My Year With Proust - Day 216

   "It was not 'Rachel when from the Lord' who seemed to me of little significance, it was the power of the human imagination, the illusion on which were based the pains of love, that I found very great.  Robert noticed that I seemed moved.  I turn my eyes to the pear and cherry trees of the garden opposite, so that he might think that it was their beauty that had touched me.  And it did touch me in somewhat the same way; it also brought close to me things of the kind which we not only see with our eyes feel also in our hearts.  In likening those trees that I had seen in the garden to strange deities, had I not been mistaken like Magdalene when, in another garden, on a day whose anniversary was soon to come, she saw a human form and 'supposed it was the gardener.' Treasurers of our memories of the golden age, keepers of the promise that reality is not what we suppose, that the splendour of poetry, the wonderful radiance of innocence may shine in it and may be the recompense which we strive to earn, were they not, these great white creatures miraculously bowed over that shade so propitious for rest, for angling or for reading, were they not rather angels?  I exchanged a few words with Saint-Loup's mistress.  We cut across the village.  Its houses were sordid.  But by each of the most wretched, of those that looked as though they had been scorch and branded by a rain of brimstone, a mysterious traveller halting for a day in the accursed city, a resplendent angel stood erect, stretching over it the dazzling protection of his widespread wings of innocence: it was the pear tree in blossom."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 162-163

There are several reasons why I like this passage, featuring typically wonderful Proustian reflections on beauty and meaning, in this case a continuation of his first meeting with Robert and his mistress Zezette (the former prostitute who Proust always refers to as "Rachel when from the Lord").  However, it also got me thinking about Proust's ability - or the ability of any writer or painter or composer for centuries on end - to make subtle references to characters or events from the Old or New Testament.  I've often talked to my students about how Renaissance painters would include very subtle allusions to stories from the Bible or from Greek or Roman mythology, knowing that an educated audience would get the reference.  Sadly, those days are long past.  On the one hand it is representative of the fact that we lead a more secular existence in a more multicultural world, and that, I think, is a very good thing.  It also means that we have many more beautiful cultural threads to weave into our intellectual tapestry, which is one of the reasons why I'm working on my long-delayed book on the epics; a way of introducing the Ramayana or Journey to the West or the Shahnameh to a more general audience.  That said, the other obvious reason why artists can no longer make the same subtle references with any certainty of recognition is that we are increasingly a society steeped in ignorance.  What is more, in a shameless society we don't even feel bad about it.  One of the sad lessons of Trump's popularity is that garish, brutal, idiotic form is dominating content as never before.  As a society we far failing educationally, both to impart knowledge but also to share the beauty of the attainment of knowledge.