The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (26 page)

Like nature, intelligence has its spectacles. Never have the sunsets, never has the
moonlight, so often moving me to tears of ecstasy, produced more passionate tenderness
in me than that vast and melancholy conflagration, which, during our strolls at the
close of day, tinges as many waves in our souls as the brilliant rays of the vanishing
sun on the sea. We then quicken our steps in the night. More electrified and exhilarated
than a horseman by the increasing speed of his beloved mount, we abandon ourselves,
trembling with trust and joy, to our tumultuous thoughts; and the more we possess
them and direct them, the more irresistibly we feel we belong to them. With tender
emotion we pass through the dark countryside, greeting the night-filled oaks as the
solemn field, like the epic witnesses of the force that intoxicates us and sweeps
us away. Raising our eyes to the sky, we cannot help experiencing an exaltation upon
recognizing the mysterious reflection of our thoughts in the intervals between the
clouds, which are still agitated by the sun’s farewell: we plunge faster and faster
into the countryside, and the dog that follows us, the horse that carries us, or the
now silent friend, sometimes less so when no living soul is near us,
the flower in our buttonhole, or the cane we twirl joyfully in our feverish hands
receives an homage of looks and tears—the melancholy tribute of our delirium.

As in Moonlight

Night had fallen; I went to my room, nervous about remaining in the darkness and no
longer seeing the sky, the fields, and the ocean radiating under the sun. But when
I opened the door, I found my room illuminated as though by the setting sun. Through
the window I could see the house, the fields, the sky, and the ocean, or rather I
appeared to be “seeing” them again, in a dream; the gentle moon recalled them for
me rather than showed them to me, engulfing their silhouettes in a wan splendor that
failed to scatter the darkness, which thickened on their shapes like oblivion. And
I spent hours gazing at the courtyard, watching the mute, vague, faded, and enchanted
memories of the things whose cries, voices, or murmurs had brought me pleasure or
brought me sorrow during the day.

Love has perished; I am fearful on the threshold of oblivion; but, appeased, slightly
pale, very close to me and yet faraway and already hazy, they reveal themselves to
me as if in moonlight: all my past happiness and all my healed anguish, staring at
me in silence. Their hush moves me while their distance and their indecisive pallor
intoxicate me with sadness and poetry. And I cannot stop looking at this inner moonlight.

Critique of Hope in the Light of Love

No sooner does an approaching hour become the present for us than it sheds all its
charms, only to regain them, it is true, on the roads of memory, when we have left
that hour far behind us, and so long as our soul is vast enough to disclose deep
perspectives
. Thus, after we passed the hill, the poetic village, to
which we hastened the trot of our impatient hopes and our worn-out mares, once again
exhales those veiled harmonies, whose vague promise has been kept so poorly by the
vulgarity of the streets, the incongruity of the cottages huddling together and melting
into the horizon, and the disappearance of the blue mist, which seemed to permeate
the village. But we are like the alchemist who attributes each of his failures to
some accidental and always different cause; far from suspecting an incurable imperfection
in the very essence of the present, we blame any number of things for poisoning our
happiness: the malignity of the particular circumstances, the burden of the envied
situation, the bad character of the desired mistress, the bad state of our health
on a day that should have been a day of joy, the bad weather or the bad accommodations
during our travels. And, certain that we will manage to eliminate those things that
destroy all pleasure, we endlessly appeal to a future we dream of; we rely on it with
the sometimes reluctant but never disillusioned confidence of a realized, that is,
disillusioned dream.

However, certain pensive and embittered men, who radiate in the light of hope more
intensely than other people, discover all too soon, alas, that hope emanates not from
the awaited hours but from our hearts, which overflow with rays unknown by nature,
and which pour torrents of those rays upon hope without lighting a hearth fire. Those
men no longer have the strength to desire what they know to be undesirable, the strength
to chase after dreams that will wither in their hearts when they wish to pick them
outside themselves. This melancholy disposition is singularly intensified and justified
in love. Constantly passing back and forth over its hopes, the imagination admirably
sharpens its disappointments. Unhappy love, making the experience of happiness impossible,
prevents us from discovering the nothingness of happiness. But what lesson in philosophy,
what advice given by old age, what blight of ambition could surpass in melancholy
the joys of happy love! You love me, my little darling: how could you have been cruel
enough to tell me? So this was the ardent happiness of mutual love, the mere thought
of which made my head whirl and my teeth chatter!

