Sidewalk Art In Tehran

Akbar Fazli Panah is an Iranian sculptor who started his metal artworks in Tehran's side walks five years ago!
His works with his words, click here

Francis Bacon A Terrible Beauty

"Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite."
Francis Bacon

Olive Borden (July 14, 1906 – October 1, 1947)

She was an American
actress in silence and
early talkies. Nicknamed
"The joy girl".
Happy Birthday Olive!

"The sex lives of great writers"

Trailer - The sex lives of great writers - Marc Lefrançois
the trailer of the latest book by Marc LeFrançois: "The sex lives of great writers" - Publisher: SHARE THE COMMON ...

قمرالملوک وزیری

2 poems by Endre Ady

Nov. 22, 1877 was the birthday of Hungarian Symbolist poet Endre Ady who was born in a part of Hungary that is now Romanian territory. He studied law, and later became a journalist in Oradea (also now in Romania). Through his involvement with a married woman who lived in Paris, he became aware of the relative provinciality of his home country and followed her to France. His muse Léda (a reverse spelling of her name Adél Brüll (married name, Mrs. Diósi)) inspired some of his sensual love poems, altogether an improvement over his youthful Sturm und Drang efforts…

Gradually he became a Modernist through exposure to the art circles in Paris and he started writing poems alternating between spleen and speed:

Autumn Passed through Paris

Autumn sliped into Paris yesterday,
came silently down Boulevard St Michel,
In sultry heat, past boughs sullen and still,
and met me on its way.

As I walked on to where the Seine flows by,
little twig songs burned softly in my heart,
smoky, odd, sombre, purple songs. I thought
they sighed that I shall die.

Autumn drew abreast and whispered to me,
Boulevard St Michel that moment shivered.
Rustling, the dusty, playful leaves quivered,
whirled forth along the way.

One moment: summer took no heed: whereon,
laughing, autumn sped away from Paris.
That it was here, I alone bear witness,
under the trees that moan.

***

Benediction from a Train

The express is hurtling at full speed,
the sun explodes into the sea,
my memories flash a millisecond,
and I bless you.

“May God bless
all your goodness,
your unresponsiveness,
and all your wickedness.
May your words of torment
return to you in benediction.
May your coldness
leap into flames.
All is at an end.
I have a thousand cares,
and for my folly
the bier is spread.
Well, I bless you,
and meanwhile
kiss me softly,
in silence and peace.
I wish to leave you
with a memory and a kiss
to freeze for warmth,
to be alone,
to feel alone,
to die alone.
May God bless you.”

The express is hurtling at full speed,
the sun explodes into the sea,
my memories flash a millisecond,
and I bless you.

Ady was against the war mongering forces in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and wrote pacifist poems during WW I. He suffered a stroke near the end of the war, and died in 1919 from pneumonia and weakened health as a result of alcoholism.

I like to add another poem of him which is my favorite. FE

* * *

Who come from far away

We are the men who are always late,
we are the men who come from far away.
Our walk is always weary and sad,
we are the men who are always late.
We do not even know how to die in peace.
When the face of distant death appears,
our souls splash into a tam tam of flame.
We do not even know how to die in peace.
We are the men who are always late.
We are never on time with our success,
our dreams, our heaven, or our embrace.
We are the men who are always late.

Endre Ady

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, abstract expressionist, one of The Irascibles, the angel of the color field: Sep. 25, 1903 - 1970

Collaboration of Two Artists, Nin and Telberg

"AND she danced; she danced with the music and with the rhythm of earth's circles; she turned with the earth turning, like a disk, turning all faces to light and to darkness evenly, dancing towards daylight."

Anais Nin's first novel, "House of Incest" (1936), ends with this verbal image of release. A later edition of the book, published in 1958, does not, however, end with words, but rather with a visual image, a photomontage by Val Telberg of Sag Harbor. The picture portrays a nude dancer, her wide-flung arms solarized into torches. Superimposed on her torso are blades of grass, and behind the dancing figure is a beckoning doorway.

