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The Captive / La prisonnière
275 Plays4 months ago
Having returned to Paris with the narrator, hosts Emma Claussen and Hannah Weaver enter the claustrophobic and surveilled world of the household he has set up with his object of obsession, Albertine. In concert with the narrator, we ask: What does it mean to love someone? How (or to what extent) can we know anybody? How could jealousy be the key to understanding time? Plus, we’ll answer the question, “What gift of nature would you like to have?” Join us as we search for lost time and remember things Proust.
Resources:
In Search of Lost Time (trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Mayor; rev. Enright)
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Victoria Baena, “In Search of Albertine”
For a transcript, visit our corner of Public Books, an online magazine of arts, ideas, and scholarship.
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Transcript
Introduction to Proust Curious Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Proust Curious, a podcast in partnership with Public Books. I'm Hannah Weaver, an assistant professor of medieval literature at Columbia University and fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. And I'm Emma Clausen, an early modernist at Trinity College, Cambridge.
00:00:20
Speaker
Proust Curious is a podcast about the experience of reading à la Richerche du temps perdu, all seven volumes. Written between 1906 and 1922, published between 1913 and 1927, Marcel Proust's cultural touchstone is an object of enduring fascination and, let's face it, intimidation. We're not Proust experts, but we do study literature for a living, so we feel both under and overqualified to tackle this. Join us as we search for lost time.
00:00:49
Speaker
and remember things first.
Theme of Obsession in 'The Captive'
00:01:08
Speaker
Today we're talking about the fifth volume of a la rucherche. La prisonieur, whose English title is The Captive. The titular captive is mostly, but not exclusively, the narrator's love interest slash girlfriend slash something. albertin The narrator has prevailed upon her to live with him in Paris, keeping this a secret from most of his acquaintances and referring to her as his prisoner.
00:01:30
Speaker
Other than popping to his neighbour Madame Biermont to acquire the best fashions for his captive, and a visit to the Vergierin, the narrator mostly stays at home in a state of languor. He obsessively analyses his feelings about Albertine and tries both to keep her with him and away from her lovers, and to know all the details of her life. Of course, this knowledge continually eludes him, and at the end of the volume, she packs her bags and leaves without saying goodbye.
00:01:57
Speaker
But more simply, a man tries to trap a woman in his home and wonders whether that's love.
Discussion on Desired Natural Talents
00:02:03
Speaker
ah Indeed. Before we talk in more detail about the volume, it's time for the part of our podcast where we ask a question from the famous Proust questionnaire, answered by Proust twice at ages 13 and 20, and used as an interview device by Vanity Fair. We'll put a link to the questionnaire in the show notes. So what is today's question, Hannah?
00:02:24
Speaker
It's more of a prompt, really, um but this time it is, le dans de la nature que je votre avoir, which is to say, the gift of nature or maybe natural talent that I would like to have. And Proust answered, very apropos for our volume today, la volante et des seduction, willpower and seduction.
00:02:49
Speaker
What about you, Emma? Is it willpower and seduction for you? Well, who doesn't want to have those gifts? Although I slightly wonder whether they're not learned behaviours, right? I mean, maybe that's also a natural gift. I'm not going to not going to nitpick. I think that the gift that I would most like to have is a bit more boring, actually, and it is the gift of being able to fall asleep easily, which is also very relevant Ah, that is. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. And especially on airplanes. That would be really great. My mother, it's like the white noise of the airplane puts her instantly to sleep. She's usually asleep before the wheels go up. It's wild. That's awesome. Good for her. yes She has the gift that I desire. What about you, Hannah? What gift would you like to have?
00:03:32
Speaker
I wish and this is also very, a I guess, is there a possible gift of nature that's not a purple? I'm starting to wonder. um Mine is memory. I wish I had a better memory. Oh, really? Yeah, I feel like my memory is deeply mediocre. And if only I could remember things better, I would be a better scholar, friend and person.
00:03:58
Speaker
So I wish I had a better memory. I suppose I could attempt to train it or something. Yeah. The memory arts. Yeah. I don't know that I don't see myself building a memory palace. Alas.
Unique Style of Unrevised Volume
00:04:14
Speaker
Let's talk about the book at hand. How did you find volume five? What did you notice this time? I anticipated that I'd be less into this one, partly because of conversations that I had beforehand with people who'd read it, because I've not read it, and they were like, oh, it's kind of boring. He's just obsessing about Albertine, the earlier volumes where he's ah younger and much more fun. So I was like expecting this to be hard work.
00:04:38
Speaker
But I'm actually a huge fan. I found this, perhaps worryingly, and really and really fun to read. What did I notice? I noticed the kind of slight slight shift in style, perhaps, because you reminded us last time that this is the first of the volumes that Proust didn't live to revise. right So the style feels a little different to me, a bit more aphoristic, you know, sometimes with greater and lesser success, sometimes it overlaps into cliche, actually. And then also it's quite a signalled, like, move to more reflective and internal style. So we spend pages and pages and pages more than previously, I think, just with his thoughts, yeah just thoughts.
00:05:23
Speaker
And that is because he is staying at home for most of this for most of this volume. he's Yeah, he's just sort of languishing, not to bring up one of your keywords.
00:05:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. God, don't start talking to me about languishing. and For listeners, I've been working on the theme of languishing in Renaissance writing and especially Renaissance poetry for several years now, which actually I was thinking of a lot reading reading this volume as well. It's kind of mode of Petrarchan or sub-Petrarchan desire where you always need to be languishing after something inaccessible is very much present in this book. So yeah, five stars.
