The Truth and the Discourse of theNovel

Florian BRATUUniversitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” Suceava

RésuméAvant de devenir un axiome du romand’introspection, la recherche de la vérité estun processus, une voie parsemée d’échecs et deleurres. La fragmentation de l’espace et ladiscontinuité du psychique contribuentégalement à la distorsion et à la pénétrationen profondeur du réel, toujours ajournée. Pourconnaître la vérité des êtres et des choses lesujet narrateur est obligé à se définirperpétuellement par rapport à ceux-ci. Parconséquent, la vérité, avant d’être uneessence dans l’écriture romanesqued’introspection, elle est une relationcomplexe que nous essayons de mettre enévidence à travers notre article.

“…but isn’t our very life a perpetual lie?” Marcel Proust

“The first fall into sin is the firstlie.

This is why it is codified in humans.We are deceitful by our very birth.”

Ivan Ognev

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The reflexive consciousness in theact of writing involves a high degree ofanxiety, which accompanies its own beingand refuses an illusory victory; its is alanguage sentenced to transience andapproximation, a ritual in which realityand verb are brought into wedlock,through which the impossible, in itsendless uttering, conjugates its ownaspiration. Thus, Proust’s work becomes aperpetual postponement of creation, whoseinner tension generates and upholds thebalance of the text. The truth of thiscreation resides in the obstinacy of thiscontradicted dynamism, in a doublemovement of both promotion and annulmentwhose resultant is absence itself, orsooner an interval presence. The logic ofpostponement or of absence, whichsupports the entire novelistic edifice,structures and fecundates the work – itis visible within the introspectivenovel’s space, starting with the object.The novel of the consciousness, suspendedin the exercise of aspirations’expansion, develops its superficiesaround things, refusing to isolate theauthentic: it embraces the real inmultiple ways, molding it until all thatis left is an open space whereinastonished contemplation loses itself.

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In its essence, the creative spiritcan’t be subdued by existence, for itdefies the ultimate frontier – death,while the aletheic interrogation becomes,by means of introspective writing, anaesthetic way-of-being. The work, inProust’s vision, is the differenceinstituted by the creator’s identity: “Itis the revelation, impossible by directand conscious means, of the qualitativedifference there is in the way in which we look at theworld, a difference which, without art, would remain forever each man's personal secret” (ourunderlining).1

The ideas, in the search of whichthe novelist finds himself, exist intransparency beyond the visible. Thesensible essences of the visible re-vealthemselves to the ego as a “closeness ofmeaning into the sensible, a passage fromthe mute world to the spoken world,[possible] with Marcel Proust on accountof the lived body” (our translation).2

The novelist sees in art asubstantial reality to which he confers

1 Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. TimeRegained, translation, foreword, notes andcommentary by Irina Mavrodin, p. 247 (Englishtranslation, C. K. Scott Moncrieff).2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'Invisible,Gallimard, N.R.F., Paris, 1964, p. 350.

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metaphysical existence; art is also ameans to anchor and preserve the identityof the being. Proust’s novel is a genuineschool of introspection that teaches away of looking at people and things, fullof life and especially of astonishment.This way of looking is the expression ofa vision. On reading the introspectivework, the aesthetic experience acquiresan unusual dimension: it projects itselfas eternal reality. We witness asymbiosis of life’s and spirit’sperspectives that only the metaphysicalinterrogation is able to disclose.

The deciphering and knowledge ofbeauty admit to the idea that the truththey seek for is accessible by followingthe path of Literature. Thus, the writingand the ego become compatible with eachother as the former speaks and draws thecontour of the ego against the backgroundof reality – the reality of its essentialdifference.

