My Years With Proust - Day 520

And as if it were not enough that I should bear an exaggerated resemblance to my father, to the extent of not being satisfied like him with consulting the barometer, but becoming an animated barometer myself, as if it were not enough that I should allow myself to be ordered by my aunt Leonie to stay at home and watch the weather, from my bedroom window or even from my bed, here I was talking now to Albertine, at one moment as the child that I had been at Combray used to talk to my mother, at another as my grandmother used to talk to me.  When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation.  Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and, beyond these, the past of my parents and relations, blended with my impure love for Albertine the tender charm of an affection at once filial and maternal.  We have to give hospitality, at a certain stage in our lives, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered around us.

   Before Albertine obeyed and took off her shoes, I would open her chemise.  Her two little uplifted breasts were so round that they seemed not so much to be an integral part of her body as to have ripened there like fruit; and her belly (concealing the place where a man's is disfigured as though by an iron clamp left sticking in a statue that has been taken down from its niche) was closed, at the junction of her thighs, by two calves with a curve as languid, as reposeful, as cloistral as that of the horizon after the sun has set.  She would take off her shoes, and lie down by my side.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 73-74

I suppose I should have separated out these two paragraphs, because, well, the world certainly needs more witless commentary from me.  However, for some reason I found that I couldn't.  Proust starts off this section by reminding us that we are products of our parents and grandparents and family, and, well, all of our personal history really.  "When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation"  Marcel finds himself talking to Albertine, in this incredibly intimate moment, and "at one moment as the child that I had been at Combray used to talk to my mother, at another as my grandmother used to talk to me." The juxtaposition is jarring, which is clearly where Proust is headed: "Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and, beyond these, the past of my parents and relations, blended with my impure love for Albertine the tender charm of an affection at once filial and maternal."

I'm also intrigued by Proust's description of the nude Albertine in this particular passage.

"Her two little uplifted breasts were so round that they seemed not so much to be an integral part of her body as to have ripened there like fruit . . ."

A fairly common representation of a nature goddess - I remember seeing one in a museum in Beirut, Lebanon (I think) very similar to this one - where the breasts  are fruit.

I couldn't help thinking of this classic representation from the ancient world.  I suppose this is probably the equivalent of Artemis or a much later version of Inanna, but I think her name was different.

There's a Seinfeld episode where Jerry has a girlfriend who is nude all the time, and for some reason it bothers him so he begins to walk around with no clothes and she is horrified.  He shares the story with Elaine and she is often put off by it, and, if I remember correctly, dismisses the male body as functional but certainly not beautiful.  There's whimsy in the episode, but also some truth.  Actresses are expected to be nude in movies all the time (I remember reading an interview with the Canadian actress Katharine Isabelle, who starred in the wonderful Ginger Snaps trilogy, who said when she agreed to do Freddy vs Jason the director and producer were begging her, and eventually were practically trying to trick her into a nude scene and she simply refused - so they used a body double instead), whereas their male counterparts never are (although the Europeans are certainly more balanced on that front than we are).  Certainly, part of this is an expression of the ruling patriarchy, but it also gives us a little glimpse into aesthetic norms (although, obviously, that's also shaped by patriarchal beliefs).

" . . and her belly (concealing the place where a man's is disfigured as though by an iron clamp left sticking in a statue that has been taken down from its niche) was closed, at the junction of her thighs, by two calves with a curve as languid, as reposeful, as cloistral as that of the horizon after the sun has set."

The reason why I bring up the aesthetic point is that one might expect Proust, a homosexual, to be a little more forgiving in his representation of nudes.  Instead, reading the lines above made me think of these two paintings.

Another one of those appropriately shocking paintings from Gustave "show me an angel and I will paint it" Courbet, this one called The Sleepers.  Obviously, there are other reasons to associate this painting with Albertine.

And one of those jarring nudes from Lucien Freud, who always painted the head last because it was just another piece of flesh.

Proust, when writing about homosexuals in Remembrance of Things Past, referred to them as Inverts, and, while not cruel, and usually sensitive and understanding, did clearly draw a line between his own beliefs and those of the Inverts (although there are a few moments when he slips in hints of something more).  Are his physical descriptions here another way to distancing himself from his own desires?

Having said, that, is it even more subtle and profound than simply Proust's uneasy peace with his own sexuality (not that that isn't at the heart of it)?  He talks about his "impure love for Albertine," which counterbalances with the purity of the memory of his mother and grandmother.  So much of Remembrance of Things Past is, in addition to a search for the past, also a search for beauty, and here it seems that the dissonance between dream and reality is profound.

And finally (today's post is a lot longer than I thought it would end of being) who knew that the word "cloistral" could be used so effectively in a sexual context?  I've proposed repeatedly that Albertine is as much metaphor as woman, and she certainly represents something Marcel can't have - or at least can't have in a way that would make the two of them happy.  She's hiding something within her that he needs - or at least that he imagines that he needs - and which he, even when he keeps her captive, can't possess.  And whether cloistral is emotional or vaginal in this sense, it works to maintain the metaphor.