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@nickkahler / nickkahler.tumblr.com

chronicling an eclectic labyrinth of architectural contemplation based in new york city

The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

What a contradiction it is to search in reality for memory’s pictures, which would never have the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from not being perceived by the senses. The reality I had known no longer existed.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

When a belief disappears, there survives it - more and more vigorous so as to mask the absence of the power we have lost to give reality to new things - a fetishistic attachment to the old things which our belief once animated, as if it were in them and not in us that the divine resided and as if our present lack of belief had a contingent cause, the death of the Gods.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

I did not at the time represent to myself cities, landscapes, monuments as more or less pleasant pictures, cut out here and there from the same material, but each of them as an unknown thing, different in essence from the others, a thing for which my soul thirsted and which it would profit from knowing. How much more individuality still did they assume from being designated by names, names that were theirs alone, proper names like people have.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

I had no greater desire that to see a storm at sea, not so much because it would be a beautiful spectacle as because it would be a moment of nature’s real life unveiled; or rather for me there were no beautiful spectacles except the ones which I knew were not artificially contrived for my pleasure, but were necessary, unchangeable - the beauties of landscapes or of great art. I was curious, I was avid to know only those things which I believed to be more real than myself, which had for me the value of showing me a little of the mind of a great genius, or the force or grace of nature as it is manifested when left to itself, without the interference of men.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

For what we believe to be love, our jealousy, is not one single passion, continuous, indivisible. They are composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, which are ephemeral but by their uninterrupted multitude give the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

Reality is therefore something that has no relation to possibilities.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

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Maybe it is the nothingness that is real and our entire dream is nonexistent, but in that case we feel that these phrases of music, and these notions that exist in relation to our dream, must also be nothing. We will perish, but we have for hostages these divine captives who will follow us and share our fate. And death in their company is less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

Indeed if, during this period, he often desired death though without admitting it to himself, it was to escape not so much the acuteness of his sufferings as the monotony of his struggle.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

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The absence of a thing is not merely that, it is not simply a partial lack, it is a disruption of everything else, it is a state which one cannot foresee in the old.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

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It was the novelty of his language that convinced one of the darkness of his intentions.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

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The objects of one’s preferences do not have an absolute value in themselves, but they all depend on one’s period, one’s social class, they are all merely fashions, the most vulgar of which are equal to those that pass for the most distinguished.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

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Lights were beginning to go out all around him. Under the trees on the boulevards, in a mysterious darkness, fewer people wandered past, barely recognizable. Now and then the shadow of a woman coming up to him, murmuring a word in his ear, asking him to take her home, would make Swann start. He brushed anxiously against all of those dim bodies as if, among the phantoms of the dead, in the kingdom of darkness, he were searching for Eurydice.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

He had for so long given up directing his life toward an ideal goal and limited it to the pursuit of everyday satisfactions that he believed, without ever saying so formally to himself, that this would not change as long as he lived; much worse, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideas, he had ceased to believe in their reality, though without being able to deny it altogether. Thus he had acquired the habit of taking refuge in unimportant things that allowed him to ignore the fundamental essence of things.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

All these memories, following one after another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a taste or ’perfume,’ and those which were actually the memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at second hand–no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and formation.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

So the ’Méséglise way’ and the ’Guermantes way’ remain for me linked with many of the little incidents of that one of all the diverse lives along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind. Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the truths which have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have opened new paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for their discovery; but that preparation was unconscious; and for us those truths date only from the day, from the minute when they became apparent.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

For at that time everything which was not I, the earth and other people, appeared to me more precious, more important, endowed with a more real existence than they appear to grown men.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, 1913-27

#marcel proust #in search of lost time #remembrance of things past #time #earth #precious #important #men #existence #reality #swann #swann's way #quote #lit #literature

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