I unpin your flowers, I lift your hair, I tear off your jewels, I reach your flesh;
my kisses sweep over your body and beat it like the tide rising across the sand; but
you yourself elude me, and with you happiness. I have to leave you, I go home alone
and sadder. Blaming that last calamity, I return to you forever; it was my last illusion
that I tore away; I am miserable forever.

I do not know how I had the courage to tell you this; I have just ruthlessly thrown
away the happiness of a lifetime, or at least its consolation; for your eyes, whose
happy trust still intoxicated me at times, will henceforth reflect only the sad disenchantment,
which your acumen and your disappointments already warned you about. Since this secret,
which one of us concealed from the other, has been loudly proclaimed by us both, no
happiness is possible for us. We are not left with even the unselfish joys of hope.
Hope is an act of faith. We have undeceived its credulity: hope is dead. After renouncing
enjoyment, we can no longer spellbind ourselves to nurture hope. Hoping without hope,
which would be wise, is impossible.

But come nearer, my dear, sweet darling. Dry your eyes so you can see; I do not know
if it is the tears that blur my vision, but I think I can make out over there, behind
us, large fires being kindled. Oh, my dear, sweet darling, I love you so much! Give
me your hand, let us go toward those beautiful fires without getting too close. . . . I
think that indulgent and powerful Memory must be wishing us well and now doing a great
deal for us, my dear.

Under the Trees

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from that vigorous and peace-loving
tribe of trees that keep producing tonic essences and soothing balms for us and that
also provide gracious company in which we spend so many cool, snug, and silent hours.
In those burning afternoons, when the light, by its very excess, eludes our eyes,
let us descend into one of those
Norman “grounds,” whose tall and thick beeches rise supplely here, and their foliage,
like a narrow but resistant shore, pushes back that ocean of light, keeping only a
few drops, which tingle melodiously in the dark hush under the trees. At the beach,
on the plains, in the mountains, our minds may not know the joy of stretching out
across the world; but here the mind experiences the happiness of being secluded from
the world. And, fenced in all around by those trunks that cannot be uprooted, the
mind soars like a tree. Lying on your back, with your head on dry leaves, your thoughts
in a profound repose, you follow the joyful agility of your mind, which, without making
the foliage tremble, ascends to the highest branches, where it settles on the edge
of the gentle sky, near a singing bird. Here and there a bit of sunshine stagnates
at the foot of trees, which sometimes dip into it dreamily, gilding the outermost
leaves of their branches. Everything else, relaxed and inert, remains silent in a
gloomy happiness. Erect and towering in the vast offering of their branches, and yet
calm and refreshed, the trees, in their strange and natural posture, murmur gracefully,
inviting us to participate in this so ancient and so youthful life, so different from
our own, and virtually its obscure and inexhaustible reserve.

For an instant a faint breeze ruffles their glistening and somber immobility, and
the trees quiver softly, balancing the light on their crowns and stirring the shade
at their feet.

Petit-Abbeville, Dieppe, August 1895

The Chestnut Trees

More than anything, I loved pausing under the immense chestnut trees when they were
yellowed by autumn. How many hours did I spend in those mysterious and greenish caverns,
gazing overhead at the murmuring cascades of pale gold that poured down in coolness
and darkness! I envied the robins and the squirrels for dwelling in those frail, deep
pavilions of
verdure in the branches, those ancient hanging gardens that each spring for two centuries
now has decked out in white and fragrant blossoms. The scantly curving branches descended
nobly from tree to earth, as if they were other trees planted head-down in the trunk.
The pallor of the remaining leaves more sharply accentuated the boughs, which already
seemed darker and more solid for being stripped bare, and which, thereby reunited
with the trunk, looked like a magnificent comb holding back the sweet, blond, flowing
hair.

Réveillon, October 1895

The Sea