On page 24 of The Captive, Marcel is lying in bed after just having dismissed his girlfriend Albertine only a while before, and is wrapped up in his own \u201csolipsistic\u201d universe(solipsism: the philosophy that only the self exists). He had told Albertine that his reason for not venturing out with her was because his doctor forbade him to, a claim he admits to the reader is an out right lie. In fact, he says \u201cif it had been true, his instructions would have been powerless to prevent me from accompanying my mistress(22).\u201d In other words, if he had been told not to join her he would have done so just to be contumacious. His real reason for not accompanying her was due to his fear of exacerbating his already raging anxiety. \u201cWhenever I went out with Albertine, if she left my side for a moment I became anxious, began to imagine that she had spoken to or simply looked at someone.\u201d Being in the presence of his girlfriend provides him with far to many opportunities to over analyze her every move. Staying home and having her friends take her out allows him to defer that responsibility to them. <\/p>\n
As he lies in bed, Francois comes into his room to stoke his fire, which allows him to reintroduce the theme of sensory memory. The twigs which she threw onto the fire would create a scent which \u201ctraced traced round the fire place a magic circle within which, glimpsing myself pouring over a book at Combray\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Marcel is saying that the scent of the twigs only reaches a certain circumference around his fire, and thus it is only within that circle that the \u201cmagic\u201d of memory takes place. The recollection is so intense he can actually see himself reading as a child. Marcel goes on to explain that the act of remembrance is the most enjoyable for those with a chronic illness, because the \u201ctyranny\u201d of their sickness keeps them from venturing out and creating new memories that are similar: \u201cto seek in nature scenes that resemble those memories.\u201d He adds that people in such circumstances don\u2019t regard these memories as merely \u201cpictures,\u201d because they are convinced that they will soon be able to create these desirable circumstances in their future. Thus, they stare at their memories \u201cin a state of desire and appetite\u201d as if they are pleasures soon to come. I find the fact that Marcel seems to be claiming that the pleasure he gets from dwelling on the past is because he has not the ability to venture out and create his own memories to be rather irksome, because though he does have health problems, we know from his confession to us that he can in fact go out and do things. <\/p>\n
Marcel then says that the memory \u201crecreated out of my present self, the whole of that self, by virtue of an identical sensation, the child or youth who had first seen them.\u201d It is this sentence that reveals of \u201cmagical\u201d Marcel truly feels that invisible circle is. He experiences a transformation, or rather a regression to a past form of himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On page 24 of The Captive, Marcel is lying in bed after just having dismissed his girlfriend Albertine only a while before, and is wrapped up in his own “solipsistic” universe(solipsism: the philosophy that only the self exists). He had… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}