Ein Gebäude aus Gedanken

The 150th birthday of its author this year does not make Proust’s In Search of Lost Time seem old, but on the contrary makes its freshness more obvious. The story of this novel’s success is the story of its readers’ enthusiasm, which has many different causes, including the range of its perspectives. One of these has previously been unrecognised: the continuous power of reflection that governs the text. Not only are events reconstructed (from memory) but a mode of thinking is entered into, in the course of which a universal conclusion can be drawn from the contingent incidents of a life. If the events in a novel that reconstructs a life are singular and individual, reflection shows the general conclusions it gives rise to. At this level the “I” of the novel, which mutates in the reflective passages onto “one” or “we”, is in a permanent dialogue with the readers, the ultimate aim of which is not only a poetic self-awareness of the work but furthermore a general valence of recognition that connects all people. From this derives the act of writing in the text’s last, spectacular sleight of hand; but it also generates – as this book aims to show – a new plasir du texte, a previously unknown, profound pleasure in reading.