In Proust’s introspective novel,due to the dimension of interiority, thesubject refuses the disjunction, thefracture that space or time forces uponhim as dictatorial, totalistic forces.The discontinuity of psychical life leadsto the fragmentation of time, of what iscustomarily known by the name of

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historical time. The error, confessed bythe Narrator several times whileprojecting his look upon the world, liesin the perspective it brings upon thereal. This perspective ought to lead himto the discovery of the truth pertainingto reality: it consists in the fact that,in the beginning, he looks upon realityas to a determining entity characterizedby objectivity. Instead, it is time andits individual moments that change hisway of looking at the surrounding world.As such, the negational function of timeis, every now and then, postponed,suspended (it is in this state ofsuspension that revelations occur), whichcontributes to the begetting of meaning.Through its lively intensity, inner lifebecomes reality’s only mode of existence,as plurality contracted into uniqueness.In Proust’s novel of introspection,becoming acquires an aletheic valueradically different from the idea ofsubject, and signifies the idea ofresistance against the force ofdisintegration, of fragmentation, similarto Heraclitus’ vision of the river, inwhich one cannot bathe twice. De-structuring becoming changes its polarityand, through the identity and uniquenessof the sensations that divert little

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Marcel from immediate existence, themonism of Parmenides is imbued withmeaning.

Critics have signaled the searchfor truth in Proust’s novel, but theyhave done it in an unconvincing manner,in that they just mention the phenomenonas the mere enumeration of a structure ina thematic ensemble, without alsohighlighting what the term and theconcept mean in the novelisticconstruction. The only study that touchesupon the subject, though tangentially andlimiting itself to inconclusiveaffirmations, was written by René Girard:

“The truth of the novelist is total. Itembraces all the aspects of individualand collective existence. Even though thenovel slightly overlooks some of theaspects, it certainly is indicative ofperspective” (our translation, ourunderlining).3

Although René Girard graspsProust’s novelistic pertinence inanalyzing particular segments ofexistence, he does not enlarge upon them.Consequently, we shall try to compensate

3 René Girard, Minciună romantică şi adevăr romanesc(Romantic Lie and Novelistic Truth), in Romanian byAlexandru Baciu, preface by Paul Cornea,Editura Univers, Bucharest, 1972, p. 225.

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for this hiatus of critical perception byadvancing several ideas.

The plurality of images, enforcedby the “discourse” of the world,contributes to the orientation of thesubject’s sensibility, who, in his turn,aspires to beauty and to the one and onlytruth, thus enriching the very sameworld, as his vision brings together boththe person who perceives and feels, andthat which is perceived and lived. Thetruth can be reached by conjunction, not bydisjunction.

In Proust’s novel of introspection,one reaches the truth not only throughintuition but also through theinstruments offered by intelligence.While the Narrator goes directly to theessence of beings and things throughintuition or ecstatic revelation, oneshouldn’t overlook the role played byintelligence, which contributes to theadequacy and verification of reality’sdata and, stimulated by volition, to theconstruction of the work as well.

The novel’s fabula also contains anexplicit moral of the entire fictional constructionillustrated in Time Regained: intelligenceseparates and develops the aletheicsynthesis, while intuition operates withit. It is the reason why we don’t share

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Emmanuel Lévinas’ point of view when hestates, “The truth, a subtler contactthan tangency, at the risk of ignorance,illusion, and error, does not recover the‘distance’, does not lead to the union ofthe connoisseur with the known thing, itdoes not lead to totality” (ourtranslation).4

The aspiration toward truth inProust’s novel of introspection is self-evident: this is the reason why neitherthe inner determinations of the one whodesires to know the truth nor the valuesit highlights have been enlarged upon asyet. In his way of looking at the world,Proust is “too much of a philosopher” tolimit himself to the mask of the utilityman.

Before it becomes an axiom of theintrospective novel, the search for truthis a process, a path interspersed withfailure and errors. The fragmentation ofspace and the discontinuity of psychismcontribute to a great extent to thedistortion and postponement in theprocess of in-depth penetration of the

4 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalitate şi infinit. Eseu despreexterioritate, translation, glossary andbibliography by Marius Lazurcă, afterword byVirgil Ciomoş, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 1999, p.44.