Nin, who died in 1977 at 73, is best known for her seven volumes of diaries written from 1914 to 1974. When she saw Mr. Telberg's work in 1950, Nin detected a kindred spirit. "She loved his photographs and decided he should illustrate 'House of Incest,' " said Sheryl Conkelton, associate curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art.

Theirs was a remarkable collaboration of two artists from different disciplines who produced a hybrid work of art combining words and pictures. " 'House of Incest' is the best thing Nin ever did, and Telberg's photomontages really capture the dreamlike state and Surrealist mood," said Benjamin Franklin 5th, a professor of English at the University of South Carolina and an expert on Nin's work.

Nin described Mr. Telberg's photography as a "spiritual X-ray." After seeing his images for her book, she wrote, "I have a feeling you have done it, . . . captured the book's intent without illustrating." In another letter she added, "Your montages are poetic in their own terms -- in their own language." Conference and Exhibition

Mr. Telberg and Nin worked in different media, but they had much in common. Both were cosmopolitan and attracted to Surrealism.

Nin was born in France in 1903, the daughter of musicians. Her Cuban father was a celebrated pianist and composer who deserted the family when Anais was 11. She began her diary on a boat to America, in an attempt to win him back.

Mr. Telberg, was born in Moscow in 1910 before the Russian revolution, was the child of a mother who was an artist and a father who was the last prime minister of Siberia before the Bolshevik takeover. The family fled to Korea and Japan before settling in China, where Mr. Telberg grew up.

Trained as a chemist, he moved to New York in 1938 and began studying painting under artists like George Grosz in 1942 at the Art Students League. A part-time job developing photographs soon lured him away from painting.

"Photography was faster," Mr. Telberg, 84, said in an interview. "The space between conception and performance is very short in photography. Photomontage is more exciting, more immediate than oil painting, which is very laborious." Debt to Abstract Expressionists

His darkroom technique owes much to the improvisatory style of the Abstract Expressionists. "Their attitude of experimentation with new visions and new images appealed to me," he said.

Mr. Telberg created his montages from a stockpile of negatives that he sandwiched together on a lightbox, without preconceived notions of a final product. In a method akin to free association, he layered a variety of negatives in different configurations as a leaping-off point that evolves into a finished composition.

"Val works in the darkroom the way a painter works in the studio," said Jim Richard Wilson, director of the Rathbone Gallery at Sage Junior College in Albany, which originated the exhibition of Mr. Telberg's work.(1994)

Like Nin, Mr. Telberg was interested in Surrealism. "What appealed to me was magic and anything unusual," said the photographer, who was friends with surrealist artists like Pavel Tchelitchew, Salvador Dali and the film maker Maya Deren.

"Val was happy to be included with the Surrealists, because they welcome accidents, use the unconscious, and act on dreams," a photographer, Warren Padula, said.

"But he was not part of a defined group." Mr. Padula, who curated a show of Mr. Telberg's photomontages for the Art House Odeon Gallery in Sag Harbor, added. "He's an American original."

Nin was part of a Parisian literary group in the 30's that included writers like Antonin Artaud, Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. "Surrealism," she wrote, "was part of the air we breathed." In "House of Incest," Nin tried to represent the subconscious, based on Jung's dictum to "proceed from the dream outward."

"Nin's greatest contribution was to liberate women through her diary. She opened doors to let women reveal their personal lives," said Suzanne Nalbantian, a professor of English and comparative literature at the C. W. Post campus of L.I.U. "Nin was seductive, erotic, very 20th-century and expressed herself with a freedom that is liberating."

Ms. Nalbantian, organizer of the conference on Nin, wrote "Aesthetic Autobiography" (St. Martin's), dealing with Nin's work.

Nin and Mr. Telberg shared an interest in avant-garde film making. When they met in 1950, "I was yearning to become a film maker, but I couldn't afford the equipment," Mr. Telberg recalled.

