My Years With Proust - Day 474

   Albertine's neck, which emerged in its entirety from her nightdress, was strongly built, bronzed, grainy in texture.  I kissed it as purely as if I had been kissing my mother to calm a childish grief which I did not believe that I would ever be able to eradicate from my heart.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1162

Marcel continues to try and convince Albertine to come live with him in Paris.  The next couple posts will be longer and deal with more substantive issues, but I felt inclined to include this very brief snippet, only two lines long, because I think it hints at something profound.  I cannot read his description of Albertine neck, which "was strongly built, bronzed, grainy in texture," which brings us back to the question of Proust's own sexuality.  Granted, Albertine and her friends were "sporty", but the physical description isn't what one would associate with female beauty, especially from a certain class, at that age.  Marcel kisses her neck "purely as if I had been kissing my mother."  For a person who has fits of passionate jealousy, he never seems to be particularly passionate about Albertine; that is, she seems more of an ideal than a woman. It bring me back again to that famous opening sequence where Proust talks about waiting in his room for his mother to, hopefully, spirit herself away from her social duties and come see him.  I know this sounds terribly Freudian, but is all of this about his quest for his mother's love?  I don't know if I'll be like Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer who famously immediately re-read Remembrance of Things Past after finishing it, but I definitely want to go back and explore the first section of Swann's Way again. Oh, and since I mentioned Breyer, it reminds me of his observation that literature was essential for any democracy.  Remember when we had public officials who were painfully literate?  And while I'm thinking about it, here's a section of Breyer's comments about Proust:

"It's all there in Proust - all mankind! Not only all the different character types, but also every emotion, every imaginable situation.  Proust is a universal author: he can touch anyone, for different reasons; each of us can find some piece of himself in Proust, at different ages . . . What is most extraordinary about Proust is his ability to capture the subtlest nuances of human emotions, the slightest variations of the mind and the soul. To me, Proust is the Shakespeare of the inner world."

Oh, and Breyer read Proust in French so that he could work on his own French language skills.  Astonishing.