« Anywhere, at will, I can draw a veil over my sight: all at once I withdraw into myself and there I find a dark chamber where all the accidents of Nature are reproduced in a much purer form than that in which they appear to my external senses. » He had learned to cultivate visions nourished not by fantasy but by truth—the truth of his memory and of his observation—which he could summon at will and modify as he pleased.
Honoré de Balzac
Prologue
Prologue
The prologue stands before the work.
It is a door that opens the house.
It is the first appearance.
Before one enters, it shows itself.
It is like the donkey harnessed at the front of the wagon. It strikes the ground, pulls, and in a final effort tears the cart from its stillness.
Thus the book begins, in a surge.
But scarcely has the road been taken
than the gaze already turns elsewhere. Paths open. The journey has begun. The prologue remains at the point of departure and fades away. Yet it is the one that gave the impulse. Now it falls silent, and the whole book continues to move forward under the thrust of that first word. And when, later, having crossed a few boundaries, one returns to the beginning, one is struck with wonder.
In these few lines there was already the murmur of the entire book, just as in the dawn the whole day already exists.
