This notion of Time embodied, of years past but not separated from us, it was now my intention to emphasize as strongly as possible in my work. And at this very moment . . . as though to strengthen me in my resolve, the noise of my parents’ footsteps as they accompanied M. Swann to the door and the peal–resilient, ferruginous, interminable, fresh and shrill–of the bell on the garden gate which informed me that at last he had gone and that Mamma would presently come upstairs, these sounds rang again in my ears, yes, unmistakably I heard these very sounds, situated as they were in a remote past. . . .
And I felt, as I say, a sensation of weariness and almost of terror at the thought that all this length of Time had not only, without interruption, been lived, experienced, secreted by me, that it was my life, was in fact me, but also that I was compelled so long as I was alive to keep it attached to me, that it supported me and that, perched on its giddy summit, I could not myself make a movement without displacing it. A feeling a vertigo seized me as I looked down beneath me, yet within me, as though from a height, which was my own height, of many leagues, at the long series of the years.
Marcel Proust Time Regained, pp. 449-451 Translation: Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin
For I felt myself to be alone; things had become alien to me; I no longer had calm enough to break out of my throbbing heart and introduce into them a measure of stability. The town before me had ceased to be Venice . . . I could no longer tell it anything about myself. I could leave nothing of myself imprinted upon it; it contracted me into myself until I was no longer more than a beating heart and an attention strained to follow the development of O sole mio. . . . rising like a dirge for the Venice I had known. . . . My mind, no doubt in order not to have to consider the decision I had to make, was entirely occupied in following the course of the successive phrases of O sole mio, singing them to myself with the singer . . . No doubt this trivial song, which I had heard a hundred times did not interest me in the least. . . . None of the already familiar phrases of this sentimental ditty was capable of furnishing me with the resolution I needed; . . . I said to myself: “After all, I’m only listening to one more phrase,” I knew that the words meant: “I shall remain by myself in Venice.” . . .
My mother must by now have reached the station. In a little while she would be gone . . . I looked on at the slow realization of my distress, built up artistically . . . note by note, by the singer as he stood beneath the astonished gaze of the sun . . . Thus I remained motionless, my will dissolved, no decision in sight.
But suddenly, from caverns darker than those from which flashes the comet which we can predict . . . my will to action arose at last; I set off in hot haste . . .
Marcel Proust The Fugitive, pp. 749-752 Translation: C.K. Scott Moncrief and Terence Kilmartin
