Proust and Emotion: The Importance of Affect in "A la recherche du temps perdu" 9781442678866

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Motivated Reader
1. The Narrating Presence
2. Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher
3. Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm
4. Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships
5. Narrative Identity
6. Emblematic Narration
7. From Impression to Expression
8. Reading Emotions
Conclusion: Reading Proust in the Twenty-first Century
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

PROUST AND EMOTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF AFFECT IN A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

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INGE CROSMAN WIMMERS

Proust and Emotion The Importance of Affect in A la recherche du temps perdu

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2003 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8727-2

Printed on acid-free paper University of Toronto Romance Series

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Wimmers, Inge Crosman, date Proust and emotion : the importance of affect in A la recherche du temps perdu / Inge Crosman Wimmers. (University of Toronto romance series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-8727-2 1. Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922. A la recherche du temps perdu. 2. Emotions in literature. 3. Reader-response criticism. 4. Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922 - Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. PQ2631.R63A723 2003

843'.912

C2003-901050-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

In memory of my parents

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: The Motivated Reader

3

1 The Narrating Presence 19 2 Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher

32

3 Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 50 4 Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships

64

5 Narrative Identity 84 6 Emblematic Narration 99 7 From Impression to Expression 111 8 Reading Emotions 142 Conclusion: Reading Proust in the Twenty-first Century 172 Notes

185

Bibliography Index

269

261

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Acknowledgments

The ideas that led to Proust and Emotion began to take shape in a paper I wrote for an international colloquium on Proust and Philosophy held in Bonn, Germany, in November 1994. In writing the paper, I realized how important a role affect plays in A la recherche du temps perdu and in Proust's way of viewing the world. I am deeply indebted to the organizers of the conference, Volker Roloff and Ursula Link-Heer, who got me started on what turned out to be an engrossing long-term project. In July 1995, I added another piece to the puzzle when, at the invitation of Jean Sebeok I wrote a paper entitled 'Emotionally Charged Intrigues' for a stimulating conference, 'Signs of Evil: The Seven Deadly Sins Sub Specie Semioticae,' held at the International Center for Semiotic and Linguistic Studies in Urbino, Italy. First published in Semiotica, this paper became the basis for chapter 6 of the present study. I delved deeper into the role of affect a few years later when Bernard Brun invited me to read a paper at a conference on Proust at Cerisy-LaSalle, France, devoted to new critical perspectives. Here I first took a closer look at the various impressions that shape the hero-narrator's inner world and that are central to the novel's mise en intrigue. In addition, I am very grateful to Bernard for his invaluable assistance with the Proust manuscripts at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes in Paris. I have also greatly benefited from the helpful insights into the various editions of the novel that Elyane Dezon-Jones and Nathalie Mauriac Dyer shared with me. And, for approaches to genetic criticism, I am particularly indebted to Almuth Gresillon, whose publications on the subject have been most inspiring. A note of special thanks goes to my husband, Eric, who was the first

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Acknowledgments

close reader of each chapter. Further thanks go to Eileen Angelini, who helped me with the final formatting of the manuscript, and to Jennifer Gage for invaluable assistance with proofreading and indexing. I also wish to thank Brown University for its generous support throughout this project, including a grant in aid of publication. Finally, I am grateful for the expert advice the editors of the University of Toronto Press gave me during the review and publication process, and, in particular, for the careful copy-editing of John St James and the close guidance of Barbara Porter.

PROUST AND EMOTION

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Introduction: The Motivated Reader

The understanding of any single emotion is incomplete unless its narrative history is grasped and studied for the light it sheds on the present response. Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought

There is more than one way of reading A la recherche du temps perdu, as is evident from the many approaches to this novel. As we take stock, at the beginning of a new millennium, it is quite apparent that Proust has been acknowledged as both a canonical and a subversive writer and that he has survived all critical approaches. Some of the most renowned critics have paid hommage to Proust. Spitzer, for instance, initiated readers into important features of Proustian style and Genette opened the door to an in-depth study of the novel's narrative discourse. Ricoeur, in turn, taking Genette's study a step further, showed how the 'jeu formidable avec le Temps' as discussed by Genette is far more than just a game, that it is, in fact, a Zeiterlebnis - nothing less than an experience of living in time.1 In insisting on a reader-oriented perspective, Ricoeur has, moreover, introduced the concept of 'narrative identity' in addressing the novel's aesthetic and ethical concerns. Moving in a similar direction, Barthes, in his last rereading of Proust, developed a more personal aesthetics - a total revision of his earlier structuralist approach to narrative. Now reading the novel not for abstract categories but for its story and the effect it had on him,2 he found in affect its central impetus - an experience that impelled him to conceive of pathos as the driving force in reading and writing.3 What pulled him into the text more than anything else, during this last rereading, was its ability to

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appeal to the most intimate within him: 'C'est 1'intime qui veut parler en moi, faire entendre son cri, face a la generalite, a la science/4 It is the personal that Barthes extols: 'La posterite donne de plus en plus raison a Proust: son oeuvre n'est plus lue seulement comme un monument de la litterature universelle, mais comme 1'expression passionnante d'un sujet absolument personnel qui revient sans cesse a sa propre vie, non comme a un curriculum vitae mais comme a un etoilement de circonstances et de figures' ('Longtemps' 319). More recently, Andre Aciman, in an article in the New Yorker entitled 'In Search of Proust/ expressed the same feeling: 'But the figure who lies at the heart of today's Proust revival is the intimate Proust, the Proust who perfected the studied unveiling of spontaneous feelings. Proust invented a language, a style, a rhythm, and a vision that gave memory and introspection an aesthetic scope and magnitude no author had conferred on either before. He allowed intimacy itself to become an art form/5 It is the intimate and the private that is at the centre of my present rereading of Proust as I focus my attention on the inner life of the novel's principal figure, the hero-narrator of A la recherche du temps perdu. My approach is informed by recent studies on emotions and by a poetics of reading narrative fiction that I previously developed and that I am now expanding by considering the nature and function of the motived reader.6 I first became interested in the theory of emotions through several informative symposia on the subject in philosophy and the social sciences that challenged existing approaches. For instance, in the introduction to a volume devoted to readings in philosophical psychology entitled What Is an Emotion?, the editors propose several possible approaches - including physiological, behavioural, evaluative, and cognitive theories.7 What emerges from this and other recent studies is that emotions are part of complex structures of affect whose nature and dynamics are best understood when considered from various perspectives, over time, and within a given experiential context. Novels are an ideal source for studying emotions, since they provide us with characters in a concrete, life-like situation. Moreover, they enable us to witness how a fictional being, with a given sensibility, emotions, beliefs, and a memory, develops over time. We are certainly given such insight in A la recherche du temps perdu, over the span of some three thousand pages, with its detailed account of the hero-narrator's life. As I reconsidered the novel from the frame of reference of the emotion theories I brought to the reading, I realized that the critical insights found within the text itself were of the utmost importance and that, in

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 5 conjunction with the novel's own articulation and shape, they led me to the heart of Proust's philosophy: a philosophy of emotions that is central to the work's aesthetics. It seemed quite apparent to me that the emphasis, through the narrator's discursive remarks and through the novel's very form and texture, was on affect, that is, on the emotions, feelings, moods, and dispositions that are so inextricably intertwined in the hero's life experience. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that strong emotions and passions were at the very heart of the novel's mise en intrigue and that they explained the actions and reactions of its principal characters. It now seemed obvious to me that the very matrix from which everything originates and develops is the hero-narrator's separation anxiety, thrown into relief, right in the first part of the novel, through the striking drome du coucher, which takes up most of the first chapter of 'Combray/ an anxiety that recurs repeatedly throughout the novel and that eventually leads the hero-narrator to important insights. The drome du coucher also casts the mould for the hero's future relationships with women and sets up structural parallels with other parts of the novel, as, for instance, the comedie de la rupture repeatedly enacted in front of Albertine volumes later (La Prisonniere), which is nothing less than another acute manifestation of the hero's separation anxiety. The relationship between Swann and Odette, already evoked in the description of the drame du coucher as similar in suffering, echoes the mother-son relationship and anticipates the hero's future anguish in his relationship with Albertine. The narrative thus sets up an intricate network whose nexus becomes more evident as we make our way through the novel, ever more evident as we reread, holding in memory the various associations already discovered. Yet such suffering accounts for only part of the story; of that too we are made aware from the very start of the novel: intense joy relieves suffering through the first experience of involuntary or affective memory, which is described right after the drame du coucher. The narrator, by thus juxtaposing and contrasting the two emotional states, sets them in relief and prepares the stage for the second part of 'Combray,' which illustrates once again how time recovered, and hence the story being told, grow out of the deepest layers of affect. When I discovered the very same structure in the short version of Albertine disparue, only recently found and published, I saw it as one further indication of Proust's practice of highlighting emotions, juxtaposing intense suffering (part one) and intense joy (part two) in each case, and cutting out everything

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else.8 The occasional reminders of affective memory throughout the novel, and the crescendo effect of several such experiences in Le Temps retrouve, experiences whose importance is spelled out by the narrator, significantly reinforce a hermeneutic reading rooted in affect. The theories of emotion on which I draw to fashion my own approach to Proust are primarily cognitive/evaluative views, which I combine with insights from psychology. It is striking how well these theories fit the Proustian universe. It is not surprising, then, that philosophers turn to Proust, as Martha Nussbaum does in Upheavals of Thought, a title she derives from a passage of the novel where, as she explains, emotions are described as 'geological upheavals of thought' (1). Though this book was published after I completed the present study, I shall briefly account for it since its view is closest to mine in that it combines philosophy and psychology (mainly an object-relations view) to make its major point, namely, that emotions are 'intelligent responses to the perception of value' (1). Nussbaum, as I do, highlights the importance of narrative in studying emotions: '[I]f emotions are as Proust describes them, they have a complicated cognitive structure that is in part narrative in form, involving a story of our relation to cherished objects that extend over time' (2). To give a life history its due in evaluating emotions, she devotes an entire chapter to the psychological underpinnings of human life, beginning with infancy, by drawing on Klein, Winnicott, Bellas, and others. For, as she persuasively argues, 'the "geological upheavals of thought" that constitue the adult experience of emotion involve foundations laid down much earlier in life, experiences of attachment, need, delight, and anger. Early memories shadow later perceptions of objects, adult attachment relations bear the traces of infantile love and hate' (6).9 Like Nussbaum and other cognitive philosophers, I believe that emotions are an integral part of human perception and cognition, hence an essential part of intelligence; that they involve judgments - including evaluative propositions10 - and that they determine our ways of being in the world, since they influence behaviour and actions. They are, moreover, extremely complex, since a given emotion may be intricately linked to other emotions, feelings, perceptions, moods, and dispositions - all of which are conditioned by our past experience. It is to do justice to the important role of a person's life history in assessing emotions that I focus primarily on the hero-narrator, the central figure of A la recherche, since such insight is not afforded us for other characters of the novel.

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 7 Besides bringing new insights on emotion to my present rereading of the novel, I seriously reconsidered the nature and function of fictional characters and the role of the reader. I soon realized that the very concept of reader needed to be rethought in an approach to the novel focused on affect. It soon became evident that a new player entered the scene, the motivated reader - a term I chose to account for the motivational forces in both the text and the reader. One such force is our belief that works of fiction can give us insight into our own lives. In his thought-provoking book Engaging Characters, Murray Smith persuasively argues for a view of human cognition through the imaginative processes involved in reading fiction: 'No matter how far our beliefs and values are initially shaped by social structures in which we are immersed, we are capable of expanding and adapting our conceptual frameworks through new experience, including our experience of fictional representations' (52). Yet, it is important to bear in mind the interactive nature of the reading process: 'we need our experience of the world to "get into" the text, but the text itself may transform the way we understand and experience the world' (54). Ricoeur forcefully makes the same point in describing the reading process as 'the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the reader' ('Life' 126). As we engage with literary texts, Ricoeur argues, we are able to experiment with 'the various roles that the favorite personae assume in the stories we love best. And so we try to gain by means of imaginative variation of our ego a narrative understanding of ourselves' (131-2). As we subject ourselves to this kind of imaginative play, characters are likely to be taken as persons, since, as Murray Smith points out, '[s]eeing characters as persons is a central aspect of such a mimetic act, bringing both the person schema and culturally specific role-schemata ... into play' (54). Yet we also bring our likes and dislikes to the scene of reading, which, no doubt, leave their imprint on the fictional beings we engage with, as Vincent Jouve explains in L'Effet-personnage dans le roman: Tar la fac.on dont il [le lecteur] combine et actualise les donnees du texte, il ne manque pas d'imprimer sa marque aux creatures romanesques: 1'identite des personnages est necessairement liee a son etat affectif (39; my emphasis). Seeing characters as persons and getting emotionally involved with them makes for a powerful force of reading, as Jouve points out: 'La reception du personnage comme personne se revele done d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Elle suppose un investissement emotionnel qui fait de la lecture bien autre chose qu'un simple divertissement. On peut d'ailleurs penser que ... c'est 1'illusion d'entrer

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en contact avec des figures presque "plus vivantes" que les personnes "reelles" qui fonde le plaisir de lire' (149). This special appeal of narrative fiction is the central focus in Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds, where she explains why novels seem so 'real' to us: 'the special lifelikeness of narrative fiction - as compared to dramatic and cinematic fictions - depends on what writers and readers know least in life: How another mind thinks, another body feels' (5-6).n Fictional characters are clearly central to the reading of narrative fiction. Not only do they play a major role in the actions and passions of the fictional world,12 they are also a pivotal force, as we have seen, in the reading process and thus in the mise en intrigue, the 'plotting' that involves both reader and text. Not only do 'emotions constitute a crucial "motivational supplement" in the conduct and explanation of human action' (Smith 56), they are also what catches our attention as we read. As Ronald de Sousa so aptly puts it, emotions give us 'patterns of salience among objects of attention, lines of inquiry and inferential strategies ... Logic leaves gaps. So long as we presuppose some basic or preexisting desires, the directive power of "motivation" belongs to what controls attention, salience, and inference strategies preferred' (Rationality 196-7). As we make our way through A la recherche, our attention becomes focused on emotions, since they are of central interest to the hero-narrator who dwells on them in examining his own life and who, moreover, closely analyses his own response to works of fiction, thus inscribing in the very novel we are reading a theory of affective response where characters are the focal point in the hero's own motivated reading of fiction. Close analysis of the pivotal function of characters in such an interactive process between reader and text will reveal how sympathy and empathy and other modes of identification (or distancing) structure response. In discussing the narrator's empathetic readings, I show how a 'combination of cognitive evaluation and affective arousal' sets up our 'allegiance' to characters (Smith 62).13 I also consider the importance of role playing as discussed by Volker Roloff.14 He shows, for instance, how the reader may accept, reject, or in different ways alter the role laid down for him in the text ('Begriff' 445), and how he may actively be involved in imaginary role playing including such reactions as identification, projection, association building, sympathy, and antipathy (50). Besides such imaginary engagement with characters, readers may be subjected to the unconscious, as Christopher Bollas has shown, a view that resonates when applied to the hero-narrator of A la recherche. In

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 9 Bollas's view, a literary text - and other aesthetic objects as well - may function as a transformational object, a kind of processing form for the 'unthought known/ Affect, as he explains in his ground-breaking study The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known, is at the very heart of such fortuitous processes: In adult life, therefore, to seek the transformational object is to recollect an early object experience, to remember not cognitively but existentially through intense affective experience - a relationship which was identified with cumulative transformational experiences of the self. Its intensity as an object relation is not due to the fact that this is an object of desire, but to the object being identified with such powerful metamorphoses of being. In the aesthetic moment the subject briefly re-experiences, through ego fusion with the aesthetic object, a sense of the subjective attitude towards the transformational object, although such experiences are re-enacted memories, not recreations. (17; my emphasis)

As we shall see, this view is well suited to the various manifestations of the Proustian hero's separation anxiety and gives insight into a search that, in addition to the one for time lost and recovered, to which it is related, is at the very core of the novel. As Bellas explains: 'The search for symbolic equivalents to the transformational object, and the experience with which it is identified, continues in adult life' (17).15 This view is also consonant with the narrator's reading of his own life and the discovery therein of what I will be referring to as emotional paradigms.16 By highlighting those experiences - thus making sure that we too will retain them and invest them with significance - he calls attention to the fact that his narrative is rooted in affect. Considering these various insights into the nature of fictional characters and the reader's relationship to them, it seemed to me that approaches to reading narrative fiction might well benefit from being considered from a new perspective. For instance, not so long ago, J. Hillis Miller made the following observation: The assumption that one should talk about the characters when discussing novels is deeply ingrained in English and American culture. To analyze the character of the characters seems so natural - so much part of nature, not cultural at all - that it is difficult to get students in courses in fiction to talk or write about anything else.' He then offers a possible explanation why this is so: 'Most English and American readers of novels ... pass through the language of a novel as if it were transparent glass. They begin talking

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about the characters in the story as if they were people, seen perhaps through that glass and perhaps distorted by it, but not created by language' (29; my emphasis). The very last words of the passage cited ('but not created by language') seem to imply that one ought to pay attention only to language, that fictional characters are, after all, nothing more than an illusion, a tour de force of language. This view was certainly embraced by French structuralist critics in the sixties. One of the most influential, Roland Barthes, then made the following claim: 'What goes on in a narrative is, from the referential (real) point of view, strictly nothing. What does "happen" is language per se, the adventures of language, whose advent never ceases to be celebrated' ('An Introduction' 271). In a similar vein, and at roughly the same time, Gerard Genette dismissed the reader's intellectual and emotional involvement with fictional characters by arguing that it is senseless, for instance, to try to understand the motive behind Mme de Cleves's confession because, according to him, her feelings 'are not real feelings but feelings of fiction and of language'; they are, as such, 'confined to all the utterances through which discourse signifies them.'17 That, in short, was the predominant French view of the 1960s and beyond, one that never made any sense to me, since it went against the grain of my own experience of reading novels. A more convincing explanation of why characters may strike us as 'real' is given by Kendall L. Walton, who claims that we bring a special disposition to the reading of novels: 'We feel a psychological bond to fictions, an intimacy with them, of a kind which otherwise we feel only toward what we take to be actual. Fictions, unlike objects of other intensional attitudes, are in this way thought of as though they exist. We have a strong tendency to regard them as part of our reality, despite our knowledge that they are not.'18 Walton then goes on to explain why our attitude toward novels is not merely 'suspension of disbelief: 'We don't promote fictions to the level of reality, but we descend to the level of fiction where we "share" worlds with fictional characters' (21). Proust's narrator gives us some important insights into how, as readers, we are drawn into the fictional world. For instance, in the passage where he describes the hero's experience of reading novels in the garden of Combray, he interpolates a long explanation on why the pains and joys of fictional characters have such a powerful effect on readers and why they seem so 'real': it is thanks to the novelist's craft that we are able to grasp emotions and passions, aspects of the inner world that in real life, so the argument goes, are inaccessible to us. Once novels have put us in

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 11 touch with such represented emotions, and once we invest ourselves fully by closely following the characters' plight, then such emotions, according to Proust's narrator, are likely to be felt ten-fold, because we have invested so much of ourselves in them that they have become our own, that they continue to develop within us.19 These and similar views confirm my own belief that fictional characters are the most compelling point of contact between reader and text. Given the fictional world as a whole, we are more likely to be interested in their situation and actions, drawn especially to their inner life - their sensitivity, emotions, and passions - than in anything else. Moreover, novels, by condensing, accelerating, and telescoping time, and by representing aspects of time and memory in a more concrete and 'dramatic' fashion, are able to give us insights into the experience of living in time that normally escape us. Ricoeur, for instance, in viewing novels as fables about time, shows how they constitute a temporal experience, a Zeiterlebnis.20 Characters in stories thus are 'figures' of our existential predicament, allegories of living in time. This dimension is, of course, central to A la recherche, as its author himself pointed out at the time Du cote de chez Swann was first published by calling the critics' attention to the novel's 'psychologic dans le temps,' a psychology in which fictional characters play a major role: [L]es divers aspects qu'un meme personnage aura pris aux yeux d'un autre, au point qu'il aura ete comme des personnages successifs et differents, donneront - mais par cela seulement - la sensation du temps ecoule. Tels personnages se reveleront plus tard differents de ce qu'ils sont dans le volume actuel, differents de ce qu'on les croira, ainsi qu'il arrive bien souvent dans la vie du reste. Ce ne sont pas seulement les memes personnages qui reapparaitront au cours de cette oeuvre sous des aspects divers, comme dans certains cycles de Balzac, mais, en un meme personnage ... certaines impressions profondes, presque inconscientes.21

This aspect of permanence within, alluded to at the very end of this quotation through the mention of recurring 'profound' impressions, is an important discovery in the central figure's search for time lost; it gives him insight into his own identity, an important revelation for hero and reader alike that I closely examine in the discussion of separation anxiety and in evaluating some telling features of the mode of narration. By identifying with or distancing ourselves from fictional characters, by discovering analogies between our lives and theirs, we achieve

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nothing less than insight into our own identity - a process that Ricoeur has described as 'narrative identity/22 It is also a process undergone by Proust's hero-narrator, as he engages in various kinds of reading. In the case of a rereading, the reader's relationship to the characters is bound to be different, influenced by the more global view of the fictional world one has in a retrospective reading, and by one's own experience, which may in one way or other have altered one's attitude toward a character or other aspects of the text as one now fills in blind spots or foregrounds material that had gone unnoticed before. This, in turn, may make the reader aware of changes in his or her own life since the previous reading, which thus too constitutes an aspect of narrative identity. These are some of the reasons why fictional characters have such an appeal for readers. In considering this dimension of reading, we have come a long way from the structuralist view of characters as actants agents in a series of actions - or as pure creations of language. We have also left behind the simplistic view that characters are no more than a collection of traits to which authors have given names. While the former regarded character as a component part of the narrative, a mechanistic view centred on the syntagm, the latter was part of a deterministic psychological view where given traits were taken to be intelligible indices to a predictable mode of behaviour, a paradigm familiar to readers of realist fiction. Given these views on fictional characters and the dialogic exchange between reader and text, it became clear to me that any future story I would tell about my experience of reading narrative fiction would have to go far beyond the 'mere adventures of language.' It was also clear to me that it would have to take the shape of a more personal poetics, one that would lend itself to incorporating a motivated reader able to replace such abstract concepts as 'ideal,' 'model/ or 'implied reader/23 Such a reader, besides being drawn to the special appeal of fictional characters, would also be sensitive to the narrating presence. Not only is our contact with characters mediated through a narrator whose point of view and way of describing have a definite effect on how we perceive them and respond to them, his presence also shapes the narrative in various other ways; moreover, he may engage the reader in communication that goes beyond the telling of the tale, as is the case in A la recherche, where a philosophizing narrator is eager to share his insights. While thus aware of, and open to, the presence of both characters and narrator, the motivated reader would be actively engaged in the novel's

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 13 mise en intrigue, participating not only in what is there and already stated, but also dealing with what is missing, uncertain, implausible, unacceptable, or not yet told. It is, I believe, primarily affect and curiosity - our eagerness to know how things turn out - that stimulate such reader participation, though beliefs and ideological differences too play a role, as Iser has convincingly shown.24 Not all novels engage us as intensely in the various ways I have mentioned; nor do they all foreground the affective dimension, as does the Proustian narrator by building his tale around emotions and passions, by theorizing about them, and by providing the reader with timely lessons in how to read and respond. Let us take stock of the various aspects of reading narrative fiction that make for a motivated reader. In doing so, it is important to keep in mind that such a reader emerges from the interaction of the reader with a given text. Not only do readers bring their own experience to the text, the text has compelling features that command attention and make for a certain kind of reading. We have seen, for instance, why and how fictional characters play a central role as points of contact between the fictional world and ours. Besides being afforded such a privileged focus, readers are also bound to be influenced by how things are presented: the stylistic, narrative, and structural features of the novel and the discursive dimension of the text - including explanation, generalization, and other kinds of rhetorical manipulation. Once attention has been captured, the motivated reader will, no doubt, bring his or her own experience and expectations to bear on the text. This is the aleatory and personal dimension of a motivated reading, with its moments of recognition through the 'unthought known' and through what has been called a 'referential illusion/ which, of course, will not be seen as an illusion at all by those readers who feel that there is truth in fiction and that novels can be instructive, therapeutic, and transformative. Another variable, on the reader's side, is a given frame of reference that one may bring to the text. In my case, a keen interest in current theories of emotion and my long-standing work on a poetics of reading narrative fiction provided the frames of reference that motivated and shaped my reading. Another compelling factor was rereading Proust's novel in the new Pleiade edition where, through notes and editorial comments, readers are encouraged to look into earlier drafts of the novel that now accompany the publication of the text. A brief detour into the 'sketches' or esquisses, as Proust called his preliminary drafts, can be quite instructive, as I soon discovered in reading those particular

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sketches that provided further insight into the hero-narrator's emotional life.25 By introducing the concept of the motivated reader, I do not mean to suggest that the emphasis, in the chapters that follow, will be on my own subjective or idiosyncratic readings. Rather, the focus will be on a reading that pays attention to both the rhetorical forces of the text and the kinds of readings and responses it invites. My approach is, in part, informed by Iser's concept of the implied reader defined as a 'network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text' (Act 34). As Iser points out, the implied reader is 'a textual structure anticipating the presence of the recipient' and must not be confused with the actual reader, who has to deal with two tasks: heed the construct of the implied reader laid down in the text and accomplish a structural act, the act of comprehension (34).26 For the kind of competence required to deal with literary texts, we should bear in mind Jonathan Culler's description of the 'competent reader' as endowed with a certain literary competence, that is, 'a set of conventions for reading literary texts/ which, in the case of novels, would require some familiarity with narrative conventions.27 However, like Iser, Culler is quick to add that his competent reader is not an actual reader but a theoretical construct based on an ideal: "The question is not what actual readers happen to do but what an ideal reader must know implicitly in order to read and interpret works in ways which we consider acceptable, in accordance with the institution of literature' (123-4). Though my own readings presuppose such basic literary competence, I strongly feel that the concept of the kind of reader implied in the text should be expanded to include those motivational forces that readers may bring to the text.28 This does not mean, however, that any reading goes. Some psychological approaches run the risk of setting up a vicious hermeneutic circle, as is the case in Norman Holland's description of reading in 5 Readers Reading, where the reader's personal 'identity theme' gets in the way of discovery beyond the self.29 The motivated reader I have in mind is open to new ways of being in the world (Proust, Ricoeur) and is not confined to the mental set of an 'interpretive community' (Fish), to the conventions of the 'competent reader' (Culler), or to psychological determinism (Holland). It is a reader who is sensitive to textual and intertextual strategies, to response-inviting aspects of the fictional world, and to structures of exchange between the world of the text and the world of the reader, all of which the Proustian narrator encourages by initiating readers through

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 15 the various kinds of metaphoric narration I discuss and through models of how to read literature, art, and music. Reflections and lessons on such motivated readings are not only a central concern of the novel's hero-narrator, they constitute a major theme in all of Proust's writings, beginning with his earliest critical works.30 In an essay entitled 'Journees de lecture/ Proust first presents some of the most important ideas on reading that will later be incorporated in A la recherche du temps perdu, as, for instance, the following observation that reading gives us insight into the deepest recesses of our soul: '[L]a lecture est pour nous 1'incitatrice dont les clefs magiques nous ouvrent au fond de nous-meme la porte des demeures ou nous n'aurions pas su penetrer' (180). Reading thus inspires us to probe deeper because, so the argument goes, 'par une loi singuliere et d'ailleurs providentielle de 1'optique des esprits (loi qui signifie peut-etre que nous ne pouvons recevoir la verite de personne, et que nous devons la creer nous-memes), ce qui est le terme de leur sagesse ne nous apparait que comme le commencement de la notre' (177). It is quite evident from these and similar observations that a motivated reader is at the very centre of Proust's aesthetics of reading. He encourages us not only to descend into ourselves and to be introspective, but to reach out and discover new worlds, as in the following passage from the novel: 'Grace a 1'art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le notre, nous le voyons se multiplier, et autant qu'il y a d'artistes originaux, autant nous avons des mondes a notre disposition' (IV, 474). In developing his views on reading and writing with the focus on how things appear to us and how we feel about them, Proust did nothing less than redefine reality by emphasizing that what matters is not some objective account of the world, but rather 'la realite telle que nous I'avons sentie' (IV, 495; my emphasis), that is, our inner world as shaped by sensory impressions, emotions, moods, reminiscences, and imagination. In the Proustian world, reference is no longer to a given object or state of affairs, but to a personal construction that reflects the very inflections of one's being.31 In reading A la recherche du temps perdu, we are thus confronted with the description of the complex overlay of the hero-narrator's concurrent impressions and feelings, and, occasionally, the sudden telescoping of past and present moments through affective memory. As we add to this intricate texture the configurations of our own self-motivated reading, we are engaged in a truly 'hypertextual' experience, since Proust's novel is open to diverse readings as it encourages us to seek new connections and to explore the aleatory.

16

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As I developed my approach to the novel while rereading Proust, I came across Roland Barthes's revised view on the study of narrative fiction, which he developed in the late seventies. It was instructive and encouraging to see how different this was from his former position in the sixties. Instead of a structural analysis of narrative, Barthes now imagined a 'poetics' based on pathos, inspired by his experience of rereading Proust and Tolstoy. No longer based on text-inherent structures, his new way of reading is set in motion by certain moments of the text that come across as moments of truth, not because they are intellectually compelling, but rather because they are felt, because they tear one apart emotionally: 'Je constatai d'abord que ces episodes, je les recevais (je ne trouve pas d'autre expression) comme des "moments de verite": tout d'un coup la litterature (car c'est d'elle qu'il s'agit) coincide absolument avec un arrachement emotif, un "cri"' ('Longtemps' 323). Barthes then proposed an analytical concept for this 'moment of truth/ the recognition of pathos as the very force of reading - a force felt only at certain moments of the text, its crests or summits (323). It is in and through the fictional characters, Barthes points out, that this force is best conveyed to the reader: 'le Roman, tel que je le lis ou le desire, est precisement cette Forme qui, en deleguant a des personnages le discours de 1'affect, permet de dire ouvertement cet affect: le pathetique y est enongable' (324). Fictional characters, I agree, are a force to be reckoned with. In viewing their impact from this new perspective, Barthes had definitely changed his position; the critical pendulum was now swinging in another direction.32 My own readings that follow are in harmony with Barthes's revised view in that they are based on moments of the text I found most compelling. Since narrators play a crucial role in capturing our attention and in guiding our response, I begin, in chapter one, by taking a close look at the narrating presence who sets the tone through a sympathetic or ironic perspective, and who engages us through different kinds of commentary as he does far more than simply tell a story. In the next three chapters, I follow closely one of the novel's central emotions, the hero-narrator's separation anxiety, tracing its origin from the detailed description of the drame du coucher (chapter two) to subsequent recurrences of the same anguish in later relationships (chapter three), including suffering through jealousy in adult life (chapter four). How this anguish, over a lifetime, reveals the presence of emotional templates and leads to self-awareness is the subject of chapter five. The

Introduction: The Motivated Reader 17 central role such insight plays in the narrator's tale and to what extent it influences the style and structure of the novel I discuss in chapter six. In chapter seven, I take a more global view of Proust's text by considering the various impressions that, together with the permanent impression made by the all-pervasive anguish of separation, are central to the novel's mise en intrigue and lead to the hero-narrator's vocation: the creation of a work of art. The focus of chapter eight is the crucial role of emotions, not only in the fictional persona's life experience but also in his reading of literary works and other cultural texts. Here, as in previous chapters, I show to what extent the novel itself offers a philosophy of emotions and a theory of aesthetic response that implicates us as readers of A la recherche du temps perdu. In the conclusion, I shift attention to the Proust phenomenon at the turn of the century and anticipate ways in which Proust will be with us in the twenty-first century. I reconsider the novel's generic status (fiction, essay, autobiography) and its openness to diverse approaches as I discuss what motivates us to go on reading narrative fiction. In starting out on this journey, I think it important to begin by taking a close look at the voice that speaks to us to see how it initiates us into the fictional world, how it portrays its central character, and how it relates to us, the reader. As I do so, I shall keep in mind that our view of characters and the effect they have on us are mediated by the narrator, that we are, in fact, confronted by a dual presence that must be reckoned with. This dual presence is particularly challenging in first-person narration, as is the case in A la recherche, where the narrator constantly scrutinizes his own life, shifting back and forth between present and past perspectives. As we enter into this complex world, I shall pay close attention to the fictional persona and its distinctive narrative practice which, in more ways than one, may be viewed as 'metaphoric narration,' a term whose implications I will develop throughout this study.33 Metaphoric narration is not merely the predominant use of metaphors as a distinctive feature of Proustian style, but also the narrator's tendency to constantly introduce concrete analogies to help us grasp the abstract (like living in time or suffering through jealousy and separation anxiety), to set up associations between characters, events, or parts of his own tale, and to invite the reader to read self-reflexively. Readers who, besides participating in such associations, identify with fictional characters, feel empathy, or experience moments of recognition that give them access to

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their own identity or 'unthought known' are themselves fully engaged in such metaphoric narration as they cross borders and join domains, linking the world of the text to the world they live in. In the chapters that follow, I will keep track of the principal players: narrator, fictional character, and the motivated reader. The focus will be on the representation of emotions in Proust's novel and how, in turn, they structure our reading and response. In time, special attention will be given to narrative identity and processes of identification, both of which are central to the novel's mise en intrigue and to the poetics of reading that will gradually take shape in these pages. In developing such a poetics, I am not striving for a systematic theory, but wish to offer a fresh perspective on the reading of narrative fiction by combining compatible approaches from several disciplines, including narratology, reader response theory, and emotion theories informed by philosophy, psychology, and the neurosciences. The combinations are not meant to be prescriptive and vary from chapter to chapter. They are designed to open up new possibilities, not only for reading Proust but for reading other novelists as well. It is now time to take a closer look at the narrative presence in the process of telling the story and in digressing from it. We should remember that the narrator has an important mediating function in shaping our response, since he prepares the stage for the action to come, chooses a given perspective, and sets the tone.

CHAPTER ONE

The Narrating Presence

II n'est personnne, s'il s'escoute, qui ne descouvre en soy une forme sienne, une forme maitresse, qui luicte contre 1'institution, et centre la tempeste des passions qui lui sont contraires. Montaigne, Essais, Du repentir

As the reader sets out on the long journey through A la recherche's more than three thousand pages, it is evident from the start that the narrator of this first-person novel does considerably more than talk about his own past. It is best, I will argue, to think of his past self as the 'hero' and to distinguish it from the narrating presence, which is prone to view this former self at times critically, at times sympathetically: alternating perspectives that influence the reader's view and disposition. Yet, ther are passages where a distinction cannot be made between hero and narrator; when this happens it is best to speak of the hero-narrator or 'protagonist.'1 Since the reader's contact with the hero is always mediated in some way by this narrating presence, it is best to conceive of a fictional persona, the joint presence of hero and narrator, instead of focusing solely on the hero as 'main character.'2 Even in instances where the hero can be clearly distinguished from the narrator and speaks in his own voice, which rarely happens, we hold in mind our knowledge of the already read, which is likely to influence our reading. The narrator is so closely enmeshed in the story he is telling that it is impossible to separate the teller from the tale. Instead of keeping an allusive distance, giving the illusion of an objective or absent narrating agency, Proust's narrator takes sides, judges or empathizes without restraint, not shy about revealing his own feelings or attitude. He

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introduces, moreover, images and analogies that give us insight into his way of perceiving and thinking. All of this helps to characterize the narrator, gives him shape and substance, and makes him a figure in the margins to be reckoned with, one that captures our attention in more ways than one. We as readers are thus confronted with the joint presence of hero and narrator from the very beginning of the novel. It is this intricate presence that gives its distinctive shape to the narrative fabric and that structures our response. It is worthwhile to take a close look as this presence emerges and to refrain from restricting ourselves to too simplistic a view.3 From the very start of the novel, it is evident that the narrator in talking about his past also reveals a good deal about his present self in the process. The initial sentence, 'Longtemps je me suis couche de bonne heure' (I, 3), which, at first, seems simple and straightforward, turns out to be quite intriguing on closer inspection. It is intriguing, because it is not backed up by further details one might expect as to the identity of the 'I,' some precision about the past alluded to, and the reason for going to bed early. All we are given is reference to an indefinite past, though we know it was considerable ('longtemps'), and that it is over and done with, as the passe compose indicates. The sentence, moreover, has a complex function, as one realizes in retrospect, since it is the topical sentence for the entire overture (1,3-9), in fact, the very kernel out of which the novel will grow.4 It is also the framing sentence that gives rise, in the next few lines, to a series of nocturnal evocations whose habitual nature is underscored by the 'parfois' at the start of the next sentence, and the use of the imperfect. What is striking, in this opening paragraph, is the pains the narrator takes to give a detailed rendition of the fantastic shapes and guises his former self experienced while sliding back and forth between sleep and waking. Besides giving us insight into his past, the narrator, through the careful depiction of his imaginary life, makes us aware of the fact that he, as narrator, is obviously very interested in examining this aspect of his former life. What strikes me, as I read on, is that he dwells even more closely on those moments when the hero, in the midst of his phantasmagoric imaginings, momentarily touches base, wondering what time it is. The narrator gives not one, but two examples of this kind of temporal awareness, sliding into a descriptive expansion of quite an unusual kind, introducing in each case an imaginary scenario that dramatizes anxious feelings associated with the late night hour. What do such

The Narrating Presence 21 scenes have in common with the hero's sleep-waking? Whose point of view do they embody? What do they have to do with the story at hand? To come up with some possible answers, it is necessary to take a close look at each scene and their combined impact on the reader. The first such scenario is introduced at the end of the novel's opening paragraph: Je me demandais quelle heure il pouvait etre; j'entendais le sifflement des trains qui, plus ou moins eloigne, comme le chant d'un oiseau dans une foret, relevant les distances, me decrivait 1'etendue de la campagne deserte ou le voyageur se hate vers la station prochaine; et le petit chemin qu'il suit va etre grave dans son souvenir par 1'excitation qu'il doit a des lieux nouveaux, a des actes inaccoutumes, a la causerie recente et aux adieux sous la lampe etrangere qui le suivent encore dans le silence de la nuit, a la douceur prochaine du retour. (1,3-4)

As one reads the passage just quoted, it becomes evident that the narrator is not simply giving an account of the kinds of things the hero habitually experienced during this early-to-bed period. Though the hero may be confused after taking on different shapes and guises, the narrator does not lose sight of what he is doing, weaving a tightly structured narrative of whose complexity and impact the reader only gradually becomes aware. Note, for instance, the chronological organization of the narrative segment up to the passage just quoted: after the fantastic images of the dream state, the hero goes through semi-conscious awareness until he touches base with reality, wondering what time it is. The answer, for hero and reader, is, however, delayed for quite a while, since attention is first drawn to an auditory impression ('le sifflement des trains'), which, in turn, gives rise to a considerable 'detour' while the narrator first describes how the auditory stimulus acutely sharpened the hero's spatial awareness ('me decrivait 1'etendue de la campagne deserte'), before introducing a brief explanation, in the form of a concrete analogy that translates his own perspective of spatial orientation through sound: 'comme le chant d'un oiseau dans une foret.' Then comes the most remarkable part of the passage under discussion: the sudden expansion, into an imaginary scenario, of the lonely traveller on his way to the railroad station, with the focus on his frame of mind, his anxious overexcitement. The scene, with its own temporal and spatial coordinates, is dramatic and certainly makes an impact; it is written in the present, it unfolds in front of our eyes as we

22

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are given one specific detail after another, inviting us to live through it, to get the feel of it, so to speak, though part of us may still see it as delayed action, a retardement, as we wait for the answer to the question as to what time it might be. Though the answer is finally given two sentences later ('Bientot minuit'), the actual time is of little importance; what seems to matter are the feelings and moods associated with this time of night, as is quite evident from the striking scenario that follows. The narrator once again interrupts the flow of the narrative and shifts the focus away from the wakening hero trying to reorient himself in space and time. Only briefly are we reminded of his actual setting: 'J'appuyais tendrement mes joues centre les belles joues de 1'oreiller' (I, 4). As the sentence continues, the focus first shifts to the narrator's nostalgic point of view, his sensual appreciation of the softness of pillows, in which he implicates us through the all-encompassing noire (Tes belles joues de 1'oreiller qui, pleines et fraiches, sont comme les joues de notre enfance') before introducing the second imaginary scenario, which is even more extensive and dramatic than the first. Though it may seem like a digression at first to readers intent on finding out more about the hero's past experience, in retrospect its function turns out to be poetic, attuning the reader to a mood that will soon be predominant in the pages to come. In such an interpretative rereading of the novel, I see each scenario as a proleptic motif, not unlike the motifs woven into the prelude of a Wagnerian opera. As in a musical composition, this overture to the novel does not merely introduce the main themes to be taken up later, it also sets the stage for moods and emotions. Thus, the dramatic scenes of the lonely night traveller and the sick person alone in a hotel room have the joint function of introducing the anxiety motif, to be fully developed later on, in the hero's and in Swann's crises of separation anxiety. By thus initiating us into a frame of mind through a concrete scene, the narrator not only foreshadows, in a memorable way, what is to come, he also introduces us to the very core of his being: the hero's separation anxiety, which, as we shall see, will also turn out to be a major impetus, along with involuntary memory, for the narrator to get on with the story, and in doing so, to come face to face with his own identity.5 The second dramatic scene, like the first, is in the present. It is introduced abruptly, without any indication as to who is imagining this scene and why - thus implicating hero, narrator, and reader alike. By inference, this strange procedure also characterizes the narrator as some-

The Narrating Presence

23

one interested in, possibly even subject to, such anxieties, finding it important enough to give a detailed, dramatic account of it: Bientot minuit. C'est 1'instant ou le malade, qui a ete oblige de partir en voyage et a du coucher dans un hotel inconnu, reveille par une crise, se rejouit en apercevant sous la porte une raie de jour. Quel bonheur, c'est deja le matin! Dans un moment les domestiques seront leves, il pourra sonner, on viendra lui porter secours. L'esperance d'etre soulage lui donne du courage pour souffrir. Justement il a cru entendre des pas: les pas se rapprochent, puis s'eloignent. Et la raie de jour qui etait sous sa porte a disparu. C'est minuit; on vient d'eteindre le gaz; le dernier domestique est parti et il faudra rester toute la nuit a souffrir sans remede. (1,4)

There is nothing impersonal or abstract, as some have claimed, in this sudden change from first- to third-person narration.6 Though the focus has shifted from hero to unknown stranger - the lonely hotel guest the reader is drawn into this setting, and given a firm grasp as to what it feels like, through the detailed account of what happens from moment to moment. Not only are we witness to how each sensory impression the ray of light and the sound of footsteps - evokes first hope, as help is expected, then resignation with the sudden realization that it is midnight, not morning, we are allowed insight as well into the sick person's inner voice as the narrator slides into free indirect discourse, a way of communicating that affords us direct contact with the changing mood: 'Quel bonheur, c'est deja le matin!' It is significant that we are taken through the false illusion, step by step, before being enlightened. Not only are we thus able to fully share in the unwell person's disappointment once the truth becomes apparent, we learn as well something about the narrator's aesthetics: to render impressions as they are first perceived, not as they are logically processed afterwards. That this was one of Proust's own aesthetic guidelines is apparent, as Kazako Maya has shown, when one compares, as she does, two previous versions of the hotel scenario, each one of which is based on a more logical causeeffect structure, which the author subsequently changed.7 Independent of the spatial and temporal coordinates of narrative discourse, these scenarios are not subject to the forward thrust of 'What happens next?', a mode of reading that invites inferences and anticipations; readers are initiated instead into a mode of being - a foreboding of how it feels - whose full implications will become obvious only in a retrospective reading when analogies can be drawn between the same

24

Proust and Emotion

and similar. My own awareness of the motif-like nature of the two dramatic scenes, which function like mood pieces, came into focus while working on passages of the novel describing experiences of separation anxiety, of which the most notable is the detailed account devoted to what the narrator, with a touch of humour and self-irony, calls his drame du coucher. The 'bedtime drama/ described in the first part of 'Combray/ comes soon enough so that a reader finely attuned to the preceding mood pieces of the text might well make the connection on a first reading.8 Moreover, readers who have been subject to experiences similar to those depicted in the two scenarios may bring a special awareness and disposition to the text. As Marcel Muller pointed out in studying these scenes, 'Nous avons affaire ici, non a un personnage, mais a un faisceau de circonstances concretes susceptibles d'etre vecues par n'importe qui et transcendant, de ce fait, le cas particulier du je' (75). These motif-like scenarios are an integral part of the novel's poetics; yet a strictly narratological approach cannot account for them. It would not suffice to simply add one more narrative function to those already singled out by Genette.9 Insight gained from musical composition might be more adequate. Ricoeur, moreover, in his three-volume study Temps et recit takes us in the right direction by arguing for a reader-oriented approach to the study of narrative fiction,10 and by showing how novels explore experiences of non-linear time. Through close analysis of Der Zauberberg, Mrs. Dalloway, and A la recherche du temps perdu, he convincingly shows how works of fiction are better able to convey what it means to live in time than do philosophy or history. By borrowing two key concepts from phenomenology, Husserl's notion of recouvrement or tuilage and Heidegger's concept of repetition, Ricoeur offers new insight into the temporal framework of A la recherche.11 Of particular importance, for the present study, is his view of the dual presence of hero and narrator, with their multiple, shifting viewpoints as a kind of recouvrement or overlay: 'On peut, il est vrai, parler encore de recouvrement pour qualifier le jeu entre la perspective du heros qui avance vers son avenir incertain par 1'apprentissage des signes, et le narrateur qui n'oublie rien et anticipe le sens global de 1'aventure; c'est bien a une sorte de tuilage de la duree que procede le narrateur en incorporant les reminiscences du heros au courant d'une recherche qui avance, dormant ainsi au recit la forme du "futur dans le passe"' (193).12 However, the most distinctive feature of the Proustian narrative, in Ricoeur's view, is repetition, a repetition that is not random but signifi-

