[One Thousand Characters a Day] Proust's 'If You Must Cry Because of an Old Love'

Editor's NoteAsia Economy provides daily 1,000-character transcription content for the 'One Day Ten Thousand Steps, One Day Thousand Characters' newsletter readers. The transcription content is carefully selected according to daily and monthly themes from Eastern and Western classics, Korean literature, famous columns, and notable speeches. Today, we introduce a part of "If You Still Have to Cry Because of Old Love" from , a collection of early prose poems by the great French writer Marcel Proust. The text contains 1,023 characters.

It is touching for readers when novelists or protagonists in novels linger on old love, but unfortunately, it often feels quite contrived. This contrast between an old love that seems eternal and present indifference ? a contrast we become aware of through countless concrete details such as names mentioned in conversation, letters rediscovered in drawers, meetings with the person involved, and even the act of possessing that person ? is heartbreakingly moving and tear-inducing within a novel. However, in reality, we accept this coldly. This is because we are currently immersed in indifference and oblivion, because the woman we once loved no longer satisfies us except aesthetically, and because even the troubled and anguished feelings have vanished along with love. Therefore, the sorrowful melancholy brought by this contrast is merely a spiritual truth. For this spiritual truth to also become a psychological reality, the writer must place it not after love has ended but at the time when the passion they describe begins.

When we begin to love ? contrary to our hearts that feel the emotion of love or harbor the illusion that love will last forever ? we already know through the insight of experience that although we live daily immersed in thoughts of that woman, someday she will no longer attract our attention any more than any other woman. Hearing her name will evoke no sensual pain, we will read her letters without trembling, we will not change our path just to brush past her on the street, we will remain unmoved even if we meet her, and even if we possess her, we will not be excited. At such times, this certain insight will make us weep despite the absurd and intense premonition that we will love her forever. And love ? that mysterious, sorrowful, and sacred morning sun that still rises above our heads ? will spread something like a vast horizon before our pain. The horizon of love is strange and distant, with a touch of enchanting grief mixed in.

- Marcel Proust, , translated by Lee Geonsu, Minumsa, 13,000 KRW