My Years With Proust - Day 390

   Francoise was considerably impressed when she learned that the two brothers of these humble women had married, one the niece of the Archbishop of Tours, the other a relative of the Bishop of Rodez.  To the manager, this would have conveyed nothing.  Celeste would sometimes reproach her husband with his failure to understand her, and I myself was astonished that he would put up with her.  For at certain moments, raging, furious, destroying everything, she was detestable.  It is said that the salt liquid which is our blood is only an internal survival of the primitive marine element.  Similarly, I believe that Celeste, not only in her bursts of fury, but also in her hours of depression, preserved the rhythm of her native streams.  When she was exhausted, it was after their fashion; she had literally run dry.  Nothing could then have revitalised her.  Then all of a sudden the circulation was restored in her tall, slender, magnificent body.  The water flowed in the opaline transparence of her bluish skin. She smiled in the sun and became bluer still.  At such moments she was truly celestial.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 878-879

So many characters pass in and out of Remembrance of Things Past and I've never tried to keep track of all of them, either in this blog or in my own reading of the novel.  Granted, I guess this is a balancing act that we all do when we read, but it is especially daunting with a work as monumental as Proust's.  However, sometimes I find myself noting a character who seems like a bit player, and who is probably just going to pass off stage rapidly, for no other reason than their Proustian description.  And so we have Celeste.  Her temper sounds much like mine, with the obvious difference that mine does not erupt from a "tall, slender, magnificent body."  I think we've all met people over the years who seem almost elemental, like the marine biologist who might be a mermaid in Local Hero.