Proust: Erti Kedukaan dalam Bercinta

Memerlahankan waktu. Menunggu kehidupan untuk datang. Membuka pintu ke dalam diri. Menemui ingatan; duka; dan kenangan yang tergantung di sudut memori seperti lukisan yang bertahun-tahun tidak pernah ditatap. Membaca Proust membawa kita ke dalam pengalaman yang panjang dan epik ini. Ia ditulis ketika manusia mempunyai ruang dan waktu untuk menikmati perbualan, fesyen, dan rekaan dalaman rumah seseorang. Tanpa gangguan daripada teknologi digital. Sebuah zaman yang sudah hilang; kecuali bayang dan gema yang menggelintar di lantai imaginasi kita yang paling purba. 

Saya sedang menghabiskan novel kedua, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (terjemahan baru oleh James Grieve) dalam siri tujuh buah buku karangan Proust. Jika buku pertama lebih tertumpu kepada hubungan cinta di antara Swann dengan Odette melalui pemerhatian dan renungan kembali pencerita novel ini iaitu Marcel; dalam buku kedua kita menemui cinta Marcel sendiri dengan Gilberte, anak kepada Swann dan Odette. Fantasi, kekaguman, obsesi, cemburu, dan kedukaan sentiasa mewarnai kanvas naratif Proust apabila menceritakan hubungan cinta di antara watak-watak utamanya. Anda tidak akan menemui novel lain di mana anda dipaksa menghadap kedukaan seorang watak selama berhari-hari, berminggu-minggu, malah berbulan-bulan. Salah satunya ialah momen ketika Marcel berpisah dengan Gilberte. Dia enggan memujuk kembali Gilberte; sebaliknya ingin menunggu Gilberte kembali merayu kepadanya. Kedukaan yang berlarutan sudah tentu meninggalkan bekas dalam diri seseorang, walau sedalam mana pun cinta itu asalnya tumbuh dan mekar. Melihat ia perlahan-lahan layu sudah tentu lebih menyeksakan daripada ia mati dan hilang terus. Maka saya turunkan di bawah renungan panjang (dan indah) Marcel .

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During these periods when sorrow, though already beginning to wane, still persists, there is a difference between the mode of sorrow caused by the obsessive thought of the loved one and the sorrow brought back to mind by certain memories: a nasty thing said, a verb once used in a letter. Let it be said here (all the diverse modes of sorrow will be described in connection with a later lover affair) that the first of these modest is not nearly as cruel as the second. This is because our impression of the woman, living forever within us, is enhanced by the halo which our adoration constantly creates for her, and is tinged, if not by the glad promises of recurrent hope, at least by the peace of mind of lasting sadness. (It is noteworthy too that our image of a person who causes us pain takes up little space among the complication which exacerbate a heartbreak, which make it persist and prevent us from getting over it, just as in certain illnesses the cause is out of all proportion to the ensuing fever and length of time required for a cure.) Though our image of the whole person we love is lit by by the glow of a generally optimistic mind, this is not the case with the individual memory of the hurtful words spoken on a particular occasion or the unfriendly letter (I only ever had one like that from Gilberte): it feels as though these fragments, however minute they are, contain the whole person, amplified to a power well in excess of what she has in the usual imagined glimpses we have of her, entire though she is in them. Unlike the loved image of her, we have never gazed at the terrible letter with the untroubled eyes of melancholy and regret; the moment we spent reading it, devouring it, was fraught with the awful anguish of unexpected catastrophe. The difference in the making of these sorts of sorrows is that they come from the outside world and take the shortest and most painful route to the heart. The image of the woman we love, though we think it has a pristine authenticity, has actually been often made and remade by us. And memory that wounds is not contemporaneous with the restored image; it dates from a very different time; it is of the few witnesses to a monstrous past. Since this past goes on existing, though not inside us, where we have seen fit to replace it with a wondrous golden age, a paradise where we are able to reunited and reconciled, such memories make us realize how far we have strayed from that reality, and foolish are the hopes with which we sustain our daily expectation.