00:06:03
Speaker
It reminded me of this like hit novel from a few years ago that I think you've read as well called and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Atessa Mosvick.
Comparative Themes with Contemporary Works
00:06:13
Speaker
Because the narrator's like, yeah he he lies to Albertine that his doctor has prescribed his him bed rest.
00:06:22
Speaker
and you know there that that That's a book in which this young, like hot, rich woman in New York goes through some life things. I think like she should her parents die and leave her money, and so she kind of quits the rat race and enters a kind of narcotic trance.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yes. so Right. for For a certain amount of time. And, you know, narcotics are involved in and this volume two to a certain extent, like different kinds of sleeping remedies that the narrator tries out.
Isolation and Obsession
00:06:51
Speaker
So why is he staying at home? He's staying at home because he is too stressed to go out with Albertine because he's so hypervigilant about what she's doing, what she's thinking, who she's noticing. And then he says that even if one lives under the equivalent of a bell jar, associations of ideas, memories continue to act upon us.
00:07:09
Speaker
So that's the signal for what this volume is going to be like, which also, you know, you got that reference to the Belgian. I mean, in French it's cloche n'emartique, so it's not quite the same thing, but there's also a kind of literary reference there.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, there is something really hermetic about this volume. And I also like the citation you just gave us about being under a bell jar, because the idea that you are enclosed and yet it is glass and somewhat permeable seems to be really a posit to what's happening in this novel. And one of the things that comes in to him as he's lying in bed, which just seems to be what he's often doing, are sounds from the street.
00:07:47
Speaker
yeah And that was something that I really noticed and also really remembered. I had read this volume before, but only once and and quite long ago at this point. Gosh, nearly 20 years ago. But the one image that I really remembered was this image of the street vendors crying out and him hearing them from inside the room. So the premise of this scene, which is sort of a borderline a set piece, right? It's like it goes on over several pages and he developed several themes. But the premise is that the chance of the itinerant food merchants outside his window recall ecclesiastical or medieval France because they're vaguely liturgical. um And he also he he compares them to the drone of the priest in a pulpit and compares them to plain chant.
00:08:33
Speaker
He also says that their tone seems to enclose some sort of mystery, like the mystery at the heart of the medieval story of Melisande, as it was rendered in opera by Debussy, who in turn was adapting a play by the Belgian playwright Mater Link. So it's very out of remove from the Middle East. Nevertheless, it is a medieval story. So it's the sort of interesting medieval romance slash liturgy that's happening not in a sort of high drama way, but rather just because of the manner in which street vendors are attempting to sell their wares. So I pulled a quote for you, Emma. The old clothes man in toned, old clothes, any old clothes, bold,
00:09:17
Speaker
Clothes. yeah That's me attempting to render a an ellipsis in the text with the same pause between the final syllables as if he had been intoning in plain chant, per omnia cyclula cyclulorum. And I actually was listening to recordings of plain chant to make sure I understood what he was talking about. It's not really a pause of no sound. It's just sort of an extension of the previous sound and sort of um holding the note as it were. Oh my gosh, it's so good. It's so good. It's going back to some of what we've talked about in previous episodes and in our library chat, which is a video you can find on YouTube listeners of this comparison of his daily life to forms of art from the distant past.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that I also want to say about this, which yeah I also loved this um street vendor scene, it's just beautiful and really fun, is that although this is a volume about kind of about misery really, about unhappy love,
00:10:24
Speaker
there are all these quite joyous and fun and funny scenes
Joy Amidst Unhappy Love
00:10:28
Speaker
in it. So when he's listening to these street vendors, he's really enjoying it. He's enjoying it because Aldautin enjoys it. He's enjoying being able to do this kind of thinking with the sound and music. When he first mentions listening to street sounds, he says, but it was above all in myself I heard with rapture a new sound emitted by the violin within. So that really Yeah, I know. That really says that he's having a great time at various points in this otherwise quite satinine text. Right, but that gets right back to that idea of the bell jar, that things are penetrating and affecting what is within the jar, even as the jar stays somehow closed. It's fascinating.
00:11:23
Speaker
Should we move on to discuss some of the sort of major themes or points of interest that we found in this volume? Absolutely. And the street vendor scene is actually a good jumping off point for the first one that we wanted to talk about, because effectively what's happening is he's in bed. It's kind of between sleep and waking. And I don't know if you ever have this, Hannah. I mean, I'm not sure you're one for a lie-in.
00:11:52
Speaker
ah
00:11:56
Speaker
Occasionally I am partial and sometimes I have the radio on and I'll like tune in and out of what they're saying on the radio and that's what he's doing in the street vendor scene. you know Sometimes he's like, oh damn, I missed this bit because I was asleep. yes right we're right yeah And in fact, sleep and the kind of interplay between sleep and waking, different kinds of sleep.
00:12:15
Speaker
is huge, huge in this year of rest and relaxation. for ah for maa but But it's not only his sleep, which is part of what is so interesting because I do feel like sleep is normally something that is deeply personal. And maybe you can reflect upon your own sleep and sleep practices, but it's hard to access the sleep of another, but not for him.
00:12:40
Speaker
ah Yeah, we should say that he's been kind of obsessively, intermittently, analysing his own sleep. yeah throughout all of the all of the volumes, including in the really well-known opening when he has to go to bed and it's very stressful for him because the narrator is not somebody who sleeps easily. But also in the in Sodom and Gomorrah, there's a huge set piece about sleep and memory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And a really nice scene in Donsieur, in Germont, at which point Bruce says,
00:13:10
Speaker
no life really can be written without sleep. So that's how major of a thing sleep is in al-Arshash-e-Tampé-Ardu. But sleep is particular, as you say, in Volume 5, because of all the scenes of Albertine asleep.
