But if the access of joy brought me by the spectacle of women whom it was impossible to imagine a priori made the street, the town, the world, more desirable, more deserving of exploration, it set me longing, for that very reason, to recover my health, to go out of doors and, without Albertine, to be a free man. How often, at the moment when the unknown woman who was to haunt my dreams passed beneath the window, sometimes on foot, sometimes at full speed in a motor-car, did I not suffer from the fact that my body could not follow my gaze which kept pace with her, and falling upon her as though shot from the embrasure of my window by an arquebus, arrest the flight of the face that held out for me the offer of a happiness which, thus cloistered, I should never know!
Of Albertine, on the other hand, I had nothing more to learn. Every day she seemed to me less pretty. Only the desire that she aroused in others, when, on learning of it, I began to suffer again and waited to challenge their possession of her, raised her in my eyes to a lofty pinnacle. She was capable of causing me pain, but no longer any joy. Pain alone kept my wearisome attachment alive. As soon as it subsided, and with it the need to appease it, requiring all my attention like some agonising distraction, I felt how utterly meaningless she was to me, as I must be to her. I was miserable at the thought that this state of affairs should persist, and, at certain moments, I longed to hear something terrible that she had done, something that would keep us estranged until I was cured, giving us a chance to make it up and to reconstitute in a different and more flexible form the chain that bound us.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 20-21
At a certain point I know it's tempting to say throw your hands up in the air and scream, "Oh my good God, Proust, are you still writing about Albertine?!?!" Yes, and I'll have to admit that I've had a couple weak moments. That said, he almost inevitably digs deeper and views love, jealousy and desire through a different lens. It seems that here we have come around, or come around again, to the notion of love and desire as a reflection on the quest for the new, an almost hunter/gatherer fascination. Proust shares, "But if the access of joy brought me by the spectacle of women whom it was impossible to imagine a priori made the street, the town, the world, more desirable, more deserving of exploration, it set me longing, for that very reason, to recover my health, to go out of doors and, without Albertine, to be a free man." But doesn't this sound awfully cliche? It sounds like the excuse of every sophomore dude in college mansplaining away why he cheated on his eminently lovely girlfriend. For a person who never truly seems to have tremendous, rutting desire, however, I think there's something more complex going on here. The other day I made the point that we can never forget the dark cloud of ill-health which perpetually hung over and increasingly isolated Proust. Women seem to be more a conduit to life itself than simply a carnal trampoline. I think his boredom with Albertine had nothing to do with her unwillingness to participate in that staple of male fantasy, a three-way (in fact, I'm pretty certain that she'd definitely be up for that challenge), and instead his fear, loneliness and boredom with his own narrowing existence. Proust tells us, "Of Albertine, on the other hand, I had nothing more to learn." In fact, "Every day she seemed to me less pretty." Was life itself less lovely as the light began to dim?
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