Day 0017

I was too tired today to do a meticulous drawing, so I turned again to Degas to have some fun with my oil pastels and learn from his modelling of light and shade. I worked from his pastel Dancer on Stage with a Bouquet.

I am nearing the end of my Proust odyssey. He is currently dealing with old age, the sudden apprehension that you are a being within time and that when you see signs of ageing in those around you, you begin to understand that you yourself have been transformed without you being aware of it. It is tremendously moving.

He has anticipated my feelings, my criticism, my analysis by placing this show-piece after a lucid exploration of what literature is, what it is to write and to think and to read and to live. So when I read his work and interpolate my own experiences and memories with his, he has already told me he knows I am doing so, and has indeed invited me to do so. I have never read a book so wonderfully self-aware and so carefully wrought.

What a precious thing it is to be young and alive and aware of it.