Possession and Control
00:13:24
Speaker
He explicitly says that sleeping albatin is his favourite albatin to spend time with.
00:13:30
Speaker
that as compared to Abedzin hanging out, he prefers it when she's sleeping. It's kind of similar to the reason he stays indoors. Abedzin awake is a source of stress for him, but Abedzin asleep is just sort of an artistic object of contemplation and can be removed into a different realm. He compares it repeatedly to a plant yeah Here's a quick citation. As though by falling asleep she had become a plant. And then he goes on to say, she was animated now only by the unconscious life of plants, of trees, a life more different from my own, more alien, and yet one that belonged more to me. So again, it's this idea that you can possess or control a plant in a way that you maybe can't an animal. And we know that he does love plants.
00:14:22
Speaker
We know that he loves opposites, right? Actually, weirdly, I had to make that connection between him like embracing Hawthorne Bushes back in Volume 1 and his desire, because it is quite sexual, right? This this contemplation of of sleeping abbots. Yeah, yeah. And listeners should know that it's quite disturbing in some ways, the way that he kind of manipulates her sleeping body. So he kind of he kind of um oscillates between finding her incredibly like physically compelling while she's asleep, but then also seeing her as this kind of degree zero of life.
00:14:57
Speaker
I guess. Yeah, that's right. He gets really obsessed with her breathing at one point saying that that contains the whole life of the charming captive. And I thought that was interesting when he said the whole life because at another point, you know, we'll get onto this later, but he gives all these like fleeting definitions of love and he says love is a desire for the whole. So in some ways it is where a kind of wholeness is temporarily achieved. Right, but that's also interesting because if love is the desire for the whole, then love is like an awareness of the, this is very platonic, but an awareness of the lack, right, of the whole. And here he is somehow having the whole, which maybe means that it is not in fact a scene of love, but a scene of possession, which we'll talk about the entanglement of love and possession and in this volume at length later on.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think this problem that you're evoking comes across in a complicated way in the ah the quotation about sleep that I wanted to to bring, because in this one, he's watching her breathe, which he loves, he loves to see her breathe. And so his jealousy have subsided, but somehow it's a kind of really ecstatic moment for him. So it's one of these times when he's not jealous, which normally is bishop always is what means that he's in love.
00:16:18
Speaker
And yet he's experiencing something else. i'll just I'll just read it. It's another, obviously, as you must be expecting, listeners, a weird one. My jealousy subsided, for I felt that Albertin had become a creature that breathes and is nothing else besides, as was indicated by the regular sarspiration in which is expressed that pure physiological function which, wholly fluid, has a solidity neither of speech nor of silence.
00:16:44
Speaker
and in its ignorance of all evil, drawn seemingly rather from a hollowed reed than from a human being. That breath, truly paradisiacal to me, who at such moments felt Albertine to be withdrawn from everything, not only physically but morally, was the pure song of the angels.
00:17:01
Speaker
yet So I could have stopped there, but I just wanted to have one more sentence to show that that's another really fleeting moment. And yet in that breathing, I thought to myself of a sudden that perhaps many names of people born on the stream of memory must be revolving. So he has this ecstatic moment where he's like, she almost doesn't exist. She's just the pure breathing song of angels. And then he's like, oh, but maybe there is actually something going on. So he can't Maybe she's dreaming of people, dreaming of his names that are almost coming out of her mouth. So his jealousy sort of revives in that last sentence. Yeah. So you were raised that there has to be a lack for there to be love in the Proustian and in many other visions of it.
Love vs. Possession
00:17:43
Speaker
And maybe the lack here is almost everything about her. Yeah, she's nothing except her breathing. A hollowed reed. Which is ah an insane thing to desire, and it does seem like he actively desires this, as Lu said, you want to desire an empty vessel. ah Yeah, and he says it elsewhere as well, like the pleasure of feeling her simply being alive.
00:18:08
Speaker
That's kind of the Albertine's bare life, the hollowed reed, which reminds me of like the definition, I think, of man of man in Pascal, which is a thinking reed, right? A thinking reed, goodness. You're telling me. yeah but i'm also But what it renders, Abbottson, I think somewhat incontrovertibly, but also very mysteriously, is replaceable. Because if all you need is a creature breathing, or if the creature breathing is what allows you that sense that you're touching the angels and allows you to let go of your jealousy, then it could be anyone, no? Yeah, so it's puzzling. but that's it But that's also the getting back to what we were talking about last episode about Abedzin being really kind of a cipher and so elusive that she doesn't seem to really have
00:18:59
Speaker
qualities or the qualities that she has don't quite hang together or form a sense of a coherent character or person. Yeah, he talks about that in relation to her face as well, that she's got all these different traits, all these these facial traits that that yeah kind of don't all fit together.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's like a kind of like abstract painting. Right, these layers of different sort of reliefs. That's an extended description that he goes into. It's sort of like her hair is on one plane while her cheek is on another. it's But it's yeah that's very it's a very odd way of thinking about a being in space. Yeah, this whole question of, is Albertin replaceable? like To what extent is the their relationship one that is founded on love. And if it is founded on love, what does Proust mean by love or how does he conceive of it? This is another thing that worried us. I think at various points we slightly disagreed, didn't we? I think we did. Yeah, we got into the of an argument in our document.