The Narrating Presence 25 cant: 'Mais le jeu des voix narratives atteint a une autre profondeur. C'est une authentique repetition qu'opere le narrateur, lorsqu'il met en rapport la Quete constitute par 1'apprentissage des signes avec la Visitation prefiguree dans les moments bienheureux et culminant dans la grande meditation sur 1'art redempteur dans la bibliotheque du prince de Guermantes. La formule proustienne pour la repetition, c'est le temps perdu retrouve' (193-4).13 Though Ricoeur focuses almost exclusively on Tes moments bienheureux/ it is crucial, I will argue, to consider as well those moments that by analogy might be called 'les moments malheureux' - the hero's repeated experiences of separation anxiety, paradigm scenarios of which the first and most memorable is the drame du coucher. Like involuntary memory, such troubling experiences reveal to the hero-narrator a permanent aspect of the self and thus constitute an important part of his identity. Since they are part of a repeated pattern, these experiences partake of both repetition and recouvrement: every new experience that is added to the existing pattern partially covers, while at the same time it reinforces, the old and familiar, thus 'recovering' it in the sense of regaining or repossessing it. Such a retrieval, bringing back to the surface permanent aspects of the self, gives life its inner cohesion and is at the very heart of what Ricoeur sees as 'narrative identity/ the material par excellence for telling a story. Given his view that the reading of novels constitutes an experience of living in time, Ricoeur understandably finds Genette's discussion of A la recherche, which is centred on narrative technique, too limiting. Ricoeur's critique is eye-opening, since it does nothing less than suggest a new approach to narrative: Mais ne faut-il pas finalement renverser ce renversement, et tenir 1'etude formelle des techniques narratives qui font apparaitre le temps comme perverti pour un long detour en vue de recouvrer une intelligence plus aigue de 1'experience du temps perdu et retrouve? C'est cette experience qui, dans la Recherche, donne sa signification et sa visee aux techniques narratives. Sinon, comment pourrait-on parler a propos du roman entier, comme le narrateur lui-meme a propos du reve, 'du jeu formidable qu'il fait avec le Temps' (p. 182)? Un jeu pourrait-il etre 'formidable/ c'est-adire effrayant, s'il etait sans enjeul Au-dela de la discussion de 1'interpretation de la Recherche proposee par Genette, la question est de savoir si, pour preserver la signification de 1'oeuvre, il ne faut pas subordonner la technique narrative a la visee qui

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porte le texte au-dela de lui-meme, vers une experience, feinte sans doute, mais neanmoins irreductible a un simple jeu avec le temps.14

The stakes (I'enjeu) Ricoeur has set for works of fiction are indeed high, since this is nothing less than giving readers insight into deciphering the human condition and its temporality (2:113). This, in his view, is the overarching significance of novels that must be kept in mind when studying narrative technique (130). One might add, keeping in mind the role of the mood-setting imaginary scenarios that confront the reader at the start of A la recherche, that novels also initiate readers into ways of being and that more than one technique is used to attune the reader to the emotions and passions of the fictional world. To do justice to the novel, Ricoeur argues, it is necessary to consider 'le rapport du temps de la narration au temps de la vie a travers le temps raconte' (118). He is right to insist that more attention be paid to the narrating presence, at the level of enunciation, and to the temporal aspects associated with it: Tl faut done integrer au temps du recit "une autre temporalite, qui n'est plus celle du recit, mais qui en derniere instance la commande: celle de la narration elle-meme" ...' (127). By incorporating Genette's own words in the last part of this quotation, Ricoeur goes on to make the point that although Genette is obviously aware of the importance of the time of narration, he nonetheless did not account for it, since he analysed the stylistic features of the 'jeu avec le Temps' before having properly treated the various temporal aspects at the level of enunciation. How complex and multifaceted the narrating voice can be is evident right from the opening pages of A la recherche, with its multiple perspectives and different 'registers/ It is equally important to acknowledge that the narrator does much more than just narrate, since he introduces long pauses where the narrating voice makes room for philosophizing and generalizing, at times even allowing for free associating, which, as I have shown, can take the form of quite considerable expansions like the ones on the theme of anxiety that suddenly confront the reader with dramatic scenes. Such voices, at the level of narration, have their own agendas, and their own perspectives and temporal traits, and must, therefore, be reckoned with. A few years before Ricoeur's Temps et recit, Alain de Lattre prepared the way for the kind of interactive approach to reading A la recherche Ricoeur calls for. What I find most compelling in de Lattre's La Doctrine de la realite chez Proust is the importance he attributes to the Proustian narrator, seeing him as 'a point of convergence/ a central presence for

The Narrating Presence 27 processes of assimilation, accumulation, and identification - a view in harmony with Ricoeur's concept of recouvrement: 'Une attention, un angle et un regard; une presence aux choses, immensement ouverte: ou chacun a sa place, ou nous avons la notre. Ou chaque place nous attend, a condition d'y aller voir. C'est la que joue a plein le principe et le fait de 1'assimilation' (La Doctrine 105). Though he does not give any concrete examples to illustrate how assimilation might come about, de Lattre does sketch the rough outlines for processes of identification, of which he enumerates three, in designating the narrator as their central force: 'Le Je du Narrateur, au bout du compte, est a 1'intersection de trois systemes de coexistence et de simultaneity, chacun soutenant 1'autre et lui apportant confirmation de ses dispositions et de sa pertinence: coexistence du passe dans le present, de la particularite de chaque personnage dans la constitution du Je, et du lecteur enfin dans la forme imprecise de 1'auteur voulue sous la designation du Narrateur' (115). The first such system comprises not only experiences of involuntary memory, but also, as I will show in the next chapter, emotional paradigms. The present discussion of the joint presence of hero and narrator in the novel's opening pages is a partial illustration of the second system of identification, the presence of each fictional character within the Narrator. I would modify the third category, eliminating reference to the author, adding instead to the reader's identification with the hero-narrator any possible identification with any one of the novel's other fictional characters. How readers mine their own life experience in bringing insights to the scene of reading should not be neglected. Given the complexity of such interacting perspectives, de Lattre astutely argues for a new view of both fictional characters and narrator: 'Le reajustement des perspectives et la notion du temps qui s'y trouve associee chez Proust, ont done le double effet de recuser au benefice du Je du Narrateur la conception traditionnelle des personnages dans le roman, et d'etablir ce Je dans une dimension de 1'evidence, dans une attestation de 1'experience ou nous avons immediatement, de plein droit, notre place. Nous sommes ici le Je qui parle, parce que sa voix se pose et se situe ou nous avons la notre' (110). How the narrator commands such a presence and how, in turn, it influences the reader's disposition is a question whose various facets I will take up in subsequent chapters. Yet there is one particular trait of this narrating presence that should be considered now, since besides telling about the past, the narrator sets up another mode of communication with the reader. We first encounter this presence in the overture; it is given a

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predominant part and will be with us throughout our reading of A la recherche. It is the narrator's voice of wisdom, dispensing truths and maxims to such an extent that nearly half of the novel is taken up by this kind of discourse. These general insights, which more often than not implicate the reader through an all-inclusive on, nous, or vous, are nonetheless closely related to the narrative in that they illustrate or prepare for an aspect of the story being told. Yet, like the dramatic mood pieces, they are outside of the temporal, spatial, and causal network of the novel's events. Our first encounter with this voice occurs in the fifth paragraph of the novel's opening pages, in a long passage explaining how temporal and spatial disorientation may be caused by irregular sleeping habits. What we learn here sheds light on both the part of the novel already read and the following paragraphs that focus on the different kinds of rooms remembered thanks to 'la memoire du corps' (I, 6-9). One should not dismiss this voice as parenthetical, since it establishes close ties with the reader by giving the illusion that what is being said applies to both the story-world and the world we live in.15 No longer confined to the idiosyncratic preoccupations of a fictional character, but focused instead on general claims that invite a response, this voice sets up a dialogue with the reader. The sheer length of time this general voice is with us, and the variety of possible situations it evokes to make its point through concrete situations, commands attention: Un homme qui dort, tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, 1'ordre des annees et des mondes. II les consulte d'instinct en s'eveillant et y lit en une seconde le point de la terre qu'il occupe, le temps qui s'est ecoule jusqu'a son reveil; mais leurs rangs peuvent se meler, se rompre. Que vers le matin apres quelque insomnie, le sommeil le prenne en train de lire, dans une posture trop differente de celle ou il dort habituellement, il suffit de son bras souleve pour arreter et faire reculer le soleil, et a la premiere minute de son reveil, il ne saura plus 1'heure, il estimera qu'il vient a peine de se coucher. Que s'il s'assoupit dans une position encore plus deplacee et divergente, par exemple apres diner assis dans un fauteuil, alors le bouleversement sera complet dans les mondes desorbites, le fauteuil magique le fera voyager a toute vitesse dans le temps et dans 1'espace, et au moment d'ouvrir les paupieres, il se croira couche quelques mois plus tot dans une autre contree. (I, 5)

It is evident that this passage is closely linked to the hero's story, since what precedes and follows it is about his disorientation through irregu-

The Narrating Presence 29 lar sleep. In fact, the very next sentence following the above quotation shifts attention back to the hero without a break in the paragraph: 'Mais il suffisait que, dans mon lit meme, mon sommeil fut profond et detendit entierement mon esprit; alors celui-ci lachait le plan du lieu ou je m'etais endormi, et quand je m'eveillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j'ignorais ou je me trouvais, je ne savais meme pas au premier instant qui j'etais' (5). Besides such thematic continuity between the general and the personal, the narrator has forged a close stylistic link between the two, as the metaphor of the magical voyage is extended to describe the hero's experience ('ces evocations tournoyantes et confuses' [I, 7]; 'mon corps avait vire une derniere fois' [I, 8]). In retrospect, one realizes that even the scenario of the lonely hotel guest is part of this tightly woven fabric, since he too is disoriented in time, seeing a ray of light at midnight as the coming dawn. It is, of course, the narrator who introduces such analogies and who sets up the associations; yet, in doing so, he also characterizes himself, revealing through concrete images how he feels about certain situations. There is redundancy and insistence in this reciprocal process, one that reinforces the bond between hero and narrator, since they evidently share the same anxious mood. We as readers too are drawn into it, first attuned to this anxious mood through the dramatic scenes of lonely traveller and anguished hotel guest, reminded of it through the narrator's analogies, before fully living through such an experience when the first scene of the hero's bedtime anguish is described in great detail. From this and similar instances it becomes evident that it is the joint presence of the fictional persona, hero and narrator combined, that is the deciding factor in the reader's participation and response. This persona takes many shapes and guises so that each case is best considered in its surrounding context and, when appropriate, in the larger context of the novel, where it may have further repercussions, as is the case in the drame du coucher, which, as I will show in the next chapter, is closely tied to similar experiences and other textual spaces. We must bear in mind that this childhood dilemma grows out of the reveries set in motion by the disorienting irregular sleep, which brings back to mind former rooms and the modes of being associated with them. How extensive such journeys into the past are is evident when the narrator evokes the different places he has inhabited as the overture draws to a close: 'je passais la plus grande partie de la nuit a me rappeler notre vie d'autrefois, a Combray chez ma grand-tante, a Balbec, a Paris, a Doncieres, a Venise, ailleurs encore, a me rappeler les lieux, les personnes que j'y avais connues, ce que j'avais vu d'elles, ce qu'on m'en avait raconte' (I, 9).

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The very next line, beginning a new paragraph, takes up the tale of the first place mentioned, Combray, whose initial focus is on the drame du coucher. The narrator's story is thus intimately linked to the experience of disorientation. As we set out on this journey of time recovered, the narrating presence will continue to take on many guises, giving us insight into its feelings, beliefs, and discoveries, at times close to or indistinguishable from the hero, at times distant, indifferent, or critical. Sometimes we lose sight of the hero, as the focus shifts to the narrator who may philosophize or explain, who may empathize with or criticize another character, or who may indulge in a lyrical outburst - all instances that draw attention to his persona, that characterize him, and as such are likely to have repercussions on our conception of the hero as well.16 At one of his most self-conscious moments, in the midst of a narrative segment describing the hero's behaviour in Albertine's presence, the narrator calls our attention to the complex nature of his relationship with the reader. Since the hero often lies to Albertine in order to produce certain effects, the narrator's paradoxical task is to convey both the hero's deceptive words and his hidden feelings: 'Mes paroles ne refletaient done nullement mes sentiments. Si le lecteur n'en a que 1'impression assez faible, c'est qu'etant narrateur je lui expose mes sentiments en meme temps que je lui repete mes paroles' (III, 850). The narrator then calls attention to himself as a presence to be reckoned with by excusing the hero's behaviour and by making an emphatic distinction between the hero's lack of insight and his, the narrator's, present knowledge: 'les images qui me faisaient agir, si opposees a celles qui se peignaient dans mes paroles, etaient a ce moment-la fort obscures: je ne connaissais qu'imparfaitement la nature suivant laquelle j'agissais; aujourd'hui j'en connais clairement la verite subjective' (ibid.). He does not spell out the very nature of the truth discovered; it is up to the reader to infer it from what is said, how it is told, and how it links up with information found in the surrounding context and elsewhere in the novel. What matters is that the reader is made aware of the presence of the narrating agency and the important part it plays in shaping one's response. As the complex presence of the fictional persona - the dual presence of hero and narrator - emerges in the opening pages of the novel, the motivated reader realizes that much more than the hero's past life is at stake; that one has to work through the narrator's attitudes, mood pieces, aesthetic sensibility, and various kinds of associations - including retro-

The Narrating Presence 31 spection and anticipation - that involve one in the intricate network of past, present, and future moments. The focus of the next chapter will be on how the narrator, through a synthesizing vision of similar moments of suffering caused by separation anxiety, discovers his identity, a process of narrative identity in which we, as readers, fully participate. We will share, with hero and narrator alike, a new experience of what it means to live outside of linear time, an experience full of startling surprises. A close look at how such unexpected discoveries may happen through an emotional template or paradigm - separation anxiety will give further insight into the emerging fictional persona and into the diverse ways the responsive reader participates in such intricate processes, made aware, moreover, of how 'Present reading time is haunted by reading times past.'17

CHAPTER TWO

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher

C'est le chagrin qui developpe les forces de 1'esprit. A la recherche du temps perdu, IV, 484

When the narrator begins to focus exclusively on one of the rooms that had come back to mind during the period of irregular sleep, the actual story of his childhood begins. It is his room in Combray, first briefly alluded to in the novel's overture as part of the nocturnal musings evoking familiar places inhabited in the past, to which he now returns. This access to the past, it is important to remember, is rooted in the body's, not the mind's memory, a fact the narrator himself emphasizes in the initial reference to Combray: Mon cote ankylose, cherchant a deviner son orientation, s'imaginait, par exemple, allonge face au mur dans un grand lit a baldaquin et aussitot je me disais: Tiens, j'ai fini par m'endormir quoique maman ne soit pas venue me dire bonsoir,' j'etais a la campagne chez mon grand-pere, mort depuis bien des annees; et mon corps, le cote sur lequel je reposals, gardiens fideles d'un passe que mon esprit n'auralt jamals du oublier, me rappelaient la flamme de la veilleuse de verre de Boheme, en forme d'urne/ suspendue au plafond par des chainettes, la cheminee en marbre de Sienne, dans ma chambre a coucher de Combray, chez mes grands-parents, en des jours lointains qu'en ce moment je me figurais actuels sans me les representer exactement et que je reverrais mieux tout a 1'heure quand je serais tout a fait eveille. (I, 6; my emphasis) It is significant that the first thing that comes to mind, once he has

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 33 located a particular bed, is the surprise at having been able to fall asleep before his mother has come to say good night - a fact dramatically highlighted through the direct quotation of his thoughts: Tiens, j'ai fini par m'endormir quoique maman ne soit pas venue me dire bonsoir.' Thus, before we even learn the name of the place being recalled, our attention is drawn to what will turn out to be the major emotional turmoil of his childhood, separation anxiety, the central event of the first part of 'Combray,' where it is emphatically set in relief through its extensive, detailed treatment and striking imagery. As we closely follow the narrator's story of this traumatic experience, we are given important insight into the fictional persona, both hero and narrator. We not only become closely acquainted with the very core of his being, we gain insight as well into the importance of emotions and sensory impressions in shaping an identity - insight that will also prove invaluable to the narrator in finding his vocation and in developing a poetics. As we make our way through the novel, we begin to realize that it is strong feelings that lead to time recovered. They are central not only in the hero-narrator's life to which they give meaning and a true vocation, they are also the focal point in our experience of reading the novel. As we are gradually initiated into the workings of affect, we are motivated to pay more attention to this dimension of the novel and to our own response to it. The story of the young boy's bedtime anxiety is bound to make an impression on the reader, since it is carefully prepared for in advance, given a detailed, striking treatment when it is told, and is humorously referred to by the narrator, once it has been told, as Te drame de mon deshabillage' (I, 43) and 'le theatre et le drame de mon coucher' (I, 44), catchy phrases that call attention to the narrator's present perspective as well. Given the dramatic implications of these metaphors of playacting, one might conclude that he is treating his former self with a good deal of humour and possibly some irony; yet it is not easy to pinpoint the narrator's present point of view, since a good deal of the time there is consonant narration of a narrator in harmony with or empathizing with his former self. This opens up the possibility for more than one reaction or interpretation on the reader's part. For instance, while Spitzer, in his discussion of the hero's bedtime scenes, sees in the humorous caption 'le drame de mon deshabillage' the irony of exaggeration, he is careful to add a footnote telling us that when he discussed this expression in a seminar, some students found it ironic whereas others took it seriously, from which he concludes that the

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'ambiguity' may well be intentional on the author's part.1 To create a distancing effect through humour or irony may indeed be intentional; yet it is not clear what exactly the underlying intention is. Is it to distance oneself from a child now seen as overly sensitive? Is it to hide behind the mask of irony and humour to disguise strong feelings one is reluctant to show? Or is it based on an aesthetic decision to describe the scene in such a way that those sensitive to this kind of suffering can feel empathy, while those immune to it may enjoy the witty rendering? Though there is no simple answer, the questions raised make us aware of the importance of paying attention to the hero, the narrating presence, and the motivated reader as we make our way through the first part of 'Combray.' It is also important to recall the overall context into which the drame du coucher is introduced. The bedroom in Combray is irrevocably linked to an oppressive, overwhelming anguish. Prefigured by the overture's scenarios of the lonely traveller and the suffering hotel guest, the mood is evoked in the initial lines of the narrative segment devoted to Combray and is explicitly linked to separation anxiety: 'A Combray, tous les jours des la fin de 1'apres-midi, longtemps avant le moment ou ilfaudrait me mettre au lit et rester, sans dormir, loin de ma mere et de ma grand-mere, ma chambre a coucher redevenait le point fixe et douloureux de mes preoccupations' (I, 9).2 Thus, reference to the pain caused by separation is our first introduction to the childhood narrative of Combray. Though the next few pages will focus on the child's reaction to the magic lantern, this is clearly the start of the drame du coucher. When, a few lines later, the negative impact of the magic lantern is described, the bedtime anguish is recalled as well: 'Mais ma tristesse n'en etait qu'accrue, parce que rien que le changement d'eclairage detruisait 1'habitude que j'avais de ma chambre et grace a quoi, sauf le supplice du coucher, elle m'etait devenue supportable. Maintenant je ne la reconnaissais plus et j'y etais inquiet, comme dans une chambre d'hotel ou de "chalet," ou je fusse arrive pour la premiere fois en descendant de chemin de fer' (I, 9; my emphasis). When his room, made unfamiliar through the intrusion of the images projected by the magic lantern, is compared to a hotel room, the analogy harks back to and resonates with the motif of anguish first introduced in the two imaginary scenarios, the one of the lonely traveller and the suffering hotel guest. This motif, soon to become a leitmotif through the extensive, dramatic treatment of the drame du coucher, is thus introduced and prepared for like a musical motif and will be linked to other themes in a tightly knit orchestration.3

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 35 The expression 'le supplice du coucher/ in the quotation above, is the first hyperbole of later images to follow where the simple act of going to bed is compared to a death sentence. Humorous irony or a comparison felt as a literal approximation of intense suffering? The decision rests with each reader and is in part informed by one's own impression of and attitude toward the fictional persona. In my own rereading of the novel in the new Pleiade edition, with its accompanying variants and sketches, this persona becomes even more complex as other aspects of its experience are revealed and as familiar ones are treated differently. For instance, in the present context, a note referring to a variant gives readers a glimpse at a narrator treating the episode of the magic lantern quite differently; he is overcome by strong emotions as he relives the past, so that the focus shifts to his present frame of mind as he thinks about the images once projected by the lantern: 'Helas! leur vue me ferait bien mal aujourd'hui, car c'est dans un passe presque aussi profond que celui-la, dans mon enfance, qu'elles me feraient descendre, c'est de souvenirs de douleurs plus reelles que celles de Genevieve de Brabant, de fautes qui me touchent plus directement que celles de Golo, qu'elles m'etreindraient le coeur' - an astonishing passage that, a few lines further on, builds up to a crescendo with the narrator's apostrophe to a butterfly wing once seen through the magic lantern: 'Aile inconnue aux yeux d'azur et de feu, retourne a ces tenebres dont je suis deja si loin. Ne m'en rapporte pas mes tristesses d'alors: elles me feraient courir comme autrefois sous la lampe paisible qui s'est eteinte, vers les bras fermes a tout jamais qui seuls savaient me guerir' (1,1094). A touching lament, free of irony; the direct expression of mourning a loved one, the pain of separation obviously never overcome. There are other passages in the sketches where the narrator, giving free range to his 'emotive function/ calls attention to his present frame of mind.4 Though these passages are not part of the definitive version of 'Combray/ they nonetheless are held in memory and leave their trace in a kind of palimpsestic (re)reading of the novel. It is difficult to assess the effect that such a voice in the margins may have on the reader; its function will vary with the context and purpose of each particular reading, and with the reader's willingness to pay attention to this voice enfiligrane. Once one is aware of alternate versions, changes and omissions in the ultimate version certainly shed light on the poetics of the novel. For instance, in one of the sketches related to the early pages of the drame du coucher in Combray, the narrator introduces a long explanation - in a serious, at times philosophical, at times emotional

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mode - of the kind of anxiety in question.5 By sketching, at this early stage of the novel, the connection between separation anxiety, death (death of a loved one as well as the partial death of the self through change), habit, forgetting, and the opposition between two kinds of knowing (the heart as opposed to reason), the narrator gives us in advance an overview of the complex fabric of a mise en intrigue whose various threads need yet to be identified and developed - information we are not explicitly given in the novel until Albertine disparue, where the reader is sensitive to the full emotional thrust of such discoveries, having witnessed the effects of habit, love, death, and forgetting in a concrete setting, already persuaded from the evidence given that emotional knowledge is what counts. The narrator's eagerness to explain, to philosophize, and to reveal the overall picture has thus been subdued, as the novel took shape, to make room for a more direct appeal, allowing readers to share in the pain and joy of a particular event, deriving only gradually the knowledge that comes through experience. We are thus first invited to see and feel for ourselves. This is the aesthetics underlying the changes that were made, an aesthetics of reception directed towards a reader more easily motivated by reasons of the heart than by those of the mind. This also explains the striking images, digressions, and verbal orchestrations found in such emotionally charged episodes as the bedtime drama. As Spitzer has persuasively shown through careful analysis of complex Proustian sentences, such linguistic endeavours are meant to take us to the deepest dimensions of the soul - their very elaborateness being a testimony to the emotional significance of childhood experiences.6 It seems, then, that the style and form of Proust's novel are far more revealing than the author's or the narrator's philosophical pronouncements. As Vincent Descombes has convincingly shown in Proust: Philosophic du roman, the novel's own philosophy appears to be that insight into what happens to us in life can be communicated more clearly and persuasively through characters and their relationships than through abstract thought.7 In this respect, one of the novel's most telling examples is the drame du coucher. It is evident from the way this episode is described that the mother plays a central role not only in the young boy's experience but also in the emotional makeup of the adult narrator. The one and only thing that can allay the anxious youngster's nighttime suffering is the mother's eagerly awaited good-night kiss. This yearned-for consolation is dramatically heightened when the narrator introduces religious metaphors to describe the calming effect of

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 37 the mother's kiss ('ce baiser de paix'), which he compares to a communion wafer. Yet this kiss likened to Holy Communion does not bring unalloyed joy; it is tarnished by a feeling of guilt, since the boy knows that his father finds this nightly ritual ridiculous and that, moreover, he is bound to upset his mother by trying to delay the moment of separation: 'Or la voir fachee detruisait tout le calme qu'elle m'avait apporte un instant avant, quand elle avait penche vers mon lit sa figure aimante, et me 1'avait tendue comme une hostie pour une communion de paix ou mes levres puiseraient sa presence reelle et le pouvoir de m'endormir' (1,13; my emphasis). It is worth taking a small detour to consult those passages in the published sketches where references to religion and death are first introduced. In EsquisseVIII, for instance, the analogy to the communion wafer is already present in a passage stressing the much-needed peace found in the mother's kiss, and the boy's fear of destroying it by angering her through his insistence that she stay a bit longer. This version is more developed than in the definitive text of the novel. It includes a direct quotation of the boy begging his mother to stay and a lyrical expansion in which the narrator sings her praises, followed by an analogy to the less soothing effect of a druggist's prescription. Not only is the detailed and dramatic rendering in this version more striking, so is the focus on the narrator and his emotional participation in the scene he is describing, followed by a note of nostalgia - a longing for the comfort once enjoyed but now forever lost: Or voir son visage fache cela detruirait tout le calme qu'elle m'avait apporte un instant avant quand elle avait penche vers mon lit sa figure heureuse et aimante, et 1'avait tendue a mes levres comme une hostie ou elles gouteraient sa presence reelle et la garderaient jusqu'au lendemain matin; hostie pour une communion de paix, qui m'assurait un sommeil plus doux et plus calme que celui que nous trouvons dans ces autres hosties que la pharmacopee prepare et qui sont bien miraculeuses pourtant elles aussi, bien precieuses, en tout cas, certains soirs pour ceux qui n'ont plus leur mere, en leur permettant d'interrompre un moment, quand Us deviennent trop anxieux, le besoin qu'ils ont encore de I'embrasser.8

Most striking, in this version, is the narrator's empathetic feeling for those who long for a lost mother, a need, one suspects, he still shares, since he does not distance himself through humour or irony. Of significance also is the phrase 'sa presence reelle,' which was added to an

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earlier, shorter version that simply read: 'en tendant a mes levres, pour une douce communion, sa figure heureuse et tendre comme une hostie' (I, 665). This phrase is an important addition, since in the religious context of the holy wafer it alludes to Christ's presence during communion, thus setting the stage for the implicit association between the boy's suffering and divine salvation. It thus adds broader, more universal implications to a scene at first familial, albeit with Oedipal overtones that now recede into the background. After having read the more dramatic versions of this scene in the sketches, I am more inclined to see this analogy as a device to give more importance to this experience and to elicit sympathy instead of distancing the reader through humour or irony. Such analogies are also in keeping with the Ruskinian aesthetics that Proust admired and emulated, namely, endowing 'with a prophetic power and mystery scenes in themselves so simple/9 In the present instance, the prophetic power lies not only in the child's separation anxiety, which anticipates the emotional structure of all future relationships, but also in the religious imagery and other associations introduced into the drame du coucher that will later be taken up and developed further.10 Not only is the mother portrayed as a divine presence, but the boy himself will be likened to the suffering Christ when his anguish turns to despair the nights the mother is prevented by guests from coming to his room. The longed-for kiss then becomes a last communion ('il me fallut partir sans viatique' [I, 27]) in the context of one condemned to death: 'Une fois dans ma chambre, il fallut boucher toutes les issues, fermer les volets, creuser mon propre tombeau, en defaisant mes couvertures, revetir le suaire de ma chemise de nuit. Mais avant de m'ensevelir dans le lit de fer... je voulus essayer d'une ruse de condamne' (1,28).n It is utter despair, heightened by a keen sense of exclusion, that drives him to transgression and to the ruse he invents: he lies to Franchise, the housekeeper, coaxing her into delivering a message to his mother, thus allowing him to make contact by intruding into the place of forbidden pleasures, the dining room! Once the hesitant Franchise agrees to take the message, the boy's anxiety vanishes. The process of this sudden change is described in detail and allows us insight into the complexity of separation anxiety: first, the unbearable feeling of anxiousness pushes him to do something - no matter how inappropriate or difficult - to establish contact with the longed-for person, the only way to find relief; then, as a result of the anticipated success of the measure taken, he finds calm at once. There is yet another

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 39 feeling that enters into the emotional structure of the deep despair felt through separation anxiety; it is the feeling of exclusion, as is evident from the following description of the dining room, first seen as 'hostile' then as accessible through the boy's manoeuvre. Thus led into temptation through the despair of separation and exclusion, he begins to rejoice as he imagines partaking of the forbidden fruit. The passage deserves close scrutiny, since through one and the same image - the metaphorical fruit - the narrator conveys both the boy's urgent need for his mother and the pleasures currently being enjoyed by the guests at table: Aussitot mon anxiete tomba; maintenant ce n'etait plus comme tout a 1'heure pour jusqu'a demain que j'avais quitte ma mere, puisque mon petit mot allait, la fachant sans doute (et doublement parce que ce manege me rendrait ridicule aux yeux de Swann), me faire du moins entrer invisible et ravi dans la meme piece qu'elle, allait lui parler de moi a 1'oreille; puisque cette salle a manger interdite, hostile, ou, il y avait un instant encore, la glace elle-meme - le 'granite' - et les rince-bouche me semblaient receler des plaisirs malfaisants et mortellement tristes parce que maman les goutait loin de moi, s'ouvrait a moi et, comme un fruit devenu doux c\ui brise son enveloppe, allait faire jaillir, projeter jusqu'a mon coeur enivre I'attention de maman tandis qu'elle lirait mes lignes. Maintenant je n'etais plus separe d'elle; les barrieres etaient tombees, unfil delicieux nous reunissait. (I, 29-30; my emphasis)

The feeling of exclusion, which underlies the boy's present experience of separation anxiety, is evident from the use of several transferred adjectives in the passage just quoted. For instance, the dining room is described as 'hostile' and the pleasures found there as 'plaisirs malfaisants et mortellement tristes.' From the context, it is quite clear who is hostile and sad unto death, and from whose point of view such pleasures seem to be evil ones: it is the perspective of the uninvited boy whose attention is fixated on being excluded ('salle a manger interdite'; 'plaisirs malfaisants ... parce que maman les goutait loin de moi'). His urgent need to overcome not only the unbearable separation but also the hated feeling of being excluded is forcefully conveyed through the image of the ripened fruit of which he partakes: through this/// delicieux, contact is established and the excluded one is able to imagine himself as an invited guest able to share in the pleasure, which fills him with intense joy ('mon coeur enivre'). How confident he is about the positive

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outcome of his strategy is evident from the following exuberant exclamation, in free indirect discourse, which gives us direct insight into the young boy's frame of mind: 'Et puis, ce n'etait pas tout: maman allait sans doute venir!' Through this kind of 'consonant self-narration/ the narrator evokes, without any distancing irony or wit, his former frame of mind. Though the image of the bursting fruit that establishes the link between mother and child may be a descriptive tour de force on the narrator's part, it fits in admirably with the boy's emotional makeup and the narrator's descriptive motifs: the boy's overriding need for the mother's kiss, first conveyed through the image of the communion wafer and then echoed by the more mundane one of the bursting fruit both substances of ingestion - may well hark back to a paradigm scenario from earliest childhood, thus re-enacting in the present part of the hero-narrator's 'unthought known,' a point I will come back to when discussing subsequent experiences of separation anxiety, notabl one where the kind of relief given by the boy's grandmother is compared to the soothing effect of breast-feeding.12 In the present example, the change from communion wafer to ripe fruit not only fits the narrative context - the change of scene from bedroom to dining room - it also reflects differences in the child's emotional structure: whereas in the former setting, the kiss, as part of the permitted nightly ritual, brought soothing calm, it is now tainted through a feeling of guilt ('la fachant sans doute'), since the intrusion into the forbidden place (the dining room) is felt as a transgression, which turns the imagined fruit into a forbidden one, a reading reinforced when the boy's exhilaration is described in terms of intoxication ('mon coeur enivre').13 In the present experience of separation anxiety, the feeling of exclusion becomes the very centre of the tale when the narrator brings in an analogy to Swann, who suffered from the same affliction, backed up by a generalizing observation that draws attention to the main point: 'cette angoisse qu'il y a a sentir 1'etre qu'on aime dans un lieu de plaisir ou 1'on n'est pas, ou Ton ne peut pas le rejoindre' (I, 30). Considerable emphasis is then added when the narrator introduces imaginary scenarios centred on the feeling of exclusion; in each a lover tries in vain to make contact with a beloved attending a social function to which he cannot gain access, though friends encourage him to try: 'Cette joie trompeuse que nous donne quelque ami, quelque parent de la femme que nous aimons, quand, arrivant a 1'hotel ou au theatre ou elle se trouve, pour quelque bal, redoute ou premiere ou il va la retrouver, cet ami nous aperc,oit errant dehors, attendant desesperement quelque

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 41 occasion de communiquer avec elle' (I, 30). The focus has obviously shifted from the hero's personal experience to a description of the kind of experience at hand, as is obvious from the use of the inclusive pronoun nous and the demonstrative ce ('cette joie'). Yet the narrator does not stop here and takes us instead deeper into the emotional experience by switching to the present tense as he stages a hypothetical encounter - with concrete details and an exchange of words between the neglected lover and a friend trying to help - that takes us step by step from momentary hope and false illusion to the moment of defeat. By thus creating an actual setting with a temporal framework, the narrator dramatizes the emotional state and gives it added significance. The scene also initiates the reader into the keen sense of experiencing 'the future in the present/ which characterizes such inner states of wishful thinking that grow out of the need to escape from an unbearable present - a state not unlike the one of the suffering hotel guest at the start of the novel. In the present instance, the excluded person's hope to overcome separation is vividly evoked through temporal progression and a concrete image ('breche mesperee'): 'Ces heures inaccessibles et suppliciantes ou elle allait gouter des plaisirs inconnus voici que par une breche inesperee nous y penetrons; voici qu'un des moments dont la succession les aurait composees, un moment aussi reel que les autres, meme peut-etre plus important pour nous, parce que notre maitressse y est plus melee, nous nous le representons, nous le possedons, nous y intervenons, nous 1'avons cree presque: le moment ou on va lui dire que nous sommes la, en bas' (I, 30; my emphasis). The mounting suspense, created through the dramatic temporal progression, punctuated through the rhythmic repetition of nous at the start of successive phrases, and the crescendo built up through the delayed direct object, 'le moment ou on va lui dire que nous sommes la, en bas/ all call attention to the key moment, the necessity of intruding. The mention of plaisirs inconnus brings back to mind the plaisirs malfaisants of the dining-room scene, and leads one to suspect that envy and curiosity are part of the emotional structure of separation anxiety, a hunch that will be reinforced through later experiences. Before returning to the outcome of his personal dilemma, the narrator refers once more to Swarm, thus foreshadowing what is to come and supplying as well a resolution to the imaginary scenarios: 'Helas! Swarm en avait fait 1'experience, les bonnes intentions d'un tiers sont sans pouvoir sur une femme qui s'irrite de se sentir poursuivie jusque dans une fete par quelqu'un qu'elle n'aime pas. Souvent, 1'ami redescend

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seul' (I, 31). In the very next sentence, set off as a new paragraph, the hero receives his own disappointing answer: 'Ma mere ne vint pas, et sans management pour mon amour-propre ... me fit dire par Franchise ces mots: "II n'y a pas de reponse'" (I, 31). The reader is now in a better position to understand his bitter disappointment; at the same time we realize, however, that far more is at stake than the hero's personal plight when the narrator, in one and the same sentence, immediately turns to more general aspects of the situation and introduces another imaginary scene - this time a young woman tries in vain to contact her beloved which, once again, highlights the same kind of emotional state: 'ces mots "il n'y a pas de reponse" que j'ai si souvent entendus des concierges de "palaces" ou des valets de pied de tripots, rapporter a quelque pauvre fille qui s'etonne: "Comment, il n'a rien dit, mais c'est impossible! Vous avez pourtant bien remis ma lettre. C'est bien, je vais attendre encore"' (I, 31; my emphasis). Not unlike the previous scenario, here direct speech and concrete details about the waiting (one servant offers to bring more light, another a fresh drink) make a vivid impression. One may wonder why there is a change from man to young woman in the second imaginary scene. Is the first more likely to appeal to women and the second to men? Or could it be that the narrator, being culturally conditioned, realizes that it is less seemly for a man to show such emotions and that a woman in such a situation is likely to find more sympathy?14 There is more than one possible answer, of course. What matters, it seems to me, is the effect on the reader and how this in turn affects his or her own involvement with the characters and their situation. By staging the imaginary scenarios, the narrator calls attention to the kind of suffering at hand; by inviting us to take a close look at what at first may seem like a digression, he builds our compassion so that once we return to the story at hand, the cumulative emotional effect we have experienced on the way is then transferred to the suffering hero, whose situation we are now better able to understand.15 Such 'polyphonic' narrative practice, as Spitzer has pointed out in discussing a similar passage of Proust's novel, is not merely the expression of a complex vision, but also a testimonial to the significance of the tale.16 The narrator's tendency to compare the hero's situation to analogous cases - Swann's anxiety and the anguish of the two spurned lovers gives us important insight into his narrative practice. The comparison to Swann already anticipates the love affair with Odette in 'Un amour de Swann' and foreshadows its dominant emotion; it also sets the stage for future comparisons with Swann, who is, in more ways than one, the

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 43 hero-narrator's double.17 Most importantly, it dramatically emphasizes the fact that separation anxiety will irrevocably be the dark side of love.18 This early insight into the emotional structure of love prepares our understanding of the protagonist's future relationships with women. By thus grounding the future in the present and the specific and personal in the more general, the narrator constructs the kind of tale that may be described as tuilage (layering). This kind of structuring by association - juxtaposing similar events from different times and places - also works in reverse. A telling example is the passage where, several volumes later, the child's perception of the dining room as 'hostile' is recalled within the narrative context of another attack of separation anxiety. It is triggered when Albertine tells him that Mile Vinteuil, a notorious lesbian, was a childhood friend. Terrified by the thought that Albertine may have the same inclination, the hero is overcome once again by feelings of exclusion and abandonment. The analogy between the present and former situation, reinforced by another reference to Swann's similar suffering, makes it quite clear that such associations are triggered by affect; it also illustrates the fact that the present experience is closely tied to the past, which shapes and illuminates it. Through this kind of narrative recall, which exemplifies the hero's inner experience, the reader's own memory of scenes already witnessed is activated, thus bringing to the present instance the full impact of insights previously gained: C'etait de Trieste, de ce monde inconnu ou je sentais que se plaisait Albertine, ou etaient ses souvenirs, ses amities, ses amours d'enfance, que s'exhalait cette atmosphere hostile, inexplicable, comme celle qui montait jadis jusqu'a ma chambre de Combray, de la salle a manger oil j'entendais causer et rire avec les etrangers, dans le bruit des fourchettes, maman qui ne viendrait pas me dire bonsoir; comme celle qui avait rempli pour Swann les maisons ou Odette allait chercher en soiree d'inconcevables joies. (Ill, 505; my emphasis)

Thus, as one critic so aptly put it, Templates are being created and futures foretold, throughout the first two volumes of the novel.'19 Toward the end of his account of the drame du coucher, the narrator is at work at another kind of 'layering' based on an emotional association: this time the interweaving takes place on the stylistic level as he introduces a few lines alluding to Racine's Phedre without identifying them. This happens at the most paroxysmic moment of the entire bedtime

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episode, after the boy, even more desperate since his mother's negative response, simply refuses to go to bed and decides to confront her when she comes up the stairs to go to sleep. Experiencing mixed feelings - he is both elated (having rid himself of anxiety) and terrified at this, his second and most serious transgression; yet there is no going back: he is ready to die (not just lie) to escape the anguish of separation! Things have clearly escalated, and not unlike the young boy, we feel the tension mounting and hold our breath as we read the step-by-step description of the parents making their way up the stairs: 'Bientot, je 1'entendis qui montait fermer sa fenetre. J'allai sans bruit dans le couloir; mon coeur battait si fort que j'avais de la peine a avancer, mais du mains il ne battait plus d'anxiete, mais d'epouvante et de joie. Je vis dans la cage de 1'escalier la lumiere projetee par la bougie de maman. Puis je la vis ellememe; je m'elanc,ai' (I, 35).20 Then, just as the worst punishment is expected, the father, realizing that his son is in the grips of nervous anxiety, not only refrains from disciplining him, but suggests that the mother spend the night in his room. Given this unexpected turn of events at the very moment of the story's climax, I was curious to see how such an intense moment was treated in the sketches. The favourable outcome is the same in all versions, and all mention the fact that it was impossible to thank the father for his understanding, that he would have found any emotional manifestations ridiculous.21 Yet an important observation is added at this point in the novel: 'Je restai sans oser faire un mouvement' (I, 36). The additional phrase acquires its full significance when one compares the final version with its earlier rendition in Esquisse X where, instead of highlighting the boy's fearful intimidation in front of the father, the narrator shifts attention instead to a different emotion, the boy's gratitude: 'Mais je ne crois pas qu'on puisse sentir vers un autre etre un elan de reconnaissance plus infinie que j'eprouvais ce soir-la pour lui' (I, 675).22 If one pursues further the comparative reading between novel and sketch, what is striking is that in both the narrator suddenly shifts the focus from the boy's erstwhile bedtime drama to the present moment of his remembering self, painfully aware of the time that has elapsed and the many changes it has wrought.23 After mournfully evoking some of these - house and parents are forever gone and their loss makes it impossible to ever relive the past - the novel's narrator adds that he too has changed, thus further widening the abyss between present and past. Yet, in the very next sentence, he reveals how, of late, now that his

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 45 life is quieter, he has been able to recapture something of the past, including the very tears he suppressed in front of his father: 'Mais depuis peu de temps, je recommence a tres bien percevoir si je prete 1'oreille, les sanglots que j'eus la force de contenir devant mon pere et qui n'eclaterent que quand je me retrouvai seul avec maman. En realite ils n'ont jamais cesse; et c'est seulement parce que la vie se tait maintenant davantage autour de moi, que je les entends de nouveau, comme ces cloches de couvents que couvrent si bien les bruits de la ville pendant le jour qu'on les croirait arretees mais qui se remettent a sonner le soir' (I, 36-7; my emphasis). In the corresponding sketch, the narrator's tone and focus are distinctly different. Instead of dwelling on the past, he shifts attention to the present moment and the overwhelming emotion he experiences while writing about the past. He now gives full expression to feelings once stifled and repressed: 'Mais je pleure plus en ecrivant ce que mon pere a fait ce soir-la que je ne pus le faire alors, dans 1'effroi de le facher, et je lui donne tous les soirs, quand je pense a lui les remerciements et les baisers que je n'ai ose lui dormer alors' (I, 675).24 In this experience of time recaptured, as described in the two sketches, it is not only the father who is brought back to mind, but also a father presented in a different light, given considerably more importance in the hero-narrator's sentimental life. Given these passages, one could imagine quite a different orientation in the fictional world, one where the father would play a more central role in the hero's development and in the story being told by the narrator. The fact that they were suppressed raises some interesting questions: Were they cut to allow for a different kind of story to develop? Was it so important, in the overall scheme of things, to give the mother centre stage? Was the narrator's focus on his present emotions felt to be intrusive, taking attention away from the boy's inner turmoil? Or is the narrator meant to be less open and less emotional? Though there is no single answer to any of these questions, some plausible reasons come to mind after the kind of palimpsestic reading I have engaged in. It seems that there is a general tendency, on the narrator's part, to be less personal, to suppress emotional outbursts - especially those that point to his presence here and now, at the moment of narration - and to eliminate details and references that might lead readers to identify the fictional persona with the real-life author. In the present context of the drame du coucher it is significant, however, that mention of the hero's first name, Marcel, is dropped in two places, thus leaving the hero of 'Combray' nameless. In Esquisse X, for example, the father first

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uses the boy's name right after having forgiven him for disobeying: 'Dis done a Franchise de faire le grand lit qui est dans la chambre Marcel' (II, 675), followed a few lines later by a second reference to the same name, this time uttered by Franchise, the housekeeper: 'Mais Madame, qu'a done Monsieur Marcel, pourquoi pleure-t-il?' (ibid.).25 On the whole, it seems that the glimpse one gets of the fictional persona - both hero and narrator - as it emerges from the various stages of th manuscript, is that of a presence that was considerably more emotional and more direct; a presence that became more guarded and less personal as the novel evolved, introducing a certain distance through humour and irony, and thus tuning down the impact of its own pathos by weaving the story of the boy's suffering into a complex social fabric where other preoccupations, other points of view, and other voices are heard. By thus interpolating into the account of his unbearable childhood anxiety witty exchanges or comic remarks, the narrator puts himself at a safe distance from which it is not easy to assess his true feelings, while, at the same time, giving the reader relief from what might otherwise have been too narrow or monotonous a focus whose sustained tension may have proved unbearable to some. Moreover, in diverting attention from the suffering self by staging scenarios of similar suffering in others - the lonely traveller and indisposed hotel guest in the novel's overture, and the spurned lovers in the context of the drame du coucher - the narrator is more likely to appeal to the reader's compassion and understanding. If, after this detour through alternative versions found in the sketches, one returns to the climax of the novel's drame du coucher, one is in for another surprise. In the definitive version, attention is focused on the hero's feelings, instead of shifting to the narrator's retrospective gratitude towards his father. In describing the boy's frame of mind, the narrator slips in a verbal allusion to Racine's Phedre, without identifying the source. He thus tacitly introduces a metonymic link preparing for the hero's future identification with the tragic heroine, an identification of which he is, as yet, not consciously aware and that the narrator will not explicitly mention until Albertine disparue. In the present instance, realizing that his anxiousness is no longer considered punishable behaviour and is accepted instead as an involuntary state ('un mal involontaire'), he feels a weight lifted off his shoulders. It is in the passage describing this momentous change that we find the intertextual allusion to Phedre: 'Ainsi, pour la premiere fois, ma tristesse n'etait plus considered comme une faute punissable mais comme un mal involontaire

