Physically, too, she had changed. Her blue, almond-shaped eyes - now even more elongated - had altered in appearance, they were indeed of the same color, but seemed to have passed into a liquid state. So much so that, when she closed them, it was as though a pair of curtains had been drawn to shut out a view of the sea. It was no doubt this aspect of her person that I remembered most vividly each night on leaving her. For, quite contrarily, every morning the ripple of her hair, for instance, continued to give me the same surprise, as though it were some novelty that I had never seen before. And yet, above the smiling eyes of a girl, what could be more beautiful than that clustering coronet of black violets? The smile offers greater friendship; but the little gleaming coils of blossoming hair, more akin to the flesh of which they seem to be a transposition into tiny wavelets, are more provocative of desire.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 10-11
"And yet, above the smiling eyes of a girl, what could be more beautiful than that clustering coronet of black violets? The smile offers greater friendship; but the little gleaming coils of blossoming hair, more akin to the flesh of which they seem to be a transposition into tiny wavelets, are more provocative of desire." In a novel that is dominated so much by love and desire, or at least the memory of failed love and clumsy desire, there are not really that many passages in Remembrance of Things Past which capture the carnal aspects of either. I love this entire passage, but especially the concluding sentence.
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