Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

 The remaining three chapters* of Albertine Gone deal with Marcel coming to terms with loss, finally visiting Venice, and revisiting Combray. Chapter II It is said that there are five (or seven) stages of grief, but for Marcel there are only three: anguish; suspicion; and oblivion. Chapter II finds him fluctuating between the latter two. By the beginning of this chapter, his love for Albertine has altered. On his way to forgetting and indifference, Marcel sees his feelings go on a reverse journey. He now finds himself back at the beginning of their affair and experiences again the sentiments through which he had passed before “arriving at my great love”. His memories of those sentiments “retained the terrible force, the happy ignorance of the hope that was then yearning towards a time which has now become the past, but which a hallucination makes us for a moment mistake retrospectively for the future” ( p.195 XI Scott Moncrieff, p.569 III Kilmartin ). He presently feels a charm in ...

 I have already indicated (see my 22 nd post) that for this part of the novel, I would be departing from Scott Moncrieff's volume titles as I find his use of The Sweet Cheat Gone, a line from Walter de la Mare's poem Ghost, to be forced, awkward and unsuitable. The title in French is Albertine disparue, but it was originally going to be La Fugitive, and publishers sometimes still use this latter title. That has prompted a number of English translators to call the volume The Fugitive, which has the merit of following on logically from The Captive. However, I think Albertine Gone is to be preferred because, although she was subject to Marcel's controlling behaviour, Albertine was not a prisoner as she was free to leave (see my 25 th and 27 th posts), which she did at the end of the previous volume. Accordingly, as she has not escaped, she is not a fugitive either. Albertine Gone is a more literal translation of Albertine disparue and importantly, like the French, contains ...