Persistent (May)

Re-reading Proust. Former Macleod resident Gerald Murnane, for whom Macleod’s hillside views are now a memory he may wish to memorialise, once wrote an essay entitled ‘Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs’. Marcel, or Proust, or both, are the author of this line. Much depends on the word ‘persistants’. Most translators say ‘enduring’ lilacs that last for as long as his memory, and the words they honour. But one translator has ‘indestructible’, which is effective, but is it true? When I gaze at Macleod hillsides how can they be less real than my memory of them? For now, my memory is indestructible.