And I did not want to let myself be side-tracked once more, for the task before me was to discover at long last whether or not it was possible to attain to what - disappointed as I had always been by the actuality of places and people - I had, although once the septet of Vinteuil had seemed to point to the contrary conclusion, come to think of as unrealisable. I did not intend, then, to make yet another experiment in a direction which I had long known would lead nowhere. Impressions such as those to which I wished to give permanence could not but vanish at the touch of a direct enjoyment which had been powerless to engender them. The only way to savour them more fully was to try to get to know them more completely in the medium in which they existed, that is to say within myself, to try to make them translucid even to their very depths.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 910-911
Last time I made the point that I was trying not to regain Lost Time, but rather to free myself from its clutches. Proust is telling us that he wanted to make these events "translucid even to their very depths.": "Impressions such as those to which I wished to give permanence could not but vanish at the touch of a direct enjoyment which had been powerless to engender them. The only way to savour them more fully was to try to get to know them more completely in the medium in which they existed, that is to say within myself, to try to make them translucid even to their very depths." do I want to get rid of these objects of Lost Time without understanding them, or would I prefer to make the "translucid", understand them, and then delete them? If I don't truly understand the memory I'm sure expunging it will be easier, but what would be the point? It would simply be another memory that meant nothing and thus didn't stick around. I have to understand the memory, and its implications, in its entirety or what would be the value in disposing of it?
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