I love the beauty of Marcel Proust’s writing. In his masterwork, In Search of Lost Time, he described the ineffable pleasure that he experienced in present time when he sipped a teaspoon of tea in which he had soaked a morsel of a madeleine cookie as had happened in past time. It brought back a flood of reminiscence in which the town and townspeople of Combray rose up vividly before him like a set upon a stage.
I am you, and you are me. Many people experience what Proust described. Bill and I recently attended an ISO performance featuring Andre Watts, one of the world’s greatest pianists. The audience gave him a standing ovation and exhausted itself, clapping through five curtain calls.
Over fifty years ago, I spent two years at I.U. in Bloomington, teaching first and second year French while working on a Master’s in French Literature. That was a wonderful time of scholarly pursuits, parties where I entertained and was entertained, hours spent at Nick’s English Pub with my fellow teaching assistants and stimulating conversations with brilliant professors.
I lived alone in a little apartment next to a beauty shop that was deserted at night. One Saturday morning there had been an ice storm during the night. The sun made the trees sparkle as if covered with diamonds. Feeling somewhat lonely on this day when few people were out and about, I walked up Kirkwood to a record store, took a leap of faith and bought a recording of Van Cliburn playing Brahms’ “Second Concerto” with which I was unfamiliar.
I fell in love with it and listened to it so often that I know almost every passage by heart. To me, its treble passages personify dazzling ice, the bravura ones symbolize fire, and the mellow section stands for the hush of a snowy day.
I kept hoping that one day the ISO would do the Brahms. That night, at the very first note, I knew that this was what I was waiting for. I had tears in my eyes throughout because I was swept up in a Proustian evocation in which I was back in that little apartment . . . I saw my friends, students and professors . . . heard their voices . . .
While listening intently to the sublime music and admiring Watts’ artistry, I thought that the perception of beauty makes us human. Following the intermission, a video of cellist, Sarah Boyer, was shown in which she spoke about how music connects humanity. Her thoughts matched up with mine. Proust, Brahms, Van Cliburn, and Watts will never know me, nor I them. However, I feel a connection with them that transcends time and space.
In a few words — interspersed with cello phrases — Boyer described her relationship with her cello. She said that she and her cello are necessary to one another: the cello produces lovely sounds that nourish her spirit, but she is necessary to bring them forth. Thus it is with the craft of writing. There are infinite words available to express emotions and ideas, but it takes a writer to select and arrange them and turn them into art.
Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “ . . . I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.”
When I was younger I lived more broadly and unthinkingly. I scattered my life among many people and interests and spent my time as if it would last forever. Now, in the wintertime of my life, I try to follow Thoreau’s advice. These days, I am finding contentment in staying mainly at home.
One can never have too much beauty. Regardless of our circumstances, we can all live more deliberately and deeply and search out the beauty that is all around us. Beauty is always accessible. wclarke@comcast.net