Unknown, known

Charles Swann, making people’s lives make sense to him:

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).

Donald Rumsfeld’s talk of “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns” (what we know we know, what we know we don’t know, and what we don’t know we don’t know) is easily mocked, but it does make sense. The part of a person’s life we don’t know must count as an unknown unknown, no? Swann converts the unknown unknown into a known known by an act of imagination. Here’s hoping.

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All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)