Instead he adapted cinematic effects like dissolve and jump-cut to still photography. "Val's photomontages have the feeling of movement that you find in cinema," said his wife, Lelia Katayen, a dancer and choreographer. "They take you from one image in time or place to another until they blend."

"Some critics say a Telberg photomontage is like a whole movie shown simultaneously in one frame," Mr. Padula noted.

Mr. Telberg contributed to a pioneering film, "Between Two Worlds" (1952), directing a dance sequence of superimposed frames projected simultaneously. The photographer also collaborated with Nin's husband, Ian Hugo, an experimental film maker, on the multi-image film "Bells of Atlantis" (1952), based on "House of Incest" and narrated by Nin.

After their brief alliance the careers of the artists diverged. Before her first diary gained acclaim when published in 1966, Nin had great difficulty publishing her novels. Even after she bought a printing press and produced her own editions in Greenwich Village in the 40's, Nin could not persuade critics to review her books.

In the 70's, however, she became a cult figure, a frequent speaker on the college circuit. She was considered a heroine of the women's movement, even though her brand of feminism was nondoctrinaire. Cacharel named a perfume, Anais, after the writer, and a film, "Henry and June," portrayed her friendship with Miller and his wife.

The conference at L.I.U. will offer further evidence of Nin's celebrity. Scholars from around the United States and as far away as Japan will debate Nin's fiction in terms of psychoanalysis and eroticism. Her brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell, a musician, will deliver the keynote address, friends will offer reminiscences, and her husband's films will be screened.

In contrast to Nin's fame, Mr. Telberg was not widely known, even though hewas an important figure in this country for creative, as opposed to "straight" or documentary, photography. His work appears in major collections like the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum, but his emotion-laden evocative montages, in which images merge like watercolor, never fit the former fashion for realism.

"I was interested in dream images," Mr. Telberg said. "I was considered crazy."

A 1983 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Art paid homage to his montages, but difficulty in classifying his oeuvre delayed recognition. "He doesn't belong in the painter's field, and yet his work is like a painting," his wife said. "Nobody knew where to place him."

"Poets were more interested in my work than photographers," Mr. Telberg said, adding that he was friends in Greenwich Village, before moving to Sag Harbor in 1959, with New York School poets like Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery and the musician John Cage.

O'Hara, an art critic as well as poet, called Mr. Telberg "a painter who turned to photography in order to accomplish the pictures he could not find in paint."

"I try," Mr. Telberg said 40 years ago, "to invent a completely unreal world, new, free and truthful."

source: NY Times archive, museum of New Mexico/fine art, MOMA's web site

dreams

Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.

Anais Nin

A Career Woman’s Short but Sweet Career in the 17th Century

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: July 22, 2009
NYtimes

WASHINGTON — Think of “Judith Leyster, 1609-1660” at the National Gallery of Art as a 400-year-old answer to the art historian Linda Nochlin’s famous question “Why have there been no great women artists?”

Leyster wasn’t a great artist — not when compared to Rembrandt, Vermeer and other select contemporaries — but she was very, very good. And before her marriage to the painter Jan Miense Molenaer she managed to have an independent career, no small feat for a 17th-century woman.

After training with accomplished painters thought to include Frans Hals, Leyster earned membership in the prestigious Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem. The Dutch artist had her own workshop, her own students and her own style, one that combined the spontaneity of Hals’s brushwork with a Caravaggist chiaroscuro.

What happened next is a familiar story: She married, had children and painted less and less frequently. Her art, unlike her husband’s, fell off the radar. Many of her paintings were attributed to other artists and weren’t properly identified until the 1890s.

The National Gallery show, like Leyster’s brief career, is a bit of a tease. It includes just 10 of her paintings, orchestrated around a splendid self-portrait from the permanent collection. The rest is context: a smattering of work by contemporaries, as well as 17th-century musical instruments that relate to some of the images.

