My Years With Proust - Day 592

   The present calamity was the worst that I had experienced in my life.  And yet the suffering that it caused me was perhaps even exceeded by my curiosity to learn the causes of this calamity: who Albertine had desired and gone to join.  But the sources of great events are like those of rivers; in vain do we explore the earth's surface, we can never find them.  Had Albertine been planning her flight for a long time past? I have not mentioned the fact (because at the time it had seemed to me simply affectation and ill-humour, what in the case of Francoise we called a "a fit of the sulks") that, from the day when she had ceased to kiss me, she had gone about as though tormented by a devil, stiffly erect, unbending, saying the simplest things in a mournful voice, slow in her movements, never smiling.  I cannot say that there was any concrete proof of conspiracy with the outer world.  True, Francoice told me later that, having gone into Albertine's room two days before he departure, she had found it empty, with the curtains drawn, but had sensed from the atmosphere of the room and from the noise that the window was open.  And indeed she had found Albertine on the balcony.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp.433-434

"But the sources of great events are like those of rivers; in vain do we explore the earth's surface, we can never find them."  Like every one of us standing the wreckage of a failed relationship, Marcel is trying to find simple answers.  We've all asked these questions: "Is she younger than me?" "Do I know him?" "Does he work with you?" "Have I ever met her?"  In the end we're asking the wrong questions.  The affair with the mysterious other is almost always a symptom, not a cause.  The answers are internal to ourselves and to the relationship, so, of course, we need find "the sources of great events" by looking far afield.

Proust's imagery in the section is classic: "True, Francoice told me later that, having gone into Albertine's room two days before he departure, she had found it empty, with the curtains drawn, but had sensed from the atmosphere of the room and from the noise that the window was open.  And indeed she had found Albertine on the balcony." Windows and doors are classic metaphors for change and transition, both in literature and art but also in dreams.  It could well have been that Albertine was sitting on balcony speaking to a lover and planning her escape, or merely dreaming of escape, but it is also symbolic of her character's liminal space.

Botticelli's portrait of Guiliano de Medici.

Here's a painting I often show my students.  It's Botticelli's portrait of Guiliano de Medici (who is also in Botticelli's much more famous Adoration of the Magi).  Guiliano's wife had recently passed, and that loss, as well as his own sorrow, are commemorated in the painting by the open door and the dove, and the fact that his head is facing backwards (and thus towards the past).  Now, in the case of Marcel, Albertine is not dead, at least not yet (spoiler alert), but he's still looking into the past for the answers.  Even if we can't intellectually rally to consider the future, maybe we, including Marcel, would be better served by thinking about present and the status of your relationship to the other person.  However, to be fair, at that moment the past, at least in regards to your reality as a couple, is all you possess.