"I used to dream that Mme de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there, that all day long stood fishing for trout by my side. And when evening came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gardens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would teach me all their names. She would make me tell her, too, all about the poems that I meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me that, since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock. I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its development. . . Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the Government and with Providence that I should be the first writer or my day. But at other times, while my parents were rowing impatient at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my actual life, instead of seeming an artificial creation of my father, and one which he could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be comprised in a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit, from whose judgements there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was bound, helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like them, and that among them I was not to be distinguished mere as one of those who have no aptitude in writing. And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when someone is loud in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of conscience."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 182-183
I think I now have even more fodder for my tombstone, as the phrase "the nullity of my intellect" has to have a place there, if not also for the Scudder t-shirts. I have also at times, and probably at my most prescient, have echoed the words: "before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering my development." I suspect that the staple of all people who have accomplished a lot in their life (or in my case a slightly less embarrassing amount) is the gnawing fear/certainty that they are frauds and have absolutely no talent. Maybe they consciously or unconsciously use this as fuel, sort of a Tom Brady phenomenon where he has never once forgotten that he was the 199th player picked in the NFL draft (I don't like sports analogies, but this one seems apt). I remember my doctoral chair in graduate school writing a teaching evaluation of me, and describing me as a "reasonably intelligent young man of Hoosier bourgeois stock." I just remember thinking, "I'm going to bury you."
Just briefly, I was also struck by the use of the word vacuity, which has such different meanings in the East and West. In Proust's mind it expresses something that is definitely (and maybe debilitatingly) missing, whereas in the East it can be considered something to strive for. At one point in early in Journey to the West, Monkey is given a title, if I remember correctly, that is something like Master of Vacuity, which pleased him quite a bit. There's more than a bit of an inside joke there, but Monkey is pleased by the title because it hints at the achievement of the Buddhist concept of Emptiness.
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