The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
How hard it is to change the filters through which we see the world and the events that happen to us. I hope you have fresh “new” eyes today and see all sorts of new landscapes in the familiar all around you.
3 comments:
Hi Alianora
Good to hear from you. I have lost contact with your page again. Did you start a new one?
Life continues to weave and spin in wonderous circles and keep me on my toes these days. I "dance" a little, "rest" a little, and through it all, try to keep moving forward. Hope your life is a balance of this too, and you are enjoying your "voyage of discovery". Take care.
In part two, chapter two of Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah, volume four of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator goes to an afternoon party at the Verderins. The narrator is always going to dinner parties, but that sets the scene for many of his best observations and most penetrating philosophical asides.
The Baron de Charlus, a man of incredible wealth, lineage, social prestige, and eccentricity shows up at the party. The Verderins are not familiar with him. They are about to seat their guests at the table. Proust describes the scene as follows.
Mme. Verdurin whispered in her husband”s ear: “Shall I offer my arm to the Baron de Charlus? As you’ll have Mme. de Cambremer on your right, we might divide the higher in rank” (meaning that M. de Cambremer was a marquis), “M. de Charlus is, after all, his inferior.” “Very well, I shall put him beside the Princess.”
Of course, M. de Charlus is of haut St. Germain society and would not normally lower himself to go to a party at the Verderins unless he was vacationing in the country and chasing a male lover. The narrator who knows M. de Charlus well from St. Germain society is surprised to see him there, but he knows what is going on and we who are the narrator’s guests do too.
The moral might be, not only is it fun and exciting to see with new eyes, but it is sometimes necessary to avoid embarrassment.
Thanks for the quotation. I think I’ll read some Proust over the holidays. I couldn’t give myself a better gift.
Thanks for the tip on "The Proust Project". It sounds really good. I'll keep my eye open for it.
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