Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time #7)

by Marcel Proust

Preserved by our memory, it is the piecemeal sequence of all those inaccurate expressions, in which nothing of what we have really experienced remains, which constitutes our thought, our life, reality, and all that the so-called art of ‘real life’ can do is to reproduce that lie, in an art which is as simple as life, devoid of beauty, and such a tedious and pointless duplication of what our eyes see and our intellect records that one wonders where anyone who engages in it can find the joyous, dynamic spark capable of setting his task in motion and then keeping it going. The greatness of true art, on the other hand, the sort of art that M. de Norpois would have called dilettante amusement, lies in rediscovering, grasping hold of, and making us recognize this reality, distant as it is from our daily lives, and growing more and more distant as the conventional knowledge we substitute for it becomes denser and more impermeable, this reality which we run a real risk of dying without having known, and which is quite simply our life. Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature.