As one does on the eve of a premature death, I drew up a mental list of the pleasures of which I was deprived by the fact that Albertine had put a full stop to my freedom. At Passy it was in the middle of the street itself, so crowded were the footways, that a pair of girls, their arms encircling one another's waists, enthralled me with their smiles. I had not time to distinguish them clearly, but it is unlikely that I was overrating their charms; in any crowd, after all, in any crowd of young people, it is not unusual to come upon the effigy of a noble profile. So that these assembled masses on public holidays are so precious to the voluptuary as is to the archaeologists the disordered jumble of a site whose excavation will bring ancient medals to light. We arrived at the Bois. I reflected that, if Albertine had not come out with me, I might at this moment, in the enclosure of the Champs-Elysees, have been hearing the Wagnerian storm set all the rigging of the orchestra ascream, draw into its frenzy, like a light spindrift, the tune of the shepherd's pipe which I had just been playing to myself, set if flying, mould it, distort it, divide it, sweep it away in an ever-increasing whirlwind. I was determined, at any rate, that our drive should be short and that we should return home early, for, without having mentioned it to Albertine, I had decided to go that evening to the Verdurins'. They had recently sent me an invitation which I had flung into the waste paper basket with all the rest. But I had changed my mind as far as this evening was concerned, for I meant to try to find out who Albertine might have been hoping to meet there in the afternoon. To tell the truth, I had reached that stage in my relations with Albertine when, if everything remains the same, if things go on normally, a woman no longer serves any purpose for one except as a transitional stage before another woman. She still retains a corner of one's heart, but a very small corner; one is impatient to go out every evening in search of unknown women, especially unknown women who are known to her and can tell one about her life. Herself, after all, we have possessed, and exhausted everything that she has consented to yield to us of herself. Her life is still herself, but precisely that part of her which we do not know, the things about which we have questioned her in vain and which we shall be able to gather from fresh lips.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 165-166
Proust continues to ruminate on what his relationship with Albertine had cost him, now that she "had put a full stop to my freedom." He imagines that every woman he sees would be open to his advances if only Albertine were not in the way. One would think that the captive in The Captive was Marcel and not Albertine. A couple days ago we discussed Proust's realization that as he became the master he became the slave. Yes, on the one hand it was a case of self-pity, if not self-delusion, but it is true that as he shrank Albertine's world he in turn shrank his own. And, as we all know, when you do that you hating, or at least not loving, what you've created. Proust realizes, "To tell the truth, I had reached that stage in my relations with Albertine when, if everything remains the same, if things go on normally, a woman no longer serves any purpose for one except as a transitional stage before another woman." It's very easy, and obviously incorrect, to think back over your life and view all the people, especially the women you've loved, as chess pieces who have helped get you, geographically and intellectually and emotionally, to where you are now, and to who you're with now. Not only is that insensitive and disrespectful, but it also doesn't make much sense because life is not that simple. Still, you can be in such a dying relationship that it is hard to not think of it as nothing more than a transitional stage. It is an old chestnut that nothing makes a man more appealing to a woman than the fact that he is someone else's boyfriend/fiance/husband, and one wonders if this is what Marcel believes. Even if he doesn't believe that simply having a mistress in Albertine makes him more desirable to other women, he certainly views the relationship as expiring, which, of course, is also a self-fulfilling prophecy because he's going to devote even less time to it (although there's always time to be jealous and find ways to make Albertine miserable). In the end she's nothing more than something to be possessed, and the process of possessing her has in turn made her undesirable. As Proust tells us, coldly, although I suspect also honestly, "Herself, after all, we have possessed, and exhausted everything that she has consented to yield to us of herself."
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