At most I noticed cursorily that the differences which exist between every one of our real impressions - differences which explain why a uniform depiction of life cannot bear much resemblance to the reality - derive probably from the following cause: the slightest word that we have said, the most insignificant action that we have performed at any one epoch of our life was surrounded by, and coloured by the reflection of, things which logically had no connexion with it and which later have been separated from it by our intellect which could make nothing of them for its own rational purposes, things, however, in the midst of which - here the pink reflection of the evening upon the flower-covered wall of a country restaurant, a feeling of hunger, the desire for women, the pleasure of luxury; there the blue volutes of the morning sea and, enveloped in them, phrases of music half emerging like the shoulders of water-nymphs - the simplest act or gesture remains immured as within a thousand sealed vessels, each one of them filled with things of a colour, a scent, a temperature that are absolutely different one from another, vessels, moreover, which being disposed over the whole range of our years, during which we have never ceased to change if only in our dreams and our thoughts, are situated at the most various moral altitudes and give us the sensation of extraordinarily diverse atmospheres, It is true that we have accomplished these changes imperceptibly; but between the memory which brusquely returns to us and our present state, and no less between two memories of different years, places, hours, the distance is such that it alone, even without any specific originality, would make it impossible to compare one with the other. Yes: if, owing to the work of oblivion, the returning memory can throw no bridge, form no connecting link between itself and the present minute, if it remains in the context of its own place and date, if it keeps its distance, its isolation in the hollow of a valley or upon the highest peak of a mountain summit, for this very reason it causes us suddenly to breathe a new air, an air which is new precisely because we have breathed it in the past, that purer air which the poets have vainly tried to situate in paradise and which could induce so profound a sensation of renewal only if it had been breathed before, since the true paradises are the paradises which we have lost.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 902-903
Yes, Proust at his most dense and almost unapproachable, and also most beautiful.
He continues to reflect upon the three vivid memories as we waited to enter the soiree at the Guermantes mansion. In the process he ruminates about the difficulty of working our way through, and reconciling, the difference between reality and perception. Proust tells us, "the slightest word that we have said, the most insignificant action that we have performed at any one epoch of our life was surrounded by, and coloured by the reflection of, things which logically had no connexion with it and which later have been separated from it by our intellect which could make nothing of them for its own rational purposes . . ." Surrounding the original memory is a universe of other perceptions and memories, some corresponding and others distracting, which vie for our attention: "here the pink reflection of the evening upon the flower-covered wall of a country restaurant, a feeling of hunger, the desire for women, the pleasure of luxury; there the blue volutes of the morning sea and, enveloped in them, phrases of music half emerging like the shoulders of water-nymphs - the simplest act or gesture remains immured as within a thousand sealed vessels . . ." Not to be indelicate, but I remember a friend telling me a story once which focused, partially, on an act of spirited carnality carried out during a violent thunderstorm during his years in college. Decades later he would reflect that the most important aspect of that moment was that he and the woman were falling in love, and that love would shape years of his life, but at the time, and even years later, what he would remember most vividly was the violent flash of lightning on her skin. Hence, the externality of physical desire competed with the internality of love for control of the memory's narrative, and in the end, as so often happens, the surface level desire won the day. Using Proust's logic, the mind had not been able to reconcile the two events/emotions, and so it discarded the more "illogical" in this case love, which seemed like a strange bedfellow, so to speak, during that moment of sweaty physicality. Who knows if Proust is right, of course, although it makes sense, and sounds a bit like cognitive dissonance, although, knowing Proust, even tangentially like I do, he's doubtless aiming at a higher and more metaphysical level.
So, what happens when you can't reconcile these two worlds, the world of pristine memory and the one of cluttered perception? Proust, not surprisingly, reflects upon this as well: "Yes: if, owing to the work of oblivion, the returning memory can throw no bridge, form no connecting link between itself and the present minute, if it remains in the context of its own place and date, if it keeps its distance, its isolation in the hollow of a valley or upon the highest peak of a mountain summit, for this very reason it causes us suddenly to breathe a new air, an air which is new precisely because we have breathed it in the past, that purer air which the poets have vainly tried to situate in paradise and which could induce so profound a sensation of renewal only if it had been breathed before, since the true paradises are the paradises which we have lost." I like the notion of a "new air," which we've actually breathed before, and which is actually that "purer air which the poets have vainly tried to situate in paradise." It is often stated that in Islam a true Muslim would never actively say no to God, because that is inconceivable, but might forget; and hence the biggest sin in the faith, at least according to this line of reasoning, is forgetfulness. I proposed the other on the Discography discussion that the essential human desire is the quest for beauty. Trying to bring the two strands together, maybe the air is new because we have rediscovered beauty, and because we have changed, and the world has changed, we're experiencing it with new eyes.
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