Remembrance of things past – Proust
Remembrance of things past has a flow to it. The flow comes from seemingly separate events that melt into one, and the melting of words to create a picture of reality. This flow is what attracted me to the novel. There is a unity to the novel, where it feels like one conscious event.
Proust through the use of words is able to capture reality as it is experienced by a conscious human being. Seemingly quick events in what we experience in reality are broken down in words to capture the entire conscious experience of a single thing. Proust is able to ‘recreate’ consciousness, or what a conscious experience is like. So much is contained in conscious experience that it takes a grand amount of words to describe what it is like.
In a real conscious experience so much is there, the taste of deserts, the sight of a church of exquisite architecture. Describing these experiences is what Proust does with excellence.
I think this aspect of the novel makes it particularly modern. Proust is a kind of phenomenologist, describing how things appear to consciousness, as well as how memory works for a conscious being.
The unity of the novel comes from the consciousness like experience of it. Our lives have a flow to them; Proust is able to mimic this flow.
Consciousness is a particular modern area of study, Proust uses the novel as an opportunity to write about consciousness and express what it is like. Using literature to express philosophy is also quite modern; the Existentialists capitalize on the way one can express philosophy with the use of literature.
Michael Pavan
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