Finding Time Again: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Marcel Proust

Yes, the idea of Time that I had just formed was telling me that it was time to apply myself to the work. It was high time; but, and this was the explanation for the anxiety which had beset me as soon as I entered the drawing-room, when the made-up faces had given me the idea of lost time, was there still time, and was I even still in a sufficiently fit condition? The mind has its landscapes and only a short time is allowed for their contemplation. My life had been like a painter who climbs up a road overhanging a lake that is hidden from view by a screen of rocks and trees. Through a gap he glimpses it, he has it all there in front of him, he takes up his brushes. But the night is already falling when there is no more painting, and after which no day will break. Only, one prerequisite of my work as I had just recently conceived it in the library was the thorough investigation of impressions which needed first to be re-created through memory. But that was threadbare. First of all, nothing having yet been started, I might well feel anxious, even though I might think, on account of my age, that I still had a few years ahead of me, for my hour might strike at any moment. For I really had to start from the fact that I had a body, that is that I was perpetually under threat from a twofold danger, external and internal. Yet I spoke of it in those terms only as a convenience of language. For the internal danger, such as from a cerebral hemorrhage, is also external, as it threaten...