"Some of those Pompeians, as the fire of heaven rained down on them, descended into the corridors of the Métro, knowing that they would not be alone there; and the darkness that irradiates everything like a new element abolishes the first phase of pleasure and offers direct access to a domain of caresses that is normally attained only after a certain length of time.(Proust)
He had promised himself that, one night or day, he would witness those "secret rites" for himself."
"In 1906, at the age of 35, when his literary baggage was extremely light, he was already acquainted with the law of modern life according to which one's immediate surroundings remain a mystery while distant places seen in guidebooks and paintings are as familiar as old friends whose material presence is no longer required to maintain the friendship. The Métropolitain, whose rumble was perceptible to the spiders on the ceiling, might as well have been a fantasy of HG Wells. This, combined with an inability to leave his apartment, explains why, when very few Parisians had never taken the Métro, and when more kilometres were travelled every day in Paris than on the entire rail network, Marcel Proust had yet to descend to the Métropolitain. He had never, as far as we know, even written the word; nor had any of his friends ever mentioned it. In August, he had tried to reach the Père-Lachaise cemetery in order to attend his uncle's funeral, but had spent two hours wheezing in the Saint-Lazare railway station, galvanising his asthmatic lungs with coffee before returning to his apartment."
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