Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Illness and art


A great cover of the old Clientele song 'From a Window' reminded me all of a sudden of this passage by Proust:

'Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help.'

Swann's Way p.4 tr. C. K. Scott Moncrieff

3 comments:

dennis said...

Your passage by Proust reminds us that of the stakes of suffering in life were higher before some lucky few of us had our anti-inflammatories, morphine, oxycontin, nerve ablations, etc to relieve pain... that said, to me this well-crafted pop song captures something a little different-- the tingly feelings one has when looking out while remaining hidden out of sight, perhaps in the dark, and being able to move about unnoticed...

Unknown said...

Hello Alasdair,

Please listen to my cover of 6 AM Morningside that I recorded a few years ago on my iPhone.

https://youtu.be/_ocJ0twqW0E

Cheers,

Mark

Alasdair said...

Nice version, Mark.