AtDTDA (3) .81, 82 Nasal Desire

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

  Mind you, after 2200 pages  of "Recherche", there's the 
distinct possibility of "lamp projection", there's still so 
much pointing in the general direction of Proust in 
Against the Day, both in the finely wrought extended 
sentences, and in the meditations on memory
and those sensory impressions that trigger memory
and desire.


              Webb staggered up out of his bedroll after 
              one of those nights when he did not so much 
              sleep as become intermittenly conscious of time. . . .
              AtD.81

              For a long time I used to go to bed early. 
              Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my 
              eyes would close so quickly that I had not even 
              time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour 
              later the thought that it was time to go to sleep 
              would awaken me; I would try to put away the 
              book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, 
              and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all 
              the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just 
              been reading, but my thoughts had run into a 
              channel of their own, until I myself seemed 
              actually to have become the subject of my book: 
              a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I 
              and Charles V. This impression would persist for 
              some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb 
              my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and 
              prevented them from registering the fact that the 
              candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin 
              to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former 
              existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the 
              subject of my book would separate itself from me, 
              leaving me free to choose whether I would form 
              part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would 
              return and I would be astonished to find myself in a 
              state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the 
              eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which 
              it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a 
              matter dark indeed. 
              Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96s/chapter1.html

              . . . .Webb felt a shortness of breath and a wandering 
              in his head that had little to do with the altitude. Glory, 
              he could smell that nitro. No Chinaman and his opium 
              could be more intimate than Webb and the delicately 
              poised chemistry there. He let his horse have some 
              water, but in the unsettling presence of nasal desire, 
              unwilling to trust his own voice too far, stayed up in 
              the saddle, straight-faced and yearning. AtD.82