Summer

Use in the book

In early April, clouds increasingly take summer forms, standing like sheep in hot pastures. The analogy imports a felt season into the shape of the sky. June’s cold then frustrates the expectation: greenery alone prevents the scene from seeming wintry. Guérin complains that even Breton summer at its finest appears confined beside the luminous breadth of the South.

Yet unbroken brightness is not his only desire. After many brilliant August days, a motionless grey sky offers welcome repose. Summer’s value is consequently inseparable from variation and contrast; the season is not a perpetual maximum of light.

In the 1834 account of a country holiday, warmth, vegetation, birds, and breezes allow a rest that proves intellectually active. The later image of summer-cloud shadows moving across paper distils this receptive interval into a model of writing. Summer contributes abundant materials and wandering forms, but their freedom also makes them hard to retain.

Places to read

1. 5 April 1833 · ¶1Summer cloud shapes are recognised within an April scene
2. 13 June 1833 · ¶1June cold and regional comparison unsettle conventional seasonal expectations
3. 14 August 1833 · ¶1Grey weather gives relief after sustained brilliance
4. 20 August 1834 · ¶2Summer holiday idleness proves to have nourished inward powers
5. 10 December 1834 · ¶4Moving summer-cloud shadows become a figure for writing

Translation in this edition

Formes d’été is kept as summer forms, preserving the perceptual anticipation. The June translation’s summer, on its days of solemn splendor expands the force of dans ses jours de solennité without implying that the described cold day is itself splendid.