In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2: The Captive - A Journey Through Love, Jealousy, and Memory
<September 13, 2025, Monday>
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
The Captive - Part 1
Day 11 (Pages 171-185)
I had to choose between ceasing to suffer or ceasing to love, because love, initially formed by desire, was later maintained only by painful anxiety. I felt as though a part of Albertine's life was slipping away from me. Love, like blissful desire, demands everything even in painful anxiety. Love is born and endures only when there is something left to conquer. We love only what we do not completely possess. (172)
Indeed, I had decided to break up that day and leave for Venice. But what bound me to the relationship again was Normandy. Not because she expressed her desire to return to the place where I had been jealous of her (fortunately, her plans did not touch the most painful points of my memories), but because when I said, "It sounds like you're talking about a friend of your aunt who lives in Infréville," she became angry, and at the same time, as if wanting to provide as much evidence as possible during an argument, she replied with satisfaction, "But my aunt doesn't know anyone in Infréville. I've never been there either." She had forgotten that one evening, she had lied about needing to go have tea at a certain lady's house, even if it meant losing my friendship and committing suicide. I did not remind her of this lie. But it tormented me. So, once again, I postponed the breakup. To be loved, one does not need to be honest or skilled at lying. I call love a mutual torment here. It wasn't so reprehensible, as my grandmother said that evening, or to announce one's decision in the noisiest way possible, disproportionate to the decision itself, like my father suddenly deciding to go to the Verdurins' house with her. (176-177)
==> My heart aches for Marcel. He says, 'Mutual torment... one doesn't need to be honest or skilled at lying,' but Marcel's anguish only grows. It's heartbreaking to see love binding each other tenaciously like a punishment, wanting freedom yet being recaptured, a relentlessly repeating cycle of broken resolutions.
Anyway, feeling that she was upset, I used it as an opportunity to bring up the story of Esther Lévy. "Bloch said (it was a lie) that you and his cousin Esther are very close." "I wouldn't even recognize her," Albertine said with an ambiguous expression. "I saw a picture of Esther," I said angrily. I did not look at Albertine as I said this, and because she said nothing, I did not see her expression, which would have been the only answer.
On nights like these, what I felt beside Albertine was not the relief that my mother's kiss had given me in Combray, but the anguish I had felt on nights when my mother was angry, or when a guest had come over and she hadn't greeted me properly, or when she hadn't tried to come up to my room. (180)
The moment for Albertine to say goodnight drew nearer and nearer, and finally she did. But that night, her kiss lacked her presence and any connection with me, and I was so anxious that, with a trembling heart, I watched her walk to the door, muttering to myself, "I must find an excuse to call her back and reconcile quickly. A few steps and she will be out of the room, now two steps, only one left. She turns the doorknob and opens the door. Too late. She has closed the door!" Perhaps it is not yet too late. As when my mother left without comforting me with a kiss in Combray, I wanted to follow Albertine, throw myself at her. (181)
I went back to her door and peered in. Now there was no light visible through the crack. Albertine had turned off the light and gone to bed, and I stood there motionless, hoping for a stroke of luck. After a long time, I returned to my room, cold, and got into bed, where I cried all night. (182)
==> I want to cry... Albertine's kiss lacked her presence... Marcel is extremely anxious, feeling no connection. On Marcel's behalf, my heart wants me to jump up and grab Albertine. "Something's strange... there was something strange about that kiss... I don't feel any love," I would say, holding on to her. For Marcel, it is a repetition of the deprivation he felt from his mother as a child, or rather, an even deeper despair and loneliness. I cry along with Marcel, who is weeping under the blankets, cold.
Only her breathing changed in response to my caresses, as if she were an instrument I was playing, an instrument from whose every string I extracted different sounds, executing modulations. My jealousy subsided because Albertine felt like a breathing being, completely liquid, as her even breathing implied, nothing but a simple physiological function without the solidity of words or the solidity of silence. (183)
<September 16, 2025, Tuesday>
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
The Captive - Part 1
Day 12 (Pages 186-201)
The words that Albertine spoke as she woke up, though not meaningless, were imbued with a pure beauty, untouched by the common phrases, clichés, or traces of error that contaminate ordinary conversation. Moreover, once I had decided to wake her, I could do so without much fear, because I knew that her awakening would come from her sleep, just as morning comes from night, regardless of the evening we had spent. She smiled, slightly opened her eyes, and offered me her lips, and there I tasted, before she said anything, the freshness of her lips, soothing to our hearts, like the freshness of a quiet garden before sunrise.
The day after the evening when Albertine said she might go to the Verdurins' house, and then might not, I woke up early, and the joy I felt while not fully awake seemed to announce the existence of a spring day inserted in the middle of winter. (186-187)
"I find this unknown charm only in you,
This charm that forever captivates me and never bores me." (From Act 2, Scene 7 of "Esther," where King Ahasuerus speaks to Esther.) (In my mind, I thought separately, 'No, I've been bored many times.')
