The Dense Heat of Noon or the Shiver of Twilight

“The wind went whirling around the poplars; it came from elsewhere, from everywhere; it went rushing through space, and I, too, was whirled away with it, without stirring from where I stood, right to the ends of the earth. When the moon rose in the sky, I would be in touch with far-off cities, deserts, oceans and villages which at that moment were bathed, as I was, in its radiance. I was no longer a disembodied mind, an abstract gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heath moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy, yet I was like vapor in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds.”

— Simone de Beauvoir in “Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter” (1959)