"I did not want to abstractly analyse this evolution of a thought, but rather reacreate it, make the reader live it." -- Marcel Proust, letter to Jacques Riviere.

"If I am not better than others, at least I am different." - Rousseau, Confessions

The sixth volume of the Search, La Fugitive (or Albertine disparue, translated as The Fugitive, The Sweet Cheat Gone, or Albertine Gone), is based on a manuscript that Proust was feverishly working on in the weeks before his death. This unfinished quality is evident both in the text and in the numerous continuity quibbles, but one could even question whether a dying, heavily medicated man can be taken as a reliable author - even of his own work! Anyhow, despite these complications (and the fact that scholars argue that the work should be only about half its length, since Proust crossed out dozens upon dozens of pages and planned to make Albertine's flight even more duplicitous), I still found this book a welcome return to form after The Captive, which will hopefully assuage some of dear readers who express displeasure with my previous review. (For newcomers to the journey, my previous reviews can be found: Un Deux Trois Quatre Cinq.)

So, shall we continue?

"One does not possess a picture because it hangs in one's dining room if one is incapable of understanding it.

The novel is in four parts, each of which improves upon the previous. Grieving and Forgetting is, truly, only about the first of those words, as non-Marcel suffers from the most arduous break-up in history that doesn't involve Archie and Betty. What makes the book much more captivating (sorry, that's the last time I'll pull that pun!) than the previous instalment in the Albertine books is that the narrator is forced to act rather than simply think. With his beloved having left, he is plunged into a darkness from which he can only escape by forgetting and, as he begins to realise, forgetting can only happen once habit has found new hobbies which can become new vocations which can become the new normal. Of course, he's still obsessed with the "gay panic" that characterised The Captive, but now he is forced to examine his own actions, and ultimately seek out, if not answers, friends and companionship: a recovery.

Early in the novel, Proust makes reference to moments in life where beauty and trouble are "intertwined like Wagnerian leitmotifs". Despite several reference to the German behemoth, this was the first time I'd explicitly connected the leitmotif with the Search and it really makes perfect sense, doesn't it? The Fugitive feels a bit like it could have been the ending to the work, in that it brings back many of the series' earlier characters, uniting them in unexpected connexions, and reminding the narrator of the many roads not taken. Many of the former icons of Paris are now decrepit and wearisome to him (some of them are medical marvels, it seems, since they were killed off in The Captive and yet have returned - through the magic of the author's early death - to life!), and everyone is beginning to learn truths they had earlier ignored. For the narrator, he begins to get some of the answers regarding Albertine's tastes, from Andrée particularly, but these answers just provide further questions: did Albertine truly love him? And, if so, how can her love be explained in light of her answers? The mystery here goes some way to justifying why Albertine had to remain such a shadowy figure in the previous novels, but I still believe that decision was the undoing of The Captive and parts of Sodom too. The implication here - backed up, I think, by the condensed but charming BBC Radio adaptation - is that Albertine relied on the narrator, needed him, genuinely loved him. Like many cheats before and since, she may well have sought out others to fulfill her sexual desires and yearnings she did not connect with him, but that did not necessarily change the nature or strength of her feelings. It's a wonder no-one has yet written a post-modern retelling of the story from Albertine's viewpoint, isn't it? (Note to self.)

It was not Albertine alone who was a succession of moments, it was also myself.

The reveals about Albertine are beautifully rendered, although occasionally betraying some of that monomaniacal exhaustion of the previous volume. The comparison of her love to the sonata by Vinteuil is particularly inspired, and the vision of this man "suffering from a love that no longer existed" is poignant. Nonetheless, it's good to get the narrator out of the house, even if at first he is simply sending his henchmen, Robert and Aimé, to find out more for him. Gradually, many of Proust's earlier conceits which were either confusing or ambiguous to contemporary readers are being explained, with scenes from earlier volumes taking on shocking new meaning. Even the realisation that the narrator's naïve belief that Robert de Saint-Loup was 100% upstanding, as if anyone could be, is challenged and asks one to revisit the niggling moments where he has behaved unusually, often on the fringes of a scene.

Still, one thing that intrigues about the volume is that Proust remains subtle to the point of coy regarding the narrator's sexual experiences. Aside from that teenaged tussling with Gilberte and some enjoyable romps with Albertine when the latter happened to be, awkwardly, asleep, we don't really have much information on how far he tends to go. When it comes to describing same-sex action, Proust is far less shy (and the foot fetishes of certain laundry-girls get a workout here), but the coupling of male and female is generally spoken of in a roundabout way - ironically the early 20th century English translators of Ancient Roman & Greek texts would often translate the naughty parts into another language, often French, so that they wouldn't ruffle the delicate sensibilities of the reader - or, more importantly, of the person sitting next to the reader on a train! Proust speaks here of "semi-carnal" relations at one point, and of his frequenting of brothels, not to mention one apparently humorous incident in which he is almost charged with child molestation due to the casual act of taking a young girl home with him, only to be saved by a police officer who perhaps shares his tastes, and manages to cover the matter up. (!!!!) Whether this is deliberate subtlety that went too far, or a squeamishness on the part of the homosexual Proust, or something altogether, I do not know.

