In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

by Marcel Proust

  He had just put a final dab of paint on his flowers and I wasted another moment in looking at them. This wasting of a moment did not redound at all to my credit, as I knew that by now the girls would have left the beach; but even if I had known for sure that they were still there and that this waste of minutes would make me miss them, I would still have looked at the painting, as I would have told myself that Elstir’s flowers were more important to him than my meeting the girls. Though my grandmother’s nature was the exact opposite of my complete egoism, it could be reflected in mine. In a situation where someone who inspired indifference in me, but for whom I had always feigned affection or respect, might be caused some bother and I might be exposed to a danger, I would have been incapable of not sympathizing with him and treating his nuisance as something important, and the threat to me as unimportant, because that would be how I would imagine our respective positions seeming to him. To be precise, it was more than that: not just ignoring the danger I was in, but wilfully exposing myself to it, while trying to make sure, even if this increased my own chances of being harmed, that the other person would be able to avoid being put out. This can be explained by several reasons, none of which say much in my favour. One of them is that, though I have managed to reason myself, in theory, into the belief that I am attached to my own life, there have been times when, beset by emotional problems, or mere nervous anxieties, some of them so childish that I would not dare speak of them here, an unforeseen circumstance has arisen, bringing with it a risk of death for me, and this new consideration has actually appeared of such slight consequence to me, compared to the others, that I have welcomed it with a feeling of relief approaching exhilaration. Though I am the least intrepid man in the world, I have in this way experienced something which I had contrived to convince myself was so foreign to my nature as to be inconceivable: the intoxication of danger. But in the face of danger, mortal danger, even if I am going through a period of total calm and happiness, I would find it impossible not to shield someone else from it by putting myself in the dangerous position. Having learned from a significant number of experiences that I always acted in that way, and with pleasure, I discovered to my shame that, contrary to what I had always believed and affirmed, I was very sensitive to the opinions of others. Such unconfessed self-importance has no connection, however, with conceit or pride: the satisfactions afforded by either of these sentiments could never tempt me, and I have always abstained from them. But though I have always been able to conceal from certain people those petty advantages of my own which might have made them see me as slightly less paltry, I have never been able to resist the pleasure of letting them see that I am more concerned to avert death for them than for myself. My motive being self-esteem and not virtue, I see it as quite natural that their own behaviour in every situation should be quite different. I do not in the slightest blame them for this, as I might do if I had been motivated by a conception of duty, which would then appear to me to be as binding on them as on myself. On the contrary, I think it is entirely sensible of them to look out for themselves, though I cannot help subordinating my own interest to theirs, and though I must say this does appear singularly absurd and blameworthy, when I consider that the lives of many of those whose bodies I shield with mine when a bomb drops are even less valuable than my own. Anyway, at the time of my visit to Elstir, the day of my discovery of that difference in value was still far in the future; and there was no danger, but only the importance I saw (a forewarning of the pernicious self-esteem) in not appearing to think the pleasure I was longing for was more important than his task of finishing his water-colour. He finished it at last. As soon as we went outside, I noticed it was not as late as I had thought, the days being long at that time of year; and we walked down to the esplanade. I racked my brains to think of ways of keeping him near the place where I thought there was still a chance that the girls might appear. I pointed to the cliffs near by and kept asking him questions about them, in the hope of making him forget the time and keeping him there. I suspected we might have a better chance of catching up with the little gang if we went towards the far end of the beach. ‘Perhaps we could look at those cliffs from a little closer,’ I said, knowing that one of the girls often walked off in that direction. ‘And as we walk, perhaps you could tell me about Carquethuit? How I would love to go to Carquethuit!’ I added, without thinking that what was so novel and powerful in Harbour at Carquethuit probably came from the vision of the painter rather than from some special quality in the place itself. ‘Since seeing your painting, that’s the place I would really like to see – as well as the Pointe du Raz, of course, but that would be quite a journey from here. – In any case, Elstir said, even if it wasn’t nearer to Balbec, I’d still be inclined to recommend Carquethuit. The Pointe du Raz is magnificent, but it’s really just your typical tall cliffs on the coast of Normandy or Brittany, which you’re quite familiar with. But Carquethuit is completely different, with its rocks and its low sandy beach. I’ve never seen anywhere else like it in France – it looks more like somewhere in Florida. A most curious place, and very wild country too. In between Clitourps and Nehomme – you know what a wilderness all that part is, with the lovely line of the beaches. Hereabouts the line of the beaches is nondescript. But in those parts, it’s full of grace, very sweet.’

