"The truth is," she went on with a melancholy air, "that I have spent my life in cloistered seclusion because my great loves have all been for men who were horribly jealous. I am not speaking of M. de Foncheville, who was at bottom a commonplace man - and I have never really been able to love anyone who was not intelligent. But M. Swann for one was as jealous as the poor Duke here, for whose sake I renounce all enjoyment, because I know that he is so unhappy in his own home. With M. Swann it was different, I was desperately in love with him and it seems to me only reasonable to sacrifice dancing and society and all the rest of it for a life which will give pleasure to a man who loves you, or will merely prevent him from suffering. Poor Charles, how intelligent he was, how fascinating, just the type of man I liked." And perhaps this was true. there had been a time when she had found Swann attractive, which had coincided with the time when she to him had been "not his type." The truth was that "his type" was something that, even later, she had never been. And yet how he had loved her and with what anguish of mind! Ceasing to love her, he had been puzzled by this contradiction, which really is no contradiction at all, if we consider how large a proportion of the sufferings endured by men in their lives is caused to them by women who are "not their type" Perhaps there are many reasons why this should be so: first, because a woman is "not your type" you let yourself, at the beginning, be loved by her without loving in return, and by doing this you allow your life to be gripped by a habit which would not have taken root in the same way with woman who was "your type," who, conscious of your desire, would have offered more resistance, would only rarely have consented to see you, would not have installed herself in every hour of your days with that familiarity which means that later, if you come to love her and then suddenly she is not there, because of a quarrel or because of a journey during which you are left without news of her, you are hurt by the severance not of one but of a thousand links. And then this habit, not resting upon the foundation of strong physical desire, is a sentimental one, and once love is born the brain gets much more busily to work: you are plunged into romance, not plagued by a mere need. We are not wary of women who are "not our type," we let them love us, and if, subsequently, we come to love them we love them a hundred times more than we love other women, without even enjoying in their arms the satisfaction of assuaged desire. For these reasons and for many others the fact that our greatest unhappiness comes to us from women who are "not our type" is not simply an instance of that mockery of fate which never grants us out wishes except in the form which pleases us least. A woman who is "our type" is seldom dangerous, she is not interested in us, she gives us a limited contentment and then quickly leaves us without establishing herself but her presence beside us every day and our curiosity about what she is doing every minute: not the beloved woman, but habit.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1075-1076
Proust, per usual, sharing some truth. As part of a discussion with Odette, who is reflecting up both M. de Guermantes and Charles Swann, Marcel thinks about the dangers posed and pleasures provided by women who are "not our type." He writes:
"We are not wary of women who are "not our type," we let them love us, and if, subsequently, we come to love them we love them a hundred times more than we love other women, without even enjoying in their arms the satisfaction of assuaged desire."
I can only think of the LBG, who was definitely not my type, just as I was definitely not her type, and yet somehow we fell in love, and, as I've said, I think we were as generally serenely happy on a day to day basis as any relationship I've ever had; but in the end we could not get out of each other's way. I think these loves do sneak up on you because you go into them not considering that you might actually fall in love with that person. Actually, having nothing in common allows you to create an entirely new universe, as compared to relying upon what brought you together in the first place. The LBG was (no doubt is) beautiful, but she wasn't the classic Scudder dark European actress with terrible secrets look that I love, and which is so famous/infamous. What we had in common was that we desired/liked/loved each other, which, oddly, I guess did make each of us the other's type. Oh, she did really like Neil Young and bad monster movies, so it's not as if we had nothing in common.
No comments:
Post a Comment