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 47 qu'on venait de reconnaitre officiellement, comme un etat nerveux dont je n'etais pas responsable; j'avais le soulagement de n'avoir plus a meler de scrupules a I'amertume de mes larmes, je pouvais pleurer sans peche' (I,378; my emphasis).26 The psychological bond with Phedre, of which the boy is not yet aware, is a complex one, sharing both the intense panic of separation anxiety that leads to irrational action, and a feeling of guilt a verbal trace of which is the mention of peche in the passage under discussion. There is dramatic irony at work, since the narrator surreptitiously introduces the association with Racine's heroine, the only clue being the intertextual allusion. Equally indirect is the suggestion of the boy's guilt: the mention of 'sans peche' implies that he harboured guilty feelings; moreover, such guilt lingers on, as is apparent from what follows, the boy fearing that his parents condoning his frantic behaviour only brings grief to his mother: 'J'aurais du etre heureux: Je ne 1'etais pas. II me semblait que ma mere venait de me faire une premiere concession qui devait lui etre douloureux' (1,38). Descriptive details invoking Phedre are included a second time in the narrative context of another attack of separation anxiety. It is the passage where, in the second part of 'Combray,' the young boy comes to bid goodbye to his beloved hawthorns in bloom. It is a charged scene, combining complex feelings not all of which are spelled out, since the narrator adopts the boy's naive point of view. The intertextual reference to Racine's play, a humorous aside to the reader, creates a space for dramatic irony. This time, the identification with Phedre is more obvious, explicitly introduced by 'comme une princesse de tragedie': 'apres m' avoir cherche par tout, ma mere me trouva en larmes dans le petit raidillon, contigu a Tansonville, en train de dire adieu aux aubepines, entourant de mes bras les branches piquantes, et, comme une princesse de tragedie a qui peseraient ces vains ornements, ingrat envers Vimportune main qui enformant tous ces noeuds avail pris soin sur mon front d'assembler mes cheveux, foulant aux pieds mes papillotes arrachees et mon chapeau neuf' (1,143; my emphasis).27 Particulary striking, in this passage, is the personification of the hawthorns, which is further set in relief when the boy speaks to them like a lover: 'O mes pauvres petites aubepines, disais-je en pleurant, ce n'est pas vous qui voudriez me faire du chagrin, me forcer a partir. Vous, vous ne m'avez jamais fait de peine! Aussi je vous aimerai toujours' (1,143). We are encouraged to see more in this scene than meets the eye, since in the passage immediately preceding the leave-taking, the young boy had his first glimpse of the enigmatic Gilberte with whom he fell instantly in love (1,139^1). One may well

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conclude that the outburst of tears in front of the hawthorns is displaced, that the emotional trigger for this attack of separation anxiety is the unfulfilled desire for the young girl whom he has to leave behind without having made contact. This reading is quite plausible, since the Tansonville path with its hawthorns, from which the boy first saw Gilberte, is recalled in the leave-taking scene. The narrator thus uses indirection to veil his most ardent fears and desires. Moreover, by introducing intertextual allusions to another text with whose main character he empathizes and identifies, the narrator prefigures, at this early stage of our reading, a later moment of the hero's insight into his identity. Thus, in two separate instances, there is an implicit prefiguration of the Proustian hero's future identification with Racine's tragic heroine through which the reader is initiated into a process of gradual awareness, a kind of mimesis, on the stylistic level, of the 'unthought known.'28 This too is a kind of tuilage, the weaving into the present of elements pertaining to the future. This kind of covert anticipation is one of several forms of narrative identity we encounter in A la recherche du temps perdu; it is also part of the different kinds of metaphoric narration that give Proust's novel its special shape and impact. Through this and other types of prefiguration, the narrator detaches himself from the yet naive and unsuspecting hero to establish a special kind of communication with readers, attuning them to the feelings and mood of separation anxiety, and foreshadowing the significance of what will turn out to be the central emotional paradigm through which the self-in-process will eventually find the core of its identity. In this respect, the allusions to Phedre and the imaginary scenarios are quite similar in nature and function: they are signs of indirection, figures in the fabric of the text that point to the unthought known yet to be discovered by the story's protagonist. Yet they also reveal a narrating presence given to camouflage, reluctant to reveal insights gained before having described the process that led to them, and rather reticent - though there are some remarkable exceptions - about his own emotional involvement with the subject at hand, resorting instead to analogies, generalizations, and invented scenarios to make his point. Such procedures are highly motivated, as is quite obvious, for instance, from the scenarios of the lonely traveller and hotel guest that set the stage for the drame du coucher, and the dramatic scenes of the spurned lovers that reinforce it by calling the reader's attention to the kind of anxiety experienced in different situations. They are not digressions, as some have argued, but take us to the very heart

Separation Anxiety: The drame du coucher 49 of the matter: the driving force of the hero-narrator's emotional life.29 The motivation at work is not aimed at creating a mere effet de reel; it is calculated to fully engage readers by giving them close insight into what emotions are, how they feel, and how they function. Here lies the gain for the motivated reader; it is not to be found, as Genette once argued, in a poetics where the ends justify the means.30

CHAPTER THREE

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm

ces dilemmes douloureux que 1'amour nous pose a tout instant, nous instruisent, nous decouvrent successivement la matiere dont nous sommes fait. A la recherche du temps perdu, IV, 487-8

The recurrence of the same kind of anguish described in subsequent experiences of separation anxiety points to an emotional paradigm of which the young hero becomes aware only gradually. The narrator does not reveal this future insight to the reader until the hero himself has gone through the process of recognition. One realizes, especially in a rereading of A la recherche, that separation anxiety plays a central role in the novel, that, like experiences of involuntary memory, it is an essential part of the entire mise en intrigue. The boy's anguish in 'Combray' prepares us not only for Swarm's suffering through Odette, but also for his own unsettling relationships with Gilberte and Albertine. The narrator calls attention to this by repeatedly comparing a present experience with earlier or later ones of the same person or with those, similar in kind, experienced by others, which accounts, in part at least, for the direction of his narrative - set in motion by associations instead of being chronological or episodic. The indelible imprint of the bedtime drama will thus have bearing on all future relationships. It is, as we realize in retrospect, the very matrix of the narrator's tale, since separation anxiety is not only the emotion that dominates the young boy's life, but is also the very centre of the story being told: it gives the narrative its impetus, its shape, and, as it turns out, its very raison d'etre. As the narrator focuses on this and subsequent experiences of sepa-

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 51 ration anxiety, he probes more deeply into the kind of experience it constitutes. He does not shy away from depicting recurring scenes; nor does he hesitate to repeat what has been said. To the contrary, he finds truth in repetition, as he explicitly tells us in the following passage: 'De sorte qu'un romancier pourrait au cours de la vie de son heros, peindre presque exactement semblables ses successives amours et dormer par la 1'impression non de s'imiter lui-meme mais de creer, puisqu'f/ y a moins de force dans une innovation artificielle que dans une repetition destinee a suggerer une verite neuve' (II, 248; my emphasis). What he tells us about a novelist's description of love applies equally well, of course, to the repeated depiction of anxiety attacks. It is well worth examining the trajectory of such repetitions to see what insight might thus be gained. After the initial experiences in 'Combray,' the hero is subject once again to the same anguish at the beginning of the second part of A I'ombre des jeunesfilles enfleurs. Having to say good-bye to his mother at the railroad station triggers the emotional turmoil, as the narrator is quick to point out by focusing attention on the kind of suffering at hand: 'une separation apparait brusquement impossible a souffrir, alors qu'elle n'est deja plus possible a eviter, concentree toute entiere dans un instant immense de lucidite impuissante et supreme' (II, 9). It is striking how, once again, the narrator introduces religious imagery with references to Christ's suffering. He sets the mood by describing the Gare Saint-Lazare as a place where terrible things might happen 'comme un depart en chemin de fer ou 1'erection de la Croix' (II, 6). The analogy to the Crucifixion, which by implication puts the suffering hero into the position of Christ bearing the Cross, is further reinforced by two references to religious paintings: Mantegna's Crucifixion and Veronese's Calvary. Instead of describing the scene at the station or the vacation projects, the narrator entirely concentrates our attention on the boy's frame of mind, thus making it quite clear that even now, in retrospect, it is the boy's anxiety that is important to him. If one compares the present instance of separation anxiety to the anguish of the bedtime drama, one realizes that the boy is able to manipulate his suffering through a kind of mental superimposition of the future on the present that either alleviates or aggravates the situation. In the present case, he makes things worse by seeing the impending separation as a prefiguration of his future relationship with his mother: Tour la premiere fois je sentais qu'il eta it possible que ma mere vecut sans moi, autrement que pour moi, d'une autre vie. Elle allait habiter de son cote avec mon pere a qui peut-etre elle trouvait que ma mauvaise sante, ma nervosite,

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rendaient 1'existence un peu compliquee et triste' (ibid.)- From this and the following detailed description, which expands into an imaginary scene, we are given insight into the complexity of separation anxiety: the boy's anguish is closely linked to other feelings - a feeling of exclusion, which was also present in the drame du coucher, the young boy feeling excluded from the dining room, and a feeling of guilt, which clearly underlies the following observation: 'Cette separation me desolait davantage parce que je me disais qu'elle etait probablement pour ma mere le terme des deceptions successives que je lui avais causees, qu'elle m'avait rues et apres lesquelles elle avait compris la difficulte de vacances communes' (ibid.).1 Anguish mounts when he vividly imagines the repercussions that the present separation might have on the rest of his life: ... le premier essai d'une existence a laquelle elle commenc.ait a se resigner pour 1'avenir, au fur et a mesure que les annees viendraient pour mon pere et pour elle, d'une existence ou je la verrais moins, ou, ce qui meme dans mes cauchemars ne m'etait jamais apparu, elle serait deja pour moi un peu etrangere, une dame qu'on verrait rentrer seule dans une maison ou je ne serais pas, demandant au concierge s'il n'y avait pas de lettres de moi. (ibid.)

The inevitable parting, set in relief through the defamiliarizing description of the mother as 'une dame qu'on verrait rentrer seule dans une maison,' translates into a dramatic scene that allows us to feel how painful and threatening this separation is for him. It is through projections of the future into the present, a kind of emotional tuilage, that the hero increases the suffering caused by separation anxiety. Through such bleak imaginings, he loses all hope and becomes further weighed down by a feeling of guilt and envy (envie d'en etre), leaving room only for an even more unbearable despair.2 A few hours later, he is subject to a second anxiety attack when he suddenly finds himself alone in a strange and hostile-looking hotel room, far away from his mother and the comfort of his own room, while the grandmother, who accompanied him to the Balbec resort, has gone out for a moment to do some errands. Through the repeated reminder of nay ant plus, the narrator emphasizes how utterly vulnerable and bereft the young boy feels: 'N'ayant plus d'univers, plus de chambre, plus de corps que menace par les ennemis qui m'entouraient, qu'envahi jusque dans les os par la fievre, j'etais seul, j'avais envie de

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 53 mourir' (II, 28). The dramatic change from feeling totally helpless and abandoned, wishing to die, to a feeling of boundless relief when the grandmother 'rescues' him is conveyed through a striking spatial metaphor: 'Alors ma grand-mere entra; et a 1'expansion de mon coeur refoule s'ouvrirent aussitot des espaces infinis' (ibid.). The positive image of infinite spaces, like the image of the soft ripe fruit that opens up the otherwise hostile space of the Combray dining room, effectively conveys the sudden relief from being shut out and excluded. In rescuing him from separation anxiety and in fulfilling the maternal role, the grandmother, thanks to her sympathetic understanding, undivided attention, and unflinching devotion, is much closer to him than his own mother, who has other obligations, could ever be: [J]e savais, quand j'etais avec ma grand-mere, si grand chagrin qu'il y eut en moi, qu'il serait recu dans une pitie plus vaste encore; que tout ce qui etait mien, mes soucis, mon vouloir, serait, en ma grand-mere, etaye sur un desir de conservation et d'accroissement de ma propre vie autrement fort que celui que j'avais moi-meme; et mes pensees se prolongeaient en elle sans subir de deviation parce qu'elles passaient de mon esprit dans le sien sans changer de milieu, de personne. (II, 28)

Having found a perfect soulmate and feeling safe and cared for in his grandmother's presence, he abandons himself, like a small child, to her loving care, thus overcoming his anguish: 'je me jetai dans les bras de ma grand-mere et je suspendis mes levres a sa figure comme si j'accedais ainsi a ce coeur immense qu'elle m'ouvrait. Quand j'avais ainsi ma bouche collee a ses joues, a son front, j'y puisais quelque chose de si bienfaisant, de si nourricier, que je gardais 1'immobilite, le serieux, la tranquille avidite d'un enfant qui tete' (II, 28). The comparison to the nursing child suggests that the emotions he now experiences may reach back as far as early childhood, that they may be part of what Christopher Bellas has described as the 'unthought known,' an intense affective experience that plays a crucial part in one's development.3 The importance, in retrospect, that the narrator still attaches to the grandmother's consoling presence in Balbec is obvious from the fact that he repeatedly focuses our attention on this aspect of their relationship. Particularly striking is the detailed description, lyrical tone, and vivid imagery of how the grandmother immediately and unfailingly responded to his knock on the wall separating their rooms.4 This intimate way of communicating is described as nothing less than a heav-

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enly chant: 'doux instant matinal qui s'ouvrait comme une symphonie par le dialogue rythme de mes trois coups auquel la cloison penetree de tendresse et de joie, devenue harmonieuse, immaterielle, chantant comme les anges, repondait par trois autres coups, ardemment attendus, deux fois repetes, et ou elle savait transporter 1'ame de ma grand-mere tout entiere et la promesse de sa venue, avec une allegresse d'annonciation et une fidelite musicale' (II, 30). Thus, thanks to the tender care and perfect understanding of his grandmother, the boy is able to free himself for a while from the oppressive fear of separation, to find, instead, moments of intense joy, untarnished by any feeling of guilt or wishful thinking that things should be better. The angelic image of the grandmother is reminiscent of the earlier image of the mother's kiss as communion wafer (hostie). The imagery throws into relief the significance such experiences have for the hero-narrator; they point to nothing less than a personal religion: salvation and redemption through a maternal figure. The importance of the grandmother in such a role is even more evident when the hero is suddenly reminded of their stay together in Balbec during a subsequent trip to the same resort. Arriving exhausted and feeling hopelessly alone in his hotel room, he finds himself in the same desperate situation as before. To make things worse, he is suddenly overcome by intense grief as involuntary memory, set in motion by affect, brings back the past: Bouleversement de toute ma personne. Des la premiere nuit, comme je souffrais d'une crise de fatigue cardiaque, tachant de dompter ma souffrance, je me baissai avec lenteur et prudence pour me dechausser. Mais a peine eus-je touche le premier bouton de ma bottine, ma poitrine s'enfla, remplie d'une presence inconnue, divine, des sanglots me secouerent, des larmes ruisselerent de mes yeux. L'etre qui venait a mon secours, qui me sauvait de la secheresse de 1'ame, c'etait celui qui, plusieurs annees auparavant, dans un moment de detresse et de solitude identiques, dans un moment ou je n'avais plus rien de moi, etait entre, et qui m'avait rendu a moi-meme, car il etait moi et plus que moi... Je venais d'apercevoir, dans ma memoire, penche sur ma fatigue, le visage tendre, preoccupe et dec,u de ma grand-mere, telle qu'elle avait ete ce premier soir d'arrivee; le visage de ma grand-mere, non pas de celle que je m'etais etonne et reproche de si peu regretter et qui n'avait d'elle que le nom, mais de ma grandmere veritable dont, pour la premiere fois depuis les Champs-Elysees ou elle avait eu son attaque, je retrouvais dans un souvenir involontaire et complet la realite. vivante. (Ill, 152-3; my emphasis)

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 55 The sudden feeling of relief is afforded him through an experience of involuntary memory set in motion by sensory impressions - a moment in the present identical to one in the past ('un moment de detresse et de solitude identiques')/ an association that is, moreover, rooted in affect. The moment of his grandmother's comforting presence is immediately dampened, however, when he realizes that she will never ever be able to mother him as she once did. At this point of the story the narrator interpolates a brief explanation on the importance of involuntary memory in bringing back the full impact of the past: 'Cette realite n'existe pas pour nous tant qu'elle n'a pas ete recreee par notre pensee ...; et ainsi, dans un desir fou de me precipiter dans ses bras, ce n'etait qu'a 1'instant - plus d'une annee apres son enterrement, a cause de cet anachronisme qui empeche si souvent le calendrier des faits de coincider avec celui des sentiments - que je venais d'apprendre qu'elle etait morte' (III, 153). The important insight to be retained from this passage, presented in general terms as a truth applicable to all human beings, is that the heart has its own 'calendar/ the only one that counts in the final analysis. It is thus only now, thanks to affective memory, that the boy is fully aware of what her death means to him, that the loss is irrevocable, the separation permanent: 'Et maintenant ce meme besoin renaissait, je savais que je pouvais attendre des heures apres des heures, qu'elle ne serait plus jamais aupres de moi, je ne faisais que de le decouvrir parce que je venais, en la sentant pour la premiere fois, vivante, veritable, gonflant mon coeur a le briser, en la retrouvant enfin, d'apprendre que je 1'avais perdue pour toujours' (III, 154-5). As is quite evident from the present instance of involuntary memory, such an event is not always joyful, bringing back, as it does, the full impact of sensations and feelings, the very etat d'ame - happy or unhappy - once experienced. Nor is there any escaping from past habits deeply ingrained, as is evident from a pattern of response to which the hero is subject during anxiety attacks. He thus aggravates his present despair by imagining the grandmother as 'une simple etrangere qu'un hasard a fait passer quelques annees aupres de moi' (III, 155) - a reaction similar to the one at the railroad station, where he intensified his suffering by imagining his mother's future life without him.5 One realizes, in comparing the various experiences of separation anxiety, that they are all subject to the same emotional complex, including feelings of anguish, the fear of exclusion, and guilt. In the present instance, the hero regrets having been a source of worry for his grandmother; he also feels guilty for not having given her much thought until now, having almost forgotten her since her death two years ago. The

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feeling of guilt becomes the central focus and is rendered concrete through a dream the narrator recounts in great detail (III, 157-9), a dramatic staging of inner feelings.6 The number of pages devoted to the grandmother, and the hero's ardent wish to be able to find once again such an intimate rapport which is compared to nothing less than paradise - emphatically conveys how significant a role she plays in the hero-narrator's emotional life: Je savais que je pourrais frapper maintenant, meme plus fort, que rien ne pourrait plus la reveiller, que je n'entendrais aucune reponse, que ma grand-mere ne viendrait plus. Et je ne demandais rien de plus a Dieu, s'il existe un paradis, que d'y pouvoir frapper centre cette cloison les trois petits coups que ma grand-mere reconnaitrait entre mille, et auxquels elle repondrait par ces autres coups qui voulaient dire: 'Ne t'agite pas, petite souris, je comprends que tu es impatient, mais je vais venir/ et qu'il me laissat rester avec elle toute 1'eternite, qui ne serait pas trop longue pour nous deux. (Ill, 159-60; my emphasis)

In this nostalgic account, there is no humour or ironic distance on the narrator's part. It is consonant narration, entirely in harmony with the boy's feelings. The lyrical wish addressed to God that past bliss may be recaptured, a wish so intense that it includes within it an evocation of the past - the tender scene where grandmother and grandson communicate by knocking on the thin dividing wall - brings back to mind the whole context of intense feelings already familiar to the reader as well, who is thus able to participate in the emotional upheaval created by the intrusion of the past into the present. By recalling verbatim the grandmother's consoling words, the narrator not only gives us a feeling for the intensity of the boy's wish to bring back the past, but also allows us a taste of what it feels like to be cared for so lovingly. It is also the hero's only way, when all else fails, to 'mother' himself by bringing back to mind words that once proved so effective.7 In describing the young boy's relationship with the grandmother during their first trip to Balbec, the narrator adds an important passage of considerable length that gives a much broader view of what causes such anguish (II, 30-2). It tells us, moreover, why relief from suffering through the mother's or grandmother's care can only be temporary. Once again, anguish is made worse because unsettling images of the future are superimposed on the present, a kind of mental tuilage that, in

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 57 this case, amounts to nothing less than a Weltanschauung, revealing a view of life where every change gives rise to separation anxiety, including a change of place - with its loss of friends, loved ones, and all that is comfortable and habitual - the death of parents, and the gradual death of the self ('la mort fragmentaire et successive telle qu'elle s'insere dans toute la duree de notre vie' [III, 32]): Mais cette premiere nuit d'arrivee, quand ma grand-mere m'eut quitte, je recommencais a souffrir, comme j'avais deja souffert a Paris au moment de quitter la maison. Peut-etre cet effroi que j'avais - qu'ont tant d'autres - de coucher dans une chambre inconnue, peut-etre cet effroi n'est-il que la forme la plus humble, obscure, organique, presque inconsciente, de ce grand refus desespere qu'opposent les choses qui constituent le meilleur de notre vie presente a ce que nous revetions mentalement de notre acceptation la formule d'un avenir ou elles ne figurent pas; refus qui etait au fond de I'horreur que m avail fait si souvent eprouver la pensee que mes parents mourraient un jour, que les necessities de la vie pourraient m'obliger a vivre loin de Gilberte, ou simplement a me fixer definitivement dans un pays ou je ne verrais plus jamais mes amis; refus qui etait encore au fond de la difficulte que j'avais a penser a ma propre mort ou a une survie ... dans laquelle je ne pourrais emporter mes souvenirs, mes defauts, mon caractere qui ne se resignaient pas a 1'idee de ne plus etre et ne voulaient pour moi ni du neant, ni d'une eternite ou ils ne seraient pas. (II, 30-1; my emphasis)

This anxious dismissal of change in favour of reassuring habit is part of a theme that will develop into a major leitmotif. In fact, Oubli and Habitude will be capitalized and will gradually take on the consistency of allegorical figures. Separation anxiety thus figures prominently in the larger scheme of things. It is now more evident, at this point of our reading, that the earlier scenarios of the lonely traveller and the anxious hotel guest function like a Wagnerian leitmotif, a prefiguration of things to come. This motif is given full resonance through later motivic cross-references and its insertion into the evolving mise en intrigue.8 Reading in the margins, by looking at Esquisse XXXIII, 'La Peur de 1'inconnu/ to which a note in the present context refers us, one sees even more clearly where the narrator is headed: 'Mais mon coeur n'entend guere le langage de ma raison' is a statement we encounter there; it prefigures one of the main themes at the very heart of Albertine disparue, one that the narrator of the avant-texte takes pains to further elucidate: 'notre corps est comme notre coeur, il ne sait pas entendre le

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langage de la raison et de 1'experience et est oblige d'attendre pour retrouver le calme et le bonheur que la mort, puis une nouvelle vie ait fait cette double oeuvre que je personnifiais sous le nom d'Habitude' (II, 905; my emphasis). More direct, more explicit and analytical, and at times more emotional are some of the defining characteristics of the narrating presence in the sketches; the novel's narrator is more reserved, less inclined to give us insight, ahead of time, of the overall scheme of things. The novel's narrator does, however, set in relief the hero's painful experience of recovering the past (the sudden evocation of the grandmother through involuntary memory and a dream) by giving a title to this part of the novel that announces its central episode ('Les Intermittences du coeur'). In the long passage that begins by describing how, while untying his boots, he was suddenly transported to the past, the narrator first identifies the inner turmoil as a 'souvenir involontaire' ('je retrouvais dans un souvenir involontaire et complet la realite vivante' [III, 153]), followed a few lines later by the observation 'Car aux troubles de la memoire sont liees les intermittences du coeur' (ibid.). Further emphasis is added when the narrator takes pains to explain this unique occurrence by introducing spatial imagery, by personifying the self, and by presenting it as a universal experience, through the inclusive pronoun nous: En tout cas si elles [past joys and sufferings] restent en nous, c'est la plupart du temps dans un domaine inconnu ou elles ne sont de nul service pour nous, et ou meme les plus usuelles sont refoulees par des souvenirs d'ordre different et qui excluent toute simultaneite avec elles dans la conscience. Mais si le cadre de sensations ou elles sont conservees est ressaisi, elles ont a leur tour ce meme pouvoir d'expulser tout ce qui leur est incompatible, d'installer seul en nous, le moi qui les vecut. (Ill, 154; my emphasis)

The explanation is then followed with a specific illustration - the present experience of affective memory - and is reinforced by another spatial metaphor translating the temporal experience into a concrete image: 'Or comme celui que je venais subitement de redevenir n'avait pas existe depuis ce soir lointain ou ma grand-mere m'avait deshabille a mon arrivee a Balbec, ce fut tout naturellement, non pas apres la journee actuelle que ce moi ignorait, mais - comme s'il y avail dans le temps des series differentes et paralleles - sans solution de continuite, tout de suite

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 59 apres le premier soir d'autrefois, que j'adherai a la minute ou ma grandmere s'etait penchee vers moi' (ibid.; my emphasis). Through spatial metaphors the narrator thus highlights the unique aspect of such temporal experiences that escape chronology; these nonlinear 'intermittences of the heart' are, as the catchy phrase tells us, rooted in affect. In a sketch corresponding to the narrative segment under discussion, the narrator is more explicit about the nature of these intermittences, insisting more than once that a prerequisite for such experiences is that one be subject once again to a framework of circumstances analogous to ones already experienced in the past ('un cadre de circonstances analogues'). In highlighting their nonlinear nature, as in the following passage, he introduces the concept of the intermittent self: 'Je les revoyais sans que rien de ma vie qui avait continue s'interposat, tout pres de moi, contre moi, sans intervalle de temps, dans 1'instant qui precedait immediatement celui ou je me trouvais. Car 1'ordre du temps est continu mais incomplet en chacun des moi intermittents que nous sommes' (III, 1035; my emphasis).9 The temporal nature of involuntary memory is thus explained in the narrative context of the second trip to Balbec, long before the more detailed treatment of such experiences in Le Temps retrouve.10 It is noteworthy that in a letter to Eugene Fasquelle in 1912, Proust describes his novel as having two volumes, to be published under the general title 'Les Intermittences du coeur,' and only renounced doing so in a letter to Grasset in 1913, because a work with a similar title had come out in the meantime. Still fond of the title, Proust considered using it for the second volume, before it finally found its place in Sodome et Gomorrhe II, as the heading for the last part of the first chapter. It is equally significant that Proust originally conceived of two parts for this section of the novel, as announced at the time of the publication of A I'ombre desjeunes filles enfleurs: 'Les Intermittences du coeur I. Je sens que j'ai perdu ma grand-mere/ and 'Les Intermittences du coeur II. Pourquoi je quitte brusquement Balbec avec la volonte d'epouser Albertine.'11 Since each one of these experiences is, in essence, an experience of separation anxiety belonging to the same emotional paradigm, as I will argue, the original layout of the novel highlighted their symmetry and common nature by juxtaposing them under the same heading. The reader now has to wait until the end of the fourth chapter of Sodome et Gomorrhe II, some three hundred and fifty pages later, for the Albertine episode, which is no longer included under a title explicitly linking it to the experience of intermittence.

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It is important to keep in mind that what the narrator refers to as 'intermittences of the heart' is, in essence, another manifestation of involuntary memory. Like other experiences of affective memory described in the novel, they are released by sensory impressions and linked to a specific experiential context. There is, however, a marked difference; 'intermittences of the heart' are unhappy memories, linked to sadness, anguish, and suffering, whereas other experiences of involuntary memory are happy ones, bringing joy, ecstasy, or bliss. It is remarkable and somewhat puzzling that the narrator only refers to the happy ones when, in Le Temps retrouve, he closely analyses a series of such experiences, explains the important role they have played in helping him find his vocation, and announces the crucial part they will play in the book he intends to write. It would seem, judging by the narrator's own aesthetic theorizing, that the unhappy intermittences of the heart would have no part in his future project. Yet one is left with quite another impression if one considers the very novel one is currently reading as the realization of the future project envisioned by the narrator. Especially in a rereading of A la recherche, it is apparent how central a role is played by those unhappy memories, referred to as intermittences, and by others that are similar in nature. The sudden remembrance of the grandmother, during the second trip to Balbec, is the first and most striking of such experiences. Most readers are sensitive to the emotional effect those pages have on them, finding them the most moving, and the least dogmatic. They are also psychologically the most convincing, since they are intimately linked to the hero-narrator's identity, the very core of his being, which, as we have seen, is rooted in the earliest experience of separation anxiety, the drame du coucher. By the time our reading has taken us to the first experience of intermittence in the Balbec hotel, it is apparent that the hero is subject to nothing less than an emotional paradigm whose nature and ramifications will be evident from subsequent experiences of similar anguish. I will be more explicit later about the psychological framework of such experiences. The point to be made now is that those unhappy experiences of involuntary memory are not something left behind or left out of the narrator's aesthetic project, as some have claimed. Quite to the contrary, they are at the very heart of the novel's mise en intrigue:12 they are what helps the hero-narrator find his very identity; moreover, they will, in turn, be the real impetus that leads to the book to be written - based as it is on the livre interieur the narrator has finally deciphered. They are also the focal point for the motivated

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm

61

reader's insight and empathy, and make for a compassionate reading to which we are attuned from the very opening pages of the novel through the first scenarios of anguish. It seems that an ethics and aesthetics of emotions is inscribed in the very fabric of the novel, a philosophy that goes far beyond the narrator's own theorizing, and that is far more touching and convincing.13 The search for times past, lost, and even wasted will primarily turn out to be a search for suffering. The role that suffering plays - especially suffering through the loss of loved ones - in the book to be written is a theme the narrator touches on more than once in Le Temps retrouve, without, however, revealing the underlying emotional structure.14 If one reads in the margins, as I have done, by consulting the sketches for Sodome et Gomorrhe, one discovers two or three passages that are much more explicit about the novel's emotional and psychological underpinnings. One of the most revealing passages is the following, since it points at the emotional complex associated with separation anxiety: 'Et cette tristesseje m'y attachais, car je sentais bien qu'elle etait la souffrance particuliere causee par le souvenir de ma grand-mere, et la preuve qu'a ces moments-la c'etait bien son souvenir que je sentais en moi. Je sentais que je ne me souviendrais vraiment d'elle que dans la douleur, et j'aurais voulu pouvoir enf oncer sans cesse plus avant en moi ce cilice pour rester en communication constante avec elle' (III, 1037; my emphasis). Separation anxiety is thus overcome by staying in touch at all cost, through suffering, a link that will be significantly reinforced when such suffering associated with the memory of loved ones is brought back to mind and given permanence through the book that will be written. Yet this is not all that is accomplished through suffering and writing the book; it also helps allay the feeling of guilt that is linked to each experience of separation anxiety, including the present one, the devastating 'intermittence du coeur.' The feeling of guilt is more predominant in the sketches, especially in evoking the grandmother through the dream sequence in Esquisse XIII.15 In this context, a few lines after the passage previously quoted, we are given further insight into the complex, intertwining emotions of such inner turmoil, revealing how suffering for the grandmother reduces the hero-narrator's feelings of guilt towards the mother: Tl me semblait que maintenant j'etais moins indigne de vivre aupres de ma mere, que je la comprendrais mieux. Toute une existence etrangere parasite qui etait venue s'ajouter a mon ame s'etait momentanement effacee. Et a sa place des souvenirs dechirants mais adores, avaient remonte du neant, et pressaient tendrement mon front

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saignant mais rajeuni de leur couronne d'epines et defleurs' (III, 1038; my emphasis). The image of the bleeding forehead and the crown of thorns is not only a striking hyperbole for the suffering caused by the memories that tear him apart ('souvenirs dechirants'), but is also a telling analogy to Christ suffering on the cross, and hence emblematic of the atonement of sins - another emphatic reference to his feeling of guilt. Equally striking is the juxtaposition of contrasting modifiers - 'painful and adored/ 'thorns and flowers': 'des souvenirs dechirants et adores ... pressaient tendrement mon front saignant mais rajeuni de leur couronne d'epines et de fleurs.' What may at first seem like a succession of oxymorons is, in essence, closely linked through affect; it is nothing less than an emotional necessity: pain is revered because it keeps up communication with the departed; moreover, it helps overcome unbearable feelings of guilt, guilt generated not only in one but in two maternal relationships - an emotional transfer whose flexibility will be even more apparent in subsequent experiences of separation anxiety. Consulting the sketches in a rereading of A la recherche is revealing not only because some of the underlying psychological connections are treated more explicitly, but also because the transfer of material from mother to grandmother or to Albertine is instructive: it confirms the close affective link, in the hero's emotional memory, between these maternal figures. For instance, in the final version of Sodome et Gomorrhe, an important passage highlighting the emotional link between the present experience of suffering and previous, similar experiences of separation anxiety is not included though it figures prominently in Esquisse XIII, devoted to 'Les Intermittences du coeur.' This information is withheld until the hero gains insight, in Albertine disparue, through the most devastating instance of separation anxiety he will ever experience, when Albertine leaves him. It is eye-opening to look at the earlier passage, which, though the wording is different, contains the key to what will turn out to be the protagonist's central emotional paradigm; it also introduces the metaphorical seedling for what will, in the later passage, develop into a memorable image of suffering: Toutes les angoisses que j'avais pu avoir d'etre sans elle, soir a Combray, les jours de depart, quand j'avais peur pour sa sante, vinrent de seconde en seconde sans qu'en moi je les reconnaisse grossir celle que j'eprouvais en ce moment, en firent une detresse comme je n'en avais connue de toute ma vie et de toute la puissance infinie de laquelle je n'aspirai plus qu'a 1'avoir pres de moi comme autrefois' (III, 1034). The verb grossir is the metaphorical kernel that will later develop into the image of the

Separation Anxiety: An Emotional Paradigm 63 unbearable masse homogene in Albertine disparue.16 In the present context, it is introduced to express in concrete terms the cumulative pain caused by similar attacks of separation anxiety suffered previously in Combray and at the railroad station, when the hero had to do without his grandmother; later in the novel, the same instances will be cited to describe his anguish at being separated from the mother.17 Not only are the three women interchangeable in this emotional paradigm, the hero is subject to the same kind of suffering each time, a pain that will turn out to be unbearable, since it is intensified through each recurrence.18 It is precisely this intensely felt pain that will be the very incentive perhaps even more so than the happy memories - for the hero-narrator's vocation, the writing of the book. The real search of A la recherche du temps perdu may well turn out to be a search for past suffering; once found again, it not only brings back to mind and heart his former self, but it also puts him in touch with loved ones lost. Writing about what has thus been recovered is, moreover, a mode of expiation, a way of overcoming guilt.19

CHAPTER FOUR

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships

Les etres nous sont d'habitude si indifferents que, quand nous avons mis dans 1'un d'eux de telles possibilites de souffrance et de joie pour nous, il nous semble appartenir a un autre univers. A la recherche du temps perdu, 1,232

There is no escaping from the acute pain of separation anxiety. It will leave its mark on all future relationships. The hero will experience his most intense pain yet once he has fallen in love with Albertine. First seen from a distance as one of the most enigmatic and enticing of a group of young girls encountered on the beach, he associates her with the beauty of this outdoor setting: a young woman in bloom against the backdrop of the sea.1 When later he sees her occasionally in Paris, he soon finds her to be unpredictable and unreliable. We are reminded of the drame du coucher of the Combray era, when the narrator describes the hero's growing anguish in this relationship. Particularly telling is a passage in Sodome et Gomorrhe II that anticipates the emotional association between mother and Albertine. This privileged insight into future developments not only lends them added emphasis but is also an important framing device, both for viewing the hero's relationship with Albertine as it evolves in time and for better understanding the narrator's retrospective appraisal of his life. This prefiguration of things to come is interpolated into a passage describing how anxiously he awaits Albertine's arrival until late into the night, fully aware that her excuse is nothing but a lie: En entendant ces mots d'excuse, prononces comme si elle n'allait pas

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships 65 venir, je sentis qu'au desir de revoir la figure veloutee qui deja a Balbec dirigeait toutes mes journees vers le moment ou, devant la mer mauve de septembre, je serais aupres de cette fleur rose, tentait douloureusement de s'unir un element bien different. Ce terrible besoin d'un etre a Combray, j'avais appris a le connaitre au sujet de ma mere, et jusqu'a vouloir mourir si elle me faisait dire par Frangoise qu'elle ne pourrait pas monter. Get effort de 1'ancien sentiment pour se combiner et ne faire qu'un element unique avec 1'autre, plus recent, et qui, lui, n'avait pour voluptueux objet que la surface coloree, la rose carnation d'une fleur de plage, cet effort aboutit souvent a ne faire (au sens chimique) qu'un corps nouveau, qui peut ne durer que quelques instants. Ce soir-la, du moins, et pour longtemps encore, les deux elements resterent dissocies. (Ill, 130; my emphasis)

Though at the end of this passage the narrator tells us that there is as yet no imminent danger, the feeling of impending doom is reinforced a few lines later when he gives us insight into the hero's disquieting intuition of future suffering brought on by his present realization that he has no hold over Albertine, that he cannot tell her lies from the truth: Tour Albertine, je sentais que je n'apprendrais jamais rien, qu'entre la multiplicite entremelee des details reels et des faits mensongers je n'arriverais jamais a me debrouiller. Et que ce serait toujours ainsi, a moins que de la mettre en prison (mais on s'evade) jusqu'a la fin. Ce soirla, cette conviction ne fit passer a travers moi qu'une inquietude, mais ou je sentais fremir comme une anticipation de longues souffrances' (III, 131; my emphasis).2 Not only is his future suffering thus twice foretold, the seed is also laid for the next volume (La Prisonniere) through the casually dismissed hypothesis of making her a prisoner. As readers, we are thus intensely involved in the kind of temporal overlay or tuilage that, according to Ricoeur, so aptly describes the Proustian narrative: first, we participate in the hero's memory image evoking the essence of what Albertine first meant to him in Balbec, onto which we project our own recollection of the description of those happy times as we remember them from reading A I'ombre des jeunesfilles enfleurs. The new image of the hero's present relationship with Albertine and his forebodings of suffering to come - made more emphatic by the reference to the kind of anguish already familiar to us from Combray - is more compelling yet in a rereading of the novel, when one knows precisely what lies in store, thus being able to confer upon the present scene the full weight of all the suffering yet to come. When the hero sees Albertine during his second stay in Balbec, their

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meetings are overshadowed by the sorrow he feels at the loss of his grandmother - a realization so forcefully impressed upon him through the experience of intermittence - and by the increasing anguish he feels as he becomes more closely involved with her. Most distressing is his growing suspicion that Albertine may be interested in, or desirable to, women. Once again, the narrator anticipates the nature and cause of his mounting anxiety - a prefiguration that functions as an important framing device as the story of their relationship unfolds: 'Je crois que je mentirais en disant que commenc,a deja la douloureuse et perpetuelle mefiance que devait m'inspirer Albertine, a plus forte raison le caractere gomorrheen, que devait revetir cette mefiance' (III, 183; my emphasis).3 Only a few pages later we are given some specific reasons for the hero's growing suspicion and are told that a new era has definitely begun, one marked by 'la curiosite douloureuse de savoir ce qu'elle avait pu faire' (III, 194). This painful curiosity will turn out to be a new and irresistible force in their relationship; it will be the pretext for another kind of drama, every bit as painful and uncontrollable as the drame du coucher, as the hero subjects Albertine to one interrogatory after another, prying into her past and her present, asking her endless questions.4 In doing so, he increases his suffering by comparing his present plight to that of Swarm's suffering through Odette, an emotional analogy that invites the motivated reader to recall the kind of pain and anxiety already familiar from previous descriptions and to bring such insights to the present scene: Je pensais alors a tout ce que j'avais appris de 1'amour de Swarm pour Odette, de la fac.on dont Swann avait ete joue toute sa vie. Au fond si je veux y penser, 1'hypothese qui me fit peu a peu construire tout le caractere d'Albertine et interpreter douloureusement chaque moment d'une vie que je ne pouvais pas controler tout entiere, ce fut le souvenir, 1'idee fixe du caractere de Mme Swann, tel qu'on m'avait raconte qu'il etait. Ces recits contribuerent a faire que dans I'avenir man imagination faisait lejeu de supposer qu'Albertine aurait pu, au lieu d'etre une jeune fille bonne, avoir la meme immoralite, la meme faculte de tromperie q'une ancienne grue, et je pensais a toutes les souffrances qui m'auraient attendu dans ce cas si j'avais jamais du 1'aimer. (Ill, 199-200; my emphasis)

Such is the power of stories - especially those about emotions and passions - in shaping our lives, a point to which I shall return. It is in and through his relationship with Albertine that the hero will

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships 67 make the most profound discoveries about the very essence of his being, thus gaining insight, however painful, into how the past has bearing on the present and what, in the present, makes him act and react. It is strong emotions and not careful reasoning that make him face the truth with the speed of lightning. The first such instance comes at the most unlikely moment, at the end of their stay together in Balbec, at a time when he thought he was growing tired of Albertine. It is during a train ride together, shortly before Albertine's stop, that the emotional upheaval takes place, just as he is wondering how and when to tell her it might be better not to see each other for a while. Before he knows how it happened, he finds himself on an emotional rollercoaster when he hears Albertine's seemingly casual remark - calculated to impress him that she knows Mile Vinteuil, the composer's daughter whose music he was just discussing with her. Immediately, the name Vinteuil triggers a memory image: the lesbian scene he witnessed in Combray between Mile Vinteuil and her lover. Instead of focusing on the moment of revelation and the hero's immediate reaction right then and there, the narrator, for more than a page, delves into the repercussions of such insight, evokes the past (the scene at Montjouvain), compares the hero's present situation to Swarm's, and contemplates future implications. He also slips in a few remarks and questions that reveal to the reader how closely the present experience is related to a whole emotional complex, the hero's separation anxiety: A ces mots prononces comme nous entrions en gare de Parville, si loin de Combray et de Montjouvain, si longtemps apres la mort de Vinteuil, une image s'agitait dans mon coeur, une image tenue en reserve pendant tant d'annees que meme si j'avais pu deviner en l'emmagasinant jadis qu'elle avait un pouvoir nocif, j'eusse cru qu'a la longue elle 1'avait entierement perdu; conservee au fond de moi - comme Oreste dont les dieux avaient empeche la mort pour qu'au jour designe il revint dans son pays punir le meurtre d'Agamemnon - pour mon supplice, pour mon chatiment peut-etre, qui sail? d'avoir laisse mourir ma grand-mere; surgissant tout a coup du fond de la nuit ou elle semblait a jamais ensevelie et frappant comme un Vengeur, afin d'inaugurer pour moi une vie terrible, meritee et nouvelle, peut-etre aussi pour faire eclater a mes yeux les funestes consequences que les actes mauvais engendrent indefiniment, non pas seulement pour ceux qui les ont commis, mais pour ceux qui n'ont fait, qui n'ont cru, que contempler un spectacle curieux et divertissant, comme moi, helas! en cette fin de journee lointaine a Montjouvain, cache derriere un buisson, ou (comme

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quand j'avais complaisamment ecoute le recit des amours de Swarm) j'avals dangereusement laisse s'elargir en moi la voie funeste et destinee a etre douloureuse du Savoir. (Ill, 499-500; my emphasis)

The emphasis is clearly on the hero-narrator's retrospective evaluation and analysis of the present situation. Such a complex temporal perspective makes for a more engaging reading, since the empathizing reader is now in a better position to fully understand the impact of the newly gained insight on the hero's present life as described in the pages to come, and to share in the anxious anticipation of a foreboding future. As we call to mind the Montjouvain episode and Swarm's suffering through Odette, so forcefully depicted in Du cote de chez Swann, our own emotional involvement with, and reaction to, those experiences is now superimposed on the present scene.5 Equally significant is his mentioning the feeling of guilt, which he now associates with his grandmother's death, thereby establishing an important link between this troubling event and the experience of separation anxiety, along with all the complex feelings associated with it.6 After thus explaining his painful experience from a retrospective point of view, the narrator turns his attention to how, at the moment it happened, the hero dealt with the situation at hand. When Albertine, shortly after having mentioned Mile Vinteuil, gets up to leave the train, the hero is overcome by a feeling of panic, which, having witnessed previous similar experiences, we now readily identify as another attack of separation anxiety: Albertine placee en face de moi et voyant qu'elle etait arrivee a destination, fit quelques pas du fond du wagon ou nous etions et ouvrit la portiere. Mais ce mouvement qu'elle accomplissait ainsi pour descendre me dechirait intolerablement le coeur comme si, contrairement a la position independante de mon corps que a deux pas de lui semblait occuper celui d'Albertine, cette separation spatiale, qu'un dessinateur veridique eut ete oblige defigurer entre nous, n'etait qu'une apparence et comme si, pour qui eut voulu, selon la realite veritable, redessiner les choses, il eutfallu placer maintenant Albertine non pas a quelque distance de moi, mais en moi. Elle me faisait si mal en s'eloignant que, la rattrapant, je la tirai desesperement par le bras. (Ill, 500-1; my emphasis)

By introducing the spatial analogy, the narrator translates into concrete terms a truth the baffled hero intuits but does not yet fully comprehend,

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struck by the intensity of the pain and the speed at which the change within him has taken place. Through the spatial metaphor the narrator highlights the inner transformation without identifying the emotion, thus adjusting his point of view to the hero's momentary insight. The striking and detailed description of the momentous change within allows the reader to ponder what has happened and to get a 'feel' for it. It may also bring to mind the memorable descriptions, earlier in the novel, of the hero's distress during past moments of separation anxiety, thus giving more weight to the present scene of suffering.7 In a rereading of the novel, aware of the greater suffering that yet lies in store for him, we are bound to empathize more deeply. If, by chance, we are reminded of a similar crisis in our own lives while reading the present passage, we may then find ourselves in a powerful emotional transaction, conferring the pain and anxiety of our past self onto the hero's present dilemma while, conversely, his present suffering is bound to stir up old fears and anxieties. A novel such as Proust's A la recherche is an ideal literary form for enabling us to experience such a surge of recognition and empathy, taking us as it does in its more than three thousand pages through the gradual process of how human beings develop in space and time. It takes us further in the search for human truths than does philosophy, as Martha Nussbaum so convincingly argues in comparing Plato and Proust, showing how the latter has built persuasive arguments into his novel that repeatedly remind us that 'there are no truths that can be detached from the perspective of a human life and its concrete experiences, from the experience of the peculiar sort of fragmentation and of unity that constitutes a human life in its characteristic relation to time and change.'8 In the lines following the passage under discussion, the narrator takes us step by step through the gradual process of realization. First, an impulsive reaction fuelled by the fear of separation: he tries at all cost to persuade Albertine to stay with him at the Balbec hotel. Having achieved this, he gives in to his feelings the moment he is alone and breaks down crying - a necessary release of pent-up anxiety and fear of the future. It is intuition, not reason, that gives him insight into the kind of suffering that lies in store for him, a suffering that takes concrete shape in a series of imaginary scenes that relentlessly invade his mind. Remembering Cottard's remarks about lesbian pleasures at Incarville forces him to radically revise his previous positive image of Albertine: 'Derriere Albertine je ne voyais plus les montagnes bleues de la mer, mais la chambre de Montjouvain ou elle tombait dans les bras de Mile