The exhibition was organized by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., the museum’s curator of northern Baroque painting, in consultation with the Leyster scholar Frima Fox Hofrichter. It occupies the Dutch Cabinet Galleries, an intimate set of rooms intended to evoke period domestic interiors. This installation suits the generally modest scale of Leyster’s art, though the symbolism is unfortunate. (The galleries were carved out of storage space adjacent to the Rembrandts.)

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Judith Leyster's painting slide show

پرستو فروهر و چهره ها

مصاحبه با پرستو فروهر (فرزند پروانه و داریوش فروهر)
دربرنامه " به عبارت دیگر/ چهره ها" در تلویزیون بی بی سی فارسی

Aubrey V Beardsley

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was an influential English artist, illustrator, and author. He was born in Brighton, England.

Beardsley was aligned with the Yellow Book coterie of artists and writers, and produced many illustrations for the magazine. He was also closely aligned with Aestheticism, the British counterpart to Decadence and Symbolism.

Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

Aubrey Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica, which themes he explored in his later work. His most famous erotic illustrations were on themes of history and mythology, including his illustrations for Lysistrata and Salomé.

Beardsley was a close friend of Oscar Wilde and illustrated his play Salomé in 1893 for its French release; it was released in English the following year. He also produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) and worked for magazines like The Savoy and The Studio. Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser.

Beardsley was also a caricaturist and even did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster Art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists like Pape, Mucha and Clarke.

Beardsley was a public character as well as a private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim — the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair."

Although Beardsley was aligned with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the details of Beardsley's sexuality remain in question. Speculation about the artist's sexuality include the rumors of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have borne his miscarried child.

Beardsley died of tuberculosis in Menton, France at the age of 25 on March 16, 1898.

در جستجوی مارسل پروست

من زندگی ام را یک باره سر نمی کشم
جرعه جرعه از ساغری منحصر به فرد مزمزه می کنم.

