On page 615 the narrator has arrived at a “small party” which he has convinced his friend the painter Elstir to host in order that he might finally meet the allusive quarry he has been insatiably obsessing over for many weeks if not months. Before he arrives at this party, the narrator reflects on the role of willpower versus the fluctuating and often fickle function of the intelligence and sensibility.
My brain assessed this pleasure at a very low value now that it was assured. But, inside my will did not for a moment share this illusion, that will which is the persevering and unfalteringly faithful, toiling incessantly, and with no thought for the variability of the self, to ensure that the self may never lack what is needed (p.614).
As with much of the novel, Proust often investigates the many different facets of the self and how human nature is inundated with multiple natures and identities, sometimes conflicting with one another. In this section, the narrator acknowledges the danger of succumbing to his intelligence and sensibility, which are lazy task-masters of his subconscious; urging him not to go to the party.
While, at the moment when we are about to start on an eagerly awaited journey, our intelligence and our sensibility begin to ask themselves whether it is really worth the trouble…(p. 614).
However, the narrator’s will is there, behind the scene tirelessly laboring to keep him physically on the path toward the goal. Willpower becomes the influence through which the narrator strives to inflict direction on his actions and control over his vacillating emotions. Proust is highlighting willpower’s ability to control behavior, sometimes passively behind the scenes, in which it becomes an integral and almost foundational part of a person’s personality and motivations.
…but since [willpower] is silent, gives no account of its actions, it seems almost non-existent; it is by its dogged determination that the other constituent parts of our personality are led…(p. 614).
In the end the narrator’s willpower succeeds in overcoming the other aspects of his character in which he calls “lazy”. However we can speculate that other emotions such as fear, anxiety and lack of self-confidence may also be imposing their ambitions upon the narrator, perhaps even mislabeled as “intelligence and sensibility”.
Once the narrator arrives at the party, Proust yet again, dives into the complexity of our cognitive perception, when the narrator is struck by an unfamiliar impression of Albertine. This visual depiction of a girl supposedly to be Albertine is inconsistent with the image he has so painstakingly constructed in his own mind. Here, Proust demonstrates the ability of our minds to diverge from reality and flavor our perceptions with our own colorful filter. In other words, the narrator has spent weeks constructing and fantasizing about a girl he has only observed from afar, the Albertine he creates is modeled from his own desires and identity. Like everything we encounter, Albertine is an example of how our ego interacts with the external world through perception.
When I arrived at Elstir’s a few minutes later, I thought at first that Mlle Simonet was not in the studio. There was certainly a girl sitting there in a silk frock, bareheaded, but one whose marvelous hair, whose nose, whose complexion, meant nothing to me, in whom I did not recognize the human entity that I has extracted from a young cyclist in a polo-cap strolling past between myself and the sea (p.615).
However this important moment of conflicted internal and external recognition, is immediately dismissed by the narrator as he becomes drawn into the excitement of the social gathering. Proust now abruptly shifts course to feature another example of human nature, as he describes how the narrator, young and impetuous, is immediately caught up in the experience of the party.
On entering any social gathering, when one is young, one loses consciousness of one’s old self, one becomes a different man, every drawing-room being a fresh universe in which, coming under the sway of a new moral perspective, we fasten our attention, as if they were to matter to us for all time, on people, dances, card-tables, all of which we shall have forgotten by the morning(p.615).
The narrator navigates the studio, moving though introductions, consuming strawberry tarts and listening intently to music. All the while avoiding the entire purpose of the gathering: to meet Albertine. Although Proust does not come out and say it, the narrator seems to be, through procrastination, prolonging the meeting. It seems as though in this moment, he is faced with the inevitable answer to his quest: who is Albertine?
But is it not thus, in the bustle of daily life, with every true happiness, every great sorrow? In a room full of other people we receive from the women we love the answer, auspicious or fatal, which we have been awaiting for the last year. But we must go on talking, ideas come flocking one after another, unfolding a smooth surface which is pricked now and then at the very most by a dull throb from the memory, infinitely more profound but very narrow, that misfortunes has come upon us. If, instead of misfortunes, it is happiness, it may be that not until many years have elapsed will we recall that the most important event in our emotional life occurred without our having time to give it any prolonged attention or even to become aware of it almost, at a social gathering to which we has gone solely in expectation of that event (p. 616).
When the ultimate moment arrives, and Elstir asks the narrator to come with him to meet Albertine, he delays by eating a coffee éclair and talking to a man who he ends up giving the rose from his buttonhole to. (This becomes important later when he is surprised that Albertine recalls these actions from her own memory and perspective) The narrator gives these actions credit by recognizing that pleasure is like photography, and can be captured within one’s own memory filter to relive at a later time.
What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people (p.616).
As the narrator physically advances toward Albertine he mentally approaches her in stages of impression, from the impersonal facts such as her family name and connections, to the physical mole on her check and inflamed temple and finally to her individual character by way of her use of the phrase “perfectly”. Each stage, of their meeting, bringing the illusionary Albertine closer to clashing with the original. The narrator is struck by a new view both optical and cognitive of Albertine, one that is very different from what he had constructed from his own beliefs.
If this incarnation of ourselves in the person who seemed to differ most from us is what does most to modify the appearance of the person to whom we have just been introduced, the form of that person still remains quite vague; and we may wonder whether it will turn out to be a god, a table or a basin. But, as nimble as the wax-modellers who will fashion a bust before our eyes in five minutes, the few words which the stranger is now going to say to us will substantiate that form and give it something positive and final that will exclude all the hypotheses in which our desire and our imagination has been indulging(p. 617).
The narrator now reflects on these “optical errors” in which invoked the entire formation of his imagined Albertine. He is forced to interlay these new true impressions with the illusionary ones, slowly letting any false assumption fall away. However the narrator recognizes the joy that the false Albertine brought him, and this “movement” toward replacing her with the real one.
And yet, whatever the inevitable disappointments that is must bring in its train, this movement towards what we have only glimpsed, what we have been free to dwell upon and imagine at out leisure, this movement is the only one that is wholesome for the senses, that whets their appetite (p. 620).
When the narrator arrives at home, he reflects on the encounter, using voluntary memory to acknowledging the differences between the real and the false Albertine. He uses the phrase “sleight of hand” to signify this combination of both Albertines in his memory. Although they are significantly different, he projects the love of the false girl onto the real one so that he can admiring the new qualities that the he has discovered in Albertine that day.
In spite of which, since I had, in my conversations with Elstir, identified her with Albertine, I felt myself in honour bound to fulfil to the real the promises of love made to the imagined Albertine (p. 621).
The narrator then returns to relating memory to photography, explaining how each moment is solidified within our minds separately and without a specific order. This allows for moments to be recalled in any order in which they are triggered, and thus in this case allows for a natural dilution between the false memories of the imaginary Albertine and these recent ones of the real one. This mix creates the impression, and invokes feelings for a new Albertine in which embodies both real and imaginary traits. The narrator, once obsessed with a replica Albertine, forged by his imagination and fueled by the thrilling ambiguity of not knowing the real one, now is confronted with challenge of merging the two. How will the real Albertine live up to the imaginary one, only time will tell.
And then, since memory begins at once to record photographs independent of one another, eliminates every link, any kind of sequence between the scenes portrayed in the collection which it exposes to our view, the most recent does not necessarily destroy or cancel those that came before. Confronted with the common place and touching Albertine to whom I had spoken that afternoon, I still saw the other mysterious Albertine outlines against the sea. These were now memories, that is to say pictures neither of which now seemed to me any truer than the other (p.621).