"Please, my love, don't do any high-wire acts like you did the other day (hinting at Albertine's fate in 'The Vanished Albertine.' However, the expression 'high-wire act' can apply not only to words but also to airplanes, so in this respect, the expression may evoke the plane crash that caused Agostinelli's death in 1913. The narrator desires Albertine's death to put an end to his persistent jealousy, and this desire is condensed in Albertine's short phrase, "You won't survive forty-eight hours..."). Think about it, Albertine. If something were to happen to you." Of course, I didn't want anything bad to happen to her. But how delightful it would be to have such a wonderful thought that she would ride away on a horse to a place I didn't know, a place she liked, and so never come home again! How simple everything would be if she lived happily elsewhere, and I didn't want to know where that was! "Oh! I know very well that you won't survive forty-eight hours and will commit suicide." Thus we exchanged false words. But a truth more profound than what we would have said sincerely can be expressed or predicted through a path other than the path of sincerity. (196-197)
<September 17, 2025, Wednesday>
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
The Captive - Part 1
Day 13 (Pages 202-217)
I saw the female driver. She was clearly a woman, but a tall, strong, old woman, with white hair peeking out from under her cap, and a large red spot spreading across her face. As I left, I thought: Is this what a woman's youth is? A woman we met in the past suddenly wanting to see again, but already old when we meet her? Is the young woman we desire like a theatrical role? A role first created for a specific actress, then passed on to a new popular actress as the actress who played it withers? But then she is no longer the same person.
Then sadness came over me. Like the Renaissance 'Pietà,' our sleep is inhabited by so many 'compassions', but unlike those carved in marble, those compassions are not solid. However, they have the usefulness of reminding us of a more compassionate and human perspective on what we too easily forget when awake, with our cold and sometimes hostile rationality. Therefore, I was reminded of the promise I had made in Balbec to always have compassion for Françoise. (203-204)
==> The suffering of others that we too easily forget when awake due to our rationality! Sleep is inhabited by so many 'compassions' like the Renaissance 'Pietà.' To explain the desire not to lose compassion for Françoise like the sadness shown by the Pietà in this way...
In fact, when we are awake, our hearts often harden coldly due to our calculating and sometimes defensive minds. Even when we see the suffering of others, we dismiss it indifferently, saying, 'There must have been a reason,' and rationalize it. Compared to the sublime sadness expressed by the Pietà in marble, compassion in sleep may disappear in the morning, but in sleep, forgiveness and compassion can be constantly revived. Because we even eat amicably with the people we hated in dreams... just like in my dream yesterday.
Sleep is sacred but unstable, evaporating with even the slightest shock. Habit, a friend of sleep, holds sleep in a place consecrated every night, more fixed than sleep itself, and protects it from all kinds of shocks. But if we move the habit to another place, and sleep is no longer subject to habit, sleep disappears like steam. Sleep is similar to youth or love, once lost, it can no longer be regained. (205)
As soon as Albertine left the room, I could feel how exhausting her constant presence was, her endless yearning for movement and life. Her presence disturbed my sleep, kept the door open and exposed me to a constant draft, and every day forced me to deploy more ingenuity than Scheherazade in finding an excuse not to accompany her without seeming too hurt, and at the same time finding someone else to accompany her. Unfortunately, with the same ingenuity, the Persian storyteller could delay her death, but I was only hastening mine. Thus, in our lives, there are certain situations in which the question of whether to continue living together or return to a life lived separately before is raised in an almost medical way, not arising from feelings of jealousy born of love or from being unable to share life with a young and active person due to frail health. Which of the two kinds of rest should we dedicate ourselves to: rest for the brain or rest for the heart (continuing the daily overwork or returning to the anguish of absence)? (215-216)
<September 18, 2025, Thursday>
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
The Captive - Part 1
Day 14 (Pages 218-235)
He, who had to be confined in the studio all the time, knowing that the forest was full of violets on a spring day, was seized with a severe thirst to see the flowers and had the gatekeeper woman buy him a bunch of violets. What he then believed he saw under his eyes, almost hallucinating with emotion, was not the table on which stood the small plant model he intended to draw, but the entire meadow in the forest, with thousands of winding stems bent under the sharp blue buds he had seen before, an imaginary area that the transparent fragrance of the evocative flowers enclosed within the studio.
