Having re-read Revel’s book “Sur Proust”, I came across this passage, which strikes me as very apt, concerning…

Having re-read Revel’s book “Sur Proust”, I came across this passage, which strikes me as very apt, concerning the love between the narrator and Albertine:

🖋️ “The abrupt shift from the first desire to the second occurs in the famous scene of the train journey 🚂 with Albertine, at the end of “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

At first, Albertine pesters and annoys the narrator; her presence far exceeds his need for her; then, after that fateful remark about Mlle Vinteuil 🎼, no one else’s presence will ever be enough to satisfy the passion that has just erupted. For in fact, in “The Prisoner”, there is no suggestion whatsoever that Albertine does not love the narrator.

The life they are able to lead would be the envy of many lovers ❤️‍🔥. Are Albertine’s infidelities – however sporadic – when set against the total devotion she gives of her life, the true cause of the narrator’s suffering? The sense of inevitability that hangs over “The Prisoner” from the very beginning is more fundamental. The failure of passion is inescapable 💔; it is inherent in its nature, and the Search for, and discovery of, her infidelities is rather like a kind of external confirmation: one might say of them, as has been said of God, and with just as much reason to believe in their success, that if they did not exist, one would have to invent them.

It is not the discovery of infidelity that causes passion to fail, but the feeling that happiness within passion is impossible that drives one to seek evidence of infidelity – and, indeed, makes infidelity itself inevitable, for, when it comes to passion, what is not infidelity? The object of our passionate love becomes, by that very fact, unfaithful, always one step behind our madness.” 🙃

— Jean-François Revel,
On Proust, 1960,
Les Cahiers rouges @editionsgrasset pp. 135–136

#MarcelProust #JeanFrançoisRevel #proustagram #SurProust #RTP #LaPrisonnière #AlbertineSimonet #Proust