LE PERSONNAGE D’ALBERTINE SIMONET DANS À LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU DE MARCEL PROUST
THE CHARACTER OF ALBERTINE SIMONET IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME BY MARCEL PROUST

Summary/Abstract: The article is part of a research about translating the Proustian idiolect into Romanian and views at defining the complex character of Albertine, along with her particular language, as compared to other idiolects in the Proustian novel. Founding our assertions on works written by J-Y. Tadié, R. Coudert, A. Bouillaguet, J. Dubois, S. Becket, C. Bidou-Zachariasen, Justin O'Brian and many others, we underline what makes of Albertine such an important and difficultly definable character : her relation to love, death, time, vice and lie. Considered the most important character of the novel, Albertine is often referred to as a personnage de fuite, hardly understandable and explainable, because of her social insecurity, because of the gap between what she is and what she wants to be taken for or intends to become. Leader of l‘entredeux (Dubois), Albertine is along with Charlus the symbol of the vice, top figure of Gomorrah, causing to Marcel doubt, jealousy, questioning and finally separation, all described in the fifth and sixth parts of the novel. Changing physically, linguistically and socially from Les Jeunes Filles to La prisonnière, Albertine is contradictory in language : at first she uses argot and petit bourgeois French, then she arrives to master the joli language of a Swann or a Charlus, perfectly imitating Proust's language of grande bourgeoisie, in describing ice-creams, in discussing about architecture or literature. Albertine is as much sensual by the place she occupies in the plot as by the tongue she uses, a tongue physically and linguistically meant to tease and torture Marcel.

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