The tendency to paradox is none other than the attempt to bridge two undefinable aspects, two intangible folds of identity, two irreconcilable tenses: never what is, but “the desire for what could have been.” In the space between two eternities, there is the gap, no less unreal than are the extremes on either side:
I don’t want to have my soul and don’t want to renounce it. I want what I don’t want and renounce what I don’t have. I can’t be nothing nor be everything: I’m the bridge between what I don’t have and what I don’t want.
I exist without knowing it and will die without wanting to. I’m the gap between what I am and am not, between what I dream and what life has made of me.
In the gap between Paul Celan’s “always and never” (zwischen Immer und Nie), between leaving and lingering, being and not being, between blindness and seeing double (voir double dans le temps) in Proust, his space will always be the irrealis domain: the might-have-been that never happened but isn’t unreal for not happening and might still happen, though we fear it never will and sometimes wish it won’t happen or not quite yet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Sigrid Rausing at Granta, Sudip Bose at The American Scholar, the editors of The Paris Review, Andrew Chan at the Criterion Collection, PEN America for hosting me at the Cavafy evening, Laura Martineau at Coda Quarterly, Robert Martin for including my piece in The Place of Music (Bard College), Whitney Dangerfield at The New York Times, my former student Leah Anderst for including me in The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master, Michaelyn Mitchell at the Frick Collection, Robert Garlitz for introducing me to the work of Fernando Pessoa, Youssef Nabil for allowing me to reprint his stunning picture on the jacket of this book, and the Corporation of Yaddo for a wonderful and productive stay. I particularly want to thank Jonathan Galassi and Katharine Liptak at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and last but certainly not least, my agent, Lynn Nesbit.
ALSO BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN
FICTION
Call Me by Your Name
Eight White Nights
Harvard Square
Enigma Variations
Find Me
NONFICTION
Out of Egypt: A Memoir
False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory
Entrez: Signs of France (with Steven Rothfeld)
The Light of New York (with Jean-Michel Berts)
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere
AS EDITOR
Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss
The Proust Project
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
André Aciman is the author of Call Me by Your Name, Find Me, Eight White Nights, Out of Egypt, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, and Enigma Variations, and is the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and lives with his wife in Manhattan. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
UNDERGROUND
IN FREUD’S SHADOW, PART 1
IN FREUD’S SHADOW, PART 2
CAVAFY’S BED
SEBALD, MISSPENT LIVES
SLOAN’S GASLIGHT
EVENINGS WITH ROHMER
Maud; or, Philosophy in the Boudoir
Claire; or, A Minor Disturbance on Lake Annecy
Chloé; or, Afternoon Anxiety
ADRIFT IN SUNLIT NIGHT
ELSEWHERE ON-SCREEN
SWANN’S KISS
BEETHOVEN’S SOUFFLÉ IN A MINOR
ALMOST THERE
COROT’S VILLE-D’AVRAY
UNFINISHED THOUGHTS ON FERNANDO PESSOA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALSO BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2021 by André Aciman
All rights reserved
First edition, 2021
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:
“Heaven,” from Boy, by Patrick Phillips. Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Phillips. Reprinted by permission of The University of Georgia Press.
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-72021-6
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