Abstract

Four major elements in the philosophy of Bergson are also discernible in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. In Bergson each of these elements occurs as a binary, one enantiomer of which is coded digital and the other analogic. For Bergson, pure duration, which is analogic, is superior to digital, scientific time, but whilst time is important in Proust's novel, it is essentially spatial in character. Bergson characterizes two forms of memory, intentional and spontaneous. Proust's text does not involve intentional memory but two subdivisions of Bergson's spontaneous memory. Bergson specifies two aspects of being, a superficial self and a profound one, and both are found in the Proustian text. Bergson also describes a twinning of self in memory, the actual self mirrored as the virtual, and this doubling of self is present throughout A la recherche as the twinning of 'I' into narrator and hero. ;The Proustian hero or narrator seeks to recreate the perception of l'essence des choses, of self and of being which intelligence and logic cannot describe. Emulating the fictitious painter Elstir, he composes with words, bridges in time and memory, creating the continuity and unity of the qualitative, with the contiguous, and discrete of the quantitative. Bergson's language is used to communicate truth, which pre-exists his words; nevertheless his discourse contains imagery as the only manner of communicating his non-verbal ideas. Proust's text is less a detailed description than an evocation, a suggestion that is specific enough to stimulate imagination yet sufficiently ambiguous to let the reader create images from his own experience, and memory. ;The similarities between Bergson's philosophy and elements of Proust's novel are due to two affiliated reasons: the tide of opposition against determinism, materialism and science that was flowing through France of 1880-1910, and the curious convergence and correspondence, at that period, between the arts and philosophy