"I found Albertine in bed. Leaving her throat bare, her white nightdress altered the proportions of her face, which, flushed by being in bed or by her cold or by dinner, seemed pinker; I thought of the colours I had had beside made a few hours earlier on the front, the savour of which I was now at last to taste; her cheek was traversed by one of those long, dark, curling tresses which, to please me, she had undone altogether. She looked at me and smiled. Beyond her, through the window, the vfalley lay bright beneath the moon. The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those flushed cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had so shifted the reality of the world for me away from nature into the torrent of my sensations which I could scarcely contain), that it had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life which circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison. The sea, which was visible through the window as well as the valley, the swelling breasts of the first of the Maineville cliffs, the sky in which the moon had not yet climbed to the zenith- all this seemed less than a featherweight on my eyeballs, which between their lids I could feel dilated, resistant, ready to bear far great burdens, all the mountains of the world, upon their fragile surface. Their orb no longer found even the sphere of the horizon adequate to fill it. And all the life-giving energy that nature could have brought me would have seemed to me all too meagre, the breathing of the sea all too short to express the immense aspiration that was swelling my breast. I bent over Albertine to kiss her. Death might have struck me down in that moment and it would have seemed to me a trivial, or rather an impossible thing, for life was not outside me but in me; I should have smiled pityingly had a philosopher then expressed the idea that some day, even some distant day, I should have to die, that the eternal force of nature would survive me, the forces of that nature beneath whose godlike feet I was no more than a grain of sand; that, after me, there would still remain those rounded, swelling cliffs, that sea, that moonlight and that sky! How could it have been possible; how could the world have lasted longer than myself, since I was not lost in its vastness, since it was the world that was enclosed in me, in me whom it fell far short of filling, in me who, feeling that there was room to store so many other treasures, flung sky and sea and cliffs contemptuously into a corner. 'Stop it or I'll ring the bell!' cried Albertine, seeing that I was flinging myself up her to kiss her. But I told myself that not for nothing does a girl invite a young man to her room in secret, arranging that her aunt should not know and that boldness, moreover, rewards those who know how to seize their opportunities; in the state of exaltation in which I was, Albertine's round face, lit by an inner flame as by a night-light, stood out in such relief that, imitating the rotation of a blowing sphere, it seems to me to be turning, like those Michelangelo figures which are being swept away in a stationary and vertiginous whirlwind. I was about to discover the fragrance, the flavour which this strange pink fruit concealed. I heard a sound, abrupt, prolonged and shrill. Albertine had pulled the bell with all her might."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 995-996
Through a series of maneuverings Albertine arranges to spend the night at Proust's hotel, and then invites him to visit her room. As he recalls, "What was going to happen that even, I scarcely knew. In any event, the Grand Hotel and the evening no longer seemed empty to me; they contained my happiness." In this beautifully written section Proust deftly balances out the worlds of love and carnality and expresses his urgent and confused emotions. "The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those flushed cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had so shifted the reality of the world for me away from nature into the torrent of my sensations which I could scarcely contain), that it had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life which circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison."
I've been lucky/unlucky enough to have been in love several times in my life, so I can completely sympathize with Proust's exaltation and disappointment. He writes, "How could it have been possible; how could the world have lasted longer than myself, since I was not lost in its vastness, since it was the world that was enclosed in me, in me whom it fell far short of filling, in me who, feeling that there was room to store so many other treasures, flung sky and sea and cliffs contemptuously into a corner." What's that line from Hamlet, "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." In this case "infinite space" is bound inside of Proust. I've felt some measure of this several times, although, typically, I think I felt it most acutely the first time I felt in love. I was twenty and she was twenty-four, and the entire world was a droplet inside of me, but I was a droplet inside of her. Not surprisingly, this entire experience reminds me of some of the songs on Neil Young's first album, which beautifully express the fragile emotion and tangible pain of love: If I Could Have Her Tonight, I've Been Waiting for You, What Did You Do to My Life? and I've Loved Her So Long. Young had just "broken up" with Buffalo Springfield, so maybe there's some symmetry here - or maybe I was just listening to the album a lot during that moment (which seems pretty likely) and it's just imprinted on my heart and mind. Beyond the Proustian implications, it is a criminally overlooked album, and if not for the dreadful Last Trip to Tulsa it would be one of his best.
Note to self: use the descriptor "vertiginous whirlwind" more often.
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