Albertine Disparue by Marcel Proust

 Albertine Disparue by Marcel Proust

 

I was seventeen when I first started to read Marcel Proust. Back then, I was very interested in the multiple aspects of love that Proust reveals. Intrigued and baffled by the discovery that we love the unattainable, people who say no and the ones who love us. It may very well be that “Proust did change my life” as Alain de Botton has it. After my first encounter with Proust, I was shocked to find that Proust was homosexual. Not so much as a man raised in a kind of a discriminatory environment, which the communist regime was- even it rather not mentioned “deviations”, but more in a state of awe at the intricacies of love between a man and a woman that Proust unveiled. How could he know so much about what a man feels for a woman, when he loved men? Gradually, I started to get it: because he knew so much about many aspects of life: psychology, art, painting, politics, diplomacy, flowers, Venice, philosophy, Ruskin and many more… then there is Sodome and Gomorrhe, where we learn so much about the attraction for the same sex. Nowadays, I have a friend who keeps making guesses about who is gay, at the locker room and sauna and I remember Proust and say to him: since we’re not gay, we do not really know, Proust says that “they „know each other on the spot, they have a way to identify members of the same club…we are left to wonder when we see an obvious, specific walk, but that is rare- I for one don’t know if I’ve seen it twice, except for movies or news reports from gay prides.

 

When reading Albertine Disparue I recalled what Proust’s brother has said about reading A La Recherche: “one has to have his leg broken, to find the time to read it”… I love Proust who is my very favorite writer, but his obsession with Albertine, her infidelities, her escapades with women and men, which happened or maybe not, but then we find proofs, which may turn out to be false, end up with me losing track and sometimes even interest for short spells.

Proust’s style is so beautiful that interest is shortly back and even if I tend to wonder for short spells why the hell do I read about the “blanchisseuse”, there is a psychological insight which moves the “intrigue”, from the lamentations of a cheated lover, to a general, interesting point of view where we can watch ourselves in a mirror, understand how our mind works, our habits, shortcomings.

Bloch turns out to be inspired by a real life friend, who ignored an article written by Proust, only to demand a point of view on his own work later.

 

One of the major themes of Albertine Disparue is high society, snobs. I was fascinated, as I see myself as a kind of a snob, even if not descending from any grand family; I tend to look down on forestières, rude guys, uneducated, like I was the Prince of Persia.

Proust does influence the way I think, even in some unexpected details: I know a man who talks with everybody and anybody, without any consideration for education, occupation-at the gym, that means body builders, pensioners, old women, escaped convicts, you name it.

There is in Albertine Disparue a passage on nobility, which made me think of Eddy, who used to be a kind of a potentate, a man for all seasons- Proust talks about the high nobility, which, by receiving, inviting all the “roturiers” end by diluting their importance until they end up with no “salon” at all, at least in the sense of a salon worth going to…

 

I like the nobility la duchesse, le baron Charlus, even his brother, la duchesse de Parme, madame de Villeparisis- and I was sad to find her in Albertine Disparue with a lèpre rouge, in a restaurant in Venice.

As I write this, with the TV on, but silent in the background, I notice on the “headline news „that yet another gipsy princess got married and I get upset, not because of any racism I presume, even if I learned from psychology books that I‘ve been reading that we are biased and even racist in many of our spontaneous answers, even if consciously we are not prejudiced. It is a longing for the “real „nobility of Proust, with all their idiosyncrasies, they knew about art, they had grace and style. The RRoma queens and kings don’t know how to talk properly, have tacky palaces and dubious, to say the least, fortunes.

 

Ending in a positive note: I thought of an iPad or android application, which, after you introduce a number of your favorite literary authors, gives birth to a new work, in a style which takes all of your favorites into account and creates the ultimate masterpiece…or maybe not J