Pleasures and Days by Marcel Proust

Author:Marcel Proust [Proust, Marcel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847493170
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2017-05-23T16:40:20+00:00

2

How has all that freshwater surge of memories managed to spring up again and flow into my soul, today so impure, without being sullied by it? What virtue is possessed by that morning odour of lilacs that enables it to make its way across so many fetid vapours without being affected and weakened by them? Alas! the soul I had at fourteen can still awaken within me, but at the same time it is far away from me and outside of me. I know full well it is no longer my soul and that it is no longer within my power to make it so again. And yet at that time I did not think I would one day look back on it with nostalgia. It was merely pure, and I needed to make it strong and capable of performing, one day, the highest tasks. Often, at Les Oublis, after going with my mother to the edge of the pond filled with the playful glitter of the sunlight and the fish, in the heat of the day, or in the morning and evening walking with her out in the fields, I would trustingly dream of the future that was never beautiful enough to satisfy her love, nor my desire to please her; and the powers, if not of will, at least of imagination and feeling that were stirring within me, tumultuously summoned the destiny in which they could find fulfilment, and knocked repeatedly against the walls of my heart as if to burst through and rush out of me, into life. If I then jumped up, filled with exuberance, if I kissed my mother a thousand times over, ran far ahead like a puppy dog or, having lingered behind her, picking poppies and cornflowers, brought them up to her with glad cries, it was less because of the joy of the walk itself and the pleasure of picking those flowers than it was a way of giving free rein to my happiness at sensing within me all the life ready to spring forth, to spread out infinitely, in vaster and more magical perspectives than those granted by the distant horizon of the forests and the sky that I wished I could reach at a single bound. Bouquets of cornflowers, clover and poppies, if I carried you off in such intoxication, my eyes burning, quivering all over – if you made me laugh and cry – the reason was that I made you part of all the hopes I then nursed, which now, like you, have withered and perished and, without having even blossomed like you, have returned to dust.

What made my mother so sad was my lack of willpower. I did everything on a momentary impulse. As long as my life drew its sustenance from my mind or my heart, it was, if not altogether good, at least not altogether bad. My mother and I were above all else preoccupied by the attempt to fulfil all my fine plans for

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.