From Gilberte to Albertine…

From Gilberte to Albertine… 👩🏻‍🦰👩🏻

Marcel is in a state of utter despair because, having ‘broken off’ his friendship with Gilberte (from whom he had hoped to win love), he has just spotted her walking down the Champs-Élysées with another boy. 💔

🖋️ “There was a row at home because I didn’t accompany my father to an official dinner where the Bontemps family were due to be present, along with their niece Albertine, a young girl who was still almost a child. The different periods of our lives overlap like this. We disdainfully refuse, for the sake of what we love—and which will one day be just as dear to you—to see what is just as dear to you today, what we shall love tomorrow, and what we might perhaps have, had we consented to see it, love sooner, and which would thus have shortened your present sufferings, only to replace them, it is true, with others.”

— Marcel Proust,
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, 1919 🌺
“Part One: Around Madame Swann”
Pléiade 1954 (ed. Clarac and Ferré), pp. 626–627

The second part, which begins 15 pages later, opens with a “two years later” that allows the “little girl” to have grown into a teenager. 👧🏻👩🏻

Two points of interest in this extract:
1️⃣ The different stages of life ‘overlap’, yet we know what will become of Albertine at the start of “The Fugitive”. 🐴
2️⃣ the pronominal reflexive, which allows Proust to write “LE voir” rather than “la voir” when referring to Albertine. Yet we know that Albertine’s main model… was called Alfred. 👩🏻👨🏻

#MarcelProust #AlbertineSimonet #proustagram #MaudeFealy