MARCEL PROUST - IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME
By: Fereshteh Priou
December 2022
Proust’s book, À la recherche du temps perdu, is about Marcel, the narrator, relating his memories of the places he had known and the people he had encountered in life, while reflecting on various philosophical concepts and the intricacies of human nature. One of these concepts is “idleness,” which afflicts Marcel and many of the book’s other characters.
In our daily life, we are continuously pulled between two forces: one dictates that we find a vocation, set long-term goals, and strive towards their achievement, which requires effort and exertion; the other pulls us towards idleness, comprising short-sighted actions aligned with our instinctive tendency to eschew hard work and opt for a leisurely life. Unchecked, this tendency could lead to purposeless pursuits, giving credence to the saying, “idleness is the seed of all evil.”
However, idleness is a misunderstood concept, as it is essential for a contemplative life, especially for artists and creatives. Indolence helps one to rest and relax, indispensable for our well-being. Kierkegaard famously said, “Idleness is a divine life, if one is not bored.” Human nature, however, disfavors prolonged idling. We prefer having an objective and purpose to guide us because it generates happiness, while a life of mindless preoccupations leaves us wretched and dejected.
Proust steadfastly examines this aspect of the human condition through the characters in La Recherche. The lives of these characters are scrutinized by the extent of their dedication towards their vocation and their quest for a fulfilled life.
A hallmark of Proust’s era was the middle class's newfound ability to pursue higher ambitions and specific vocations due to the collapse of class distinctions, the industrial revolution, and significant breakthroughs in science and art. Proust writes extensively about the innovations of his time, such as photography, the telephone, moving pictures, and aviation.
Proust’s father, Adrien Proust, exemplifies the societal changes of that period. From a provincial family of grocers, he was the first to study medicine in Paris and become a doctor—an advancement unlikely a generation or two earlier.
Reading Proust’s book, one gets the impression that, among its multitude of hidden messages, there is one about finding happiness through one’s vocation. Despite this implication, Proust demonstrates that one’s inherent penchant for futile efforts could lead—even those who have found their passion—to neglect their calling.
One such character is Marcel himself, who lives an idle life of social climbing until old age awakens him to the futility of an existence based on attending what he later calls barbarian festivals: “with men in white shirt-fronts and women beneath feathered plumes.” (Time Regained) He then decides to curtail, or even forego, his habit of accepting every invitation, realizing that this decision might make him seem rude or selfish, but it is necessary for his aspiration to become an author: “I should have the courage to answer that I had an urgent appointment about essential matters it was necessary for me to regulate without further delay, an appointment of capital importance with myself.” (Time Regained)
Marcel finds good company in the book, filled with an immense cast of idle characters, mostly wealthy or titled people, whose main preoccupations are attending various salons. Conversely, Proust demonstrates his admiration for a full and meaningful life through a few worthy characters who pursue their aspirations with hard work and devotion. This short list includes Elstir, the painter; Vinteuil, the musician; Burma, the actress; Bergotte, the author; and even Cottard, the doctor, who, despite his provincial and unsophisticated manner, becomes a renowned diagnostician.
Even Françoise, the Combray servant of Marcel’s Aunt Léonie who is later engaged by Marcel’s parents, is praised for the care and attention she puts into her work, especially her cuisine. Marcel beautifully describes her careful planning, shopping, cooking, and presenting delicious meals. Her boeuf à la gelée, prepared with selected cuts of meat from the market—Marché des Halles¾ is compared to Michel-Ange’s visits to quarries to select his marbles. Her talent for preparing delicious crème au chocolat is equated to the genius of a musician creating a musical composition: “a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the hand of Françoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an ‘occasional piece’ of music, into which she had poured the whole of her talent.” (Swann’s Way)
Despite the menial and repetitive nature of her work, Françoise finds meaning and happiness in her life. In the last volume, when Marcel finally decides to write, he declares he plans to work near Françoise and build his book the way she makes a dress: “by pinning supplementary leaves here and there that I should build up my book, so to speak, like a dress.” (Time Regained)
Contrasted with the worthy characters, there is a lengthy list of idle people whom Marcel meets in the various places mentioned in the book. These places are somewhat limited for a book as immense as La Recherche and include Paris, Balbec, Doncières, Venice, and Combray, the place Marcel remembers most fondly.
