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The Genesis of the Involuntary Memory in Proust's Early Works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Elizabeth R. Jackson
Elizabeth R. Jackson*
Affiliation:
Universitè de Paris, Paris, France
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Extract

That curious psychological phenomenon, the involuntary memory, is not an original discovery of Proust. Nor does he claim it as such, since, in Le Temps retrouvé, he himself mentions Chateaubriand, Baudelaire, and Nerval as predecessors. Critical investigations have since amplified this list. What is original, however, is Proust's use of it: only he conceived of its many facets—poetic, dramatic, philosophic— and exploited its possibilities by incorporating it centrally in the substance of a novel. Within his own work the involuntary memory underwent a lengthy evolution, appearing in embryonic form from the outset in Les Plaisirs et les jours and recurring, progressively more refined, in all subsequent writing, but not fully modeled nor centrally placed until the final work. In La Recherche three separate forms of the involuntary memory are delineated. There is a dream memory operating in a state of full or partial somnolence found principally in the “Ouverture” and in La Prisonnière where the senses and imaginative powers pursue a course unchecked by reason or will, where the evocations are fleeting, vague in contour, limited in significance and never surprising. There is a sentimental memory evoking a person once loved by the narrator (Gilberte, his grandmother, Albertine), in effect resuscitating that person since the narrator experiences her as present, as a living reality within him, surrounded by the full force of all old emotional ties.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 1961 , pp. 586 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 586 Justin O'Brien, “La Mémoire involontaire avant Proust,” Revue de littérature comparée, 1939, pp. 19–36. Elisabeth Czoniczer, Quelques Antécédents de A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Droz, 1957).

Note 2 in page 586 Dr. Charles Blondel in La Psychographie de Marcel Proust (Paris: Vrin, 1932) discusses a “mémoire du cœur” defined by its affective (sentimental) nature but which he describes as coinciding in the limiting case with the involuntary memory proper. In my opinion the sentimental memory should be considered as a form of the involuntary memory but distinct in content and operation from the esthetic memory (which is what Dr. Blondel means by the involuntary memory proper), pp. 17–21.

Note 3 in page 586 Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1935).

Note 4 in page 587 This collection of love affairs resembles Swann's. See Sodome et Gomorrhe, La Recherche (Paris: Ed. Pléiade, 1954), ii, 703.

Note 5 in page 588 Proust, Jean Santeuil (Paris: Gallimard, 1952).

Note 6 in page 589 Another passage illustrating pleasure divided between the reminiscence and the sensation, in this case the fragrance of lilacs, is found in ii, 10–11.

Note 7 in page 589 ii, Sec. 6, Chap, vii; ii, Sec. 6, Chap, viii; ii, Sec. 6, Chap, ix; ii, Sec. 7, Chap. x.

Note 8 in page 590 Proust also gives an extensive list of examples which have as impetus-sensations not cosmic elements but insignificant and special odors, among others the smell of clean linen, the musty and not particularly pleasant smell of a house by the sea.

Note 9 in page 591 Proust, sketch of Combray (posthumous), La Table ronde, April 1945.

Note 10 in page 592 Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve, ed. Bernard de Fallois, (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).

Note 11 in page 593 In a letter to Camile Vettard (Correspondance générale de Marcel Proust, Paris, 1932, in, 194–195) Proust describes the creative process in this fashion: “Ce que je voudrais que l'on vît dans mon livre, c'est qu'il est sorti tout entier de l'application d'un sens spécial … qu'il est bien difficile de décrire … à ceux qui ne l'ont jamais exercé … c'est peut-être celle d'un télescope qui serait braqué sur le temps, car le télescope fait apparaître des étoiles qui sont invisibles à l'oeil nu, et j'ai tâché … de faire apparaître à la conscience des phénomènes inconscients qui, complètement oubliés, sont quelquefois situés très loin dans le passé …” This corroborates the notion that the creative process is not precisely the involuntary memory but a special memory-like faculty which can be employed when desired.