00:20:04
Speaker
Which is always fun. About whether or not he loves her, which is kind of absurd. Well, I think you're on team, he does love her, and I'm on team, he has no idea what's happening. No, I'm overstating it. But anyway, Emma, defend your case. I mean, look, I'm just going with what he says, that he keeps referring to his love for her. But he also explicitly says that he's not in love with her.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, okay. But that doesn't mean that he's not, he doesn't think that he's in love with her at times. and Oh, I agree with that. Okay. Also, I do think that the kind of the denial posture actually doesn't preclude love at all. I think that's part of it, right? Yeah. Part of loving is saying, actually, no, I can, I'd be fine without them. I don't love them at all. Oh, I'm so over them.
00:20:56
Speaker
you know right yeah yeah That's how it starts. when he I think one of the first times he introduces the question of whether or not he loves her slash asserts that he doesn't love her anymore is with this unbelievably layered negative sentence that in English is, it was not of course, as I was well aware, that I was the least bit in love with Albertine.
00:21:21
Speaker
But in French, it's... And I think the French with the subjunctive in the centre and the subjunctive is a grammatical mood that we also do have in English, but it's just less signal and less kind of... extensively codified, is a mood of like doubt and negation. And I think that that governing the sentence so explicitly actually undermines in some way the certainty that he is trying to express with c'est n'est pas serte de de la survey. Even serte actually can be a kind of admission of something not being certain. But it's often just a concessionary word.
00:22:02
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. So it looks like an affirmation, but it's not necessarily. So it just is so infused with doubt, this sentence. So it's not just that he doesn't know whether he loves her. He doesn't know whether he doesn't love her. Love and doubt are really twinned in this book.
Love as Pursuit of Knowledge
00:22:22
Speaker
It seems to be a big part of his, fault if we're going to say, philosophy of love. For him, a lot of that is reaching outside of love to other ideas like doubt, jealousy, possession, etc. I don't think love just exists as a solo object in this book. I agree with that.
00:22:44
Speaker
Also, that reminds me of something that one of my colleagues wrote in an article on the figure of Albertine, and what we're linked to in the show notes. is I think it's called In Search of Albertine by Victoria Baena, and she talks about how love for the narrator is a kind of epistemological drive. So it's all about like not knowing, not knowing about her life, not knowing how he feels, not knowing how yeah how she feels or what love is. Yeah, and that's really um thought-provoking, right? It provokes curiosity.
00:23:12
Speaker
So he's not sure he loves her. He swings all the time between wanting to break up and wanting to keep her. So there is this kind of endless alternation that at one point he refers to as amphibian love. Which is wonderful. And I wonder if that's the thing that he escapes when she's asleep.
00:23:32
Speaker
because then it's wholly fluid, the breath, but also has a solidity neither of speech nor of silence. So it's um sort of escaping this binary that when they're awake, he's absolutely trapped in.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah, i think and and also, just to get back to the other citations too, and even bringing in the hallowed reed, it also goes into that space of plants, right? Because plants, like they also are neither talking nor silent, really, because they rustle quite a bit. m And it takes him away from this animate place into a different sort of space. And I think he finds it a relief to be on land with her. And I think the plants that he evokes are all land plants. He doesn't talk about seaweed or anything like that. And so I think the the watery part is the stressful part. Yeah. Yeah. And at one point he says Albertine is basically like she contains the sea.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yes, right, that that behind her, like as though she's some sort of screen, you can perceive the sea of Balbec. In general, these aquatic moments throughout the Recherche have been just a totally delightful leitmotif that have been coming up, like the swimming figures at the opera back in volume two. Just in general, he often depicts society as an aquatic milieu, and he seems to find it a useful metaphor for interaction in a way. Yeah. And for kind of the half immersion yeah that you have as a reader where you're in where it's all about flow, but then there are these moments and increasingly in volume five where you get pulled out of it because there are these kind of meta moments where the narrator is like, oh, of course, because I'm writing this.
00:25:15
Speaker
Oh, right, right, right, right. Yes, and also I think that sort of half awareness, I want to follow that for just a second because I feel like one of the curious things is becoming, as it were, curiouser and curiouser in this reading experience is how many of the vital, like, seemingly essential pieces of information or experiences are either not in the book or occur with a huge delay. So I'm thinking about how little we know about Abbotts and how she's a cipher. I'm thinking about how when the grandmother died in volume three, it took us a thousand pages to get to the narrator actually thinking about her death and facing it. I'm thinking about
00:25:59
Speaker
here how Abbotin is trapped in his house. And we have no idea how that came to be. Like, why did anyone let this happen? um Because they are. No, seriously, they are both young people who have sort of responsible adults around them who they seem to rely on for a lot of advice and and financial support. And yet somehow he has imprisoned her. And and that occurs between the volumes in a sort of blank space that is just presumed completed without us ever getting to interact with it. Yeah. She is totally controlled and surveilled and he kind of emotionally manipulates her into choosing her own captivity at various points. So that the extent to which she is a prisoner is also kind of unstable, I think.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think, well, I think that's right. And I think the question of, um, of what it means to be imprisoned or like who, who is the jailer and who's, who is the jailed, who is in control here is something that is obviously a is essential preoccupation of yeah this novel. And at one point, there's this amazing passage towards the end of the book where he talks about how he had always thought that when he came into his inheritance, he would start collecting art and says, but wait, why collect art? I have the best art of all.
