{ Sunday, October 25, 2009 }
Monsieur Proust is the account of Proust's final decade, as told by Celeste Albaret, his servant and confidante. He lived his final days, as is well known, in a cork-lined room with the curtains drawn, awake mostly at night, writing his masterpiece. Albaret kept to his strange hours, fixed all his meals, took his clothes to be laundered, and sat and listened to his accounts of his childhood, his social life and the many people he had known. After Proust's death, Albaret lived for 50 years in obscurity, refusing any inquiries for interviews from journalists and biographers. She finally agreed to narrate this account in her 80s, just to correct the many myths and inaccuracies that had grown up around Proust, to tell his story as best she could. It's quite an engaging read, and I was deeply impressed by Albaret's devotion to and love for Proust. Halfway through the book, I flipped to the back cover, and was a bit taken aback by the review by Angus Wilson printed there:
"Suicidal" "monstrous" "cold-blood" "revulsion" "deforming" "madman" -- wow. I was reading it as a study in devotion, service and sacrifice. I tried to figure out where such revulsion had come from, and it seemed to me that people in Western society have a horror of selflessness, and what they perceive of as subordination and subservience. In some ways this book was a perfect and remarkable complement and contrast to the expendable warrior theme of my prior post on Dogfights and Gameness with their triumphs and heroics -- here was a quiet, modest life, lived in the service of another. She took pleasure in warming Proust's bathwater to the perfect temperature, fixing his coffee just so, and knowing exactly which hat he wore on which occasion.
How do you decide what you should devote your life to? Why would this reviewer feel such disgust at Albaret's chosen path? And since I think he wrote this in the 50s, he wasn't able to read, say, Wendell Berry's essay Feminism, the Body and the Machine which outlines, for me, why a household economy, such as the one Albaret was participating in, though not his wife, is a good, honest way of living. Far from being exploited, she was being made a part of something she knew to be important. She found someone who needed her, and their small, unusual family subordinated itself to a great task: the creation of a work of art.
LINK | 11:35 AM | TB
Thanks, David, for your comment, I am really happy to hear from you on this subject. I think one of the most damaging things about our success-oriented culture is that it deforms -- to use a word from the Wilson review -- it deforms people's lives by making them feel that being the principal is more significant than, as you say, living for that which one holds dear.
Caterina | October 27, 2009 10:31 PMThe new film "the Maid" speaks to the same issues, giving value to domestic life.
Linda | October 30, 2009 7:43 PMIndeed. For that matter, why do we so often assume that the choices other people make are open to our censure? Celeste Albaret believed passionately in Proust and his work, and in no small way made it possible for him to do it. If she considered that her life's work, and indeed her accomplishment, who are we to say no? Satisfaction comes from feeling useful in whatever capacity is open to us. Finding satisfaction in doing service to others--if we choose to, if it pleases us--doesn't make us slaves, it makes us human.
Kari | November 1, 2009 2:38 PMAnd what if her master had been a particularly unstable layabout?
The knowledge she'd been "part of something she knew to be important" came only later.
Claims of foresight in hindsight are our universal indulgence.
Your comments make me reconsider what is valuable about the activities of our lives. Thank you.
Amy | November 23, 2009 7:55 PMThe American educational system doesn't gives us the eyes to see this as a story of an art patron. And yet, Albaret gave much more of her personal equity -- her inner life and physical life -- than did any of the Medici.
Barbara French | December 7, 2009 7:17 PM{ Post a comment }
Thank you for your thoughtfulness on this topic. Without wanting to sound sexist, I believe that only a man could possibly have written all those negative adjectives about what I, too, see as a chosen path in support of a greater good.
There are many ways to live a good life, and we do not all have to be stars ourselves in order to live for that which we hold dear. For instance, I gave up my career in classical music (in good part) because I realized that I could help advance the cause of music much more by getting a "regular" job and helping to support my wife's work (she is a composer of classical art songs). Her talent writing music far outshines my own talent as a cellist...and it gives me great satisfaction to assist her in every way possible, to share her life and her creative world, to bring to life beautiful music (which she writes) in order to bring more beauty into this hard world.
I applaud all those who, like Albaret, "sacrifice" themselves to a greater cause...though they themselves know it is surely no sacrifice--quite the opposite.
Many thanks for this post, Caterina.
David S | October 26, 2009 2:49 PM