proustian rant on proust

As I have expected (from having seen glimpses of the book here and there in my distant past), this is one of the most beautiful texts that I have encountered, and, with every line, I feel that keen jolt of pleasure from reading which informs me of the prestige in his use of words and structure of language in the representation of the human experience.

The opening paragraphs are an epitome of the blending of consciousness and unconsciousness, the vagueness of human thought and perception, and the arbitrary nature of reality itself as being supremely subjective. Such aforementioned qualities are not objective but in fact deeply subjective, simply because they are liable to fluctuate under the influence of those tiniest wafts of memory that pervade the moment of time, influenced by the subtlest flickerings of emotion that kindle in the fires of the awakening mind. No amount of objectivity — be it through logic, mathematics, reason, or science— can never help us understand the human condition in its fullest, most representative form. The closest means of understanding the human condition is through art, because art is about self-expression, and literature, as an art form, has the power of specificity (I would argue much more than painting or instrumental music does) in capturing the subjective details of existence down to the granular level of material textures, voices, and principles.

The material world stands here, there, and right there, here before our eyes, and right beyond our reach, in the form of brass doorknobs, forgotten bedrooms, undusted floors and flickering candlelights. But we, as human beings, are not part of that world — our memories and experiences are associated with such material objects, but fundamentally our minds operate in a distinct world of its own, drawing from and brushing over the image of these material objects but never truly in touch with them, instead playing around with a dense haze of miraculous, voluptuous, and ridiculously personal tide of emotions that have no basis other than in our characteristic perceptions, inner eyes, and emotions of the heart.

As opposed to a technique in literature that I call ‘revealing the significance of things that are seemingly insignificant’, Proust does not seem to do this. On the whole, of course, there is a particular degree of significance that generally emerges from his very act of having expressed these multitudinous ideas. But microcosmically, specific events and memories that he describes do not alone hold significance, unless they are viewed in comparison to one another by the reader. This is especially prominent when he describes the reason causing his grandmother to come back inside from her walk outside. Along with a medley of other details, he indicates that his great-aunt would tease her by indicating that her husband was drinking, and his grandmother would go home, since she does not want this happening. Without any inclination to explain the significance of this memory, the speaker gradually and almost imperceptibly transitions to elaborating his own feelings on the matter, and how he naively desires to be alone in such instances, leading the text towards his room, his personal ills, and his desire for a goodnight kiss from his mother. These passages are not significant on their own but appear to provide significance if pitted up side by side with one another; in this context, the contrast between the dispute erupting from his family, and the speaker’s discomfort towards this, is what provides significance to his solitude and desire for a ‘kiss of peace’ (13), because it seems to symbolize his desire for love and closeness in the midst of familial disputes.

I was quite struck by the naivety of the speaker’s tone throughout the text. The recurrent reflections over memories of his mother, and more specifically his desire to receive a goodnight’s kiss from her, along with his memories about his grandmother and his father, strikes me as those types of memory retrieved from the muted depths of one’s childhood, preserved in the form of an arrangement of vague feelings and arduous visions that penetrate the deepest regions of the subconscious mind, and linger on for ages as a lasting personal impression, which, if never expressed through art, will remain in one’s heart to be taken to the grave.

Is literature a good art form for representing subjective experiences?