Sunday, July 22, 2018
The Fragrance of Life Past
Paul Valéry (1871-1945), "Reception Address to the French Academy," Collected Works, Vol. 11: Occasions, tr. Roger Shattuck and Frederick Brown (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 3-37 (at 21-22, on Anatole France):
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He had long inhaled from books the fragrance of life past, pervaded with an odor of death, and his spirit, redistilling what history had distilled of itself, became gradually imbued with this refined essence of past centuries.
Il avait longuement respiré dans les livres les essences de la vie passée qui s'y mêlent à l'odeur de mort, et sa substance s'était imprégnée peu à peu du meilleur de ce que les siècles avaient déjà distillé de plus excellent.
