In my awareness of the approach of death I resembled a dying soldier, and like him too, before I died, I had something to write. But my task was longer than his, my words had to reach more than a single person. My task was long. By day, the most I could hope for was to try to sleep. If I worked, it would be only at night. But I should need many nights, a hundred perhaps, or even a thousand. And I should live in the anxiety of not knowing whether the master of my destiny might not prove less indulgent than the Sultan Shahriyar, whether in the morning, when I broke off my story, he would consent to a further reprieve and permit me to resume my narrative the following evening. Not that I had the slightest pretension to be writing a new version, in any way, of the Thousand and One Nights, or of that other book written by night, Saint-Simon's Memoirs, or of any of those books which I had loved with a child's simplicity and to which I had been so superstitiously attached as later to my loves, so that I could not imagine without horror any work which should be unlike them. But - as Elstir had found with Chardin - you can make a new version of what you love only by first renouncing it. So my book, though it might be as long as the Thousand and One Nights, would be entirely different. True, when you are in love with some particular book, you would like yourself to write something that closely resembles it, but this love of the moment must be sacrificed, you must think not of your own taste but of a truth which far from asking you what your preferences are forbids you to pay attention to them. And only if you faithfully follow this truth will you sometimes find that you have stumbled again upon what you renounced, find that, by forgetting these works themselves, you have written the Thousand and One Nights or the Memoirs of Saint-Simon of another age. But for me was there still time? Was it not too late?
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1101-1102
"In my awareness of the approach of death I resembled a dying soldier, and like him too, before I died, I had something to write. But my task was longer than his, my words had to reach more than a single person. My task was long. By day, the most I could hope for was to try to sleep. If I worked, it would be only at night."
Once again, I'm interested in Proust's reference to the Thousand and One Nights, and not simply because I'm using it for my Heroines & Heroes class this semester. I am planning on bringing in my well-marked copy of Remembrance of Things Past to read this section in class on Tuesday (anything to get more Proust in the curriculum). Now that I've finished, and before the next big reread - and after the stupid epics book is finished - I need to do more research on Proust himself, and part of that is learning more about his relationship to the Thousand and One Nights. In this particular passage I think it's fascinating how he mentions the fact that he only wrote at night, which is certainly part of the Proustian mythology, certainly, as he slept most of the day and wrote most of the night, living a life of isolation as he rushed to finish his novel. It's appropriate, and more than a bit heartbreaking, that he is essentially comparing himself to Shahrazad, with the spinning of tales keeping him alive for another day.
I was also struck by these words: "True, when you are in love with some particular book, you would like yourself to write something that closely resembles it, but this love of the moment must be sacrificed, you must think not of your own taste but of a truth which far from asking you what your preferences are forbids you to pay attention to them. And only if you faithfully follow this truth will you sometimes find that you have stumbled again upon what you renounced, find that, by forgetting these works themselves, you have written the Thousand and One Nights or the Memoirs of Saint-Simon of another age." Writers, like any person who loves to read (as all right-thinking individuals do), have their own favorite works and it's doubtless human nature, and a dangerous trap, to try and and rewrite our favorite books. Of course, as Proust warns us, that would not be our truth, but if we pursue our own truth then we have a chance to produce works that will also resonate and transcend the centuries.
No comments:
Post a Comment