The memory of them transported in the place in which I now found myself so far outside the world of to-day that I should not have been surprised if, like the young man of the prehistoric age that Elstir had painted, I had come upon a mythological personage in the course of my ride. Suddenly, my horse reared; he had heard a strange sound; it was all I could do to hold him and remain in the saddle; then I raised my tear-filled eyes in the direction from which the sound seemed to come and saw, not two hundred feet above my head, against the sun, between two great wings of flashing metal which were bearing him aloft, a creature whose indistinct face appeared to me to resemble that of a man. I was as deeply moved as ancient Greek on seeing for the first time a demi-god. I wept - for I had been ready to weep the moment I realised that the sound came from above my head (aeroplanes were still rare in those days), at the thought that what I was going to see for the first time was an aeroplane. Then, just as when in a newspaper one senses that one is coming to a moving passage, the mere sight of the machine was enough to make me burst into tears. Meanwhile the airman seemed to be uncertain of his course; I felt that there lay open before him - before me, had not habit made me a prisoner - all the routes in space, in life itself; he flew on, let himself glide for a few moments over the sea, then quickly making up his mind, seeming to yield to some attraction that was the reverse of gravity, as though returning to his native element, with a slight adjustment of his golden wings he headed straight up into the sky.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1062
Proust often seems timeless, but is that the same as saying that it exists outside of time? We're a century removed from the world that Proust chronicled, but his eye for detail and his keen perception makes his commentary seem remarkably "present". Yes, he's a product of his age, as we all are, and he makes comments which seem dated, but often that reflects a surface level societal norm. When he digs deeper and reflects on love and desire, and especially pain and beauty, I feel that his observations are as true today as they were a century ago or a millennium ago, and will be as true in a century or a millennium. For this reason when you read Remembrance of Things Past it is easy to lose track of time, and thus it is jarring when you're brought back to the realization that he lived and wrote a hundred years ago. In the section above Proust sees an airplane for the first time, and it drives him to tears. He sets up the scene beautifully by having Marcel in the primitive countryside, already reflecting upon two paintings by Elstir: "Poet meeting a Muse" and "Young Man meeting a Centaur." This leaves Marcel proposing that "I should not have been surprised if . . . I had come up a mythological personage in the course of my ride." Plus, having him on horseback, a mode of transportation already made, if not irrelevant, at least mainly a product of leisure, makes the plane even more otherworldly, if not downright mythological. If that earlier gentle age was already disappearing during Proust's ride, just think what would happen within a few years with the outbreak of World War I.
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| I guess it's not particularly surprising that all of this makes me think of Poussin's Et In Arcadia Ego. |
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