From 1893 to 1896, the young Proust sharpens his knives as a writer in the magazine La Revue blanche. Fragmentarily, he sketches a personal, still future, universe. The homosexual confession in "Before Night Falls" exposes the anxieties of desire-pain, the short "Memory" focuses entirely on the power of sensation, while "Against Ambiguity," his last text for La Revue blanche, confirms his interest in adopting a combative stance, as well as his will to develop a reflection on the truth of literature. These texts, which will not be included in the collection "Pleasures and Days," his first book published in 1896, approach themes that will run through his entire work "In Search of Lost Time."
In "The Indifferent," as in "Before Night Falls," desire dominates. This short story was first published on March 1, 1896, in La vie contemporaine et Revue parisienne reunies. With its condensed narrative plot and perfect ending, the author remains faithful to the stylistic demands of the short story. He follows the perspective of a woman in love and establishes the phenomenology of passionate consciousness, studying and analyzing love throughout its duration (from the moment it is born until its end), in its various complications (social and interpersonal) and its emotional essence (love in Proust is a Golgotha)...