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Vinteuil avec ce rire ou elle faisait entendre comme le son inconnu de sa jouissance' (III, 501-2).9 This new view of Albertine is then backed up by a series of memory images from the past involving Albertine and other young women; the once seemingly innocent gestures, looks, and acts are now reinterpreted in light of the recent discovery (III, 502). There is no way, it seems, to stop this self-inflicted torture, since the pain associated with actual scenes from the past is reinforced by hypothetical imaginary scenes of Albertine's potential wrongdoing - scenarios triggered by place names and certain dates, like New Year's Day, which reminds him of his anxious feelings, on that day, in being separated from Gilberte (III, 504).10 It is not until now, after having witnessed the hero's disturbing imaginary scenes for several pages, that the reader is informed about the underlying feeling. The narrator withholds the name until it finally comes to the surface and is identified by the hero: it is love that has manifested itself through jealousy (III, 504-5 and 508). Once he has thus labelled the inner turmoil, its name is repeated several times and its nature is elucidated through references to the experience of others: the unhappy relationship of Saint-Loup and Rachel, and Swarm's suffering through Odette, both mentioned by the narrator in the same context - a kind of analogizing that will forthwith characterize the narrative of a new era in the hero's emotional life, his intense suffering through Albertine.11 He does, of course, also mine his own experience for an emotional situation similar in kind and intensity, the drame du coucher, which is brought back to mind more than once in these final pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe. The most striking is the passage where the name Trieste triggers an imaginary scene of Albertine's wrongdoings, an image so powerful that it afflicts him with the kind of anguish familiar to him since his childhood days in Combray. It is significant that the narrator makes reference to the dining-room scene in Combray and to the anxiety Odette once caused Swann, associations that are rooted in affect. The comparison between the present and similar past situations brings to the fore the feelings of exclusion and abandonment.12 Through this kind of analogizing narration, the reader's own memory of what has already been read is activated, thus bringing to the present instance the full impact of insights previously gained. The passage must be quoted in its entirety to illustrate these complex associations: C'etait de Trieste, de ce monde inconnu ou je sentais que se plaisait Albertine, ou etaient ses souvenirs, ses amities, ses amours d'enfance, que

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s'exhalait cette atmosphere hostile, inexplicable, comme celle qui montait jadis jusqu'a ma chambre de Combray, de la salle a manger oil j'entendais causer et rire avec les etrangers, dans le bruit des fourchettes, maman qui ne viendrait pas me dire bonsoir; comme celle qui avait rempli pour Swarm les maisons ou Odette allait chercher en soiree d'inconcevables joies. Ce n'etait plus comme vers un pays delicieux ou la race est pensive, les couchants dores, les carillons tristes, que je pensais maintenant a Trieste, mais comme a une cite maudite que j'aurais voulu faire bruler sur-le-champs et supprimer du monde reel. Cette ville etait enfoncee dans mon coeur comme une pointe permanente. (Ill, 505; my emphasis)

The narrator thus brings to our attention how the present experience is closely tied to the past, which shapes and illuminates it.13 By alluding to Sodom and Gomorrah, he lays the foundation for the frenetic searches - the forays into the yet unknown world of homosexuality - where the hero as young adult, feeling hopelessly excluded, will cross forbidden boundaries in pursuit of the loved one. The comparison of TriesteGomorrah to a stab in the heart is a concrete reminder of the age of suffering that has begun for the hero; one may also see in it another allusion to the suffering Christ to whom he has repeatedly been compared. Yet, in a moment of wishful thinking, he puts himself in the place of God, ready to annihilate Gomorrah by fire. It is not until some ten pages later that the narrator returns to the spatial metaphor first invoked to describe the hero's initial reaction to Albertine's revelation of her friendship with Mile Vinteuil. By now he fully realizes - having tortured himself through imaginary scenes from the past, and having, moreover, pondered similar situations in the life of others - what has happened to him. The narrator now offers a general explanation of the momentous event that took place in the train; it is nothing less than falling in love, though he does not explicitly say so: Comme la vue est un sens trompeur! Un corps humain, meme aime comme etait celui d'Albertine, nous semble, a quelques metres, a quelques centimetres, distant de nous. Et 1'ame qui est a lui de meme. Seulement, que quelque chose change violemment la place de cette ame par rapport a nous, nous montre qu'elle aime d'autres etres et pas nous, alors aux battements de notre coeur disloque, nous sentons que c'est, non pas a quelques pas de nous, mais en nous, qu'etait la creature cherie. En nous, dans des regions plus ou moins superficielles. Mais les mots: 'Cette amie, c'est Mile Vinteuil'

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avaient ete le Sesame, que j'eusse ete incapable de trouver moi-meme, qui avait fait entrer Albertine dans la profondeur de mon coeur dechire. Et la porte qui s'etait renfermee sur elle, j'aurais pu chercher pendant cent ans sans savoir comment on pourrait la rouvrir. (Ill, 512; my emphasis)

The emphasis given the initial sentence by the exclamation ('Comme la vue est un sens trompeur!') calls attention to the striking discovery that has been made and conveys the importance the narrator still attaches to it in retrospect. We also learn, a few lines later, that it is the fear of losing the person we are with that brings about the overwhelming transformation.14 As motivated readers following closely the hero's emotional life, we will be quick to recognize the underlying emotional structure already in place since the childhood days of the drame du coucher. Though the narrator does not explicitly point out such a connection, it is confirmed by further details in the next two sentences: 'Ces mots, j'avais cesse de les entendre un instant pendant qu'Albertine etait aupres de moi tout a 1'heure. En I'embrassant comme j'embrassais ma mere a Combray pour calmer mon angoisse, je croyais presque a 1'innocence d'Albertine ou du moins je ne pensais pas avec continuite a la decouverte que j'avais faite de son vice' (III, 512; my emphasis). The association between mother and Albertine is not a fleeting one; it will repeatedly be recalled, here and in the next two volumes.15 It shows that loved ones do not exist in their own right as separate entities or 'love objects,' but are instead part of a complex emotional structure reaching as far back as earliest childhood. Such engrained emotional templates bring with them, unbeknownst to us, patterns of behaviour whose natural impulse we cannot escape. It seems that even the narrator's descriptive analogies are part of such recurring patterns. For instance, when, in the passage under discussion, he describes his future pain with analogies reminiscent of Christ's suffering ('mon sanglant sacrifice/ 'du sang de ma plaie,' 'barbele de flammes comme dans les tableaux'), one may well wonder if these recurrences are to be attributed to an unconscious repetition compulsion on the narrator's part or whether one should see them as a hint to the reader intended to thus highlight the similarities between various experiences of separation anxiety.16 As the hero is repeatedly subjected to the same patterns of behaviour in his relationship with Albertine, and as the narrator continues to draw parallels between the present and previous intimate relationships, it becomes evident that such associations are emblematic of psychological and emotional forces at the very core of his being. It is

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships 73 these forces that constitute the very essence of the hero-narrator's identity. Once the hero himself is made aware of this through another traumatic event - Albertine's sudden departure - the narrator will be more explicit about the permanent aspects of the self that shape his identity. It is important to recall the trajectory that leads to such a revelation. First, the hero leaves no stone unturned to hold on to Albertine after learning of her friendship with Mile Vinteuil: he keeps Albertine from getting off the train, brings her back to his hotel, then persuades her to come live with him in Paris in a closely guarded relationship that is described in detail in La Prisonniere. When he is overcome by anguish in the evening, it is Albertine's kiss, likened to the mother's good-night kiss in Combray, that brings him comfort. Once he is reassured, he begins to imagine how he might be freer and happier without Albertine. He then falls into a pattern of play-acting where he threatens to break off the relationship, a mode of behaviour the narrator humorously refers to as the 'comedie de la rupture,' an expression that, in expanding the theatre metaphor, is reminiscent of his earlier treatment of the nighttime anguish in Combray as the 'drame du coucher.'17 The hero's illusion that he might do better without Albertine is suddenly shattered, at the very end of La Prisonniere, when he finds out that she has left him. The impact of the news is keenly felt, since it is introduced into the context of an ironic situation where the hero, elated by imagining his future freedom, is in the midst of making plans to travel without Albertine. He hears the news from the housekeeper Franchise, for whom he had sent in order to ask her for an up-to-date train schedule. Suddenly immobilized by an uncontrollable pain, he is unable to tell her why he sent for her. He is surprised by his own reaction and soon realizes that the initial shock, which was entirely physical, has led to a shock of recognition: the important insight that he was deluded to think he could live without Albertine. The narrator takes us through this experience step by step, first recording verbatim what Franchise actually said, followed by the hero's immediate reaction: 'Ce matin a huit heures Mile Albertine m'a demande ses malles, j'osais pas y refuser, j'avals peur que Monsieur me dispute si je venais 1'eveiller. J'ai eu beau la catechismer, lui dire d'attendre une heure parce que je pensais toujours que Monsieur allait sonner. Elle n'a pas voulu, elle m'a laisse cette lettre pour Monsieur, et a neuf heures elle est partie.' Et alors - tant on peut ignorer ce qu'on a en soi, puisque j'etais persuade de mon indiffe-

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rence pour Albertine - mon souffle fut coupe, je tins mon coeur de mes deux mains, brusquement mouillees par une certaine sueur que je n'avais jamais connue depuis la revelation que mon amie m'avait faite dans le petit tram relativement a 1'amie de Mile Vinteuil, sans que je pusse dire autre chose que: 'Ah! tres bien, Franchise, merci, laissez-moi un instant, je vais sonner tout a 1'heure.' (Ill, 915)

As one takes in the details of Franchise's news, one foresees the pain it will cause: Albertine's refusal to listen and wait, her asking for her trunks all point to one thing, her leaving for good. One is, moreover, likely to feel the weight of the frustration the hero must feel as he listens to the loyal servant's explanation of how she protected him from being disturbed, letting him sleep instead of warning him - an ironic situation par excellence. The narrator is silent on this account, focusing instead on what is to be learned from this experience, namely, that we tend to delude ourselves ('rant on peut ignorer ce qu'on a en soi, puisque j'etais persuade de mon indifference pour Albertine'). Only then does he turn his attention to the immediate reaction to the bad news (breathlessness and sweaty palms), a clear indication that the body's memory works far more quickly than the mind's.18 The striking image 'je tins mon coeur de mes deux mains' tells us in vivid terms where the pain has struck. How efficiently such memory works is illustrated when the narrator compares the present physical reaction to a specific instance of the past. By reminding us of an analogous situation - the moment of Albertine's revelation, in the train, that she was befriended by Mile Vinteuil - the narrator appeals to our memory as well. The full impact of the scene alluded to, with all its implications, can now be transferred onto the hero's present experience. An empathetic reader, fully acquainted with the protagonist's emotional makeup, will be quick to make the connection between this and previous experiences of separation anxiety, and will, therefore, be able to fully assess the suffering.19 It is by now quite evident that the hero's love for Albertine is closely tied to the fear of losing her. It seems that such reader awareness is also central to the narrator's design in telling his tale, since the hero is repeatedly subjected to separation anxiety and since the narrator anticipates, recalls, and compares such instances, thus adding emphasis through repetition and analogy.20 The opening paragraph of Albertine disparue continues to describe, as if there were no break between this and the previous volume, the hero's reaction to Albertine's sudden departure. Since at this point of the

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novel readers are confronted with quite different texts depending on whether one has chosen the shorter or longer version, it is important to take into account these differences.21 I do not intend to examine the pros and cons of choosing either one, but will pay attention to crucial differences between the two in those parts of the novel relevant to the present discussion: the hero's attacks of separation anxiety and their repercussions. I will thus engage in a palimpsestic reading in comparing editions, occasionally adding yet another layer by referring to passages in the sketches, published in the Pleiade edition, that are pertinent to the present analysis. The initial sentence of the short version was added by Proust's own hand on the typescript on which this edition is based: 'Ainsi ce que j'avais cru n'etre rien pour moi, c'etait tout simplement toute ma vie! Comme on s'ignore.' This elliptical opening sentence, beginning in medias res without any explanation, is followed by Tl fallait faire cesser ma souffranee immediatement' (481). There are thus no transitional elements to orient the reader.22 Quite a different experience lies in store for the reader who opens the longer version of the Pleiade edition. It begins with a brief reminder of Franchise's heartbreaking news and of the hero's situation as described at the end of La Prisonniere. Equally significant is the generalizing remark, from the narrator's point of view, which is interpolated immediately after the initial sentence, thus foregrounding a universal law derived from individual experience before going into the details of the hero's suffering: 'Mademoiselle Albertine est partie!' Comme la souffrance va plus loin en psychologic que la psychologic! II y a un instant, en train de m'analyser, j'avais cru que cette separation sans s'etre revus etait justement ce que je desirais, et comparant la mediocrite des plaisirs que me donnait Albertine a la richesse des desirs qu'elle me privait de realiser,23 je m'etais trouve subtil, j'avais conclu que je ne voulais plus la voir, que je ne 1'aimais plus. Mais ces mots: 'Mademoiselle Albertine est partie' venaient de produire dans mon coeur une souffrance telle que je sentais que je ne pourrais pas y resister plus longtemps. Ainsi ce que j'avais cru n'etre rien pour moi, c'etait tout simplement toute ma vie. Comme on s'ignore. II fallait faire cesser immediatement ma souffrance ...24 (IV, 3)

The opening lines of the long version thus stand in sharp contrast to the much briefer, enigmatic beginning of the shorter version, which, by

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immediately focusing on the hero's reaction to the bad news and its repercussions, draws attention to the personal and sets a quicker narrative pace. In the long version, the focus shifts, in the very next sentence, to one of the narrator's characteristic interpolations of a general truth: 'Comme la souffranee va plus loin en psychologic que la psychologie!' This assessment of the situation is backed up, a paragraph later, by an even more striking and longer explanation: Mais notre intelligence, si grande soit-elle, ne peut apercevoir les elements qui la composent et qui restent insoupc,onnes tant que, de 1'etat volatil ou ils subsistent la plupart du temps, un phenomene capable de les isoler ne leur a pas fait subir un commencement de solidification. Je m'etais trompe en croyant voir clair dans mon coeur. Mais cette connaissance que ne m'avaient pas donnee les plus fines perceptions de 1'esprit, venait de m'etre apporte, dure, eclatante, etrange, comme un sel cristallise, par la brusque reaction de la douleur.25 (IV, 4)

This passage is one of the most striking, since it introduces metaphoric language to render in vivid, concrete terms the powerful impact of emotional knowledge. The image of crystallization calls attention to the sudden change in perception and the tangible nature of the pain. The narrator of the long version thus highlights, from the very start, what will turn out to be one of the central themes of Albertine disparue, namely, that emotions as instruments of cognition are far more subtle than intelligence or reason could ever be. In doing so, he also calls attention to himself, a retrospectively wiser and more analytical presence.26 There is thus an important shift in focus when one compares the two editions: the long version highlights and anticipates, from the narrator's point of view, an important insight yet to be learned by the afflicted hero. To follow more closely the hero's emotional process as it develops in time, it is important to return to the opening paragraph of Albertine disparue. In the short version, based on the Mauriac typescript, the two initial sentences, as already mentioned, briefly recall the hero's sudden insight into his soul. After this stunning realization brought on by the bad news, there is an important change in focus to the hero's inner need to be comforted. In this his deepest hour of need what instantaneously comes to mind are maternal words of consolation: Ainsi ce que j'avais cru n'etre rien pour moi, c'etait tout simplement toute ma vie! Comme on s'ignore. II fallait faire cesser ma souffrance

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships 77 immediatement; tendre pour moi-meme comme ma mere pour ma grandmere mourante, je me disais, avec cette meme bonne volonte qu'on a de ne pas laisser souffrir ce qu'on aime: 'Aie une seconde de patience, on va te laisser trouver un remede, sois tranquille, on ne va pas te laisser souffrir comme cela. Tout cela n'a aucune importance parce que je vais la faire revenir tout de suite. Je vais examiner les moyens, mais de toute fac.on elle sera ici ce soir. Par consequent inutile de se tracasser.'27

Thus, in a moment of need, the mother's presence reasserts itself through the consoling words she once spoke. By appropriating her comforting words - originally addressed not to him but to the grandmother - the hero provides for himself some much-needed mothering. Implicit in this passage is also the underlying association between the three women in the hero's experience of separation anxiety: the grandmother replacing the mother, both eventually replaced by Albertine, an exchange of roles that makes substitution plausible. It also tells us something about the hero's most intimate desires; he is attuned to those tender relationships that correspond to his own needs; engrained in his memory are those scenes that mirror his most ardent wishes. This, in essence, is the sentimental education on which he draws in his hour of need. The mother's words are a metonymic link to a previous scene that not only establishes reassuring contact with the loved ones but also supplies a proven remedy and a model of behaviour: a lesson in tenderness and reassurance to conquer the ultimate fear of separation, death. In another moment of crisis, some fifty pages later when the hero learns of Albertine's death, words once spoken by the mother again come to mind, thus alerting the reader, through repetition of the same pattern of behaviour, that this kind of transfer from one experience to another fulfils an important emotional need: J'avais moins besoin de sa fidelite que de son retour. Et si ma raison pouvait impunement le mettre quelquefois en doute, mon imagination ne cessait pas un instant de me le representer. Instinctivement je passai ma main sur mon cou, sur mes levres, qui se voyaient embrasses par elle depuis qu'elle etait partie et qui ne le seraient jamais plus, je passai ma main sur eux, comme maman m'avait caresse a la mart de ma grand-mere en me disant: 'Mon pauvre petit ta grand-mere qui t'aimait tant ne t'embrassera plus.' (541; my emphasis)

This is an even more striking example of how the past intrudes into the present, recapturing and re-enacting an experience that is rooted in an

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emotional network. In the present instance, the association is acted out with words and gestures from the past superimposed on the present, while the hero, in a kind of dedoublement, is at once his suffering self and his consoling mother.28 This kind of re-enacting of the past is spontaneous; it is intuited, not reasoned. The hero may even be under the spell of a repetition compulsion, since after having invoked the mother's consoling words, he comes to the decision that something must be done immediately. There is a striking similarity between the present plan of action and the one resorted to long ago, in Combray: instead of taking things into his own hands, he depends on others. In Combray it was Franchise who was charged with carrying a note to his mother, in Paris it is his friend SaintLoup who is to search for Albertine: 'Je ne pensais qu'a une chose, charger un autre de cette recherche; cet autre fut Saint-Loup, qui consentit' (496). As was the case in Combray, once a decision has been made, he is overcome with joy: 'L'anxiete de tant de jours remise a un autre me donna de la joie et je me tremoussai, sur du succes, les mains redevenues brusquement seches comme autrefois et n'ayant plus cette sueur dont Franchise m'avait mouille en me disant: "Mademoiselle Albertine est partie"' (496).29 Once again, physical symptoms accompany a sudden change in emotions ('les mains redevenues brusquement seches'). Through the refrain of Franchise's bad news ('Mademoiselle Albertine est partie') and the brief reminder of his immediate physical reaction ('n'ayant plus cette sueur dont Franchise m'avait mouille'), the narrator calls attention to the causal relationship between emotions and sensory impressions. ^nu That emotions play a crucial role in the search for the past and that discoveries thus made lead to self-knowledge is the most important revelation in Albertine disparue. The narrator makes this point emphatically through explicit statements and through repeated associations between present and similar past experiences. In doing so, he questions intelligence and subordinates it to another power: Tintelligence n'est pas 1'instrument le plus subtil, le plus puissant, le plus approprie pour saisir le Vrai... C'est la vie qui peu a peu, cas par cas, nous permet de remarquer que ce qui est le plus important pour notre coeur, ou pour notre esprit, ne nous est pas appris par le raisonnement mais par des puissances autres' (485).31 The powerful effect of emotional knowledge and the insight to which it leads is highlighted in the following passage where, significantly, the reader is reminded once again of the drame du coucher. The association

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between the present experience and a previous similar one is emblematic of psychological and emotional forces at work that constitute the very core of the hero-narrator's identity: Pour se representer une situation inconnue 1'imagination emprunte des elements connus et a cause de cela ne se la represente pas. Mais la sensibilite, meme la plus physique, regoit comme le sillon de la foudre la signature originale et longtemps indelebile de 1'evenement nouveau. Et j'osais a peine me dire que si j'avais prevu ce depart j'aurais peut-etre ete incapable de me le representer dans son horreur ... Que le desir de Venise etait loin de moi maintenant! Comme autrefois a Combray celui de connaitre Mme de Guermantes, quand venait 1'heure ou je ne tenais plus qu'a une seule chose, avoir maman dans ma chambre, Et c'etaient bien en effet toutes les inquietudes eprouvees depuis mon enfance qui, a 1'appel de 1'angoisse nouvelle, avaient accouru la renforcer, s'amalgamer a elle en une masse homogene qui m'etouffait. (486)

The narrator's detailed description of this inner event, emphatically underscored through the translation of emotions into concrete images ('sillon de la foudre'; 's'amalgamer en une masse homogene'), and his emotional outcry in remembering his sudden insight as if it were today ('Que le desir de Venise etait loin de moi maintenant!') make it evident that this experience is still very important to him, that he still feels the impact as he empathizes with his younger self. It seems likely that the narrator is fully aware only in retrospect of the significant insight to be gained from this experience, namely, that layers of affect structure our emotional life, and that similar experiences have a cumulative, intensifying effect. It is this discovery that the personification of inquietudes and the metaphor of the ever-growing homogenous mass so strikingly translate. How the pain of separation is thus intensified is made explicit in the sentence following the passage just quoted: 'ce coup physique au coeur que donne une telle separation et qui, par cette terrible puissance d'enregistrement qu'a le corps, fait de la douleur quelque chose de contemporain a toutes les epoques de notre vie ou nous avons souffert' (486). The knowledge the narrator has derived from this and similar experiences, the one he offers the reader as a general truth, is nothing less than an emotional paradigm. By inviting us, through the inclusive nous, to mine our own experience for similar discoveries, the narrator engages us in an interactive process that gives further weight to this newly won insight, an insight whose full importance is yet to be re-

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vealed. Moreover, the reference to Combray enables readers to fill in the emotional association set up by the narrator with their own memory of the vividly described bedtime drama. Such an intensifying effect through the memory of what has already been read must also be reckoned with if one has allowed oneself to read in the margins by consulting the sketches published in the Pleiade edition. Of particular interest are those sketches that are linked to the opening pages of Albertine disparue, since they give further insight into the hero-narrator's discovery of his emotional make-up.32 It is striking that as many as five different versions of the hero's sudden insight through suffering are included in Esquisse I. In one version, the analogy to the drame du coucher is given a more detailed treatment and is backed up by an additional instance of the hero's separation anxiety: the scene at the railroad station where, just before the young boy's departure for Balbec, his mother told him that she was not coming along. In this version, the cumulative effect of anguish is described as follows: Vidant mon coeur de tout ce qui 1'avait rempli sans qu'on put plus s'y reposer que dans une maison ou tout est deja parti pour la gare, un jour de depart, revenant en foule pour s'amalgamer en une masse homogene, a chaque instant grossissante, qui creusait ma poitrine jusqu'a [un mot illisible] profondeur et la remplissait a eclater' (IV, 630). It is noteworthy that the metaphor masse homogene already has a central function in conveying the nature of the pain. In fact, it is more developed here, illustrating the dramatic consequences of the expanding volume.33 The extent of the descent into the self and the precise nature of the emotional recall are evident from references to specific experiences (Combray, Balbec). The reader's emotional involvement is reinforced through the imagined scene of the deserted house, a dramatic rendering of the hero's utter desolation. This scene is likely to resonate, in the reader's memory, with similar ones encountered earlier in the novel, some reaching as far back as the opening paragraph of 'Combray/ where the anxiety motif is first introduced through the scenario of the lonely nighttime traveller, an overture to the soon-to-come drame du coucher.34 Images of the formation or expansion of solids are poetic constants in A la recherche and are repeatedly associated with intense suffering. Besides translating the deep-rooted anguish of separation anxiety, as in the example under discussion, such images are also introduced to convey the pain inflicted by jealousy, as in the following passage from the short version of Albertine disparue: 'ces intervalles qu'il y avait alors entre ses visites et qui, faisant surgir Albertine au bout de plusieurs

Separation Anxiety in Love Relationships 81 semaines du sein d'une vie inconnue que je n'essayais pas de posseder, assuraient mon calme en empechant les velleites sans cesse interrompues de ma jalousie de se conglomerer, defaire bloc dans mon coeur' (548; my emphasis). Readers of 'Un amour de Swann' will be quick to recognize the translation of unbearable jealousy into images of an expanding mass that threatens to break the heart. Such recurring metaphors encourage a comparative reading between Swann and Albertine disparue by highlighting similarities between the hero's relationship with Albertine and Swann's suffering through Odette. Equally important is the role of such imagery in emphasizing the close connection between jealousy and separation anxiety by concretely illustrating how the child's anguish is absorbed into future love relationships. All this is part of Proustian metaphoric narration: it is metaphoric not only in that it introduces figurative language that takes the reader from one semantic domain to another, but also in setting up various associations that invite a back-and-forward scanning of the text. Such associations and the cumulative effect of the metaphors that function as poetic constants in the context of what will turn out to be the hero-narrator's central emotional paradigm, separation anxiety, are felt even more strongly by those readers who have ventured into the Esquisses co-ordinated with the narrative segments describing the experience of intermittence. There are some striking disoveries in reading Esquisse XIII ('Les Intermittences du coeur'), where certain descriptions seem to be the avant-texte to the present passage under discussion from Albertine disparue. The major difference, in these earlier scenarios of separation anxiety, is that the grandmother takes the place of both Albertine and the mother, as in the following passage where the hero's anguish is caused by a dream during which he cannot prevent his grandmother from boarding the train: Toutes les angoisses que j'avais pu avoir d'etre sans elle, soir a Combray, les jours de depart, quand j'avais peur pour sa sante, vinrent de seconde en seconde sans qu'en moi je les reconnaisse grossir celle que j'eprouvais en ce moment, en firent une detresse comme je n'en avais connue de toute ma vie et de toute la puissance infinie de laquelle je n'aspirai plus qu'a 1'avoir pres de moi comme autrefois' (III, 1034; my emphasis). The similarity between this passage and the corresponding one in Albertine disparue is striking: the same cumulative impact of past and present anguish rendered concrete (grossir), and the references to specific past events, including the drame du coucher.35 Some ten pages later, in the same sketch, similar imagery and references to his own past are introduced when the

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hero once again feels abandoned, this time because the grandmother is going on vacation without him: 'La souffrance que j'eprouvais alors n'etait pas une souffrance inventee; gonflant 1'image de ma grand-mere d'un etouffement que j'avais vraiment ressenti, c'etait 1'angoisse que j'avais cue la veille du premier depart pour Querqueville quand ma mere m'avait annonce la veille qu'elle ne viendrait pas avec nous, qu'elle passerait les vacances avec mon pere' (III, 1043).36 The emotional dynamics of these relationships and the nature of the pain are thus quite similar from one instance to the next. It seems that the paradigm was already in place for an earlier part of the novel, where it was intended to describe the boy's intense relationship with the grandmother. Only a name and place had to be changed to adapt it to the later context of Albertine disparue. This kind of interchangeability, in the context of separation anxiety, stresses the kinship, from the heronarrator's perspective, between mother, grandmother, and Albertine a close bond whose recognition will also lead him to insight into his own identity. There is a revealing passage, in one of the preparatory sketches for Albertine disparue, where the narrator points out that what really matters are not individual people or specific circumstances, but rather those inner 'emotional models' or paradigms: 'Et je n'eprouve pas de remords de cet oubli de ma grand-mere comme si en effet les etres n'existaient pas, mais seulement en nous certains modeles de sentiments, notamment cet amour familial que j'avais eprouve pour ma grand-mere et - quoique different - pour Albertine, et si ce n'etait pas mal d'oublier ma grand-mere puisque en rendant ce culte a Albertine je le rendais en moi a ce meme modele d'amour familial' (IV, Esquisse IX, 661; my emphasis). The fact that Albertine is included in this 'family affair' sheds light on previous and later associations between the three maternal figures in his life - mother, grandmother, and Albertine - and explains why one may be substituted for the other.37 The repetition of the same pattern of behaviour at moments of intense suffering induced by anguish, and the narrator's repeated use of the same or similar images to highlight such despair, have a cumulative effect on the reader. Not only does repetition command attention, it also enhances the reality effect: since the hero undergoes the same experience several times, and since the narrator describes those experiences in similar terms, explicitly pointing out, moreover, the close connection between them, the familiarity of the deja vu has an authenticating function that is persuasive. Such identification of the same and similar on the narrator's and the reader's part strengthens the bond between

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reader and text and makes for more active participation in the novel's mise en intrigue. Not only does a present situation acquire added meaning against the backdrop of what went before, earlier incidents are given significance retrospectively, thus involving readers in a kind of temporal overlay or tuilage through both anticipation and what Proust's narrator so aptly refers to as 'retroaction,' a reinterpretation of the past in light of the present.38 As the passage we are currently reading resonates with others already encountered earlier, we too bring the cumulative effect of those passages and our reaction to them to the present scene. Thus, time effects are made palpable through the narrator's technique and the reader's involvement in the text.

CHAPTER FIVE

Narrative Identity

Nothing that ever existed in the unconscious completely loses its influence on the personality. Melanie Klein, Envy and Gratitude

The hero's central discovery, in Albertine disparue, is nothing less than insight into the very core of his being. The loss of Albertine is the price he had to pay for such self-knowledge. It is this important discovery that the short version of the text, based on the Mauriac typescript, sets in relief, Proust having eliminated all that is extraneous. These revisions are by far the most significant and extensive in the genesis of the novel, considerably altering the shape and impact of the narrative. B foregrounding the intensity of emotions and the insight to which they lead, Proust gave a different perspective to his tale, one that, in turn, has repercussions on the novel as a whole and the reader's involvement with the text. It thus matters whether one reads Albertine disparue in the long or in the short version. The most significant change is the enormous cut, on the Mauriac typescript, of some two hundred and fifty pages in the middle of Albertine disparue, preceded by a brief but significant addition.1 This addition and a change of place names in the telegram announcing Albertine's death both give proof of her lesbian interests. This has important consequences: the new information heightens the hero's suffering. It also allows Proust to cut a considerable part of the narrative, eliminating the repeated quests in search of discovering the truth about Albertine's sexual preferences.2 These changes are significant, as Nathalie Mauriac has pointed out,

Narrative Identity 85 since they introduce an altogether new unravelling of the lesbian plot whose groundwork had been laid in Sodome et Gomorrhe II and in La Prisonniere. Moreover, the passage in question that was added provides readers with another instance of the hero's intense suffering through a painful memory triggered by emotions, a recall that, in turn, reactivates our own memory of what has been read before: Ces mots: 'au bord de la Vivonne/ ajoutaient quelque chose de plus atroce a mon desespoir. Car cette coincidence qu'elle m'eut dit dans le petit tram qu'elle etait amie de Mile Vinteuil, et que 1'endroit ou elle etait depuis qu'elle m'avait quitte et ou elle avait trouve la mort hit le voisinage de Montjouvain, cette coincidence ne pouvait etre fortuite, un eclair jaillissait entre ce Montjouvain raconte dans le chemin de fer et cette Vivonne involontairement avouee dans le telegramme de Mme Bontemps. Et c'etait done le soir ou j'etais alle chez les Verdurin, le soir ou je lui avals dit vouloir la quitter, qu'elle m'avait menti!3

The earlier incident recalled in this passage is important for hero and reader alike. It is the catalyst of all his suffering through Albertine and the first moment of insight into his true relationship with her. It is also the narrative kernel for the rest of Sodome et Gomorrhe II, for all of La Prisonniere and Albertine disparue. Through this additional piece of information ('au bord de la Vivonne'), the hero is subjected not only to the pain previously felt at the initial discovery of Albertine's acquaintance with Mile Vinteuil, but is shaken by a sudden insight that strikes him like lightning ('un eclair jaillissait entre ce Montjouvain ... et cette Vivonne'), as he reinterprets the past event once obscured by lies. Woven into the same passage is the narrator's point of view, calling attention to the growing despair as he follows step by step the hero's logic of discovery, its sudden crystallization and solution, and the emotional impact of the event, emphasized by the exclamation mark at the end of this passage. The narrated monolgue aptly translates the dual but consonant perspectives of both hero and narrator. Superimposed on this dual perspective is the reader's own view, not only as it is shaped by the narrator's present sympathetic narration but, more important, as it has evolved, over the course of reading, from one scene of suffering to the next. Thus, the full force of the cumulative effect on the reader is brought to the present discovery. It is, then, through the cumulative impact of recall and associations that the narrator involves us in the gradual discovery of an emotional

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paradigm. Though he never explicitly names it, it is at the core of the hero's life and it occupies a central place in the narrative. It is brought to the hero-narrator's attention through strong emotions, accompanied by physical symptoms that lead to awareness through sudden insight that is compared to the speed of lightning, to instantaneous precipitation, or to a threateningly expanding mass. Insight thus comes through emotions and sensations, through a surge of affect, not through reason or intelligence. Thinking and imagining only lead to self-deception in the Proustian universe, as was quite evident the morning the musing hero, believing that he had grown tired of Albertine, imagines taking a trip without her, only to be shocked into awareness, through physical symptoms (short breath, sweaty palms) and a bursting heart ('une masse homogene qui m'etouffait'), when he hears Franchise's devastating news, which will haunt him, like a refrain ('Mademoiselle Albertine est partie'), an experience readers share while repeatedly coming across the same phrase in subsequent pages. In discussing the Proustian hero's sudden insight through Albertine's departure from a philosopher's point of view, Martha Nussbaum argues that certainty in the knowledge thus gained is similar to Zeno's belief in knowledge through cataleptic impressions. These are, as she explains, 'certain special perceptual impressions: those which, by their own internal character, their own experienced quality, certify their own veracity. From (or in) assent to such impressions, we get the cataleptic condition, a condition of certainty and confidence from which nothing can dislodge us.'4 It is her impression that the Proustian narrator, in stressing how the sheer surprise, force, and particularity of such impressions lead to the truth about ourselves, is working out an analogue to Zeno's view of insight into our inner world.5 Whereas Zeno relies on perceptual impressions in the discovery of truth, such impressions are, as Nussbaum points out, primarily emotional in the Proustian universe, with the emphasis on suffering through anguish. Yet sensory impressions too play a crucial role, as is evident from close scrutiny of the hero-narrator's suffering through anguish in A la recherche. Not only does the Proustian hero find out in a flash of insight brought on by suffering that he cannot live without Albertine, he also is put in touch with a permanent part of his innermost self: separation anxiety. By taking us through time and space in over three thousand pages, Proust's narrator, through repetition and reflection in the back-andforward scanning of his life, gives us a feeling for the biorhythms and the cumulative impact of such emotional paradigms. He does, more-

Narrative Identity 87 over, involve us emotionally through a compelling style, making feelings palpable through concrete images and dramatic scenarios, through changes in point of view and through direct contact with inner voices and character speech, all of which give a specific human context to the psychological insights being discovered. Readers who are sensitive to such modulations or who have discovered such patterns in their own lives will, moreover, bring such lived evidence to the reading of the novel. Those, like Martha Nussbaum, who are familiar with philosophical theories of emotions will find further evidence that substantiates the treatment of emotions in A la recherche, thus confirming the undeniable links, in this novel, between life and art, between fiction and the truths it is able to convey. Yet this is not the only reason why Proust's novel captured the philosopher's attention, made a lasting impression on her, and compelled her to write about it by showing how a novelist's exploration of inner life gets us further than a philosophical treatise: 'To show these ideas adequately in a text, we seem to require a text that shows a temporal sequence of events (that has a plot), that can represent the complexities of a concrete human relationship, that can show both denial and yielding; that gives no definitions and allows the mysterious to remain so. Could any non-narrative text do all this?'6 The answer is, most likely, 'No' - an anwer that will seem even more plausible when one looks into the behavioural sciences for descriptions of complex emotions and perceptions. By briefly reviewing some of the research in this field, my intention is not to show that Proust was familiar with psychological insights or that he was ahead of his time by anticipating present-day research (though this is true), but rather to emphasize the crucial role that narrative plays in such discoveries and to conclude by assessing the relative advantage of narrative fiction in the exploration and depiction of emotions.7 For instance, in devising a method for assessing personality, Lester Luborsky introduces the concept of the 'core conflictual relationship theme' (CCRT), defined as 'the central pattern, script, or schema that each person follows in conducting relationships' (Understanding 1). He bases his research on a person's narratives of relationships with others, narratives derived from a variety of sources, including questionnaires, conversations, and clinical observations. In comparing his findings with Freud's concept of the transference template as described in 1912, Luborsky concludes that 'the CCRT's conceptual categories are congruent with Freud's basic categories' and that 'it is based on a conflictual dichotomy: wishes (wishes, needs, intentions) which conflict with re-

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sponses (responses from other and of self)' (253). Like Freud, he believes that there is a central schema at the heart of one's personality, since research has shown 'a parallel between the early relationship patterns with the parents and the current ones with other people' from which he infers that 'the pattern originates in early relationships with parental figures' (254). He concludes that there is indeed one main pattern and that there is considerable stability over time, since the pattern is constantly repeated (265) or, in Freud's terms, '"constantly reprinted afresh - in the course of a person's life"' (258).8 There is a striking similarity between Luborsky's description of this main pattern and the Proustian hero's recurring experiences of separation anxiety. For instance, he points out that the characteristics observed in the main pattern are like 'characteristics of a schema ... an enduring symbolic framework that organizes constellations of thought, feeling, memory, and expectation about self and others' (265; my emphasis). Equally revealing is his observation that 'the CCRT pattern when traced back in time may be found to contain correspondences with early traumatic scenes in terms of the recurrence of theme components as well as fragments of the traumatic scenes' (255; my emphasis). In the Proustian text, there obviously is such recall of a traumatic scene from childhood - the drame du coucher of Combray - which is explicitly mentioned in Albertine disparue, when the narrator describes the hero's intensely felt anguish upon hearing that Albertine has left him. The description of the Proustian hero's experiences of separation anxiety is a perfect illustration and working through in fiction of Freud's claim that there seems to be one main pattern in transference or, in Luborsky's terms, 'a high frequency theme' (256), substantiated by 'the existence of a highly pervasive central relationship pattern, especially in terms of the wishes' (257). The tyrannical power of such a wish is only too evident in the hero's ploys to have the loved one entirely to himself, luring, for instance, the mother away from guests and 'imprisoning' Albertine who, once fled, must be recaptured at all cost! What is central to the Proustian hero's inner life has, as I will argue, important repercussions on the narrator's selection and organization of the material and explains, in part at least, his preference for a narrative based on retrospective associations instead of linear progression. For instance, in describing how the acuteness of the anguish brought on by Albertine's leaving him reminded him of similar crises in the past, the narrator does no less than pinpoint what Luborsky's team of researchers identified as the 'core conflictual theme' or the 'nuclear script,' an

Narrative Identity 89 awareness that 'involves interpreting present situations in terms of their similarity to childhood nuclear scenes' (5). The emphasis, in the concept of such a nuclear script, as Luborsky explains, is on the concreteness of the scene as 'an organized unit that includes persons, places, actions, and feelings' (5). The specificity of such recall is exemplified in the Proustian text through descriptive detail and the recall, for hero and reader alike, of scenes previously experienced. Whereas the scientist hypothesizes about the 'automatic' nature of the repetition of such inner schemas, pointing out that research has shown that 'a schema, once learned, sets the stage for interpreting later events according to the prior schema' (281), the novelist is more precise about the automatic nature of the experience in question, stressing its rapidity (the speed of lightning) and overpowering emotional impact, and showing how an analogous emotional feeling is at the root of the experience.9 What the Proustian narrator explains and illustrates through a specific example in a concrete context is only a vague hypothesis in Luborsky's study: 'Another basis for the repetition of themes may be based on the schema's getting its start through emotion-laden events' (281; my emphasis). In focusing on the physical reaction (breath cut short, sweaty palms) and the overwhelming surprise and change in outlook, the novelist makes it quite clear that this is not the province of will or reason. By stressing the superiority of emotions over intelligence in the context of the experience of separation anxiety, Proust's narrator directs our attention to the realm of the emotions as central in our lives and crucial in determining our innermost identity and personal history.10 The importance of emotions and the discovery of a central core or paradigm has been discussed, in recent years, by researchers from various disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, and cultural studies. The findings of a number of symposia representing different fields and approaches have been published on the subject, with some surprising similarities.11 Though literary scholars have not, as yet, brought out a volume on the role of emotions in the reading of literary texts, some of the existing scientific research suggests some fruitful cross-pollination between literature and other domains. In fact, a number of social scientists refer to literature in order to test or to develop their theories. For instance, Ronald de Sousa, in discussing the appropriateness or truth of an emotion, introduces the concept, not unlike Luborsky's, of a paradigm scenario: 'Our emotional repertoire is learned in the context of what I shall call paradigm scenarios, many of which are played out in infancy. In the context of such a scenario, a child's instinctive responses

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to certain stimuli become a part - indeed sometimes acquire the name of an emotion' ('Self-Deceptive' 285). In extending the learning process of emotional paradigms to cultural texts, including literature, de Sousa's research is of particular interest for an inquiry into a poetics of affective response: 'We are made familiar with the vocabulary of emotion by association with paradigm scenarios, drawn first from our daily life as small children, later reinforced by the stories and fairy tales to which we are exposed, and, later still, supplemented and refined by literature and art.'12 In fact, the most complex emotions, de Sousa argues, are best revealed through literature, a claim he backs up with a quotation from Iris Murdoch that should prove most encouraging for literary scholars: The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations' (ibid. 143). By attributing a cognitive dimension to emotions, by seeing them as 'judgments' ('in the way that scientific paradigms might be said to be "judgments'"), and by concluding that 'they are what we see the world "in terms of" (138), de Sousa gives them the same importance as Proust's narrator who, mAlbertine disparue, after the flash of insight afforded him through the recurring experience of separation anxiety, discovers nothing less than his central emotional paradigm. There is a telling passage in de Sousa's essay that makes us realize how fruitful the cross-pollination between art and science can be: in an endnote he wonders about 'the extent to which literature can invent scenarios that when applied to one's own life result in "authentic" emotions.'13 Proust's novel not only stages such response-inviting scenarios but also includes scenes describing how characters respond to literature. Of particular interest is the Proustian hero's response, at different moments of his life, to Racine's Phedre. The most telling passage occurs in Albertine disparue where, some thirty pages after the shock and suffering caused by the fear of abandonment, the narrator describes how the hero suddenly discovers an emotional pattern at the very core of his being. He comes to this realization during a retrospective assessment of Racine's play, focusing mainly on the crucial scene where Hippolyte announces his sudden departure. It is with Phedre that the hero identifies, empathizing entirely with the despair that drives her to confess her hidden love. This scene is significant to him because he associates it with several periods of his life. Recalling his previous interpretations and comparing them to the present one enables the narrator to draw some interesting conclusions about life and

Narrative Identity 91 art:'Alors je me souvins des deux fac,ons differentes dont j'avais ecoute Phedre, et ce fut maintenant d'une troisieme que je pensais a la scene de la declaration. II me semblait que ce que je m'etais si souvent recite a moi-meme et que j'avais ecoute au theatre, c'etait 1'enonce des lois que je devais experimenter dans ma vie' (1993: 523). This insight is in turn illustrated with specific references to the hero-narrator's own life, one pertaining to his previous relationship with Gilberte, the other to his present suffering through Albertine: 'mais que par un depart 1'etre indifferent nous soit retire, et nous ne pouvons plus vivre' (523) - a lesson familiar to him from his own experience but not fully realized until he comes across a similar situation in Racine's play. In this selfreflexive reading he begins to see the scene from Phedre as a 'sorte de prophetic des episodes amoureux de ma propre existence' (525), finally realizing why it always attracted his attention. This important discovery is further highlighted when the narrator derives a general truth from it: Tl y a dans notre ame des choses auxquelles nous ne savons pas combien nous tenons' (523). Thus, works of art can lead us to selfdiscovery, as the narrator convincingly shows through close analysis of the hero's comparative reading of Phedre and his own life, a process that puts him in touch with the hitherto unknown inner core of his being. Such reading also engages him in a truly interactive process, since not only does Phedre's dilemma give him insight into his own situation, his present suffering leads to a new, more empathetic rereading of Racine's play. Though it is not until Albertine disparue that the reader is made explicitly aware, in the passages under discussion, of this important insight, the hero's unconscious identification with Phedre is prefigured as early as 'Combray/ so that we too, as readers, have intimations of the important discovery to come. The narrator thus exemplifies the workings of what is yet unconscious. The first indirect reference to Phedre is introduced, as we have seen earlier, into the context of the narrative segment of the drame du coucher, the night the boy refused to go to sleep, an incident that led to his father's unexpected pardon and the suggestion that his mother spend the night in his room. We saw how, in describing the hero's frame of mind, the narrator slips in a verbal allusion to Phedre without identifying the source, thus tacitly introducing a metonymic link that prepares the process of identification - whose full implications will become apparent only later - between Proust's hero and Racine's heroine. Further details invoking Phedre are woven into the 'Combray' narrative some hundred pages later when the narra-

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tor describes the boy's despair in saying goodbye to his beloved hawthorns, thus further reinforcing the gradually evolving process of association.14 The Racinian intertext is a concrete example of how Proust's narrator, through prefiguration and indirection, prepares for a crucial moment of insight into his own life and involves the reader in such a gradual process of discovery. Such narrative practice is also evidence of the lasting impression that certain readings have made on the hero-narrator and of the role they play in helping him find his identity and in developing a narrative based on association. The hero's sudden insight into his soul through the reading of a literary text is not an experience solely confined to fictional worlds. Through his theory of the 'unthought known,' Christopher Bollas, for instance, has convincingly shown how aesthetic and other objects can lead to selfawareness. In his view, even an unconscious emotional participation can trigger such a process.15 In fact, as he points out, it is affect that leads the way in the search for the past: 'In adult life, therefore, to seek the transformational object is to recollect an early object experience, to remember not cognitively but existentially - through intense affective experience - a relationship which was identified with cumulative transformational experiences of the self (17). It is thus the traces of affective memories that are able to re-establish the link with our earliest childhood. It is the mother, according to Bollas, who, as the first transformational object in our life, plays the most important role in this process.16 What Bollas tells us in theory and through stories based on his interaction with patients is enacted more convincingly in the Proustian text through a narrative emblematic of the hero-narrator's emotional and psychological make-up as it evolves in time. The intimate view we are given, for instance, of the hero's separation anxiety from childhood to young adulthood, closely witnessing how he substitutes one maternal figure for another and how similarly he relates to them, is the most telling example. We are given the 'feel' of each emotional crisis through concrete images and other aspects of style, and are allowed to witness, through shifting points of view from the hero's to the narrator's perspective, the changing as well as the permanent aspects of the self.17 The Proustian narrator is fully aware of the existence of the 'unthought known' and the importance of the descent into the deepest layers of the self as he formulates his poetics, in Le Temps retrouve, for the book to be written: 'livre interieur de signes inconnus (de signes en relief, semblaitil, que mon attention, explorant mon inconscient, allait chercher, heurtait,

