Reading | Digest: he had been leaning over the map of the Compiègne Forest as if it were a map of love

Proust's novels dominated France for the first half of the twentieth century, as did Balzac's novels. He poured his thoughts and even the best parts of his life into "Remembrance of the Lost Years".

Excerpt XII of "Reminiscences like water"

Volume 1 "Over there in the Swanns"

The Second Part of "Swann's Love" (5)

He doesn't make up his own pain out of nothing. His feelings of pain are nothing more than the recollection and continuation of some kind of pain from the outside.

◆ His mouth was so pouting that he felt the tense muscles in his neck rubbing against the collar of his shirt.

He had not yet awakened from his pain, had not yet awakened from his insincere drunkenness, and the untrue tone and the sonorous tone of his speech were still reinforcing his drunkenness from time to time.

◆ If they don't love you, they won't say those words, and since they love you, they don't have to do what they say, and they can only love you more afterwards.

Even if he didn't know exactly where she would be and when she would appear, he already felt everywhere that the possibility of her sudden appearance was suddenly pulsating.

This restriction on his freedom of movement is only one of the forms of slavery, that love, which he cherished so much.

◆ He had been leaning over the map of the Forest of Compiègne as if it were a map of the kingdom of love, surrounded by pictures of the castle of Bierphon.

She didn't even think about him. It helped tie his heart more than her whole style. Because then Swann lived in such a bitter agitation.

It would be too imprudent to let such a beautiful woman go out alone in Paris, which is like placing a box full of jewels in the middle of the road.

◆ After painstakingly trying to understand the reality of the external world or the immortality of the soul, people always ask god to alleviate the tired brain.

These things absorb his dreams like a sponge absorbing water, and at the same time as they free him from them, they themselves are enriched; they also point out to him the reality that his dreams can see and touch, and attract the attention of his thoughts.

◆ He calmly observed his illness, as if he were vaccinating himself in order to conduct research.

He was no less afraid of this illness than death, for such a cure would be tantamount to declaring the death of all his present beings.

And his hatred, like his love, needs to be vented, needs action, and he is happy to push his bad thoughts further.

◆ As long as Swann imagines her without disgust, then this love has resumed the hobby of treating her smile and tone rise and fall as a drama, as a phenomenon to explore this fun hobby.

◆ Through the chemical mechanism of his illness, after creating vinegar with love, he began to create warmth and pity for Odette.

The absence of one thing does not only mean the absence of such a thing, it is not just the lack of one part, it is the great turmoil of the whole rest, this is a new state that cannot be foreseen from the old state.

◆ It is the spirit of power that allows him to accept the appeasement of a kind of pleasure, allowing him to give willpower a holiday.

◆ This thought is like a rubber band that has just been discarded or the air coming out of a pneumatic press that has just opened the lid, and suddenly breaks into the current field from a distance, and comes to the field where it is possible to achieve it immediately.

It is something a little like love, like death, not something vaguely similar to the concept of disease; it is something that we often doubt, often investigate deeply, lest we grasp its essence—that is the mystery of man's character.

◆ The disease of Swann's love has spread greatly, has become one with him, it is impossible to strip from him without destroying himself completely, in the words of a surgeon, his love can no longer be operated on.