Page 367 - swanns-way

to liberate in him the room that was needed to contain it;
the proportions of Swann’s soul were altered; a margin was
left for a form of enjoyment which corresponded no more
than his love for Odette to any external object, and yet was
not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely individual, but
assumed for him an objective reality superior to that of oth-
er concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the
little phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without
bringing him any definite gratification to assuage it. With
the result that those parts of Swann’s soul in which the little
phrase had obliterated all care for material interests, those
human considerations which affect all men alike, were left
bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to inscribe
the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette’s affection
might seem ever so little abrupt and disappointing, the little
phrase would come to supplement it, to amalgamate with it
its own mysterious essence. Watching Swann’s face while he
listened to the phrase, one would have said that he was in-
haling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe more
deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him, which
was shortly to create in him a real longing, was in fact close-
ly akin, at such moments, to the pleasure which he would
have derived from experimenting with perfumes, from en-
tering into contract with a world for which we men were not
created, which appears to lack form because our eyes can-
not perceive it, to lack significance because it escapes our
intelligence, to which we may attain by way of one sense
only. Deep repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann,—for
him whose eyes, although delicate interpreters of painting,

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