A song he wrote for his first love. She perished in a school fire that he only barely got away from himself. His entire life story is sad but I find this song particularly devastating, he never got past the trauma.
Halfway through Swann's Way. I really adore his long meandering sentences that so accurately surface a deep rooted perception that I'd never have elucidated despite knowing it my entire life. And I don't expect it to pan out well, but I love the development of Swann's appreciation for Odette's beauty when he sees her through the lens of a Botticelli painting, and how Proust imbues it with eroticism. Also Swann's parisian high society hugh grant-esque fuckboy antics