up my idiosyncrasies – Albertine
by richibi
“Wing Seller“ (2006)
Stefan Caltia
_______
what are you doing, a friend of mine
asked when he called
I’m reading my Proust, I answered,
comfy enough with my text, after
years waking up side by side, to
use the possessive adjective
what’s going on, he inquired
Albertine is lying on his bed, I
recounted, asleep, she’s been there
for the past ten pages, and she’s
just now turned onto her stomach
there is not so much story as
paintings, in Proust, detailed
descriptions applied like strokes of
colour to a canvas, that of recovered
time, colours that are specific to a
place and a period, like photographs
showing in their very fabric their
ancestry, their lineage
but in the elucidation of what he
sees, or, more accurately, of what
he remembers, Proust delivers
a work of the very highest art, a
mixture of poetry and philosophy,
Beethoven did as much, see his
Proust’s French is essentially
immaculate, his tone, however
intimate, always erudite, aristocratic,
perspicacious, wise, penetrating,
embracing, which is to say, French,
though German can be also,
incidentally, pretty cerebral, English
is narrative, just the facts, please,
though often, I think, hilarious
Albertine had been one of the “young
girls in bloom” he’d met at Balbec, a
seaside resort, with whom he’d
undertaken an illicit affair, but
whose faithfulness he doubted
as she lay on his bed at his Paris
apartment, he replays all the
speculations his imagination could
provide, an endless set of variations
on his anguish, which is to say, his
jealousy, worthy of a very Othello
for ten pages he paints a picture of
infidelities completely of his making,
which, of course, becomes the world
he will respond to
it is all in our little heads, I surmise,
however informed, intelligent, that
we create our little realities, they
have never been nearly enough,
though, indeed, our lives depend
on them, however dutifully
considered, however unconsciously,
and ever convincingly, contrived
make them, I submit, good ones
I imagine myself a poet, for instance,
how’s that for a shot in the improbable
dark
Richard
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