Marcel Proust’s Captives December 17, 2011
Posted by cantueso in philo102.trackback
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Swann is a wealthy art collector who falls in love with a beautiful girl of expensive habits. He chases and finances her until he almost breaks down under the strain.
Finally he discovers that he does not love her, but ends up marrying her.
The English translation is stuffy, but freely available:
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The Proust theorem:
Since most people believe more or less coherently in some ideal like justice, beauty, love, loyalty, something that does not seem to serve their practical interests, Proust reasoned like this:
If there is no immortal soul, then:
(quote)
“these notions which exist in our mind must be nothing either. We must perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable. “
(end of quote)
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This reflection is in “Swann in Love“:
Proust explains the same thing elsewhere: a work of art makes you happy because it strongly relates the present moment (of looking or listening) to a moment far away in the past. Thereby the soul feels that it is where it truly belongs, outside of time, above time, not subject to time, enjoying its immortality.
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The original French text:
« Par là, la phrase de Vinteuil avait [...] épousé notre condition mortelle, pris quelque chose d’humain qui était assez touchant. Son sort était lié à l’avenir, à la réalité de notre âme dont elle était un des ornements les plus particuliers, les mieux différenciés. Peut-être est-ce le néant qui est le vrai et tout notre rêve est-il inexistant, mais alors nous sentons qu’il faudra que ces phrases musicales, ces notions qui existent par rapport à lui, ne soient rien non plus. Nous périrons mais nous avons pour otages ces captives divines qui suivront notre chance. Et la mort avec elles a quelque chose de moins amer, de moins inglorieux, peut-être de moins probable. »
Marcel Proust, Un amour de Swann
The drawings are by Raphael Wünsch. The kid with his cell phone is by Gary Olsen.
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I love what Proust says about a work of art. Beautiful.
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To -30-
Yes, but don’t think he is a theologian of some kind. He was basically interested in psychology, and he loved to ridicule everybody’s character defects, especially his own.
You don’t have to warn about that translation, because Proust is always stuffy, but he is also mostly great fun, not as a philosopher, but as a psychologist:
“Renan says we must avoid friendship with individuals, Emerson that we should progressively change every friendship for a better….I am growing weary of insincerity and friendship, two things which are practically identical.”
He is very rarely stuffy in French, but very difficult to translate, and so you’ll have to read him in French.
He is funniest when he imitates women babbling about fashion or trying to deride each other. He understood that really well, likely with the help of introspection.
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