Thursday, June 17, 2010


Inexhaustible profusion


But it was in vain that I lingered beside the hawthorns--inhaling, trying to fix in my mind (which did not know what to do with it), losing and recapturing their invisible and unchanging odor, absorbing myself in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with the lightheartedness of youth and at intervals as unexpected as certain intervals in music--they went on offering me the same charm in inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play a hundred times in succession without coming any nearer to their secret.

More ultimate Proust: the narrator lingering over a pleasing aroma, trying to grab onto that which cannot be grabbed. He is left only with words.