The burden of survival …

… Józef Czapski: painter, prisoner, and disciple of Proust. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Born and buried a Catholic, carrying a small oilcloth Bible with him when he travelled in Russia in search of the truth about his fellow prisoners, Czapski was a religious man. A Tolstoyan pacifist in his youth, who resigned from the Polish cavalry because he did not want to kill other human beings, he was attracted to the mysticism of Simone Weil (1909-43) and became a close friend of the God-seeking Russian philosopher Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865-1941). Czapski was not mistaken in finding in Proust’s work a kind of religion: not a story of redemption, but a struggle to defy time and disillusion, and eternalise the passing moment in memories of meaning and beauty.