Oldal 24 [24]
IN SEARCH OF LOST IMAGE
possible development lies in the sense of depth: “The only fertile research is
excavatory, immersive, a contraction of the spirit, a descent. The artist is active,
but negatively, shrinking from the nullity of extra-circumferential phenomena,
drawn into the core of the eddy.”!? Proust describes the surface of the epidermis
as the facade behind which the Idea is imprisoned." It is the task of the artist to
recover the “form” out of uniformity.
Beckett was soon seduced by Proust’s new postulate which was based on
offering a reality that is not intelligible in a total, immediate way, even though
this is precisely what puzzled his first readers. Until then, a literary piece
of work was presented as an understandable whole that offered a coherent
picture of reality and its characters in an explainable world.
According to René Albérés, in Proust’s oeuvre a new vision can be perceived,
that is, the very nature of perception, the point of view: the eye of the reader
ceases to occupy a privileged place, and instead, there is a whirlwind of
images that gives us the impression of suffering from myopia or presbyopia,
because visions are taken from too close or too far, which requires from the
reader a constant effort of adaptation and identification." Through hundreds
of images, Proust abandons the attempt to follow the thread of a succession of
“adventures” and starts to expose a series of self-reflections through a chaotic
disorder of impressions. In this new artistic architecture, Proust encourages
novels not to be just “stories,” but journeys of spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic
adventures: intimate epics. Thus, his creative work could no longer be seen as
the logical development of an account, but as the search for an enigma.”
Thus, In Search of Lost Time brings a new dimension in contrast to the
traditional construction, the latter consisting of episodes that are rigidly
chained toward a plot and a denouement. As this new approach is built under
the sleep-wake state, the reader is immersed in a world without direction,
showing the discontinuity of the modern novel. Proust is not only considering
the problem of reality or of sleep, but rather the issue of the representation
of the reality of the modern subject, as it is difficult to grasp a human being
that is undergoing constant changes in consecutive “selves.” In In Search
of Lost Time, the narrator is lost in a forest of images that become his own
representations, as in the phantasmagoria that takes place in the Guermantes
matinée. The nightmare comes when the narrator enters the hall in a
panoramic view through a gallery of deformed mirrors that show old, faded,
unrecognizable, caricatured characters; only big moustaches and white
beards that move, gesture and chat, as if they were alive. He cannot remember
2 Tbid., 48.
The “Idea” as the “ideal real” in the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, that is, not abstract but
concrete and particular.
4 René M. Albérès: Métamorphoses du roman, Paris, Éditions Albin Michel, 1972, 14-15.
15 Ibid., 16.
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