  Daylight was fading; it was time to go. I was walking back towards the villa with Elstir when, with the suddenness of Mephistopheles materializing before Faust, there appeared at the far end of the avenue – seemingly the simple objectification, unreal and diabolical, of the temperament opposite to my own, of the almost barbaric and cruel vitality which, in my feebleness, my excess of painful sensitivity and intellectuality, I lacked – a few spots of the essence which it was impossible to mistake for any other, a few of the stars from the zoophytic cluster of young girls, who, although they looked as though they had not seen me, were without a doubt at that very moment making sarcastic remarks about me. Seeing that a meeting between them and us was inevitable, and knowing that Elstir would call me over, I turned my back, like a bather as a large wave comes in: I stopped, letting my illustrious companion walk on without me, and stood outside the antique shop which we happened to be passing, stooping towards its window as though fascinated by something. I was not sorry to be able to appear to have something other than the girls to think about, and I could vaguely foresee already that, when Elstir called me over to introduce me, I would put on the interrogative look which reveals not so much surprise as the desire to appear surprised – each of us being as bad at acting as our witness is good at reading faces – that I would even go so far as to point at my own chest as though asking, ‘Who? Me?’ and then walk quickly over to them, my head bent in docile obedience, and my expression a cold mask hiding annoyance at being dragged away from my study of old china, merely to be introduced to people whom I had no desire to know. I went on gazing into the shop-window, waiting for the moment when Elstir would shoot my name at me, like a harmless, expected bullet. The certainty of being introduced to the girls had made me not only feign indifference towards them, but feel it. The pleasure of their acquaintance, having become inevitable, was compressed and reduced; it now seemed a smaller thing than the pleasures of chatting with Saint-Loup, having dinner with my grandmother, going on outings in the surrounding country which, because of this imminent connection with people who very likely had little interest in historical architecture, I would feel reluctantly obliged to forgo. Also, the joy awaiting me was diminished not only by the imminence, but by the incongruity, of its coming to pass. The order of the images which we form in our minds, one above the other, is maintained by the functioning of laws as precise as those of hydrostatics, but the proximity of an event can disturb it. Elstir was about to call my name – but this was nothing like the scene in which, down on the beach, up in my bedroom, I had so often pictured my first encounter with the little gang of girls! What was about to happen was a different event, one for which I was unprepared:
in it, I could recognize neither my desire nor its object; I was almost sorry to have gone out for a walk with Elstir. But the main reason for the shrinking of the pleasure to which I had been so looking forward was the knowledge that nothing could now prevent me from enjoying it. It only went back to its previous dimensions, as though by the working of an elastic force, when that knowledge ceased to constrain it; and that occurred at the moment when, happening to glance round, I saw Elstir just a few feet away, taking his leave of the group of girls. Something in the face of the one standing closest to him, plump and illuminated by the bright look in her eyes, made me think of a cake with a bit of sky in it: her eyes, even when motionless, gave an impression of mobility, as happens on blowy days when the air, though invisible, shows the rate at which it is skimming over the sky-blue surface. For an instant her eyes passed across mine, like those flowing skies on stormy days when clouds moving at different speeds come close, touch, then part: they do not meet or ever become one. In a momentary intersection of eyes we stood there, each in ignorance of the promises or threats for the future that the other silent passing continent might contain. Only at the instant when her glance lowered, without slowing in its movement, did it fade slightly, as on a clear windy night, the moon is swept behind a cloud, veiling its brightness, then immediately reappears. Elstir parted from the girls without calling me over. They turned up a side-street and he came towards me. It was a fiasco.

  I have said that, on that day, Albertine did not appear to be the same as on previous occasions, and that each time I saw her she was to seem different. But at that particular moment, I sensed also that certain changes in the appearance, the importance or the size of a person can be explained by the variability of the factors which may interpose between us and the other. One of the most potent in that regard is a belief in our mind: on that evening, within a matter of seconds, my belief that I was going to meet Albertine, then the annihilation of that belief, had made her almost insignificant to me, then infinitely precious; and some years later, the belief that she was faithful to me, followed by disbelief, would have analogous results.