What is fascinating and, psychologically, I think realistic is the way Proust's narrator, as his 20s presumably give way to his 30s, becomes far more sanguine than his uptight young self. A certain fetishistic desire to understand Albertine's tastes overwhelms him, and later in the novel he even professes to be perfectly okay with homosexuals, a far cry from his earlier stance!

"Even if one love has passed into oblivion, it may determine the form of the love that is to follow it."

This newfound maturity is further emphasised in the second chapter, Mlle de Forcheville, as we return gradually to artistic references, with Bergotte and Elstir particularly getting name-checked. The narrator is last making some (small) headway in doing something with his life. With the publication of his first article in Le Figaro, Proust is able again to delight us with something truly comedic, as the young author imagines all the absolute highs and lows of his newfound "fame". His acquaintances are also growing up, and everyone from Rachel to the nebbish, golf-playing Octave will prove to have serious talents. A return to the world of the aging Guermantes, who no longer impress the narrator, sees us return to the original counterpart to him: Charles Swann. Gilberte is now grown up, although it's here that more evidence of Proust's lack of revision creeps into the text. True, he can't be expected to recognise her after all these years, but even the narrator's internal voice seems barely to remember her at times, which is crazy given how much we know his thoughts lingered on her. Perhaps with more time, Proust would have worked this section into the direction whereby we understood that this was a deliberate comment related to his previous thoughts on habit, that over time we really do lose these memories that at one time we live amongst. Here, at least in the Scott Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation, it's all a bit undercooked. Still, the return to the world of the living is a great relief, and we feel that transition from winter to spring as Proust no longer suffers "night and day from the companionship of [Albertine]'s memory". (He also gets in some dynamite zingers about Francoise, which are always worthwhile!)

"We fall in love for a smile, a look, a shoulder. That is enough; then, in the long hours of hoipe or sorrow, we fabricate a person, we compose a character."

It's here I should note, isn't it fascinating how much Proust lived in this world? I knew before I began my Year of Proust 10 and a half months ago that he became the hermit in the cork-lined room, but the casual-yet-exacting references he makes throughout to minor scenes from the narrator's life are so expertly laid on. It's no wonder people have trouble separating the real Proust from the character of "Marcel". The interplay of the seemingly endless array of characters never ceases to delight me.

Anyhow, the third chapter - the Venice episode - allows Proust to adopt the mask of Dickens for forty pages, obviously delighting in describing a landscape so different to that of the French domain of the rest of the novel. Mamma also blossoms as a fresh character here, seen now in the narrator's eyes as an adult undergoing her own painful transitions. Here, the narrator is able to ponder the nature of our various selves as we move from situation to situation and, more importantly, as we age. Strolling the streets of Venice, cruising for girls, the narrator begins to realise there is a difference between yearning for the girls he loved when he was 16 and yearning for the girls now 16. "What I loved was youth", he says, and in this one, atypically brief sentence, we realise how far we have come from the Marcel Proust writing Swann's Way in the early 1910s to this sickly in-patient completing a novel after the horrors of WWI.

The less said about that telegram the better (the BBC Radio adaptation slightly neutralises the issue by causing the bad penmanship to be that of the concierge writing it down than that of Gilberte), as it's one of the most melodramatic moments in the novel, and would hopefully have been excised by Proust before the novel was published. Anyhow, Proust - after a beguilingly beautiful scene overlooking the canals - departs for home on a train with his mother, where two letters bring word of two marriages, and plunge us into the final act of the great novel.

Memory has no power of invention.

This last chapter, A New Aspect of Saint-Loup, I found particularly enjoyable because of the very evident development of the characters, and of the thought processes of the narrator. Nevertheless, it is clearly only fragments of whatever Proust was intending to do here. The death of the author in 1922 really is one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of artists dying mid-work. The doomed marriage of Jupien's niece allows us to briefly check in on Charlus (still as inexplicable to me as ever) and Morel, and allows Proust one last jab at the silliness of "society". The more important marriage of two of the most defining figures of the narrator's life is severely truncated as mentioned, but nevertheless it is intriguing to read about Gilberte. Perhaps because her parents were examined in such detail in the first volume, or perhaps because she represents less of a sexual threat, Gilberte is so much more refreshing a character than Albertine and, although her developments are not always positive, they are always interesting.

