22 - Proust: the self, time and art

Summary

I myself seemed to have become the subject of my book

– Proust, The Way by Swann's

Àla recherche du temps perdu (the Recherche, or the Search, for short), the 3,000-page, multi-volume novel by Marcel Proust (1871–1922), published between 1913 and 1927, is now recognized as the undisputed masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction. Endlessly rich in its themes and idioms, it is a philosophical novel about time, memory, imagination and art; a psychological novel about human behaviour, love and jealousy; a social novel about France, especially high society, as it evolved from the end of the nineteenth century to the aftermath of the 1914–18 war; and a comic novel of manners, character and language. It is also an experimental novel, quite unlike what contemporary readers normally understood to be a work of fiction. Part of Proust's importance historically is that he redefined the boundaries of fiction. Instead of a conventional linear story with a clearly identifiable plot, the Search uses a kaleidoscope of memories to create a startlingly new form of narrative. For those who come to the Search for the first time, it reads very much like an autobiography. There is an ‘I’, a narrator, who is telling the story of his childhood experiences, reminiscing about them, adding analytical comments as he goes. But although there are strong autobiographical elements in the novel – the places and characters can be matched with Proust's own experience, and the narrator's name is revealed to be Marcel – these elements have been transformed, and a world created out of them which, though based on real experiences, is an imaginary one, a fictional creation. The narrative ‘I’ is, moreover, a double ‘I’, moving fluidly between the present of the narrator and the past of his younger self, building multiple perspectives into a symphonic structure and promoting a dramatic narration as the narrator comes slowly to understand the significance of his past experiences. The novel invites the reader to enter the narrator's mind, to accompany him on his journey of discovery as he explores in minute detail, in sentences of intricate precision, the workings of his own consciousness and sensibility, and seeks to understand not only the meaning of his life but also the nature of the human condition.