Narrative Identity 93 contournait, comme un plongeur qui sonde' (IV, 458). This plunge is nothing less than a search for the 'unthought known': 'le retour aux profondeurs ou ce qui a existe reellement git inconnu de nous' (IV, 475; my emphasis). How important a role reading works of art plays in such a descent is evident in the hero's identification with Phedre, which takes him all the way back to childhood.18 Through the retrospective scrutiny of this discovery and through the dramatic description, earlier in Albertine disparue, of the growing pain intensified through each additional experience of separation anxiety, the narrator gives significant emphasis to the emotional structure or paradigm that has been brought to awareness. By thus giving a retrospective reading of his life as it develops in time, and by discovering similarities that give it a structure, the Proustian narrator forges for himself and the reader a narrative identity. As we progress in our reading of A la recherche, it becomes even more evident that the search for identity is a central theme, that, in the final analysis, it will lead the hero-narrator to his vocation, enabling him to turn identity ('le livre interieur') into a narrative, the book to be written. Through his contemplative pauses and synthesizing views, the narrator emerges as the novel's real protagonist: the one who has found his identity, who has given it a narrative shape, and who invites the reader to participate in the process of narrative identity. It is important to take a closer look at the concept of narrative identity and its implications for a new approach to the study of fictional characters and a theory of affective response. It is Ricoeur who first introduced the concept of narrative identity in his three-volume study on narrative under the comprehensive title Temps et recit (1983-5).19 A few years later, in an essay entitled 'Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator/ he starts out with the premise that life is 'a virtual narrative making an authentic demand for a story' (129).20 Yet, before such a story can be told effectively, it must be given some meaning. It is narrative fiction, Ricoeur claims, that is most useful in helping us find such meaning and order, which, in turn, leads to a better understanding of the self (130). Given this interpretative framework, Ricoeur then defines subjectivity in terms of narrative identity: 'It seems that our life, enveloped in one single glance, appears to us as a field of a constructive activity, deriving from the narrative intelligence through which we attempt to recover (rather than impose from without) the narrative identity which constitutes us' (131). It is important to note that such an identity is not fixed but mutable, and that it derives from various sources: 'we do not cease to re-interpret the narrative identity that constitutes us in the light of

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stories handed down to us by our culture' (131). Though Ricoeur briefly mentions that narrative identity involves role-playing ('imaginative variations of our ego/ [131]), no specific example of such role-playing is given. To have a firmer grasp of Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity as described here, it is helpful to bring back to mind the Proustian hero's readings of Phedre, which exemplify both meanings inherent in Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity and the interactive movement it implies: the hero-as-reader identifying with a fictional situation, and, through such identification, finding his own identity ('cette scene, sorte de prophetic des episodes amoureux de ma propre existence').21 In subsequent studies, Ricoeur comes back to the notion of narrative identity, with, however, a shift in emphasis, as explained in Oneself as Another: The decisive step in the direction of a narrative conception of personal identity is when one passes from the action to the character.'22 What a literary character can contribute to the discussion of personal identity is now the central focus. Ricoeur describes character (personnage) as both a figure of selfhood (figure de I'ipseite) and a central force in the emplotment (mise en intrigue). Narrative identity, as Ricoeur points out more than once, involves both 'the permanence in time of character' (166), that is, the same identity throughout the narrative being told, and 'the pure selfhood of self-constancy' (165), a stable inner being. Given this view of character as a figure of selfhood, the crucial question one must now ask is how such a represented 'figure' has bearing on the reader's sense of self or, in Ricoeur's terms, 'Quelle refiguration du soi resulte-t-il de cette appropriation au moyen de la lecture?' At the heart of the reader's relationship with the text, as he points out, are several kinds of identification, all centred on the literary character as a mediating figure. First, by 'appropriating' the identity of the fictional character, the reading self becomes 'un Je qui se figure comme ceci ou comme cela.'23 This role playing, based on identification with another, may well lead to the refiguration of the self, since, as Ricoeur explains, 's'approprier une figure de personnage au moyen de 1'identification signifie se soumettre soi-meme au jeu des variations imaginees, lesquelles deviennent alors des variations imaginees du soi' (ibid.). Depending on how it is used, both good and bad can come from such identification - a lesson contained in more than one work of fiction. A convincing example of how not to read may be found in Flaubert's ironic treatment of Emma Bovary's way of appropriating texts, identifying with literary heroines to the point of losing touch with reality.24 What the rewards of a more constructive kind of identification

Narrative Identity 95 can be is quite evident in the passages describing the Proustian hero who gains insight into emotions and passions through literary fiction a discovery that in turn has bearing on how he conducts his life. This is surely what Ricoeur had in mind when wondering how 'la figuration du soi a travers 1'autre puisse etre un moyen authentique pour se decouvrir soi-meme' (ibid.). Ricoeur gives some indication, in Oneself as Another, about the nature of such discoveries through fictions. Not unlike Proust, he sees fiction as an organizing force in life: 'It is precisely because of the elusive character of real life that we need the help of fiction to organize life retrospectively, after the fact' (162). In giving an identity to characters and unity to their lives, he argues, fictional narratives instruct readers in how to make sense of their lives: 'the character draws his or her singularity from the unity of life considered a temporal totality which is itself singular and distinguished from all others' (147). The crucial role of temporal awareness in the discovery of one's identity, and the important role novels play in bringing about such an awareness, is the focus of several chapters in Ricoeur's earlier study Temps et recit. Of particular interest are two chapters in Temps et recit 2: 'La Configuration dans le recit de fiction.' In the first, 'Les Jeux avec le temps,' Ricoeur criticizes Genette, as mentioned earlier, for not taking his study of Proust's narrative technique beyond the level of the text to discover their ultimate significance.25 What is at stake, in the formidable game Proust plays with time, is much more than narrative technique, a point Ricoeur forcefully makes through a rhetorical question: 'Mais ne faut-il pas ... tenir 1'etude formelle des techniques narratives qui font apparaitre le temps comme perverti pour un long detour en vue de recouvrer une intelligence plus aigue de 1'experience du temps perdu et retrouvel' (2: 130). Ricoeur's main point is that such a temporal experience, '1'experience fictive du temps/ is the real stake (enjeu) of great works of fiction (129). There is no doubt that, for Ricoeur, Proust's novel is one of these great works.26 In the chapter devoted to Proust in the second volume of Temps et recit, he describes A la recherche as 'une fable sur le temps' (2: 194), one able to give the reader a genuine experience of time as it is lived ('1'experience vecu du temps'). In setting up the coordinates for reading the novel, Ricoeur gives two important guidelines. First, he advises, it is not the novel's hero who should be the centre of attention but, rather, the hero-narrator: 'Notre premiere hypothese de lecture sera done de tenir, sans compromis, le heros-narrateur pour 1'entite fictive soutenant

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la fable sur le temps que constitue la Recherche' (2:194). The importance of the narrator in setting up the reader's time experience must be fully reckoned with. Not only is he able to play temporal games with order, duration, and frequency, he can, moreover, cast a different light on the hero's experience by anticipating what the outcome of his search will be, a revelation that for the hero does not come until the end, as recounted in the final section of Le Temps retrouve.27 Ricoeur comes back to this kind of temporal overlay through anticipation and the notion of the 'future-in-the-past' in Oneself as Another, linking it more explicitly, this time, to identity through narrative unity an insight, he argues, works of fiction can give us to help achieve a more comprehensive view of our own lives: One may well believe that the literary narrative, because it is retrospective, can inform only a meditation on the past part of our life. The literary narrative is retrospective only in a very particular sense: it is simply in the eyes of the narrator that the events recounted appear to have occurred in the past. The past of narration is but the quasi past of the narrative voice. Now among the facts recounted in the past tense we find projects, expectations, and anticipations by means of which the protagonists in the narrative are oriented toward their mortal future ... This is why there is nothing absurd in speaking about the narrative unity of a life, under the sign of narratives that teach us how to articulate narratively retrospection and prospection. (162-3)

Though in his chapter on Proust in Temps et recit 2 Ricoeur first looks briefly at the novel from the perspective of a first reading ('Quels seraient les signes de la retrouvaille du temps pour qui ignorerait la conclusion de la Recherche, dans le Temps Retrouve' [200]), he primarily concentrates on a retrospective reading, carried out from the organizational, compositional point of view: Tour une seconde lecture, plus instruite, 1'extase de la madeleine ouvre le temps retrouve de 1'enfance, comme la meditation dans la bibliotheque ouvrira celui du temps de mise a 1'epreuve de la vocation enfin reconnue. La symetrie entre le commencement et la fin se revele etre ainsi le principe directeur de la composition' (203). However, it seems that even in a first reading, more emphasis should be given to the narrator's presence, not merely in telling the story, but in how, through a metaphoric style, through moodsetting scenarios, through signs revealing his emotional participation, and through philosophical asides he invites the reader from the start of the novel to participate in his insight and poetic vision. If more atten-

Narrative Identity 97 tion were given to these aspects of the narrative, then the 'overlay' Ricoeur has described as recouvrement in A la recherche would turn out to be much more pervasive, going beyond anticipation, retrospection, and analogizing on the level of emplotment to include the multifaceted manifestations of the narrator's presence.28 Ricoeur focuses on repetition as the central motivating force in A la recherche: 'Mais le jeu des voix narratives atteint a une autre profondeur. C'est une authentique repetition qu'opere le narrateur, lorsqu'il met en rapport la Quete constitute par 1'apprentissage des signes avec la Visitation prefiguree dans les moments bienheureux et culminant dans la grande meditation sur 1'art redempteur dans la bibliotheque du prince de Guermantes. La formule proustienne de la repetition c'est le temps perdu retrouve' (3: 193-4). In this recovery of the self through repetitions actually experienced and lived through - the moments of involuntary memory - and the discovery, through them, of the true self and its vocation, Ricoeur sees 'une authentique reprise de 1'heritage que nous sommes a 1'egard de nous-memes dans la projection de nos possibilites les plus propres' (201). This explains why he sees repetition as the ultimate figure, 'la plus apte a servir de fil directeur dans 1'interpretation des experiences temporelles fictives qui ont pour enjeu ultime "la cohesion de la vie"' (3: 201; my emphasis).29 His argument would be more persuasive yet had he paid attention to the heronarrator's discovery of the central emotional paradigm, separation anxiety, and to how its cumulative effect leads to self-awareness. Learning, through the reading of narrative fiction, how life can be seen as having cohesion or unity is thus revealed as the real enjeu of 'le jeu formidable avec le temps.' Though Ricoeur briefly introduces the concept of the unity of a life, his focus, in this earlier study, is clearly on the organizational, informed by his analysis of mise en intrigue as a synthesis of heterogeneous elements on the level of actions, which explains why, in the case of A la recherche, Tenigme a resoudre est celle du rapport entre les moments bienheureux, offerts par le hasard et la memoire involontaire, et l'"histoire invisible d'une vocation"' (2: 212). Within this interpretative framework, each experience of involuntary memory is seen as a narrative transition ('une transition narrative qui fait basculer le sens du Bildungsroman de 1'apprentissage des signes a la visitation' [2: 212]). He concludes that 'la Recherche raconte la transition d'une signification a I'autre du temps retrouve: c'est en cela qu'elle est une fable sur le temps' (2: 215). Ricoeur's discussion of Proust's novel would now have a somewhat different focus, I suspect, given his growing interest in character and

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narrative identity. For one thing, the hero's reading of works of fiction and his experience of deep anguish (those moments malheureux that Ricoeur, focusing on the moments bienheureux, does not discuss) deserve more attention, since they reveal, as we have seen, the protagonist's true identity. How insights from these and similar experiences lead to the discovery of the self and become the foundation of the narrator's autobiographical tale, must be reckoned with.30 In turn, to show how the narrator, by weaving a fabric of repetition and juxtaposition, reveals to the reader the analogies he perceives between certain of his experiences and those of others, would enrich Ricoeur's discussion of repetition and recouvrement, thus giving further insight into the complexities of temporal awareness. It would be equally important to consider the inevitable temporal overlay in a rereading of the novel whose outcome is already known to the reader. Ricoeur is right to emphasize, in this respect, the difference between a first and second reading of Proust's novel: 'L'originalite de la Recherche est d'avoir dissimule le probleme et la solution jusqu'a la fin du parcours du heros, reservant ainsi a une seconde lecture 1'intelligence de 1'oeuvre entiere' (Temps et recit 2 196). Moreover, the reader's emotional involvement and participation in shaping narrative identity need to be accounted for as we go from a rhetoric based on narrative organization to one that pays attention to the 'peak' moments that Barthes speaks of in envisaging a reading based on pathos. In his words, such moments of reading 'sont a proprement parler les sommets, la lecture vivante, concernee, ne suivant en quelque sorte qu'une ligne de crete: les moments de verite sont comme les points de plus-value de l'anecdote'(Essflzs critiques 71/323). At such moments, the reader's response provides an additional layer of significance. There are striking aspects of temporal overlay and narrative identity in the second part of Albertine disparue that deserve special attention. They involve both the hero and the narrator, as I shall show in the next chapter by focusing on those aspects of narrative identity that point to sameness of character, that is, to permanence within revealed through certain inherent traits and further set in relief through the narrator's style.

CHAPTER SIX

Emblematic Narration

Nous lisons le passe a la lumiere du present. Gerard Genette, Figures III

There is an important shift in mood and perspective in the second chapter of Albertine disparue, the Venice section.1 After giving all his attention to his relationship with Albertine in the first part - searching for her, mourning her, then going through the stages of forgetting - the narrator begins the next chapter by focusing on an experience of affective memory through which the hero is reminded of the sunny Sunday mornings of Combray. This fortuitous event puts him in touch with a happy childhood memory, making him aware of a permanent aspect of his sensibility.2 The opening paragraph of the Venice chapter stands in sharp contrast to the predominantly sombre mood of the previous chapter, since there are no transitional remarks preparing the reader for the change of scene and circumstance. From the start, the emphasis is on how the hero is put in touch with his past, which is described in the opening sentence: 'Ma mere m'avait emmene passer quelques semaines a Venise et - cornme il peut y avoir de la beaute aussi bien que dans les choses les plus humbles, dans les plus precieuses - j'y goutais des impressions analogues a celles que j'avais si souvent ressenties autrefois a Combray, mais transposees selon un mode entierement different et plus riche' (550). The last part of this sentence provides the key for the following contrastive description of the sunny mornings of Venice and those of Combray. Yet it is not the difference in the two settings that matters but rather what, in essence, they have in common. The focus is on the similar kind of experience and what it reveals to the hero. It is

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worth looking at the detailed description of what will turn out to be an important discovery for him: Quand a dix heures du matin on venait ouvrir mes volets je voyais flamboyer, au lieu du marbre noir que devenaient en resplendissant les ardoises de Saint-Hilaire, 1'Ange d'or du campanile de Saint-Marc. Rutilant d'un soleil qui le rendait presque impossible a fixer, il me faisait avec ses bras grands ouverts - pour quand je serais une demi-heure plus tard sur la Piazzetta - une promesse de joie plus certaine que celle qu'il put etre jadis charge d'annoncer aux hommes de bonne volonte. Je ne pouvais apercevoir que lui tant que j'etais couche, mais comme le monde n'est qu'un vaste cadran solaire ou un seul segment ensoleille nous permet de voir 1'heure qu'il est, des le premier matin je pensai aux boutiques de Combray, sur la place de 1'Eglise, qui le dimanche etaient sur le point de fermer quand j'arrivals a la messe, tandis que la paille du marche sentait fort sous le soleil deja chaud. Mais des le second jour ce que je vis en m'eveillant, ce pourquoi je me levai (parce que cela s'etait substirue dans ma memoire et dans mon desir aux souvenirs de Combray), ce furent les impressions de ma premiere sortie du matin a Venise, a Venise ou la vie quotidienne n'etait pas moins reelle qu'a Combray, ou, comme a Combray le dimanche matin, on avait bien le plaisir de descendre dans une rue en fete, mais ou cette rue etait toute en une eau de saphir, rafraichie de souffles tiedes, et d'une couleur si resistante que mes yeux fatigues pouvaient, pour se detendre et sans craindre qu'elle flechit, y appuyer leurs regards. (550-1)

On reading this passage for the first time, one may well wonder why the narrator interrupts the description of the hero's visual impression of the splendid sight of the golden angel seen from his Venice window by interpolating a formulaic explanation of the world in terms of a sundial, followed, moreover, by a vivid recall image of the church square in Combray to illustrate his point. It seems as if something were missing, that all is not spelled out. Yet everything is in the text, though the reader is asked to bring to mind a passage from 'Combray' that sheds light on the present experience. The narrator, in fact, gives us a hint by referring to the reflecting slated roof, a metonymic link that may suffice to evoke the striking description, in 'Combray/ of the church roof's reflection compared to a black sun (I, 64). We are thus asked to participate in the process of bringing the past to bear on the present, in the kind of significant overlay or tuilage that leads the hero to insight.3 What is to be learned from both experiences is that things experi-

Emblematic Narration 101 enced at a certain time, in a certain setting - including sensory impressions, feelings, mental preoccupations - constitute a closely knit network and are stored in memory as such, so that reactivating any one element may lead to complete recall. In the present instance, it is a similar visual impression that sets memory in motion, the reflection of the sun on an object (roof, angel). After this initial spark has made contact with the past, the rest automatically follows through a process of association based on contiguity. This is basically the dual process of associations that underlies experiences of affective or involuntary memory. Yet there is an additional layer of association-building that enters into play in the experience under discussion, one that is highlighted through the narrator's generalizing observation about the world as sundial and his descriptive focus on the outside world (the marketplace surrounding the church in Combray), instead of concentrating on the room where the hero actually experiences the initial visual impression that leads to recall. The same point is made a second time, as we read on, through the narrator's enigmatic remark that after the first day, the sunny angel no longer evoked memories of Combray associated with that time of day, but impressions of Venice. What underlies all of these experiences - including the original one in Combray - is the same kind of memory process: one where a single impression relating to the outside world can bring back to mind the rest, an entire setting associated with a specific time and place, under similar atmospheric conditions. The hero need not look at the square below (which, in fact, he cannot see) or go outside; he knows what it looks like and how it feels from previous experience. This was the point first made in 'Combray' through the narrator's striking description of the boy's view from the window, a passage that must be brought back to mind in order to grasp fully the multiple layers of remembrance present in the Venice description: 'C'etait le clocher de Saint-Hilaire qui donnait a toutes les occupations, a toutes les heures, a tous les points de vue de la ville, leur figure, leur couronnement, leur consecration. De ma chambre, je ne pouvais apercevoir que sa base qui avait ete recouverte d'ardoises; mais quand, le dimanche, je les voyais, par une chaude matinee d'ete, flamboyer comme un soleil noir, je me disais: "Mon Dieu! neuf heures! il faut se preparer pour aller a la grand-messe si je veux avoir le temps d'aller embrasser tante Leonie avant"' (1,64). It is the partial view of the church tower's shiny slates that sets memory in motion ('je ne pouvais apercevoir que sa base qui avait ete recouverte d'ardoises'); the boy cannot see the sun, only infer its presence from the roof's reflection - a

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fact highlighted through the striking image 'flamboyer comme un soleil noir.' Nor can he see the clock, yet he knows exactly what time it is, intuited from sensory impressions related to that particular hour under sunny skies. Memory, based on the link between simultaneous impressions and activities, brings to mind the rest ('et je savais exactement la couleur qu'avait le soleil sur la place'). How exact and extensive the recall is is apparent from the detailed description of the shops and people on the square below, down to the minutest notation of gesture and habitual behaviour. It is thus not only the hero's room, on sunny Sunday mornings in Combray, that is evoked in the Venice passage, but also all he holds in mind, through memory, in that childhood setting. The first insight thus gained into the workings of affective memory is echoed and presented as a general truth in the Venice section: 'comme le monde n'est qu'un vaste cadran solaire ou un seul segment ensoleille nous permet de voir 1'heure qu'il est' - a law that, in a retrospective reading, can now also be applied to the 'Combray' passage.4 By continuing to evoke aspects of Combray while describing distinctive features of Venice, the narrator takes us through a kind of emblematic description relating the two domains - through contrast and comparison - a process that, by continually reactivating our memory of what has already been read and is, therefore, familiar, takes us beyond the significance of the immediate setting. It intimately involves us, not unlike the hero-narrator, in a process of recall and recognition. Yet this process is even more complex for us as readers, since we bring our own memory of what we have read and how we responded to it to the present experience of analogizing narration. This involves us in more than one kind of narrative identity, each reinforcing the other: by recalling one of the hero's earlier experiences (the sunny Sundays of Combray) and by relating it to the present, the narrator calls attention to his sense of identity (the same inner self); by repeatedly recalling features of a setting previously described, he adds another layer of narrative identity, one where readers recognize and identify similar features of setting and style, which brings into focus the narrating presence and the process of narration. The extent to which the past is being recovered - for hero, narrator, reader - in the Venice section of Albertine disparue already anticipates the recovery of the past and the discovery, at last, of the hero's vocation in Le Temps retrouve. Since finding one's identity is a crucial part of this discovery, the cumulative impact of the different kinds of narrative identity in the novel's penultimate volume play a significant role. They

Emblematic Narration 103 are like stages of the cross that ultimately lead to salvation. Besides regaining the special mode of being associated with sunny Sundays in Combray, the hero's rediscovery of the emotional paradigm to which he has repeatedly been subjected is an important step on the way. It is brought back to mind in the narrative segment under discussion when, in the midst of the description evoking Venice through the repeated references to Combray, attention is suddenly focused on another memory image. There is a change in mood and perspective as the joyful description of Venice makes way for an elegiac evocation of the hero-narrator's mother who had accompanied him on the trip to Italy.5 It appears that the mother has replaced Albertine within the narrator's long-term memory, as the following passage, written from a retrospective point of view, seems to suggest by highlighting the close association between her and a certain kind of window. What is striking, in this instance, is the detailed description of the mother's loving devotion to her son, which precedes the narrator's revelation of the permanent impression this experience has made on him:6 [D]es que de la gondole je 1'appelais, elle envoyait vers moi, du fond de son coeur, son amour qui ne s'arretait que la ou il n'y avait plus de matiere pour le soutenir - a la surface de son regard passionne qu'elle faisait aussi proche de moi que possible, qu'elle cherchait a exhausser, a 1'avancee de ses levres, en un sourire qui semblait m'embrasser - dans le cadre et sous le dais du sourire plus discret de 1'ogive illuminee par le soleil de midi: a cause de cela, cette fenetre a pris dans ma memoire la douceur des choses qui eurent en meme temps que nous, a cote de nous, leur part dans une certaine heure qui sonnait, la meme pour nous et pour elles; et, si pleins de formes admirables que soient ses meneaux, cette fenetre illustre garde pour moi 1'aspect intime d'un homme de genie avec qui nous aurions passe un mois dans une meme villegiature, qui y aurait contracte pour nous quelque amitie; et si depuis, chaque fois que je vois le moulage de cette fenetre dans un musee, je suis oblige de retenir mes larmes, c'est tout simplement parce qu'elle me dit la chose qui peut le plus me toucher: 'Je me rappelle tres bien votre mere.'7 (552-3; my emphasis)

Through a detailed description and changes in narration, the Proustian narrator calls our attention to the significance and complexity of affective experience. The details, at the beginning of this passage, recalling the mother's boundless devotion give us a better understanding of the strong emotional bond between mother and son. The following state-

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ment revealing the personal association, in the hero's mind, between mother and window is expanded to a general assertion about the close link, in memory, between simultaneous impressions and feelings. The narrator thus invites the reader, through the all-inclusive nous, to consider this insight into the workings of emotional life as generally true, as applicable to one's own life as well. The striking personification of the window into a man of genius who is given a voice ('Je me rappelle tres bien votre mere') is a dramatic translation of the lasting bond with the mother. How strongly this memory image still affects him is evident when, at the end of the passage, the narrator slides into the present tense ('et si depuis, chaque fois que je vois le moulage de cette fenetre') and gives concrete evidence by which to gauge the emotional effect ('je suis oblige de retenir mes larmes'). With this shift in focus from the hero (his former self) to his present situation - not as an instance of narration, but as a presence with a personal history, vulnerable to impressions and feelings, and subject to memory - the narrator calls attention to his permanent self, to what Richard Wollheim so aptly called 'mental connectedness' in discussing the influence of the past on our lives through experiential memory.8 What the Proustian narrator stresses in the passage under discussion is that, in the final analysis, it is our deepest subjective associations that prevail, not any extrinsic value a given experience may have - a point that is given added emphasis through the analogy of the man of genius who is valued not because of his intelligence but for his friendship.9 As readers of A la recherche, we participate in shaping the heronarrator's 'inner connectedness.' For instance, in reading the passage under discussion, one is bound to realize that the narrator is once again subject to suffering from the fear of abandonment (through the mother's death), and that it is his mother who prevails in the emotional paradigm of separation anxiety, replacing Albertine, who had previously replaced her.10 The reader is able to give the above passage its full measure, having witnessed the strong emotional ties between mother and son in earlier parts of the novel. It is significant that the pages preceding and following this passage on the mother's lasting importance repeatedly refer us back to Combray, in particular to the young boy's room and his whole mode of being on sunny Sunday mornings.11 This brings the surrounding narrative context into harmony with the central affective experiences of this volume, involuntary memory and the suffering caused by separation.12 These experiences have a joint function in that they constitute part of the hero-narrator's permanent

Emblematic Narration 105 identity. They also play a crucial role in our involvement with the text, since they focus attention on those experiences that will be central in giving shape to his life story.13 In conveying these experiences through a consonant narration that adopts the point of view of the joyful or suffering hero, the narrator, by giving free rein to his emotions through the choice and placement of words, through exclamation marks and other expressive devices, and through striking metaphors that translate the experience into a concrete image, allows us to closely witness the main events of inner life. Thanks to the narrator's empathetic mode and a narrative centred on analogous experiences, the reader is able to fully participate in such associative processes from which the protagonist's life story and the significance of the novel's mise en intrigue will gradually emerge. Through reading A la recherche we realize not only how important a role narrative plays in leading to self-awareness, but also how ideally suited the novel is for describing and conveying processes of narrative identity. We have seen how through repetition of similar events and an analogizing narration we are made aware of the hero-narrator's permanent emotional condition, separation anxiety. Permanence within is further set in relief when the narrator reintroduces specific features of the previously described childhood setting of sunny mornings in Combray into the narrative segment evoking the distinctive impressions of Venice. Such descriptive and narrative processes require the reader's active participation. Particularly challenging, in this respect, is the deciphering of indirect signs and the long road that, like Parsifal, one needs to travel before gaining insight into the grail. Some of the most telling passages are those where, on first reading the novel, the reader is kept at the same level of ignorance as the naive hero, aware only retrospectively of having been subjected to dramatic irony. One of the most striking instances is the prefiguration of Albertine's true identity, discovery of which is so central a force in the hero's life and the shaping of his own identity.14 In staging his different perceptions of her, which reflect the hero-narrator's changing awareness of who she is and how it affects their relationship, one of the earliest and most revealing is the extensive narrative segment, in A I'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, where Albertine playing diabolo on the beach is compared to one of Giotto's Vices, Infidelitas (II, 241-3). The enigmatic passage prefigures the negative turn of events to come.15 In a retrospective reading of the novel, it is quite apparent that the recurring references to Giotto are part of a characteristic feature of Proust's aesthetics: initiating the reader

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into an analogizing vision that prepares for things to come. As such, they play an important role in the novel's mise en intrigue.16 They also involve us, as readers, in an emotional structure of uncertainty similar to the hero's so that we too, never sure of grasping all, are driven by the relentless desire to search further, to know more. The scene in question can be read at once as simply literal and as a complex prefiguration, engaging us in an allegorical reading.17 The comparison between the young girl and Giotto's Infidelitas is introduced at the very start of the narrative account, thus framing the whole episode as would an introductory caption or title. As readers we too are prey to dramatic irony, the story being told from the point of view of the unsuspecting young hero whose interpretation of the scene we have, at first, no reason to doubt. The situation is the following: while he is walking on the beach one day with Albertine, Gisele - whom the hero has not met yet - joins them and gets the cold shoulder from Albertine, who obstinately tries to keep the two apart. When finally forced to introduce them to each other, she continues to be rude to Gisele until the latter finally leaves. When he asks her why she was so rude, Albertine accuses Gisele of indiscretion and of making a bad impression with her hair hanging loose. The phrase 'ga donne mauvais genre,' besides referring to bad manners, carries sexual connotations of inversion. Add to this an enigmatic remark made by Andree regarding Gisele, which the narrator now quotes verbatim, and the plot begins to thicken: 'J'ai supporte longtemps sa terrible faussete, me dit-elle, sa bassesse, les innombrables crasses qu'elle m'a faites. J'ai tout supporte a cause des autres. Mais le dernier trait a tout fait deborder' (II, 242). The teasing narrator does not tell us what this was all about, tantalizing us further by adding another enigmatic phrase: 'Et elle me raconta un potin qu'avait fait cette jeune fille [i.e., Gisele] et qui, en effet, pouvait nuire a Andree' (ibid.). The reader is bound to re-evaluate this scene when learning about the somewhat dubious intimacy, described later on in the novel, between Andree and Albertine, which leads one to suspect that Gisele's gossip may well have been sexual slander. Within this context, the comparison between Albertine and Giotto's Infidelitas seems even more pertinent and acquires additional layers of meaning. At first glance, the analogy between the young girl playing diabolo and Giotto's Vice holding an idol in her hand - attached, like the toy, to a cord - could be seen as a straightforward visual comparison. Yet, from the start, we are made aware that there is more to it when the narrator focuses on the toy's name, diabolo, and comments on the allegorical

Emblematic Narration 107 reading one might give this scene: 'il s'appelle d'ailleurs un "diabolo" et est tellement tombe en desuetude que devant le portrait d'une jeune fille en tenant un, les commentateurs de 1'avenir pourront disserter comme devant telle figure allegorique de 1'Arena, sur ce qu'elle a dans la main' (II, 241). If we go beyond the literal and give the scene a figurative reading while, at the same time, superimposing insights gained from later narrative developments of the novel, we begin to realize that the entire passage forebodes evil. Proust, like Giotto, is weaving a dense temporal and perspectival web, inviting the reader, as Ruskin once pointed out in the case of Giotto, 'to trace the undercurrents of thought which link them with future events of mightier interest,' endowing 'with a prophetic power and mystery scenes in themselves so simple.' The Proustian hero meeting Albertine playing with a toy on the beach seems to be such a simple scene, as simple as the example Ruskin gives of 'the meeting of a master with herdsmen among the hills.'18 Once we engage in a more complex, double reading, Albertine's diabolo is indeed a devilish game whose very nature becomes more apparent when one takes a closer look at Giotto's Infidelitas. What she holds in her hand is not an idol in the form of a statue, but rather a small figure of a young girl holding a tree. When one remembers that, in medieval times, tree worship was associated with sin and idolatry, and once one notices that a cord connects this tree to Idolatry's neck, implying dependency and subjugation, an intricate network of signs of evil emerges, underscored by the reddish flames in the fresco's left-hand corner, a visual reference to hell. In this sinful context, a battle is indeed raging. Its domain, when superimposed on the Proustian context, is, however, entirely sexual. The idol of the young woman held in Idolatry's hand may then be read as a concrete representation of Albertine's attraction to women. Moreover, the androgynous appearance of Giotto's Vice, clad in a long-sleeved tunic and toga and wearing a warrior's helmet, recalls the appearance of Albertine in outdoor gear, wearing her rain slicker.19 It is also important to realize that the name of Giotto's Vice, which is inscribed in the frame above, is Infidelitas, not 'Idolatry/ as Proust translates it. The name thus functions as a prefiguration of things to come in the hero's intimate relationship with Albertine. Yet the title also fits the shifting sexual interests of all the characters in this scene, including the hero moving back and forth between Andree, Gisele, and Albertine, to which other infidelities will be added later. All three are

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thus playing a devilish game, and all three are playing with fire! In retrospect, the whole scene is a tour de force of dramatic irony where narrator and reader take delight in knowing more than the unsuspecting young hero, realizing, for instance, that the young women too have secret desires that may take them in more than one direction. All this makes for a tense situation and an involved reading that depends on the reader's active participation in superimposing on this scene information given previously or later on in the novel, and in deriving clues from the Giotto intertext.20 The hero's future suffering through Albertine is thus prepared for through complex, indirect signs, including allegorical figures. Aware, once having witnessed several incidents of his need for a reassuring maternal presence and his fear of abandonment, the reader is able to understand fully the hero's unease with someone as elusive as Albertine. Once initiated into the prophetic power underlying the double vision of Albertine as Infidelitas, one may well begin to fear for his well-being. Besides setting in motion such an emotionally motivated reading, the foreboding vision of the young girl sets the stage for future scenarios of suffering: the hero's jealousy, the anguish of separation when she leaves him, and the painful quests - driven by an uncontrollable curiosity - into her past. Mode of narration thus plays a central role in guiding our reading, as we are confronted with an intricate web of indirect signs, including religious, allegorical, and literary figures. The comparisons to Christ, to Phedre, and to Giotto's Vices and Virtues are not merely concrete embodiments of prefiguration, they also encode an aesthetic and ethical point of view, a way of seeing things anew and judging them accordingly. These and similar analogies one encounters in the Proustian novel take the reader into the realm of good and evil, a world, however, where the boundaries have been redrawn in assessing guilt and innocence. Initiation into such new ways of seeing also functions like an identity theme, identifying the hero-narrator as someone with an open mind, a sympathetic presence inviting the reader to withhold judgment and to view a given situation from a fresh perspective. One of the most striking examples is the scene in 'Combray' where Mile Vinteuil, in the presence of her lesbian friend, spits on her father's photograph, a desecrating act followed by the narrator's empathetic analysis of her motives, which amounts to no less than an apology for sadism (1,1613).21 Equally telling is the long description of the nature of inversion at the start of Sodome et Gomorrhe I, explained sympathetically and 'naturalized' through the analogy to cross-pollination, which is followed by

Emblematic Narration 109 a long list of where the all-pervasive tendency is to be found and backed up by an engaging story of the married man who for years has led an exemplary life but who, in the end, cannot escape the temptation of his natural inclination (III, 25-7). The narrator then introduces two further references to nature - an analogy to orchids and medusas presented in a lyrical passage that may well influence one's view on inversion: 'Meduse! Orchidee! Quand je ne suivais que mon instinct, la meduse me repugnait a Balbec; mais si je savais la regarder, comme Michelet, di> point de vue de 1'histoire naturelle et de 1'esthetique, je voyais une delicieuse girandole d'azur' (III, 28). The Proustian narrator thus rewrites transgression, exposing it as a social construct by comparing the forbidden to the natural and by introducing it into a context of emotions and passions into whose complex workings the reader is given a sympathetic insight. Our awareness, since the publication of new editions of A la recherche du temps perdu, of an ever-growing cycle entitled Sodome et Gomorrhe is also bound to have some bearing on our perception of Proust's novel, especially within the context of the present discussion.22 With its repeated references to the well-known biblical cities punished for their sins, the novel calls attention to the theme of homosexuality. In turn, this emphasis surely has repercussions on how we, as readers, view the hero's relationship with Albertine, especially since La Prisonniere and Albertine disparue are now part of the 'Sodome et Gomorrhe' cycle. Does this sustained analogy make us more aware of signs of indirection? Does it give more weight to prefiguration and recall, and does it encourage us to a more active scanning of the text to find connections and to participate in shaping and reshaping the hero-narrator's identity as it evolves in Time? These are all important questions for a motivated reader to ponder. The form and mode of the narrative and the reader's interaction with the text thus all have bearing on shaping the hero-narrator's identity. The narrator's sympathetic treatment of separation anxiety, sadism, and homosexuality are particularly telling, in this respect, as are the lyrical descriptions of moments when time is recovered. By presenting himself or another in terms of figures well known from other cultural texts - religious, aesthetic, allegorical - he not only affords us insight into a psychological profile, but also gives us intimations of things to come: the hero's eventual salvation through suffering, prepared for by the earliest comparisons to Christ in the description of the drame du coucher, is perhaps the most striking example. Redemption will turn out

110 Proust and Emotion to be nothing less than his finding his vocation.23 Once the hero-narrator has learned to read within himself, Time can be recovered and the story can be told. Suffering will play an important part in it for, as the narrator tells us, 'Les annees heureuses sont les annees perdues, on attend une souffranee pour travailler' (IV, 488). Yet suffering is not the only kind of experience that has left its mark. There are other indelible impressions that must be recovered and brought to awareness through the ongoing process of reading the self. It is important to identify now those impressions that have made a lasting impact and to consider their joint function in shaping the hero's identity and the narrator's tale, which will be the focus of the next chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN

From Impression to Expression

Seule 1'impression, si chetive qu'en semble la matiere, si insaisissable la trace, est un criterium de verite.1 A la recherche du temps perdu, IV, 458

As we accompany the hero-narrator on the long journey that takes us from 'Combray' to Le Temps retrouve, we witness more than once important moments of discovery. Yet it is not until we are halfway through the last volume that the narrator lets us in on the secret of how he finally discovered his vocation. It happens at the most unlikely moment, on the occasion of his last social gathering, the Matinee Guermantes. He suddenly and unexpectedly is subject to several experiences of involuntary memory, first in the courtyard, then in the library where he has to wait before being ushered into the room where the guests are gathered.2 It is thanks to the joint impact of these experiences - each one of which puts him in touch with the past in such a powerful way that it seems to him that he has captured 'un peu de temps a 1'etat pur' (IV, 451) - that he is now in possession of the material that will constitute the basis for the book to be written. He no longer has to go in search of it, for once contact has been made with the past, everything - place, period, and the special mode of being associated with it - will be brought back as well, something already learned from the very first experience of affective memory (taking tea with a madeleine), where a similar sensory impression was the stimulus that unlocked the gates to the past: 'Et des que j'eus reconnu le gout du morceau de madeleine trempe dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre a bien plus tard de decouvrir pourquoi ce

112 Proust and Emotion souvenir me rendait si heureux),3 aussitot la vieille maison grise sur la rue, ou etait sa chambre, vint comme un decor de theatre s'appliquer au petit pavilion, dormant sur le jardin... et avec la maison la ville, depuis le matin jusqu'au soir et par tous les temps' (I, 47). A chain reaction is thus set in motion ('tout cela qui prend forme et solidite, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de the') by a process of associations based on contiguity. Having already witnessed how the second part of 'Combray' grew out of this experience, the reader can well imagine how much material is now at hand for the hero who, in Le Temps retrouve, has just undergone several such experiences.4 In thinking about the book to be written, the hero now realizes how important a role is to be given to impressions, a discovery further highlighted by the narrator's formulaic language: 'I/impression est pour 1'ecrivain ce qu'est 1'experimentation pour le savant, avec cette difference que chez le savant le travail de 1'intelligence precede et chez 1'ecrivain vient apres' (IV, 459). Before considering what the narrator understands by 'impression' and how many different kinds there are, it is important to keep in mind the overall framework within which the hero about to become a writer intends to present his experience. He is quite explicit about it: 'Et sans doute tous ces plans differents suivant lesquels le Temps, depuis que je venais de le ressaisir dans cette fete, disposait de ma vie, en me faisant songer que, dans un livre qui voudrait en raconter une, il faudrait user, par opposition a la psychologic plane dont on use d'ordinaire, d'une sorte de psychologic dans 1'espace, ajoutaient une beaute nouvelle a ces resurrections que ma memoire operait' (IV, 60S).5 What he thus proposes to undertake is nothing less than a 'psychologic dans le Temps.'6 How he intends to convey such a complex psychology becomes more evident once one takes a closer look at the impressions that enter into the hero-narrator's aesthetic project. In considering these, it is equally important that we as readers of A la recherche bring back to mind those impressions experienced by the hero that have previously been brought to our attention and have left their mark. In doing so, we too participate in a temporal and spatial psychology as we go from a linear reading to a multidimensional one that takes us beyond the immediate context to spaces previously traversed. When, in Le Temps retrouve, the narrator first introduces the term 'impression' to describe his project, he begins by making a distinction between certain impressions and reminiscences: 'Cependant, je m'avisai au bout d'un moment, apres avoir pense a ces resurrections de la memoire, que, d'une autre fac.on, des impressions obscures avaient quel-

From Impression to Expression 113 quefois, et deja a Combray du cote de Guermantes, sollicite ma pensee, a la fac.on de ces reminiscences, mais qui cachaient non une sensation d'autrefois mais une verite nouvelle' (IV, 456; my emphasis). Modified by 'obscure/ such impressions are signs to be decoded, promising to reveal a truth - an experience more than one impression has given him since Combray: 'deja a Combray je fixais avec attention devant mon esprit quelque image qui m'avait force a la regarder, un nuage, un triangle, un clocher, une fleur, un caillou, en sentant qu'il y avait peutetre sous ces signes quelque chose de tout autre que je devais tacher de decouvrir, une pensee qu'ils traduisaient a la fac.on de ces caracteres hieroglyphiques qu'on croirait representer seulement des objets materiels. Sans doute ce dechiffrage etait difficile mais seul il donnait quelque verite a lire' (IV, 457). Though such enigmatic impressions enter one's awareness through the senses, not unlike involuntary memory, they are different in that they must be further developed by the mind. One can succeed or not in trying to get to the bottom of such impressions. Within the context under discussion, the narrator reminds the reader of one specific instance of successful decoding: the episode of the Martinville towers experienced long ago, in Combray.7 In the present passage, both obscure impressions and experiences of involuntary memory - referred to as 'reminiscences' - are subsumed under the general label of 'impressions' as the narrator clarifies the importance of their joint function in his future project: En somme, dans un cas comme dans 1'autre, qu'il s'agit d'impressions comme celle que m'avait donnee la vue des clochers de Martinville, ou de reminiscences comme celle de 1'inegalite des deux marches ou le gout de la madeleine, il fallait tacher d'interpreter les sensations comme les signes d'autant de lois et d'idees, en essayant de penser, c'est-a-dire de faire sortir de la penombre ce qiie j'avais senti, de le convertir en un equivalent spirituel. Or, ce moyen qui me paraissait le seul, qu'etait-ce autre chose que faire une oeuvre d'art? (IV, 457; my emphasis)

Thus, the first and foremost criterion in mining his experience for adequate material is that only what has been felt is to be considered for the book to be written; that is, only those experiences are to be recovered that have been intensely lived.8 The hero had his first inkling of this while listening to Vinteuil's music. It is illuminating to turn back to those pages in La Prisonniere where the narrator, long before Le Temps retrouve, already mentions some of the same experiences that are to be

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considered for a 'meaningful construction of his life': 'ces impressions qu'a des intervalles eloignes je retrouvais dans ma vie comme les points de repere, les amorces, pour la construction d'une vie veritable: 1'impression eprouvee devant les clochers de Martinville, devant une rangee d'arbres pres de Balbec' (III, 765).9 Yet, in order to be worth their weight, impressions must be developed, as the narrator points out more than once. But how? Are there any explicit indications as to how one is to go about deciphering those impressions that, by definition, are obscure and enigmatic? The narrator is reticent on this subject, which may be taken by the motivated reader as an invitation to participate in solving the mystery. The most likely place to start, it seems to me, is the episode, early on in the novel, involving the Martinville towers, to which the narrator retrospectively keeps referring as an exemplary case of intriguing impressions.10 Even in a first reading of the novel, one cannot help but notice this episode, since it is given special emphasis in the thematic and episodic structure of the novel: it is the one and only experience that motivates the young boy eager to become a writer to suddenly ask for pencil and paper in order to record what he has just experienced. Further emphasis is added when the narrator quotes the entire passage verbatim, allowing the reader to witness first-hand how impressions are translated into expression, something the young hero aspiring to be a writer was not able to do for an incident told a few pages earlier, where stimulating visual impressions led to no more than an enthusiastic 'zut, zut, zut, zut' - a gut reaction he himself finds most inadequate and unsatisfying: 'je sends que mon devoir cut ete de ne pas m'en tenir a ces mots opaques et de tacher de voir plus clair dans mon ravissement' (1,153). The successful translation of the impressions made on him by the Martinville towers thus stands out as the hero's first and only writing sample in the more than three thousand pages one has to read before witnessing the discovery that will finally lead to his vocation. In a retrospective reading of the tower episode, the first thing that strikes me is the emphasis on the special kind of pleasure associated with this experience: 'Au tournant d'un chemin j'eprouvais tout a coup ce plaisir special qui ne ressemblait a aucun autre' (I, 177). Before reading on to learn how this happened, I first go back to the beginning of the long paragraph of which this is part to see if there is anything in the surrounding context that prepares the reader for what is to come. It is obvious that the lines preceding the Martinville episode are part of the same narrative segment, which begins with the description of the

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hero's regret at not having what it takes to become a writer. Such misgivings are dispelled from time to time, as the narrator informs us, thanks to certain impressions he experiences while taking walks:' Alors, bien en dehors de toutes ces preoccupations litteraires et ne s'y rattachant en rien, tout d'un coup un toit, un reflet de soleil sur une pierre, 1'odeur d'un chemin me faisaient arreter par un plaisir particulier qu'ils me donnaient a decouvrir' (I, 176). This is the beginning of the process of mystification, for hero and reader alike, since the narrator does not give any explanation. In rereading this segment one not only recognizes certain terms that, in retrospect, carry more weight (impression, plaisir particulier, plaisir irraisonne, plaisir special, plaisir obscur, or simply plaisir), one also realizes that the entire segment is filled with dramatic irony. This is particularly evident when the young boy does not heed impressions and directs his search elsewhere: Certes ce n'etait pas des impressions de ce genre qui pouvaient me rendre 1'esperance que j'avais perdue de pouvoir etre un jour ecrivain et poete, car elles etaient toujours liees a un objet particulier depourvu de valeur intellectuelle et ne se rapportant a aucune verite abstraite. Mais du moins elles me donnaient un plaisir irraisonne, 1'illusion d'une sorte de fecondite et par la me distrayaient de 1'ennui, du sentiment de mon impuissance que j'avais eprouvee chaque fois que j'avais cherche un sujet philosophique pour une grande oeuvre litteraire. (1,176-7)

Aware of the significant role to be played by impressions in the hero's life and the narrator's aesthetics, the reader realizes, of course, that the boy is on the wrong track looking for 'intellectual value' and a 'philosophical subject.' Even on a first reading of the novel one infers as much when the impressions made by the Martinville towers, which are described two paragraphs later, lead to nothing less than the hero's first piece of writing. It is worthwhile to follow the description step by step to learn more about the nature of the impressions and to discover how they are developed and translated into words. The process of discovery begins with the intuition that there is more than meets the eye: 'En constatant, en notant la forme de leur fleche, le deplacement de leurs lignes, l'ensoleillement de leur surface, je sentais que je n'allais pas au bout de mon impression, que quelque chose etait derriere ce mouvement, derriere cette clarte, quelque chose qu'ils semblaient contenir et derober a la fois' (1,178). He first tries to identify the special kind of pleasure he

116 Proust and Emotion feels ('ce plaisir obscur'). Then suddenly comes a moment of insight, which the narrator describes as follows: 'Bientot leur lignes et leurs surfaces ensoleillees, comme si elles avaient ete une sorte d'ecorce, se dechirerent, un peu de ce qui m'etait cache en elles m'apparut, j'eus une pensee qui n'existait pas pour moi 1'instant avant, qui se formula en mots dans ma tete, et le plaisir que m'avait fait tout a 1'heure eprouver leur vue s'en trouva tellement accru que, pris d'une sorte d'ivresse, je ne pus plus penser a autre chose' (1,178; my emphasis). His persistent scrutiny of the scene in front of his eyes pays off; sudden insight comes in the guise of a thought that can be expressed in words. Yet the narrator refrains from formulating the thought for us, giving us instead another kind of translation, the young boy's version of the event, which, rich in detail and imagery, deserves a closer look.11 It is important to note that once expression has been found, pleasure turns to intense joy ('une sorte d'ivresse').12 In the hero's version (1,179-80), the event is given dramatic emphasis through the personification of the towers and through a series of similes that translate the changing visual impressions into concrete images ('comme trois oiseaux poses sur la plaine'; 'comme trois pivots d'or'; 'comme trois fleurs peintes sur le del'). The difference is apparent right from the start, in the first two sentences: 'Seuls, s'elevant du niveau de la plaine et comme perdus en rase campagne, montaient vers le ciel les deux clochers de Martinville. Bientot nous en vimes trois: venant se placer en face d'eux par une volte hardie, un clocher retardataire, celui de Vieuxvicq, les avait rejoints. Les minutes passaient, nous allions vite et pourtant les trois clochers etaient toujours au loin devant nous, comme trois oiseaux poses sur la plaine, immobiles et qu'on distingue au soleil' (1,179). Moreover, the entire passage is in strict chronological sequence, recording, as they occur, the changing spatial relationships and the fading light as the sun is gradually setting ('au soleil,' 'la lumiere du couchant,' 'cimes ensoleillees/ 'le soleil etait maintenant couche,' 'le ciel encore rose'). Backed up by the constant reminder, through temporal phrases and expressions (Tes minutes passaient/ 'depuis un peu de temps/ 'un peu plus tard'), that time is passing, the changing visual impressions - spatial and atmospheric - are bound to make their point. The indirect message is conveyed over and over again in this passage, without, however, being translated into an explicit statement. The hero's description is, in a nutshell, what the novel will take up at great length. It is a lesson in perspective, an illustration through narrative form and figurative language of what it means to live in time and space.

