The Structure of Memory: Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’

‘Combray’ — the first part of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time — begins as it ends; with the narrator stuck in bed, unable to sleep. If one were to see this scene ‘from outside’, one would, as Proust says later on in the novel, see nothing. However, in the intervening pages, between the beginning of ‘Combray 1’ and the end of ‘Combray 2’, we do not observe this scene from the outside. Instead, we are afforded access into what Richard Bales calls Marcel’s ‘inner goings-on’; i.e. his thoughts, memories and projections. As a result, we are transported across great distances (in time as in space), all without leaving the narrator’s bedroom.

This discrepancy, between outward appearance and inward experience, is deliberate. It occurs throughout the novel — most notably in the madeleine scene— and even dictates the novel’s ‘structural appearance’. The narrative is outwardly linear (the narrator in bed), but it is experienced non-linearly (the memories of Combray). This circuitous narration, like the novel itself, ‘replicates the structure of the human mind’ (Landy) as it is experienced subjectively. Proust, as ‘one of the first artists to internalize Henri Bergson’s philosophy’ (Lehrer), presents subjective experience — or perception — just as Bergson did; as a ‘circuit’ rather than a rectilinear process. Just as the narrator returns us to his…