My Years With Proust - Day 519

   When it was Albertine's turn to bed me good-night, kissing me on either side of my neck, her hair caressed me like a wing of softly bristling feathers.  Incomparable as were those two kisses of peace, Albertine slipped into my mouth, in making me the gift of her tongue, as it were a gift of the Holy Ghost, conveyed to me a viaticum, left me with a provision of tranquillity almost as precious as when my mother in the evening at Combray used to lay her lips upon my forehead.

   "Are you coming with us to-morrow, old crosspatch?" she would ask before leaving me.

   "Where are you going?"

   "That will depend on the weather and on you.  But have you written anything to-day, my little darling?  No? Then it was hardly worth your while not coming with us. Tell me, by the way, when I came in this evening, you knew my step, you guessed at once who it was?"

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 72

Here we have a very short passage, but one, appropriately Proustian, stocked full of subtle significance.  Once again we have the conflating of personal and religious significance in something as seemingly simple as the kisses that Albertine gives him before leaving him for the night.  The viaticum is the Eucharist associated with those dying.  I was making the point, yesterday, I think, that we always have to keep Proust's failing health and concomitant shrinking physical and social worlds, in mind as we read Remembrance of Things Past.  I think it shapes his relationship with Albertine and his, at least to us anyway, unseemly desire to control her and keep her as a captive.  I argued that she represented life, and his inability to control his own health and vitality.  The very fact that he would use a term like viaticum in this context, tied to all the other religious symbolism throughout the novel, speaks to the presence of death.

And again he makes reference to Albertine offering him her tongue, "as it were a gift of the Holy Ghost."  As we discussed above, I completely get the religious metaphor.  That said, he's mentioned her sliding him the tongue repeatedly.  Seriously, don't they ever French kiss when they're having sex?  I mean, well, they are French after all . . .

As I've noted before, the deeper I get into the novel I, naturally I suppose, become more fascinated with Albertine, and also frustrated that Proust doesn't reveal more about her, which may just be a testimony to his utter and all-encompassing self-absorption.  Still, we get little glimpses, and she strikes me as having more power than she might convey on the surface. She's clearly operating within the limiting societal gender constraints of her age, which leaves her trapped into kicking back in a more passive-aggressive fashion (not that Proust himself isn't guilty of this in abundance).  Her seemingly innocuous statement isn't so innocuous: "That will depend on the weather and on you.  But have you written anything to-day, my little darling?  No?  Then it was hardly worth your while not coming with us."  Proust has clearly refused to come along with them, while reserving the right to be jealous about her time alone, while staying home and doing nothing.  Considering how often he treats her like a child her use of the phrase "my little darling" is also clever.  Albertine then immediately slides on to another topic, leaving the wound to remain undressed.