My Years With Proust - Day 612

Albertine's intelligence pleased me because, by association, it reminded me of what I called her sweetness, as we call the sweetness of a fruit a certain sensation which exists only in our palate.  And in fact, when I thought of Albertine's intelligence, my lips instinctively protruded and savoured a memory of which I preferred that the reality should remain external to me and should consist in the objective superiority of a person.  There could be no denying that I had known people whose intelligence was greater.  But the infinitude of love, or its egoism, brings it about that the people whom we love are those whose intellectual and moral physiognomy is least objectively defined in our eyes; we alter them incessantly to suit our desires and fears, we do not separate them from ourselves, they are simply a vast, vague arena in which to exteriorise our emotions.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 505

Proust proposes, "But the infinitude of love, or its egoism, brings it about that the people whom we love are those whose intellectual and moral physiognomy is least objectively defined in our eyes; we alter them incessantly to suit our desires and fears, we do not separate them from ourselves, they are simply a vast, vague arena in which to exteriorise our emotions." On the surface it seems like an odd statement, because who should we know better, both physically and intellectually, than our lover, but I think, as usual, that Proust is on to something.  Maybe it is because we idealize love, and thus we would idealize our lover (when we aren't actively demonizing her), that we don't have a clear picture.  And because we don't have - or I guess need - a clear picture we can write what we want.  Sadly, this is what often causes breakups.  We're stunned that our lover has said or done something that we did not plan for in our fabricated identity for her, although it might have been perfectly natural for her actual self.