted to read Remembrance of Things Past, and I thought that at this particular moment in the great arc of my life I would benefit from some serious soul searching and self-reflection (not that we don't always benefit from that on a daily basis) and that Proust would serve as a useful conceptual tool. However, along the way I fell in love with what Proust was trying to accomplish, and also how he was doing it.
One of the basic tenets of Scudderian philosophy is that everything is good in theory but bad in practice, mainly because in theory we're dealing with the heart and mind whereas with practice we're dealing with the body (which is seldom up to any good). I mention this because his wonderfully romantic description of what life would be like with her seems to capture that notion. "Life would have seemed in exquisite thing to me if only I had been free to spend it, hour after hour, with her, to go with her to the stream, to the cow, to the train, to be always at her side, to feel that I was known to her, had my place in her thoughts. She would have initiated me into the delights of country life . . ." This section, and especially this particular passage, reminds me of Country Girl, one of my all-time favorite Neil Young songs.
Proust writes, "But in this again the temporary cessation of Habit played a great part. I was giving the milk-girl the benefit of the fact that it was the whole of my being, fit to taste the keenest joys, which confronted her. As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live; most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services." Proust is experiencing that moment, in this instance a transcendent one, but it could really be any moment, because he is breaking free of the tyranny of Habit and offering up the "whole of my being," whereas we normally live "with our being reduced to a minimum." He escaped by travelling, in this case an actual trip, which would probably be best, but a journey inward (and aren't all journeys a journey inward) might serve the purpose as well. It would seem that the key is to not live life at a minimum. As Lester opines in American Beauty, "I know I didn't always feel this sedated."
Finally, I also love the, again appropriately Proustian, elegiac feel of this passage. "She fastened on me her penetrating gaze, but doors were being closed and the train had begun to move. I saw her leave the station and go down the hill to her home; it was broad daylight now; I was speeding away from the dawn." As we remember from the end of Swann's Way, "the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment." Maybe what Swann is regretting, and thus remembering, is not the missed opportunity with his own country girl, but rather the passing of a moment made beautiful by an imagined happier world.
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