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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. + 23
