My Years With Proust - Day 619

   At last I saw before my eyes, in that arrival of Albertine at the baths along the narrow lane with the lady in grey, a fragment of that past which seemed to me no less mysterious, no less horrifying than I had feared when I imagined it enclosed in the memory, in the look in the eyes of Albertine.  No doubt anyone but myself might have dismissed as insignificant these details on which, now that Albertine was dead, my inability to secure a a denial of them from her conferred the equivalent of a sort of probability.  It is indeed probable that for Albertine, even if they had been true, even if she had admitted them, her own misdeeds (whether her conscience had thought them innocent or reprehensible, whether her sensuality had found them exquisite or somewhat insipid) would not have been accompanied by that inexpressible sense of horror from which I was unable to detach them.  I myself, with the help of my own love of women, and although they could not have meant the same thing to Albertine, could more or less imagine what she felt.  And indeed there was already an initial pain in my picturing her to myself desiring as I had so often desired, lying to me as I had so often lied to her, preoccupied with this or that girl, putting herself out for her, as I had done for Mlle de Stermaria and so many others, for the peasant girls I met on country roads.  Yes, all my own desires helped me to a certain extent to understand hers; it was by this time an immense anguish in which all desires were transformed into torments that were all the more cruel the more intense they had been; as though in this algebra of sensibility they reappeared with the same coefficient but with a minus instead of a plus sign.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 527

Marcel continues to consider the implications of the revelations from Aime's letter that confirmed his worst fears about Albertine's sexual proclivities, "a fragment of that past which seemed to me no less mysterious, no less horrifying than I had feared . . "  That said, Marcel tries to understand what drove Albertine's desires, and has to admit, "I myself, with the help of my own love of women, and although they could not have meant the same thing to Albertine, could more or less imagine what she felt."  It is fascinating, but also frustrating to a modern reader, that Marcel feels compelled to suggest that the women "could not have meant the same thing to Albertine."  He clearly understands the similarities: "And indeed there was already an initial pain in my picturing her to myself desiring as I had so often desired, lying to me as I had so often lied to her, preoccupied with this or that girl, putting herself out for her, as I had done for Mlle de Stermaria and so many others, for the peasant girls I met on country roads."  It's impossible to read this passage and not reflect back on his comments about "inverts" during his discussion of the Baron's homosexual love affairs, and all of this is difficult to reconcile with Proust's own homosexuality.  At the same time, we can't celebrate Remembrance of Things Past for it's modern feel without also recognizing that one of the reasons why it seems so startling modern is the limited cultural age in which he wrote.