From Impression to Expression 117 Though general implications about the changing nature of perspective may be inferred from this passage, the emphasis is on the subjective nature of the experience: what one sees depends largely on one's viewpoint - not only the physical position from which one observes, but also how one perceives and reacts to what one sees. This is quite evident from the boy's description, which conveys his interests, imagination, and sensibility. Particularly revealing, in this respect, is the description, at the close of the passage, of the change in atmosphere after sunset. But what is even more striking is the change in focus and mood as a descriptive detail expands into an imaginary drama: Mais, un peu plus tard, comme nous etions deja pres de Combray, le soleil etant maintenant couche, je les aper^us une derniere fois de tres loin qui n'etaient plus que comme trois fleurs peintes sur le del au-dessus de la ligne basse des champs. Ils me faisaient penser aussi aux trois jeunes filles d'une legende, abandonnees dans une solitude ou tombait deja 1'obscurite; et tandis que nous nous eloignions au galop, je les vis timidement chercher leur chemin et apres quelques gauches trebuchements de leurs nobles silhouettes, se serrer les uns contre les autres, glisser 1'un derriere 1'autre, ne plus faire sur le ciel encore rose qu'une seule forme noire, charmante et resignee, et s'effacer dans la nuit. (1,179-80)

The reader is thus afforded direct insight into the subjective nature of the boy's experience. It is the first instance of unmediated narrative, a passage that bears the imprint of the young hero's identity and that, at the same time, is reminiscent of the narrator's predilection to slide into dramatic imaginary scenes. In retrospect, upon rereading this passage, I do not simply attribute the sudden introduction of the three maidens abandoned in the dark to the boy's poetic imagination, but rather see it as a concrete translation of the separation anxiety he is bound to feel as night approaches, a feeling that, in an empathetic mood, he projects upon the scene - both the imaginary one of the three young girls ('jeunes filles ... abandonnees dans une solitude') and the actual one of the three towers, reduced to a 'forme resignee.' As such, the passage functions as a motivic reminder of the fear of being abandoned, tying in with the overture's initial scenario of the lonely traveller, with the narrative segment of the drame du coucher and its accompanying imaginary scenes of the abandoned lovers, and with all later experiences of separation anxiety. The reader thus identifying a trait of the hero's permanent identity within his (the hero's) own narrative expression is one of the forms that

118 Proust and Emotion narrative identity may take.13 We are, moreover, reminded of the bedtime drama in the very next paragraph, which confirms the interpretation of seeing the hero's anguish already projected upon the scene of the towers disappearing in the fading light. The onset of darkness is bound to be a reminder of what lies in store, as much as the actual reason given in the paragraph that follows, namely, that as soon as he sees a certain farm and the surrounding trees, he knows that he will be home within half an hour and his heart begins to race as joy turns to anguish: 'brusquement mon coeur se mettait a battre, je savais qu'avant une demi-heure nous serions rentres, et que, comme c'etait la regie les jours ou nous etions alles du cote de Guermantes et ou le diner etait servi plus tard, on m'enverrait me coucher sitot ma soupe prise, de sorte que ma mere, retenue a table comme s'il y avait du monde a diner, ne monterait pas me dire bonsoir dans mon lit' (I, 180). The joyous experience of having finally gotten to the bottom of one of the obscure impressions by writing about the Martinville episode thus stands immediately juxtaposed to the evocation of a bedtime drama about to happen. This intrusion of the future into the present completely dampens the boy's elated mood and subjects him, without delay, even before arriving home, to the anguish of separation anxiety: 'Les desirs qui tout a 1'heure m'entouraient, d'aller a Guermantes, de voyager, d'etre heureux, j'etais maintenant tellement en dehors d'eux que leur accomplissement ne m'eut fait aucun plaisir. Comme j'aurais donne tout cela pour pouvoir pleurer toute la nuit dans les bras de maman!' (1,180-1). By sliding into narrative monologue, in the last sentence, the narrator allows the hero's anguished voice to be heard, a voice that strikes a familiar note easily detected by an empathetic reader who has witnessed the earlier drome du coucher. Thus, nothing else matters any more, and it is made quite clear that he gets no further pleasure out of the rest of the trip home: 'Je frissonnais, je ne detachais pas mes yeux angoisses du visage de ma mere, qui n'apparaitrait pas ce soir dans la chambre ou je me voyais deja par la pensee, j'aurais voulu mourir' (I, 181). The narrator highlights this abrupt change in mood by interpolating a striking visual analogy into the explanation he now gives: 'La zone de tristesse ou je venais d'entrer etait aussi distincte de la zone ou je m'elanc.ais avec joie il y avait un moment encore, que dans certains ciels une bande rose est separee comme par une ligne d'une bande verte ou d'une bande noire. On voit un oiseau voler dans le rose, il va en atteindre la fin, il touche presque au noir, puis il y est entre.' This is not merely an analogy, but a translation into a dramatic scene of the

From Impression to Expression 119 sudden change of the boy's emotional state.14 In a retrospective reading, both the striking description of the change in mood and the personification of the shifting towers may be seen as emblematic of what it means to live in time. For is this not an early illustration of things to come, the various ways in which he will see and relate to the world around him? Is it not also a telling example of the complexity and changeability of emotions? The changing perspective of things and people over time will turn out to be one of the discoveries to which the hero is most sensitive and one the narrator repeatedly emphasizes. Among the most striking are his changing views of Albertine, seen first as simply a young girl on the beach, against the blue waves of the sea, then associated, in a drastically revised image, with the setting of Montjouvain - changing images of the same person that finally lead to the realization that she is nothing less than a 'Goddess of Time.'15 How pervasive such changes are is a leitmotif by the time we finish reading the Matinee Guermantes section of Le Temps retrouve, where the narrator explicitly tells us that this too will be one of the main themes of the book to be written. The most striking passage is the one where he ponders the multiple relationships he has had with certain people over the years, including some who are present at the gathering: Plus d'une des personnes que cette matinee reunissait ou dont elle m'evoquait le souvenir, me donnait par les aspects qu'elle avait tour a tour presentes pour moi, par les circonstances differentes, opposees, d'ou elle avait, les unes apres les autres, surgi devant moi, faisait ressortir les aspects varies de ma vie, les differences de perspective, comme un accident de terrain, colline ou chateau, qui apparait tantot a droite, tantot a gauche, semble d'abord dominer une foret, ensuite sortir d'une vallee, et revele ainsi au voyageur des changements d'orientation et des differences d'altitude dans la route qu'il suit. En remontant de plus en plus haut, je finissais par trouver des images d'une meme personne separees par un intervalle de temps si long, conservees par des moi si distincts, ayant elles-memes des significations si differentes, que je les omettais d'habitude quand je croyais embrasser le cours passe de mes relations avec elles. (IV, 548-9; my emphasis)

What strikes me in this double-focused rereading - comparing the Martinville tower episode to the narrator's later more explicit poetics as expressed in the above quotation - is how these passages mutually

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reinforce and illuminate each other. The analogy to the traveller's changing views of a landscape introduced here to explain differences in perspective in dealing with people over time also sheds light on the changing aspects of the towers; conversely, the earlier episode helps clarify the landscape analogy. By mining his own fictional world for analogies to make a point, by thus drawing on what is already familiar, the narrator is bound to be more persuasive. His explanations will acquire even more weight to the extent that the reader can bring to the present scene examples remembered from the story world that illustrate the same insight, as, for instance, the changing images of Albertine, of Swann, or of Madame de Guermantes over the years.16 The early lesson in perspective derived from the Martinville towers thus has far-reaching implications for the hero's future project of a psychology in time and space. If we reconsider the fact that together with reminiscences, such obscure, enigmatic impressions are to be a central part of this project, it seems important, then, to take a closer look at what is meant by reminiscences, also referred to as 'impressions bienheureuses.' Yet, the term seems restrictive within the context of the novel we have already been reading, since we have come across memorable passages of affective memory that might well be called 'impressions malheureuses.' The most striking is the one where the hero, on his second trip to Balbec, is suddenly reminded of his first trip there while untying his boot. Though a sensory analogy (taking his shoes off) puts him in touch with a given moment of his past and, once contact has been made, brings back the rest by association, this sudden intrusion of the past into the present brings him no joy, only immense grief. It is significant that the narrator highlights this experience by displaying it in the title of the chapter of which it is an integral part: 'Les Intermittences du coeur' - a title Proust once considered for the novel as a whole.17 The experience of 'intermittence' that the hero undergoes in Balbec is nothing less than an experience of affective or involuntary memory; yet, it is also something more, which distinguishes it from the happy ones. The expression 'intermittence du coeur' points to what else there is that makes the difference: it is, above all, an experience of the heart, an experience that involves strong emotions, emotions that make an impact. As such, intermittences constitute the most powerful impressions, rendered even more forceful since they link up with a whole emotional paradigm, the hero's separation anxiety.18 As is the nature of such emotional structures, their effect is cumulative, hence devastating. This is the very point the narrator so insistently makes

From Impression to Expression 121 when describing the anguish the hero feels when Albertine leaves him, comparing its impact to a homogeneous mass that breaks the heart.19 In the experience of intermittence under discussion, the hero is doubly affected by separation anxiety: first, by making contact with the past through involuntary memory, he suddenly finds himself within the same frame of mind as on the very first night he spent in Balbec when he suffered being separated from his mother who had not accompanied him on the initial trip there; moreover, besides re-experiencing that anguish, he now suffers the loss of his grandmother, missing not only the comfort she provided on the previous trip, but also fully aware now that through her death he has lost her forever. The narrator's detailed description, in consonant narration, of this painful episode, and the added impact it is given in a retrospective reading as we bring to it all the insights gained from later experiences, make it one of the most moving scenes of the novel. It is also one of those moments of reading where, to use Roland Barthes's suggestive image, the text is 'cresting' - one of those special moments where insight and compassion are at their most intense - a point to which I shall return at the close of this chapter. Yet the narrator makes no special mention of including such 'intermittences of the heart' among the significant impressions that are to be the basis for the book to be written. Nor is any mention made of another kind of intermittence, one based on the modes of being associated with the sensory impressions of a certain kind of day or season. One of the most memorable is the description, in the opening pages of La Prisonniere, of how the hero comes to realize that there is, within him, a certain 'petit personnage intermittent' particularly sensitive to the sensory impressions associated with sunny weather (III, 519). It constitutes, as the narrator tells us in this earlier context, one of the two or three most permanent aspects of the self, and the one, he believes, that will outlast all others:20 'En revanche, je crois bien qu'a mon agonie, quand tous mes autres "moi" seront morts, s'il vient a briller un rayon de soleil, tandis que je pousserai mes derniers soupirs, le petit personnage barometrique se sentira bien aise et otera son capuchon pour chanter: "Ah! enfin il fait beau"' (III, 522). Some ten pages later, the narrator comes back to this permanent being within him - so sensitive to atmospheric conditions - and gives it further emphasis through an extended analogy to music that is quite suggestive: 'Mais c'etait surtout en moi que j'entendais avec ivresse un son nouveau rendu par le violon interieur. Ses cordes sont serrees ou detendues par de simples differences de la

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temperature, de la lumiere exterieures. En notre etre, instrument que I'uniformite de 1'habitude a rendu silencieux, le chant nait de ces ecarts, de ces variations, source de toute musique: le temps qu'il fait certains jours nous fait aussitot passer d'une note a une autre' (III, 535). The analogy to music does not merely translate into a more familiar and tangible mode the sudden changes within wrought by certain impressions, it is also attuned to the hero-narrator's interest in music as an ideal medium for conveying emotions - one has only to think of the alternating modes of joy and suffering he finds so inspiring in Vinteuil's music, which remind him of certain impressions in his own life, and which lead to intimations of the aesthetic underpinnings of his own future project.21 In the passage under discussion, the narrator goes on to further explain the very nature of this type of intermittence, specifying that it is a kind of experience whose 'ideal' or typical nature is its distinguishing feature, an aspect further stressed through the analogy to a sacred book: [J]e jouissais en imagination de toutes les matinees pareilles, passees ou possibles, plus exactement d'un certain type de matinees dont toutes celles du meme genre n'etaient que 1'intermittente apparition et que j'avais vite reconnu; car 1'air vif tournait de lui-meme les pages qu'il fallait, et je trouvais tout indique devant moi, pour que je pusse le suivre de mon lit, 1'evangile du jour. Cette matinee ideale comblait mon esprit de realite permanente, identique a toutes les matinees semblables, et me communiquait une allegresse que mon etat de debilite ne diminuait pas. (Ill, 535-6)

The narrator of Le Temps retrouve does not explicitly include such 'typical' experiences in the list of impressions that are to figure prominently in the book to be written. Yet, quite clearly, they play an important role in the book we have been reading, right from the very start. Are not those sunny Saturdays and Sundays described in the second part of 'Combray' such 'ideal' experiences, with their typical nature highlighted by the iterative mode of narration?22 Isn't the long process of mourning in Albertine disparue organized around those impressions and modes of being associated with a certain time of day, a given season, and different kinds of weather - another reminder of what it means for a human being to live in time and space and to be attuned to the very core of one's identity? What is striking, in the context of the opening pages of La Prisonniere, is the narrator's interweaving of various kinds of impressions, all of

From Impression to Expression 123 which play a central role in the novel's mise en intrigue. Right after having introduced the 'petit personnage intermittent/ we are reminded of the drame du coucher as Albertine's soothing good-night kiss is compared to the mother's nightly ritual (III, 520). Two paragraphs further on, the scene describing how the hero carries on a conversation with Albertine through the thin partition between their adjoining bathrooms is reminiscent of the tender mode of communication with his grandmother, their rooms in Balbec being divided by a mere cloison - a fact so important to the anxious boy (III, 521). The reader is thus twice reminded of the most permanent feature of the hero-narrator's personality: his fear of being separated. Three pages later, reference is made to the Martinville tower episode when the hero, who apparently has sent the piece to a publisher, wonders whether it appears in that day's Figaro (III, 523).23 Then, a few lines after the passage, discussed above, of the matinee ideale, the hero suddenly has another experience of involuntary memory when Franchise lights the fire: a familiar olfactory impression reminds him of two experiences that are similar in kind, reading by the fire in Combray and in Doncieres (III, 536). This incident, like the one of intermittence, is highlighted through the narrator's careful explanation of the very nature of this experience, made more memorable yet through striking imagery: 'L'odeur dans 1'air glace des brindilles de bois, c'etait comme un morceau du passe, une banquise invisible detachee d'un hiver ancien qui s'avanc.ait dans ma chambre, souvent striee d'ailleurs par tel parfum, telle lueur, comme par des annees differentes ou je me retrouvais replonge, envahi avant meme que je les eusse identifiers par 1'allegresse d'espoirs abandonnes depuis longtemps' (III, 536). The last part of the sentence alludes to his desire to become a writer, a desire whose realization is closely tied to the various kinds of impressions described in these opening pages of La Prisonniere, which read like the overture to a rich symphony. It seems that all the material for composing the future work is already at hand, and that the narrator is much more inclusive, in the kinds of impressions he weaves into this complex texture, than the theorizing narrator of Le Temps retrouve.2^ After having emphasized the important role of reminiscences and obscure impressions in his future project, the hero-narrator of Le Temps retrouve gives considerable weight to another kind of impression, one that repeatedly comes to mind as he looks around him at the people attending the memorable 'bal de tetes.' What he notices are all aspects of time embodied, of 'temps incorpore' (IV, 623). It is this, the most

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negative imprint of time, that will now be the focus until the end of the novel. It almost seems as if the formulation of the hero-narrator's poetics went hand in hand with his experience, gradually evolving as events unfold at the Matinee Guermantes. It is this frightening scene of 'embodied time' that will now be impressed upon the reader, until the closing pages of the novel, through the unrelenting impact of descriptions of physical decline, through the narrator's telescopic vision, constantly highlighting the shocking contrast between the infirmities of old age and the once youthful vigour of friends and acquaintances, and through metaphors and similes comparing symptoms of aging to petrification and disguise, culminating in the crowning metaphor of 'des hommes juches sur de vivantes echasses grandissantes sans cesse' (IV, 625).25 It is unsettling to see the much-admired Berma, whose superb acting has repeatedly been mentioned, be reduced to the lifelessness of stones and sculpture - a dehumanizing process that touches the heart: 'La Berma avait, comme dit le peuple, la mort sur le visage. Cette fois c'etait bien d'un marbre de 1'Erechteion qu'elle avait 1'air. Ses arteres durcies etant deja a demi petrifiees, on voyait de longs rubans sculpturaux parcourir les joues, avec une rigidite minerale. Les yeux mourants vivaient relativement, par contraste avec ce terrible masque ossifie, et brillaient faiblement comme un serpent endormi au milieu des pierres' (IV, 575-6). Equally disturbing is the comical description of the once-dashing Due de Guermantes, now portrayed as an unsteady old man. The merciless focus on the duke's shaky legs, first reinforced through the humorous comparison to the unsteady gait of old archbishops, then absorbed into the extended metaphor of men on stilts, dramatically highlights the vulnerability of old age: Je venais de comprendre pourquoi le due de Guermantes, dont j'avals admire, en le regardant assis sur une chaise, combien il avait peu vieilli bien qu'il eut tellement plus d'annees que moi au-dessous de lui, des qu'il s'etait leve et avait voulu se tenir debout, avait vacille sur des jambes flageolantes comme celles de ces vieux archeveques sur lesquels il n'y a de solide que leur croix metallique et vers lesquels s'empressent des jeunes seminaristes gaillards, et ne s'etait avance qu'en tremblant comme une feuille, sur le sommet peu praticable de quatre-vingt-trois annees, comme si les hommes etaient juches sur de vivantes echasses, grandissant sans cesse, parfois plus hautes que des clochers, finissant par leur rendre la marche difficile et perilleuse, et d'ou tout d'un coup ils tombaient. (IV, 624-5)

From Impression to Expression 125 That the scene at the Matinee Guermantes is not merely a spectacle to be observed but has repercussions on the observer's life as well is evident from the hero's comparative assessment of aging ('il eut tellement plus d'annees que moi au-dessous de lui') and the narrator's shift from specific instance to generalizing remarks about the human condition ('comme si les hommes etaient juches sur de vivantes echasses'). Such a process of identification enacted within the text and reinforced through an observation that implicates all men and women, cannot escape the reader who, depending on his or her own experience with the infirmities of old age, is bound to react viscerally. Whereas the metaphors of disguise, dehumanization, and instability may have, at first, a distancing or alienating effect that keeps us at a safe distance, the gradual unmasking of the travesty, reinforced by the narrator's general observations about old age and death as inescapable parts of the human condition, work jointly to impress upon us the pathos and universal implications of the Matinee Guermantes. There is a profound change in mood as the positive theorizing about the future project gives way to an ever-growing anxiety, intensified through the cumulative effect of the unrelenting focus on death, sickness, and the loss of memory. The hero-narrator's increasing anguish, as he observes and records the mounting evidence of human frailty around him, fearing that he may not be spared long enough to carry out his long-awaited project, is bound to be felt as well by the empathetic reader who has accompanied the searching protagonist on this long journey through more than three thousand pages. We have witnessed how earnest the quest has been, and we realize by now how close to his heart such a project is, since it will enshrine his most prized possessions. The fear of running out of time is the most intense in the novel's final pages (IV, 612-25), as the narrator repeatedly draws attention to it: 'Oui, a cette oeuvre, cette idee du Temps que je venais de former disait qu'il etait temps de me mettre. II etait grand temps; mais, et cela justifiais 1'anxiete qui s'etait emparee de moi des mon entree dans le salon, quand les visages grimes m'avaient donne la notion du temps perdu, etait-il temps encore et meme etais-je encore en etat?' (IV, 612; my emphasis). The dramatic emphasis, through direct questions, of time running out and of life's uncertainties is reinforced through an imaginary scenario that stages an analogous situation - the outdoor painter prevented from completing his task since night is falling.26 The note of anguish is sustained as the hero-narrator imagines unforeseen dangers, both within and without, while he assesses his ironic

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situation - finding his vocation so late in life27 - and as he anxiously keeps on wondering whether there is enough time to carry out his mission ('Je savais tres bien que mon cerveau etait un riche bassin minier, ou il y avait une etendue immense et fort diverse de gisements precieux. Mais aurais-je le temps de les exploiter?' [IV, 614] - a disquieting concern repeatedly voiced: 'Mais etait-il encore temps pour moi? N'etait-il pas trop tard?' [IV, 621]).28 The anxious mode of this, the novel's final movement, is decidedly 'pathetique' as its vulnerable protagonist imagines what death might be like (IV, 616), as he gives a concrete example of almost succumbing to it ('je manquai trois fois de tomber en descendant 1'escalier' [IV, 616]), and as he speaks of his future work in terms of a burdensome child: 'Elle [mon oeuvre] etait pour moi comme un fils dont la mere trouve si fatiguant d'avoir a s'occuper sans cesse, entre les piqures et les ventouses' (IV, 619).29 By equating himself, as writer-to-be, with the dying mother about to leave her child behind, he strikes a familiar chord that resonates with the leitmotif of separation anxiety.30 For the reader who, in these final pages of the novel, pauses a moment to consult the sketches - more explicit about the protagonist's frailties and mounting fear - the impact is even more intense and the feeling of empathy is bound to be greater, extending at times to the novel's author as well. Such pathos, reaching across textual boundaries, is particulary poignant when the author, in his own voice, speaks of the same things described by the fictional narrator, as in the following passage from Esquisse LXXI: Tour le dernier Cahier quand je me sens presque mourant ne pouvant descendre 1'escalier' (IV, 986). If one is aware of Proust's own infirmity while he wrote those lines, and of the circumstances of his death - preventing him from finishing the revisions to the last three volumes - then one is likely to feel more acutely the sense of unease conveyed in the final section of A la recherche du temps perdu. It is the destructive aspect of time that, according to the narrator of Le Temps retrouve, is to play the major role in the book the hero intends to write. If we pause and reflect on this, comparing this expressed intention to the novel we have been reading, we might agree that the hand of Time has indeed been visible from the very beginning, inscribed as it is in the tombstones, the stained-glass windows, the tapestries, and the different architectural periods of the church in Combray to whose worn aspect the narrator had repeatedly called our attention,31 and perceptible even in the delicate dried stems, petals, and flowers of the linden

From Impression to Expression 127 tea.32 In retrospect, the descriptive emphasis on the linden blossoms' metamorphosis, to which the narrator calls attention ('Et chaque caractere nouveau n'y etant que la metamorphose d'un caractere ancien' [I, 51]), takes on symbolic implications and seems to anticipate the physical changes of old age portrayed at the end of the novel. Though the focus in the novel's final section, the 'bal de tetes/ is undeniably on the destructive aspects of time and the negative impression it makes on the hero, there is a revealing twist in the narrative, a momentary shift to another kind of impression that has left its mark on him, one that is not mentioned, however, as part of the impressions that are to be the basis for the book to be written. After considering the nefarious influences of time and the threat it poses for his future project, the anguished hero about to become a writer pulls himself together to face the task at hand by asking himself a crucial question: 'Or la recreation par la memoire d'impressions qu'il fallait ensuite approfondir, eclairer, transformer en equivalents d'intelligence, n'etait-elle pas une des conditions, presque 1'essence meme de 1'oeuvre d'art telle que je 1'avais conc,ue tout a 1'heure dans la bibliotheque?' (IV, 621). What follows is a momentary outburst of wishful thinking as he brings back to mind one of the moments of involuntary memory experienced in the Prince de Guermantes's library: 'Ah! si j'avais encore les forces qui etaient intactes encore dans la soiree que j'avais alors evoquee en apercevant Francois le Champil' (ibid.). Though part of a series of impressions that first inspired him to think seriously about the work to be written, the impression made by the book's cover was, however, quite different in that it did not make him happy as did the other experiences of involuntary memory (les impressions bienheureuses), but brought him pain. It is significant that the narrator, in describing the part of the past recovered through this painful memory, goes into considerable detail evoking it instead of generalizing about the distinctive nature of involuntary memory, as is the case with the happier experiences. He points out how evocative and effective it is in putting him in touch with the past, in reviving his former feelings: C'etait une impression bien ancienne, ou mes souvenirs d'enfance et de famille etaient tendrement meles et que je n'avais pas reconnue tout de suite, je m'etais au premier instant demande avec colere quel etait 1'etranger qui venait me faire mal. Get etranger, c'etait moi-meme, c'etait 1'enfant que j'etais alors, que le livre venait de susciter en moi, car de moi ne connaissant que cet enfant, c'est cet enfant que le livre avait appele tout de

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suite, ne voulant etre regarde que par ses yeux, aime que par son coeur, et ne parler qu'a lui. (IV, 462-3)33

It is the whole mode of being, the very essence of who he once was that is thus evoked. It is no surprise, then, that the drame du coucher is brought back to mind, since it is irrevocably linked to his mother reading Francois le Champi to him the night he suffered so desperately from separation anxiety.34 It is significant that the first contact with the past is through a visceral, disagreeable feeling that at first baffles him: 'je me sentis desagreablement frappe comme par quelque impression trop en desaccord avec mes pensees actuelles' (IV, 461). It is thus not his mother's consoling presence, as she read to him, and the beauty of that night that makes the initial contact, but the desperate mood that preceded it, the etat d'ame of separation anxiety. How indelible an impression it made on him and how intensely he still feels the despair is suggested through a striking imaginary scenario that the narrator introduces at this point to convey dramatically how unsettling the hero finds this negative feeling, since it does not harmonize with the positive thoughts about his future project:35 [A]u moment ou j'ouvrais distraitement ... Francois le Champi de George Sand, je me sentis desagreablement frappe comme par quelque impression trop en desaccord avec mes pensees actuelles, jusqu'au moment ou, avec une emotion qui allait jusqu'a me faire pleurer, je reconnus combien cette impression etait d'accord avec elles. Tandis que dans la chambre mortuaire les employes des pompes funebres se preparent a descendre la biere, le fils d'un homme qui a rendu des services a la patrie serre la main aux derniers amis qui defilent, si tout a coup retentit sous les fenetres une fanfare, il se revoke, croyant a quelque moquerie dont on insulte son chagrin. Mais lui, qui est reste maitre de soi jusque-la, ne peut plus retenir ses larmes; car il vient de comprendre que ce qu'il entend c'est la musique d'un regiment qui s'associe a son deuil et rend honneur a la depouille de son pere. Tel, je venais de reconnaitre combien s'accordait avec mes pensees actuelles la douloureuse impression que j'avais eprouvee en lisant le titre d'un livre dans la bibliotheque du prince de Guermantes. (IV, 461-2)

The analogy between the young man in mourning and the hero's present situation, startled by the negative impression produced by the cover of the book, is suggestive but far from explicit. The negative emotion, triggered by the yet unconscious association between the

From Impression to Expression 129 book and the drame du coucher, seems at first inappropriate to him, since he has just been thinking positively about the book to be written, inspired by the previous impressions bienheureuses. Yet he gradually realizes - this is the part that is left implicit in the above quotation and must be inferred by the reader - that the impression of pain fits into this project, that it too enshrines the past, that it will be able 'to pay its respects' to his former self and, most important, to his mother!?6 It is up to the reader to develop fully this oblique reference, to fill in the gaps by bringing to the present scene the whole context of separation anxiety.37 This experience thus ties in with the emotional matrix at the very core of the hero-narrator's identity. Once contact has been made with his inner being, once the sensitive chord has been touched, the narrative seems to flow effortlessly: Void que mille riens de Combray, et que je n'apercevais plus depuis longtemps, sautaient legerement d'eux-memes et venaient a la queue leu leu se suspendre au bee aimante, en une chaine interminable et tremblante de souvenirs' (IV, 463) - a remark quite reminiscent of a similar observation the narrator made in the closing sentence of the first part of 'Combray/ at the end of the first detailed description of the workings of involuntary memory: 'maintenant toutes les fleurs de notre jardin et celles du pare de M. Swann, et les nympheas de la Vivonne, et les bonnes gens du village et leurs petits logis et 1'eglise et tout Combray et ses environs, tout cela qui prend forme et solidite, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de the' (1,47). The contiguity principle underlying the nature of experience will thus play a determining role in the shape of the future narrative, and will enter into the hero-narrator's conception of style as he makes his way from impression to expression.38 The textual expansion, in the narrative segment describing the hero's experience of seeing Francois le Champi in the Guermantes library, and the repeated mention of this episode in the novel's closing pages, is symptomatic. It is nothing less than another manifestation of narrative identity, a revealing sign that the narrative process itself is more closely in touch with the hero-narrator's identity than all of the narrator's explicit theorizing as put forth in Le Temps retrouve. It is important to follow the development of the novel's final segment step by step to witness this process and to fully understand its ramifications. It all begins, as mentioned earlier, when the hero, contemplating his future project and wondering how to transform the significant impressions he has experienced into 'equivalents d'intelligence,' brings back to mind Frangois le Champi in a moment of wishful thinking (IV, 621). Instead of

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trying to solve the problem of how to convert experience into its 'intellectual equivalent/ his attention is suddenly taken elsewhere, and so is ours, as we follow the narrative detour that evokes the night his mother had read to him, bringing back to mind his emotional state and certain sensory impressions, including the sound of the garden bell, which is mentioned at the end of a sentence that is left unfinished, with three periods marking an ellipsis as though it were a thought left in suspense: Ah! si j'avals encore les forces qui etaient intactes encore dans la soiree que j'avais alors evoquee en apercevant Francois le Champil C'etait de cette soiree, ou ma mere avait abdique, que datait, avec la mort lente de ma grand-mere, le declin de ma volonte, de ma sante. Tout s'etait decide au moment ou, ne pouvant plus supporter d'attendre au lendemain pour poser mes levres sur le visage de ma mere, j'avais pris ma resolution, j'avais saute du lit et etais alle, en chemise de nuit, m'installer a la fenetre par ou entrait le clair de lune jusqu'a ce que j'eusse entendu partir M. Swann. Mes parents 1'avaient accompagne, j'avais entendu la porte du jardin s'ouvrir, sonner, se refermer ... (IV, 621)

What could be more revealing than the details evoking the drome du coucher and the narrator's retrospective realization that it was this very experience that changed the course of his life!39 When his attention is fixed again on the poetics of the book to be written, he comes back more than once to the realization that the forms through which time manifests itself must be the focus of the work: 'cette matinee - comme autrefois a Combray certains jours qui avaient influe sur moi - qui m'avait aujourd'hui meme, donne a la fois 1'idee de mon oeuvre et la crainte de ne pouvoir la realiser, marquerait certainement avant tout, dans celle-ci, la forme que j'avais pressentie autrefois dans 1'eglise de Combray, et qui nous reste habituellement invisible, celle du Temps' (IV, 621-2). Though the first mention of Combray, in this passage, could be read as an oblique reference to the bedtime drama, which has just been evoked, it is quite clear from the second time it is mentioned that the focus is on the forms through which time manifests itself, in the present instance the boy's impression of the church as having a fourth dimension.40 In considering how to express the shape of time, which he now begins to see as 'embodied time' ('cette notion du temps incorpore' [IV, 623]), the hero-narrator introduces spatial metaphors as he first fixes his attention on the outer, physical manifestations of time ('decrire 1'homme comme ayant la

From Impression to Expression 131 longueur non de son corps mais de ses annees, comme devant ... les trainer avec lui quand il se deplace' [ibid.]). It is this spatial translation that will prevail in the novel's last two paragraphs, reinforced by comparisons to vertiginous heights, stilts, church towers, and giants (IV, 624-5). There is, however, another aspect of 'embodied time' that insinuates itself into the closing pages. It first manifests itself as a denegation - in a statement in which the narrator first mentions it as admittedly important, yet apparently not as crucial as the physical manifestations of time. What, regrettably, he has to leave out, pressed by the constraints of time and energy, is the following: [S]i je n'entreprenais pas, ce dont ma liaison avec Albertine suffisait pourtant a me montrer que sans cela tout est factice et mensonger, de representer certaines personnes non pas au-dehors mais au-dedans de nous ou leurs moindres actes peuvent amener des troubles mortels, et de faire varier aussi la lumiere du ciel moral, selon les differences de pression de notre sensibilite, ou quand, troublant la serenite de notre certitude sous laquelle un objet est si petit, un simple nuage de risque en multiplie en un moment la grandeur, si je ne pouvais apporter ces changements et bien d'autres (dont la necessite, si on veut peindre le reel, a pu apparaitre au cours de ce recit) dans la transcription d'un univers qui etait a redessiner tout entier, du moins ne manquerais-je pas d'y decrire rhomme comme ayant la longueur non de son corps mais de ses annees, comme devant, tache de plus en plus enorme et qui finit par le vaincre, les trainer avec lui quand il se deplace. (IV, 622-3)

It is remarkable how, in talking about what he intends to omit, the narrator cannot stop talking about how important it is. Not only has the focus thus shifted to considerations of how time is experienced within; he insists on dwelling on its emotional dimension, illustrating it, moreover, with a significant example, his relationship with Albertine. There is no mystery as to what is really on his mind: the mention of Albertine is the metonymic link to the whole affective complex of suffering through jealousy and separation anxiety - a link that is not easily suppressed and that will once more assert itself, two paragraphs later, despite the expressed intention to direct his attention elsewhere.41 In this segment the narrator starts out by first reminding the reader of his main purpose: to fix attention on 'embodied time.' However, instead of focusing on the exterior manifestations of time, as might be

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expected from the preceding context, he slides into a long aside describing a specific instance of how time is experienced within. This detour into the inner life takes up where, a few paragraphs earlier, the ellipsis had cut off the hero's ruminations about the sound of the garden bell. It is this little bell that now moves into focus as it triggers another textual expansion. Irrevocably associated in his mind with Swarm's visit, which prevents his mother from coming to his room, the sound of the bell is a metonymic link to the drame du coucher and, as the initiated reader knows by now, to the emotional paradigm of separation anxiety.42 This connection is, in fact, spelled out at the end of the paragraph with the mention of Albertine and the jealousy he still feels. The entire passage deserves close attention, since it is of central significance in assessing the novel's closing pages and its poetics. It begins as follows: Si c'etait cette notion du temps incorpore, des annees passees non separees de nous, que j'avals maintenant 1'intention de mettre si fort en relief, c'est qu'a ce moment meme, dans 1'hotel du prince de Guermantes, ce bruit des pas de mes parents reconduisant M. Swann, ce tintement rebondissant, ferrugineux, intarissable, criard et frais de la petite sonnette qui m'annonc.ait qu'enfin M. Swann etait parti et que maman allait monter, je les entendis encore, je les entendis eux-memes, eux situes pourtant si loin dans le passe. Alors, en pensant a tous les evenements qui se plagaient forcement entre 1'instant ou je les avals entendus et la matinee Guermantes, je fus effraye de penser que c'etait bien cette sonnette qui tintait encore en moi, sans que je pusse rien changer aux criaillements de son grelot, puisque ne me rappelant plus bien comment ils s'eteignaient, pour le reapprendre, pour bien 1'ecouter, je dus m'efforcer de ne plus entendre le son des conversations que les masques tenaient autour de moi. Pour tacher de 1'entendre de plus pres, c'est en moi-meme que j'etais oblige de redescendre. (IV, 623^4; my emphasis)

The point is thus quite emphatically made that the notion of embodied time must incorporate inner time. It is, moreover, convincingly illustrated through the persistent focus on the little bell, evoking its particular sound and a whole mode of being associated with it. It is not merely a mnemonic device, it also symbolizes the continuity between his present and past self, and shows him how time may best be recovered: by plumbing his own depths ('c'est en moi-meme que j'etais oblige de redescendre').43 This important point is made a second time, a few lines later:

From Impression to Expression 133 C'est done que ce tintement y etait toujours, et aussi, entre lui et 1'instant present tout ce passe indefiniment deroule que je ne savais pas que je portals. Quand elle avait tinte j'existais deja, et depuis pour que j'entendisse encore ce tintement, il fallait qu'il n'y cut pas eu de discontinuite, que je n'eusse pas un instant cesse, pris le repos de ne pas exister, de ne pas penser, de ne pas avoir conscience de moi, puisque cet instant ancien tenait encore a moi, que je pouvais encore le retrouver, retourner jusqu'a lui, rien qu'en descendant plus profondement en moi.*4 (IV, 624; my emphasis)

The focus has thus definitely shifted from the outer manifestations of time, which the narrator has emphasized throughout the 'bal de tetes' in his descriptions and theorizing, to the inner life. Once attention has been redirected, it is not surprising to find the narrator eager to express in general terms - a truth to be shared by all readers - the discovery just made. What is surprising, however, is that this universal message does not concentrate on the overall nature of inner time, but rather dwells on a very specific aspect of it, suffering through love and jealousy: Et c'est parce qu'ils contiennent ainsi les heures du passe que les corps humains peuvent faire tant de mal a ceux qui les aiment, parce qu'ils contiennent tant de souvenirs de joies et de desirs deja effaces pour eux, mais si cruels pour celui qui contemple et prolonge dans 1'ordre du temps le corps cheri dont il est jaloux, jaloux jusqu'a en souhaiter la destruction. Car apres la mort le Temps se retire du corps, et les souvenirs - si indifferents, si palis - sont effaces de celle qui n'est plus et le seront bientot de celui qu'ils torturent encore, mais en qui ils finiront par perir quand le desir d'un corps vivant ne les entretiendra plus. (IV, 624)

The elegiac tone, in the final lines, and the sliding from the general to the personal with the mention of 'celle qui n'est plus' arrest our attention - a mode reminiscent of Albertine disparue. Though in harmony with the lines that precede it, it is surprising how this passage - and the long paragraph of which it is part - ends: with a lyrical outcry and a personal reminiscence evoking none other than Albertine: Trofonde Albertine que je voyais dormir et qui etait morte' (IV, 624)! This considerable detour that takes the reader from the garden bell to the drame du coucher, to the discovery of inner time, to the pain of jealousy and an elegiac reminder of Albertine gives the impression that the narrative will, most likely, grow out of the very suffering that is

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linked to the deepest recesses of the hero-narrator's soul. Although he may consciously express another design, the true shape of the work will evolve more spontaneously, going beyond willed intentions and overt theorizing. It seems that suffering through separation anxiety has the first and last word in the narrator's tale. It is a significant signpost of the protagonist's identity - characteristic of both the hero and the narrator. Having followed the long journey from 'Combray' to the closing pages of Le Temps retrouve, one is likely to feel the cumulative impact of repeated instances of separation anxiety and one may well wonder why the narrator does not include such an insistent inner force among the significant impressions he explicitly mentions. It is so irresistible a force that it infiltrates itself into the very pages of his theorizing - the repressed known thus coming to the fore to impress itself upon the text and on the reader.45 The final two paragraphs, which follow the meditation that resuscitated Albertine, are in harmony with the motif it reintroduced into the narrative: the repeated expression of the hero-narrator's growing fear ('J'eprouvais un sentiment de fatigue et d'effroi'; 'Je m'effrayais que les miennes [echasses] fussent deja si hautes') resonates with the leitmotif of separation anxiety; it is a variation on the theme, as he envisages the fear of falling and the ever-present threat of death - the ultimate separation, both from life and from his cherished project. As time goes on, are we not likely to feel more intensely, at each rereading of the novel, the growing anguish and the added weight that our own experience lends to those treacherous stilts? Are we not likely to pay more attention to the little garden bell, more desirous than ever to return to the opening pages and to begin the cycle anew? A question whose answer, no doubt, depends on each reader's own motivation and involvement with the text. Bringing to the novel's closing pages the memory of all that has gone before and the impression it has made in order to assess the heronarrator's evolving poetics, the motivated reader has to play an equally active role when the narrator turns his attention from what is to be included in the book to be written to considerations of how impressions are to be conveyed. When he discloses that metaphor is to be the essence of style, we as readers need to ponder the full implications of what is meant by 'metaphor' and by 'style.' It soon becomes evident that metaphor is not considered a mere figure of speech used for rhetorical purposes or for embellishment, but a vehicle of communication

From Impression to Expression 135 able to translate a given: the very nature and function of the significant impressions at the heart of the hero-narrator's subjective experience. The role of poetic language is thus not to invent, but to find the means to convey an existing inner reality.46 To grasp the full extent of such a poetics, it is necessary to take a closer look at the novel's seminal passages on metaphor while, at the same time, keeping in mind the very nature of the significant impressions that are so central to the hero-narrator's experience. It is important to remember that they are all linked to an aspect of what it means to live in time and that, moreover, they constitute an important part of his identity. This holds true for all the impressions discussed above, including those the narrator fails to mention: (1) the reminiscences of involuntary memory - including happy ones, unhappy ones (the 'intermittences du coeur'), and those the narrator refers to, in the novel's overture, as the body's memory (Ta memoire du corps') - all able to establish contact with the past; (2) recurring experiences of separation anxiety, revealing a permanent trait or paradigm within; (3) the joy that comes from reconnecting with a certain 'ideal' mode of being, shaped by a series of experiences that reveal permanence within ('le petit personnage intermittent'); (4) impressions the narrator refers to as obscure, profound, or poetic, apprehended as an enigma to be solved;47 and, finally, (5) reading as one of those significant impressions that gives insight into what it means to live in time and that leads to recognition of one's identity.48 There is something inherently 'metaphoric' in such experiences, uniting, as they do, past and present. Such bipolar impressions not only furnish the material of the book to be written, they also function as a model, since in their very nature, they are already emblematic of the style that is to give the work its intrinsic shape. The narrator introduces his view of metaphor in Le Temps retrouve, into the midst of a discussion where he criticizes the cinematographic vision of realist art. In presenting his own aesthetics, which is diametrically opposed to the surface notation of realist art, he begins by giving two examples based on experience - the evocative cover of a book once read and a certain mode of being associated with the morning cup of coffee - both of which are able to make contact with the past: 'La vue, par exemple, de la couverture d'un livre deja lu a tisse dans les caracteres de son titre les rayons de lune d'une lointaine nuit d'ete. Le gout du cafe au lait matinal nous apporte cette vague esperance d'un beau temps qui jadis si souvent, pendant que nous le buvions dans un bol de

136 Proust and Emotion porcelaine blanche, cremeuse et plissee qui semblait du lait durci, quand la journee etait encore intacte et pleine, se mit a nous sourire dans la claire incertitude du petit jour' (IV, 467). Both examples illustrate how the past persists in the present through similar experiences that evoke it (associations based on analogy) and through the irrevocable link that exists between simultaneous impressions (associations based on contiguity). This significant insight is given further emphasis when the narrator spells out the general implications of the specific examples just given: Une heure n'est pas une heure, c'est un vase rempli de parfums, de sons, de projets et de climats. Ce que nous appelons la realite est un certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs qui nous entourent simultanement - rapport que supprime une simple vision cinematographique, laquelle s'eloigne par la d'autant plus du vrai qu'elle pretend se borner a lui - rapport unique que 1'ecrivain doit retrouver pour en enchainer a jamais dans sa phrase les deux termes differents. (IV, 467-8)

By thus basing considerations of style on the complex nature of experience, the narrator not only reaffirms his intentions of mining his own experience, but also affords us a close look at those aspects of his life that are to be translated into style. Whereas the first approximation of what such a style should be like is rather vague ('enchainer a jamais dans sa phrase les deux termes differents'), the narrator is more explicit in the following lines. It is symptomatic of his deepest belief that he continues to back up theory with experiences taken from life while formulating the aesthetic foundations for the book to be written: On peut faire se succeder indefiniment dans une description les objets qui figuraient dans le lieu decrit, la verite ne commencera qu'au moment ou 1'ecrivain prendra deux objets differents, posera leur rapport, analogue dans le monde de 1'art a celui qu'est le rapport unique de la loi causale dans le monde de la science, et les enfermera dans les anneaux necessaires d'un beau style. Meme, ainsi que la vie, quand en rapprochant une qualite commune a deux sensations, il degagera leur essence commune en les reunissant 1'une et 1'autre pour les soustraire aux contingences du temps, dans une metaphore.49 (IV, 468)

By thus equating style with metaphor and by presenting the metaphoric process as one centred on extracting the common essence of two