00:27:28
Speaker
like And then there's this huge long passage that we've already referred to where he analyzes her body as though it were a work of art in this very sort of detached mode of aesthetic appreciation. But then after this page is long, beautiful, insane description of her. and He reversed his course. But no, Abbotin was for me not at all a work of art. And the reason that he changes his mind is that collecting is possessing. And I quote, one only loves that in which one pursues the inaccessible. One only loves what one does not possess. And very soon I began to realize once more that I did not possess Abbotin.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, and that's all in relation to Swann, isn't it? Right, yes, because Swann did, ah he often, as we saw, rendered women into works of art. Yeah, and he was also a collector. Right. Yeah, I absolutely loved that passage. It was so sweeping and kind of stimulating.
00:28:35
Speaker
But it's kind of complicated, isn't it? He's saying, I don't possess her and yet she is my prisoner and I haven't been able to collect her because I am not the kind of, I don't have the kind of aesthetic appreciation or practice that Swan did. And then it starts to make me think that all this reflection on captivity, on possession, on collection, is then also about writing and about kind of capturing Albertine within his art or on the page in a different kind of way. Which is something that he refuses to
Theme of Captivity Revisited
00:29:12
Speaker
do, right? Albertine is never as captured on the page as, say, Charles
00:29:19
Speaker
of whom we have really a quite in-depth idea of his character, right? Abedzin is much more elusive. Yeah, and yet that has been captivating, right? Not only for the narrator, but for us, but for all the writers subsequently who have imagined Albertine, imagined her perspective, have seen her as a kind of totemic figure of what art is and isn't, I think.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yes, right. So Abedzin, in fact, by being imperfectly captured, captures us in turn. And it seems like that is also what happens in the dynamic between these two characters within the novel. yeah The narrator also self-describes as a prisoner at various points and seems to see himself as very constrained because of the presence of Abedzin.
00:30:07
Speaker
even though it is also sort of objectively true that she is imprisoned by him. But there it's not just a simple case of captor and captive. They're both keeping each other in chains in certain ways. Yeah. And again, in a meta way, because he's trying to write her. Like, did you like those bits at the end where she reveals some truths about her past behavior and he's like, oh my God, a novel that I spent a thousand years writing is burning.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yes, I did. His novel is his memory, right? Because he hasn't actually been writing. But then we know that it's also somehow the novel that we're... It's it's really a wonderfully complex situation. Yeah. And then kind of funny.
00:30:53
Speaker
Right. Cause then and another little crumb of information drops and he's like the final like parts of that old novel just turned to ashes. Or like the you when he ah he wishes he could just like get away from her and meet other girls. He's like, Oh, I just really long for other women and other sketched novels. So then that's also Al D'Artin's as a sketch as a kind of yeah half finished portrait.
00:31:23
Speaker
Bruce Curious is brought to you in partnership with Public Books, an online magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship. You can find us at publicbooks dot.org. That's publicbooks.org. To donate to Public Books, visit publicbooks dot.org slash donate.
Parallels of Control and Sexuality
00:31:40
Speaker
Are these the only characters, Emma, do you think that are dealing with this dynamic of imprisonment, possession, love? Oh, absolutely not. Who else comes to mind? I mean, obviously, Charlotte and Morrell.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yes. So Morell is kind of an amazing character. yeah He We haven't given him enough airtime, so sorry listeners. But he is he is incredible. Totally grotesque. He is the, wait, what's that relationship? The nephew of a now dead servant of the narrator's family. I think he's the son of the narrator's uncle's valet. Oh, he's the son. that He's the son of a of a former servant in the narrator's family.
00:32:22
Speaker
And now he is a successful musician. He is seeking to conceal his less bourgeois background. There's an amazing passage in the middle of the this volume that we haven't really got time to talk about in full, where he plays Van Thuy's music at the Virgilhan Salon. And he's clearly like very talented. He's considered to be kind of an up and up-and- coming violinist. And he, as a young handsome, I think he's described at one point as like,
00:32:52
Speaker
handsome, brutal, and stupid or something.
00:32:57
Speaker
I don't remember that, but I believe you. It sounds right. Something like that. I mean, there's this like triptych that's just like kind of devastating and hilarious. So as he's a young, handsome, talented man, and he catches the eye of the Baron de Charles, who is Charles, we met for the first time, actually in the first volume, where he was keeping Odette's company. And the reason that Swann let that happen is that Charles is, whether he likes it or not, an openly gay person, met who most people who cross his path realize that he is gay, even though he does make some attempts to conceal it that we may come back to.
00:33:35
Speaker
He is an older, very aristocratic person. He's the brother of the juc de germonts and very proud of his noble lineage, but also very attracted to people of the working class and the bourgeois. So he seems to enjoy lording it over his um sexual conquests. So we talked about him at length last episode because of his encounter with the tailor Jupian in the courtyard of the home where the narrator is living.
00:34:08
Speaker
And in the last volume, he picked up Morell at a train station, um basically just sort of astonished by his good looks. And he is now keeping Morell in the financial sense, not in the way that the narrator is keeping abelts in, but he's ah helping Morell pay his bills. He's trying to set Morell up with Jupiens' niece so that they have a sort of respectable marriage that can be a cover for him to continue what seems to be, but this is another thing that is never really made clear. It seems to not, in fact, be a sexual relationship, but rather just a relationship of control and infatuation. Yeah, I wasn't sure about that. Kind of like, Charlize setting himself up as an alternative patriarch in a kind of chosen but still very policed family.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think that seems right. And I think Morrell, as part of the deal, has to put up with a lot of affection, but I'm not quite sure that it is sexual. But actually, the fact that we can't be sure is is part of the intrigue of this yeah relationship. So, Charles is kind of captivated by Morrell. Morrell is also kind of captured ken yeah captured, kind of a sort of a version of a prisoner of Chardus. And I think that since the previous volume, Chardus and Morell have been a kind of double of yes um the narrator the naator and Albertine. So they're in a kind of similar but not identical relation of captivity.
