From 1893 to 1896, the young Proust sharpens his writing skills in the magazine La Revue blanche. He sketches out a personal, still future universe in fragments. The homosexual confession in Before Night Falls exposes the anxieties of desire-pain, the brief Remembrance 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 and his will to develop a discourse around 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 permeate his entire work In Search of Lost Time. In "The Indifferent," as well as in "Before Night Falls," desire dominates. This short story was first published on March 1, 1896, in La vie contemporaine et Revue parisienne réunies.
With its condensed narrative plot and perfect closure of the story, the author remains faithful to the stylistic demands of the short story. He follows the perspective of a lovesick woman and establishes the phenomenology of passionate consciousness, examining and analyzing love throughout its entirety (from the moment it is born until its end), in its various complexities (social and interpersonal) and its emotional essence (love in Proust is a Calvary)... (From the introduction)
