What came to my rescue against this image of the laundry-girl - certainly when it had lasted for some time - was that image itself, because we only truly know what is new, what suddenly introduces into our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, what habit has not yet replaced with its colourless facsimiles. But it was above all that fragmentation of Albertine into many parts, into many Albertines, that was her sole mode of existence to me. Moments recurred in which she had simply been kind, or intelligent, or serious, or even primarily addicted to sport. And was it not right, after all, that this fragmentation should soothe me? For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room, the Albertine who on the night when I had told her that we must part had said so sadly: "This pianola, this room, to think that I shall never see any of these things again" and, when the she saw the distress which I had finally communicated to myself by my lie, had exclaimed with sincere pity: "Oh, no, anything rather than make you unhappy, I promise that I shall never try to see you again."
Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 540
One of the best discussions we've had all semester in my COR 110 (Concepts of the Self) classes centered around Proust's idea of the different fragments that make up a personality, and which we weave into our perception of that person; truthfully, is there anything that first year students love more than reading and discussing Proust (he asked, knowingly). Proust revisits the idea once again as he reflects upon his failed relationship with Albertine and her death. He writes: "But it was above all that fragmentation of Albertine into many parts, into many Albertines, that was her sole mode of existence to me. Moments recurred in which she had simply been kind, or intelligent, or serious, or even primarily addicted to sport." We all like to grouse about our lovers - or ex-lovers (and it's difficult to say whether we do it more during or after the relationship) - but in the process of doing so our we radically over-simplifying them into a single, easily understandable, easily quantifiable, concept, as compared to the complex amalgam they actually are. Proust continues, "For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room . . ." What jumps out at me is his suggestion that "none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value." I want to believe this, although is this too forgiving, too relativistic? I (the totality of my being) did not have an affair with her (the totality of her being) but instead a more animalistic, morally bankrupt part of my self had an affair with a more animalistic, morally bankrupt part of her self. We certainly concsciously compartmentalize our actions, but do we do it unconsciously as well?
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