Her aquiline nose and unpleasant gaze, that thoughtful, individualistic, and judgmental gaze, cast the other girls into darkness like a golden lightning bolt darkening the surrounding scenery. Therefore, what I remember from the dairy shop I went to order cheese (if I can say 'remember' even about a face I didn't look at well enough to attach ten differently shaped noses to the middle of the face) was only the girl who disgusted me. But this is enough for love to begin. If Françoise hadn't said that the girl was still young but knowing, and soon would leave the mistress because she had too many debts in the neighborhood due to being too fancy, I would have forgotten that enormous blonde girl and never tried to meet her again. Someone said that beauty is the promise of happiness. But conversely, the possibility of pleasure may be the beginning of beauty. (230-231)
I began to read my mother's letter. Beyond the quotation from Madame de Sévigné ("If my thoughts in Combray are not completely black, they are at least grayish-brown. I think of you every moment, wishing you health and work, but can you imagine how far away you are, and what all this makes me think in the time between dog and wolf?") Although she had not yet expressed her intention to marry her fiancé, I could feel my mother's discomfort as she saw Albertine's stay at our house become prolonged and solidified. (231)
The reason they didn't capture our hearts is not that they are less beautiful than other women, but that they always wait for us in a prepared state, anticipating and offering what we seek, that is, they are not objects that we want to conquer. In this case, the deviation is minimal. The prostitute is already smiling on the street and will do so later by our side. We are sculptors. We want to obtain from the woman a sculpture that is completely different from what the woman showed us. (234)
<September 19, 2025, Friday>
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
The Captive - Part 1
Day 15 (Pages 236-250)
"We add the name of Miss Léa, who has allowed the afternoon performance of 'Nerine's Trick,' to be held this afternoon at the Trocadéro Banquet Hall, as previously announced. She will, of course, play Nerine, showing dazzling eloquence and charming wit." It was as if someone were violently tearing off the bandage from a wound in my heart that had only just begun to heal since returning from Balbec. A tidal wave of anguish poured out. Léa was the girlfriend of the two girls whom Albertine had pretended not to see while looking in the mirror at the casino one afternoon, and was an actress. When we were in Balbec, Albertine, in fact, said, hearing Léa's name and with a particularly solemn tone, as if shocked that one could suspect such a chaste woman, "Oh! No, she's not like that at all. She's a very wonderful woman." (237-238)
Not long after making this first assertion, a second assertion followed: "I don't know such a person." The third stage was when she spoke of someone 'undeniable,' someone she had said (in the second stage) she 'didn't know,' she gradually forgot that she had initially said she didn't know, and unknowingly spoke of knowing that person with 'contradictory' words. After this first forgetting occurred, a new assertion came out, and then a second forgetting, that is, she began to forget that she had said the person was undeniable. "Isn't such-and-such a lady not a woman of that behavior?" I asked. "Of course. Everyone knows that?" But soon a solemn tone followed again, uttering an assertion that could be described as a weakened, faint echo of the first assertion. "But she has always been perfectly polite to me. Of course, she knew that I would ruthlessly chase her away if she did such a thing. But that's nothing. I must thank her for always respecting me. She knew who she was dealing with." Truth has a name and roots in the past, so we remember it, but an impromptu lie is easily forgotten. (238-239)
==> Because it is an impromptu lie, the person who made it does not remember it, but the listener continues with a continuous memory of the past and present and remembers it. Just as a splendid flower withers, so does a lie, but the truth remains as a memory, becoming a seed and a tree. Doubt is growing into certainty.
These false stories we hear from loved ones pain us and, instead of being satisfied with enjoying the surface of human nature, lead us to delve more deeply into that awareness. Sadness permeates our hearts, thus forcing us to pierce through the truth with painful curiosity. This is where the truth that we feel we have no right to hide comes from, so the atheist on the verge of death, who has discovered the truth, is convinced of vanity, and is indifferent to honor, but uses the last few hours to announce the truth he has discovered. (240)
Uncertain jealousy writhes in the air. It is as uncertain as in a dream in which you go to find someone you knew in real life but cannot meet them because their house is empty, and so you worry that perhaps they are someone else and only borrowed the appearance of another person. (241)
If I were to die in an accident, I wouldn't really care," she says, which was possible because she was sure that she would not die. (244)
I remembered Albertine's expression when the two girls, or women of that kind, looked at her excessively in Balbec. I also remembered the pain I felt seeing such a lively gaze pass through her, like the gaze of a painter wanting to make a sketch. The face that was completely obscured by that gaze at that time, perhaps pretending not to see the contact of the gaze because I was there, perhaps passively or secretly erotically accepting the contact. There were times when Albertine would remain motionless for a moment before regaining her composure and speaking to me, smiling in the air with an expression that pretended to be natural but hid joy, as if taking a picture. (245)
Her slender, velvet gaze was fixed, closely adhered, and stuck to the body of the passing girl, penetrating so deeply that it seemed that if the gaze were removed, the skin would be peeled off as well. (246)
Jealousy with a blindfold is so powerless that it cannot find anything in the darkness that surrounds it, and not only that, but like the Danaïdes or Ixion, it must be restarted endlessly, and this very task is one of the punishments they receive. But if the two girls are not there, what impression will Léa, transformed, beautifully adorned, and intoxicated with the glory of success, give to Albertine? What dreams and desires will Léa give to Albertine, who is tired of a life that she cannot satisfy her desires and control in my house? Besides, although she doesn't know Léa, who knows if Albertine will go to the dressing room? (248)
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