Thus it was that I envisaged the task before me, a task which would not end until I had achieved what I had so ardently desired in my walks on the Guermantes way and thought to be impossible, just as I had thought it impossible, as I came home at the end of those walks, that I should ever get used to going to bed without kissing my mother or, later, to the idea that Albertine loved women, though in the end I had grown to live with this idea without even being aware of its presence; for neither of our greatest fears nor our greatest hopes are beyond the limits of our strength - we are able in the end both to dominate the first and to achieve the second.
Yes, upon this task the idea of Time which I had formed to-day told me that it was time to set to work. It was high time. But - and this was the reason for the anxiety which had gripped me as soon as I entered the drawing-room, when the theatrical disguises of the faces around me had first given me the notion of Lost Time - was there still time and was I still in a fit condition to undertake the task? For one thing, a necessary condition of my work as I had conceived it just now in the library was a profound study of impressions which had first to be re-created through the memory. But my memory was old and tired. The mind has landscapes which it is allowed to contemplate only for a certain space of time. In my life I had been like a painter climbing a road high above a lake, a view of which is denied to him by a curtain of rocks and trees. Suddenly through a gap in the curtain he sees the lake, its whole expanse is before him, he takes up his brushes. But already the night is at hand, the night which will put an end to his painting and which no dawn will follow. How could I not be anxious, seeing that nothing was yet begun and that though on the ground of age I could still hope that I had some years to live, my hour might on the other hand strike almost at once? For the fundamental fact was that I had a body, and this meant that I was perpetually threatened by a double danger, internal and external, though to speak thus was merely a matter of linguistic convenience, the truth being that the internal danger - the risk, for instance, of a cerebral haemorrhage - is also external, since it is the body that it threatens. Indeed it is the possession of a body that is the great danger to the mind, to our human and thinking life, which is is surely less correct to describe as a miraculous entelechy of animal and physical life than as an imperfect essay - as rudimentary in this sphere as the communal existence of protozoa attached to this polyparies or as the body of the whale - in the organisation of the spiritual life. The body immures the mind within a fortress; presently on all sides the fortress is besieged and in the end, inevitably, the mind has to surrender.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1091-1092
Proust has reached the point where he knows he has to write his book, but he also begins to understand the incredible challenge awaiting him. He tells us that he fully understands both the vision and the challenge, " . . . for neither of our greatest fears nor our greatest hopes are beyond the limits of our strength - we are able in the end both to dominate the first and to achieve the second."
But how does one handle both the vision and the challenge? Proust tells us, "The mind has landscapes which it is allowed to contemplate only for a certain space of time. In my life I had been like a painter climbing a road high above a lake, a view of which is denied to him by a curtain of rocks and trees. Suddenly through a gap in the curtain he sees the lake, its whole expanse is before him, he takes up his brushes. But already the night is at hand, the night which will put an end to his painting and which no dawn will follow." As I've shared before, my friend Steve will often mock me when I come up with my routine Lawrence of Arabia-esque comments, which usually run something like this: "My brother, we are going to start our own tour company - and as part of it we're going to buy a house in Zanzibar as a base. I have envisioned it which means it's already real. All that remains are details." That inevitably leads him to say something like, "Thank you, Lawrence." However, I think once you have seen it, truly seen it in its beautiful dream-like immediacy, then everything else truly is details. I'm not having a Proustian moment because, well, Proust was a genius and I'm more than a bit of a total dope, but I think he's saying something similar here. It is at the party that he has that moment where he has seen the lake through the trees, and he witnesses beauty but he also understands true beauty. But, as he fears, "the night is at hand," and there may be obstacles that he simply cannot overcome. We've talked many times about Proust's failing health, and about the devil's bargain he happily made where he worked his self to an early grave (or at least earlier grave) to finish his epic dream (or at least get desperately close to finishing it). I think about my own failure to accomplish more, and the sense that, as another birthday has passed and sixty approaches and "the night is at hand," and the need to work. While we can fail because we don't dream big enough and lack courage, we can also fail because the body gives out on us. We only have so much time. Proust writes: "For the fundamental fact was that I had a body, and this meant that I was perpetually threatened by a double danger, internal and external, though to speak thus was merely a matter of linguistic convenience, the truth being that the internal danger - the risk, for instance, of a cerebral haemorrhage - is also external, since it is the body that it threatens. Indeed it is the possession of a body that is the great danger to the mind, to our human and thinking life, which is is surely less correct to describe as a miraculous entelechy of animal and physical life than as an imperfect essay - as rudimentary in this sphere as the communal existence of protozoa attached to this polyparies or as the body of the whale - in the organisation of the spiritual life. The body immures the mind within a fortress; presently on all sides the fortress is besieged and in the end, inevitably, the mind has to surrender." I've said several times that Remembrance of Things Past is one of several books that I think have made, and will continue to make, me a better person. One of the reasons why is that it inspires me to keep pushing and try to try to achieve these dreams I have.
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