My Year With Proust - Day 60

"Once he was left alone he would see again that smile, and her smile of the day before, another with which she had greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her answer, in the carriage that night, when he had asked her whether she objected to his rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of Odette at all other times, since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all directions, traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable smiles.  But, once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which Swann still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it was not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it, some friend who knew them both, and, suspecting that they were in love, had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cap trimmed with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her bosom.  This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not wholly subordinated to his own . . ."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 254-255

And doubt begins to creep into Swann's mind almost immediately, which may just be part and parcel of love, sadly. What I find interesting in this section is that the doubt springs from Swann making an amazing discovery: that Odette was actually a separate being.  We're all, I suspect, even the most emotionally generous of us, solipsistic at our hearts.  Everything is an extension of our own beings, planets orbiting around our central sun, merely reflecting our light. One of the great shocking discoveries that new parents make is that one day they discover that these little creatures who now inhabit the house are, in fact, separate little creatures, who almost certainly have their own agenda.  In the end, hopefully, we get over this and come to appreciate their difference and their independence and their unique worldview.  Not always, of course. Some parents never grasp this fact, and tend to lose interest in their kids when they discover that they are their own separate entities and not merely evidence of their parents' success.

Oddly, I think the same thing happens with lovers.  We assume they patiently wait around in their apartments or houses for us to call them - or, maybe more accurately - call them into being, as they're really just extensions of our imagination.  So when we see them out and about we can only assume that there has been a jailbreak in our self-imposed narrative, and thus they are clearly doing something wrong.  I forget which Kurt Vonnegut novel it is where at the end he frees all the characters. Maybe we need to do the same thing.