Albertine is the most controversial character of Recherche du temps perdu, the most mentioned yet the one we know the least about: we do not know where she comes from, what she does for a living, where she ends up… and even when she dies, we wonder if she ever existed at all. Several critics saw in Albertine Proust’s driver Alfred Agostinelli, a young Italian with whom Proust had been madly in love. The novel and Proust’s life become the excuse for a contemporary love story – where Marcel, Albertine and Alfred hide, bluff, swap genders and roles, experiencing love as an eternal question, aware that the heart of things cannot be captured, but only glimpsed at.
More »
