If you've read [a:Marcel Proust|233619|Marcel Proust|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392271688p2/233619.jpg] and have any thoughts/opinions about Albertine (and how can you not), you will adore this humorous, thought provoking piece by Anne Carson, who through a series of short statements tills much (but still not all) of the oddity that Albertine poses in Proust's novel. The form itself is fun and quirky, reflecting the consistent thread of levity through In Search of Lost Time that never gets its due attention. This was also my first read of Anne Carson--I will be back for more! ( )

I have no idea what this is. I can describe it just fine: 59 fragments about Albertine from Proust's RduTP, with 16 fragments a little less connected to her. If that sounds like not much, well, you're probably right. Of course, Proust readers will be excited. Quite right to be so.

The take-away, if you will, is that Proust uses Albertine to show very clearly his pessimistic understanding of human love: that we only love that which we cannot fully possess, but we want to fully possess that which we love. So the narrator more or less 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. This is, in effect, the narrator torturing Albertine and also himself.

Despite the best efforts of a minority of literary scholars, most people will know and care that Albertine is somehow related to Alfred Agostinelli, real-life Proust's chauffeur.

In short, Proust's theory of love makes perfect sense for a fin-de-siecle gay man.

I know all of this. So why is it that when Carson quotes a bit of Mallarme that Proust inscribed on a plane he intended to give to Alfred, that I nearly cried at its beauty, and the beauty of Carson's little booklet of literary criticism? I have no idea.

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre
Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre
Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui. [Forgive the lack of accents].

My only complaint is that Carson appears to approve of Barthes' "dreamy commitment to a third language in which we would all be exempt from meaning," 26. Yawn. ( )

No way this is poetry. No way this is a workout. No way this is anything. No pain, no gain... lost no weight. ( )