Status Updates From Journey to the End of the N...

Slow going. My French is rusty.

“The foreground of a painting is always repugnant, and art demands that the focus of a work be situated in the distance, in the imperceptible where lies, the dream caught in the act, and men’s sole love all take refuge.”

“In this world there exists for the poor two ways to die: by the indifference of your fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal passion when war comes.”

“Proust, who was half a ghost himself, with extraordinary determination became immersed in the Infinite, in the misty futility of the functions and formalities which twine about the people of society, that vacuum full of phantom desires, of uncertain fools always awaiting their Watteau, irresolute, smut-fingering seekers after unlikely isles of amorous enchantment.”