Paris
Paris is where most of the story takes place and where idle characters abound. Charles Swann, an old family friend from Combray and a major personality in the book, is one such character. Swann has literary ambitions and a passion for the works of Great Masters. He has been forever working on an essay on Vermeer but whiles away his time pursuing Odette de Crécy, a woman of supposedly shady reputation. Predictably, he falls in love with her and eventually marries her but regrets marrying a woman who is not his type. He realizes that what he loves about her is only an imaginary idea based on her resemblance to Botticelli’s Zephorah in Youth of Moses (c. 1480). In Swann, Proust depicts a character who misses his calling and ends up as a failure—a good example of a man of high potential and low focus. Marcel attributes Swann’s failure to his obsessive love. However, one can argue that the failure is due to his laziness and his penchant for idleness.
Paris is also the background for most of Marcel’s life. In Paris, he and his parents live in an apartment in the same building as the aristocratic Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes. The Guermantes family has its roots in Combray, and their château lies along the banks of the fictional Vivonne River. The young Marcel develops an obsession for the Duchesse, whose image evokes in him the grandeur of the nobility and the aristocratic name of de Guermantes. He coordinates his daily walks to coincide with the Duchesse’s outings, saluting her with the tip of his hat to make himself known. Marcel’s daily walks and organizing his life around his fixation symbolize a futile existence. He nevertheless continues this purposeless pursuit until his mother tells him that everybody knows what he is doing, and he is thus humiliating himself in the eyes of the neighbors. The scolding awakens Marcel to his senseless conduct.
Marcel nevertheless continues with his futile behavior by eagerly accepting invitations to the Guermantes family's parties and frequenting their aristocratic circles. In the process, he meets a miscellany of other noble men and women, with more invitations to their gatherings. After years of meaningless social climbing, he concludes that despite their high birth and elite position, the nobility is mostly mean-spirited individuals with ignoble comportment, excelling at bad-mouthing and one-upping each other. Despite this knowledge, young Marcel cannot tear himself away from their gatherings, each invitation bringing new excitement and false expectations of importance and relevance.
Balbec
The fictional sea resort city of Balbec is another important place for the narrator. As a young boy, following Swann's recommendation, Marcel travels to Balbec with his beloved grandmother, staying at the posh Grand Hotel. Both Balbec and its hotel are modeled after Cabourg in Normandy, where Proust spent many summers with his devoted servant, Céleste Albaret.
In Balbec, the narrator meets and befriends Robert de Saint-Loup, a young Guermantes aristocrat. However, Proust shows little regard for ordinary friendships, viewing them as time spent unwisely. He describes friendship as an idea that: “can lead to nothing” (Time Regained). At one point, Marcel refers to friendship as a madness, describing talking to friends as: “the error of a lunatic who imagines the furniture to be alive and talks to it.” (Time Regained, Chapter 3)
In Balbec, Marcel also meets Albertine, the girl with whom he falls in love. Albertine later moves to Paris to live with the narrator and his family, but their tumultuous relationship is doomed. Like Swann, Marcel’s love for Albertine is filled with jealousy, distrust, and possessiveness. He struggles with his desire to dominate her mind and control her thoughts, failing to recognize its impossibility and futility. The relationship is best described as a tug of war, fueled by obsession, jealousy, and rage, resulting in constant fights and occasional break-ups. Marcel claims that by falling in love with Albertine, he has lost focus on his literary ambitions, spending his days dealing with conflicted feelings. Proust categorizes love in the same group of futile endeavors as friendship, with happy and loving relationships being rare in La Recherche.
Marcel and Albertine continue their difficult relationship. Together, they return to Balbec and visit Mme Verdurins' gatherings at La Raspèliere, her rental home near Balbec. Upon returning to Paris, Albertine feels compelled to flee her practically prison-like circumstances. The narrator then feels free from the obsessive pattern of his life and can finally focus on his literary aspirations.
Mme. Verdurin’s "little clan" is another example of idleness in Proust’s narrative. Mme. Verdurin hosts a musical salon attended by various artists, musicians, and other personalities, all attracted to her charm and hospitality. Despite her wealth, her origin is rooted in middle-class, but she yearns for social ascension and is wildly eager to have the aristocracy at her salon, but they don’t deign attending her gatherings. She thus calls them bores, pretending that it is her decision to shun them. Moreover, she only admits those who worship her to her salon and bans anyone who crosses her or threatens her control. Her salon attendees, similar to the nobles, are deeply envious of one another, feigning friendships while constantly gossiping behind each other’s backs. Mme. Verdurin eventually climbs the social ladder, remarrying the Duc de Duras, thus becoming the Princesse de Guermantes.
