My Years With Proust - Day 545

True, in order to possess, one must first have desired.  We do not possess a line, a surface, a mass unless it is occupied by our love. But Albertine had not been for me during our drive, as Rachel had once been, a meaningless dust of flesh and clothing.  At Balbec, the imagination of my eyes, my lips, my hands had so solidly constructed, so tenderly polished her body that now, in this car, in order to touch that body, to contain it, I had no need to press my own body against Albertine, nor even to see her; it was enough for me to hear her, and, if she was silent, to know that she was by my side; my interwoven senses enveloped her completely and when, on our arrival at the house, she quite naturally alighted, I stopped for a moment to tell the chauffeur to call for me later, but my eyes enveloped her still as she passed ahead of me under the arch, and it was still the same, inert, domestic calm that I felt as I saw her thus, solid, flushed, opulent and captive, returning home quite naturally with me, like a woman who belonged to me, and, protected by its walls, disappearing into our house.  Unfortunately, she seemed to feel herself in prison there, and - judging by her mournful, weary look that evening as we dined together in her room - to share the opinion of that Mme de La Rochefoucauld who, when asked whether she was not glad to live in so beautiful a house as Liancourt, replied: "There is no such thing as a beautiful prison." I did not notice it at first; and it was I who bemoaned the thought that, had it not been for Albertine (for with her I should have suffered too acutely from jealousy in an hotel where all day long she would have been exposed to contact with many people), I might at that moment be dining in Venice in one of those little low-ceilinged restaurants like a ship's saloon, from which one looks out on the Grand Canal through little curved windows encircled with Moorish mouldings.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 173-174

"There is no such thing as a beautiful prison." Proust quotes this line as he lays out a poignant scene which expresses so much of the mood of The Captive.  Marcel, inexplicably notes his surprise at Albertine's response: "Unfortunately, she seemed to feel herself in prison there, and - judging by her mournful, weary look that evening as we dined together in her room . . ." 

However, the line that summed it up best for me is the following: "she quite naturally alighted, I stopped for a moment to tell the chauffeur to call for me later, but my eyes enveloped her still as she passed ahead of me under the arch, and it was still the same, inert, domestic calm that I felt as I saw her thus, solid, flushed, opulent and captive, returning home quite naturally with me, like a woman who belonged to me, and, protected by its walls, disappearing into our house." Of all the very Proustian descriptors the one that jumped up most appropriately for me was "inert."  By that point Albertine was beyond reactive or docile or domestic; she had passed on to inert.  What strikes me how she was already imprisoned, already inert, long before this moment.  Proust, like all of us to be fair, remembers that time early in the relationship when he could not keep his hands off Albertine: "At Balbec, the imagination of my eyes, my lips, my hands had so solidly constructed, so tenderly polished her body that now, in this car, in order to touch that body, to contain it, I had no need to press my own body against Albertine, nor even to see her . . " But now he feels no need to tenderly polish her body.  It's enough that she will dutifully enter her jail cell.  From the moment he could easily keep his hands off Albertine she had begun to grow inert. Sadly, all of us understand that chemistry lesson.