داستان زندگي مارسل پروست، داستان زندگي مردي است که شيفتة دوران جادويي کودکي‌ است. مردي که زيبايي کودکي را جاوداني ساخت، از زندان زمان و مکان خارج کرد و بر صفحه‌هاي کاغذ جولان داد.
پروست، اين نويسندة تأثيرگذار و پر نفوذ نيمة اول قرن بيستم، از مادري يهودي و پدري کاتوليک زاده شد. مادرش دختر يک دلال ثروتمند بورس بود و پدرش پزشکي بسيار موفق. پروست از زندگي آسوده و مرفه‌اي برخوردار بود و هيچ کاري جز نويسندگي نکرد؛ گرچه زندگي آساني نگذراند و ضعف جسماني و بيماري آسم، که از نه سالگي به آن دچار شد و همة عمر گرفتار آن بود، روزگار را به او تلخ کرد. در بازگشت از سربازي، خانواده از او خواست که خود را براي پرداختن يه يکي از حرفه‌هاي در خور موقعيت اجتماعي‌اش آماده کند، در نتيجه او به دانش‌کدة حقوق دانش‌گاه سوربن رفت و در همان حال به کلاس‌هاي سياسي تا شايد بعدها ديپلمات شود؛ با اين حال هيچ‌يک را جدي نگرفت و بيش‌تر وقت خود را در محافل اشرافي، که در آن‌ها بسيار محبوب بود، گذراند و به رغم تن عليلش زندگي ولنگارانه‌اي پيش گرفت که بعدها مصالح آن به کار نوشتن داستان‌هايش آمد.
اولين کتابش«خوشي‌ها و روزها» را يک سال بعد از فارغ‌التحصيل شدن از سوربن منتشر کرد. اين کتاب مجموعه‌اي از چند مقاله و داستان عشقي رومانتيک بود که خوانندگان را به اين باور مي‌رساند که«خوشي بر کار» مقدم است. ولي آن چه که او عملاً در زندگي به آن پرداخت حکايت از چيز ديگري دارد. پروست در زندگي ضربه‌هاي سختي خورد و شلاق هوس‌هايش زخم‌هاي گزنده‌اي بر روحش به جا گذاشت و از او آدمي خشن و شرور ساخت؛ ولي مرگ پدر و مادر و درک اين‌ که خودش هم به زودي خواهد مرد، تغيير ماهوي به زندگي او داد. او حس مي‌کرد که ديگرتاثيرات جديد و جاري زندگي بر او کم‌رنگ و کم‌رنگ‌تر مي‌شود و زمان حال برايش رنگي ندارد و خاطرات کودکي است که پرجلوه‌تر و سرزنده‌تر است. موجي از تخيل او را دربرگرفته بود که به نوعي تکرار دقيق نخستين موج تأثيرات زندگي‌اش بود. او در خانه را به روي خود بست، در ميان صندوق‌چه‌هاي خاطراتش نشست و آن‌ها را دوباره تجربه کرد و به«از زمان از دست رفته» عشق ورزيد؛ چون مي‌ديد که توان آن را دارد که بارها و بارها«اين از دست رفته‌ها» را چون شالي در دست خود بگيرد و انگشت بر اين رنج‌ها و شادي‌ها بکشد. او خود را در دنياي خاطراتش حاکم مطلق مي‌ديد؛ چرا که مي‌توانست آن‌ها را متوقف کند، در هم بريزد وکالبد شکافي کند. او با بزرگ‌نمايي تکه‌هاي ذره‌بيني از گذشته توانست به عمق آن دست يابد و در واقع مي‌توان گفت که در نيمة دوم زندگي، پروست، به عنوان انساني تجربه‌گر، ديگر زنده نيست و تنها نويسندة نيمة اول زندگي خود است و گذشته در هزارتوي معده‌اش بارها و بارها گواريده مي‌شود. خودش گفته:«هنرمندانه دست پشت سر مي‌گذارم، دراز مي‌کشم و خود را بي‌قيد و راحت در لباس خوابي گل‌دوزي شده بر روي کاناپه‌اي مخملي رها مي‌کنم و به آرامي رعشة دوران سکون‌هاي مليح زندگي‌ام را به خاطر مي‌آورم. من زندگي‌ام را يک‌باره سر نمي‌کشم؛ جرعه جرعه از ساغري منحصر به فرد مزمزه مي کنم.» اگر بتوانيم براي پروست مکتبي قايل شويم، مي‌توان گفت که او متعلق به«فرهنگ خاطرات» است؛ کسي که توانسته رابطة بين هنر و خاطره را بشکافد. براي او مهم‌ترين موضوع شخصيت انساني است و مهم‌تر از همه شخصيت خودش.«زندگي بيش از همه زندگي من است، به عبارتي ديگر هر نوع زندگي عيني نوعي در هم بافتن من‌هاي من است.» از نظر فلسفي پروست شاگرد برگسون محسوب مي‌شود که عقيده دارد زمان يعني تجمع، استمرار و تکامل. به عقيده برگسون زمان از گذشته تا حال ادامه دارد و در آن بالفعل موجود است و به فعاليت خود ادامه مي‌دهد.
