A Bit of Prose, for Summer
In the second section of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , “Swann in Love,” when Charles Swann is insisting Odette tell him of her other suspected lovers, his line of reasoning of needing to know follows that he’ll stop bothering her about it so often because being able to picture a thing, to bring it out of the unknown, brings him a sense of relief. “The truly horrifying things,” he continues, “are the ones you can’t imagine.” Early 20th century American poet, Edna Millay, disagrees. As she wrote in “The Unexplorer”— There was a road ran past our house Too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once — she said That if you followed where it led It brought you to the milk-man’s door. (That’s why I have not traveled more.) — Subsequently, it was the mystery of a small dirt road which always had the three year-old version of myself always wanting to walk down it despite never having the confidence of asking my father to take me, and losing the opportunity altogeth...