Translations:CP 03787/27/en
- ↑ This no doubt refers to boules Quiès [natural wax earplugs]. In Le Côté de Guermantes Proust describes his experiences with these earplugs. See the famous episode about silence being created artificially by means of boules Quiès: "Indeed it sometimes happens that an invalid whose ears have been hermetically sealed can no longer hear the noise of a fire like the one that was crackling away at that very moment in Saint-Loup's chimney [...]; to no longer hear the passage of the trams whose music rose at regular intervals over the main square at Doncières. And then, if the invalid reads, the pages turn silently as if being leafed through by a god. The deep rumble of a bath that is being run becomes weaker, softer and more distant like the celestial babbling of a brook [...] [W]e have only to thicken the balls that close the aural passages, they compel to a pianissimo the boisterous tune being played by a young girl above our heads; if we smear one of these plugs in grease immediately its despotism is obeyed by the whole building, and the same laws are extended out of doors. Pianissimo is no longer sufficient, the plug instantaneously closes the piano and the music lesson is abruptly curtailed; the gentleman who is pacing the room above our head ceases his round in one fell swoop; the traffic of carriages and trams is interrupted as if a head of state were about to pass." (RTP, II, 374-375.) [PK, ChC]