اگر بخواهيم پروست را به هنگام نوشتن مجسم کنيم پر بي‌راه نيست اگر او را دراز کشيده و قلم به دست در رختخواب ببينيم که خود و ذهنش را به پردة سينماي خلاقي سپرده که بر روي آن خاطراتش نمايش داده مي‌شود. منتها چشم‌هاي بيننده اين پرده همانند گوش، فکر و عواطف او با قدرت روي بعضي از تصاوير درنگ مي‌کند و به آن‌ها معنا مي‌دهد. او در اين فيلم بازي‌گر نقش خود است.
در مدت سيزده سال گوشه نشيني و تلاش زاهدانة نوشتن تا به هنگام مرگ، پروست زندگي خود را برخي تدارک و آفرينش کتاب عظيم«در جست‌وجوي زمان از دست رفته» کرد که البته عمرش کفاف نداد تا آن را، آن گونه که خود دوست داشت، به پايان برساند و چاپ جلدهاي آخر اثرش با سر هم بندي نمونه‌هاي چاپي نامنظم و دست نوشته‌هاي نويسنده صورت گرفت. تا آن که در سال هزارو نهصد و پنجاه و چهار نسخة معروف پلياد در سه جلد قطور، هر يک بيش از هزار صفحه، به چاپ رسيد و از آن به بعد به عنوان روايت قطعي و رسمي پذيرفته شد.
«درجست‌و جوي زمان از دست رفته»، زندگي‌نامة خودنوشتِ پروست نيست، هر چند در تار و پود آن بخش‌هايي از زندگي خودِ پروست وجود دارد، ولي به مانند هر اثر هنري ديگري، واقعيت در آن نشانه‌اي است که تأويل مي‌شود و بستري از نشانه‌ها وحدت اين رمان را در عين کثرت شکل مي‌دهد. در اين رمان به رغم آن که خواننده صداي راوي را مي‌شنود ولي شناخت چنداني از او ندارد، تنها مي‌داند که راوي آدم تن درستي نيست و زندگي را به بطالت مي گذراند. ديگر آدم‌هاي داستان از ديدگاه راوي داوري و معرفي مي‌شوند؛ ولي خود او به طرز عجيبي مبهم و ناملموس باقي مي‌ماند. کتاب بافتي حلقوي دارد، يعني در پايان کتاب به آغاز آن مي‌رسيم، و مضمون آن مفاهيم وکهن الگوهاي عام بشري:«عشق و مرگ»، «واقعيت و خيال» و«انديشه و آفرينش» است. پروست در اين کتاب تصوير نقادانه‌اي از خانواده‌هاي اشرافي و طبقة متوسط مرفه ارائه مي‌دهد و نشان مي‌دهد که چگونه طبقة متوسط به تدريج و به آرامي جاي‌گزين اشراف مي‌شوند و چطور همه چيز از«کلايد اسکوپ» يا قانون تحول مدام-هيچ چيز ثابت نيست- پيروي مي‌کند. خودش گفته:«اگر کسي به اندازة کافي در جامعة اشراف و نخبگان جامعه زندگي کرده باشد، در مي‌يابد قانون اسرارآميزي بر اين جامعه حکم مي‌راند که باعث افول يا طلوع ستاره‌هاي مختلف مي‌شود.»
تحليل ژرف، کامل و گستردة پروست از عشق و چگونگي شکل‌گيري، پيشرفت و زوال آن بي‌نظير است؛ گرچه شايد مورد پسند و پذيرش همه نباشد. او پاي‌بند روانشناسي عشق است و جنبه‌هاي فيزيکي را، يا آن چه که امروز اصطلاحاً رابطة جنسي ناميده مي‌شود، اساس عشق نمي‌داند. از نظر او عشق زماني به اوج مي‌رسد که تمناهاي جسمي در آن بي اهميت و خواهش‌هاي فکري و ذهني مهم‌تر باشد و اين خلاف نظر رمان‌نويسان خلفش، از جمله تولستوي است. تولستوي در کتاب آنا کارنينا و يا داستان نسبتاً بلند سونات کرويتسر نشان مي‌دهد که آتش عشق تا زماني که هم آغوشي پيش نيآمده سوزان است و بعد از آن ملاحظات ديگري سربرمي‌آورند؛ اما از ديدگاه پروست تمناي جسمي- با آن که وجود دارد- عنصري نسبتاً جزيي از کل مسئلة عشق را، که پروست آن را بلاي مقدس مي‌نامد، تشکيل مي‌دهد و براي عاشق وفاداري فيزيکي معشوق آن اندازه اهميت ندارد که اين باور که همة محبت معشوق براي او است.
