Abstract
I begin this chapter with a brief elaboration of Aristotle’s classical account of chronological time, aided by one of C. P. Cavafy’s poems. I will then use this as the critical basis from which Henri Bergson’s thought on time departs, before segueing into Proust’s own related impressions of time in his novel In Search of Lost Time (A la recherché du temps perdu). Next I will show how through the concept of involuntary memory Proust avoids errors made about time highlighted by Bergson, and develops the notion of what is referred to as ontological time (understood symbolically as a deeper, geological time) that differs from chronological time. I will then conclude by stressing the implications of Proust’s insights while drawing attention to possible misinterpretations of his thought.
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Notes
- 1.
In places I have paraphrased elements of the following discussion on Aristotle from, David Bostock, ‘An Introduction and Notes to Aristotle’s Physics’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. xliii–xlvii; and Paul Nadal, ‘What is Time? On Aristotle’s Definition of Time’ in Physics Book IV, https://belate.wordpress.com.
- 2.
Aristotle, Physics, Book IV, 219b1, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 106.
- 3.
‘Candles’ from The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven. English translation copyright © 1961, and renewed 1989 by Rae Dalven. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
- 4.
Whether linear or cyclical, time refers to such division. For example, we divide different ages and seasons.
- 5.
We will see that Bergson stresses the implications of this.
- 6.
Augustine, The Confessions, 11. 14.17, translated by Philip Burton (London: Everyman’s Library, 2001), p. 271.
- 7.
Jacques Derrida, Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time, Originally published in, L’endurance de la pensée: Pour saluer Jean Beaufret (Plon, 1968), p. 39.
- 8.
J. B. Priestley, Man and Time (London: Aldus, 1964), p. 76.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1912), p. 42.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 43.
- 13.
T. E. Hulme, translator’s preface to, Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1912), p. 13.
- 14.
Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 47.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 48.
- 17.
Miguel de Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher: The Art of Metaphor, translated by Dorothée Bonnigal Katz, with Simon Sparks and Miguel de Beistegui (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 3.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 19.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (London: Everyman’s Library, 2001), pp. 19–20.
- 20.
Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 14.
- 21.
David Ellison, A Reader’s Guide to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 55.
- 22.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, pp. 390–391.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 415.
- 24.
Hence C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s mistake translating the title of Proust’s novel into English using the Shakespearian line, Remembrance of Things Past.
- 25.
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (Digireads.com Publishing, 2010), p. 82.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 31.
- 29.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, p. 45.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 46.
- 31.
Ibid., pp. 47–48.
- 32.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 3, p. 146.
- 33.
Ibid., 147.
- 34.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 4, p. 435.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 439.
- 36.
Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 45.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 54.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 147.
- 39.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2, p. 4.
- 40.
Although we have already said that past time cannot be recaptured by the efforts of our intellect as it is outside the intellect’s realm and hidden in the sensation a material object gives us, we still might be tempted to understand Proust’s reference to ‘within’ through a Kantian interpretation of time. Kant argued that time is one of twelve a priori categories of our understanding, which are thought by us independently of experience and then applied to it. This makes time a universal subjective concept and one of the ways we make sense of the world. Kant’s logic here is that we can only think about phenomena in their relationship to time, yet we can think of time without phenomena. However, it would seem that Proust’s Bergsonian influence would prevent such a subjective reading because Bergson was a fierce critic of Kant in just about every area of his thought. While Kant argued that our knowledge cannot transcend experience (phenomena), but may have a basis other than experience (noumena), Bergson believed we could gain absolute knowledge through intuition. Proust, it would appear, agreed, and the import of this will be discussed as we proceed. For a helpful discussion on this see the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under ‘Henri Bergson’ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/.
- 41.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 3, p. 866.
- 42.
Ellison, A Reader’s Guide, p. 177.
- 43.
Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 61.
- 44.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 4, p. 119.
- 45.
Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 57.
- 46.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 4, p. 438.
- 47.
See, ibid., p. 439.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 440.
- 49.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (1883), quoted in Steven M. Cahn and Aaron Meskin (eds.), Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008), p. 194.
- 50.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 4, pp. 440–441.
- 51.
Similar to how we might misinterpret Proust’s work as a form of idealism, there is also the danger of understanding his notion of pure Time in terms of the fourth dimension. This is an understandably seductive topic in relation to Proust’s thought, but I maintain that it misrepresents it. From the perspective of Bergson’s work the fourth dimension turns time into one of the two abstractions we discussed him questioning, i.e. it sees time as a unity holding the points of time together like the thread holding pearls on a necklace. This gives the impression of time as some intemporal essence of time, thereby freezing the flux of time into an immense solid sheet. This is fine when understood symbolically as a spatial metaphor, but not when it is literalised and consequently reified as Time. The mistake, argued Bergson, is ‘to ascribe to the figure we have traced the value of a description, and not merely of a symbol. … We give a mechanical explanation of a fact, and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself.’ Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, translated by F. L. Pogson (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2008), p. 181.
- 52.
I have paraphrased this point about Plotinus from Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1966), p. 86.
- 53.
I have in part paraphrased Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 28.
- 54.
Beistegui, Proust as Philosopher, p. 60.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 446.
- 56.
See Ellison, A Reader’s Guide, p. 8.
- 57.
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 4, p. 463.
- 58.
Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 45.
- 59.
Ibid., p. 48.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 49.
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Williams, D. (2020). Eternity Glimpsed and Time Regained: Marcel Proust’s Ontological Time. In: Ferguson, T. (eds) Literature and Modern Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29278-2_5
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