Читать книгу Marcel Proust, an English Tribute. The Portrait of the Man written by the People Who Knew him the Best онлайн

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Proust, having thus reduced all human society to misery, builds upon the ruins his philosophy of salvation: Only by much suffering shall we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven—that is to say, shall we be enabled to see ourselves solely and simply as members of the human race, to perceive what is essential and fundamental in everybody beneath the trappings of manners, birth, or fortune, learn to be really intelligent. Love and jealousy alone can open to us the portals of intelligence. Thus, in the opening pages of Du Côté de chez Swann, the poor little boy, who, because M. Swann is dining with his parents, cannot receive in bed his mother’s kiss, starts on the long spiritual journey which is to run parallel to that of the brilliant, unhappy mondain guest. Miserable at being left alone, he desperately sends down to his mother an agonised note by his nurse, and in his agitation he hates Swann, whom he regards as the cause of his misery, and continues to reflect:

As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot follow—to him that anguish came through Love, to which it is in a sense predestined, by which it must be equipped and adapted; but when, as had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one’s soul before Love has yet entered into one’s life, then it must drift, awaiting Love’s coming, vague and free without precise attachment, at the disposal of one sentiment to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety or affection for a comrade. And the joy with which I first bound myself apprentice, when Françoise returned to tell me that my letter would be delivered, Swann, too, had known well that false joy which a friend can give us, or some relative of the woman we love, when on his arrival at the house or theatre where she is to be found, for some ball or party or first night at which he is to meet her, he sees us wandering outside, desperately awaiting some opportunity of communicating with her.