"It would seem, none the less, that so far as Odette was concerned people could have taken into account the fact that if, indeed, she had never entirely understood Swann's mentality, at least she was acquainted with the titles and with all the details of his studies, so much so that the name of Vermeer was as familiar to her as that of her own dressmaker; while as for Swann himself, she knew intimately those traits of character of which the rest of the world is ignorant or which it scoffs at, and of which only a mistress or a sister possesses the true and cherished image; and so strongly are we attached to such idiosyncrasies, even to those of them which we are most anxious to correct, that it is because a woman comes in times to acquire an indulgent, an affectionately mocking familiarity with them such as we ourselves or our relatives have, that love affairs of long standing have something of the sweetness and strength of family affection. The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 505
Proust continues to reflect upon the mystery of the seeming aberration of the marriage of Swann and Odette. As is always the case, the question eventually evolved from why are they together to why are they still together, as is so often the case. There is an old chestnut that runs that you initially love your partner despite their idiosyncrasies but eventually - and this is how you know it is truly love - you begin to love them for their idiosyncrasies. In my last two love affairs - and considering my age - they will probably officially be my last two love affairs (although, life is strange and tends to have its own plan, so who knows) both women at a certain point suddenly realized that we had absolutely nothing in common. To be fair, I think in both instances I prompted the realization when I commented, during an exegesis on some other couple's mismatched pairing, that it just not really matter because we had nothing in common. In both instances there was this almost theatrical pause wherein the woman suddenly realized that we, in fact, had nothing in common; and how this wasn't painfully obvious from the beginning is beyond me. I don't know if my long-suffering first wife Brenda ever grew to love my idiosyncrasies, but she did put up with them. I remember one time leading up to my fantasy baseball draft she prepared, somehow, in an age before memes, a copy of the famous Polaroid picture from the film Memento of me, wherein she had scribbled "Don't believe his lies," which served as both a great homage to the movie as well as a necessary warning to my fellow owners. Now, that seems like the classic example of the "affectionately mocking familiarity with them" that Proust discusses. She never grew to love baseball (one of her few egregious faults), and I don't think she ever reached the point of loving what I loved, but maybe she just loved that I loved something, and maybe that's more than most people ever have.
But what to make of the last line, "The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections." I don't think Proust in this case is talking about sharing our own self-delusion about an imperfection, but rather in sharing the same honest view of that imperfection; accepting that imperfection as an essential part of the person. One of the fundamental mistakes that people make, and I know I've talked about this before, is our desire to change the other person, even though it was the very original nature of that person we fell in love with. Men tend to want to tart up their girlfriends, and then turn around and jealously assume that the only reason why they're dressed that way is that they're sleeping or looking to sleep with someone else. Women tend to try and turn their men into this paragon of bourgeois normality, fit only to go to cookouts and mow the yard, that they, in the end, wouldn't fuck on a bet. It's amazing that we've survived as a species.
No comments:
Post a Comment