Renewal in "Sodom and Gomorrah" by Marcel Proust...

"... pools of water which the sun, now bright again, had not dried made a regular quagmire of the ground, and I thought of my grandmother who, in the old days, could not walk a yard without covering herself in mud. But on reaching the road I found a dazzling spectacle. Where I had seen with my grandmother in the month of August only the green leaves, and so to speak, the disposition of the apple-trees, as far as the eye could reach they were in full bloom, marvellous in their splendour, their feet in mire beneath their ball-dresses, taking no precaution not to spoil the most marvellous pink satin that was ever seen, which glittered in the sunlight; the distant horizon of the sea gave the trees the background of a Japanese print; if I raised my head to gaze at the sky through the blossom, which made its serene blue appear almost violent, the trees seemed to be drawing apart to reveal the immensity of their paradise. Beneath that azure a faint but cold breeze set the blushing bouquets gently trembling. Blue tits came and perched upon the branches and fluttered among the flowers, indulgent, as though it had been an amateur of exotic art and colours who had artificially created this living beauty. But it moved one to tears because, to whatever lengths the artist went in the refinement of his creation, one felt that it was natural, that these apple-trees were there in the heart of the country, like peasants, upon one of the highroads of France. Then the rays of the sun gave place suddenly to those of the rain; they streaked the whole horizon, caught the line of apple-trees in their grey net. But these continued to hold aloft their beauty, pink and blooming, in the wind that had turned icy beneath the drenching rain: it was a day in spring."
- Marcel Proust, "Sodom and Gomorrah" Vol. 1, (Chatto and Windus, 1943), p252-253

If I ever have the opportunity of explaining the beauty of this extract,- that is- if I ever finish In Search of Lost Time I guarantee I will recount the honest manner in which this moment is reached. Spring-time is that part of the year, the character of nature and this earth which offers a moment of universal renewal and growth. The violence of the rain is counterbalanced (as Proust wonderfully depicts) by the slow, soft blossom of a new season. Nature is alive and has its own manner of coming back to life, the world lighting up as the sun begins to shine more often upon it in the course of a day. The world during winter is quiet, tentative and almost asleep, but it begins to bristle with the onset of a new season; saplings form beneath the soil, and root vegetables begin to grow when the soil fills with electricty and life. As I say, theire is more to this quote than the simple description of a season, but allow me to leave this as a place-marker and return to it when I am finished the whole novel.

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