Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time #7)

by Marcel Proust

So many times in the course of my life reality had disappointed me because at the moment when I perceived it, my imagination, which was my only organ for the enjoyment of beauty, could not be applied to it, by virtue of the inevitable law which means that one can imagine only what is absent. But now all the consequences of that iron law had suddenly been neutralized, suspended, by a wonderful natural expedient, which had held out the prospect of a sensation – sound of a fork and a hammer, same book title, etc. – both in the past, which enabled my imagination to enjoy it, and in the present, where the actual shock to my senses of experiencing the sound, the touch of linen, etc., had added to the dreams of the imagination the thing which they were habitually deprived of, the idea of existence – and, thanks to this subterfuge, had allowed my being to obtain, to isolate, to immobilize – for the duration of a flash of lightning – the one thing it never apprehends: a little bit of time in its pure state. The being which had been reborn in me when, with such a tremor of happiness, I had heard the sound common at once both to the spoon touching the plate and the hammer hitting the wheel, or felt the unevenness beneath my feet common to the stones of the Guermantes’ courtyard and St Mark’s baptistery, etc., this spirit draws its nourishment only from the essence of things, and only in them does it find its sustenance and its delight.