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real. In order to know the truth ofbeings and things, the narrating subjectis forced to define himself with relationto these. As such, the truth, before being anessence, a concept in the novelistic introspectivewriting, is a relation. Unlike the traditionalnovel of psychological analysis, thetruth in Proust’s introspective noveldisplays at least two stages or levels ofrepresentation: the search for truth andthe acquisition of truth. The search isrelated to the analysis of the acquireddata or of whatever Marcel may feelattracted to, while the acquisitionsignifies the synthesis of therelationship’s definition, which becomesoperational by transfer to the realm ofart.

The pathway to truth starts fromthe subject and returns to it, traversingthe Other, who, in a way or another,contributes to the subject’s self-construction. As one can easily notice,in this relationship exteriority can’t bedefinitively excluded: at this point we sharethe same ideational ground with Lévinas,whose concept of exteriority, extant inthis segment of his thinking, coincideswith the reality of Proust’s text, understood not onlyas expression, but also as trajectory of a deeplyphilosophical reflection. Thus, Lévinas makes a

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statement that corresponds perfectly toProust’s way of imagining the absolute,the infinite in and through the novel: “…the relationship with the Other does notconsist in redoing the pathway inreverse, but in faring forth toward Himthrough Desire, whose exteriority ofobject is acknowledged by theory as well.This is because the idea of exterioritythat guides the search for truth ispossible only as an idea of the Infinite.The soul’s conversion to exteriority, orto the absolute Other, or to the Infiniteis not deductible from the soul’s veryidentity, because it is no match for thissoul. The infinite does not proceed fromthe Ego, nor from an Ego’s need to weighits void with accuracy. Here, the movementproceeds from the thought ‘object’, not from thethinker. It is the only form of knowledgethat displays this inversion – theknowledge without a priori” (ourtranslation, our underlining).5

We share almost completely thisperspective, advanced by the philosopherLévinas, with a single amendment: theconversion to the other or to theinfinite is not merely the result ofsimple deductibility, but rather theresult of induction. Furthermore, to regard

5 Ibidem, p. 45

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the ego as a void form, as a scheme thatis filled with aspiration, constitutes aconstrained, materialistic manner ofobserving reality, which can becomprehended only through spirit.

According to René Girard andGhislaine Florival, desire is an enginethat sets the being in motion and,consequently, the act of writing and theentire psychical and thematicorchestration of Proust’s characters aswell. But desire, which signifies themovement toward the other, does not alwaysconstitute the origin of the call, as it can beborn within as mere energy, dreams, andimagination. The subjective projectionspresent in the first part of the novelSwann surely certify the existence ofthis aspiration that goes beyond thehorizon of the immediate look. It is lessabout a movement of the ego toward theexterior than about an aspiration towardexteriority with a view to converting it [the aspiration]into pure interiority, purged of all impurity.Impurity, evil, lie, perversion,snobbery, are all filtered by the look ofinteriority, which is returned to exteriorityin the shape of artistic truth.

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The sought for truth6 is the one ofthe language spoken by beings and things,which does not limit itself to thecontact of/with alterity, to the mereinterpellation of the look, but attemptsseparation and comprehension, with theaid of the demystifying intelligence ofwhatever the other may hide. Swann, theDuchess de Guermantes, Albertine,Charlus, Saint-Loup, even Bergotte, arefirst images, projections, before beingdeciphered as substances bearing certainmeanings. The identification of thesemeanings has its disadvantage as they areembellished by the subject’s imagination.But at his level, imagination is thesource of errors. As long as the herodesires a thing and starts by attributingit qualities it doesn’t possess, his look isfalsified in the first place.

The analysis of love as a feelingconfronts us with the ipseity of somethingor of the other in a search for pleasure,6 The 370 occurences of the word truth are notaccidental; they bespeak the obsession of asearch for a fixed landmark, of an exigency oftranscending the condition that humans arecustomarily subjected to: the illusion of thereal possession of the universe. The contextin which this term appears is, most of thetimes, in relation to words like knowledge (192occurences) and time (1682 occurences).

