Time Regained (32nd post)

 I view the middle section of Time Regained as being the real conclusion of the novel and the the last section covering Marcel's attendance at the Prince and Princesse de Guermantes' as being a swansong as he departs Parisian society before entering the private world of the writer who will pen the book we have just read.

The middle section draws together the recurring themes of the novel, such as Marcel's wavering hopes of becoming a writer and the epiphanies, and by this synthesis shows how time lost to the past can be retrieved.

But before he can achieve this breakthrough, he must undergo more disillusionment. The volume opens with Marcel as a guest of Gilberte at Tansonville. On the final evening of his stay, she lends him a newly published part of the Goncourts' Journal. The journal has a mixed effect on Marcel: it makes him think he lacks any aptitude for literature because, unlike its author, he does not know how to look or listen and so cannot write like that; but he also realises that such literature is inconsequential and reveals no profound truths.

The reader is given an extract of the journal. In it, the author, presumably Edmond de Goncourt, meets the Verdurins and their circle. The extract is, of course, not from the actual journal, but is Proust's pastiche of it. I have some reservations about the success of this pastiche, even though critics describe it as “delicious”, “celebrated”, “satirical”, etc. Yes, the pastiche name-drops the usual Goncourt crowd of Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Flaubert etc. However, despite the Goncourts' aristocratic background, their subject matter is usually down-to-earth, indeed often earthy, and it is improbable that, for example, they would lovingly describe in florid terms, as in the pastiche, all the types of chinaware to be found on the Verdurins' table – which is a rather Proustian preoccupation and is more in his style. There is also a chronological awkwardness to the pastiche. We should, however, ignore the mistake in translation by Kilmartin and Enright where they have M Verdurin address the “Goncourts” in the plural (although the journal was originally by both brothers, Jules died in 1870 before any of the events in Proust's novel). Nevertheless, the pastiche entry purports to be of a period when Swann was still part of the clan (ie when Elstir would still have been the young unknown Biche), but in it Elstir is already a household name (Hudson XII pp.15-26, Kilmartin III pp.728-736, Enright VI pp.22-32).

The theme of Marcel's concern over his lack of literary talent is taken up again when, on his return by train to Paris, the sunlit trees he sees from his carriage window fail to inspire him (see my 31^st post). This personal disillusionment is again accompanied by a second theme: the compensatory general disappointment with “the vanity, the falsehood of literature” (SH XII p.195, TK III p.886, DE VI p.202). And this dual theme returns as Marcel makes his way to the Prince and Princesse de Guermantes' party and tries, in order to test his creative powers, to conjure up a literary description of what he had seen in Venice. He discovers that he has no more talent for describing Venice from memory than he had for describing the trees from observation. “I possessed the proof that I was useless and that literature could no longer give me any joy whatever, whether this was my fault, through my not having enough talent, or the fault of literature itself, if it were true that literature was less charged with reality than I had once supposed”. It is at this low-point of self-criticism that a series of incredibly consequential events unexpectedly begins. “But it is sometimes just at the moment when we think that everything is lost that the intimation arrives which may save us” (SH XII pp.208-209, TK III pp.897-898, DE VI pp.215-216).

What is it that rescues Marcel? He trips over a paving stone.

Outside the Guermantes' mansion, Marcel steps out of the way of a car and the uneven pavement causes him to stumble. But as he does so, he feels the same happiness he had experienced when he tasted the madeleine. “All anxiety about the future, all intellectual doubts had disappeared, so now those that a few seconds ago had assailed me on the reality of my literary gifts, the reality even of literature, were removed as if by magic.” In fact, his joy is so great that even death becomes a matter of indifference to him. This is his first “intimation” (Wordsworth again – see my 31^st post). He searches for the cause of this particular sensation, and he realises that it is the same as the sensation he had experienced when he had stood on two uneven stones in the baptistery of St Mark's in Venice. But that is as far as his investigation takes him: why his recollection of Venice should cause him such happiness, he does not yet understand (SH XII pp.210-211, TK III pp.898-900, DE VI pp.216-218).

He enters the mansion and, while waiting to enter the main hall, a second intimation comes to him: a servant knocks a spoon against a plate and the sound recalls to Marcel the noise of the railway man's hammer on the wheel of the train which had stopped by the sunlit, but uninspiring, trees. A third intimation follows soon after as Marcel wipes his mouth with a napkin, the texture of which is the same as the towel he had used to dry his face by the window of his hotel room on his first day at Balbec (SH XII pp.212-213, TK III pp.900-901, DE VI pp.218-219).

And Marcel is visited by a fourth intimation when the shrill noise of water running through a pipe in the room where he is waiting to enter the party sounds to him the same as the Balbec pleasure steamers' whistles which he had heard from his hotel (SH XII p.219, TK III p.907, DE VI p.226).

The laid tables at the Grand Hotel

Each of the four intimations transports Marcel back to the remembered scene: just as the madeleine had conjured up Combray, now resurrected before him are the profound azure and dazzling light of Venice, the heat and smokiness of the railway carriage with the cool background smell of the forest, the undulating, salty blueness off the Normandy coast, and the glitter of the linen and silver on the laid tables in the hotel dining room with its open windows catching the late afternoon sun. And he observes that these experiences that had been reawakened in him were not at all like what came to mind when he remembered Combray, Venice or Balbec by an act of will. This is due to the different effects of involuntary and voluntary memory (see my 4^th post): each occurrence in our lives is surrounded and coloured by things which have no logical connection with it and which our intellect then separates off, so when we later voluntarily remember that event, none of those incidentals are present. And because voluntary memory preserves nothing or little of life, when we recall the images we have stored in our memory, our lives might appear trivial to us (SH XII p.214, TK III p.902, DE VI pp.220-221). On the other hand, when an earlier occurrence is recalled involuntarily, such as when a recollection is caused by tripping on a paving stone, it comes to us coloured by the original associated colours, scents, temperatures, etc.

