My Years With Proust - Day 725

   The idea of Time was of value to me for yet another reason: it was a spur, it told me that it was time to begin if I wished to attain to what I had sometimes perceived in the course of my life, in brief lightning-flashes, on the Guermantes way and in my drives in the carriage of Mme de Villeparisis, at those moments of perception which had made me think that life was worth living.  How much more worth living did it appear to me now, now that I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!  How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book!  What a task awaited him! To give some idea of this task one would have to borrow comparisons from the loftiest and the most varied arts; for this writer - who, moreover, to indicate the mass, the solidarity of each one of his characters must find means to display that character's most opposite facets - would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducting an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world without neglecting those mysteries whose explanation is to be found probably only in worlds other than our own and the presentiment of which is the thing that moves us most deeply in life and in art.  In long books of this kind there are parts which there has been time only to sketch, part which, because of the very amplitude of the architect's plan, will no doubt never be completed.  How many great cathedrals remain unfinished!  The writer feed his book, he strengthens the parts of it which are weak, he protects it, but afterwards it is the book that grows, the designates its author's tomb and defends it against the world's clamour and for a while against oblivion.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1088-1089

The appearance of Robert and Gilberte's daughter also inspired Marcel, once again, to hasten to the challenge of writing his book.  I think this passage is one of the best descriptions of the art, but also the brutally hard work, of writing, as each writer "would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducting an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world . . ."  I've been flailing around for years on my book on the epics, and sometimes I feel that I am no closer to ever completing it.  Why?  Well, beyond the obvious fact that I have a very small, smooth brain, there is also the fact that I clearly lack the courage and the dedication and love of hard work to finish it.  All of the attributes that Proust mentions above I lack in abundance.  "How many great cathedrals remain unfinished!"  I don't think I have any "great cathedrals" inside me, but at this point I'd settle for a road side monument.