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not happiness. Pleasure pertains to a specificselfishness of the ego while happiness transgresses theimmediate lived experience. The pleasureafforded by watching the young girls atBalbec and by the possession of Albertinebelongs to the sphere of the minor genreof existence. To wish and to desire, thenarrator realizes later, are notsynonymous with to be. Pleasure pertainsto the present, while happiness does notpossess a temporal dimension: it is notdetermined by but determining for afuture to be, as the revelations heexperiences during the Guermantes matineeenter the sphere of unitime, of an eternity,even though it may last only for amoment. On the other hand, happiness inProust’s writing pertains toconsummateness, to the sublime. It is anuance of truth revealed in and through art, asthe ultimate purposefulness of existence in Proust’sview.

The ancient adage ars longa, vita breviscan be ranged among those coordinates ofthe introspective novel to which Proustgives shape and confirms by dint of thephilosophical substance of his artisticcreation. The pleasure afforded by thingsand beings pertains to transience, tolife, as it were; happiness, when it is genuine,is related to art, which transcends the present. The

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happiness7 through art only rarelyignores the interaction, therelationship. It is a projection ofcertainty, of a revealed truth.

Emmanuel Lévinas confirms ouroption and the distinction we operated atthe intimate level of Proust’s work whenhe states:

“Pleasure is not a psychologicalstate among others, an affective tonalityof empiricist psychology; it is the veryeffervescence of the ego. Within it, weperpetually preserve a secondary degree,which, nonetheless, is not that ofreflection. The happiness we experiencein the very act of being alive is,indeed, always placed beyond the beingfrom whom things are being notched off.There is finality in this happiness, butthe aspiration’s memory confers finalityits consummate character, a better statein comparison with ataraxia8 (ourtranslation, our underlining). Theaspiration toward the beauty accomplishedthrough art is an aspiration toward

7 Proust’s original text displays 278occurences of the word happiness. Theconsistent presence of this term indicates anauthentic aspiration.8 Emmanuel Lévinas, op. cit., p. 92.

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happiness and the sublime. Mimeticdesire9 is transgressed by the will topossess identity within the novel’sspace, an act which no longer presupposesa specific time, but a dimension beyondregular boundaries, at the foundation ofwhich lies the unitemporal truth aboutthe self and the world.

Referring to the nostalgia of unity,Michel Raimond analyses in depth thisaspiration of human beings that can befound in Proust’s writing and is,obviously, related to the idea ofseparation10. To be sure, these twostructures that traverse Proust’s novelof introspection originate in theobsessive idea of the aspiration towardtruth. It is also a certain fact that theaspiration toward truth is the imprintthat singles out the human along his/herexistential trajectory. The subject thataspires to know the world and the beingsit is made of is part from a whole11, whereasthe truth, regardless of the nuances thatempower the presence of its plurality, is9 In this respect, see the perspectiveadvanced by René Girard in op. cit., p. 23-71.10 Michel Raimond, Proust romancier, 2e édition,SEDES, Paris, 1991, p. 299-309.11 Our position differs from Emmanuel Lévinas’opinion, which claims the opposite. SeeEmmanuel Lévinas, Totalitate şi infinit, p. 44.

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unique and can only be discovered by the subjectivitythat enters a relation with itself and with the Other.The search for truth, both in fiction and inother fields, is jammed by the continuous motionof desire, a deforming structure that institutes thedistance between the ego and the world.