00:35:45
Speaker
right Notably, a huge difference is that Charles wants Morell to be out and about and to be yeah becoming well-known for his talents and actually is also attempting to set him up with yeah with the niece with a ni and and just with other. He's almost ah attempting to supply Morell with victims almost. yeah Yeah, and he's like thrilled by this rape fantasy that Morrell expresses at one point, yeah which yeah is not delightful. Right. So there's this kind of interesting variation on the theme or a double, but I think that their relationship is also part of a broader theme of being trapped or imprisoned or somehow not known, which is
00:36:31
Speaker
I mean, I hesitate to use this word because it's not
Secrecy and Societal Constraints
00:36:34
Speaker
Proust's word, but like the idea of the closet, right? So the fact that even though Charlus comes pretty close, that you can't live openly or in a kind of institutionalized way with same-sex desire, which is also Albion's problem in some ways.
00:36:50
Speaker
I think that's another kind of form of closure that that that you have in this. There has been actually a briefly mentioned, a analyzed, for example, by the um critic, Eve Sedrick, who writes the epistemology of the closet with a chapter on Proust. And I think a lot of the dynamics of like secrecy, revelation, lies, hiding, confession can be understood through that lens as well. But I mean, part of Sedrick's argument is that sexuality in general, not just homosexuality, is conditioned by a kind of secrecy and revelation mode. And there's something very resonant of that in a moment when the narrator describes how Chevalouse had these moments of irritable retraction in which he sought to conceal his true life, but these lasted by a short time compared with the hours of continual progression in which he allowed it to betray itself.
00:37:44
Speaker
flaunted it with an irritating complacency, the need to confide being stronger in him than the fear of disclosure." And I think Isla Prisonier, that Cedric is really interested in. But yeah, that that that's ah that a book that I've read actually more because she writes about Racine. But yeah on top you yeah yeah I thought back to that when we were reading this and thinking about that as another kind of way of people being trapped.
00:38:07
Speaker
yeah Yeah, like the narrator in a way, it's a sort of um inward turning that's being trapped, just like the narrator has decided that he will stay in mostly and have this bell jar life. And it seems there that Charles is grappling with the desire to live an outward turning life, but constrained by society to to to keep some parts of himself at least semi-hidden.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But I think we also need to think about this in practical terms. So who is imprisoned? Who is not free? There's financial imprisonment. I mean, to make that really explicit, like why is Albertine there? She's kind of being strung along by the narrator who's saying, oh, he might marry her, which would be transformative for her. She's bourgeois but barely by the skin of her child because she's an orphan who's been taken in by her aunt who is not that well off, seemingly. she She seems to move in the right circles but doesn't have money to spare. And so for Avadzin to make a brilliant marriage with this rich young man would change her entire life.
00:39:16
Speaker
ah But at the same time, Abbottson seems to be very attracted to women. And so it's it's a devil's bargain to some extent. And also, I mean, the narrator's being totally horrible. Yeah, yeah. You think awful. Occasionally he's like, I felt a bit bad.
00:39:35
Speaker
But like, not enough, Marcel. Not enough. Like, he's keeping her in dresses, isn't she he, as well? Because at one point he's like, I was really worried that she might leave me, but then I remembered that we were due to do the do a kind of try on, trying on dresses. We're due to try on dresses at Fortuny in eight days. Fortuny being this fashion house. I know she'll wait for that. ah But he he also, he he talks of her as a wild beast tamed a rose bush to which I had acted as the prop, the framework, the trellis of its life. And I think this citation is fascinating because we see that he realizes that he has curbed her, but also a rose bush and its trellis. One of those things is living and producing at least flowers and potentially
00:40:23
Speaker
beauty. While the trellis is surrounded by this rose bush, sort of suffocated by it in a way, it guides it, but it is lifeless and inert. Yeah, that's so true. In a sense, the there is a little bit of a tone of pride slash lamentation in talking of her as a tamed beast or a trellis rose. There's also a sense in which it shows again that ambivalence about who exactly is imprisoned. Yeah. And she is an artist, isn't she? Yes. She's a painter, just like Morell is a musician. So they're actually doing the art. Right. They're doing the thing, right, that that the narrator can't quite bring himself to do. Yeah, because he's just focused on her. Do you not think at some, like, variously, I thought at some point, like,
00:41:19
Speaker
He should just get a job.
00:41:22
Speaker
But I don't disagree, but at the same time, was that even on the table for him? Do you know what I'm saying? like It's independently rich. But then again, I think about the real Proust, which I know the narrator is not the author. I i i understand that fully. However, at the same time, his family was a well-off bourgeois family, and his brother did become a doctor. So it's not impossible that someone would take up a profession as a wealthy bourgeois man.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah. You're saying he should get a job, but I feel like just as the woman in my year of rest and relaxation couldn't hold down a job, like I'm not at all sure he could hold down a job. No, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. He's sick. He's very sickly as well. Yeah, he is
Albertine as 'Goddess of Time'
00:42:05
Speaker
sickly. You know, Emma, before before we finish talking about this question of captivity and the dynamic between them, i we have to talk about Abbotzin as a goddess of time ah we just have to i'm obsessed with this so we have to we have to highlight it and absolute highlight and then and then perhaps we'll move on to to winners and losers after that i'll set the scene and read this citation maybe you can get us started on what on earth this could possibly mean or or what it means for the project so the narrator towards the end of the book
00:42:40
Speaker
says that he can he can hold Abbotin on his knees and and caress her, but, quote, I felt that I was touching no more than the sealed envelope of a person who inwardly reached to infinity, and that she's not a marvelous captive like a genie in a bottle, but rather, quote, urging me with cruel and fruitless insistence in quest of the past, she resembled, if anything, a mighty goddess of time.
