My Years With Proust - Day 675

The social setting or the natural scene which surrounds our love-making barely impinges upon our thoughts.  The tempest may rage over the sea, the ship roll and plunge in every direction, the sky pour down avalanches convulsed by the wind, and at most we bestow the attention of a single second, forced from us by physical discomfort., upon this immense scenic background against which we ourselves are so insignificant, both we and the body which we long to approach. The siren with its warning of bombs troubled Jupien's visitors no more than an iceberg would have done. Indeed, the threat of physical danger delivered them from the fear which for long had morbidly harassed them.  For it is wrong to suppose that the scale of our fears corresponds to that of the dangers by which they are inspired. 

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 863

Proust starts off talking about the bombs dropped on Paris during another nighttime bombing, and whether or not Jupien's house of assignation - where Marcel had stumbled across M. de Charlus tied up and whipped - had been destroyed.  And then he transitions into a theory that the men at Jupien's house probably never even noticed the bombs.  Rather, as Proust proposes, "The social setting or the natural scene which surrounds our love-making barely impinges upon our thoughts."  Everyone has been so engrossed in carnal gymnastics that upon dismount one of the participants realizes, "Yeah, so, wow, I guess the door was open . . ."  or "Geez, this is a crowded parking lot" or "Look, the sign said no more than three articles of clothing in the changing area.  At no point did the sign specify a number of people."  There are moments of transcendent bliss where one can leave the mundane, tangible world far behind, and not all of them relate to the pursuit of the divine.  In wartime those stolen hours of sexual misadventure take on even greater urgency.  As Proust notes: "Indeed, the threat of physical danger delivered them from the fear which for long had morbidly harassed them.  For it is wrong to suppose that the scale of our fears corresponds to that of the dangers by which they are inspired."  Not surprisingly, it reminds me of that classic scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the young German soldiers, risking their lives, swim across the stream to sleep with the French girls.