Haley VandenHazel<\/p>\n
In Search of Lost Time<\/p>\n
Close Reading<\/p>\n
14 May 2015<\/p>\n
To begin, I think it\u2019s noteworthy to remember that this edition of The Fugitive<\/em> is not only written by Proust but translated and revised by others. Initially I found this aggravating that Proust\u2019s death stopped him from making the final edits of his last three volumes. But then I think maybe it would have been his last laugh; giving us yet another layer or perspective to sort through. After a bit of research, I found that the most recent edition of the title is Albertine Disparu; which translated into English means Albertine Gone. Obviously, our translation today has rather translated the initial title. In an online Geocity archive, the author quotes, \u201cOn a fairly superficial level, the title chosen by the translators may seem misleading: it is only for the first few dozen pages that we think that Albertine has run away. But then both the French title and The Fugitive<\/em> have a deeper meaning, as the narrator\u2019s memories of his lover begin to disappear from his imagination, becoming fugitive thoughts.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n When it comes to the themes in Proust, they all seem to be facilitated through the narrator\u2019s experiences with love. In my analysis of the narrator\u2019s comprehensive view of love; I believe he would say that love is good in that it is beautiful, breath-taking, motivating, gratifying, and exhilarating. And that love is bad in that is horrifying, painful, destructive, and all-consuming. But more than anything, the narrator would say that it is strong and it is enduring; leaving an impact on the way one sees the world forever. But like everything, it is ever-moving and ever-changing. All of this movement appears to contribute to the theme between The Captive <\/em>and The Fugitive<\/em>. There seems to be this ebb and flow between enduring and overcoming his loss. We see progress then we see retreat; \u201cI did not understand any better than before why Albertine had left me\u201d (837).<\/p>\n Up to this volume, we see loves acceleration, now; at last, such as a patient taking their first breath, preceding their arrival out of a coma, we are finally able to see the first genuine signs of a deceleration of love. As one could imagine, in the Proustian world, love dies hard. But bit by bit we see the narrator being restored to emotional stability; or as he would say \u201creturning to the state of indifference\u201d (754).<\/p>\n At the beginning of The Fugitive<\/em>, I was most compelled by the way Proust explains the act of forgetting, healing, and letting-go through objectivity, imagery, and most prominently through a system of moving entities. There seems to be no limit to the different forms that Proust uses to portray these concepts.<\/p>\n On page 754, the narrator explains that moving on is not always an act of moving forward. \u201cAnd if returning to the state of indifference from which one started, one cannot avoid covering in the reverse direction the distances one had traversed in order to arrive at love\u201d (754). He is sure to point out that, the big difference is that \u201cthey do not necessarily take the same routes\u201d (754).<\/p>\n On the bottom of page 755, the narrator compares his love to the arrangement of music notes as he quotes, \u201cAnd now, aware that, day by day, one element after another of my love was vanishing, the jealous side of it, then some other, drifting gradually back in a vague remembrance to the first tentative beginnings, it was my love that, in the scattered notes of the little phrase, I seemed to see disintegrating before my eyes\u201d (756). This takes us back to Swann in love when the \u201clittle phrase\u201d was resembled or reminded Swann of falling in love with Odette.<\/p>\n In the middle of page 757, we see a beautiful picture of a spirit. \u201cOnce again, as when I had ceased to see Gilberte, the love of women arose in me, relieved of any exclusive associations with a particular woman already loved, and floated like those essences that have been liberated by previous destructions and stray suspended in the springtime air, asking only to be reunited with a new creature\u201d (757).<\/p>\n At the top of page 758, Proust describes the movement in and the movement out to which, \u201call of them seemed to me Albertines\u201d (758). \u00a0At the bottom of page 758, Proust explains this added weight to his heart.<\/p>\n I think this idea of movement is really important but I am finding it complex to comprehend how exactly it relates to memory. I\u2019ve considered that I am potentially missing the entire point that Proust is trying to make, or I just won\u2019t understand until the end. Movement is clearly important. The biggest correlation I am currently seeing is that time is a continuously flowing duration. What is Proust trying to say through all of this? Habit and time seem to pain the narrator and strip him of life\u2019s joy and beauty when he is falling in love\u2026 do they now aid him as he tries to get over Albertine? Is Proust seeing goodness in his greatest enemies? Is he appreciating the comfort of moving not up with pleasure or down with pain but straight with indifference?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> “OoCities – Geocities Archive \/ Geocities Mirror.” OoCities – Geocities Archive \/ Geocities Mirror. Oocities, Oct. 2009. Web. 14 May 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Haley VandenHazel In Search of Lost Time Close Reading 14 May 2015 To begin, I think it’s noteworthy to remember that this edition of The Fugitive is not only written by Proust but translated and revised by others. Initially I… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056"}],"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\/1122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}