Marcel Proust, On Reading

Reading Marcel Proust On Reading in french or english on a cold April afternoon, I find the person who first read this, Marcel or me, extending out into the back country in the most sad, luxuriant way. Here is young Marcel under a hedge of trimmed hawthorn or hazel with a book.

I would run up the labyrinth as far as some hedge where I would sit, not to be found....  In this hedge, silence was profound, the risk of being discovered was almost nil, safety was made sweeter by the distant voices which from below called me in vain...

 What profound relief. There I am, there he is, at une distance d'âme, a soul's distance

... one of those distances which are not measured in metres and leagues like the others, and which, besides, cannot be confused with them when one looks at the 'distant' eyes of those who are thinking 'about something else'. Then, what? This book, it was nothing but that?

Under the hazels and the hawthorns of the park along Swann's Way, the emanations of the fields come to play silently near him, the scent of clover and sainfoin on which now and again he rests his tired eyes. The intoxication of the pages he reads are met by the sensations of where he sits in the silence and the solitude of les belles heures de l'après-midi.

We feel quite truly that our wisdom begins where that of the author ends, and we would like to have him give us answers, while all he can do is give us desires.

I listen to Mozart to absorb and extend all this. Rudolph Serkin and friends, piano concertos in the chilly early evening. Not just Proust, but all our souls' distance.