PROUST The Sweet Cheat Gone : Grief and Oblivion (Remembrance of Things Past)
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past (In Search of Lost Time),
translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)
The Sweet Cheat Gone : GRIEF AND OBLIVION
1294 Mademoiselle Albertine has gone!
1295 The first thing to be done was to read Albertine’s letter
1297 This calamity was the greatest that I had experienced in my
1298 When I vowed to myself that Albertine would be back
1299 Suffering, the prolongation of a spiritual shock
1300 The spirit in which Albertine had left me
1301 As for the means of bringing Albertine back
1302 The reader may remember that when I decided to live with
1303 Knowing that Saint-Loup was in Paris I had sent for him
1304 You are sure,” Robert asked me
1305 When it was possible that a telegram might have come
1306 Presently, as Saint-Loup remained silent
1307 Since Manon returned to Des Grieux
1309 No doubt, just as I had said in the past to Albertine
1310 As this letter seemed to me to be certain of its effect
1311 Time passes, and gradually everything that we have said
1312 I have said that oblivion was beginning to perform
1313 While she was doing Albertine’s room
1314 If, however, morning, noon and night
1315 Why should I have supposed that Albertine did not care for
1316 My dear, thank you for all the nice things
1317 Albertine’s letter did not help matters in any way
1319 I forsook all pride with regard to Albertine
1320 For the death of Albertine
1321 So, then, my life was entirely altered
1322 I asked Françoise the time
1323 How slow the day is in dying on these interminable summer
1324 Presently the sounds from the streets would begin
1325 No doubt these nights that are so short continue
1326 With the result that these several years
1327 How could she have seemed dead to me
1328 If I had found it difficult to imagine that Albertine
1329 Atmospheric changes, provoking other changes
1330 All of a sudden it was an impression
1331 Sometimes I came in collision
1332 Of course, since I entertained doubts
1333 What filled my heart now was
1334 This room in which we used to dine
1335 One morning I thought that I could see
1336 Furthermore, our mistake is our failure to value
1337 All these so pleasant moments
1338 And, to tell the truth, when I had ever possessed it
1339 How she used to hasten to see me at Balbec
1340 And yet those painful, those ineluctable truths
1341 At any rate I was glad that, before she died
1342 Why had she not said to me: I have those tastes
1343 My jealous curiosity as to what Albertine
1344 If she could have known what was about to happen
1345 I had not yet received any news from Aimé
1346 Albertine might indeed exist in my memory
1347 Monsieur will kindly forgive me for not having written
1348 To understand how deeply these words penetrated my being
1349 At last I saw before my eyes, in that arrival of Albertine
1350 No doubt it was because in that silent
1351 I saw myself astray in life
1352 The moments which I had spent with this Albertine
1353 And now Albertine, liberated once more
1354 At other times my grief assumed so many forms
1355 There are in certain affections secondary accidents
1356 If, again, this withdrawal of my different impressions
1357 Moreover these revivals of my love for Albertine
1358 Moreover a word did not even need to be connected
1359 All day long, I continued to converse with Albertine
1360 I tried at times to take an interest in the newspapers
1361 No doubt an incident such as this of the Buttes-Chaumont
1362 For the first time she seemed to me beautiful
1363 While Albertine was alive
1364 Novelists sometimes pretend in an introduction
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