00:43:07
Speaker
I mean, this is so compelling and also so hyperbolic.
00:43:18
Speaker
It's so overwrought, really. it is yeah There's something so overwrought about this novel, ah period, yeah but somehow that doesn't that yeah dispel its charm.
00:43:30
Speaker
ah Before we like get really get into it, I think this is the final reference I'm going to make to my year of Rest and Realisation, which is that that is also a comic um a comic and kind of hyperbolic text, yes yeah yeah as well as one about kind of sleep and wealth and withdrawal. and withdrawal absolutely and So yeah, Albertine is the goddess of time whose body is a sealed envelope that inwardly reaches to infinity, but that infinity is the past And so this sparks for him his quest, right? to To go in search of last time. Yeah, to capture the past. So she is his inspiration. But why is she in particular his inspiration? and Is it because he's trying to, is it to do with that novel that gets burned where he's trying to figure out where she's been and with whom and what that life represents?
00:44:29
Speaker
He's trying to understand her past movements, almost in like the most basic, least philosophical way. And that that jealous impulse ends up turning into an obsession with the past.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess it's also that she he wants to know what her life is. He refers to that on multiple occasions. Like, what is her life? I think that the um weird pure breath scenes are part of that as well. Like, what what is her life? What is therefore life? Life being a kind of sequence of past scenes and sentiments. But also it's something that's ah completely sealed off from everyone else, that all we can excess of anyone else is the sealed envelope. And then inside there's the infinity, which I agree with you is the past, but it's not only the past, and it's the personhood. It's it's yeah the Like subjectivity. Subjectivity is the being in time of someone else, ah which is elusive, just like Abbot's in.
00:45:40
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yes, yes. This is so cool. Not what I'm saying, which is the text. The text is like, you really, it's really, um, it's just incredible because I feel like you could take any random sentence and if you stop to really think deeply about the parallels that are being drawn, the connections that are being made. All of a sudden you realize that everything is so complex in this novel. And it's also really a hall of mirrors, like complex and reflective of something else.
00:46:10
Speaker
constantly Yeah, absolutely. And then also like often so idiosyncratic like this is about his purse and and also quite like concrete at the same time to all this image. He's put his hand on her knee. He's caressing her. But that touch reaches a sealed envelope of a person. So this kind of resisting this idea that in any way you can actually can connect. Yeah, either kind of conceptually or physically.
00:46:39
Speaker
Right, because a sealed envelope is sort of a symbol of non-communication, right? Oh, and then she leaves him a letter at the end. Oh yeah, that's right. Which we haven't gotten to read yet because it it's dangling. Yeah, so we're left with a sealed envelope at the end of the volume wave. Emma.
00:46:57
Speaker
Incredible.
00:47:05
Speaker
It is time to reveal, to award and deny our winners and losers of La Presigner. I found this tough this time, Hannah. How did you find it?
Debating Winners and Losers
00:47:17
Speaker
I mean, as usual, I think the thing is, I think that we've learned is that this novel has no winners o or that the winners are tongue in cheek or oblique or like a little bit not center stage, perhaps. But do you want to tell me your winner? if I want you to tell me your winner because I'm going to decide mine based on yours. I'm sorry to do that to you. And to like also to withhold some information in an adultiness way.
00:47:41
Speaker
Okay, I think that I'm going to do my most serious of the three options. Okay. Maybe I'll i'll tell you my runners up without defending them, just in case. So my runners up, and maybe one of them is yours and you'll defend them, i is the fashion house for chignon, which, um, great choice.
00:47:58
Speaker
comes out really ahead in this book. The chauffeur who seems to do whatever the F he wants at all times. ah But I'll give my my my real my real winner is in a stunning reversal from episode one, Van Thuy.
00:48:14
Speaker
Oh, amazing. He's the composer of the sonata that Swan and Odette had loved. And there's a big salons scene in this volume where what they have done is gathered to listen to the music event. i I say he's the winner because his daughter's partner, has her scandalously lesbian partner, has ah gone through his work his notebooks posthumously and transcribed all his music, which is now becoming the talk of the town and has kind of made him an instant classic now that they have more of his work to go on besides just the Sonata. So he's kind of had his um posthumous revindication. And for that, he is my winner. Case very well made, and I agree. I did i did um briefly consider him. I like the chiffon and Fortuny getting him a chimpu.
00:49:01
Speaker
Well, those are my tongue and cheek answers. I was trying to be a little bit better at this time because I feel like I've given a few tongue and cheek answers in a row. Okay, so I will say my tongue-in-cheek answer first for my winner. So my tongue-in-cheek winner is Morell's Mesh. Morell's Mesh. I was thinking in English and I was like, what Mesh? But no, the Mesh in French, which is a lock of hair. Morell's Lock of Hair. It's like this sexy lock that falls over his forehead while he's playing his violin.