The transgression of distance constitutesboth a form and an obsession in the search for truth.For the ego animated by the aspirationtoward knowledge, looking at Alterity isas meaning-conveying as can be. In fact,what we deal with is more than merecommunication between consciousnesses. Itis about what is hiding behind this look.Thus, the high-life time spent by thehero is seemingly wasted, even though thesigns of this world fragment the meaningof the subject’s existence, as heendeavors to know it. It is precisely inthis world, undermined from within byerosion and source of corruption for thetruth’s perception, that we can findelements to build the truth of the being,the Work’s truth. Proust’s effort startsfrom the fragment and moves toward the whole.From fragments of truths, discoveredwhile experiencing life’s diversespheres, the Narrator extracts theessence of each fragment of existence –of both beings and things –, recordstheir identity and singularity, and culminates

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in the construction of truth, which transcendsthem. Friendship, love, snobbery,sexuality and its deviations, theartists’ world, are, one by one, filteredthrough his analysis with a view toassimilating the hidden dimensioncontained in these forms ofcommunication, these worldly ways of thehuman being.

The look12 finds its way towards theessence of alterity’s truth, as a stateof openness on the part of its existence,more precisely, as aletheia – a non-hiding condition – which, according toHeidegger’s theoretical distinction,“must be snatched out from itsineluctable hiding”13(our translation).With Proust, the look strives to reachthe other’s truths, but it never goes asfar as to the level of pessimism andcynicism put forward by Sartre in hisstatement: “… I fix the people I see asobjects, I am in relation with them justlike another is in relation to me.12 The term must be understood in connection with the idea of thought.13 See Otto Pöggler’s interpretation in Drumulgândirii lui Heidegger (The Road of Heidegger’s Thinking),Editura Humanitas, Bucharest, 1998, p. 76. Wehave our doubts about the interpretation ofthe formulation das Warum der Wahrheit applied tothe problematic of truth.

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Looking at them, I measure my power”14. InProust’s novel, the conflict must beunderstood as the distance of hidinginstituted by the other, not as theother’s “fixing” as object by thecommunication-driven ego.

The dialectic that severalspecialists attribute to the ego-otherrelationship must not be absolutized,because the power that Sartre postulates,the death of the other’s consciousness inHegel or René Girard, who retakes Hegel’sreasoning about the triangle of desire(all these are perceptions which inProust’s case can only be accepted asopinions, not judgments), do not consistin the other’s still unrevealed hiddendimension, but in the force of the aspirationthrough which the ego seeks to open thepath to the truth. This aspiration canalso be perceived in Lévinas’philosophical writings, even though thephilosopher erroneously employs the term‘desire’ instead of ‘aspiration’: “It isdesire that measures the infinity of theinfinite, because it measures it throughthe very impossibility of doing so. The

14 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard,N. R. F., Paris, 1968, p. 316.

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measured want of measure becomes [a] face”15

(our translation, our underlining).The search for truth in Proust’s

novel of introspection assumes at leasttwo forms: the former refers to thereflection upon what the hero or thesubject knows at a given moment in hisexistential trajectory. The act thatdefines him is a critical act partiallyopposed to the latter form which belongsto the ontological undertaking. Proust’spractice of doubt, as a continuation ofDescartes’, is accompanied by thequestioning of what the author considersto be acquired truth. In the realm ofProust’s introspective novel, the act ofinterrogation must be placed above theact that is circumscribed to doubt,because the language employed by littleMarcel lies at the origin of thismovement: at the beginning of the novel,the protagonist mistakes the valuesoffered by the reality on display for thevalue called aletheia. This ratiocinationis erroneous and appears to be identicalto Spinoza’s statement: verum index sui. Butevidence is not sufficient as a conditionand nor is the scholastics’ principleadequatio rerum et intellectus, which would limitthe truth to the mere reception of

15 Emmanuel Lévinas, op. cit., p. 45.

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reality. To see Bloch’s real structure orto surprise Charlus’ true face does notmean to possess the truth bout them witha view to inducting it into art’s space.A simple reflection signifies a more orless stylized copy. Instead, Proust’swriting does not restrict itself to anintelligible reconstruction of the real,that is to passive reflection, but, onthe contrary, it targets what Proustconsidered to be the genius’ own: the forceand depth of reflection rather than the reflectedspectacle.

