Burning the Days

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This book is, to some extent, the story of a life. Not the complete story which, as in almost any case, is beyond telling — the length would be too great, longer than Proust, not to speak of the repetition.

What I have done is to write about people and events that were important to me, and to be truthful though relying, in one place or another, on mere memory. Your language is your country, Léautaud said, but memory is also, as well as being a measure, in its imprint, of the value of things. I suppose it could be just as convincingly argued that the opposite is true, that what one chooses to forget is equally revealing, but put that aside. Somehow I hear the words of E. E. Cummings in The Enormous Room: Oh, yes, Jean, he wrote, I do not forget, I remember Plenty …

Apart from my own memory I have relied on the memories of others, as well as on letters, journals, and whatever else I could find.

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