Marcel Proust Quote
The relations one has with a woman one loves (and that can apply also to love for a youth) can remain platonic for other reasons than the chastity of the woman or the unsensual nature of the love she inspires. The reason may be that the lover is too impatient and by the very excess of his love is unable to await the moment when he will obtain his desires by sufficient pretence of indifference. Continually, he returns to the charge, he never ceases writing to her whom he loves, he is always trying to see her, she refuses herself, he becomes desperate. From that time she knows, if she grants him her company, her friendship, that these benefits will seem so considerable to one who believed he was going to be deprived of them, that she need grant nothing more and that she can take advantage of the moment when he can no longer bear being unable to see her and when, at all costs, he must put an end to the struggle by accepting a truce which will impose upon him a platonic relationship as its preliminary condition. Moreover, during all the time that preceded this truce, the lover, in a constant state of anxiety, ceaselessly hoping for a letter, a glance, has long ceased thinking of the physical desire which at first tormented him but which has been exhausted by waiting and has been replaced by another order of longings more painful still if left unsatisfied. The pleasure formerly anticipated from caresses will later be accorded but transmuted into friendly words and promises of intercourse which brings delicious moments after the strain of uncertainty or after a look impregnated with such coldness that it seemed to remove the loved one beyond hope of his ever seeing her again. Women divine all this and know they can afford the luxury of never yielding to those who, from the first, have betrayed their inextinguishable desire. A woman is enchanted if, without giving anything, she can receive more than she generally gets when she does give herself.
The relations one has with a woman one loves (and that can apply also to love for a youth) can remain platonic for other reasons than the chastity of the woman or the unsensual nature of the love she inspires. The reason may be that the lover is too impatient and by the very excess of his love is unable to await the moment when he will obtain his desires by sufficient pretence of indifference. Continually, he returns to the charge, he never ceases writing to her whom he loves, he is always trying to see her, she refuses herself, he becomes desperate. From that time she knows, if she grants him her company, her friendship, that these benefits will seem so considerable to one who believed he was going to be deprived of them, that she need grant nothing more and that she can take advantage of the moment when he can no longer bear being unable to see her and when, at all costs, he must put an end to the struggle by accepting a truce which will impose upon him a platonic relationship as its preliminary condition. Moreover, during all the time that preceded this truce, the lover, in a constant state of anxiety, ceaselessly hoping for a letter, a glance, has long ceased thinking of the physical desire which at first tormented him but which has been exhausted by waiting and has been replaced by another order of longings more painful still if left unsatisfied. The pleasure formerly anticipated from caresses will later be accorded but transmuted into friendly words and promises of intercourse which brings delicious moments after the strain of uncertainty or after a look impregnated with such coldness that it seemed to remove the loved one beyond hope of his ever seeing her again. Women divine all this and know they can afford the luxury of never yielding to those who, from the first, have betrayed their inextinguishable desire. A woman is enchanted if, without giving anything, she can receive more than she generally gets when she does give herself.
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About Marcel Proust
Proust was born in the Auteuil quarter of Paris, to a wealthy bourgeois family. His father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist who studied cholera. His mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was from a prosperous Jewish family. Proust was raised in his father's Catholic faith, though he later became an atheist. From a young age, he struggled with severe asthma attacks which caused him to have a disrupted education. As a young man, Proust cultivated interests in literature and writing while moving in elite Parisian high society salons frequented by aristocrats and the upper bourgeoisie. These social connections provided inspiration and material for his later novel. His first works, including the collection of stories Les plaisirs et les jours, were published in the 1890s to little public success.
In 1908, Proust began work on À la recherche du temps perdu. The novel consists of seven volumes totaling around 1.25 million words and featuring 2,000 characters. It explores themes of memory, art, love, High Society and the human experience through the narrator's recollections. Begun when Proust was 38, the novel was partially published in his lifetime, with the initial sections appearing in 1913. The remaining volumes were revised and published posthumously by his brother Robert based on drafts and proofs. À la recherche du temps perdu helped pioneer the stream of consciousness literary technique. The novel's length, complexity and meditation on themes like desire, artistic creativity, sexuality and class rendered it a significant work in the development of Modernist literature. The work was translated into English by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and others.
Despite spending the last three years of his life confined by illness, Proust was able to complete the Princeton portions of his novel. He died of pneumonia and pulmonary issues in 1922, aged 51 and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Proust's sexuality and relationships with men were an open secret among his social circles, though the author himself never publicly acknowledged being homosexual.