MARCEL PROUST - IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME
By: Fereshteh Priou
April 2017
We tend to view our own era as the great age of innovation and technological progress, forgetting that those who lived at the turn of the twentieth century felt exactly the same way. Their time witnessed revolutionary advances such as aviation, photography, cinema, and the telephone. Like any novelty not yet dulled by habit, these inventions filled Proust with wonder. He observed them with a keen, philosophical, and often poetic eye, capturing the fresh excitement of the new. Reading his reflections reminds us of our own astonishment when we first left a voicemail or sent our earliest emails—experiences that quickly became ordinary.
Proust deeply admired the transformation of Paris under Napoleon III, with its grand avenues, sewers, catacombs, metro system, and expansive parks. He wrote lovingly of the wide boulevards, the changing light on the Pont des Invalides, and the eerie glow of gas lamps at dusk. A wealthy man thanks to his inheritance, he invested heavily (though not always successfully) in the stock market, drawn to companies pioneering revolutionary technologies and ideas.
To understand Proust’s thoughts on modernity, three innovations stand out: photography, the telephone, and aviation.
Proust saw love as a force that creates constant turmoil and motion. When separated from the beloved, one may struggle to recall their exact features. For the narrator, a photograph becomes a precious anchor — a way to preserve and revive the image of the person he loves. As a young man in love with Gilberte, he could remember only a vague idea of her face when apart. He compares the development of memories to the photographic process unfolding in an “inner darkroom,” where impressions are slowly revealed in solitude.
The telephone filled Proust with a sense of magic. Hearing the voice of someone miles away now seems ordinary, but at the time it was almost miraculous. In one memorable scene, the narrator makes his first phone call from a provincial town to his grandmother in Paris. Accustomed to speaking with her face-to-face and seeing her expressions — especially her eyes — he is startled when her voice reaches him through the receiver. Stripped of visual cues, the familiar voice sounds strangely unfamiliar, almost alien. By engaging only the sense of hearing, the telephone intensifies perception and disrupts habitual understanding.
Aviation also deeply fascinated Proust. Commercial flight emerged from the military use of airplanes during World War I. He marveled at these “iron birds” in the sky, likening them to gods from Greek mythology. The subject was personally painful as well: his former secretary and lover, Alfred Agostinelli, died in a plane crash, a loss that devastated the author.
Beyond the technological achievement, Proust recognized the profound intellectual and emotional impact of flight. In the novel, the narrator bursts into tears upon seeing an airplane for the first time while riding in the woods. The sight represents not only literal freedom but liberation from the prison of habit — a symbol of humanity’s expanding horizons and growing global connection.
Proust consistently contrasts the sharp, revelatory quality of new experiences with the dulling effect of habit and convention. A new invention can make the familiar strange — turning a known voice into something unsettling — while also offering exhilarating freedom. As he famously wrote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Modernity, for Proust, grants us precisely those new eyes with which to see the world afresh, full of wonder and possibility.
Article by: Fereshteh Priou - April 2017