"I had now only one hope left for the future -- a hope far more poignant than any fear -- and that was that I might forget Albertine."

Moncrieff:  644-656; Clark:  445-553

by Dennis Abrams

“For the death of Albertine to have been able to eliminate my suffering, the shock of the fall would have had to kill her not only in Touraine but in myself.  There, she had never been more alive.”  “In order to be consoled I would have to forget, not one, but innumerable Albertines.  When I had succeeded in bearing the grief of losing this Albertine, I must begin again with another, with a hundred others.”  Marcel’s life is altered.  Summer is at hand; memories of times with Albertine, moments from the past are recalled by identical moments in the present.  Evening is something to be avoided: “The cool evening air was rising; it was sunset; in my memory, at the end of a road which we had taken, she and I, on our way home, I saw it now, beyond the furthest village, like some distant place, inaccessible that evening, which we would spend at Balbec, together.  Together then; now I must stop short on the brink of that same abyss:  she was dead.  It was not enough to draw the curtains…”  Francoise does not even pretend to grieve Albertine’s death, “Her attitude towards Albertine was perhaps akin to her attitude towards Eulalie, and, now that my mistress could no longer derive any profit from me, Francoise had ceased to hate her,” but worries about Marcel’s tears.  Complete darkness reminds Marcel of times in the carriage, after dinner, in the woods of Chantepie.  Hope for and fear of forgetfulness.  Sounds from the street.  With the dawn new pain over Albertine “cold, implacable, and compact, glinted like a dagger thrust into my heart.”  Marcel no longer wants to go to Venice, “Albertine had seemed to me an obstacle interposed between me and all other things, because she was for me their container, and it was from her alone, as from a vase that I would receive them.  Now that this vase was shattered, I no longer felt that I had the courage to grasp things, and there was not one of them from which I did not turn away, despondent, preferring not to taste it.”  Marcel fears the return of winter, because with it will come memories of the beginning of desire for and anxiety over Albertine.  “Linked as it was to each of the seasons, in order for me to discard the memory of Albertine I should have had to forget them all…I should have had to renounce the entire universe.”  “…to the memory even of hours that were purely natural would inevitably be added the psychological background that makes each of them a thing apart…later on, I should hear the goatherd’s horn,on a first fine almost Italian morning, that same day would blend alternately with its sunshine the anxiety of knowing that Albertine was at the Trocadero, possibly with Lea…”  Francoise bring Albertine home from the Trocadero, changing emotions and meaning.  “But much later, when I went back gradually, in reverse order, over the times through which I had passed before I had come to love Albertine so much, when my healed heart could detach itself without suffering from Albertine dead, then I was able to recall at length without suffering that day on which Albertine had gone shopping with Francoise instead of remaining at the Trocadero; I recalled it with pleasure as belonging to an emotional season which I had not known until then; I recalled it at last exactly, no longer injecting it with suffering, but rather, on the contrary, as we recall certain days in summer which we found too hot while they lasted, and from which only after they have passed do we extract their unalloyed essence of pure gold and indestructible azure.”

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An extraordinary section, as Marcel’s jealousy over Albertine transforms itself into a new pain, a new kind of suffering.  But Marcel’s suffering, like his pleasure, will pass.

The key passage from this section:

“I had now only one hope left for the future — a hope far more poignant than any fear — and that was that I might forget Albertine.  I knew that I should forget her one day; I had forgotten Gilberte and Mme de Guermantes; I had forgotten my grandmother.  And it is our most just and cruel punishment for that forgetfulness, as total and as tranquil as the oblivion of the graveyard, through which we have detached ourselves from those we no longer love, that we should recognise it to be inevitable in the case of those we love still.”

The loves I’ve forgotten, the pain and sorrow over them I’ve forgotten…

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Thursday’s Reading:

Moncrieff:  “So that these few years imposed upon my memory of Albertine…” through “…that profound peace I had dreamt of.”  Pages 656-668; Kindle locations 8502-9/8642-49

Clark:  “In this way these few years not only imposed upon the memory of Albertine…” through “…of that profound peace of which I had dreamed.”  Pages 453-461; Kindle locations 8254-60/8395-8402

Enjoy.