Swann in Love

<p><i>Swann in Love</i>, a book within a book contained within the first volume, <i>Swann's Way</i>, of Marcel Proust's <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>, is an excellent entry point into the author's work and a compelling standalone novel. In its pages, the portrait of a stormy love affair between the courtesan Odette de Crécy and upper-class socialite Charles Swann serves as a springboard for the author's meditations on love and jealousy<br> <br> <i>Swann's Way</i>: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520135157<br> <br> <i>We once dreamt of possessing the heart of our beloved; later, the feeling that we already possess a certain woman's heart could be all we need so that we fall in love. So at an age where it would seem that a woman's beauty and how it aligns with our tastes would play a larger role than ever, a love can be born, a love of the most physical kind even, without there having been any initial foundation of desire. At this stage in our life, we have already been touched by love more than once, it no longer evolves on its own, following its unknown, fatal laws before our passive and astonished hearts. We come to its aid; calling on our memories, yielding to suggestion, we act it out. In recognizing one of its symptoms, we recall, we recreate the others. As we possess its song, engraved on our heart in its entirety, we need only for a woman to provide the opening strands, filled with the admiration we feel at recognizing another's beauty, and we know what comes next. And if she starts in the middle, at the part where our two hearts come together, where we talk of existing each only for the other, we know this tune well enough that we can at once join our partner in the passage where she awaits us.</i></p>