به باور پروست آدمي نه از يک«من» ثابتِ يک پارچه و دائمي که از«من»هاي بسيار ساخته شده است که در دوره‌هاي مختلف زندگي او شکوفا مي‌شوند، مي‌پژمرند و مي‌ميرند«زندگي يک قالي‌چة باشکوه است که من‌هاي ذهني در تاروپود آن تنيده شده‌اند تا شکلي از ابديت بسازند و کل هماهنگي را جلوه‌گر سازند.» و مرگ عشق زماني اتفاق مي‌افتد که ما آن«منِ» عاشق را مي‌کشيم و جاي آن را به«منِ» تازه‌اي که هيچ خاطره‌اي از زمان دل‌دادگي ندارد مي‌دهيم:«آيا ميان تو وزني که ديگر دوست نداري و پس از سال‌ها دوباره مي‌بيني، به همان اندازه مرگ حايل نمي‌شود که ميان تو و او اگر از دنيا رفته بود، زيرا چون ديگر عشقي ميانتان نيست اوي آن زمان‌ها يا خودِ توي آن زمان‌ها ديگر مرده‌ايد؟»
پروست واقعيت و خيال و ماهيت حافظه را نيز به چالش مي‌کشد؛ مي‌گويد:«حافظة فرد را مي‌توان در چيزهايي که در اطراف او هستند سراغ کرد.» به تعبير او اين چيزها حافظة غير ارادي را فعال مي‌کنند و بخش‌هايي از گذشته به گونه‌اي در ذهن زنده مي‌شوند که فرد را غرقة غم و يا سرشار از شادي مي‌سازند، حال آن که شايد در زمان خود چنين تأثيراتي نداشته‌اند، و آدمي حس مي‌کند نه در گذشته است و نه در حال؛ يک‌سره بيرون از زمان است، شايد در دنيايي که زمان در آن مفهومي ندارد. پروست به خاطرات محو و ريزي نظر دارد که در پشت و پسله‌هاي ذهن خانه کرده‌اند و تأثرات حسي گذرا و شادماني‌هاي غير منتظره ربط غير مستقيمي با آن‌ها دارد و نتيجه‌گيري مي‌کند که واقعيت زنده نه در بيرون از ما، که در درون ما است و هنرمند واقعي آن را جست‌وجو مي‌کند و با نشان دادن درک متفاوتي که آدم‌ها از واقعيت دارند ما را به درون ضمير ديگران مي‌برد و حقيقي‌ترين و معتبرترين شکل رابطه را ايجاد مي کند:«آدم‌ها در رابطه با ما پيوسته جابه‌جا مي‌شوند. در حرکت نامحسوس اما ازلي جهان ايشان را انگار ساکن در نظر مي‌آوريم؛ در نگاهي آني و آن چنان کوتاه که جا‌به جايي‌شان به چشممان نمي‌آيد. اما کافي است در حافظه‌مان به دو تصويرِ دو زمان متفاوت ايشان نظر کنيم، حتي به فاصله‌اي آن قدر نزديک که خود در درون خويشتن تغيير دست‌کم محسوسي نکرده باشند، تا از تفاوتِ دو تصوير به ميزان جابه‌جايي‌شان نسبت به خودمان پي ببريم.»
«اثر هنري تنها وسيلة بازيافتن زمان از دست رفته است.» کتاب حجيم در«جست‌وجوي زمان از دست رفته»، که حجم عظيم آن خيلي‌ها را از خواندنش منصرف کرده، به کساني که با صبر و بردباري صفحه‌هاي اوليه آن را تحمل کرده‌اند و همراه آدم‌هاي داستاني بي‌شمار آن مخيل شده‌اند جنبه‌هايي از ظرايف وجودي انسان را، با چنان دقت و گويايي، آشکار مي‌کند که شايد در هيچ کتاب ديگري نظير آن را نتوان يافت. با خواندن کتاب«در جست‌وجوي زمان از دست دفته» خواننده به اين باور حتمي مي‌رسد که اگرچه خواندن پروست زمان و بردباري مي‌خواهد- به خصوص زمان- اما اين زمان هرگز«از دست رفته» نخواهد بود.

منبع: دیباچه