Elstir, when he gazed at the violets, had no need to bother about what they were doing. The entry of the young dairymaid at once robbed me of my contemplative calm; I could no longer think of anything except how to give plausibility to the fable of the letter that she was to deliver and I began to write quickly without venturing to case more than a furtive glance at her, so that I might not seem to have brought her into my room to be scrutinised. She was invested for me with the charm of the unknown which would not have existed for me in a pretty girl whom I had found in one of those houses they attend for one. She was neither naked nor in disguise, but a genuine dairymaid, one of those whom we picture to ourselves as being so pretty when we do not have the time to approach them; she was a particle of what constitutes the eternal desire, the eternal regret of life, the twofold current of which is at length diverted, directed towards us. Twofold, for it is a question of the unknown, of a person who, from her stature, her proportions, her indifferent glance, her haughty calm, we suspect must be divine, at the same time we want this woman to be thoroughly specialised in her profession, enabling us to escape from ourselves into that world which a special costume makes us romantically believe to be different. Indeed, if we wanted to embody in a formula the law of our amorous curiosities, we should have to seek it in the maximum divergence between a woman glimpsed and a woman approached and caressed. If the women of what used at one time to be called the closed houses, if courtesans themselves (provided that we know them to be courtesans) attract us so little, it is not because they are less beautiful than other women, but because they are ready and waiting; because they already offer us precisely what we seek to attain; it is because they are not conquests. The divergence, there, is at its minimum. A whore smiles at us in the street as she will smile when she is by our side. We are sculptors. We want to obtain of a woman a statue entirely different from the one she has presented to us. We have seen a girl strolling, indifferent and insolent, along the seashore, we have seen a shop-assistant, serious and active behind her counter, who will answer us curtly if only to avoid being subject to the jibes of her comrades, or a fruit-vendor who barely answers us at all. Whereupon we will not rest until we can discover by experiment whether the proud girl on the seashore, the shop-assistant obsessed with what other people will say, the aloof fruit-vendor, cannot be made, by skilful handling on our part, to relax their uncompromising attitude, to throw about our necks those arms that were laden with fruit, to bend towards our lips, with a smile of consent, eyes hitherto cold or absent - oh, the beauty of the eyes of working-girl, eyes which were stern in working hours when she was afraid of the scandalmongering of her her companions, eyes which shunned our obsessive gaze and which, now that we have seen her alone and face to face, allow their pupils to light up with sunny laughter when we speak of making love. Between the shopgirl, or the laundress busy with her iron, or the fruit seller, or the dairymaid, and that self-same wench when she is bout to become one's mistress, the maximum divergence is attained, stretched indeed to it extreme limits, and varied by those habitual gestures of her profession which make a pair of arms describe, during the hours of toil, an arabesque as different as it is possible to imagine from those supple bonds that already every evening are fasted about one's neck while the mouth shapes itself for a kiss. And so one spends one's life in anxious approaches, constantly renewed, to serious working girls whose calling seems to distance them from one. Once they are in one's arms, they are no longer what they were, the distance that one dreams of bridging is abolished. But one begins anew with other women, one devotes all one's time, all one's money, all one's energy to these enterprises, one is enraged by the too cautious driver who may make us miss the first rendezvous, one works oneself up in a fever. And yet one knows that this first rendezvous will bring the end of an illusion. No matter: as long as the illusion last one wants to see whether one can convert it into reality, and then one thinks of the laundress whose coldness one remarked. Amorous curiosity is like the curiosity aroused in us by the names of places; perpetually disappointed, it revives and remains for ever insatiable.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 137-139
It is indeed an old chestnut to state that love, and not simply lust, is about the pursuit. That said, even if the statements borders on the bromidic it doesn't mean that it doesn't possess a grain of truth. Proust holds forth at length on this point, and while it may speak in general almost philosophical terms, I think that on the micro level it can tell us something about Marcel's fascination with Albertine. Proust writes: "Indeed, if we wanted to embody in a formula the law of our amorous curiosities, we should have to seek it in the maximum divergence between a woman glimpsed and a woman approached and caressed." What inspired this rumination was the arrival of the woman, in this case a dairymaid, that Francoise had arranged to drop by and visit Marcel ostensibly to pick up and deliver a letter. As we discussed yesterday, it had much more to do with Marcel reaching out for human contact, whether it was emotional or purely physical is a complex issues (I tend to favor the former before the latter, although that may simply be the romantic in me). What is undeniable is that it was a ruse, and her arrival caught Marcel off-guard, and he confesses, "I could no longer think of anything except how to give plausibility to the fable of the letter . . ." When the dairymaid arrives Marcel is instantly drawn to her, partially because of her authenticity. "She was invested for me with the charm of the unknown which would not have existed for me in a pretty girl whom I had found in one of those houses they attend for one. She was neither naked nor in disguise, but a genuine dairymaid, one of those whom we picture to ourselves as being so pretty when we do not have the time to approach them . . ." She was not a woman that he could have easily attained in a brothel, "neither naked nor in disguise," and thus she carried the "charm of the unknown." Part of that unknown, obviously, relates to whether or not he would be able to possess her, bringing us back to our initial point.
What is key, as laid out by Proust, is the divergence between meeting/desiring the women and the uncertainty/certainty of possessing them. The problem with women in the brothels, as Proust confirms, is that, "If the women of what used at one time to be called the closed houses, if courtesans themselves (provided that we know them to be courtesans) attract us so little, it is not because they are less beautiful than other women, but because they are ready and waiting; because they already offer us precisely what we seek to attain; it is because they are not conquests. The divergence, there, is at its minimum." In visiting the brothels the only unavoidable natural obstacle is a financial one, so the divergence is almost nonexistent, so, according to Proust, his (and all men's) fascination is minimal. On the other extreme, "Between the shopgirl, or the laundress busy with her iron, or the fruit seller, or the dairymaid, and that self-same wench when she is bout to become one's mistress, the maximum divergence is attained . . ."
Of course, most of us don't go to brothels, or at least French brothels, or get involved with difficult beautiful bisexual French women. But don't we all still struggle with the divergence that Proust proposed. "Once they are in one's arms, they are no longer what they were, the distance that one dreams of bridging is abolished. But one begins anew with other women, one devotes all one's time, all one's money, all one's energy to these enterprises, one is enraged by the too cautious driver who may make us miss the first rendezvous, one works oneself up in a fever. And yet one knows that this first rendezvous will bring the end of an illusion." Our own personal pursuit of our lovers brought them from maximum to minimum divergence, which by definition (or at least Proustian definition) brought our desire from maximum to minimum. I've often talked about my personal belief in the need to continually recreate ourselves (and this includes a complete reinvention every five years), and maybe that is especially necessary in regards to our relationships. We need to somehow move back from minimum divergence to, while not maximum, but at least within walking distance of maximum divergence. Essentially, you need to stop being that couple who dutifully fuck by rote memorization and muscle memory. And I don't think the answer is for one of you to passively-aggressively play hard to get or to wear a wig and speak with a bad Swedish accent. Rather, you consistently work to become a new person, a legitimate real new person, as you keep learning and growing and recreating yourself. What was difficult to Albertine is that she lived in an age which featured such a limited social and intellectual world for women that it was almost impossible to create yourself, let alone recreate yourself. This is why the Anarchists, often to their detriment, called for free love; they believed that nineteenth-century marriage was little more than legalized prostitution, which brings us back to minimum divergence once again.
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