The flow of time is represented through the recurrence of a phrase: 'Keep, keep' or 'Keep, ma'am, keep'. The repetition of these words contributes to a re-elaboration of thought. It alters the linear progression by blurring the division between two moments: when her brother Paul sent his two letters to Galeswinthe (here introduced under the name of *Mme Louis*). The use of repetition further allows discovering that nothing meaningful occurred in Galeswinthe's life between times, except in her thinking about whether to sell her ancestral property or not. As a result, the recurrences of various details create the effects of both flow of time and cyclical time in *CE*.

We further focus on the significance of recurring motifs in Colomb's representation of time in comparison with Woolf 's organization of narrative around 'moments' in Chapter 3.

# **1.4 The old and new narrative formulas: Colomb's two modes of writing**

The previous sections show that the novel *CE* lacks the characters whose internal experiences would have been conveyed in a similar way to the novels of *consciousness*. Furthermore, the discussions held above regarding the use of verbal tenses shed light on the proximity of *CE* to 19th-century French novel, and to the novel of 'the school of the gaze' ['*roman de l'école du regard*']. The aim set by this section will now be to show that memory is more than a central theme in Colomb's novels: it can also be regarded as a method of composition. This section includes the analysis of her two novels *CE* and *ET*.

Colomb's style is sometimes marked by variation in narrative flow, in other cases by constructing the inalterable sequence. When the style is marked by steady and precise proceedings, we have to do with the narrative of a novel that has a linear sequence. Linear narrative is adapted to the representation of more regular occurrences of external events; everyday life is measured by objective time, which controls the mundane activities of humans. Such narrative represents time as what Ricardo Quinones calls a 'predicative' phenomenon, (Quinones 1985: 38), i.e., the predictive, controlling aspect of time. A few such examples of a linear narrative sequence are found in *CE* and *ET*. In *ET* some scenes are described with a linear narrative, such as Eugène's and Madame's meeting and marriage:

[Eugène et César] virent, le fiacre arrêté, descendre une personne dont la robe était si vaste que son père la conduisant au bal marchait sur le trottoir et lui donnait la main pour n'être pas distancé. Le buste qui montait l'escalier devant eux s'enfonçait dans une corolle blanche. D'autres bustes étaient alignés sur des chaises le long de la paroi, et des bras solides cachés presque entièrement par des peaux blanches tendues les éventaient en silence. […] Eugène s'éloignait, il traversait les étendues de parquet ciré, Eugène s'inclinait devant la jeune fille, il l'invitait à danser…Ses larges yeux reflétaient le gaz, elle était grande et forte. Puis elle mangea un biscuit sans ôter ses gants de peau blanche. […] Eugène ne comprit jamais quelle idée lui vint, le lendemain, d'épouser la jeune fille du bal. […] Le mariage fut vite conclu, à cause de ce château, et surtout de Monsieur Anselme. Tout était si facile, il n'y aurait jamais plus ni famine, ni peste, ni guerre naturellement, et les dernières vendanges avaient apporté cent mille litres sous le pressoir. 46 (*ET*: 1097–1099.)

In the given episode, Colomb adheres to the norms of a classical novel's linear representation. The story of Eugène's and his wife's meeting followed by their marriage is organized in chronological order. There are no digressions or anticipations of events. The scene reveals Eugène's meeting with his wife for the first time. Eugène makes up his mind to marry her (Sémiramis, also called 'Madame') quickly after dancing with her at the ball. Remarkably, the scene is described on the final pages of the novel, whereas it takes place earlier than the rest of the events. From this moment on, the life experiences of the protagonist César no longer arrange themselves in order. His younger brother Eugène claims the ancestral house after his marriage with Sémiramis. César loses all hopes after Eugène's marriage. He seems less concerned about losing his property. He knows that once married, Eugène will never be a child again. César views marriage as a brutal separation from childhood. From this moment on, César's life experiences are told with a nonlinear narrative. Thus, Colomb tries to order the events following the character's perception of reality.

46 Eng. '[Eugène and César] saw coming out of the halted fiacre a woman whose gown was so vast that her father, accompanying her to the ball, had walked on the pavement and gave her his hand in order not to be left behind. The bust that climbed the staircase in front of them plunged into the white corolla. Other busts, lined up on chairs along the wall, were being fanned silently by solid arms almost entirely hidden by long white gloves. […] Eugène was walking away, crossing expanses of the wooden floor, bowing to the young woman and inviting her to dance… Her big eyes were reflecting the light from the gas lamps. She was tall and strong. Then she ate a biscuit without taking off her white leather gloves. […] Eugène never understood what notion came to him, the following morning, to marry the young woman at the ball. […] The marriage was quickly arranged because of the château and especially because of Monsieur Anselme. Everything was so simple, famine, plague or war would, of course, no longer exist, and the most recent harvests had brought one hundred thousand liters under the winepress. (*The Spirits*: 212–215)

Some conventional features of novel composition, such as a temporal order of events, are also respected in *CE*. The novel contains several relatively long episodes. The following episodes get described within chronological order:

The order in which these events actually occur matches the order in which they are described in the narrative, apart from the first episode, i.e., Jenny's death,

47 It is the first episode of *CE*, which appears on the first two pages of Chapter I. (*CE*: 747–748)

48 The episode follows the funeral of the young dead in Chapter I. (*CE*: 748)

51 The scene develops in Chapter V. (*CE*: 826–827)

which, as the opening episode in *La Recherche*—the Narrator's waking up cannot be dated with precision. Also, the fourth episode does not follow the third one. They are presented as parallel scenes in the narrative.