What can I say about the final revelations? I feel vindicated in my suspicions of Saint-Loup since first we met, that's what! I'll have to wait until I've read Time Regained to comment further, as all of this feels thematically but not naturally connected to the rest of the novel. My understanding is that in some translations, The Fugitive ends with the short Combray episode with Gilberte but, in the Vintage Books editions, that scene opens the final volume, so here we are left, rather abruptly, with the narrator revising his entire history with Robert Saint-Loup, his only moral male friend of any note, and "obliged to make an effort to restrain my tears". He's always been delicate, and here is no exception.

In the end, The Fugitive is an incomplete work and it is even more hubristic to give it a star-rating than The Captive. Proust's intentions sometimes seem clearer here, but sometimes we clearly only have sketches from which he may well have spun gold if time and health had allowed. Nonetheless, we've ditched the dead weight (sorry, Alb) and I'm very excited to savour the 450 pages that make up the final volume of this incredible achievement.

"Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit." - Samuel Beckett, Proust
( )

The opening pages of this volume are some of Proust's strongest in a while, as he examines the pain of a lost love, its component parts. How the triggers of memory are like other selves who must be informed and again grieve. How right he is, that in order to picture to itself an unknown situation the imagination borrows elements that are already familiar and, for that reason, cannot correctly picture it. A new experience inevitably brings with it a new sensation. At the other extremity is his statement about the power of forgetting as the only force successful enough to defeat love. The expression 'time heals all things' refers only to this factor: fading memory. The theme of death returns, and here is explored the torment of all the perpetual triggers of memory of someone you were close to - every different time of day, every location you visited or lived in together, every mutual acquaintance, the change in weather or the season - unforeseen reminders impossible to circumvent or hide from. Grief must be endured and seen through.

These are the stellar points. Plot-wise, I'm disgruntled. Taking ISOLT as a whole, this volume contains its climax, and yet all of the reflections upon it are turned inward while absolutely nothing is shown, dealt with too entirely offstage. In 150 pages or so of examining the relationship between grief and memory, I'm disappointed that the narrator hardly reflects at all on the consequence of his controlling jealousy. He even dares lay blame on its victim, for not have been open with him - for having resisted him too well, in other words. Could he be any more self-centered? The Venetian scenes are beautiful and I appreciated the shout-out to Ruskin, but the telegram he receives is almost maddening for how manipulated and deceived it made me feel, his reaction and the subsequent explanation too incredible. I did like the interesting reappearance of Gilberte and her related developments.

It's a bumpy ride through these final volumes that Proust did not have full opportunity to smooth out, but still better than the alternative. ( )

I found this penultimate volume of Proust's series the fastest moving one yet. There is some musing and philosophizing by Marcel, as always, but there are also several exciting and/or surprising events. ( )

If The Fugitive was all about keeping Albertine hostage, The Sweet Cheat Gone is her escape. Albertine's departure sets the stage for volume six. Proust has this way of capturing obsession and grief in all their painful intricacies. You know that moment, right before coming fully awake when you thinks maybe yesterday has all been some kind of horrible nightmare? But then remembrance brings back the horror with a vengeance. Yesterday's reality is today's truth. Proust's narrator is constantly remembering the times he bused Albertine's love. He couldn't tell her she reminded him of paintings of other female forms because he didn't want her to think of female nude bodies. His jealousies were that strong. After her departure, he is inconsolable; able to pick up his grief right where he left off before sleep; as if he had never closed his eyes. He repeatedly fixates on how to return the escaped Albertine back to him. If you don't believe me, count the times Albertine's name appears on every page. It got to the point where I wanted to please take this man out behind the barn and put him out of his misery.
It is so cliché to say, but you really do not know what you have until it is gone. Proust's narrator is no different. He enjoyed hurting Albertine while she was in his possession, but upon hearing of her death he fixates on all the times he took her for granted or thought her company to be a nuisance. Her charms, her innocence was something to be scoffed at until she vanished. Now that he has lost her everything she touched (including "the pedals of the pianola she pressed with golden slippers") becomes all too precious. He knows he has abused her and admits as much in the way he describes her departure as flight, escape, gone, and on the run. His obsession grows worse when he thinks her dead. He couldn't even read newspapers because the mere act of opening and lifting one to his eyes brought back memories of Albertine doing the same. ( )

Kirja alkuosa oli todella puuduttava. Olen odottanut että uppoaisin tähän jotenkin niin syvälle, ettei meinaa päästä pois, mutta yhä enemmän alan toivoa että tämä loppuisi jo. Onneksi kirjan jälkimmäinen osa on paljon mielenkiintoisempi. En tietenkään ymmärrä tämänkään romaanin hienouksia ja nyansseja, mutta mielestäni Proustilta alkaa loppua sanominen, ja kirja tuntuu jo väkisin pidennetyltä. ( )