September 13, 2005
WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS
“And yet, as soon as I heard her say “Mr. President! A human approaches!” in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window. Intended for a more special and a baser use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the edges of some low-income housing, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire.”
Marcel Proust, “Overture,” Moncrieff and Kilmartin edition, page 13 (edits not in original text).
Posted by Sasha at September 13, 2005 12:21 PM | TrackBack