online: 20 january 2015
modified: 20 january 2015
16 january 2015 in a bookshop
cafe...
...after being driven from the heath by a sudden hailstorm to
seek
somewhere dry and warm enough in which to write these thoughts...
...the hail storm which arose so suddenly brought icy wind and a vast
unstable showery cloud of frozen raindrops in the sky... and also at
ground level...
...which soon disappeared to the east to reveal a pale blue western sky
in which floated clouds of pink and darker blue and even white in
shapely order not easy to describe but wonderful to see...
...but now i am indoors... surrounded by thousands of books all filled
with abstract letters abc that nearly everyone can read (and even write)
despite the wide divide between the thoughts and things described and
the many millions of abstract letter shapes that comprise the written
world...
...and now for some of those words from Marcel Proust whose essay
On Reading i've just chosen for someone whose mother tongue is
French and whose birthday is today:
Il n'y a peut-être pas de jours de notre enfance que nous ayons si
pleinement vécus que ceux que nous avons cru laisser sans les vivre,
ceux que nous avons passés avec un livre préféré.
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we
believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a
favourite book.*
* the first words of Marcel Proust's essay On Reading as
translated by
Jean Autret and William Burford, Souvenir Press, London and J M Dent
(Canada), Ontario 1972 with the French original (titled Sur la
Lecture)
on facing pages... (in other translations it is titled Days of
Reading)...
...it is described on the flyleaf as 'Proust's first act of
literary rebellion'... and 'the beginning of his long pursuit of
psychological truth'.
homepage
© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 john chris jones
You may transmit this text to anyone for any
non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice
and if you respect the copyright of quotations.
If you wish to reproduce any of this text
commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at
publicwriting.net