I just finished reading the first chapter of Proust’s Combray and felt that he had some interesting ideas on our memory and our understanding of reality, so I wanted to focus on that in this post. In terms of my experience reading it, I found it a bit difficult to focus on the text: the long sentences and imagery were fun to read but I found myself losing track of what was going on often. That might also have been because Proust seems to jump between vivid descriptions of different things, exploring interfaces between consciousness and unconsciousness, or the permeation of social constructs like class into individual life through M. Swann. Looking back, it’s one of those books I’m glad I read because it made me appreciate my consciousness and my ability to observe things more, strangely enough, but I found myself having to reread around half the passages which wasn’t as fun.

That being said, the way he contrasted the “new” and the unfamiliar with memories and what is familiar particularly resonated with me. A few pages in, the narrator sits in their room, looking at their magic lantern. They describe the “supernatural, multicolored apparitions, where legends were depicted as in a wavering, momentary stained-glass window.” They recall how amid all these fanciful stories and images, their sadness was “only increased by this since the mere change in lighting destroyed the familiarity which my bedroom had acquired for me,” having observed the intrusion of new into the familiar, and looking back at the “anesthetizing influence of habit.”

The narrator watching the lights dance across their room reminded me of my experiences with change in the past few years, sometimes desperately wanting to cling on to the familiar but also being enchanted by the possibilities of new experiences and opportunities like university. Proust evokes a sense of profound imagination as well, never giving the figures the attribute of reality and referring to them as “apparitions,” and ‘”wavering” as though they’ll soon disappear. That emphasized to me that our memories don’t exist in some sense: I can’t visit my childhood for example, and in the meantime, everything, even the doorknobs in the narrator’s room, seems to be changing as we passively observe it. By highlighting changes that seem practically insignificant, I think that Proust meaningfully shows how nothing is constant in our lives, and things that are familiar can disappear quickly. I’ve definitely grown more comfortable with change in the past few years, with COVID, moving to UBC, and meeting new people along the way while losing contact with others. Combray made me reflect on how every moment was valuable and how much of the reality we remember is coloured by our perception of it.

In light of that, my question is “What does the narrator’s tone in describing their memories tell us about their attitude towards change?”