Yet, the time projected in Colomb's novels is not limited to representations of clock time (hours) and calendar time (days, year), which march forward. We may refer to the narrative in its linear extension as the 'narrative of a novel' ['*récit du roman'*]. The one characterized by the change in the movements and pace might be called the 'memory narrative' ['*récit des souvenirs*']. 57

J.-L. Seylaz suggests that 'memory does not tell, memory does not compose'. 58 (Seylaz 1973: 86) Yet, he does not deny that memory can be understood as a process leading to artistic creation: 'As in her other novels, in *The Spirits of the Earth*, Catherine Colomb entrusts her pen to a mental activity in which memory plays an essential role'. 59 (*Ibid*.) Colomb herself explained that memory can become a source for the emergence of recollections, of dreams and reflections: 'Does not memory continuously intervene, generating a parallel life, bringing along hundreds of recollections, elusive visions, daydreams…' ['*Est-ce que la mémoire n'intervient pas sans cesse, créant une vie parallèle, qui amène des centaines de souvenirs, de visions fugitives, des rêves*…'] (2019 (1964): 1657) She further added that these recollections could give birth to the creative process: 'But I take this sheet, my pen, and the memories come back to me in droves, thorns, impossible to tear them off. They encircle my legs, my feet. I tear them from my limbs one after the other to be finally able to begin to tell in a desert'. ['*Mais je prends cette feuille, mon stylo, et les souvenirs me reviennent en foule, épines, impossible de m'arracher, ils encerclent mes jambes, mes pieds, je les arrache de mes membres l'un après l'autre pour pouvoir enfin dans un désert commencer à raconter*'.] (*Ibid*.) According to this passage, Colomb's novels are the consequences of the recollections derived in the process of writing. In *À la rencontre de mes personnages* [Eng. *Meeting with my Characters*], Colomb stated that her characters were inspired by her memories. Her imagination was nourished with the photograph she had seen in her father's office as a child:

57 The terms 'récit du roman' and 'récit des souvenirs' with reference to Colomb's novels were used by J. L. Seylaz. (1973: 71–90)

58 Fr. '[…] la mémoire ne raconte pas, la mémoire ne compose pas'.

59 Fr. '*Les Esprits de la Terre* sont sans doute nés, comme les autres romans de Catherine Colomb, d'un abandon de la plume à une activité mentale dans laquelle la mémoire joue un rôle essentiel'.

Je me souviens : dans le bureau de mon père, il y avait au mur, à côté du baromètre, une grande photographie : des jeunes gens à casquettes blanches, bien enfoncées sur les yeux, installés par petits groupes sur des rochers, des rochers de carton. Ils apparaissent dans la brume dorée de la petite enfance, mais maintenant, maintenant, je m'avance sur une plaine, dans le brouillard, tout au fond une sorte de forêt impénétrable, d'où sortent des animaux, des inconnus, et soudain, miracle, je les reconnais. 60 (Colomb (2019 (1962): 1372))

Colomb, as an adult, has at first precise recollections of the objects seen in her father's office. After many years, she can still remember some details vividly, such as a photograph next to the barometer hanging on the wall in her father's office. Whitecaps on the heads in the photograph, the rocks made out of cardboard boxes are among her childhood memories. Later Colomb claims that her memories look like an 'impenetrable forest', inaccessible. But writing them down gives them shape. Colomb thus uses her childhood memories as the material in the creation of her novel. But these memories lead her to tell the stories of other lives based on intuitive knowledge. Hence, memory stimulates a rather intuitive writing method.

In his article on Colomb, J.-L. Seylaz points at different qualities that her work contains: 'the ideal world, which is marked by transparency and certainty in the traditional novel, is replaced by what corresponds to a rich taste for our time: a mode of uncertainty, perhaps, in which meaning remains suspended; an experience of reading requires submission to an unusual process, an obligation of an always problematic reconstruction, a perception of the text as otherness'. 61 (1972: 176)

Catherine Colomb's texts may be regarded as 'Works in Progress'— the term by which Joyce defined over many years what later became *Finnegans Wake*. From the initial to the last pages of *CE* the story runs at a fast pace. As a result, the motif or action is laid out implicitly in her novels. She admitted: 'Very far,

60 Eng. 'I remember: in my father's office, on the wall, next to the barometer, there was a large photograph of young people in white caps, with their deep-set eyes, installed in small groups on rocks, on cardboard rocks. They appear in the golden haze of childhood, but now, right now, I advance on the plain, in the fog with a kind of impenetrable forest in the background, where some animals, strangers come out from, and suddenly the miracle happens. I recognize them'.