No matter the degree ofauthenticity in Proust’s novelisticcreation, we must not overlook the factthe things and, more importantly, thecharacters are creatures pertaining to language,conspicuously depicted with exquisitenovelistic coherence. Unlike the novelsof psychological analysis by Balzac,Flaubert or Stendhal, the introspectivenovelistic creation starts from oneessential principle: reality isinsufficient, it lacks something andsearches for it, while the subject thatponders upon it adds the imprint of hisdifference to it.

The discourse of the beings allowsitself to be described in terms of thetruth that defines the choice of the

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object and its value, but also the valueof the subject that perceives it, andespecially the mode of its making. In theintrospective novelistic discourse, thetruth imposes itself as a necessity todis-close the hidden, the latent valuesof the things in waiting.16

If comprehension means to grasp themeaning of lived experiences, theinterpretation advanced by the hermeneuticalmethod deciphers their hidden meaning.Apparently there is a fracture betweenthe two levels, but, in our viewpoint,these levels should be looked at aselements of continuity in revealing thetruth. It is what happens in Proust’snovelistic discourse: although itpresents us with a subjectivity’s way ofbeing, the achievement transgresses itsorigin, objectifying itself unto art’struth.

The relation between lying and thenovelistic truth is interesting, aspresented by René Girard, but hardlysufficient. Whenever reference is made to

16 Alain de Lattre dedicates an entire chapterto the values assigned to waiting in Proust’swriting in La doctrine de la Réalité chez Proust T. II,Les réalites individuelles et la mémoire, José Corti,Paris, 1981, p. 201-223.

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a work of art, the principle of fictionis invoked, that can’t be “asked for” aquantum of truth. The question must beexamined from a different angle as well:invoking the authenticity of a visionposits the fictional idea on a secondplane. It is not fiction that is calledfor to claim a literary work’s value, asit is the implicit and/or explicitartistic truth of the discourse.

In Proust’s novel of introspectionthe Truth becomes Art. It is not commonknowledge, but in a letter dated February7, 1914, written to Jacques Rivière,Proust tried to convince his friend thathis novel had a speculative dimension. Similarly,we should call to attention the 1908Notebook, quoted by Antoine Compagnon, inwhich Proust inquired: “Should I make anovel, a philosophical study? Am I anovelist?”17

In Proust’s introspective novel,the truth starts from a sad[dening]assertion: life is based on lies.18 In itsessence, reality is, consciously or unconsciously,falsified by the human being. The act’sjustification baffles the hero of the17 Antoine Compagnon, Proust entre deux siècles, Seuil, Paris, 1989, p. 145.18 Marcel Proust, Albertine: mais notre vie ne reposait-elle sur un perpétuel mensonge?

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introspective novel, who, with greatdifficulty, manages to undo theintricate thread of appearances wovenby the individuals encountered in allsorts of environments. Lying andfalseness are not attributespertaining only to a certain socialcategory. Like any great moralist,Proust scrutinizes the phenomenon,insisting upon the causes thatdetermine human beings to put on themake-up of imposture, to tenaciouslycultivate falseness and lying.

Coincidence, a prerequisite for thedisclosure of truth, observed as arelation between the subject and thecall he receives from beings andthings, is achieved either byaccident or by unpredictablecomebacks, but most often is possibleonly after the hero is compelled totravel the space of waiting and ofhis own maturation. Proust’s lessonrefers to a simple, but real, truth:one can’t reach the truth unlesshe/she has experience.

The search for truth in Proust’sintrospective novel displays a strain ofdrama, at the origin of which lie

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various hindrances and errors. Atfirst sight, it is the beings andthings that refuse to open themselvesto the truth, manifested especiallyas communication. Remembrance of ThingsPast also presents us with a linguisticdrama, but the source of errors doesnot reside only in the other or insomething else, but in the subjecthimself, who, at a certain moment,does not know how to decode theother’s message, can’t choose betweenthis or that presence, given theother’s permanent movement, as wellas of his own perceptions andsensations that do not enter anyrelation of adequacy because of thehesitation that inherently setsdistance in motion and curtails theperception’s degree of veridicity.The paradox is born when the hero isthe one possessed by images, beings, andthings: it is their language that captures him,not the evasive existence which postponespossession.

