On the evenings when the latter did not read aloud to e, she would play me some music or begin a game of draughts, or a conversation, which I would interrupt with kisses. Our relations had a simplicity that made them soothing. The very emptiness of her life gave Albertine a sort of eagerness to comply with the few demands I made on her. Behind this girl, as behind the purple light that used to filter beneath the curtains of my room at Balbec, while outside the concert blared, there shone the blue-green undulations of the sea. Was she not, after all (she in whose being there now existed an idea of me so habitual and familiar that, next to her aunt, I was perhaps the person whom she distinguished least from herself), the girl whom I had seen the first time at Balbec, beneath her flat cap, with her insistent laughing eyes, a stranger still, slender as a silhouette projecting against the waves? These effigies preserved intact in our memory astonish us, when we recall them, by their dissimilarity from the person we know, and we realise what a task of remodelling is performed every day by habit. In the charm that Albertine had in Paris, by my fireside, there still survived the desire that had been aroused in me by that insolent and blossoming cortege along the beach, and just as Rachel retained in Saint-Loup's eyes, even after he mad her abandon it, the glamour of her stage life, so in this Albertine cloistered in my house, far from Balbec whence I had hurried her away, there persisted the excitement, the social confusion, the hollow restlessness, the roving desires of seaside life. She was so effectively caged that on certain evenings I did not even ask her to leave her room for mine, she whom at one time all the world pursued, whom I had found it so hard to overtake as she sped part on her bicycle, whom the liftboy himself was unable to bring back to me, leaving me with little hope of her coming, although I sat up waiting for her all night. Had not Albertine been - out there in front of the hotel - like a great actress of the blazing beach, speaking to no one, jostling the habitues, dominating her friends? And was not this so greatly coveted actress the same who, withdrawn by me from the stage, shut up in my house, was now here, shielded from the desires of all those who might henceforth seek for her in vain, sitting now in my room, now in her own, engaged in some work of design or engraving?
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 61-62
Have there been many books with a more appropriate title than The Captive? In this one paragraph Proust uses descriptors such as "caged" and "cloistered" and "withdrawn" and "shut up" and "shielded." And why does Marcel cage Albertine other than his desire to control her? His professed claim to protect her from her vices and other women, obviously, ring pretty hollow. All Marcel is managing to do is break her spirit. Proust recounted, "The very emptiness of her life gave Albertine a sort of eagerness to comply with the few demands I made on her." I've pointed out the number of parallel lives and parallel relationships that run through Remembrance of Things Past, and the more I think about it I would argue it also relates to Marcel and Albertine in a way. Marcel/Proust increasingly leads a life cut off from the rest of the world and controlled by factors such a declining health, whereas Albertine also leads a "captive" life, partially imposed by societal constraints but arguably even more by Marcel.
Oh, and more appropriately entitled books than The Captive? Hmm, that's a tough one, although, as we'll soon see, The Fugitive jumps to mind. I hope Time Regained delivers what the title promises. Beyond that, I've set myself the challenge of coming up with titles as equally appropriate. I'll revisit this question, although The Unbearable Lightness of Being springs to mind as a starter.
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| OK, I did mention The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but clearly I'm just posting this picture because, well, hell, it's Juliette Binoche, and one doesn't need a more valid reason to celebrate the most beautiful woman in the world. |
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