I saw a lot of Andree at this time. We did not know what to say to each other, and once there came into my mind that name, Juliette, which had risen from the depths of Albertine's memory like a mysterious flower. Mysterious then, but now it no longer stirred any feeling in me: many subjects that were indifferent to me I discussed but on this subject I was silent; not that it meant less to me than others, but a sort of supersaturation takes places when one has thought about a thing too much. Perhaps the epoch in my life when I saw so many mysteries in that name was the true one. But as these epochs will not last for ever, it is a mistake for a man to sacrifice his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries which one day will no longer interest him.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 752-753
"Perhaps the epoch in my life when I saw so many mysteries in that name was the true one. But as these epochs will not last for ever, it is a mistake for a man to sacrifice his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries which one day will no longer interest him." We've talked a lot about what makes The One The One, at least in regards to what made Albertine so central to Marcel's life. And, as I've proposed repeatedly, I wish we knew more about her, and not simply recounts of her adventures told by intermediaries after her death. When I read this line all I can think about is whether Proust is having doubts about having devoted so much of "his health and his fortune to the elucidation of mysteries," not simply of Albertine (or her equivalent in Proust's own life) but the entirety of Remembrance of Things Past itself. Was that the mystery that dominated his life, his own desire to recapture the past. Or, more likely, at least to me, was the novel the one thing that he didn't regret pursuing?
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