Abstract

Walter Biemel designated Time as the real protagonist of Proust's In Search of Time Lost. This article wants to analyse in detail the complex inner structure of that "Proustian time" by focusing on the existence of a double tension. Indeed, the awareness of time of the novel's protagonist "Marcel" seems to be determined by surprising "paradoxes". The first one betrays a strange opposition between, on the one hand, a very lucid description of temporality as a devastating power, but on the other hand, a complete blindness to one's own ageing. The second tension consists in the fact that, although in one respect everything changed and all characters in the novel grew older, still at the end of his "search", and on the occasion of his long meditation about the meaning of the "souvenirs involontaires" and the works of art, Marcel affirms that he "remained the same". What is the meaning of this "sameness" in connection with time, and more precisely, in relating with the fact that everything vanishes, changes and dies? What have both tensions to do with each other?