On a whim last year, I decided to (reread) “In Search of Lost Time”; slowly making my way through to the end, which is actually the beginning as Marcel, the protagonist, while waiting to enter a society party experiences the flash of memory that will inspire him to begin his novel. Throughout the seven volumes, I experienced again the beauty and density of the language, the suffering associated with love, the “depravity” beneath the surface - sublime art and literature wrestling with the banality of our social relations and pretensions of “society”.
Marcel’s love, Albertine has moved into his apartment in Paris - no longer an obsession as she is there at his beck and call. Still, there is a profound love mingled with his insecurity and intense jealousy - pain that he cannot fully understand or let go of. There is a beautiful set of passages describing one evening where he gently undresses her and admires her body as she rests in bed - the soft light of the evening coloring the erotic lines of her body and her luminescent skin. All of his fears come alive in his jealousy - her life outside of his control, her physical attractions to women, her imagined assignations and lies - the still mysterious nature of her life and desires.
So why read Proust in the Afternoon? Something more than “bedtime reading” - a work beyond simple leisure; an opening of doors to love and passion, to art and literature. A path to actually seeing the beauty of the sunlight dappling through the trees in the forest, or the shimmering light on the surface of the water; the candlelight flickering across the skin of our beloved.
A frail asthmatic, confined to a bed in his cork lined apartment in Paris, opening up the world for us, illuminating it for us - both its dazzling beauty and its suffering beyond words.