Swann's Way

days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough
to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would
appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part
in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify
it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we
recall and recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on
our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the
opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for
us to remember all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where
it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are
well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow