My Years With Proust - Day 645

   The night went by.  In the morning I gave the telegram back to the hotel porter explaining that it had been brought to me by mistake and that it was not addressed to me.  He told me that now it had been opened he might get into trouble, that it would be better if I kept it; I put it back in my pocket, but made up my mind to behave as though I had never received it.  I had finally ceased to love Albertine.  So that this love, after departing so greatly from what I had anticipated on the basis of my love for Gilberte, after obliging me to make so long and painful a detour, had ended too, after having proved an exception to it, by succumbing, like my love for Gilberte, to the general law of oblivion.

   But then I thought to myself: I used to value Albertine more than myself; I no longer value her now because for a certain time past I have ceased to see her. My desire not to be parted from myself by death, to rise again after my death - that desire was not like the desire never to be parted from Albertine; it still persisted.  Was this due to the face that I valued myself more highly than her, that when I loved her I loved myself more?  No, it was because, having ceased to see her, I had ceased to love her, whereas I had not ceased to love myself because my everyday links with myself had not been severed like those with Albertine. But if my links with my body, with myself, were severed also  . .? Obviously, it would be the same.  Our love of life is only an old liaison of which we do not know how to rid ourselves.  Its strength lies in its permanence. But death which severs it will cure us of the desire for immortality.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 659-660

When I'm winding up my first year students in Concepts of the Self, I will often propose that every painting is actually a self-portrait, and that every right-thinking individual knows this to be true (it's probably only second to "that wall is not actually blue, but rather a societally negotiated concept" in the category of Scudder Is Actively Fucking With His First Year Students in regards to making their little brains hurt). We tell ourselves that true love is selfless, and you know that you have found The One when you think of her before you think of yourself.  I think that happens naturally when you have children, but I suspect it is far less common in our relationships than we would like to admit.  This is why we naturally assume that Rick will actually leave Victor Laszlo behind in Casablanca and get on the plane with Ilsa, but also find it affirming and aspirational that he doesn't (someone obviously saw the 75th anniversary re-release of Casablanca last night). It services both sides of the cognitive dissonance. Marcel realizes all this as his love for Albertine begins to fade with his death, but his love of self, because he is still with himself every day, continues unabated.  However, according to Proust, even this has an end: "No, it was because, having ceased to see her, I had ceased to love her, whereas I had not ceased to love myself because my everyday links with myself had not been severed like those with Albertine. But if my links with my body, with myself, were severed also  . .? Obviously, it would be the same.  Our love of life is only an old liaison of which we do not know how to rid ourselves.  Its strength lies in its permanence. But death which severs it will cure us of the desire for immortality."