Albertine Gone: Chapters II-IV (29th post)
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 his recollections of her. “The reason for this charm seemed to me to be that I was as much in love with Albertine as ever, whereas the true reason was on the contrary that oblivion was continuing to make such headway in me that the memory of Albertine was longer painful to me, that is to say, it had changed” (p.199 XI SM, p.572 III TK).
And soon Marcel begins to develop amorous feelings for another. This might have been expected at some point but, in Proust's hands, this short episode develops in a less than obvious way and we get a clear view of his creative genius. One day in the Bois de Boulogne, Marcel spots three young women, who remind him of Albertine and her friends. A few days later, he sees them again, this time outside his house and is attracted by the fair one of the three who keeps glancing at him. Afterwards, the porter informs Marcel that the girl in question had left her name as Mlle Déporcheville and had been calling on the Duchesse de Guermantes, who happened to be away at the time. Marcel realises that her actual name must have been d'Eporcheville and recalls that this was the name of a society girl whom Saint-Loup had met in a brothel. He imagines what her glances must have signified and he finds himself “madly in love with her” (pp.201-203 XI SM, pp.573-574 III TK). His plan is to call on Mme de Guermantes two days later at the same time that Mlle d'Eporcheville told the porter she would return. In the meantime, he writes to Saint-Loup about her, but the latter's reply informs him that the girl at the brothel had been called de l'Orgeville and was not only dark but also currently in Switzerland (p.207 XI SM, p.578 III TK). The two days pass and Marcel goes to Mme de Guermantes'. There he meets Mlle d'Eporcheville, “stripped, by Saint-Loup's telegram, of the better part of her personality”, but the duchess introduces her as Mlle de Forcheville (pp.217-219 XI SM, pp.584-586 III TK). When he does not recognise her, she introduces herself as Gilberte, whose mother, after Swann's death, had married his old rival – the Comte de Forcheville (see my 8th post). The use of a series of misunderstandings and a failure of recognition is a brilliant way of reintroducing a character. We shall see more of her in the following chapters.
Andrée pays Marcel another visit. This time she tells him that she and Albertine used to caress and that Morel procured many young girls for Albertine, who would afterwards be remorseful and had refrained from such acts when she started her relationship with him. She also suggests that Albertine might have killed herself on purpose. Marcel wonders why Andrée is contradicting what she had told him a few months earlier. He thinks that maybe she is now telling the truth because she no longer feared Albertine. But he reflects that that could equally mean that she was no longer afraid to invent a falsehood (pp.251-257 XI SM, pp.612-616 III TK). On a following visit, Andrée informs Marcel that the reason Albertine left him was that a young man had offered to marry her, and her aunt summoned her home in case her staying with Marcel jeopardised the proposal. The young man, Octave, had been a friend of the little band in Balbec and he turns out to be Mme Verdurin's nephew (pp.272-273, 279 XI SM, pp.621, 629 III TK).
Chapter III
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| Carpaccio's Miracle of the Holy Cross at Rialto, in which one of the figures sports the same cloak as Albertine wore on her last outing with Marcel |
The hotel where Marcel and his mother are staying possesses “the almost oriental arch of a façade which is reproduced among the casts in every museum as one of the supreme achievements of the domestic architecture of the middle ages”. One day, Marcel's mother is waiting there for his return. As he approaches the hotel, he catches sight of “this arched window which had already seen me, and the spring of its broken curves added to its smile of welcome the distinction of a loftier, scarcely comprehensible gaze”. He calls to his mother from his gondola and “she sent out to me, from the bottom of her heart, a love which stopped only where there was no longer any material substance to support it on the surface of her impassioned gaze which she brought as close to me as possible, which she tried to thrust forward to the advanced post of her lips, in a smile which seemed to be kissing me, in the framework and beneath the canopy of the more discreet smile of the arched window illuminated by the midday sun … That illustrious window retains in my sight the intimate aspect of a man of genius with whom we have spent a month in some holiday resort, where he has acquired a friendly regard for us; and if, ever since then, whenever I see a cast of that window in a museum, I feel the tears starting to my eyes, it is simply because the window says to me the thing that touches me more than anything else in the world: 'I remember your mother so well'” (pp.287-290 XI SM, pp.637-640 III TK).
Although Marcel and his mother have only been in Venice for a couple of days, they have already come across Mme Sazerat, whom Aunt Léonie used to watch from her window in Combray, and Mme de Villeparisis with M de Norpois. Marcel and his mother, who have invited Mme Sazerat to dine with them, see the couple in the dining room of their hotel and try to point them out to Mme Sazerat who, when their table is indicated, responds however: “There are only two people, an old gentleman and a little hunchbacked, red-faced woman, quite hideous.” To which, they are forced to answer: “That is she!” (pp.294-300 XI SM, pp.644-649 III TK). We shall see in the next volume a great deal more of this type of surprise at the effect of Time on characters who have aged almost beyond recognition since we last saw them.
There is now a great shock in store for Marcel – and the reader. One evening the hotel porter hands Marcel a telegram which says: “My dear, you think me dead, forgive me, I am quite alive, should like to see you, talk about marriage, when do you return? Love. Albertine”. He discovers that this news does not evoke the feelings he would have expected. Now that Albertine is no longer alive in his mind, his reaction on learning she is alive is not one of joy. He has changed, his old self has died. Oblivion has devoured his love for Albertine (pp.310-313 XI SM, pp.656-658 III TK). Later, however, as he and his mother are leaving Venice on the train, he reads a letter that had arrived for him at the hotel. It is from Gilberte telling him she was marrying Robert Saint-Loup and she mentions having earlier sent him a telegram, whereupon he realises that her bad handwriting had confused the telegram clerk, who had deciphered her name incorrectly as Albertine (pp.325-326 XI SM, pp.670-671 III TK).
Chapter IV
At the same time, while on the train, Marcel's mother is reading a letter informing her that the Cambremers' son is to marry Jupien's niece (who had been Morel's fiancée) (pp.328-329 XI SM, pp.672-673 III TK). Unfortunately, the marriage does not last as the bride catches typhoid fever and dies just a few weeks later (p.351 XI SM, p.688 III TK). Meanwhile, Marcel learns that Gilberte is unhappy because Robert has been unfaithful to her. Marcel discovers from Jupien that Robert's lover is none other than Morel (pp.356-357 XI SM, p.695 III TK).
The chapter (and Albertine Gone) ends** with Marcel paying a visit to Combray and going on countryside walks in the dark around Tansonville with Gilberte. He learns to his surprise that the Méséglise way and the Guermantes way, which he had always thought of as separate, are joined not just metaphorically by her marriage to Robert, but in reality (p.373 XI SM, p.711 III TK). Gilberte also reveals that she had been in love with him when they had first seen each other and she had made a coarse gesture (see my 6th post) and again when she saw him by Mme de Guermantes' doorway (see above). But, as she says, “All that is a long time ago … and, let me tell you, that childish caprice is not the thing for which I blame myself most” (pp.375-380 XI SM, pp.711-715 III TK). The chapter ends there and the reader is left wondering what is the behaviour which Gilberte most regrets. We are never told, but Proust's notes reveal it was her distancing herself from her father's memory after he died by adopting the name of de Forcheville.
* Albertine Gone is divided into four chapters in Scott Moncrieff's translation and the original French publication, but not in the Kilmartin or Enright translations
**In Scott Moncrieff's version, but this section comprises the first part of Time Regained in the Kilmartin and Enright versions
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