Would it not have been different if I had been able to detain for a few moments at close quarters one of those whom from the height of my window I saw only inside their shops or in motion? To estimate that loss that I suffered by my seclusion, that is to say of the riches that the day had to offer me, I should have had to intercept in the long unwinding of the animated frieze some damsel carrying her laundry or her milk, transfer her for a moment, like the silhouette of a mobile piece of decor between the uprights of a stage flat, in the proscenium arch of my bedroom door, and keep her there before my eyes for long enough to elicit some information about her which would enable me to find her again some day, like the identification discs which ornithologists or ichthyologists attach before setting them free to the legs or bellies of the birds or fishes whose migrations they are anxious to trace.
And so I told Francoise that I wanted some shopping done, and asked her to send up to me, should any of them call, one or other of the girls who were constantly coming to the house with laundry or bread or jugs of milk, and whom she herself used often to send on errands. In doing so I was like Elstir, who, obliged to remain closeted in his studio, on certain days in spring when the knowledge that the woods were full of violets gave him a hunger to see some, used to send his consierge out to by him a bunch; and then it was not the table upon which he had posed the little floral model, but the whole carpet of undergrowth where in other years he had seen, in their thousands, the serpentine stems bowed beneath the weight of their tiny blue heads, that Elstir would fancy that he had before his eyes, like an imaginary zone defined in his studio by the limpid odour of the sweet, evocative flower.
Of a laundry girl, on a Sunday, there was not the slightest prospect. As for the baker's girl, as ill luck would have it she had rung the bell when Francoise was not about, had left her loaves in their baskets on the landing, and made off. The greengrocer's girl would not call until much later. . .
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 134-135
I know I've made this point repeatedly - and I also know that it's a "duh" fact, but I don't think you can begin to understand Remembrance of Things Past without constantly reminding yourself about Proust's own declining health and concomitant shrinking physical and social world. As his world closed in around him he became more desperate for human contact, and his efforts to acquire it became more clumsy and in ways authoritarian. One might argue that his efforts to keep Albertine "captive" is one example, and another would his request that Francoise "send up to me, should any of them call, one or other of the girls who were constantly coming to the house with laundry or bread or jugs of milk, and whom she herself used often to send on errands" He compares himself to the painter Elstir who would have flowers sent to his studio when he was trapped inside working. I don't know if Marcel was actually turning Francoise into one of the procuresses that he railed against a few passages ago, but he is putting her in a potentially uncomfortable situation (although she is always unfailingly loyal to him and probably wouldn't see it that way). So, does Marcel simply want someone to fuck? Maybe, although I think it's much more subtle than that. Not surprisingly, this passage reminds me of the Neil Young song A Man Needs a Maid, which I've always thought was a very misunderstood song. People have accused it of being a sexist song, but simply because it was written in a more sexist age (were there actually more sexist ages than Trump's America?) doesn't automatically make it a sexist song. Rather, I think it's written from the perspective of a man so devastated by a disastrous love affair that he can't imagine a relationship with another woman, but the lack of human contact with a woman is killing him. What he needs is a relationship he can control so that he can minimize the pain, even if it's "just someone to keep my house clean, fix my meals and go away." By definition this woman would also serve as the bridge and barrier to the outside world. Is this one way to think about Marcel's relationship with Albertine? I'm not trying to whitewash Marcel's actions because often they're questionable if not deplorable, but I'm trying to dig deeper and figure out what inspired them. He had his heartbroken, but who hasn't? That said, it's also true that he had an increasingly tentative grasp on life and freedom, which I think made him more driven to control his bridge/barrier to the outside world. In this passage I think the key is his use of the term proscenium, as in "the proscenium arch of my bedroom door." The proscenium is the arch above a stage, which separates, but also connects, the stage and the audience; it is the liminal space between two worlds. Proust writes that Marcel wanted to find "some damsel carrying her laundry or her milk, transfer her for a moment, like the silhouette of a mobile piece of decor between the uprights of a stage flat, in the proscenium arch of my bedroom door, and keep her there before my eyes . . " He says he wants to keep her there to gather information about her so that he might find her again someday, but I think it's bigger than that. Authors, and especially Proust obviously, are seldom careless in their choice of words, and Proust could have chosen any word, but he chose the word proscenium, and it's value as a metaphor - especially tied to the door itself as a liminal space, with a door that can be opened or closed, between two worlds - speaks to another attempt to regain control of a life slipping away.
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| One time my ex-wife and I, only half-joking, decided that she loved me because whereas she was afraid of the world, the world was in turn afraid of me. Following Proust's logic, I was the proscenium. |
"When will I see you again?"
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