Silence and immobility

Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.


One can read In Search of Lost Time for a while before discovering that Proust has a sense of humor. And were I more Proust-like myself, I would invent the perfectly convoluted, almost-but-not-quite-incomprehensible metaphor to both describe and explain his softly ironic comic touch. But I surrender before even trying. I'll just note that he makes me smile sometimes, and usually by surprise.