P A S S I N G ∞ T I M E Michel Butor

because I am writing in order to find my way about in it, all these lines being the marks with which I blaze the trail: the labyrinth being my days in Bleston, incomparably more bewildering than that of the Cretan palace, since it grows and alters even while I explore it.

Then we went out again on to the damp pavements of the Square, kissed by the mild June sun as it broke through clouds after the rain

It was the first time that I had devoted a Saturday afternoon to that auditing of my past experience on which I had been engaged since the beginning of May;

against Sunday’s boredom, which even fine weather scarcely alleviates, in its toffee-apples and ice-creams and gingerbreads, its Aunt Sallies and swings and bumper-cars, its Ghost Train and its Giant Wheel and its livelier crowds—above all in its shooting-galleries