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Forgetfulness
I had now only one hope left for the future - a hope far more poignant than any fear - and that was that I might forget Albertine. I knew that I should forget her one day; I had forgotten Gilberte and Mme de Guermantes; I had forgotten my grandmother. And it is our most just and cruel punishment for that forgetfulness, as total and as tranquil as the oblivion of the graveyard, through which we have detached ourselves from those we no longer love, that we should recognise it to be inevitable in the case of those we love still. In reality, we know that it is not a painful state but a state of indifference. But not being able to think at one and the same time of what I was and of what I would be, I thought with despair of all that integument of caresses, of kisses, of friendly slumber, of which I must presently let myself be stripped forever. The influx of these tender memories, breaking against the idea that Albertine was dead, oppressed me with such a clash of warring currents that I could not remain still; I rose, but all of a sudden I stopped, overwhelmed with anguish; the same faint daybreak that I used to see when I had just left Albertine, still radiant and warm from her kisses, had just drawn above the curtains its now sinister blade whose whiteness, cold, implacable and compact, glinted like a dagger thrust into my heart.
(Marcel Proust, Albertine Gone, ed. & tr. Terence Kilmartin, Chatto & Windus, London, 1989, pp. 66-7)
Words by authors (the headings are made up by me):
A thing far more important than beauty The python We exist alone Her person itself counts for little or nothing Women not our type Make love like the flowers Civilization Old friends Vivaldo and Ida Private kind of craziness The end of the affair The Ideal Man Good faith The shores of oblivion Duplicity On the departure of a guest Poetry Yes Minister Yes Prime Minister Society Neighbours Houri in a seraglio Harps of seraphs Fear, sin and hope Excavation Rachel when from the Lord Cured The strain of keeping up with the young Preliminary tenderness Beauty surpassing beauty The lamentable period Eternal slavery PsychopathyWords by myself
How to forget Brewing of memory To hate is more tiresome than to love Last shot of crack Lest I forget Seventeen years All down hill Blue August Ambiguities Nowhere to go Yesterday and today A dream Mawkishness is cheap Where have all the flowers gone? Has and has been A tourist Disabused Fragments New craven Serendipity A long march Pre-travel blues Maudlin while drinking Post-travel blues Small pleasures Fatiguing word mix On the weak side of 40 Yet another good friend lessMoksheungming
moksheungming@yahoo.com