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A review by kassiani
The Albertine Workout: Testo inglese a fronte by Anne Carson
Amazed by AC’s brain.
On unknowable things.
Proust uses Albertine to show his understanding of human love: that we only love that which we cannot fully possess (what's always in movement, attractive and loveable due to its apparent freedom and unattainability), but we want to fully possess that which we love (which detracts from its attractiveness and inevitably leads to boredom). So the narrator holds her hostage, while knowing that he really wants her to resist his possession. So he becomes obsessed with the ways in which she can escape him: sleeping, lying, being gay, being dead.
Anne Carson also questions the connection between desire and control: Why do we love that which eludes us? Why do we gravitate toward that which we cannot fully comprehend?
// René Girard : "et dans la mesure où il la séquestre, il ne désire plus. Il est donc obligé de la laisser échapper, pour récupérer son désir, mais qui est aussi récupérer sa souffrance, et chercher à la faire revenir. Donc il y a un va-et-vient... On fait l'expérience répétée, presque scientifique, du fait que le désir mimétique est avant tout désir de la distance, désir de l'absence, désir de ce qui ne se donne pas."
// as opposed to 'The Whistler' by Mary Oliver - learning new things about a loved one even after thirty years together, always be amazed by them: "I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle.. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?"
Carson also weaves in allusions to other texts to amplify her reading of Albertine—from snippets of Barthes, to excurses on boredom in Beckett, to ruminations on Zeno’s second paradox. Carson dwells on the famous “transposition theory” of Albertine’s identity. This theory, championed by André Gide among others, argued that Albertine was really a female proxy of Alfred Agostinelli, Proust’s chauffeur and unrequited love object.
Loved especially the Appendix - on adjectives, with a little catalogue of adjectives Proust applied to 'air' - on the speed limit in France at the time and Alfred's "speed nun" rubber outfit.
38. This pictorial multiplicity of Albertine evolves gradually into a plastic and moral multiplicity. Albertine is not a solid object. She is unknowable. When he brings his face close to hers to kiss she is ten different Albertines in succession.
53. There are four ways Albertine is able to avoid becoming possessable in Volume Five: by sleeping, by lying, by being a lesbian or by being dead.
On unknowable things.
Proust uses Albertine to show his understanding of human love: that we only love that which we cannot fully possess (what's always in movement, attractive and loveable due to its apparent freedom and unattainability), but we want to fully possess that which we love (which detracts from its attractiveness and inevitably leads to boredom). So the narrator holds her hostage, while knowing that he really wants her to resist his possession. So he becomes obsessed with the ways in which she can escape him: sleeping, lying, being gay, being dead.
Anne Carson also questions the connection between desire and control: Why do we love that which eludes us? Why do we gravitate toward that which we cannot fully comprehend?
// René Girard : "et dans la mesure où il la séquestre, il ne désire plus. Il est donc obligé de la laisser échapper, pour récupérer son désir, mais qui est aussi récupérer sa souffrance, et chercher à la faire revenir. Donc il y a un va-et-vient... On fait l'expérience répétée, presque scientifique, du fait que le désir mimétique est avant tout désir de la distance, désir de l'absence, désir de ce qui ne se donne pas."
// as opposed to 'The Whistler' by Mary Oliver - learning new things about a loved one even after thirty years together, always be amazed by them: "I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle.. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?"
Carson also weaves in allusions to other texts to amplify her reading of Albertine—from snippets of Barthes, to excurses on boredom in Beckett, to ruminations on Zeno’s second paradox. Carson dwells on the famous “transposition theory” of Albertine’s identity. This theory, championed by André Gide among others, argued that Albertine was really a female proxy of Alfred Agostinelli, Proust’s chauffeur and unrequited love object.
Loved especially the Appendix - on adjectives, with a little catalogue of adjectives Proust applied to 'air' - on the speed limit in France at the time and Alfred's "speed nun" rubber outfit.
38. This pictorial multiplicity of Albertine evolves gradually into a plastic and moral multiplicity. Albertine is not a solid object. She is unknowable. When he brings his face close to hers to kiss she is ten different Albertines in succession.
53. There are four ways Albertine is able to avoid becoming possessable in Volume Five: by sleeping, by lying, by being a lesbian or by being dead.