Wartime paradoxically restores a fuller, more inhabited experience of night

Evidence

The little town had vanished with its smoke; the odor of the great forests glided off the cliffs with the fog and drowned it to the depths of its factory alleys; nothing was left save the starry night and around him these miles and miles of forest. The afternoon’s enchantment returned. Grange realized that half his life was going to be restored to him: in wartime, the night is inhabited. — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 35

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 35
• XREF: connects to: A historical period can itself function as a waking dream — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 21; Wartime disorientation can dissolve into a feeling of self-sufficient freedom rather than fear — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 423; The end of a war experience produces emptiness rather than resolution or relief — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 509 (+2 more)