"Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as - in the moment when she has failed to meet us - for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing need, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational, absurd need, which the laws of civilized society make impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage - the insensate, agonizing desire to possess her."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 244
Proust is here sharing more of Swann's soul-searching and misery as he decides he loves Odette and wonders why he can't seem to have her. Well, he can have her physically just about any time he wants, but he can't seem to have her emotionally. The author also takes the opportunity to reflect on why we love some one. We're at the end of a lengthy anecdote where Swann was rushing form restaurant to restaurant in an attempt to find Odette, "searching for his lost Eurydice." My ex-wife used to opine that "the worse you treat them the more they want you." It is simple and direct - and thus very un-Proustian - but I suspect Proust would have completely understood. We can all remember - or, maybe I should just speak for myself; I reflect upon the women I've known her were completely locked into me and were ready to start their life with me that moment, and how I put them off, probably, no, undoubtedly, foolishly, to search for my own Eurydice. Why do we do this? Is it the allure of the unattainable? Is it a version of that old Grouch Marx line wherein he would not want to be a member of any club that would have him for a member? Of course, it may well be that these women that I now want to memorialize in my memory as bastions of devotion - and the fabled lost chances of true love - probably just loved me because I was maddeningly evasive. And if they had me, truly had me, they would had started pursuing their own unattainable loves.
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