Hm. That Explains A Lot.
Despite having wholeheartedly different ideas of and views on the nature of friendship, I'm still working my way through Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, one thoughtful tidbit at a time.
Excerpt from 'How To Be Happy In Love':
Q: Does this mean he didn't think much of making love?
A: He merely thought humans were missing an anatomical part with which to perform the act properly. In the Proustian scheme, it is impossible to love someone physically. Given the coyness of his age, he limited his thoughts to the disappointment of kissing:
Man, a creature clearly less rudimentary than the sea-urchin or even the whale, nevertheless lacks a certain number of essential organs, and particularly possesses none that will serve for kissing. For this absent organ he substitutes his lips, and perhaps he thereby achieves a result slightly more satisfying than caressing his beloved with a horny tusk. But a pair of lips, designed to convey to the palate the taste of whatever whets their appetite, must be content, without understanding their mistake or admitting their disappointment, with roaming over the surface and with coming to a halt at the barrier of the impenetrable but irresistible cheek.
Why do we kiss people? At one level, merely to generate the pleasurable sensation of rubbing an area of nerve endings against a corresponding strip of soft, fleshy, moist skin tissue. However, the hopes with which we approach the prospect of an initial kiss typically extend beyond this. We seek to hold and savor not just a mouth but an entire beloved person. With the kiss, we hope to achieve a higher form of possession; the longing a beloved inspires in us promises to come to an end once our lips are allowed to roam freely over theirs.
But for Proust, though a kiss can produce a pleasurable physical tingle, it cannot grant us a true sense of amorous possession.
For example, his narrator is attracted to Albertine, whom he met as she walked along the Normandy Coast one brilliant summer's day. He is attracted to her rosy cheeks, her black hair, her beauty spot, her impudent, confident manner, and to things she evokes and makes him nostalgic for-the summer, the smell of the sea, youth. Once he returns to Paris after the summer, Albertine comes to his flat. In contrast to her reserve when he tried to kiss her at the seaside, she now lies close to him on the bed and falls into an embrace. It promises to be a moment of resolution. Yet, whereas he had hoped the kiss would allow him to savor Albertine, her past, the beach, the summer, and the circumstances of their meeting, the reality is somewhat more prosaic. His lips brushing against Albertine's allow him as much contact with her as a brush with a horny tusk. He can't see her, because of the awkwardness of the kissing position, and his nose is so squashed he can hardly breathe.
It may have been a particularly inept kiss, but by detailing its disappointments, Proust points to a general difficulty in a physical method of appreciation. The narrator recognizes that he could do almost anything physically with Albertine-take her on his knees, hold her head in his hands, caress her-but that he would still be doing nothing other than touching the sealed envelope of a far more elusive beloved person.
This might not matter were it not for a tendency to believe that physical contact might in fact put us directly in touch with the object of our love. Disappointed with the kiss, we then risk ascribing our disappointment to the tedium of the person we were kissing, rather than the limitations involved in doing so.
This is particularly interesting to me, as an INTJ, whose general feelings on affectionate attachments have been best summed up with, "I've never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or indeed why it should be necessary to prove it at all." Sometimes I wonder that INTJs shouldn't be given a manual on the human species right from the start that explains things to us in a thoughtful, articulate and observant way. It's sort of where we fall down on the whole "being right about everything" thing.
Excerpt from 'How To Be Happy In Love':
Q: Does this mean he didn't think much of making love?
A: He merely thought humans were missing an anatomical part with which to perform the act properly. In the Proustian scheme, it is impossible to love someone physically. Given the coyness of his age, he limited his thoughts to the disappointment of kissing:
Man, a creature clearly less rudimentary than the sea-urchin or even the whale, nevertheless lacks a certain number of essential organs, and particularly possesses none that will serve for kissing. For this absent organ he substitutes his lips, and perhaps he thereby achieves a result slightly more satisfying than caressing his beloved with a horny tusk. But a pair of lips, designed to convey to the palate the taste of whatever whets their appetite, must be content, without understanding their mistake or admitting their disappointment, with roaming over the surface and with coming to a halt at the barrier of the impenetrable but irresistible cheek.
Why do we kiss people? At one level, merely to generate the pleasurable sensation of rubbing an area of nerve endings against a corresponding strip of soft, fleshy, moist skin tissue. However, the hopes with which we approach the prospect of an initial kiss typically extend beyond this. We seek to hold and savor not just a mouth but an entire beloved person. With the kiss, we hope to achieve a higher form of possession; the longing a beloved inspires in us promises to come to an end once our lips are allowed to roam freely over theirs.
But for Proust, though a kiss can produce a pleasurable physical tingle, it cannot grant us a true sense of amorous possession.
For example, his narrator is attracted to Albertine, whom he met as she walked along the Normandy Coast one brilliant summer's day. He is attracted to her rosy cheeks, her black hair, her beauty spot, her impudent, confident manner, and to things she evokes and makes him nostalgic for-the summer, the smell of the sea, youth. Once he returns to Paris after the summer, Albertine comes to his flat. In contrast to her reserve when he tried to kiss her at the seaside, she now lies close to him on the bed and falls into an embrace. It promises to be a moment of resolution. Yet, whereas he had hoped the kiss would allow him to savor Albertine, her past, the beach, the summer, and the circumstances of their meeting, the reality is somewhat more prosaic. His lips brushing against Albertine's allow him as much contact with her as a brush with a horny tusk. He can't see her, because of the awkwardness of the kissing position, and his nose is so squashed he can hardly breathe.
It may have been a particularly inept kiss, but by detailing its disappointments, Proust points to a general difficulty in a physical method of appreciation. The narrator recognizes that he could do almost anything physically with Albertine-take her on his knees, hold her head in his hands, caress her-but that he would still be doing nothing other than touching the sealed envelope of a far more elusive beloved person.
This might not matter were it not for a tendency to believe that physical contact might in fact put us directly in touch with the object of our love. Disappointed with the kiss, we then risk ascribing our disappointment to the tedium of the person we were kissing, rather than the limitations involved in doing so.
This is particularly interesting to me, as an INTJ, whose general feelings on affectionate attachments have been best summed up with, "I've never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or indeed why it should be necessary to prove it at all." Sometimes I wonder that INTJs shouldn't be given a manual on the human species right from the start that explains things to us in a thoughtful, articulate and observant way. It's sort of where we fall down on the whole "being right about everything" thing.