Tuesday, March 7, 2017

My Years With Proust - Day 393

   This assignation, in that case, must be not the first, but the sequel to adventures shared in past years.  And indeed her glance did not say: "Will you?" As soon as the young woman had caught sight of Albertine, she had turned her head and beamed upon her glances charged with recollection, as though she were afraid and amazed that my beloved did not remember.  Albertine, who could see her plainly, remained phlegmatically motionless, with the result that the other, with the same sort of discretion as a man who sees his old mistress with a new lover, ceased to look at her and pain no more attention to her than if she had not existed.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 880

Marcel, in an almost Trumpian fit of paranoia, continues to construct an alternate universe (although hopefully not including a Deep State) that features Albertine's assignation with the woman of the "thoroughly depraved life."  The one potential stumbling block is that although the two women exchange glances Albertine "remained phlegmatically motionless."  However, one of the first skills that people involved in affairs - we should really have more assignations and less affairs, it speaks to a greater level of sophistication - develop is the ability to read situations, lie on demand, and prop up a poker face at the appearance of your lovers, either current or former.  Kathleen Edwards spells out the skill quite nicely in her song Summerlong, although her protagonist is trying to stop having affairs  because she's now in love (I don't know if she had considered assignations or not).

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