"I watched the trees gradually recede, waving their despairing arms, seeming to say to me: 'What you fail to learn from us to-day, you will never know. If you allow us to drop back into the hollow of this road from which we sought to raise ourselves up to you, a whole part of yourself which we were bringing to you will vanish forever into thin air.' And indeed if, in the course of time, I did discover the kind of pleasure and disquiet which I had just felt once again, and if one evening - too late, but then for all time - I fastened myself to it, of those trees themselves I was never to know what they had been trying to give me nor where else I had seen them. And when, the road having forked and the carriage with it, I turned my back on them and ceased to see them, while Mme de Villeparisis asked me what I was dreaming about, I was as wretched as if I had just lost a friend, had died to myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 773
"We came down towards Hudimesnil; and suddenly I was overwhelmed with a profound happiness which I had not felt since Combray, a happiness analogous to that which had been given me by - among other things - the steeples of Martinville. But this time it remained incomplete. I had just seen, standing a little way back from the hog's back road along which we were travelling, three trees which probably marked the entry to a covered driveway and formed a pattern which I was not seeing for the first time. I could not succeed in reconstructing the place from which they had been as it were detached, but i felt that it had been familiar to me once; so that, my mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment, Balbec and its surroundings began to dissolve and I wondered whether the whole of this drive were not a make-believe, Balbec a place to which I had never gone save in imagination, Mme de Villeparisis a character in a story and the three old trees the reality which one recaptures on raising one's eyes from the book which one has been reading and which describes an environment into which one has come to believe that one has been bodily transported." pp. 770-771
Where we might have just seen three trees, Proust, as was his wont, saw much more. The image and the resulting emotional spasm was so profound that "my mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment, Balbec and its surroundings began to dissolve and I wondered whether the whole of this drive were not a make-believe, Balbec a place to which I had never gone save in imagination, Mme de Villeparisis a character in a story and the three old trees the reality which one recaptures on raising one's eyes from the book which one has been reading . . ." What did Proust see?
"I looked at the three trees; I could see them plainly, but my mind felt that they were concealing something which it could not grasp, as when an object is placed out of our reach, so that our fingers, stretched out at arm's-length, can only touch for a moment its outer surface, without managing to take hold of anything. Then we rest for a little while before thrusting out our arm with renewed momentum, and trying to reach an inch or two further. But if my mind was thus to collect itself, to gather momentum, I should have to be alone. What would I not have given to be able to draw aside as I used to do on those walks along the Guermantes Way, when I detached myself from my parents! I felt indeed that I ought to do so. I recognised that kind of pleasure which requires, it is true, a certain effort on the part of the mind, but in comparison with which the attractions of the indolence which inclines us to renounced that pleasure seem very slight. That pleasure, the object of which I could only dimly feel, which I must create for myself, I experienced only on rare occasions, but on each of these it seemed to me that the things that had happened in the meantime were of little importance, and that in attaching myself to the reality of that pleasure alone could I at length begin to lead a true life. I put my hand for a moment across my eyes, so as to be able to shut them without Mme de Villeparisis's noticing. I saw there thinking of nothing, then with my thoughts collected, compressed and strengthened I sprang further forward in the direction of the trees, or rather in that inner direction at the end of which I could see them inside myself. I felt again behind them the same object, known to me and yet vague, which I could not bring nearer. And yet all three of them, as the carriage moved on, I could see coming towards me. Where had I looked at them before?" pp. 771-772
Just as it is, by definition, impossible to define the ineffable, would it be impossible to actually force yourself to see the un-seeable? I agree with Proust's belief that to do so he would have to be alone. While it is lovely to visit exotic locations with another person the profundity of the experience becomes localized within the relationship and allows very little opportunity to extend to the greater environs, either physical or metaphysical. While your experience in Salalah with that woman might be as elevated as the realization that you do actually love her or as base as the realization that no one is around and that this might be the perfect time for some extracurricular carnal gymnastics, they are still very self-contained, and doesn't leave a lot of room for finding God.
"Or had I indeed never seen them before, and did they conceal beneath their surface, like certain trees on tufts of grass that I had seen beside the Guermantes way, a meaning as obscure, as hard to grasp, as is a distant past, so that, whereas they were inviting me to probe a new thought, I imagined that I had to identify an old memory? Or again, were they concealing no hidden thought, and was it simply visual fatigue that made me see them double in time as one sometimes sees double in space? And meanwhile they were coming towards me; perhaps some fabulous apparition, a ring of witches or of Norns who would profound their oracles to me. I chose rather to believe that they were phantoms of the past, dear companions of my childhood, vanished friends who were invoking our common memories. Like ghosts they seemed to be appealing to me to take them with me, to bring them back to life. In their simple and passionate gesticulation I could discern the helpless anguish of a beloved person who has lost the power of speech, and feels that he will never be able to say to us what he wishes to say and we can never guess. Presently, as a cross-roads, the carriage left them. It was bearing me away from what alone I believed to be true, what would have made me truly happy; it was like my life." pp. 772-773
So, what are we to make of all this? I know I included much more actual text from Remembrance of Things Past than I normally do (and, again, these blog posts are designed to, among other things, inspire you to acquire Proust's work and not as a replacement for it) but I think that this particular section is fascinating, and I felt it needed a lot of context - and, well, I don't think I'm going out on a limb to point out that Proust is a better writer than I am, so the more material from the original the better. While Proust doesn't talk much about organized religion, it's difficult for me to read this passage and not revert to the image of the three crosses or even the Triune God. However, Proust, like seemingly more and more modern day Americans, seems more spiritual than truly religious so I'm hesitant to go there; that said, even if you're not currently religious you probably still carry within you the cultural remnants, even vestigial ones, of your childhood faith.
In the end I think his response to the three trees is more important than why that particular image inspired his response. I've been trying to think if I've ever had an experience that intense, one that almost dislodged me from reality; in some ways his descriptions almost reads like certain poems from the Sufi mystic Rumi. I remember sitting in a little out of the way church in Vienna, around the corner, I think, from the Hotel Wandl where I stayed so many times, and having a very otherworldly experience wherein the silence was so deafening that I could hear it. At that moment I thought, with almost complete certainty, that I was on the cusp of something extraordinary and that if I just sat there a little while longer I would find God (and this was at a time when I certainly wasn't looking for God, which probably explained the relative ease in finding God at that point - which also circles us back to the point I raised above in regard to forcing oneself to grasp the unknowable). Tragically, or happily, someone walked into the church at that moment and noisily broke my concentration and the moment was gone. Beyond that, my moments when I think that the universe is trying to tell me something always are found in deserts. Doubtless I'll eventually play a very active role in my own demise by wandering off among the sand dunes in search of truth.
Drawing this ridiculously lengthy post to a close, I should return to the question of why Proust felt that "I had just lost a friend, had died to myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god." His despair was certainly not caused by the fact that he failed to grasp the transcendent, because, well, how many people ever successfully accomplish that near impossibility. Rather, I think his frustration was generated by the fact that he, at least temporarily, stopped trying. The mundane world swallowed him up, and his attempt to be alone, even if it just meant shielding his eyes, so that he could focus on the intersection of the tangible and intangible worlds, had failed, and failed for the worst possible reason, he halted in his pursuit.
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