From Impression to Expression 137 different objects whose relationship is to be captured through the 'necessary' links of style, the narrator seems to suggest a view of metaphor as interaction.50 By referring to life to explain the process of confrontation and filtering out ('en rapprochant une qualite commune a deux sensations'), he stresses the analogy principle at the heart of the metaphoric process. Yet, given the overall context out of which this definition grows, including the previous examples drawn from experience (the book and the morning cup of coffee), it is important to keep in mind a second kind of association at work, namely, the contiguity principle, which will turn out to be as crucial a factor as analogy in assesssing the Proustian conception of metaphoric style.51 This inference to be drawn from previous examples is further encouraged when the narrator, in the guise of an illustration, introduces additional experiences of involuntary memory, making the point once more that it is, after all, life that has shown him the way.52 Thus, the very nature of metaphor is based on the structure of experience, those privileged moments that afford special insight into the rich and complex texture of life. Yet it is also those very moments that are to figure prominently in the book to be written, thereby involving the narrator in nothing less than a double metaphoric process: a metaphoric narration in which metaphor is to be the essence of style; a narrative, moreover, that tells the story of experiences whose very nature is metaphoric and that repeatedly introduces analogies to compare what is similar in its own fictional world. We must keep this in mind when, a few pages later, we come across the passage where style is described as vision: 'car le style pour I'ecrivain aussi bien que la couleur pour le peintre est une question non de technique mais de vision. II est la revelation, qui serait impossible par des moyens directs et conscients, de la difference qualitative qu'il y a dans la fac,on dont nous apparait le monde, difference qui, s'il n'y avait pas 1'art, resterait le secret eternel de chacun' (IV, 474). The basis of style, then, is not imagination or invention, but lived experience. This explains the curious analogy to the causal law of science, introduced into the midst of the definition of what is to be the first and foremost aesthetic principle, metaphor. Not unlike science, it is strictly determined and necessary ('les anneaux necessaires d'un beau style'), since it is, after all, to be based on experience - those significant impressions that unlock the gates to the past.53 When one considers A la recherche du temps perdu in light of the narrator's aesthetic observations as put forth in Le Temps retrouve, it is soon apparent that the novel's metaphoric narration is far more com-

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plex than the narrator's own theorizing would allow. For instance, associations are not necessarily limited to two; in the case of separation anxiety, the impact is cumulative, bringing to the present moment several similar experiences from the past. Particularly revealing, in this respect, is the convergence of more than one kind of impression, as is the case when an experience of involuntary memory is inextricably linked to separation anxiety. Moreover, a reader initiated into a narrative based on associations between similar experiences is likely to be motivated to make further connections during the reading process.54 Readers thus participate in giving the novel its shape by introducing associations - drawn from textual elements in the novel or from their own experience - that add significant overlay to the linear unfolding of the narrative.55 Such an interactive reading is, moreover, encouraged by the narrator, given his tendency to endow a particular experience with more general ramifications and to implicate the reader through inclusive pronouns. This sliding from the personal to the general, from the fictional to the ideological, constitutes yet another level of metaphoric narration, a crossing of domains not just semantic but ontological as well. Once we follow the narrator's invitation to use the novel as an incentive to begin filling in our own life story, we too participate fully in metaphoric narration as we confront fiction with our own reality and vice versa: 'Mais pour en revenir a moi-meme, je pensais plus modestement a mon livre, et ce serait meme inexact que de dire en pensant a ceux qui le liraient, a mes lecteurs. Car ils ne seraient pas, selon moi, mes lecteurs, mais les propres lecteurs d'eux-memes, mon livre n'etant qu'une sorte de ces verres grossissants comme ceux que tendait a un acheteur 1'opticien de Combray; mon livre, grace auquel je leur fournirais le moyen de lire en eux-memes' (IV, 640).56 In the final analysis, it is metaphoric narration, with its intricate network of associations, that is best able to convey the gradual insights into the heronarrator's identity. Such a metaphoric process implies not only the poetic translation of an impression into a description, but also the narrative translation of impressions into a story, as Vincent Descombes has so convincingly shown in his study Proust: Philosophic du roman: 'Et il y a la traduction romanesque de 1'impression en histoire: elle consiste a integrer la reaction du personnage a un scenario de ses rapports avec d'autres personnages, tout en tenant le plus grand compte du roman d'aventures, sterile et sans verite que le heros a bati autour des autres personnages' (256).57 It is thanks to his interaction with others that the hero-narrator discovers the very core of his being, the matrix that determines the

From Impression to Expression 139 course of all important relationships, that makes him vulnerable, leads to suffering, and ultimately to his vocation. It is, then, the 'metaphors of the heart' (including those experiences referred to as 'intermittences du coeur' and all other instances of separation anxiety) - those painful experiences of affective memory - that, along with those happier experiences of involuntary memory, will turn out to be the central coordinates of the novel's mise en intrigue. Thus, at the very heart of the hero-narrator's search and discovery is 'la figure de ce qu'on a senti' (IV, 475; my emphasis). The novel has thus come a long way from its initial framework, the critical study directed against Sainte-Beuve. As the text gradually took the shape of a narrative, the aesthetic theory that accompanied its opening section was transferred to later parts of the text, primarily to what became the novel's final section, the 'Matinee Guermantes.'58 The decisive moment in this astonishing evolution, according to Claudine Quemar, was the introduction, at the very start of the text, of a temporal expression with dynamic import: 'autrefois/ referring to a time when the subject - the future hero-narrator - used to go to bed early and experience the kind of disorienting sleep that put him in touch with various rooms he had inhabited in the past, including the one in Combray.59 It is this very room and the central event associated with it the drame du coucher - that will eventually furnish the novel's first extensive narrative segment. This dramatic episode will also turn out to be, as we have seen, the central episode in the hero-narrator's sentimental education, since the suffering first known as anxiety over separation from the mother will later influence all significant personal relationships, and will culminate, in Le Temps retrouve, in the fear of being separated, through illness or death, from his most cherished project, the book to be written. It is thus a Leidensgeschichte, not unlike Parsifal's, where suffering leads to insight and salvation.60 In the final analysis, it is matters of the heart that infuse the narrative with life and passion and that make the most memorable impact on the reader through compassion and empathy.61 There is a revealing passage, in Esquisses XXXV, where a self-critical narrator draws attention to where the true focus of his narrative ought to be, a message, moreover, reinforced by authorial comment: Je lisais a contresens le livre de ma propre vie puisque dans Guermantes je ne voyais plus les nympheas *(voir 1'image)*, plus de souffrance *(tacher si possible de dire quelle souffrance)* dans la mort d'Albertine, plus de

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montagnes bleues de la mer dans ce fruit sec qu'elle prenait quelquefois chez moi le soir les premiers temps, plus de prestige chez le lift, plus de desir d'eglise puisque des Balbec je croyais avoir encore a moi le livre de ma vie comme quelqu'un qui aurait un livre mais a qui une congestion suivie d'aphasie verbale aurait ote la faculte de lire les lettres. Je voulais rendre a ces lignes leur signification. (IV, 857)

The significance to be highlighted is none other than 'la figure de ce qu'on a senti' (IV, 475) mentioned by the narrator of Le Temps retrouve.62 It is this part of his experience that is to give substance to his story. To give it the right emphasis he has to be selective in scanning his life and give the proper reading to 'ce livre interieur': 'je pouvais retrouver dans le passe quelques-uns de ces sommets que j'avais eu le tort de perdre de vue (ce que je comptais ne plus faire desormais)' (IV, 498; my emphasis).63 This kind of selective reading based on key moments of the inner life is the very model, as mentioned before, that Roland Barthes developed after his own rereading of Proust and Tolstoy, rejecting his former structural analysis of narrative for an approach based on affective response and centred on pathos: 'il faudrait ... accepter d'emietter le "tout" de 1'univers romanesque, ne plus placer 1'essence du livre dans sa structure, mais au contraire reconnaitre que 1'oeuvre emeut, vit, germe, a travers une espece de "delabrement" qui ne laisse debout que certains moments, lesquels en sont a proprement parler les sommets, la lecture vivante, concernee, ne suivant en quelque sorte qu'une ligne de crete: les moments de verite sont comme les points de plus-value de 1'anecdote' ('Longtemps' 323; my emphasis of sommets and crete). Though in the Garnet de 1908 Proust still asks himself, Taut-il en faire un roman, une etude philosophique, suis-je romancier?' (61), once the gates to childhood were unlocked through affective memory, the case had been decided: the drame du coucher ushered in the first in a series of emotional upheavals with repercussions for years to come; as the novel's first extended narrative segment, it also set in motion the dynamics of narrative discourse, engendering a mise en intrigue that extends over more than three thousand pages. In order to be able to recognize those impressions that count and thus to be initiated into the reading of complex emotions, readers of A la recherche, like Parsifal, have to take the long road - passion's way - that leads from the little garden bell in 'Combray' to the end of Le Temps retrouve, where it is heard once again. In considering the hero-narrator's list of significant impressions to be included in the work to be written, one cannot ignore the force of

From Impression to Expression 141 reading. Though he mentions it only briefly in Le Temps retrouve, the textual detours and expansions at the mention of Francois le Champi exemplify the kind of impact reading can have.64 It is, therefore, important to take a closer look at the role of reading in A la recherche du temps perdu, which will be the focus of the following chapter.65

CHAPTER EIGHT

Reading Emotions

Lire, et du reste aussi bien regarder, meme regarder en soi-meme, c'est mettre en oeuvre son esthetique. A la recherche du temps perdu, I, 752

Reading occupies a central place in the narrator's tale and is among the experiences whose impressions make a lasting imprint. The importance he attaches to reading is evident from the sustained focus on it and the detailed, at times even passionate, treatment it is given right from the start, beginning with 'Combray.' The many variations on the theme, throughout A la recherche, reveal it as one of the novel's recurring leitmotifs. At the end of the long journey assessing a lifetime, it is, as we have seen, a book read long ago, Francois le Champi, that brings back a central experience from early childhood, the drame du coucher. It is thanks to affective memory that the past is thus recaptured: the hero, seeing the cover of the book from which his mother once read to him, is suddenly put in touch, through complex associations, with the past the very essence of his former being. The narrator's focus, in this case, is the link between a book and the time and place where it was read an association much valued by Proust himself and highlighted in one of his earliest essays, the preface he wrote in 1905 for his translation of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies: Tl n'y a peut-etre pas de jours de notre enfance que nous ayons si pleinement vecus que ceux que nous avons cru laisser sans les vivre, ceux que nous avons passes avec un livre prefere ... s'il nous arrive encore aujourd'hui de feuilleter ces livres d'autrefois, ce n'est plus que comme les seuls calendriers que nous ayons gardes des jours enfuis, et avec 1'espoir de voir refletes sur leurs

Reading Emotions 143 pages les demeures et les etangs qui n'existent plus/1 This passage and the description of the experience triggered by George Sand's novel in Le Temps retrouve both emphasize how a particular setting and mode of being may be recalled one day by coming across the same book. The narrator's focus on reading is quite different, however, at the start of the novel. It is turned inward as he fixes his attention on what is nothing less than a phenomenology of the young hero's experience of reading novels in the garden of Combray. Moreover, in a retrospective interpretation of the novel, this passage acquires added significance for the reader, who now realizes that this early initiation into the aesthetics of reading will be reinforced by subsequent discussions of music, painting, and other literary works. It will then be apparent that the narrator is engaged in a twofold project: telling the story of his self-discovery and, in doing so, giving readers a lesson in aesthetics, initiating them into a reading both literal and 'allegorical.'2 The description of reading in Combray is of particular interest for the present discussion, since the narrator's primary focus is the representation of emotions and emotional response. Moreover, it gives the reader early insight into the importance the narrator attaches to this experience, which will turn out to be nothing less than a cherished piece of temps retrouve. This privileged moment of proleptic insight and the narrator's own emotional involvement as reflected in the telling both contributed to calling this segment to my attention. It is such a seminal passage that I have returned to it again and again, realizing that it readily lent itself - given its motivic and stylistic richness - to more than one framework of discussion. It still fascinates me as I set out on yet another reading, somewhat different from the previous ones, since it is based on a rereading of A la recherche in the new Pleiade edition. As an avid reader of this particular narrative segment I could, of course, not refrain from searching in the esquisses, scrutinizing them eagerly for any additional information or variant version of the young hero's reading experience in the garden of Combray. When this impassioned search finally took me all the way to the Proust manuscripts in Paris, I fully realized how important reading about reading had become. The major incentive behind my motivation will be clear from the following discussion, which will be interspersed with pertinent discoveries made by reading in the margins. This will, I reckon, give the reader of my analysis a feeling for the kind of palimpsestic reading that I myself experienced and a better understanding of the driving force that sparked

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my interest.3 It is now time to take a closer look at the description of reading in 'Combray.'4 Proust's narrator takes us step by step from the hero's innermost preoccupations and reactions while reading to his simultaneous awareness of certain sensory impressions and the sense of well-being associated with this experience. He takes great pains to describe each level of awareness and he introduces conceptual images to emphasize the complexity of this experience. For instance, at the start of the passage, the metaphor ecran diapre d'etats differents functions like a conceptual model in helping us grasp a complex notion, the concurrent levels of awareness that constitute the young boy's consciousness: Tespece d'ecran diapre d'etats differents que, tandis que je lisais, deployait simultanement ma conscience, et qui allaient des aspirations les plus profondement cachees en moi-meme jusqu'a la vision tout exterieure de 1'horizon que j'avais, au bout du jardin, sous les yeux' (1,83). The reader is reminded of this inner complexity toward the end of the passage where, through image and explanation, it is made clear that it is based on the spatial and temporal contiguity of things experienced simultaneously: 'ce n'etait pas par le hasard d'une simple association de pensee; non, c'est que mes reves de voyage et d'amour n'etaient que des moments - que je separe artificiellement aujourd'hui comme si je pratiquais des sections a des hauteurs differentes d'unjet d'eau irise et en apparence immobile dans un meme et inflechissable jaillissement de toutes les forces de ma vie' (I, 86; my emphasis). The metaphor jet d'eau irise, like the initial trope ecran diapre, which it reinforces, functions like a conceptual model of the complex state of awareness thus translated into a vivid image.5 In turn, jaillissement extends and reinforces the metaphorical description of jet d'eau irise. As the narrator takes us from one level of consciousness to the next, he reminds us each time of their simultaneous presence, pointing out, however, that the order in which he describes them goes from the innermost preoccupations to an awareness of his surroundings. We thus learn that first comes the 'croyance en la richesse philosophique, en la beaute du livre que je lisais, et mon desir de me les approprier' (I, 83), followed by the hero's emotional response to the novel's characters, and, at a level already somewhat closer to the surface, the landscape of the fictional universe: 'Deja moins interieur a mon corps que cette vie des personnages, venait ensuite, a demi projete devant moi, le paysage ou se deroulait 1'action et qui exer^ait sur ma pensee une bien plus grande influence que 1'autre, que celui que j'avais sous les yeux quand

Reading Emotions 145 je les levais du livre' (I, 85). This is the level of wishful thinking and of desire, as he longs to visit the places described in books and imagines the woman of his dreams in such a setting.6 He also assumes that undertaking this kind of search would lead him to the truth: 'Si mes parents m'avaient permis, quand je lisais un livre, d'aller visiter la region qu'il decrivait, j'aurais cru faire un pas inestimable dans la conquete de la verite' (I, 85). What the reader has to infer, in light of the explanation that follows, is that this desire to confront the imaginary with the real is the wrong quest, that it is the desire of the young boy, which the narrator immediately calls into question by interpolating a more enlightened point of view. He alerts us to this change in focus by switching from the first-person pronoun to the impersonal on, thus clearly taking us from the hero's subjective view to one with more general implications (I, 85-6). Here, as in the previous passage on emotions, it is the narrator's perspective that firmly establishes itself. This will be even more evident when, in the final paragraph of this segment on reading, the narrator takes us to the outermost level of awareness, after reminding us of the superimposition of the various states of consciousness: 'Enfin en continuant a suivre du dedans au dehors les etats simultanement juxtaposes dans ma conscience, et avant d'arriver jusqu'a 1'horizon reel qui les enveloppait, je trouve des plaisirs d'un autre genre, celui d'etre bien assis, de sentir la bonne odeur de 1'air, de ne pas etre derange par une visite' (I, 86). What follows is a detailed description of one of the hero's most idiosyncratic experiences, where the sounds coming from the belfry are visualized. The narrator, through consonant narration and verbal mimesis recreates the strange effect of the sounds of the bell through synaesthetic metaphors: when the clock strikes the hour on the SaintHilaire belfry, the young boy finds pleasure in seeing 'tomber morceau par morceau ce qui de I'apres-midi etait deja consomme/ and in visualizing how each hour is inscribed in the blue sky through a 'marque d'or' (I, 86).7 Sometimes, when engrossed in the book he is reading, he does not hear the clock strike; yet, even silence undergoes a sensorial transformation: Tinteret de la lecture, magique comme un profond sommeil, avait donne le change a mes oreilles hallucines et efface la cloche d'or sur la surface azuree du silence' (I, 87).8 The narrator, in transcribing this unique event, renders it in terms of the hero's experience of it. The same is no longer true at the end of this long passage on reading, when he suddenly shifts attention to himself, a change in focus further highlighted through a change in tense, tone,

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and discourse. In an emotional invocation addressed to beautiful Sunday afternoons, he voices his retrospective appreciation of what, in the long run, has turned out to be an invaluable experience, nothing less than a piece of time recovered. It is important to give this conclusion to the passage on reading close scrutiny and to consider its significance for the novel as a whole: Beaux apres-midi du dimanche sous le marronnier du jardin de Combray, soigneusement vides par moi des incidents mediocres de mon existence personnelle que j'y avals remplaces par une vie d'aventures et d'aspirations etranges au sein d'un pays arrose d'eaux vives, vous m'evoquez encore cette vie quand je pense a vous et vous la contenez en effet pour 1'avoir peu a peu contournee et enclose - tandis que je progressais dans ma lecture et que tombait la chaleur du jour - dans le cristal successif, lentement changeant et traverse de feuillages, de vos heures silencieuses, sonores, odorantes et limpides. (1,87)

This passage is a tour deforce in that it emphasizes and illustrates the close association between concurrent ideas, emotions, and sensations by introducing the metaphor of the crystal container which, like the earlier tropes of jet d'eau irise and ecran diapre, translates an abstract concept into a concrete image. This striking metaphor also highlights a second discovery, namely, that the past can be recaptured thanks to such closely knit associations, since bringing to mind one aspect of the experience will bring back the rest. Through choice of image and through its stylistic integration into the text, the metaphor of the crystal container translates the nature of this experience: the dynamics of associations built on contiguity is exemplified through the syntactical juxtaposition of the adjectives that modify each noun: 'le cristal successif, lentement changeant et traverse de feuillages, de vos heures silencieuses, sonores, odorantes et limpides/ These attributes, each one of which refers to a specific sensory impression associated with the reading sessions in the garden of Combray, can only be fully understood from the preceding descriptive context. While the adjectives modifying cristal intimate that time is passing and that things are gradually changing, the final series of four adjectives that characterize heures are metonymic modifiers, since through one telling detail, each one recalls a particular aspect of the experience: silencieuses and sonores refer to the hourly chime - the first alluding to the quiet setting between chimes, the second to the contrasting auditory stimulus that marks each hour -

Reading Emotions 147 odor antes reminds us of the tree under which the reading takes place by highlighting its pervasive fragrance, and limpides alludes to the special atmosphere associated with clear weather - the clear blue sky of sunny days previously captured through descriptive details (ce petit arc bleu; la surface azuree). Yet, more is at stake than simply recalling the salient features of the setting through this final series of modifiers. Their special function is translated through stylistic choice and arrangement: each metonymic detail refers to an essential component of the experience; in turn, syntactical juxtaposition and coordination exemplify their close conceptual contiguity. It is the concept of total preservation that the metaphor of the crystal container so dramatically highlights;9 it functions like vase and similar variants in stressing preservation through the notion of enclosure.10 The striking image emphasizes the momentous discovery the narrator has made; a discovery that leads to a lyrical outburst and metaphorical language, namely, that things experienced together will always be closely associated, and that remembering any one aspect of the experience will, perforce, bring back the rest. Thus, the young boy's act of reading and the thoughts, desires, and emotions it calls forth will always be associated with this particular setting in which the reading took place - a closely knit network convincingly expressed through the metonymic metaphors that capture the hero's concurrent impressions. It is to the discovery of this precious treasure that the image of the crystal container - given its positive connotations - lends further emphasis.11 Yet, what is not revealed in the present passage is how this unique Sunday experience is recalled in the first place. The missing link is affective memory. Though by the time we read about the hero's experience in the garden of Combray and the narrator's proleptic revelation of its future significance we have witnessed the first experience of involuntary memory (the madeleine episode), the exact nature of this kind of experience and its significance for the hero-narrator's life and vocation will not be spelled out until Le Temps retrouve.12 For a reader who comes back to this passage after having finished the novel, this retrospective reading will be more involved and complex as insights from later parts of the text come into play. If, for instance, one were to superimpose on the passage under discussion two of the heronarrator's most important discoveries in Le Temps retrouve - how seeing the cover of Francois le Champi brings back an experience irrevocably associated with Combray (the drame du coucher) and how insight into the workings of involuntary memory will inform the style and shape of

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his future project by making metaphor its central figure - then one might infer that a sensory analogy similar to the one that triggered the involuntary memory process in the case of George Sand's novel is probably at the root of the narrator's discovery in the passage under discussion. One is now in a better position, moreover, to realize that the image of the crystal container and its metonymic modifiers reveal that Proustian metaphor does not simply draw on associations based on analogy, that it may well combine different kinds of association, including those based on contiguity, creating nothing less than a metonymic metaphor able to account fully for the richness and complexity of a given experience in and over time: 'le cristal successif, lentement changeant et traverse de feuillages, de vos heures silencieuses, sonores, odorantes et limpides/ There is no mention of this kind of metaphor in the heronarrator's theorizing. The motivated reader may find evidence, however, throughout A la recherche, beginning with the telling description of the reading session in the garden of Combray.13 Even more compelling, in a retrospective analysis of this early narrative segment on reading, is the passage on emotions (1,83-5). Not only do we fully realize the important role emotions play once we have finished reading the novel, we are also likely to see the narrator's shift in focus - from the young hero's experience with emotions to his own preoccupation with how best to convey them - in a new light. In thus redirecting our attention from the hero's life to aesthetic considerations, he changes our relationship to the text. Since what is said is presented as a general truth reaching beyond the subjective experience of the novel's hero, we as readers are encouraged to test these claims during our own reading of novels, including he very text we are holding in our hand. In a rereading of A la recherche, the significance of this procedure is even more evident, since readers know by then that this initial analysis of reading will later be reinforced by others, including discussions of music and painting. This opens up a dual perspective, one fixed on a personal history, the other on an aesthetics with universal implications. Even in a first reading, the passage on emotions stands out, since it is given a far more detailed treatment than any other aspect of the experience of reading novels. Nor can it be dismissed for what it says and how it says it, since it makes the important claim - in general terms that imply its validity for the fictional world and ours as well - that reading is complementary to life, that it enriches our experience by giving us insights we might otherwise not have. How is this possible? It is so, the narrator argues, because reading a novel 'dechaine en nous pendant

Reading Emotions

149

une heure tous les bonheurs et tous les malheurs possibles dont nous mettrions dans la vie des annees a connaitre quelques-uns, et dont les plus intenses ne nous seraient jamais reveles parce que la lenteur avec laquelle ils se produisent nous en ote la perception' (I, 84). Such good and ill fortunes are, of course, bestowed upon characters. It is they who are our point of contact in the process of intensification that novels afford us, either by confronting us with a variety of different emotions in a short space of time or by impressing upon us that even the most intense emotions and passions are subject to change.14 The narrator takes pains, therefore, to consider what it is, in the writer's technique, that enables readers to get a better grasp on emotions: Mais tous les sentiments que nous font eprouver la joie ou 1'infortune d'un personnage reel ne se produisent en nous que par 1'intermediaire d'une image de cette joie ou de cette infortune; I'ingeniosite du premier romancier consista a comprendre que dans 1'appareil de nos emotions, 1'image etant le seul element essentiel, la simplification qui consisterait a supprimer purement et simplement les personnages reels serait un perfectionnement decisif. (I, 84)

It is thus the magic power of imagery that is able to give insight into emotions, in real life as well as in fiction. One wonders, however, what exactly is meant by 'image' in the context of feelings and emotions. Is the narrator referring to figurative language in general or does he have in mind metaphor, the trope singled out, in Le Temps retrouve, as the essence of style, the very basis for his aesthetics? Does the rest of the passage in question offer any clues when, a few lines later, the primordial function of images is linked to the notion of transparency? Un etre reel, si profondement que nous sympathisions avec lui, pour une grande part est pergu par nos sens, c'est-a-dire nous reste opaque, offre un poids mort que notre sensibilite ne peut soulever. Qu'un malheur le frappe, ce n'est qu'en une petite partie de la notion totale que nous avons de lui, que nous pourrons en etre emus, bien plus, ce n'est qu'en une partie de la notion totale qu'il a de soi, qu'il pourra 1'etre lui-meme. La trouvaille du romancier a ete d'avoir 1'idee de remplacer ces parties impenetrates a I'ame par une quantite egale de parties immaterielles, c'est-a-dire que notre ame peut s'assimiler. (I, 84; my emphasis)

The narrator thus claims that the right image, thanks to its 'immaterial' nature, can enable one to assimilate what would otherwise remain

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opaque and impenetrable. However, it is far from clear what is meant by 'parties immaterielles,' since he gives us no hint as to what, on the level of style or narrative technique, corresponds to it. Instead, attention shifts to the effect they produce on the reader. In describing such effects, the narrator no longer focuses on the young hero and his subjective experience but addresses readers of novels in general: 'Qu'importe des lors que les actions, les emotions de ces etres d'un nouveau genre nous apparaissent comme vraies, puisque nous les avons faites notres, puisque c'est en nous qu'elles se produisent, qu'elles tiennent sous leur dependance, tandis que nous tournons fievreusement les pages du livre, la rapidite de notre respiration et 1'intensite de notre regard' (I, 84). The primary focus of the passage on emotions is obviously no longer the young boy's experience of reading but rather a narrator absorbed by aesthetic concerns, interested in both matters of style evident from references to the 'ingenuity' and 'ploys' of novelists - and their effect on reading and reception. Intrigued by the narrator's emphasis on the mysterious nature of imagery, I was impelled to search further. I began my quest by first turning to the esquisses related to the narrative segment on reading in the garden of Combray. There are three in all, two of which contain important information on emotions.15 What is striking, when one compares the first of these (Esquisse XXXVI) with the novel's version, is that the focus is almost exclusively on the young boy's experience of reading and that considerably more attention is paid to the interaction between reader and text - an exchange whose affective dimension is foregrounded, providing the organizational framework for the entire description. We first learn of his vicarious participation in the fictional universe, which is so intense that it causes certain physical symptoms: 'Ma vie pendant cette journee etait celle des personnages du livre que je n'avais pas besoin de croire vraie pour desirer qu'elle hit bien puisqu'en passant en moi elle interessait a tous ses progres le rythme de ma respiration et la chaleur de mon sang' (I, 760). Our attention is then drawn to the interpenetration, in the hero's awareness, of the fictional universe and the actual setting where the reading takes place: 'ce que j'avais devant les yeux etait le pays decrit par 1'auteur, ou j'amenais cependant avec moi, de mon autre vie, pendant ma lecture, la sensation du beau temps qu'il faisait dans notre jardin, d'etre bien assis dans le fauteuil d'osier, et la perspective du bon diner dont Franchise m'avait dit le menu et qui me recompenserait des terribles aventures que j'affrontais en ce moment' (I, 760) - followed by several lines depicting

Reading Emotions 151 impressions, from the 'real' world, that are closely associated with the experience of reading in the garden, including the synaesthetic conversion of the sounds of the belfry into a visual image. The emphasis, once again, is on how inextricably the two worlds, the real and the fictional, are linked in his imagination. In what follows, the narrator focuses more closely on the effect the fictional events have on the hero, pointing out that these events prevail in shaping his inner life, having replaced the less compelling ones of his own everyday pursuits. Particular attention is given to the hero's active participation in the adventures of the fictional characters as the narrator examines the interaction between reader and text, describing such roleplaying as projection, appropriation, and identification:16 'je vivais les actions des personnages, ce qui faisait que je n'avais aucun besoin de les croire vraies pour souhaiter leur heureuse issue, puisque ce que je lisais n'etaient pas les actions ecrites, mais reproduces aufond de moi par mon imagination, ma voix interieure, jusqu'a ma respiration, c'etait quelque chose d'interieur a moi, quelque chose de moi a qui il serait arrive un ennui, un malheur si le livre avait mal fini' (I, 761; my emphasis).17 The heroas-reader projects his own beliefs and desires into the life of the characters, thus intensely participating in it: 'C'etait a un desir de mon amour-propre, a une velleite de mon coeur que je souhaitais bonne chance quand je voulais que le mechant homme apprit les prosperites de celui qu'il meprisait etc.' (1,761). It is thus through affect that interaction is most intense; the actions themselves provide merely the framework for such active reader participation. This intense exchange, on the level of emotions, is reinforced, as the narrator once more points out, by the strong impression the fictional landscape makes on him and by the simultaneous awareness of certain preoccupations and sensorial impressions from his own life at the moment of reading.18 There is further evidence of the narrator's keen interest in the process of interaction in Esquisse XLVIII (I, 791-3), where the focus is, once again, on identification as the projection of the self into the situation of the fictional characters: 'Or le phenomene particulier de la lecture identifie notre volonte, nos affections avec ceux de personnages, et ceci fait, ces personnages 1'auteur les fait mourir, cesser d'aimer, en un mot nous fait sentir le changement' (I, 792). A few lines later, the narrator takes up the motif of painful change once more as he singles out the process of identification as instrumental in conveying this pain to the reader, followed by several examples to make his point: 'la lecture qui apres avoir identifie momentanement notre moi a celui des heros, les

152 Proust and Emotion fait changer, nous les montre n'aimant plus les etres qu'ils aimaient, cessant d'attacher de 1'importance a ce pour quoi ils auraient donne leur vie en commenc.ant, ne voyant plus une fois par an une personne qu'ils avaient declare mourir plutot que de rester un jour sans la voir, puis morts, pas regrettes, meme pas de 1'auteur, qui ne parle plus d'eux que comme d'etres insignifiants, ce triste voyage de la vie, qu'on accomplit sans le voir, dans ces montagnes russes de la lecture nous nous embarquons pour le faire en quelques heures et percevoir des changements que d'habitude leur lenteur nous dissimule' (I, 792).19 Between the above passages on identification just examined, the narrator interpolates an explanatory comment that clarifies the process of identification by reintroducing the concept of assimilation already found in Esquisse XXXVI: 'De plus il faut remarquer que pour qu'ils se pretent a 1'experience de la lecture, pour qu'ils puissent etre totalement assimilables - ou exactement recrees cela revient au meme - a noire esprit, 1'auteur a remplace en eux toutes les parties refractaires a la penetration de notre sympathie qu'il y a dans les etres vivants, par des parties egales de sentiment pur. De sorte que tandis que s'il arrive un malheur a quelqu'un [interrompu]' (1,792; my emphasis). By equating assimilables and recrees, the narrator gives us some indication as to how, in the process of identification, the 'opaque' becomes 'transparent.' However, in the present context, as in Esquisse XXXVI, what is missing is the intermediary function of the image that the narrator so insistently highlights in the definitive version of the novel.20 It was thus necessary to go on searching. My quest took me to the Proust manuscripts at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes in Paris, where I first consulted the notebooks from which the sketches and variants of the Pleiade edition were taken. In doing so, I soon discovered a fragment on the assimilation of emotions, in cahier 30, right after the pages that had been transcribed by the editors of Esquisse XLVIII. It turned out to be important, since in it the narrator delves deeper into the nature of assimilation, being more precise about the aesthetics of reception and introducing a new development on literary creation.21 This twofold orientation within the framework of a generalizng discourse focused on aesthetics instead of the hero's personal adventure is close in design to the comparable passage in the novel. It is an important step in the development of the final version and deserves close study: Ce que nous appelons un etre reel est le element important c'etait plus le personnage reel, mais I'image ... non le personnage reel, et... la simplification qui consisterait a supprimer purement et simplement le personnage reel serait en realite un perfectionnement aussi decisif que la suppression du fil bruit acoustique dans le telephone d'Edison ou du fil electrique dans le telegraphe de Branly. (cahier 68, folio 39 verso)

The image is thus at the very heart of the interaction process between reader and text. In the present context, the important mediating function of images is qualified by three words that are no longer found in the final version of the novel: Tintermediaire d'une image de cette joie ou de cette infortune recreee en nous' (my emphasis). The image, then, is in part at least, the reader's mental image. The writer's role is less clear: does the novelist create an image that is recreated by the reader or is it the reader who, during the reading process, recreates the emotions experienced by the fictional characters in fashioning his or her own image? By looking further, I found more insight into the kind of mental image in question in an abandoned draft where much of the material is crossed out. Here too the emphasis is on the novelist's ingenuity in depicting emotions, thus putting the emphasis on writing: 'le jour ou cet inventeur ingenieux qui s'appelle un romancier a per simplifie et

Reading Emotions 155 perfectionne I'appareil nos emotions un un appareil a la fois plus perfectionne, plus simple, et plus puissant que la vie ou il produirait 1'idee du malheur d'un qui met en mouvement nos sentiments de joie et de douleur sans plus avoir besoin de personnage le personnage reel mais que nous ne percevons jamais dans la vie parce qu'il se produit insensiblement...' This part of the passage is reworked on the typescript prepared for publication by combining two sentences into one: 'ainsi notre coeur change , et c'est la pire douleur' (N.A.F. 16733, folio 126). N.A.F. 16733, folio 126; my emphasis. See N.A.F. 16755, folio 54; cf. N.A.F. 16733, folio 126 and 1,84-5 of the novel. N.A.F. 16755, folio 54. In the novel's final version, soil replaces est at the end of the sentence: 'la sensation meme du changement nous soit epargnee' (1,85). For a discussion of the various functions of Proust's parentheses, see Jean Milly, La Phrase de Proust, 192-4, and his Proust dans le texte et I'avant-texte, 181-2. See also Leo Spitzer, Stilstudien, 2: 386-95. See Nouveau discours du recit for this line of argument (106). Though Genette admits that certain effets de focalisation may well have a psychological effect on the reader, he does not discuss the role of textual perspectives in the reader's response to the text. Though I do not agree with his assertion that one had best stay within the borders of the text, I still find his work invaluable, in fact one of the very best, for the study of narrative technique - an excellent starting point for locating those textual features that play a crucial role in the interaction between reader and text. I am quoting from the Livre de Poche version of Albertine disparue edited by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer (1993), 515. In the new Pleiade edition (1989), based on the longer version of Albertine disparue, this passage appears in IV, 35. For a useful distinction of different kinds of identification, see Murray

Notes to pages 160-2 247 Smith's excellent study Engaging Characters, chapter 3 (73-109), which I discuss in more detail in the conclusion. For a discussion, within a somewhat different context, of such back-and-forth movements in the reading of literary texts, see the article by Marshall W. Alcorn, Jr and Mark Bracher, 'Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the Re-formation of the Self,' 342-54. In another article, 'Rhetoric, Projection, and the Authority of the Signifier/ Alcorn pays special attention to the joint action of the rhetorical forces of the text and the projective forces of the reader: 'Our discussion of the linguistic structure of the self encourages us to hypothesize a relation between the projective forces brought to bear upon the text by the reader and the rhetorical forces brought to bear upon the reader by the text. In reading, projection has a boomerang effect: projective moments become introjective moments as the self invests itself narcissistically in the particularity of the signifiers it encounters' (147). It is interesting to see how and to what extent the Proustian narrator, in his analyses of reading, exemplifies such interactive processes. 38 Cf. IV, 642, where the same idea is expressed; all that has changed are two of the literary figures: 'tant de fois sous le nom bien vite depasse d'Albertine j'avais pense a Mme de Cleves, a Mile de la Mole, aux heroines de Georges Eliott.' In yet another fragment from the same esquisse, the narrator explicitly points to the process of substitution and relates it to the hero's mental images of Balbec and Florence: 'Mais la substitution d'un etre ideal a un etre perceptible par les sens etait la meme. De meme que quand je me disais: "Dans huit jours je serai a Florence", je pensais a une eglise qui etait en fleur, de meme quand je me disais: "L'ingrate m'a quitte", si j'avais vu clair dans mon regret j'aurais vu que je lui donnais pour objet une Albertine a la fois Mme de Renal, Clelia Conti, Hermione et Roxane' (IV, 632; my emphasis). 39 The hero-narrator is given more than once to the personification of musical phrases (i.e., endowing the music with human characteristics). In Du cote de chez Swann, Swann is enchanted by 'the little phrase' of Vinteuil's music, a phrase that is repeatedly described in terms of an elusive woman (see, e.g., I, 206-7, 208-9, 260). For a more detailed discussion of Swann's musical listening, see my Poetics of Reading, 108-13. See also the discussion, later on in this chapter, concerning the hero's listening to Vinteuil's music in La Prisonniere. He recognizes the 'little phrase' and recalls Swann's fondness for it (III, 764). He is, moreover, fascinated by the fact that Vinteuil reintroduces the same phrase from an earlier work in a subsequent one - an important discovery for the hero as future writer: 'Cependant le septuor qui avait recommence avanc,ait vers sa fin; a plusieurs

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41 42

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Notes to pages 162-4

reprises une phrase, telle ou telle de la senate, revenait, mais chaque fois changee, sur un rythme, un accompagnement differents, la meme et pourtant autre, comme reviennent les choses dans la vie' (III, 763; my emphasis). Such parallels between the structure of artistic texts and human life are certainly reflected in Proust's novel. Cf. the Manon passage, where an unidentified 'profound feeling' leads to tears ('je fus remplis d'un sentiment si profond que je me mis a pleurer' [515]). It seems likely that in each of these cases, the loss of Albertine is harder to bear after she has benefited from the attribution of positive features. Once again, both literature and music can supply the much needed and desired emotional content. A similar observation appears in Albertine disparue, in one of the narrator's long generalizing asides just preceding the Manon passage: 'Les liens entre un etre et nous n'existent que dans notre pensee.' From this discovery he categorically derives another general 'truth': 'L'homme est 1'etre qui ne peut sortir de soi, qui ne connait les autres qu'en soi, et, en disant le contraire, ment' (514). That Albertine does not exist within her own right but is subject to the hero's imaginary constructs and his deep-seated emotions is even more obvious in the hero's experience of separation anxiety at the moment of Albertine's departure. In both cases, Albertine, who stands for more than herself, acquires added significance - not in any objective sense, but purely in the eyes, or rather, the heart of the beholder. It is interesting to note that the hero identifies with Phedre throughout this discussion and that Albertine is compared to Hippolyte; it is obviously not the sexual identity that matters, but rather the emotional ties between two people. For a detailed discussion of this passage, see the discussion of separation anxiety above. I am referring to the long version of Albertine disparue as published in volume 4 of the new Pleiade edition (1989). The passage in question is on pp. 121-2. It does not appear in the Livre de Poche edition, based on the Mauriac typescript, where the passage has been cut. The hero-narrator is involved more than once in a rereading of Bergotte. Cf. Le Temps retrouve, in the new Pleiade edition, IV, 464-5 and, in the same volume, Esquisse XXX, 'Bergotte relu.' Two fragments of this sketch deal with the hero's disappointment in rereading the once-admired novel. What disappoints him, however, are not the characters, but the book's style ('les phrases'), which has lost its impact. What has been preserved, however, is a personal association between the depiction of the snow and a feeling of anxiety involving Gilberte, which is brought back to mind and heart with full

Notes to pages 164-6 249 force: 'Mais un jour ou j'avais cru longtemps qu'elle ne viendrait pas, un jour dans les Champs-Elysees de sorte que la vue de ce soleil sur la neige, le blanc decor qui signifiait son absence etait reste plante malgre 1'apparition du soleil, de sorte que celle de Gilberte avait eu beau se produire aussi, la vue de la neige ensoleillee melait dans mon souvenir I'angoisse de I'absence aux plaisirs de 1'amour' (IV, 846; my emphasis). This fragment contains another instance of the hero's repeated attacks of separation anxiety, which, as I have shown, is one of his central emotional paradigms. For a more developed version of the association between the snow described in the novel and a scene from his own life, see Esquisse XXIV in the same volume (832). Another rereading of Bergotte, more favourable in general, appears in Esquisse LXV, IV, 959-62. See also 1,783 (Esquisse XLIV}, where the novelist's characters still inspire the same emotions in the now much older hero; in rereading Bergotte, he now superimposes upon the pages of the book the memory of his own loved ones, like his grandmother, associated with the original reading of the book. 45 For a similar response, see Esquisse XLIV (I, 783); rereading does not attenuate such an intense emotional involvement with a novel's characters, as is evident in the following passage: 'Helas, aujourd'hui quand je relis les livres de Bergotte la gracieuse femme si belle et si bonne m'inspire le meme amour, j'ai la meme tristesse quand elle disparait et qu'il n'est plus question d'elle' (783). Through rereading, one is thus able to make contact once again with fictional characters and the feelings associated with them. Yet the same does not seem to hold true for real people, as the narrator goes on to point out in the nostalgic passage about the irretrievable loss of his grandmother: 'les etres pres de qui j'allais me consoler dans la vie reelle de ne jamais revoir la jolie dame que le romancier cruel avait montree un moment puis derobee dans la nuit, ces etres, eux, ma grandmere elle-meme, la vie qui les avait fait briller un moment pres de moi les a repris dans la nuit, ils ne sont plus que des images ..., elle n'est plus qu'un songe recule dans le labyrinthe des songes' (I, 783). Yet, as we have seen, dreams and involuntary memory will be able to put him in touch once again with his beloved grandmother. 46 Another telling example is the story of Swarm's love, which, after initiating the reader into his obsessive love for Odette, ends with an introspective passage where Swann himself is at a loss to explain such devotion: 'Dire que j'ai gache des annees de ma vie, que j'ai voulu mourir, que j'ai eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui n'etait pas mon genre' (I, 375). 47 For a discussion of imaginative substitutions based on emotional Simula-

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49

50

51

Notes to pages 166-8

tion or empathy, see Murray Smith, Engaging Characters, 95-101. As he points out, in such imaginative substitutions readers imagine a scenario 'from the attitudinal perspective of a person other than oneself/ in other words, by simulating the mental or emotional state of the fictional character in question (96). For a similar view of simulation, see Kendall Walton, 'Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction,' 37-49. As Walton points out, 'Our real selves make themselves felt in what we imagine, as well as in what we feel and the manner in which we imagine what we do' (45); readers, he concludes, 'bring much of themselves to the make-believe; their actual psychological makeup, attitudes, interests, values, prejudices, hangups, and so forth, come powerfully into play. And this sometimes makes their experience of the fiction a deeply moving one' (47). Even the kind of scenarios the hero-narrator imagines are a clue to his personality. Kendall Walton, in analysing the role of mental simulation, stresses the role of mental imaginings in revealing character: 'What betrays one's character is not what one can imagine - one can imagine just about anything ... but what one does imagine, especially what one finds oneself imagining in given circumstances: what one imagines as a result of mental simulation induced by works of fiction, for instance' (49 note 15). Kendall Walton comes to a similar conclusion in 'Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime': 'We bring much of our actual selves, our real-life beliefs and attitudes and personalities, to our imaginative experiences, and we stand to learn about ourselves in the process' (38). It is Swann who first listens to Vinteuil's music; followed by the hero's initiation into the composer's music in AI 'ombre des jeunesfilles enfleurs and in La Prisonniere. I shall focus attention primarily on the discoveries he makes while listening to Vinteuil's masterpiece, his septet, as described in two separate narrative segments of La Prisonniere (III, 753-65 and 875-7). A few lines later, the narrator comes back to the notion of 'sensation' as central in expressing personality: Tharmonie d'un Wagner, la couleur d'un Elstir nous permettent de connaitre cette essence qualitative des sensations d'un autre ou 1'amour pour un autre etre ne nous fait pas penetrer' (III, 665; my emphasis). He is too quick to dismiss insight through love, however, a recurring motif in this section ('La musique bien differente en cela de la societe d'Albertine, m'aidait a descendre en moi-meme, a y decouvrir du nouveau' [ibid.]), not having realized as yet that suffering through love will put him in touch with his innermost identity - an insight that Albertine's departure at the end of La Prisonniere will forcefully impress upon him as it reactivates separation anxiety - the emotional para-

Notes to pages 168-71 251

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53

54

55

56

digm that rules his life. The emotions and sensations associated with anguish set the tone for much of the novel. The narrator keeps emphasizing the marked presence of this expansive joy: 'La joie que lui avaient causee telles sonorites, les forces accrues qu'elle lui avait donnees pour en decouvrir d'autres, menaient encore 1'auditeur de trouvaille en trouvaille, ou plutot c'etait le createur qui le conduisait luimeme, puisant dans les couleurs qu'il venait de trouver une joie eperdue qui lui donnait la puissance de decouvrir, de se jeter sur celles qu'elles semblaient appeler, ravi, tressaillant, comme au choc d'une etincelle quand le sublime naissait de lui-meme de la rencontre' (III, 758-9). The hero is likewise aware of two opposing motifs - one voluptuous, the other anxious - while listening to the sonata: 'la combinaison du motif voluptueux et du motif anxieux repondait davantage maintenant a mon amour pour Albertine' (III, 664). Though this comes closer to a 'structural' or form-oriented reading than the previous intrusions of personal associations into the musical listening, the motifs are treated like characters through the sustained process of personification. Most striking is the description of a recurring phrase in the midst of which the narrator reminds us, moreover, of the equally striking little phrase that had impressed Swann: 'Puis elles s'eloignerent, sauf une que je vis repasser jusqu'a cinq et six fois, sans que je pusse apercevoir son visage, mais si caressante, si differente - comme sans doute la petite phrase de la senate pour Swann - de ce qu'aucune femme m'avait jamais fait desirer, que cette phrase-la qui m'offrait d'une voix si douce un bonheur qu'il eut vraiment valu la peine d'obtenir, c'est peut-etre - cette creature invisible dont je ne connaissais pas le langage et que je comprenais si bien - la seule Inconnue qu'il m'ait jamais ete donne de rencontrer' (III, 764). If one pauses to read between the lines, more than musical analysis seems to be at stake; personal needs and desires appear to be projected onto the music and may well account for the transformation of musical phrases into female figures. Cf. Ill, 765 and III, 876-7; the latter reads as follows: 'Ainsi rien ne ressemblait plus qu'une belle phrase de Vinteuil a ce plaisir particulier que j'avais quelquefois eprouve dans ma vie, par exemple devant les clochers de Martinville, certains arbres d'une route de Balbec ou plus simplement, au debut de cet ouvrage, en buvant une certaine tasse de the.' For a more detailed discussion of these passages within the context of significant impressions, see above, chapter 7. Earlier on in La Prisonniere, while talking about Wagner's Tristan, the narrator already mentions his awareness of opposing motifs, joy and

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Notes to pages 171-3

sadness: 'Cette joie, du reste, ne 1'abandonne jamais. Chez lui, quelle que soit la tristesse du poete, elle est consolee, surpassee - c'est-a-dire malheureusement un peu detruite - par 1'allegresse du fabricateur' (III, 667). It is quite clear that the joy identified in Wagner and Vinteuil stems from the joy of artistic creation. It is symptomatic, in the present passage, that the hero-narrator regrets the attenuation of sadness through the triumphant joy of the creator. In his future work, the motif in the minor key - jealousy and separation anxiety - will triumph, though, as we have seen, it alternates with a second major theme, the joy associated with the past recovered through affective memory. Wagner was a major source of inspiration for Proust and underlies the creative process of A la recherche, as is quite evident from the manuscripts. For a telling example, see Esquisse XXIV entitled 'L'Adoration perpetuelle/ based on cahiers 57 and 58, the crucial part of the manuscript where the Proustian narrator develops his aesthetic theory (IV, 798-832); Wagner's Parsifal is mentioned repeatedly (cf. 799, 825-6). In a note to this sketch, the editors include one of Proust's own marginal reminders from cahier 57, where the author again mentions Wagner: 'Capital: De meme que je presenterai comme une illumination a la Parsifal la decouverte du Temps retrouve dans les sensations cuiller, the, etc., de meme ce sera une 2. illumination dominant la compositon de ce chapitre subordonnee pourtant a la premiere' (IV, note 1,1389). See also La Prisonniere, III, 665, where Parsifal is briefly mentioned. The narrator directly points to the similarity between Vinteuil's and Wagner's phrases: Tidentite que j'avais remarquee tout a 1'heure entre la phrase de Vinteuil et celle de Wagner' (III, 667). Conclusion

Reading Proust in the Twenty-first Century

1 Proust's novel has given rise to a number of activities (web sites, chat groups, theatrical stagings) and has inspired other creative works, including comic-book versions, by Stephane Heuet, of 'Combray' and A I'ombre, des jeunes filles enfleurs, and films based on A la recherche, the most recent being Chantal Akerman's La Captive (2000) and Raoul Ruiz's adaptation of Le Temps retrouve (1999). 2 The BN's website has already put part of the manuscript version of Le Temps retrouve on line, Champion has released a CD-ROM entitled Proust: Oeuvres romanesques completes (1998), and Gallimard has brought out a multimedia CD-ROM on Proust (1999). 3 Gabriele Schwab, The Mirror and the Killer Queen, 39. We have seen, in the previous chapter, how readers engaged in literary texts may be subject to

Notes to pages 173-4 253

4 5 6

7

structures of identification. See also Wolfgang Iser's argument on the need for a 'literary anthropology/ as discussed in Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology, 262-84. As he puts it: 'a central task of literary anthropology would be to explore why we find an insatiable pleasure in making ourselves into our own possibilities and why we cannot - in spite of knowing what it is - cease to play the game of our potentials' (284). For Ricoeur, identification is at the center of such role-playing as he points out in Oneself as Another: 'the possibility of applying literature to life rests, with respect to the dialectic of the character, upon the problem of "identification with"' (159). See White, Marcel Proust. The above quotation is taken from a review of this book by Carlin Romano entitled 'Capturing a Literary Giant in a Small but Smart Volume,' published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Distinction of Fiction, 58-78. See Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique, 13-46. In The Distinction of Fiction, Dorrit Cohn briefly reviews the distinction between fictionality and nonfictionality by highlighting some telling features: 'One is to give explicit notice, paratextually (by way of title, subtitle, or prefatory statement) or textually. The other is to provide the narrator's name: its distinction from the author's name conveys fictional intentionality, its identity with the author's name autobiographical intentionality' (59). Both the brief mention of the name 'Marcel' some two thousand pages into the novel and its omission elsewhere are problematic; whereas the latter could be seen as either authorial strategy or indecisiveness (61), the former is less easily solved. To begin with, a decision has to be made as to which version of the text is the most reliable. Dorrit Cohn, basing her reading on the new Pleiade edition of the novel, speaks of two instances where the author's first name is used (III, 583 and 663) and relies on the editors' notes claiming that the mentions of the name are late additions (III, 1718; Cohn, 62). A somewhat different explanation is given by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer in her edition of La Prisonniere suivi de Albertine disparue (1993): 'L'unique occurrence du prenom "Marcel" demeuree dans 1'oeuvre figure dans la partie de La Prisonniere que Proust n'eut pas le temps de reviser (p. 218)' (580, note to 135). For the same passage in the Pleiade edition, see III: 663. Proust himself, as Mauriac points out, kept up the autobiographical ambiguity in his extra-textual pronouncements by telling a reporter for Le Temps, when the first part of the novel appeared in 1913, 'le personnage qui raconte, qui dit: "Je" ... n'est pas moi'; yet in 1920 he gave another twist to this complex puzzle in an article entitled 'A propos du style de Flaubert': '[le] narrateur qui dit "je" ... n'est pas toujours moi' (ibid.).

