by Leslee Sumner

One of the first things that endeared Proust to me was his remarkable candor. It first became apparent when after many months of studying playbills posted on the Morris column, and carrying on lengthy discussions with his classmates on the virtues of this or that actor, the young Marcel is finally allowed (against his parents' better judgement) to go and see the world-reknowned Berman in Phédre. Before the matinée, he works himself into a near frenzy by chanting words about Berma's beauty, "plastic nobility", "Jansenist pallor" which are replaced, when the anticipation reaches its climax, with a phrase from the playbill: Ladies will not be admitted to the stalls in hats. the doors will be closed at two o'clock."

"...disappointed as I had always been by the actuality of places and people..." -Time Regained

If someone had asked me to close RoTP at this point, and write an essay on how I imagined Proust would react to seeing Berma on stage, I would write that he would behave as 99.9% of humanity would. He would rave about the superiority of her acting-- anythng else would invalidate his long-longed for theatergoing experience. Isn't that the way most of the world operates? The much-anticipated vacation has to be "sensational', the first kiss "extraordinary." Even the routine occurrence of weekends are almost always "great." But, Proust is able to transcend the temptation to dissimulate about his experiences, in fact, he habitually acknowledges his disappointments. At the end of Phédre he states:

"Nevertheless, when the curtain had fallen for the last time, I was disappointed that the pleasure for which I had so longed had not been greater."

Why, like Proust, do some of us suffer disappointment so keenly and so frequently? What sets us apart from those aforementioned children of pleasure who never experience less than the optimal vacations, or dry, tentative kisses? Are all of these people liars? Are we overly critical? The answer lies in the difference in our imaginations. the first group seemingly expends little, if any, psychic energy in imagining events beforehand.They accept their acquaintances as they are rather than how they could imagine them to be. The second group, the chronically disappointed, maintains the rich tapestry of the mind - embroidering and embellishing events and persons prior to the experience or the encounter. The problem with having a hyperactive imagination like Proust's, is that its fruit is so much more beautiful than reality can ever be.

An illustration of the painful intersection of Proust's imagination with reality is when he finally sees the Persian style church at Balbec:

"But this sea, which for those reasons I had imagined as coming to expire at the foot of the window, was twelve miles away and more, at Balbec-Plage, and rising beside its cupola, that steeple which, because I had read that it was itself a rugged Norman cliff round which the winds howled and the sea-birds wheeled, I had always pictured to myself as receiving at its base the last dying foam of the uplifted waves, stood on a square which was the junction of two tramway routes, opposite a cafe which bore in letters of gold, the legend 'Billiards' against a background of houses with the roofs of which no upstanding mast was blended. ... All that I have seen so far have been photographs of this church -- and of these famous Apostles, this Virgin of the Porch, mere casts only. Now it is the church itself, the statue itself, they the only ones -- this is something far greater. It was also something less, perhaps."

Later in The Fugitive he summarizes the experience: To be sure in that Balbec so long desired, I had not found the Persian church of my dreams, nor the eternal mists." In his mind, Proust reorganized the landscape surrounding the church at Balbec to create an architectural landmark on the sea untainted by the passage of time. Reality presented him with a structure miles from the sea in a commercial setting.

How often have I done the same thing? I place such extraordinarily high expectations on a thing, situation, or person that it becomes predestined to fail me. For example, a recent trip to see Vermeer with friends was visualized as a music-filled, warm, sharing, road trip culminating at one of the great art shows of the century. How could the reality, which included dead batteries in the CD player, friends with food poisoning, and an overly crowded gallery with dilettantes pontificating on Vermeer's use of the "Camera Obscura," help but bring me to the verge of tears?

Is there any hope for those of us that are addicted to the world we create in our minds? Will we ever find happiness, or at the very least will we ever thoroughly enjoy ourselves? The fact is, that in spite of our overworked, overwrought mind doing everything within its power to anticipate, enhance, and ultimately destroy every experience - it sometimes misses things. In these unguarded moments we're taken by surprise and we ... enjoy ourselves. Proust says:

"But in exchange for what our imagination leads us to expect and we give ourselves so much futile trouble trying to find, life gives us something which we were very far from imagining."

So, the Vermeer trip was a bust, but a couple of years ago I went to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and it was a transcendent experience. I had been preoccupied before the trip with other things; I hadn't given it much thought, or done any research on this architectural miracle. I can still remember the thrill that I received from the smell, the golden leaves of the woods surrounding it, and the unexpected beauty of the house itself. I enjoyed myself.

P Segal