My Years With Proust - Day 639

Now if I no longer believed in Albertine's innocence, it was because I had already ceased to feel the need, the passionate desire to believe in it.  It is desire that engenders belief, and if we are not as a rule aware of this, it is because most belief-creating desires - unlike the desire which had persuaded me that Albertine was innocent - end only with our own life.  To all the evidence that corroborated my original version, I had stupidly preferred mere assertions by Albertine.  Why had I believed them?  Lying is essential to humanity.  It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest.  One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's honour.  One lies all one's life long, even, especially, perhaps only, to those who love one.  For they alone make us fear for our pleasure and desire their esteem. I had at first thought Albertine guilty, and it was only my desire, by utilising the powers of my intelligence to construct an edifice of doubt, that had put me on the wrong track.  Perhaps we live surrounded by electric, seismic signs which we must interpret in good faith in order to know the truth about people's characters. If the truth be told, saddened as I was in spite of everything by Andree's words, I thought it fitter that the reality should finally turn out to accord with what my instinct had originally foreboded rather than with the wretched optimism to which I had later so cravenly surrendered.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 623

"It is desire that engenders belief, and if we are not as a rule aware of this, it is because most belief-creating desires - unlike the desire which had persuaded me that Albertine was innocent - end only with our own life."

I feel like a Hal Hartley film festival is opening:

Simple Men: "There's only trouble and desire."

Surviving Desire: "Love without faith is merely infatuation."

Trust: "Trust plus respect plus admiration equals love."

The Unbelievable Truth: "I know what you need . . . you need a woman."