The Maybe Man, Charles Swann

He had set himself the task of writing a text each morning, with no demands as to quality or word count, simply a text. He would start at 8:15, and twenty minutes later it would be finished. The procedure required little more than a regular sleep routine and one additional ingredient: the idea itself. Often he managed to catch hold of some small detail the day before, which he could later expand into literature, such as a snippet of conversation about washing a Mercedes, or a hostel receptionist with a fondness for Bonnie Tyler. On other days, he would need to draw inspiration from the morning paper, allowing an obituary or short notice to steer his thoughts in a productive direction.

But then there are mornings like this one, when he must close his eyes and let the previous day ripple through his mind, in the hope that the trawling will bring something to the surface. And indeed there had been a previous day this time too, he notes, lying on the sofa. All thoughts carry equal weight as they drift past: he is going to be an uncle, an intense chat on WhatsApp, a barely cleared walk along the Hammarby canal, glasses of wine with the calligrapher, the discussion about the evolution of biathlon (like combining a 100-metre sprint with darts, they had said).

Yet he lingers on Charles Swann, the fictional man to whom Marcel Proust devotes such care in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. From the outside, this worldly Swann might easily be viewed as a playboy, since there is scarcely any other definition of such a person than precisely the type Swann represented, and yet, like a typical fin de siècle maybe man, he could never help but lose himself in the people he sought out. There was a barrier somewhere, but not in the encounter, not in desire or longing. Beyond words, which of course were never to lead to any lasting arrangement, there was always a spark of truth between Swann and his lovers, something noble and tender. Perhaps only for a fleeting second, but that was his secret: where other playboys played the game, he played it with heart and soul, always with a large measure of naivety concealed beneath his more prominent dandyism. He sought an embrace as much as he sought a truth, his truth, when he pursued maids and duchesses alike, never distinguishing between people, for he followed feeling, and feeling knows no class. And who can judge a feeling if it has been shaped without the interference of thought? It simply is, like a magical presence within us.

Charles Swann sought his embrace without truly understanding his need. All women’s bodies merged in his imagination when he gave himself over to such fantasies, but calves, hips and shoulders were transformed into the needs of warmth, softness, glow and tenderness. All of it beautiful and noble, even that which the world might have dismissed as greedy desire. No one accuses a connoisseur of eating food that is too exquisite, he may have comforted himself, if he ever felt branded as seedy. Until he meets Odette, who is nothing like the others, and for whom he feels no initial attraction at all, but she is Odette, and therein lies the difference.

The intellectual and idle playboy Charles dashes through his days in pursuit of experiences like a manic user of Tinder, when, as it turns out, he needs only a single experience, a truth and no more, an experience the relationship coaches speak of in every podcast on the subject. Dare to choose your path, Charles, and the path will choose you.

It is on this that the writer finally reflects as he sits down to write, and he writes.