Proust vacillates betweenliterature and philosophy, by themediation of an ego that floats, inhis turn, between the Narrator and

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the hero. It is something we callspace of interference; Compagnon called it“interval”19, while Vincent Descombesemployed terms such as “mixed” or“hybrid” writing to name the samenovelistic reality20.

It is the sum of truths for theex-posed being that contributes tothe making of the work, not therepresentations whose authenticity isdoubtful or elusive. What we callstyle is in fact the expression of asubject’s clear and distinct ideas21

that cannot be false. Proust’snovelistic discourse is a carrier oftruths, on the one hand, because itis transparent, beyond its stylisticcoating; and, on the other hand,because the mobility of consciousnesson the part of the being that uttershimself/herself goes beyond the filter ofenunciative subjectivity, impressing itself

19 Ibidem, p. 13.20 Vincent Descombes, Proust. Philosophie du roman, Les Éditions de Minuit, coll. „Critique”, Paris, 1987, p. 39-47.21 By clarity we understand a necessary stage in gaining access to the world’s hidden dimension.

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into a deeper dimension of thesymbolic, of the myth of creation andof the aletheia experienced by theperpetually inquisitive being. Not onlythe path contributes to the revelation of thealetheia, but also its language. Thephilosophical ‘why’ belongs toLiterature as well, not untoseparation but unto communion.

René Girard, one of the subtleanalysts of Proust’s work, stated that“the novelist’s truth is total”22 (our translationand underlining). In our opinion, thework as the novelist’s projectioncontains a great many pages where theexpression of the sublime results fromthe very metaphysical vision, since the truth, inProust’s writing, always means transcending the real’sdeviations, the desires of the being converted byaspirations toward art, which is more thancommunication: it is the Meaning revealedbeyond immediate knowledge; and, what’smore, it is the transcending of thesoliloquy by means of a message withuniversal character. Proust was rightwhen he declared that Literature is the ultimatepurpose of the world: Beauty and Truth, in and through

22 Girard, René, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, Bernard Grasset, 1961.

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Art, are the entities that help to build the edifice of theBeing.

The discovery of the truthpresupposes a consciousness, in our casea part assumed by the Narrator who,instead of sublimating the very events hewitnesses or plays a part in, like in thenovel of psychological analysis allowsthe life of his consciousness toconstitute the substance that anticipatesthe Novel.

To read Proust’s work as apessimistic perspective upon existence isa sham undertaking. Desire andimagination will always be subjected tothe control exercised by the will todiscover the truth in any detail thatturned an opaque face to the Narrator’slook, no matter how insignificant. Itgoes without saying that any authenticwork represents a building effort, butthis does not necessarily mean to“psychologize” the ex-posed being, butrather its ontologization according to the aletheicpattern.

In our opinion, the truthsdiscovered in and through personalexperience are not spared from stagesdominated by the subject’s blindness tothe call of beings and things. The appealthat the narrator decodes incorrectly at

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the beginning of the novel becomes thesource of perception errors that concerntheir meaning. Love and memory play thelargest number of practical jokes at theexpense of the narrator-hero, whotraverses the “world’s forest of symbols”without managing to cover the meaningfuldistance beyond the false frontier of thereal. The illuminating opening,Heidegger’s inspired coinage, can beapplied to Proust’s hero if we understandit as a lifting of the blurring veil ofperceptive habitude, of love’sincarcerating desires, of removing thebeings’ make-up, that is taking off themask from the faces that were investedwith aesthetic values they couldn’t evenpromise. Suffice it to remember Swann’sway of looking at Odette, in reality acheap tart, whom he assimilates with apainting by Botticelli, and not the otherway around, as Roland Breeur notices.23

The truth is that Swann, like otherdeformed projections, such as Charlus,Saint-Loup and last but not least theNarrator, who mechanically repeatsSwann’s errors, indulge in loose living,

23 Roland Breeur, Singularité et sujet. Une lecturephénoménologique de Proust, Éditions JérômeMillon, Grenoble, 2000, p. 217.

