Imagine a collage, an assemblage of the entire production of august artists, especially those of fin-de-siecle France, those upstarts and pillars of the establishment of the last days that we have since learned to label as “impressionists.” Imagine also this vast canvas repeated in multiple tones, so that not only does it present a vast, almost limitless expanse of color, detail, shape, of beautiful ladies with finer curtains, of gardens full of flowers of all kind. season, from the streets of Paris crowded with carriages that glow through the damp and murky nights, from the multi-colored lilies that float on the surface of the tranquil lakes or the tranquil streams of rural France, from the ballerinas performing their ballet or they rehearse their slim limbs at the bar, but also revisit each view from multiple angles in different colors, at different times, from different perspectives with different impressions. We seem to see the same things repeat themselves, repeatedly, but always different, always changed, always vivid. And imagine this presented not only in the bright colors of the original, but also in the imposed tones of the vividly remembered memory that knows each scene, but cannot fix the exact date, time, or shape, so that they re-form truly living structures. solid rebuilt. than the original eyes registered only partially. And then close those eyes, so that the images can be extracted from their memories, those indelible, but perhaps inaccurate, archived images that we have unwittingly collected by virtue of the unfinished act of living. And then we share that experience.
And then, in the author’s own words, the same goes for our own past. It is a vain work to try to recover it: all the efforts of our intellect must be useless. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of the intellect, in some material object (in the sensation that that material object will give us) that we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether or not we find it before we ourselves must die..
But the imperative is that we must try. We only get one shot at this moving target we call “life” and our target is, by its very nature, capricious. We are always unsure of the boundary between what we remember and what we imagine, especially when one merges with the other in that uncontrolled way, that imposed blurring confusion that inevitably results when we try to focus on a passing image and we only have a memory of its. momentary imprint on the mind to remember any detail that was thrown in.
And the result? The result is a passing stream, an ever-changing, ever-changing view that always comprised the same view, the same solid objects that once, or perhaps still, populated its shores. And, from the distance of time, who can be sure of what we feel? Who can be sure of the motive, the consequence, the intention or the ruse? Who can testify that those remembered words were spoken with love, hatred, respect, mockery, criticism, praise, or simply to pass the time that we now realize we never had? Is it an irony that it may last longer, as in an invitation to dinner with a family acquaintance, M. Legrandin?
Only the day before had he asked my parents to send me to dinner with him that very Sunday night. “Come keep your old friend company,” he had said. “Like the bouquet sent by a traveler from some land to which we will never go again, come and let me breathe from the distant country of your adolescence the aroma of those spring flowers among which I also used to roam, many years ago. Come with the primrose, with the canon’s beard, with the golden cup; come with the stone harvest, from which bouquets are made, oaths of love, in the Balzacian flora, come with that flower of the morning of the Resurrection, the Easter daisy, come with the snowballs of the guelder rose, which begin to embalm the alleys of your great-aunt’s garden with their fragrance before the last snows of Lent melt from their ground. Come with the glorious Lily silk dress, tight clothing for Solomon, and with the multicolored enamel of pansies, but come, above all, with the spring breeze, still refreshed by the last frosts of winter, moving away, for the sake of the two butterflies, what have you been waiting outside all morning. , the closed portals of the first Jerusalem were raised. “
At home the question was raised whether, all things considered, he should still be sent to dine with Mr. Legrandin.
The irony, then, leaves its mark, but not as deep as the scars left by the cuts of young love, obsession or jealousy. In a vast, detailed, and probably reconstructed recollection of M. Swann’s relationship with Odette, a woman he initially compares to an image from a Botticelli painting in the Sistine Chapel, we share the accelerated emotion of a man who becomes obsessed with sensual beauty. of a desirable and available woman, we euphemistically accompany him in the adjustment of the flowers that decorate his bodice and then we suffer the gnawing, destroying the doubts about his motives that arise from jealousy that encompasses everything and almost destroys it.
Of course, there is a lot of socializing. It would not be far from the truth to observe that these people spend more time worrying about who to specifically and justifiably include and exclude from a guest list than at work, in bed, or on the road. And decisions are generally based on class, that universal categorization and mark of quality that seems to permeate and stifle human society at any time and in any place, the very quality that revolutions might occasionally but unsuccessfully try to eradicate. And what happens at these gatherings is still primarily social, whatever the focus of the evening.
If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries or the Tristan Prelude, Madame Verdurin he protested, not because the music disliked him, but, on the contrary, because it made too violent an impression on him. “So you want me to have one of my headaches? You know that pretty well, it’s the same every time I play that. I know what awaits me. Tomorrow, when I want to get up, there is nothing to do!” If I wasn’t going to play, they would talk, and one of the friends, usually the painter who was in favor that year, “spun”, as M. Verdurin said, “a damn funny story that made them all break. laugh “, and especially Mrs. Verdurin, for whom so strong was her habit of taking figurative accounts of her emotions literally, Dr. Cottard, who was starting out in general practice,” would really have to come one day and set his jaw , who had been dislocated from laughing too much.
And this is a place and a time where no one lives life by halves, where no person is truly reticent when it comes to expressing their emotions, even when what is expressed with all sincerity may, at a later date, at least convey the partial feeling of excess. -statement. In his childhood he had been taught to caress and appreciate those sinuous long-necked creatures, Chopin’s phrases, so free, so flexible, so tactile, that they begin by looking for their final resting place somewhere beyond and far away from the direction. at which they started, the point they might be expected to reach, phrases that deviate in those fantastic paths to return more deliberately with a more premeditated reaction, with more precision, like in a crystal bowl that, if you hit it, it will ring and It will throb until you cry out loud in anguish to grab your heart.
Seeing this vast mosaic of stitched art, this mixture of people brought together by time and the filter of memory, can sometimes seem like taking a trip across the ocean in a small boat, equipped with too little sail, a boat that, often calmed down. , seems to be adrift. The real trick, without a doubt, is to relax and let yourself go. This is what life seems like.
