I beg you friend, be happy. I have the vague sense that on your capacity to be happy hangs our only hope. - Milan Kundera

The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.

A person is nothing but his image. Philosophers can tell us that it doesn't matter what the world thinks of us, that nothing matters but what we really are. But philosophers don't understand anything. As long as we live with other people, we are only what other people consider us to be. Thinking about how others see us and trying to make our image as attractive as possible is considered a kind of dissembling or cheating. But does there exist another kind of direct contact between my self and their selves except through the mediation of the eyes? Can we possibly imagine love without anxiously following our image in the mind of the beloved? When we are no longer interested in how we are seen by the person we love, it means we no longer love.