Dencières
Doncières is a military garrison city where Marcel visits to meet his friend Robert de Saint-Loup. Marcel makes the trip hoping to press Robert into introducing him to his aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes. Proust thus displays Marcel’s selfish exploitation of their friendship. Robert's purpose in befriending Marcel is equally self-serving; he resents his noble background and befriends Marcel, an ordinary man of superior intelligence, to show him off to his military colleagues as proof of his associations with intellectuals.
The trip to Doncières proves successful for the narrator, as it is through Robert that he finally gains access to the aristocratic circles he has always admired. Although he later finds the experience a waste, it has a silver lining, as he uses the characters he met during his social-climbing endeavors as material for the book he plans to write.
At Doncières, Marcel observes life at a military base, meets soldiers and officers, and admires their camaraderie, discipline, and dedication to duty. The military garrison contrasts sharply with the idle life of the nobility in Paris. Proust himself served for a year at a military base in Orléans, and his memories of the rigorous army life are happy ones. His descriptions of Doncières are likely based on those experiences.
Venice
Venice holds significant meaning in the narrator’s life, embodying beauty, history, culture, and art. Marcel first visits the city with his mother, an experience that leaves a profound impact on him. Proust's descriptions of the city are heavily influenced by his own 1900 visit with the musician Reynaldo Hahn, whom Proust, despite his denial of homosexuality was rumored to be in love with.
Marcel, who always harbored an enduring desire to visit Venice, claimed that his obsession with Albertine prevents him from a trip to the magical city. It's only after their separation that he finally journeys to Venice with his mother. Curiously, amidst Venice's grandeur, Marcel finds parallels with Combray, his enchanting childhood town, a testament to his deep affection for both places.
In Venice, Marcel's capricious nature occasionally overrides his judgment. For instance, he nearly lets his beloved mother depart alone to the train station, driven by hopes of encountering Mme de Potbus’ maid, rumored to be in Venice. Marcel had been captivated by Robert's descriptions of her beauty and her shady reputation. Despite his persistent search across multiple volumes, Marcel fails to meet the young girl, which symbolizes a recurring futile effort. Fortunately, he joins his mother at the train station, once he realizes that the city lacks its allure without her presence.
Venice is another significant place in the narrator’s life, representing beauty, culture, and art. Marcel visits Venice with his mother, and the city leaves a lasting impression on him. The beauty and history of Venice inspire Marcel, but his stay is cut short due to his father's death, prompting him to return to Paris.
Combray
In conclusion, Proust’s work explores the intricate interplay of idleness, vocation, and human nature through the lives of his characters and the places they inhabit. The characters' struggles with their aspirations and tendencies towards idleness reflect the broader human condition. Through Marcel's journey, Proust emphasizes the importance of finding meaning and fulfillment in one’s vocation, while also acknowledging the challenges posed by our inherent inclination towards idleness.
The most cherished place in the book is Combray, the little town where Marcel’s family on his mother’s side owns a residence. Combray is modeled after Illiers, the town where Proust’s father's family originated. In 1972, Illiers changed its name to Illiers-Combray, an unprecedented move as no other town has ever changed its name to a fictional place in a novel. This change has been a successful tourist ploy, bringing thousands of Proust enthusiasts to the town annually. The small town is about an hour and a half west of Paris by car, and a short distance from the cathedral city of Chartres. Contrary to most French villages, Illiers-Combray is not particularly attractive. Similarly, and contrary to Marcel’s comments, the fictional Combray must be a far cry from Venice, as Marcel himself admits it is "un peu triste." (Swann’s Way)
There are many similarities between Illiers-Combray and the Combray of La recherche, such as the church, the streets, the river and the house itself. One of the features of the house is the staircase where Marcel hears the sound of his mother’s tasseled dress, as she climbs up to his bedroom, where a magic lantern is set on a table. For Marcel, the nightly visit and the cherished goodnight kiss is a must in order to achieve a peaceful night of sleep.
The kiss is part of the narrator’s voluntary memories of Combray, which are forever etched on his mind. All he initially remembers of the house are limited to the staircase, his bedroom, the room downstairs, and the anxious few hours that he spends each evening in anticipation for the precious kiss. He becomes even more restless on the evenings of Swann’s visits, when there is a strong possibility that Marcel would be either deprived of receiving the kiss in his bedroom, or worse still, not receiving the kiss at all due to his mother’s preoccupation with having a guest at the house.