We return to the question of why these involuntary memories cause Marcel such joy. Here is the crux of the entire novel where the main themes of the reality/imagination dichotomy, involuntary memory and regaining Time are brought together. The first step of the explanation is that each of the impressions which he experienced were simultaneously in the present and in the context of the past. The impressions were thus extra-temporal and Marcel was enjoying the essence of things outside time, sub specie aeternitatis. He had become an extra-temporal being and hence immune from all anxieties, be they about his future career or even death. “This being had the power to perform that task which had always defeated the efforts of my memory and my intellect, the power to make me rediscover days that were long past, the Time that was Lost” (SH XII p.216, TK III p.904, DE VI pp.222-223).

The second step incorporates a recurring theme of the novel: Marcel finds repeatedly that reality does not live up to what he had imagined (see my 7^th, 11^th, 13^th, 14^th, 17^th, 18^th and 20^th posts). That is because, for Marcel, beauty can only be enjoyed by the imagination and when we perceive reality with our senses no act of imagination is involved, because as a rule we can only imagine what is not before us. However, the intimations provide an exception to this rule: Marcel can imagine the whistling of the pleasure boats or the noise of the railway man's hammer at the same time as hearing the noise in the water pipes or the sound of the spoon against the plate. The current event “had added to the dreams of the imagination the concept of 'existence' which they usually lack” and had thereby allowed Marcel to secure “a fragment of time in the pure state”. This “minute freed from the order of Time” recreates in us our own being freed from the same order. The inner being liberated from Time by the involuntary memory feels joy: “one can understand that the word 'death' should have no meaning for him; situated outside time, why should he fear the future?” (SH XII pp.217-218, TK III pp.905-906, DE VI pp.223-225).

The four recent involuntary memories and the madeleine episode are similar to, but different from, the effect on Marcel of the Martinville steeples and of a row of trees that he had seen on a drive with Mme de Villeparisis near Balbec. The latter impressions “concealed within them not a sensation dating from an earlier time, but a new truth, a precious image which I had sought to uncover by efforts of the same kind as those that we make to recall something that we have forgotten”. Marcel now realises that it is the quest to understand such intimations that can provide the material for his writing. “The task was to interpret the given sensations as signs of so many laws and ideas, by trying to think – that is to say, to draw forth from the shadow – what I had merely felt, by trying to convert it into its spiritual equivalent. And this method, which seemed to me the sole method, what was it but the creation of a work of art?” (SH XII pp.224-225, TK III p.912, DE VI pp.231-232).

We can now see why Marcel had been disillusioned with the literary realism of the Goncourts. “How could the literature of description possibly have any value, when it is only beneath the surface of the little things which such a literature describes that reality has its hidden existence?” The work of the artist is to “struggle to discern beneath matter, beneath experience, beneath words, something that is different from them.” (SH XII pp.246-247, TK III pp.931-932, DE VI pp.253-254).

Marcel's literary plan is to reveal these realities that are hidden behind the commonplace and which are outside time, and the materials for his work of literature will be his past life. One of the themes of that life has been that, for Marcel, love is suffering. He believes this is salutary for an artist because it is only while we are suffering that we see certain things which are ordinarily hidden from us. Inside him are “a whole host of truths concerning human passions and character and conduct” discovered through suffering. Pain is invaluable for the artist: “A writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his heart” (SH XII pp.248-262, TK III pp.933-946, DE VI pp.255-270).

We have already observed that Proust employs a three-dimensional (and sometimes four-dimensional) approach in creating a character (see my 2^nd post). That this is to be Marcel's literary technique is suggested by the following description, which applies to characters such as Swann and Charlus: “Each individual … was a measure of duration for me, in virtue of the revolutions which like some heavenly body he had accomplished not only on his own axis but also around which he had occupied in relation to myself”. The method is confirmed when Marcel continues: “In a book which tried to tell the story of a life it would be necessary to use not the two-dimensional psychology which we normally use but a quite different sort of three-dimensional psychology” (SH XII p.413, TK III p.1087, DE VI p.429).

So, Marcel decides to devote what remains of his life to writing such a book. In fact, it is the book we have just read: Marcel's novel will be À la recherche du temps perdu. Escher's hand draws itself.

Although he has just discovered that in those special moments where he is taken outside of time he no longer fears death, the trepidation returns when he considers that it might prevent him from accomplishing his resolution. The awareness of impending death and the need to first complete his literary work is where the novel becomes autobiographical and Marcel becomes Proust – albeit a Proust who, whilst writing the final pages of the novel, is pretending that its creation still lies in the future. The fears are obviously autobiographical and an intimation of mortality when Marcel nearly falls three times on the stairs after visiting friends appears to be the insertion of an actual event that befell Proust rather than a fiction that he had created (SH XII p.423, TK III pp.1096-1097, DE VI p.440).

On those final pages we find: “This notion of Time embodied, of years past but not separated from us, it was now my intention to emphasise as strongly as possible in my work … There, inside me [was] the whole of that past which I was not aware that I carried within me” (SH XII p.432, TK III p.1105, DE VI pp.449-450).

Not only has Marcel become Proust, but the latter's epilogue has become the former's prologue.