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in sterile conversations,“aestheticizing” their existence. Swann’slove for Odette de Crécy is assimilatedwith Vinteuil’s sonata by using theexpression “national air”. While in thetwo characters’ relationship thetranscendence demanded by music isundermined and reduced to mereinvoluntary memory, the truth of therelationship being made opaque, for theNarrator, the function of the sonata is,on the contrary, to transcend the meaningof a simple love affair, to transfigurethe real and bring it to transcendence.The novel presupposes this very processof transcending, of illuminating openingof outer obscurity, with a view to discoveringthe path and the authentic movement toward the self,as the only means to appropriate one’s own nature,his/her selfness unto aletheia. During thisveridical opening, the creating subjectmanages, through introspection, toaccommodate the presence of the revealedmeaning into art’s sphere, as a spaceliberated from the wandering immanence.

The trajectory of the truth is notdrawn heading for the lost paradise ofinvoluntary memory: it is not orientedtoward the past, as previously stated,but toward the discovery of itstranscending guiding lines in authentic living.

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Art is the ideal form to answer the countless questionsthat baffle the human being through the Wordengraved on the mask of life, not mere evocation like inthe realistic novels of psychological analysis.

Only through writing and art can onetransgress the false, made-up images ofexistence; only through creation can one fix theeternity of existence. Consummateness isguaranteed by the novelistic creationonly when the Narrator understands thathe must eliminate preconceived ideas orthe projections of his own desires; allthese are, in fact, signs not truths. Andthe Narrator’s formula assumes shape onlyby the interference, in a very shortinterval of time, of all thoserevelations that will contribute toremove opaqueness from the data furnishedby life’s reality, but especially toillustrate the building of meaning, thenovelistic making proper. Essences willfind an abode in these impure materialsmetamorphosing them into sound (thesonata) and into the Work’s Word. Thematter becomes Logos, which in its turnturns into Art.

 

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Selective Bibliography:

Breeur, Roland, Singularité et sujet. Une lecturephénoménologique de Proust, Éditions JérômeMillon, Grenoble, 2000.Compagnon, Antoine, Proust entre deux siècles, Seuil,Paris, 1989.Descombes, Vincent, Proust. Philosophie du roman,Les Éditions de Minuit, coll. „Critique”,Paris, 1987.Girard, René, Minciună romantică şi adevăr romanesc,În româneşte de Alexandru Baciu, Prefaţă dePaul Cornea, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1972.Landy, Joshua, Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception,and Knowledge in Proust. Oxford University Press,2004.Lattre, Alain de, La doctrine de la Réalité chez ProustT. II, José Corti, Paris, 1981.Lévinas, Emmanuel, Totalitate şi infinit. Eseu despreexterioritate, Traducere, glosar şi bibliografiede Marius Lazurcă, Postfaţă de Virgil Ciomoş,Editura Polirom, col. Plural, Iaşi, 1999.Mainguenau, Dominique, Linguistique pour le textelittéraire, 4e édition, Armand Colin, Paris,Paris, 2005.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Le Visible et l'Invisible,Gallimard, N.R.F., Paris, 1964.Pöggler, Otto, Drumul gândirii lui Heidegger, EdituraHumanitas, Bucureşti, 1999.Proust, Marcel, A la Recherche du temps perdu.Paris: Gallimard, 1999.Raimond, Michel, Proust romancier, 2e édition,SEDES, Paris, 1991.

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Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard,N. R. F., Paris, 1968.Wright, Donald, Du discours médical dans ”A larecherche du temps perdu. Science et souffrance”, préfaced’Antoine Compagnon, Honoré Champion, Paris,2007.

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