00:49:35
Speaker
incredible um It's absolutely ravished by it. He keeps talking about it. Did you see the mesh? yeah yeah and it's like That's why Morell is like the rock star that classical music used to be able to have.
00:49:51
Speaker
indeed But my more serious winner, with regret, is Madame Vergierin. Just because I think she's awful. But I think we need to talk about her act of willful vengeance against Charles. Yeah, she decides that Charles has been unspeakably rude to her, which he has.
00:50:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah, but she decides to alienate him from her little group, but of course not entirely head to basically dump him and yeah break his little heart. Right. Which of course makes him very ill. And he you when when he reemerges, he's kind of over it.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I think because she's so thwarted, she's so humiliated, he's organised this party at her house, and all these noble ladies are just snubbing her like crazy. And page after page, it's like Madame Vergiron was ignored. Madame Vergiron was ignored. And then she orchestrates this scene out of her, like what Proust calls her, social jealousy. And she's also called narcissism, where she just wants to be the centre of everything. And she doesn't want any of the people who attend her salon to be more in relation with each other than with her. So she enacts this set piece break between Morell and Charyus, organized around a lie, and it absolutely comes off. She plays it perfectly. It's very horrible, but she does win, ultimately, in the battle that Charyus doesn't really know he's in. Yes, yeah, it's true. Okay, she's a winner. She won the battle. Yeah, but horribly, horribly so. horb kind of I prefer Morell's hair to beat the winner.
00:51:28
Speaker
but Morel's hair is less yeah causes less ambivalence in us all. Yeah, but I like your winners better. Oh, I don't know. You made a good case. Shall I say who i losers my loser was? Yes. So for me, the loser of this volume is Francois.
00:51:44
Speaker
um She is the now very elderly family servant who is saying that it's kind of insane that you they are allowed to do this. They're allowed to live unmarried um and just and all the spend all the narrator's money and just keep going. And who is facilitating that? But Francois is very, very bitterly. She hates Albertine. She hates that they're in this situation. She's also quite marginalised in this volume in a way that she isn't in others. ah She's just kind of here and there serving them.
00:52:15
Speaker
they're facilitating their, she thinks they're having like wild sex all the time, like so she thinks she's facilitating their orgies. which then we're very much not. Yeah, and she's also a captive, right? Because she's stuck with them. She doesn't want to be. She's totally financially dependent on this family. She has to do everything that she's told. And she doesn't even really get the kind of, I mean, some of her language, some of her relationship with her daughter, those things do remain in this volume, but they don't get the kind of more loving attention that they've had earlier on. So for me, emotionally and narratively, Francis is the loser here.
00:52:49
Speaker
compelling compelling case. I think you will agree that my loser is also a loser. like this You know what I mean? I didn't choose someone. Well, there's so many options for a loser. There's so many options. For me, it is Sanyet. Oh, yeah. Great candidate. Yes, by extension, the other dead. So let me explain to our listeners who Sanyet is in case they don't know, because I don't think we've mentioned him before.
00:53:13
Speaker
He is one of the little group around the Verdurent, but his role in the group is just to be bullied horribly by Monsieur Verdurent. So basically any words that come out of his mouth are ridiculed. ah He has become sort of a trembling leaf of a man because he's so used to being just absolutely harassed at every turn, and at this party with a Védurent, once again, Monsieur Védurent is terrible to him, and he runs out of the party, collapses, and ultimately dies. He doesn't die that night, but basically this party causes his demise, but all of this is told in a very
00:53:58
Speaker
almost like waving it off sort of way. It's not considered to be really a problem. And indeed, a lot of people have died in this volume, but it all happens off screen and without a lot of reflection. we Madame Verderain is famously hard-hearted towards those of her impervious to death impervious to death because after all it means that they're out of her little clan and so if they're not there they're not there so for her it's it's it's sort of a an on-off switch and the reason for being off seems fairly indifferent to her but Sanniette is not the only one of the little clan who has died the Princess Cherbatov has also died Madame de Ville Parisise has died she wasn't really part of the little clan but she's referred to as dead
00:54:50
Speaker
yeah good Bergotte dies, Côtard dies and is resurrected. Clearly, Bruce was just deciding what to do about that character and and traces of both fates are left in this volume. But when his death is referred to, it is just very offhand. So I mean, just people are dying like flies and none of it gets the notice
Preview of 'Albertine Disparu'
00:55:10
Speaker
it deserves. So the dead, especially Seignettes, are the losers. Yeah.
00:55:16
Speaker
Excellent losers. ah Sad. but we had Very well told. Yes, and yet, oh my goodness, what a figure of objection. All these deaths are part of where we are in the project, right, Emma? Yeah, so we are drawing towards the end now. A lot of characters have died. Things feel relatively in flux, socially and narratively, and Albertine has now disappeared, paving the way for the next volume, the penultimate one, Albertine Disparu, or The the Fugitive and in English.
00:55:54
Speaker
Yes, so we'll have to see. I mean, I think we both know some spoilers here, but we'll have to see where she goes and what and and um and what happens to her. Well, I think that's it for this episode of Proust Curious. We hope we've piqued your curiosity. If you liked the podcast, please do tell a friend about it. Proust Curious is hosted by Emma Glossen and Hannah Weaver and produced by Michael Goldsmith. You can reach us at ProustCurious at gmail dot.com.
00:56:23
Speaker
We'd also like to thank our partner, Public Books, an online magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship. Check it out at publicbooks dot.org. Join us next time for Volume 6, Abel tien des Paris, also known as La Fugitive. Au revoir. Au revoir.