Marcel’s other memories of Combray—his involuntary ones—are forgotten, but they become revived by the famous episode of the taste of the madeleine dipped in tea. Marcel relates that one cold winter day, as he comes home, his mother serves him tea with a madeleine. Marcel also states that even though he had seen the cake in the windows of pastry shops, he had not eaten one in a very long time. The long-ago taste of the cake thus suddenly fills him with some odd and indescribable feelings. He has a hard time figuring out what it is that creates such strange emotions in him. He keeps on taking bites of the madeleine and declares that the phenomena start to fade with each bite he takes, thus reducing the effect of reviving the truth hidden behind the experience. He finally has an epiphany, revealing the source of the emotions he feels. He states that on Sunday mornings in Combray, before going to church, his Aunt Léonie would serve him a cup of tisane with a madeleine. He would then dip bits of the cake in the herbal infusion before eating them. Marcel declares that the simple stimulation of his long-ago sensory experience of the taste, associated with the cake, triggers his forgotten childhood memories of Combray and causes them to reappear from total darkness into light: “the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.” (Swann’s Way)
Aunt Léonie’s precious contribution to La Recherche is not limited to the famous madeleine episode, which forever has affixed the little French cake to Proust’s name. She plays an important role in epitomizing important characteristics of the human nature such as; habit, isolation, imagination, curiosity, love of life despite sickness and old age, the need for companionship, and finally idleness.
Among all that the character of Aunt Léonie represents, her persona best embodies the concept of idleness. There is no other character in the book, who so succinctly allegorizes the notion. Despite the great meaning that Aunt Léonie’s character brings to the book, she however is not one of those who appear and disappear continuously in various volumes. Her role indeed is brief and limited to the first chapter of the book, where readers suddenly learn about her death, and hear about her servant Françoise mourning for her.
The fictional Aunt Léonie’s character is modeled after Elisabeth Amiot, Proust’s real aunt on his father’s side. Léonie—the fictional character—was married to Marcel’s deceased uncle Octave, and thus she is also referred to as Mme Octave. She is an elderly woman, who after her husband’s death, starts to isolate herself from the outside world. She never leaves her home and spends her days in two rooms in the upper floor of her house, feigning a total lack of interest in the outside world. Like Aunt Léonie, Proust also spent his last years in isolation—her in her two upstairs’ rooms and Proust in his cork-lined bedroom.
Despite her claims of disinterest, Léonie watches the happenings in the streets below her window with utmost interest. She gets excited, but also rattled, at the sight of any unknown creature, man, woman, child or even a dog that she does not recognize, “ne connait point.” She thus immediately sends Françoise on a mission of discovery to Theodore, the grocer’s assistant, who is a good source of information.
On an overcast day, Léonie worries about insignificant matters, such as the neighbor Mme Goupil not making it to the Sunday church services on time. It is after these Sunday services that she awaits with impatience a visit from the curé, but most importantly from an old and limping villager named Eulalie, who comes to her with full report of the village gossip and receives a little coin with the promise of saying prayers for the old Aunt Léonie.
Léonie’s idleness and her life of inactivity give free rein to her imagination, and she thus concocts fictional and imaginary situations about various people around her. She invents tales of misdeed by Françoise, whom she perceives as a thief and miscreant, despite Françoise’s extreme devotion to her and her well-being. Similarly, she imagines the worst calamities befalling the family if they return a bit later than usual from their daily walks. She pictures them in disastrous situations, and at times she even imagines them dead, thus immediately sending Françoise out to look for them.
Even though a comical character, Aunt Léonie has a lot in common with the serious and deep-thinking narrator of the book, but also with Proust himself. Not only they all have to deal with sickness, but also the quandaries of an idle and futile existence and lack of purpose, with the difference that Proust, in his final years, feverishly wrote and finished the most brilliant novel of his era.
As for Marcel, even though Proust depicts him as a man plunged in a whirlpool of life’s futility, and idle endeavors, he is nevertheless a man with a keen mind and reflective intelligence. We perceive his superior intellect through the display of his many meditative moments, ruminating on such matters as; love, life, friendship, death, art, imagination and memory, among many others. Marcel eventually shows the promise of fulfillment in the last volume of the book, and finds redemption through his writing about his search for le temps perdue, which means both “lost time” and the “time wasted.” Marcel, the narrator of Proust’s book, symbolizes all of us, with our tendencies towards idleness, but also with our specific talents and abilities that can be tapped into, if we put our minds to it.
Article by: Fereshteh Priou - December 2022
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