"I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. 'There is a charming quality, is there not,' he said to me, 'in this silence, for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.'"
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 133
There definitely comes a time when we find ourselves retreating from the busy working and shared and glaring world into the world of silence and shadow. You all transition into the world completely at the end, but we begin the slow transition much earlier; certainly involuntarily because of disease and decay, but more importantly I think we begin to make that transition voluntarily as we move to something far more beautiful and more important. I'm thinking of Sherwood Anderson's story "Death" from Winesburg, Ohio where George Willard's dying mother is identifying Death as her lover. I'd like to say that it is a fit metaphor, but it's probably much more than that. Maybe the boundary between life and death is more porous than we realize, and thus we're drawn toward it almost through osmosis. So, in this particular case that world of silence and shadow is less the dying of the light and more than inevitable stage where we've passed into the penumbral territory of death. And not only is it inevitable, but isn't also desirable (going back to Death as a lover, and in fact the Lover).
3 comments:
Gary~
Like passing one of the trees in a Celtic forest...I found you! Delight in the manner you post about reading Proust: a passage that resonated and where it transported you. Sometimes, I hear Proust, in Legrandin.
Your post,
"There definitely comes a time when we find ourselves retreating from the busy working and shared and glaring world into the world of silence and shadow."
on Day 26, echoes my feelings during the last year or so...a ceaseless pull to the desert of New Mexico, or another horizontal world, with lightening storms and the stars of the Milky Way.
Wanted you to know that I added your blog to my site, under "Blogging while reading Proust."
Probably should have been a librarian, as I relish helping readers discover Marcel Proust.
Gary, please email me directly, MarcelitaSwann@gmail.com, if you ever come to New York. My husband plays Lucinda, while he cooks.
Marcelita,
Thank you, in all the years I've been tinkering with this blog I am quite certain that yours is the most thoughtful and kindest post. What's the address of your site? I'd love to check it out, and link it to mine.
I know exactly what you mean in regard to the desert. With me it is the Wadi Rum in Jordan, although apparently I'm drawn to any and all deserts. I brought students there last year and we met an American who had essentially gone Bedu. His wife was out conquering the business world and he would come and go, and spent months every year living in a cabin in a Bedu camp. My students were quite certain that I was about two years away from joining him.
Glad your husband like Lucinda, as all right thinking individuals do.
Thinking desert-people like to live in their minds...or maybe, like me, they are just 'listened-out.' ;)
Being a weirdly-private person, my pages are only information centers. Actually, I'm rather like a publicist for Proust.
My main site, began as a way to remember. Where was that article on music or that particular painting or the specific letter Proust wrote to his mother?
It's best not to go exploring just yet...as you will surely stumble upon a spoiler.
I am easy to find on Pinterest (the filing cabinet), Facebook or Twitter, under my name.
There are major circles of Proustians, in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the U.S. Some overlap, like a Venn diagram, but most are not aware of, or don't have the time to keep up with, the latest Proust paper or play. Ironically, I have French e-Pals, but I must translate everything, as I don't understand French.
Over the past ten years, I have learned, and shared, that the Proustian fraternity is one of the most exclusive in the world, because you can't buy your way in; you must read your way in. And once inside, I discovered that the true Proustians have a unique humbleness...and when we're together, we talk about everything, but Proust! The novel was just our "Open Sésame!"
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