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8 In reaching this conclusion, she draws on a recent linguistic study of the Recherche and its earlier versions. See A. Gresillon, J.L. Lebrave, and C. Viollet, Proust a la lettre: Les Intermittences de I'ecriture. 9 The importance of paying attention to such a text-inherent poetics has been pointed out by several critics and is one of my main points in this study as well, as I have argued above. My main inspiration, as I mentioned earlier, was Vincent Descombes's Proust: Philosophic du roman. See also The Distinction of Fiction, where Dorrit Cohn discusses the view of Rainer Warning, who argues that 'the "official poetics" (offizielle Poetik) of Proust's final volume stands in "essential contradiction" (Grundwiderspruch) to the implied poetics of the Recherche as a whole' (76). Warning's conclusion, however, is quite different from my own, since he maintains, as Cohn points out, that '[t]he overall structure of Proust's work, far from forming a coherent whole, is cleaved by a deep "epistemological rupture" (epistemologischer Riss)' (77). 10 Alain Robbe-Grillet's attack on Lejeune's 'autobiographical pact/ inserted as an ironic aside in his autofictional work Angelique ou I'enchantement (67), comes to mind. Fictional practice is clearly ahead of theory, as is evident from the intentionally transgressive autobiographical fictions of the seventies and eighties (Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Duras, Maurice Roche, and others); Proust had obviously prepared the way, ready to cross boundaries more than half a century earlier. 11 In The Distinction of Fiction, Cohn divides the various critical responses into four groups: (1) the biographical approach (in vogue twenty to thirty years after publication): 'the habit of reading the author's life and opinions uninhibitedly into and out of literary works' (66); (2) the 'novel of imagination' approach, seeing the novel's T as a trompe I'oeil creation, a view first proposed in 1943 by Louis Martin-Chauffier, who compared the Proustian T in La Recherche to the use of the first person in Adolphe and L'Immoraliste (67); (3) the approach upholding the 'hybrid' nature of the novel (67-8); and (4) the post-structuralist stance (the deconstructive approach), including Barthes and de Man (68). 12 Genette's view on the status of the Proustian novel has changed over time. Since Genette is an astute reader and foremost critic of Proust, such interpretative mobility is, of course, not a sign of the critic's undecidability but rather further proof of the novel's flexibility. Cohn reviews Genette's evolving interpretative moves (68-70), beginning with his Narrative Discourse, where he claims that 'the speaker of the Recherche "is neither completely [Proust] himself nor completely someone else," that this voice reflects a slightly distanced and de-centered relationship' (68). In 'Meto-

Notes to pages 175-8 255 nymie chez Proust/ Proust's 'imagery is said to open at every point "an unending debate" between a reading of the Recherche as fiction and a reading of the Recherche as autobiography' (69). A la recherche is discussed in Nouveau discours du recit as a 'semiautobiographic text/ in Palimpsestes as an 'autofictional work/ and in Seuils as 'a narrative close to a pure and simple autobiography' (69). According to Genette's latest view, in Fiction et diction, the narrator is 'declared to be "fictional," and his discourse is considered entirely representative of "the discourse of first-person fictional narrative"' (69). 13 See de Man's 'Autobiography as Defacement/ where he claims 'that the distinction between fiction and autobiography is not an either/or polarity but that it is undecidable' (921) - quoted by Cohn (68). 14 For a more detailed discussion of the multiple discourses and the reader's changing impressions and responses, see my chapter 'Proust's Palimpsest: Multiple Frames of Reference in A la recherche du temps perdu' in Poetics of Reading (89-120). 15 The critic-writer who first tried his hand at composing 'Centre SainteBeuve' changed direction somewhere along the way, sliding into narrative discourse and introducing characters without, however, giving up the critical dimension - expanding the personal story into a three thousand page novel while integrating important aesthetic and ideological insights. 16 For a detailed discussion of this comprehensive study, see my review article The Status of Metaphoric Discourse: Paul Ricoeur, La Metaphore vine.' 17 Cf. Dorrit Cohn who, in The Distinction of fiction, compares the 'nonreferential narratives' of fiction to historical narratives. In talking about the former, she points out that 'we do not mean that it can not refer to the real world outside the text, but that it need not refer to it.' This is an important distinction, since it gives fictional reference more freedom, a point to which she returns: 'fiction is subjected to two interrelated distinguishing features: (1) its references to the world outside the text are not bound to accuracy; and (2) it does not refer exclusively to the real world outside the text' (15). 18 Murray Smith, Engaging Characters, 73-109. 19 For a more detailed discussion of how a literary character is gradually identified by the reader as a conceptual unit with a certain personality, see Herbert Graves, 'Wie aus Satzen Personen werden.' See also Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, chapter 6, The Self and Narrative Identity' (140-68). According to Ricoeur, 'the identity of character is comprehensible through the transfer to the character of the operation of emplotment, first applied to the action recounted' (143); it is the narrative, in Ricoeur's view, that

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Notes to pages 178-9

'constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told' (147-8). To determine such alignment in the case of novels, attention needs to be paid, for instance, to point of view (mode) and the various narrative functions as described by Genette in Discours du recit. In describing empathetic responses Murray Smith makes a further distinction between 'emotional simulation,' which is voluntary ('we imaginatively project ourselves into their [the characters'] situation, and hypothesize as to the emotion(s) they are experiencing' [72]), and 'affective mimicry,' which is involuntary and relies upon 'an almost "perceptual" registering and reflexive simulation of the emotion of another person via facial and bodily cues' (99; my emphasis). Morever, in watching a movie, as he explains, response may arise 'directly from the represented visual or aural environment in which the character moves' (102), a response he labels 'autonomic reaction.' For a similar view of simulation, see Kendall Walton, 'Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime.' This point is made quite explicit, as in the following passage: "The structure of sympathy usually acts centripetally, "pulling in" the insights of simulation and mimicry and affording them no privilege over more cognitive assessments' (103). Murray Smith insists on the narrative's structuring potential: 'As the ultimate "organizer" of the text, the narration is the force which generates recognition, alignment, and allegiance, the basic components of the structure of sympathy' (75). What needs to be added to this 'organizing force' is the reader's input as drawn from his or her own personal history - though certain associations may be triggered by empathy. Cohn, The Distinction of Fiction, 118. She is right to emphasize that 'it is by its unique potential for presenting characters that fiction most consistently and most radically severs its connections with the real world outside the text' (16). This is most apparent in third-person narration, as she points out: 'In fiction cast in the third person, this presentation involves a distinctive epistemology that allows a narrator to know what cannot be known in the real world and in narratives that target representations of the real world: the inner life of his figures. This penetrative optic calls on devices among others free indirect style - that remain unavailable to narrators who aim for referential (nonfictional) presentation' (16). See also her Transparent Minds for a detailed examination of the inner lives of characters in first- and third-person narration. The Shadow of the Object, 39. In Bollas's view, 'a person's character is a

Notes to pages 179-80 257

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process, one that expresses the subject's historical experience of the primary objects' (60). Bellas mentions diverse sources for such transformations: 'I am played by the object. At the moment of my use, the particularity specific to the object - its integrity - transforms me, whether it is Bruckner's Eighth Symphony moving me, a novel evoking associations, or a friend persuading me' (31). In Being a Character, Bollas is quite explicit about his disagreement with Freud as to the importance of objects endowed with psychic meaning: 'He [Freud] would not include in psychoanalytical theory this important part of everyday life: our travel in a rendered world of psychic signifiers that light up in the subject clusters of feeling, imagery, somatic states, and memories, and reawaken the sexual states that partly drove the initial investiture' (13). As Bollas explains: To be a character is to gain a history of internal objects, inner presences that are the trace of our encounters, but not intelligible, or even clearly knowable' (59). As Bollas describes it: The mnemic object is a particular form of subjective object that contains a projectively identified self experience, and when we use it, something of that self state stored in it will arise' (Being a Character, 21). Bollas points to the importance of such experiences in shaping our identity: 'As we constantly endow objects with psychic meaning, we therefore walk amidst our own significance' (12). The Proustian narrator, as we have seen, calls attention from the outset to the source (the drame du coucher) of the hero's later anxiety attacks, which constitute a paradigm scenario. In conjunction with experiences of involuntary memory, this emotional template provides the link with the past, connections that will lead to the discovery of his identity. See Ricoeur, 'Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,' 131-2. Wollheim too has argued for this constructive role of narrative works, in particular those that narrate a life. He gives as one of his main examples John Stuart Mill's autobiography, in which Mill describes how the reading of a book, a scene from Marmontel's Memoirs, was the turning point in his life: 'A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me and I was moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter.' Wollheim explains Mill's empathetic reading as a 'fantasy of projection,' a distancing from his own struggle 'to get another to feel these feelings for him' ('On Persons and Their Lives/ 316-17). The reader's impression of 'narrative identity' may be further enhanced

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through stylistic and structural features: recurring images or descriptive features, repetition of similar events, and the narrator's 'consonant narration/ revealing a sympathetic or empathetic presence behind the scenes, one given to similar moods and phobias. Cheshire Calhoun and Robert C. Solomon, eds, What Is an Emotion? Classic Readings in Philosophical Psychology. The five models discussed include sensation and physiological theories, behavioural, evaluative, and cognitive theories (5-22). They refer the reader to Freud's view of jealousy as a telling example: 'Freud, taking jealousy to be a far more complex emotion, breaks it down into grief, sadness, enmity, self-hate, and "the narcissistic wound'" (25). Thus Albertine is 'imprisoned' by the hero. The fear of losing the beloved entirely changes Swann's behaviour as well, as he pursues Odette, in mind and in body, wherever she goes, and sends her gifts and notes to keep in touch. Hall, 'Fear Itself,' 46. Views differ as to where fearful information goes first, to the thinking or to the emotional brain. For Joseph LeDoux, as Hall points out, the amygdala is the primary scene where cells '"learn" and memorize the fearful stimulus with incredible rapidity and tenacity'; he concludes that 'research suggests that all it takes is one terrifying experience to form a lifelong emotional memory, one that is extremely difficult to erase' (47). Such conditions imply, as Hall points out, 'a separate memory of a fearful stimulus ... lodged in the amygdala, probably informed by things we have heard or seen but do not consciously remember. So it is as if we walk through the world half-blind, bumping into archival stimuli, things we never knew scared us, things that we can't consciously remember but that nevertheless set in motion inexplicable and disturbing sensations of dread' (47) - language reminiscent of Bollas's 'unthought known.' Since, as we are told, 'the amygdala gets activated just hearing about fearful situations' (70), it may well be the very seat of empathetic emotions. See, for instance, Michael Holquist, 'A New Tour of Babel: Recent Trends Linking Comparative Literature Departments, Foreign Language Departments, and Area Studies Programs.' He identifies narrative as a particularly compelling case for the collaboration of scholars from various disciplines. Recent work by prominent social and political scientists suggests, as he points out, that 'the fundamental differences among societies can be grasped only by looking at the stories people tell themselves about themselves - and about others - that define them as selves' (111). He shows how literary narratives, in particular the novel, are especially revealing in this respect.

Notes to pages 182-3 259 40 Gabriele Schwab has shown how the reading of literary texts functions 'as a medium of cultural contact with foreign or historically remote cultures/ thus confronting us with 'an experience of otherness' (The Mirror and the Killer Queen, xi). 41 As Malcolm Bowie points out: 'During artistic creation, the self has the higher duty to become indefinitely porous to what lies outside it; to press no individual claim other than that of its own power of sympathy; to welcome all comers, the whole raggle-taggle procession of them, into its now hugely extended interior world' (204). 42 See my Metaphoric Narration (143-60) for a discussion of characters portrayed as symbolic figures in the 'Matinee Guermantes' section of the novel. In Proust among the Stars, Malcolm Bowie gives the following interpretation of this narrative segment: 'What is to be remembered, and what gives the matinee chez la princesse de Guermantes section of the novel its special atmosphere, its special far-fetchedness that rings uncannily true, is that the narrator's misericord is pronounced not from a happy position of resignation or artistic resolve but from one of extremity, and from a sense of common mortality that cruelly survived the rediscovery of his own creative power' (207). 43 Bowie, Proust among the Stars, 196-7. The final social scene of A la recherche is 'euhemeristic' in that its symbolic implications are firmly rooted in history - the hero-narrator's personal story and a more universal one that implicates the reader. The scene is thus both literal and figurative. 44 Ricoeur, for one, has intimated as much: 'As for death, do not the narratives provided by literature serve to soften the sting of anguish in the face of the unknown, of nothingness, by giving it in imagination the shape of this or that death, exemplary in one way or another' (Oneself as Another, 162). 45 Such transworld crossings from fictional world to reality are, as I have argued, part of the novel's overarching design: it is metaphoric not only in that it resorts to figurative language, but also in a broader sense through the different kinds of associations one encounters throughout the novel associations that invite the reader to cross semantic, generic, and ontological boundaries.

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Index

Aciman, Andre, 4, 185n5 affect (as emotions, moods, sensations), 15, 180. See also complex emotions affective fallacy, 191n32 affective memory. See involuntary memory Akerman, Chantal, 252nl A la recherche du temps perdu: comicbook version of, 252nl; digital editions of, 172, 252n2; film adaptations of, 252nl; generic status of, 17, 173-6, 253n7, 2545nl2; implied poetics of, 4, 8, 13 17, 175, 176-7, 182; multiple discourses in, 176; new Pleiade edition of, 13-14, 240n4; and philosophy of emotions, 4-5, 159. See also esquisses Albertine, 59, 86, chap. 4 (64-82): and androgyny, 223nl 9; heronarrator's associations of, with literary characters, 159-63, 167, 247n38, 248nn40, 43; heronarrator's multiple perspectives of, 119-20, 139-40, 209n9, 2223nl4, 227nl5; hero's suspicion of

her lesbianism, 43, 66-70, 85,1068, 168-9, 223n20. See also homosexuality; maternal associations and substitutions Albertine disparue: long vs. short versions of, 186n8, 210-lln21, 211nn22, 23, 24, 212nn26, 27, 21213n31, 219nnl, 2, 246n36, 2489n44; short version of, 5, 84-5, 212n30, 214nl, 219nnl, 2 Alcorn, Marshall W., Jr, 246-7n37 Aristotle, on ethos and pathos, 174 Bailey, Phillip, 237-8n56 Barres, Maurice, 204n3 Barthes, Roland, 10, 16, 173, 185nn2, 3, 188nl8; on pathos as a force of reading, 3-4, 16, 98, 121, 140, 182, 183; and structural analysis of narrative, 10, 16 Beardsley, M.C., 191n32 Beethoven, Ludwig van: heronarrator's association of music with Albertine, 161-2, 163, 167, 169, 229-30n28 Bergotte, rereading novel by, 155,

270

Index

164-6, 174, 239-40nl, 240n6, 2445n25, 248-9n44, 249n45 Black, Max, 236n50 Blum, Rene, 234n45 Bois, Elie-Joseph, 188n21, 225-6n6 Bellas, Christopher, 6, 8-9, 53, 92, 179-80,181, 256-7n25, 257nn27, 28, 30; on 'aesthetic moment' and mnemic object, 179, 188nl6, 257nn29, 30; moods and conservative object, 188nl6; on transformational object, 9, 92, 187-8nnl5, 16, 204n3, 216-17nl5, 217nl6, 257n26; on 'unthought known,' 9,13,1718, 53, 92-3, 201nl9, 203n28, 258n38 Bonnet, Henri, 235-6n49 Bowie, Malcolm, 173, 182-3, 194nll, 196nl7, 201nl9, 259nn41, 42, 43 Bracher, Mark, 246-7n37 Brun, Bernard, 197-8n6,198-9nl2, 200-lnl7, 226nlO, 229n24, 2323n39, 235n47, 235-6n49, 238n58, 240n3 Calhoun, Cheshire, 4,181, 186n7, 258n34, 216nll Garnet de 1908, Le, 140, 230n29 Christ, hero-narrator's identification with, 38, 51, 61-2, 71, 72, 109-10, 210nl6, 224n23 Citati, Pietro, 192n2,193n4 Clarac, Pierre, 191n30 Cohn, Dorrit, 8, 173-6, 179, 253n6, 253^n7, 254nn8, 9, 11, 12, 255nl7, 256n24 Combray, reading novels in, 10-11, 143-58, 189-90n25, 240n3, 241nn7, 9, 243nnl8, 19; characters as centre of interaction, 150-2, 167,

187nl2, 243nnl6, 17, 19, 244n25; insights from esquisses and manuscripts, 143, 150-3, 157-8, 240n6, 241n8, 242nnll, 13, 242-3nl5, 243-4n20, 244nn21, 22, 23, 246nn29, 30, 31, 32, 33; role of emotions in, 143, 144, 148-50, 1523, 157-8, 164-5, 166-7, 244n23, 246n29; role of image or metaphor in conveying emotions, 149-50, 153-6, 156, 241n7, 242nll. See also esquisses (drafts and variants) comedie de la rupture, 5, 73, 208n4, 210nl7, 216nl4 Compagnon, Antoine, 205-6nl2 compassion or pity, 42, 46, 61,153, 183, 195-6nl6, 199-200nl4. See also empathy Contre Sainte-Beuve, 191n30, 23940nl, 255nl5 Culler, Jonathan: 'competent reader,' 14, 190nn27, 28 curiosity, 13, 41, 66, 108, 181, 208n5 de Lattre, Alain, 26-7 de Man, Paul, 176, 240n2, 255nl3 Descombes, Vincent, 36, 138, 206nl3, 217nl7, 234-5n46, 238n57, 254n9 de Sousa, Ronald, 8, 89-90, 181, 216nl3, 257n31 Dezon-Jones, Elyane, 240n3 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 218n29 dramatic irony, 106, 108 drame du coucher, 16-17, 24, 25, 29, 43-7, 50, 51, 60, 66, 72, 73, 78-9, 80, 91, 109-10, 117-18, 123, 128-9, 130, 133, 140, 142, 201nl8, 2323n39, 233n43, 257n31; in Combray, 5, 30, 32-42, 64, 128, 132, 147-8, 193n6,193^n8,198nll, 198-9nl2,

Index 271 203n29, 212n29; and fear of exclusion, 38-40, 52, 55, 70,1989nl2; and guilt, 37, 40, 52. See also separation anxiety Duras, Marguerite, 254nlO Dyer, Nathalie Mauriac, 186n8, 224n22, 228n20, 240n3; Mauriac typescript of Albertine disparue, 84, 210n21, 211nn22, 24, 212nn26, 30, 214nl, 219nnl, 2, 246n36, 253n7 Eco, Umberto: 'model reader,' 190n27 Eliot, George, 247n38 Elstir, 174, 244-5n25, 250-ln51 emotional paradigms (templates), 9, 16-17, 27, 31, 48, 60, 62, 63, 72, 79, 81, 86, 97, 182, 201nl9, 207-8n2, 213-14n36, 215n8; and identity, 73, 79, 82, 102, 105; as paradigm scenarios, 25, 40, 87, 216nl3. See also separation anxiety emotions: and cognition, 6, 76, 78, 86, 90; complexity of, 6, 15, 55, 61, 87, 103, 119, 140, 180-1, 204-5n6, 209nl4, 235n48; and neurosciences, 182, 215-16n9, 258nn37, 38; and rhetoric of pathos, 3, 140, 167, 182-3, 238n62; role of, in structuring reader's response, 5, 8, 18, 189n24; as superior to intelligence or reason, 89, 216nlO; theories of, 4, 6, 13, 17, 18, 69, 869, 159, 180, 181, 186n9, 216nll empathy, 8, 17, 34, 37, 48, 61, 69, 74, 117, 118, 125, 126, 139, 159-60, 166-7, 177-9, 207-8n2, 235n48, 243nl7, 249-50n47, 256nn21, 23, 257n32, 258n38. See also compassion; sympathy

envy, as related to separation anxiety, 41, 52,181, 203^n2 esquisses (drafts and variants), 13, 35-6, 44-6, 57-8, 59, 61-2, 63, 75, 81-2, 126, 139-40, 150-2; father of hero-narrator in, 44-5,197n4, 2012n21, 202nn22, 23, 24; and mise en intrigue, 242nnl3, 14; and 'modele d'amour familial/ 82; and narrating presence, 58, 196nl; palimpsestic effect of reading in the margins, 35, 45, 75, 80, 143, 189n25, 193-4n8, 219n3, 239n65; and reference to author, 126; on role of instinct as opposed to theory, 171; on role of literary heroines, 161-2, 163, 247n38; on role of music, 162-3 fear, 182, 183, 258nn37, 38; of exclusion, 38-40, 52, 55, 70, 198-9nl2; of the unfamiliar, 134, 183, 197nn3, 5, 205n8. See also separation anxiety fictional characters or personae, 712, 16, 18, 176, 177, 178, 187nl2, 192-3n3, 255-6nl9, 256nn21, 24; emotional engagement with, 7-8, 158-62, 163-7, 180, 181, 243nl9, 249n45 Fish, Stanley: 'interpretive community,' 14 Flaubert, Gustave: Emma Bovary, 94, 218n24 frames of reference, 176, 177, 183, 188nl8, 189n24, 255nnl4, 17 Freud, Sigmund, 87-8, 180, 204n3, 215n8, 257n27, 258n35 Genette, Gerard, 3, 10, 24-6, 49, 95,

272

Index

99, 159, 188nnl7, 18, 190n26, 1923n3, 194nl2, 203n30, 245n27, 246n35, 256n20; Cohn on, and generic status of novel, 175,2545nl2; on metonymy, 225n4; Ricoeur on, 24-6, 195nl4 Gholamain, Mitra, 187nl3 Giotto, 'Vices and Virtues': Infidelitas, 105-8, 223nnl6,18, 231n32 grandmother of hero-narrator, 52-9, 60-1, 77, 123, 198nlO, 198-9nl2, 204n4, 206nnl6,17, 207nnl8, 19, 208nn6, 7, 233-4n35, 238-9n63, 248-9n44; feelings of regret or guilt toward, 61-2, 66, 68, 121, 130, 230n30, 232-3n39, 249n45. See also maternal associations and substitutions Graves, Herbert, 255-6nl9 Gresillon, Almuth, 240n3, 254n8 guilt, 37, 40, 47, 52, 55-6, 61-2, 63, 68, 108, 198-9nl2, 207nl9, 208n6, 222nl3, 231-2n37, 232-3n39, 2334n39, 239n63 habit, 57-8 Hall, Stephen S., 182, 258nn37, 38 Hardy, Thomas, 163 Harre, Rom, 216nll Heidegger, Martin, 24, 194nll, 218n27 Henrot, Genevieve, 194-5nl3, 2334n43 Henry, Anne, 188-9n22 hero-narrator (fictional persona or protagonist), 4, 6-7, 17, 19, 29-31, 33, 176, 181, 191-2nl, 192n3; and identity, 48, 60, 73, 79,82, 89, 93-4, 102, 105, 108, 117-18, 129, 134, 138, 235n47; and vocation, 17, 33,60,

61, 63, 93, 102, 110, 111, 112,11415,123,126,129,130,133, 1389, 140-1, 183, 194nl2, 229n27, 230n30, 232-3n39, 239n64 Heuet, Stephane, comic-book version of 'Combray' and A I'ombre des jeunes filles enfleurs, 252nl Hjort, Mette, 186n7 Holland, Norman, 14, 190-ln29 Holquist, Michael, 258n39 homosexuality or inversion, 108, 109; lesbianism, 43, 69, 84, 208n3, 223-4n21; prefiguration and suspicion of Albertine's, 43, 66-70, 85, 106-9, 208n5, 222nl4. See also Montjouvain; Vinteuil, Mile Husserl, Edmund: tuilage, 24, 194nll, 218n27 identification, 8, 18, 27, 48, 125, 1512, 153, 159-61, 163, 164, 165, 166, 177, 179, 187nnl3, 14, 243nnl7, 19, 246-7n37. See also empathy identity, 33, 89, 95-6, 180, 181, 257n30, 31. See also narrative identity Ifri, Pascal, 199-200nl4 images, importance of: in Bergotte, 155-6; in conveying emotions, 149-50, 153-6, 156-7, 211-12n25, 241n7, 242nll; in Martinville episode, 116-19; in Matinee Guermantes episode, 124-5, 1278, 130-1. See also imagisti c constants; metaphor imaginary scenarios, 20-4, 40-2, 489, 70-2, 96, 117-18, 125-6, 128, 181, 193n6, 199-200nl4, 250n48; and night traveller, 20-4, 26, 29, 34,46, 57, 80, 117, 193n6, 229n26. See also

Index 273 narrator, and analogizing narration imagistic (metaphoric) constants: patina ('patine'), 239-40nl; sickness, 156, 245n26; 'solid mass' (amalgam, crystallization), 76, 7982, 156, 206nl6, 207nl8, 21213n31, 213nn33, 35, 213-14n36, 228nl9, 245n26; 'vase clos' and crystal container, 148, 241-2nlO, 242nll impressions, 17, 110, 123, 134-5, 137, 138, 140, 170, 171, 218-19n30, 224nl, 226-7nl2, 228n22, 236n51, 251n55; cataleptic, 86; different kinds of, 112-14, 135; as embodied time ('le temps incorpore'), 123-5, 130-3, 135, 233n43; and 'la memoire du corps,' 28-9, 32, 74, 79, 135, 233n43; obscure, 112-13,115-16,123,135, 226nn7, 9, 231-2n37, 235n47; and reading, 135, 140-1, and see chap. 8 (14271); role of, in hero-narrator's future project, 111, 112, 114-15, 126-7, 129, 130, 134-5, 140-1, 228n20, 237n53. See also involuntary (affective) memory involuntary (affective) memory, 5-6, 22, 24-5, 27, 50, 54-5, 58-60, 97, 99-103, 104, 111-12, 120, 123, 1278, 129, 135 , 137-8, 142, 147, 183, 194-5nl3,197n5, 210nl8, 220n5, 224-5n2, 225n3, 226n9, 231n33, 234n45, 238n60, 241-2nlO, 242nnl2,13, 257n31; as intermittence, 54-5, 58-63, 66, 81-2, 98, 103-4, 120-3, 127-9,1 35, 139, 147, 205n9, 205-6nl2, 207nl8, 207-8n2, 208nn6, 7, 214n38, 218-19n30,

231-2n37; as 'le petit personnage intermittent/ 121-3, 135, 228n20 Iser, Wolfgang, 13, 187nl4, 189n24, 190n26, 243nl6, 252-3n3; and 'implied reader,' 14 James, William, 215n6 Jauss, Hans Robert, 187nl4 jealousy, 16-17, 70, 132, 133, 156, 167, 181, 209nnlO, 11, 237n54, 245n26, 251-2n56, 258n35; and fear of separation, 72, 74, 80-1, 108, 131-2, 168-9, 181; and imaginary scenes, 70-1,165 'Journees de lecture,' 15, 239-40nl, 245-6n28 Jouve, Vincent, 7, 187nl3 Joyce, Steven, 203n29 Klein, Melanie, 6, 84, 217nl6 Kristeva, Julia, 226n8 La Bruyere, Jean de, 163 Lafayette, Madame de: La Princesse de Cleves, 188nl7 Laver, Sue, 186n7 LeDoux, Joseph, 182, 215-16n9, 258n37 leitmotif, 22, 24, 34, 57,119,126,134, 142, 193n5 Lejeune, Phillipe, 173-4, 254nlO Leonard, Diane, 223nl8 LeVine, Robert A., 186n7, 216nll Luborsky, Lester, 87-9, 215n8, 21516n9; on early traumatic scenes, 88. See also drame du coucher MacLean, Paul D., 215-16n9 Mann, Thomas: Der Zauberberg, 24, 218n26

274

Index

Mantegna, Andrea: Crucifixion, 51, 198nlO, 224n23 Marcel, 45-6,192n2, 202n25, 253n7 Martin-Chauffier, Louis, 254nll Martinville steeples, 114-18,119-20, 123, 226nn9, 10, 11, 226-7nl2, 227nl3, 235n47, 251n55 Massenet, Jules: hero's response to Manon, 159-62, 216nl3, 248nn40, 42 maternal associations and substitutions, 81-2, 102-5, 169, 204n3, 207nl8, 207-8n2, 230n30; Albertine/mother, 64, 72, 73,104, 123, 214n37, 220n6, 222nl3, 2289n23; grandmother/mother, 53-4, 61-2, 76, 207nl8, 230n30, 2334n39, 239n63; grandmother/ mother/Albertine, 62-3, 77, 82, 207-8n2; hero-narrator as mother of work in progress, 230n29; as 'modele d'amour familial,' 81-2, 207nl8. See also Albertine; grandmother; mother maternal discourse (hero mothering himself), 76-8, 205n7, 212n27 Maya, Kazako, 23, 193n7 McLaughlin, Brian P., 216nll memory. See involuntary memory metaphor, 134-5, 155, 225n4, 229n25, 236n50, 236-7n52, 241n7; in Bergotte, 155-6; as conceptual model, 144, 146, 234n44, 240n5, 241-2nlO, 242nll; as essence of style, 135-7; in Elstir ('metamorphosis'), 244-5n25; and involuntary memory, 147, 235-6n49, 241-2nlO; metaphoric process as interaction, 137, 236n50; metonymic metaphor as translating

associations based on analogy and contiguity, 136-7 , 146-7, 148, 232n38, 236nn50, 51, 241n9; synaesthetic metaphor, 145,241n8. See also image; imagistic constants metaphoric narration, 15, 17-18, 48, 96, 137-8, 237n54; as based on associations, 99-103, 137-8, 156, 191n33, 237n54, 242nl3, 244n25, 247-8n39, 259n45; through emotional analogies, 66, 67, 70-1, 72, 73, 74, 77, 81, 88; through intertextuality, with Christ: 51, 612, 71, 72, 108, 110; —, with Giotto: 105-8; —, with Phedre: 46-8 90-2, 93, 94, 108, 164 Miall, David, 189n24 Mill, John Stuart, 257n32 Miller, J. Hillis, 9-10 Milly, Jean, 210-lln21, 214n2, 246n34 mise en intrigue, 17, 18, 36, 50,57, 105, 106, 140,159, 221nl2; affect as central force in, 5, 167; and effect of repetition, 82-3; and fictional characters, 8, 94; and involuntary memory, 60, 97-8; and motivated reader, 12-13; role of significant impressions in, 122-3, 138-9. See also narrator, and analogizing narration Montaigne, Michel de, 19 Montjouvain episode, 67-70, 85, 119, 168, 207nl, 208n5 mood, 180, 181, 183; and affect, 5, 179, 258n33; shifts between joy and suffering, 99, 103, 117, 118-19, 125, 198-9nl2, 201n20, 220n5, 222nl3, 259n42 mother of hero-narrator, 37, 51-2, 55,

Index 132,197n4, 197-8n6, 198n8, 204n5, 206nl7, 221nlO; and Francois le Champi, 128-30, 231n36, 231-2n37; and Venice, 102-4, 220nn6, 7, 221nll, 222nl3. See also maternal associations and substitutions; separation anxiety motivated reader, 4, 7, 12-15, 18, 301, 34, 49, 60-1, 66, 72, 109, 114, 134, 171, 179, 182, 237-8n56; heronarrator, as, 8,167; and reactivated memory, 102 , 105, 120, 138; and role of empathy, 68, 69, 74, 91, 108, 118, 125, 134; and role of personal experience, 13, 69, 138, 180. See also narrator, and analogizing narration Muller, Marcel, 24, 191-2nl, 192n2, 193n6, 199-200nl4 Murdoch, Iris, 90 narration: consonant or sympathetic, 40, 85, 105,108-9, 121, 258n33; as tuilage (overlay), 43, 48, 51-2, 56, 87, 96-7, 100, 208n8, 212n28. See also time effects narrative identity, 3, 12, 18, 22, 25, 31, 48, 93-1, 98, 102-3, 105, 11718, 129, 159, 182, 199-200nl4, 237-8n56, 238nn61, 62, 257-8n33, and see chap. 5 (84-98). See also Ricoeur, on 'narrative identity' narrator: and analogizing narration (setting up associations between similar experiences), 17, 22, 27, 29, 30-1, 38, 43, 50, 66, 67, 70, 70-1, 74, 81-2, 85-6, 90-2, 98, 99-102, 105,180, 200-lnl7, 201nl9, 207n2, 208n7, 209nll, 237n54; nonnarrative functions of, 12, 13, 16,

275

26, 28, 30, 35, 96, 176, 195-6nl6; and reader's initiation into text, 12,16,17,18, 27, 179, 258n33, and see chap. 1 (19-31). See also imaginary scenarios nostalgia, 37, 249n45 Nussbaum, Martha, 3, 6, 69, 86-7, 181, 186nn9, 10, 208n8, 209nl4, 215nn4, 5, 6, 216nll Oatley, Keith, 187nl3 pathos, 3, 16, 98, 125, 139, 153, 158, 160, 167, 170, 183; rhetoric of, 140, 182-3 personification: of aspects of self, 119, 121-2, 127-8, 135; of musical phrases, 247-8n39, 251n54 Phedre, hero-narrator's identification with: 43, 46-8, 90-2, 93, 94, 108, 164, 202-3n26, 203nn27, 28, 216nnl3, 14, 223nl5, 235n48, 248n43 Pimentel, Luz Aurora, 191n33, 194nll Proust, Madame, 204n3 Proust, Marcel, 14, 16, 140, 142; critical writings of, 191n30; early conception of A la recherche du temps perdu, 227-8nl7; and 1913 interview on Du cote de chez Swarm, 11; notion of reality, 191n31; plans for expanding Sodome et Gomorrhe cycle, 224n22; preface to his translation of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, 142-3, 191n30, 241n8. See also A la recherche du temps perdu; Albertine disparue; 'Combray'; Contre SainteBeuve; Le Garnet de 1908

276

Index

Quemar, Claudine, 139, 228-9n23, 233n42, 238n58 Racine, Jean. See Phedre reader: 'competent/ 14, 190n28; 'ideal,' 12; 'implied,' 12,14; 'model,' 12, 190n27. See also motivated reader reading: as being-in-the-text, 181, 182; and engaging appeal of characters, 7-8, 182; exemplary readings, 142-58, 168-71, 2445n25, 246-7n37; importance of for hero-narrator, 142; as interaction, 7, 8, 13, 91,109,150-3,159,161-2, 164-7, 169, 188nl8, 194nl0, 243nl6, 246n35, 247n37; retrospective reading and rereading, 12, 96-7,102,143,147-8,155, 239n65; as role playing, 7, 8, 94, 151, 162, 163-4, 243nl6; and theory of affective response, 4, 8, 13,18, 90, 93, 153, 159, 166-7, 177, 182-3, 238n62; as transworld communication, 183, 237-8n56, 247-8n39. See also Combray, reading novels in reality, hero-narrator's view of, 136, 234-5n46 reality effect (referential illusion), 13, 82,176,195nl5 repetition, 24-5, 51, 74, 82-3, 86, 89, 97,105,194nll, 212n30, 237n55, 258n33 Richards, I.A., 236n50 Ricoeur, Paul, 3, 7, 11, 14, 24-7, 93-8, 181,188nl8,188-9n22,190n26, 191n32, 191-2nl, 194nll, 195nl4, 243nl6, 259n44; on fiction as role playing, 7, 94,194nlO; on Genette,

24-6, 195nl4; on mise en intrigue, 94, 97; on 'narrative identity,' 3, 12, 25, 93-5, 98, 159, 188-9n22, 193n5, 215nl7, 217nl9, 218nn22, 29, 252-3n3, 255-6nl9, 257n32; on novels and temporal experience (Zeiterlebnis), 3,11, 24-7, 95-6, 218n26; on overlay (recouvrement or tuilage), 24,27, 65, 96-7,98, 194nll, 196nl7, 218n27; on reference, 177, 255nl6 Riffaterre, Michael, 223nl9 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 254nlO Roche, Maurice, 254nlO Roloff, Volker: reading as role playing, 8,187nl4, 232-3n39, 243nl6 Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, 186n7, 216nll Ruiz, Raoul: film adaptation of Le Temps retrouve, 252nl Ruskin, John, 191n30; and Giotto, 106, 223nl8; and Proustian aesthetics, 38, 107; Sesame and Lilies, 142-3, 191n30, 241n8 sadism, apology for, 108-9, 2234n21 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 139, 228-9n23 Sand, George, 143; Francois le Champi, 127-30,141,142,147, 224-5n2, 231nn35, 36, 231-2n37, 232-3n39, 233n42, 235n48; La Mare au diable, 233n42 Sandre, Yves, 191n30 Sarraute, Nathalie, 254nlO Schumann, Robert, 169 Schwab, Gabriele, 172-3, 252-3n3, 259n40

Index 277 Schweder, Richard A., 186n7, 216nll separation anxiety, 5, 9,11,16,17,25, 31, 69, 75, 88, 109, 126, 134, 135, 156, 181, 188nl6, 203-4n2, 205n8, 208n5, 243nl9, 251-2n56; and Albertine, 5,43, 50, 59, 66-82, 75, 80, 86, 88,108, 209nl4, 248n42; and Combray, see chap. 2 (32-63), 213n34; and complex emotions, 38-40, 43-4, 52, 55-6, 68, 209nl4; as emotional paradigm, 9,48, 5063, 81, 82, 86-7, 90, 97,103,104, 120, 129, 135, 164, 180-2, 207-8n2, 222nl3, 250-ln51, 257n31; in esquisses, 44-6, 196-7nn2, 3,197n5, 198nll; and Gilberte, 47-8, 50, 248-9n44; and grandmother, 5163, 123, 198nlO, 206nl6, 206-7nl7, 207nl8, 249n45; in love relationships, see chap. 4 (64-83), 204n3; and mother, 52, 55, 80, 102-5, 11718, 128-30, 132-3, 139, 198nl0, 204n3, 207nl8, 207-8n2; psychoanalytic treatment of, 88; and Swann, 40, 41,42-3, 70-1. See also drame du coucher Shattuck, Roger, 189-90n25 Simon, Anne, 191n31 Smith, Murray, 7, 8, 177-9,187nl3, 243nl7, 246-7n37, 249-50n47, 256nn21, 22, 23 Solomon, Robert C, 4,181,186n7, 258n34; philosophical psychology, 2 Spitzer, Leo, 3, 33, 36,42,185nl, 191-2nl, 195nl5, 196nl, 197-8n6, 200nnl5, 16; on role of parentheses, 195nl5, 200nl5, 246n34; on translating emotions through style, 200nnl5, 16

suffering, 5, 61, 63, 65, 66, 69, 75-87, 108, 110, 131, 133, 156-7; concrete images of, 76, 79-82, 92, 156, 213n35, 213-14n36, 224n23, 245n26; as instrument of cognition, 76, 79,134, 238n61; linked to past scenes of suffering, 69, 72; and Mile Vinteuil at Montjouvain, 67-8, 71-2, 74,84-5; role of, in finding novelist's vocation, 63, 110, 133-4, 138-9; self-inflicted through imaginary scenes, 70-2 Swann, Charles: analogies to heronarrator's suffering: 5, 22,41,423, 50,66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 81,156, 200-lnl7, 201nl9, 208n7, 209nll, 231n33, 237n54, 258n36; heronarrator's multiple perspectives of, 120, 227nl6. See also narrator, and analogizing narration symbolic (allegorical) implications, 183, 230-ln31, 231n32, 240n2, 259nn42, 43 sympathy, 8, 38, 42, 153, 159, 177-9, 243nl7, 256nn22, 23, 259n41. See also empathy Tadie, Jean-Yves, 204n3 time effects, 24-6, 30-1, 96-8,156-7, 194nll, 195nl5, 196nl7, 217nl9, 218n27, 243nl9, 245n27, 245-6n28; 'psychologic dans le temps,' 112, 116-17, 119-20, 122, 135, 225n5, 225-6n6, 227nl6; 'retroagir,' 214n38. See also impressions; involuntary memory; narration, as tuilage; repetition Tissot, James: fictional painting of Swann, 174 Tolstoy, Leo, 16, 140

278

Index

Tov-Ruach, Leila, 209nlO 'unthought known/ 9,13, 18, 40, 48, 92. See also Bellas, Christopher Veronese, Paolo: Calvary, 51, 224n23 Vinteuil, Mile, 43, 67-8, 69-70, 71-2, 73, 74, 85, 108, 168-9, 202n24, 210nl9, 223-4n21, 227nl5. See also Montjouvain Vinteuil's music, 122, 171, 251-2n56; musical motifs, 170, 226n9, 231n33, 247-8n39, 251nn53, 54, 55; septet as aesthetic model, 167, 168, 170-1, 239n64, 244-5n25, 250n50, 251nn52, 53, 55; septet and hero's self-reflexive reading, 163, 168-9; sonata and association with Combray, 168 Wagner, Richard, 163, 250-ln51; Parsifal, 139-40, 142-3, 224n23,

238n60, 251-2n56; Tristan und Isolde, 251-2n56 Walton, Kendall L., 10, 188nl8, 24950n47, 250nn48, 49 Warning, Rainer, 254n9 White, Edmund, 173 Wimmers, Inge Crosman, 189n23, 189-90n25, 191n33, 195nl5, 209nl2, 218n24, 222-3nl4, 227nl4, 229n25, 236n50, 240nn2, 4, 5, 241n7, 242-3nl5, 244-5n25, 2478n39, 255nnl4,16, 259n42 Wimsatt, W.K., Jr, 191n32 Winnicott, D.W., 6 Wollheim, Richard, 104,181, 220In8, 257n32 Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway, 24, 218n26 Zeno, 86 Zola, Emile, 174