Unseasonably warm day. This afternoon I walk down to the library and retrieve Gide’s Amyntas from the shelf (returned weeks ago, finally finished) in order to copy down the following passage, which has sort of stuck with me, a serviceably noble-sounding apologia of sorts for unprolificness, writer’s block, laziness, etc.:

… that’s how the finest roses are produced — only from rosebushes subject to the winter’s stupor. On this African earth, so rich and so warm, the tininess of these flowers, which astonishes us at first, their narrowness, the strangulation of their beauty, is the consequence of the fact that the plant never stops blooming. Each blossom opens without energy, without premeditation, without expectation …

In the same way, the most admirable human efflorescence requires a previous torpor. The unconscious gestation of great works plunges the artist into a sort of stupor; and not to consent to this process, to fear it, to try to regain control too soon, to be ashamed of one’s winters, that is what — in one’s greed for more — will strangle and thwart each blossom.