892 Proust, Marcel
and as a result, he cannot appear in high society
with Odette, and their “unfortunate marriage” is
disapproved of.
According to the narrator, lovers have a remark-
able capacity for self-delusion: When love “no longer
evolves by itself,” lovers often “come to its aid.” Swann,
for instance, creates love where there is none because
he is content being “in love for the pleasure of loving”
and delights in “living by love alone.” In this respect,
the idealized Odette whom Swann loves does not
exist outside of his mind. Initially, he is “indifferent”
to her; however, like the narrator who loves Gilberte
because he thinks she scorns him, Swann is attracted
to Odette once he (wrongly) learns that she might
be difficult to seduce. Moreover, Swann only finds
Odette desirable, and falls in love with her, after he
compares her to a Botticelli painting. When he looks
at her “in the flesh,” he doubts her beauty; when he
imagines she is in a painting, he is able to introduce
her image “into a world of dreams and fancies” and so
loves her. In the end, Swann so successfully deludes
himself regarding Odette that he begins “adopting
her opinions”—about the Verdurins, for instance—
and hides his true self.
In the days of his first fascination for Gilberte, the
narrator felt that “Love did really exist, apart from
ourselves.” As an adult, he suggests that love, includ-
ing Swann’s, is an invention that enlivens humdrum
existences, providing a “fresh charm” in a wearying
world. Love is also a source of torment. It affects how
the narrator and Swann act and how they interpret
their environment, and it is ultimately a projection of
their own needs, desires, and personalities.
Katherine Ashley
memor y in Remembrance of Things Past
The title of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps
perdu has been translated into English in two differ-
ent ways: Remembrance of Things Past and In Search
of Lost Time. The first title focuses on the act of
remembering and the role of specific memories—of
events, people, “fragment[s] of landscape”—in the
narrator’s life; the second focuses on the passage of
time and the feeling of wistful nostalgia that often
permeates the text. Together, the two titles under-
score the importance of memory and the role of the
past in Proust’s novel.
According to the narrator, actively trying to
regain the past is “a labour in vain” because the past
is “beyond the reach of intellect.” Memories are like
a “luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague
and shadowy background,” and the difficulty lies in
bringing the past into focus. Some of the narrator’s
oldest recollections are “instinctive” and belong to the
“deepest layer” of his “mental soil,” but others can only
be uncovered by unconscious reactions to material
objects. In these involuntary memories, sensory stim-
uli—odors, tastes, sounds—generate reminiscences
that are central to identity; the perception of reality;
and, in the case of the narrator, the creative process.
The most obvious example of the connection
between an external stimulus and the resurfacing of
long-buried memories is the madeleine incident: the
entire “Combray” account is triggered by the taste of
a madeleine cake dipped in tea, which transports the
narrator back to his youth. Similarly, at the end of
the novel, the vision of trees in the Bois de Boulogne
returns the narrator to an era when he waited impa-
tiently for a glimpse of the elegant Mme. Swann.
Other characters are also affected by evocative pow-
ers of the senses: Because Vinteuil’s sonata evokes
“forgotten strains of happiness” in Charles Swann,
when he hears it, he is carried back to an earlier
period in his relationship with Odette.
The narrator’s obsession with memory is not a
simple case of nostalgia, a mere sentimental longing
for the past. On the contrary, memory plays a central
role in the creation of identity in the text. For exam-
ple, the narrator observes that, for him, “going back
in memory,” there are two different Charles Swanns,
each reflecting a different part of his own former life.
How the narrator perceives others in the present is
affected by their role in his past, to the extent that
all personalities are “created by the thoughts of other
people.” In addition, the narrator is in many ways
the sum total of his memories: Without them and
the process of recollection, his story could not and
would not have been told.
The act of writing is presented as a means of
recapturing the past; the novel that we read is there-
fore meant to resurrect the narrator’s past. When he
refers to the “vast structure of recollection,” he is,
in a sense, referring to Remembrance of Things Past
itself. In this respect, remembering is a creative act,