  At Combray, depending on the time of day, and on whether I was entering one or other of the two dominant modes of my sensitivity, I had already experienced the decrease or increase of my sorrow at being parted from my mother, which all afternoon could be as imperceptible as moonlight while the sun shines, but after nightfall, banishing recent memory, would cast its unhappy pallor into my sickly soul. But on that day, seeing Elstir bidding goodbye to the girls without calling me over, I realized that the variable measure we apply to joys and sadness may be affected not only by such fluctuation between two states of mind, but also by a transformation in invisible beliefs, which may, for instance, make death seem insignificant, because they shed a light of unreality on it, enabling us to see our attendance at a musical evening as imperative, though it would lose its charm for us if the belief colouring that evening with inevitability were suddenly to dissolve because we learned we were just about to be guillotined; it is true that something in me, the will, knew this about the importance of belief; but what is known to the will remains inefficacious if it is unknown to the mind and the sensitivity: they can believe in good faith that we wish to leave a woman, when only the will is privy to our attachment to her. They are fooled by the belief that we will see her again in a moment. But let that belief vanish, in the realization that she has just gone and will never come back, and the mind and sensitivity, having lost their bearings, are afflicted with a fit of madness, and the paltry pleasure of being with her expands to fill everything in life.

  A variation in belief can also cause the death of love. Love, mobile and pre-existing, focusses on the image of a certain woman simply because she will be almost certainly unattainable. From then on, one thinks not so much about her, it being difficult to imagine her anyway, as about possible ways of getting to know her. A whole process of anxieties comes into play, which is enough to fixate our love on her, though she is the barely known object of it. Love having become immense, we never reflect on how small a part the woman herself plays in it. And if, as had happened to me when I saw Elstir stop beside the girls, we have sudden cause to lose our feeling of anxiety or uneasiness, since our love amounts to nothing more than that, our love too seems to have vanished at the very moment when we come into possession of a prize the value of which we have never really thought about. What did I know of Albertine? One or two profiles of her against the sea, definitely less lovely than those of women by Veronese, women whom, if my feelings were motivated by aesthetic considerations, I ought to have preferred to her. Could they be motivated by other considerations, since, once the anxiety abated, I was left possessing nothing but these mute profiles? Every day since I had first seen Albertine, I had entertained thousands of thoughts about her, I had carried on, with what I called ‘her’, an extended interior conversation, in which I had questions put to her and had her answer them, think and act; and in the endless series of imagined Albertines who occupied my head one after the other, for hours on end, the real Albertine, the one glimpsed down at the esplanade, was merely the forerunner, like an actress, the star who, having created a part, hands it over after the very first performances to others. This real Albertine was little more than an outline: everything else that had been added to her was of my own making, for our own contribution to our love – even if judged solely from the point of view of quantity – is greater than that of the person we love. This is true of love even in its most effective forms. Often very little suffices not only for love to form, but to subsist, even after it has attained its fulfilment through the flesh. A former drawing-teacher of my grandmother’s had had a daughter with an obscure mistress. The latter died soon after the birth of the child; and this was such a heartbreak to the drawing-teacher that he did not long survive her. During the final months of his life, my grandmother and some ladies from Combray, who had never so much as wished to refer in his presence to the woman, with whom he had never officially lived and who had occupied little space in his life, decided to contribute to a fund that would give the little girl a life annuity. It was my grandmother’s proposal; but some ladies proved reluctant: Was the child really worth it? Was she actually the daughter of the man who believed he was her father? One can never be sure, with women like her mother … However, it was decided; and the child came to thank them: she was ugly and bore a marked resemblance to the old drawing-teacher, thus dispelling all doubts. Her hair being her best feature, one of the ladies said to the father, who had brought the child, ‘What lovely hair!’ My grandmother added, thinking that, the fallen woman being now dead and the drawing-teacher almost dead, there could be no harm in alluding to past events of which everyone had feigned ignorance at the time, ‘It must run in the family. Did her mother have such lovely hair?’ To which the father gave the guileless reply: ‘I don’t know – I only ever saw her wearing a hat.’