To my regret, I frequently come across jealous people. In my fiction, I’ve written often about this repugnant feeling but, in general, unhappily. The result is always disappointing: from Shakespeare to Proust, everything that could be said has been said, beautifully, and it seems a wasted effort. Besides, I feel some reluctance to dig into myself and what I know about the many jealous people I’ve loved and love. Not to mention that I often run into people who say, in anguished tones, “Forget it, you don’t know enough about jealousy. I do, I know all the torments.” Jealousy is a yellowish muck that we stick our hands into without even the satisfaction of extracting some truth of our own.

And yet it’s hard to ignore the feeling: like it or not, in trivial or extreme form, we’ve all experienced it – not necessarily in love, but in every kind of relationship. Of course I’ve met many people who swear they are not the jealous type. But I’ve pretty quickly had to put them into the category of perjurers: jealousy suddenly appeared in their eyes, though they hurried to retract it – embarrassed, hoping I hadn’t noticed.

It’s mainly the cultured who are careful to hide their jealousy, because they feel that deep down this is a petty but significant presumption: their intolerance of the fact that the people they love may feel pleasure without them, in the company of others. The jealous person wants to be the only source of the beloved’s wellbeing. And yet, as we know, the press of life is so strong, so fiercely expansive, that it can’t be completely fulfilled by one relationship; all of us are tempted to risk even the most solid bonds when attracted by others.

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If we maintain some clear-headedness and a little self-control, we can see that a large part of the beloved’s existence inevitably takes place outside the enclosure in which we want to place him. To keep watch is impossible; every attack of jealousy underlines our condition as a frail human being – we’re not indispensable, we’re afraid of abandonment – and is degrading; it takes away our aura. And for that reason, we try desperately to contain our jealous rages. At times, we even manage to transform them into an impulse to give the other all the attention, all the kindness, all the understanding we’re capable of.

It’s an exercise that doesn’t always succeed, partly because the beloved seems to think it’s intended to demonstrate – not only in private, but publicly – that we are not enough. The moment the inevitable feeling of inadequacy prevails, along with the impossibility of making oneself the sole purpose of another’s life, there is no way out. We shut the beloved up in a cage, preferring that he die spiritually and even physically – rather than expose us to the humiliating wound of his escape.

• Translated by Ann Goldstein