My Years With Proust - Day 432

But the motor-car respects no mystery, and, having passed through Incarville, whose houses still danced before my eyes, as we were going down the by-road that leads to Parville (Paterni villa), catching sight of the sea from a natural terrace over which we were passing, I asked the name of the place, and before the chauffeur had time to reply recognised Beaumont, close by which I passed thus without knowing it whenever I took the little train, for it was within two minutes of Parville.  Like an officer in my regiment who might have struck me as someone special, too kindly and unassuming to be a nobleman, or altogether too remote and mysterious to be merely a nobleman, and whom I then might have discovered to be the brother-in-law or the cousin of people with whom I often dined, so Beaumont, suddenly linked with places from which I supposed it to be so distinct, lost its mystery and took its place in the district, making me think with terror that Madame Bovary and the Sanseverina might perhaps have seemed to me to be like ordinary people, had I met them elsewhere than in the closed atmosphere of a novel.  It may be thought that my love of enchanted journeys by train ought to have kept me from sharing Albertine's wonder at the motor-car which takes even an invalid whenever he wishes to go and prevents one from thinking - as I had done hitherto - of the actual site as the individual mark, the irreplaceable essence of irremovable beauties.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1037-1038

For some reason this section reminds me of my most excellent friend Sanford Zale, who will often opine that "everything was better in the past."  Actually, for the most part I don't think everything was better in the past.  Certainly, some things are.  You just have to read what passes for observation, analysis and argument in the vast majority of college papers to understand how the death of reading has led to the concomitant death, by intellectual strangulation, of thought.  Yes, we - and I do definitely include myself in this general condemnation - all have smart phones which allow us to access all the information in the world at any time, but, as I've opined before, it has taken away the mystery and I would argue the beauty from knowledge.  Now it is just a commodity, and like all commodities it must be delivered as cheaply and quickly as possible.  Proust is making a similar point in regards to the passing of the age of trains and the rise of automobiles has now made more and more places accessible, and thus more common and less unique and truly beautiful.  He regrets that the village of Beaumont was "suddenly linked with places from which I supposed it to be so distinct, lost its mystery and took its place in the district, making me think with terror that Madame Bovary and the Sanseverina might perhaps have seemed to me to be like ordinary people, had I met them elsewhere than in the closed atmosphere of a novel."  Once again, we are drawn back to perception and its domination over every aspect of our lives.