Gate of Lilacs Quotes

“...and in the spell
Of Proust's great paragraphs we hear and see
The ocean into which we all, as he did,
Must sink back, our achievements left behind –
Whether a necessary task fulfilled
Or else whole symphonies – and be reclaimed
By nature, which has no mind of its own
But simply makes us welcome, as the ashes
Of Maria Callas, spread on the Agean,
Were first a cloud, and then a mist, then nothing
But an everlasting song reduced to atoms
Which, though they drift apart, are still together
In the memories of those of us who live.”
― Clive James, Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust

“Isn't a blank verse paragraph just a chunk of prose bent around corners after every five beats? Try doing that and you'll not only get lines that don't scan, you'll also get, and all too often, the one effect that you definitely don't want: successive lines that rhyme.”
― Clive James, Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust

“The past is real but marbled by beliefs
That turned to myth as time eroded them.”
― Clive James, Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust

“The sound of the sea you hear in Proust, as if the whole book were a shell held to your ear, is the sound of the amniotic fluid, reminding you, across all your barriers of self-protection, that the first thing you ever heard was voices in the water.”
― Clive James, Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust