1338 - Et, à vrai dire, je ne l’avais jamais possédé

Et, à vrai dire, je ne l’avais jamais possédé que parce que j’avais voulu me figurer que je le possédais. Je n’avais pas commis seulement l’imprudence, en regardant Albertine et en la logeant dans mon cœur, de la faire vivre au dedans de moi, ni cette autre imprudence de mêler un amour familial au plaisir des sens. J’avais voulu aussi me persuader que nos rapports étaient l’amour, que nous pratiquions mutuellement les rapports appelés amour, parce qu’elle me rendait docilement les baisers que je lui donnais, et, pour avoir pris l’habitude de le croire, je n’avais pas perdu seulement une femme que j’aimais mais une femme qui m’aimait, ma sœur, mon enfant, ma tendre maîtresse. Et, en somme, j’avais eu un bonheur et un malheur que Swann n’avait pas connus, car justement, tout le temps qu’il avait aimé Odette et en avait été si jaloux, il l’avait à peine vue, pouvant si difficilement, à certains jours où elle le décommandait au dernier moment, aller chez elle. Mais après il l’avait eue à lui, devenue sa femme, et jusqu’à ce qu’il mourût. Moi, au contraire, tandis que j’étais si jaloux d’Albertine, plus heureux que Swann je l’avais eue chez moi. J’avais réalisé en vérité ce que Swann avait rêvé si souvent et qu’il n’avait réalisé matériellement que quand cela lui était indifférent. Mais enfin Albertine, je ne l’avais pas gardée comme il avait gardé Odette. Elle s’était enfuie, elle était morte. Car jamais rien ne se répète exactement et les existences les plus analogues et que, grâce à la parenté des caractères et à la similitude des circonstances, on peut choisir pour les représenter comme symétriques l’une à l’autre restent en bien des points opposées.

En perdant la vie je n’aurais pas perdu grand’chose ; je n’aurais plus perdu qu’une forme vide, le cadre vide d’un chef-d’œuvre. Indifférent à ce que je pouvais désormais y faire entrer, mais heureux et fier de penser à ce qu’il avait contenu, je m’appuyais au souvenir de ces heures si douces, et ce soutien moral me communiquait un bien-être que l’approche même de la mort n’aurait pas rompu.



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1338 And, to tell the truth, when I had ever possessed it

Submitted by PROUST on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 21:15.

Marcel Proust

"Remembrance of Things Past" (In Search of Lost Time),

translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)

And, to tell the truth, when I had ever possessed it, it had been only because I had liked to think of myself as possessing it. I had not merely committed the imprudence, when I cast my eyes upon Albertine and lodged her in my heart, of making her live within me, nor that other imprudence of combining a domestic affection with sensual pleasure. I had sought also to persuade myself that our relations were love, that we were mutually practising the relations that are called love, because she obediently returned the kisses that I gave her, and, having come in time to believe this, I had lost not merely a woman whom I loved but a woman who loved me, my sister, my child, my tender mistress. And in short, I had received a blessing and a curse which Swann had not known, for after all during the whole of the time in which he had been in love with Odette and had been so jealous of her, he had barely seen her, having found it so difficult, on certain days when she put him off at the last moment, to gain admission to her. But afterwards he had had her to himself, as his wife, and until the day of his death. I, on the contrary, while I was so jealous of Albertine, more fortunate than Swann, had had her with me in my own house. I had realised as a fact the state of which Swann had so often dreamed and which he did not realise materially until it had ceased to interest him. But after all I had not managed to keep Albertine as he had kept Odette. She had fled from me, she was dead. For nothing is ever repeated exactly, and the most analogous lives which, thanks to the kinship of the persons and the similarity of the circumstances, we may select in order to represent them as symmetrical, remain in many respects opposite.

By losing my life I should not have lost very much; I should have lost now only an empty form, the empty frame of a work of art. Indifferent as to what I might in the future put in it, but glad and proud to think of what it had contained, I dwelt upon the memory of those so pleasant hours, and this moral support gave me a feeling of comfort which the approach of death itself would not have disturbed.