Her sleep realized, to a certain degree, the promise of love; when I was alone, I could think about her, but she was not there, she was not mine. When she was there, I could speak to her, but was too removed from myself to be able to think. When she was asleep, I did not have to speak any more, I knew that she could not see me, I did not have to live on the surface of myself. By closing her eyes, by losing consciousness, Albertine had put off, one by one, the various marks of humanity which had so disappointed me in her, from the day that we first me. She was animated only be the unconscious life of plants, of trees.
Marcel Proust, The Prisoner, translated by Carol Clark. p. 60.
Simone de Beauvoir says women love trees as themselves. Marcel has a subjectivity problem.
