Other eyes
Doesn’t each of us come from a world that no one else seems to know?
A pair of wings, a different mode of breathing, which would enable us to traverse infinite space, would in no way help us, for, if we visited Mars or Venus keeping the same senses, they would clothe in the same aspect as the things of the earth everything that we should be capable of seeing. The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is; and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star.
from Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
I have never read more than a few pages by Proust (honesty is the best policy, right?), but after my introduction to this passage in a college course on aesthetics, I’ve returned to it many times. Art, he ruminates through long and winding sentences, communicates what an artist’s words and even his most intimate interactions (Proust sticks with the conventional masculine pronouns) can’t; it transports us to the unknown and forgotten countries from which artists seem to emerge. With this notion of lost countries, he meanders into the text above, a text that has been translated and mistranslated and quoted and misquoted and reduced and paraphrased in a variety of contexts. Most of the inspirational cards and posters boil it down to “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,” lifting this core insight from a reflection on aesthetics and handing it over to any context in which the hearer hears it.
To me, Proust is articulating a way to identify authentic art. He refers to contemporary artists working in different media who are able to transport us with their art, and the new eyes we need are not in the service of our own exploration but serve to bring us into the world of the artist. We’ll know if it’s real art if we feel transported to someplace new. This perspective privileges artists, doesn’t it? Artists alone are the Charons of transcendence, of transgressing the normal boundaries of space and time, but at least part of why these words are popular (with or without their full context) is their ready application to so many other vocations and experiences. Doesn’t anyone who is deeply engaged and passionate about their work or their play have the capacity to transport others? Doesn’t each of us come from a world that no one else seems to know?
When this passage is reduced to bumper sticker pith, I’m less concerned about the author’s apparently high opinion of artists and more concerned that the real heart of the passage, the ingredient to developing “other eyes,” is lopped off. He begins with a critique of our ability to project our own experiences and language onto others. If we traversed the cosmos with our current conditions, limitations, and capacities, we would “clothe in the same aspect as the things of the earth everything that we should be capable of seeing;” we would project the world we know onto the ones we don’t, disabling our ability to explore new terrain and defining it with our own limited definitions. Our ability to grow, to expand, to become our best and truest selves doesn’t require a thousand-mile journey, and it does not require “new eyes,” suggesting a kind of bootstraps individualism. It depends on our ability to enter the world of an other — not just another one like us, or another one onto whom we project ourselves, but a literal other, a person who comes from a different world, whose person is the composite of experiences and places and relationships we’ve never imagined. The eyes through which Proust calls us to look are not our own but are “the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
This sounds a lot like “empathy.” As I meander through Proust’s paragraphs today, amidst global suffering and panic and grief and uncertainty and anger and isolation (our current conditions, limitations, and capacities),I’m aware of our pitiful attempts to replicate our formerly-normal interactions in a new, virtual space. Virtual meetings, virtual therapy, virtual happy hours, virtual reunions, virtual family dinners, virtual dates…and throughout it all, isn’t the face we’re most drawn to on screen our own? Maybe that’s why our attempt to reconstitute our formerly-normal interactions are so unsatisfying, so exhausting. But when I’m able to pry my gaze from my own face, I find it much easier to focus on and being present to who’s speaking, and I’m more aware of how everyone else is reacting. What’s the old adage about the stage - “it’s 10% acting and 90% reacting,” right? Likewise, the real stuff of relationships isn’t what we’re spewing but what we’re noticing, what we’re present to, what we’re absorbing. That’s what opens the door to the other’s world to begin to see what they’re seeing, to see what each of them is, to fly from star to star.
Proust doesn’t give us the recipe to resolve all of our anxieties in the present moment, but he might inspire a starting point. New modes of interacting give us new ways to intersect and to understand each other, and returning to, rediscovering, or introducing ourselves to art in its many forms — from Mendelssohn to Madonna, from Rigoletto to The Golden Girls, from Rembrandt to Legos, and from Proust to hack-writers like me and the bevvy of blogs and podcasts exploding on the internet — remains an open door to growth and authenticity. We may not have expected it — we may not have wanted it — but our isolation may be what we need to finally “behold the universe through the eyes of another.”
What do you think? Have you read or heard this passage before? What are the “other eyes” we need to possess? If you feel so moved, please respond to the text or to an idea in the space below. A few requests:
Be kind. No ad hominem. Don’t pick a fight or attack me or someone else.
Be true. Speak from your experience, and speak factually. Don’t put words in anyone else’s mouth.
Be responsive. Stay relevant and on topic. Be open to response.
Be concise. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
