My Years With Proust - Day 515

   Sometimes it afforded me a pleasure that was less pure.  For this I had no need to make any movement, but allowed my leg to dangle against hers, like an oar which one trails in the water, imparting to now and again a gentle oscillation like the intermittent wing-beat of a bird asleep in the air.  I chose, in gazing at her. the aspect of her face which one never saw and which was so beautiful.  It is I suppose comprehensible that the letters which we receive from a person should be more or less similar to one another and combine to trace an image of the writer sufficiently different from the person we know to constitute a second personality. But how much stranger is it that a woman should be conjoined, like Rosita with Doodica, with another woman whose different beauty makes us infer another character, and that in order to see them we must look at one of them in profile and the other in full face.  The sound of her breathing, which had grown louder, might have given the illusion of the panting of sexual pleasure, and when mine was at its climax, I could kiss her without having interrupted her sleep.  I felt at such moment that I had possessed her more completely, like an unconscious and unresisting object of dumb nature. I was not troubled by the words that she murmured from time to time in her sleep; their meaning was closed to me, and besides, whoever the unknown person to whom they referred, it was upon my hand, upon my cheek that her hand, stirred by an occasional faint tremor, stiffened for an instant.  I savoured her sleep with a disinterested, soothing love, just as I would remain for hours listening to the unfurling of the waves.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 66-67

Here is the famous/infamous section where Marcel orgasms on, although I'm assuming not in, Albertine while she sleeps; or, as one of the more politically unstable members of the community proposed, "I think he just had a wank."  This section rests, so to speak, in the middle of a lengthy discussion where Marcel watches his mistress sleeps and reflects on her beauty and their relationship and her infidelity and her innocence and their love.  In this particular paragraph he leaves the more ethereal behind, proposing that sometimes "it afforded me a pleasure that was less pure."  It's difficult to read the following sentence without assuming that Marcel gently ("a gentle oscillation like the intermittent wing-beat of a bird asleep in the air")  masturbated while she slept: "The sound of her breathing, which had grown louder, might have given the illusion of the panting of sexual pleasure, and when mine was at its climax, I could kiss her without having interrupted her sleep."  Now, of course, the obvious, and not entirely prurient, question would be: what was he thinking about?  I'm not trying to be indelicate, but Proust himself admitted that in this case pleasure was "less pure."  It's odd that he mentions Rosita and Doodica, two famous conjoined twins, at that particular moment.  Clearly, he's thinking about Albertine in bed with another woman, and I'm trying to determine whether I think he's finding the thought of two women odd, or it's actually something that's turning him on - or some perverse combination of the two.  The problem I'm also seeing here is that as Proust is getting more honest, is he also getting more unlikable?  Clearly he's been emotionally abusing Albertine, and thus the title of this volume as The Captive is terribly appropriate.  Has he at this point crossed the line into physical abuse?  Marcel admits, "I felt at such moment that I had possessed her more completely, like an unconscious and unresisting object of dumb nature."

And here's the commentary from my friend Kathy Seiler, who is one of the twenty or so intrepid souls who actually drop in daily to read my ill-considered and poorly written reflections on Proust.  We were discussing a passage the other day, mainly her righteous anger at Marcel referring to Albertine as a plant as he watched her sleep.  This led to a decision, reached after a series of high level meetings, or the exchange of two emails, to contribute on a passage or two (or hopefully more).  Truthfully, I like her commentary a lot more than mine.  I think we agreed on many points, although in some ways I think that at this point Marcel is not viewing Albertine even as a physical body, but rather as a concept, which is why he feels so close to her at that point. Despite his often crippling jealousy, he also says that he doesn't care what she is murmuring in her sleep at that point, and notes, "I savoured her sleep with a disinterested, soothing love, just as I would remain for hours listening to the unfurling of the waves."

I think you'll find her commentary far more on point than my usual rambling and confused half-ideas.  It must be the scientist in her.

As this is my first attempt at any sort of literature analysis I’ll just put a disclaimer up front. I’m a scientist and have been trained to actually NOT read into things. Data are data. Funny how words in books of literature don’t really work that way though. And I’ll thank Scudder for picking the passage with totally inappropriate behavior in it. He claims its random but I don’t believe it.

In this passage, the plant-like Albertine is STILL asleep and Marcel is still watching her sleep, but now in not so pure and loving a way. “Sometimes it afforded me a pleasure that was less pure.” And by that, I believe at the time there might have been some tale about that less pure thing making one go blind. But wait… let’s describe it a little more:

“ …allowed my leg to dangle against hers, like an oar which one trails in the water, imparting to it now and again a gentle oscillation…” Seems benign enough, until later: “The sound of her breathing, which had grown louder, might have given the illusion of the panting of sexual pleasure, and when mine was at its climax, I could kiss her without having interrupted her sleep.” Not really leaving much to the imagination with that one.

First of all, Albertine is clearly a pretty hard sleeper. But he’s making no bones about it, he’s having a wank while she’s sleeping, and using her as eye candy to facilitate. While this is not the worst thing he could do, it does have a little teeny bit of “creepy” feel about it. What is indicative of the time, and most disturbing to me personally, is the next sentence. “I felt at such moments that I had possessed her more completely, like an unconscious and unresisting object of dumb nature.” Proust already induced my rage and ire with his previous comparison of her to a plant while sleeping, but this really takes the cake. It’s about possession, not love, not respect, not anything resembling what one might call a relationship. It’s about the fact that he’s gotten his rocks off without having to endure anything about her as a sentient being and he likes that just fine, thank you very much. Maybe what disturbs me most is when I begin to wonder how much things have not really changed – how many people view their partner as nothing more than a possession, at their best and most favored when functionally deaf and mute. Is this how we prefer our partners?