“The End of Jealousy”, a short story from 1896

“The End of Jealousy”, a short story from 1896 🤓📚✨

“The End of Jealousy” had already struck me as the finest short story in the collection “Pleasures and Days”, published in 1896 by @calmann.levy, if my notes in the small volume published by Mille et Une Nuits—bought in 1998 from @librairie.dialogues, leafed through around 2001, and read in 2018—are to be believed. ✔️

And my impression is confirmed in this €2 book from @editionsfolio, which covers part of it. I bought it at the bookshop at the @petitpalais_musee after the wonderful exhibition “André Devambez: Vertiges de l’imagination”! 🖼️😍

This short story, structured in three chapters, contains numerous early indications of the themes, motifs and, indeed, the Proustian aesthetic. Honoré’s adulterous love for Françoise, born of a simple desire for conquest and mere carnal pleasure, takes on a tragic dimension when jealousy reignites it, just as he thought it was dying out. 😏🔥

Illness, accident, premature death, sadomasochistic voyeurism… This short story is not only a distillation of post-impressionist, decadent, ‘fin de siècle’ literature, but also, and above all, a fictional sketch which, in many respects, foreshadows some of the most intense passages of the novel to come: Swann’s jealousy of Odette, Marcel’s of Albertine, the scenes of voyeurism at Montjouvain 🪟 and in Jupien’s hotel ⛓️, the mother’s kiss… ❤️‍🩹

Some of Proust’s finest obsessions are already brought to life in this short story, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it yet.

“It’s true that he listened too much to himself; deep down, he was always listening to death, which had never quite left him and which, without completely destroying his life, was undermining it, now here, now there. Now his asthma was getting worse; he couldn’t catch his breath, and his whole chest was straining painfully to breathe. And he felt the veil that hides life from us—the death that lies within us—parting, and he glimpsed the terrifying reality of breathing, of living.” — p. 98 in @editionsfolio €2 no. 4790

#marcelproust #proustagram