I’m embarking on the adventure with Proust, in search of the lost time. It’s always so much better do discover the world with a great company. What a treat that is. It's a delight and a feast for the senses. It’s a glorious morning, so sunny, and the birds are singing so loud. I can hear mellow tones of the blackbird in the distance.
Proust is such a sensitive writer as if you are reading a female author. His description of bathroom as a safe space, with red currant branch growing through the window, a place where you can rest, cry, delight, his focus on the small moments and the smallest objects, and the relation of them to a bigger image or an idea, his beautiful sentences made me tearful yesterday.
His sentences are compound and they hide beneath other meanings, so it’s necessary to slowly take delight of each sentence. It reads like a diary, as he goes through his childhood memories, and describes the tiniest detail in a sensitive, moving way. It inspires me to get back to my childhood again and think of the small moments, like my mum’s beige coat, or waiting to hear her steps.
Proust says so many beautiful things, for example, as a small child he would suffer when there were guests at his house and his mum would not come to his room to embrace him, and he was not able to fall asleep. He tried to explain to himself, he said, when he sat at the iron table, that the long hours of torture, of his suffering would not have any meaning because he would forget about them the next morning. Why dwell on the pain when the morning brings new opportunities, and new adventures, and we can start again with all the new chances and all the new opportunities?
His paragraphs are deeply romantic and poetic and I underline the most beautiful sentences and scenes, like the one when the author misses the young Swann, the image filled with the scent of holidays, big chestnut tree, the basket of raspberries and a bit of estragon. What a mixture of images, in one basket, just beautiful.
Then Groszek comes to my mind, the small kitten, born at my primary school friend’s home, in the attic. I remember the scent of him, the scent of hay, and the warmth of the attic, the scent of the summer, late afternoon in the countryside. I just wanted to stay there, the place felt so safe and lovely.