Autobiographical fiction; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Villages -- France -- Fiction
was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought,
and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had
distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
strange desire.
With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly
indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which
he was prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it
changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform,
melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista
of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing,
that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though
without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure
less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he
was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment
passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and
enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether
he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows
nothing of her, not even her name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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