61 Fr. 'au monde idéal de transparence et de certitude du roman traditionnel se substitue ce qui correspond à un goût profond de notre temps : un mode du peut-être, de l'incertain, où le sens reste suspendu ; une expérience de la lecture comme une soumission à une démarche insolite, comme obligation d'une reconstitution toujours problématique ; une perception du texte comme altérité'.

very high, it seems to me that a voice tells me that nothing has been said, that everything remains to be said. And I start again, from nothing, not knowing how I will finish the starting page'. ['[*T*]*rès loin, très haut, il me semble qu'une voix me dit que rien n'a été formulé, qu'il reste tout à dire et je recommence, partant de rien, ne sachant pas comment je finirai la page commencée*'.] (Colomb, quoted in Favre (1993: 29)) Colomb tried to record quickly numerous events, characters, and objects springing from her memory. She sketches quickly her imagination not to lose the thread of reminiscences: 'So many things to say! I'm overwhelmed … How to write fast enough?' ['*Mais que de choses à dire, je suis débordée*… *Comment écrire assez vite* ?'] (Colomb, quoted in Seylaz (1967: 133))

Recording the memory processes leads to a temporal transformation of Colomb's narrative. In a linear narrative sequence, two scenes relate based on temporal logic. Whereas *CE* and *ET* do not always give the spatial and temporal location to the readers who are often placed in an arena charged with characters and commentaries. In *CE*, the events do not always have some apparent tie, the causal relationship between them. The initial episode, Jenny's death, is not related to any other following incidents. The absence of the description of Jenny's death and funeral would not have affected the development of the rest of the events. Although several long episodes in *CE* are aligned one after another according to a temporal sequence, they branch out into several segments. The segments are multiplied, inter-twisted, delayed, and reactivated for the progression of the narrative. The ties are less obvious between various associations. As a result, the reader experiences jumping from one temporal level of the past to the other (such as from the distant to the recent past or the imaginary past) in a rapid and spatial mode: 'the lake waves washed up the shore like that night when some lady, as it was said before, walked on the white roses fallen from the coffin of the young dead'. ['[*L*]*e lac brassait ses vagues le long de la rive comme cette nuit où une autre, dit-on, marcha sur les roses blanches tombées d'un jeune cercueil*'.] (*CE*: 871) There are two temporal levels introduced in the same sentence. The use of the expression *dit-on* highlights a temporal distance between the earlier moment, i.e., when a woman walked on the flowers fallen from the tomb of the young dead, and a more recent moment. Two temporal layers are brought close to each other by association: '*le lac brassait ses vagues*'. (*Ibid*.) The association produces a temporal shift in the sentence by linking the earlier and later moments. But it also offers an instant view of temporally distant memories because, quoting Lise Favre, 'everything in memory is related, everything is located on the same plane'. 62 (Favre 1993: 43) Thus, memory destabilizes hierarchies between various recollections. Because memories escape control and linear time; the memory narrative develops at the expense of what the words or phrases might suggest during the elaboration process.

As a consequence, in *CE* and *ET*, readers cannot anticipate what comes next. They cannot keep track of the narrative developed on the ground of a game of associations. The narrative full of ruptures and breaks throws the readers into the world of fractures, troubles, and uncertainty. The fragmented narrative displays time as a series of obstacles, loss, and change. It often consists of a vast number of anachronisms. 63 Two types of anachronisms—i.e., recounting of events out of order—appear in Colomb's novels: retrospections and anticipations. They influence the temporal organization of narrative. The retrospections take on an explanatory role by recalling the earlier events from the characters' past. The anticipations leap ahead and partially reveal the facts which will be recounted at some later point in the text. The anachronisms are found in cases similar to this one:

[César] évitait la place où s'élevait autrefois la tour, place que Valà-Valà foula sans aucune crainte, ce qui le tua sous les pieds des chevaux quelque trois ans plus tard, et où marchait Madame sur ses gros pieds bosselés d'oignons, ce qui pourrait bien causer sa mort affreuse dans la barque. 64 (*ET*: 1067)

The narrative following a memory path allows tracing audacious temporal shifts. The place where once the tower stood evokes various recollections. These recollections—retrospections (such as Valà-Valà trod there; Madame walked there) mingle with one another in one sentence and contribute to a multifold narrative progression. The narrative (within the same sentence) also makes room for anticipations and daydreams: Valà-Valà will be killed after being dragged by

62 Fr. '[T]out dans la mémoire est contigu, tout se situe sur le même plan'.

63 Genette differentiates *normal* and *anachronous* sequences in the narrative. The term 'normal sequence' Genette uses to designate a linear sequence, where the discourse and the story have the same order. As for the term 'anachrony', it designates nonchronological order; see Genette (1972: 72–182); (1970: 93–118). I apply Genette's term to Colomb's novels to define the breaks in chronology, which disrupt linear representation, however, do not prevent the readers from discerning the story sequence.

64 Eng. '[César] would avoid the ground where the tower formerly rose, ground across which Well-Well trod fearlessly and on which he would be killed beneath horses' hooves some three years later, and across which Madame herself walked on her big bunionbumpy feet, an act that could indeed cause her atrocious death in a rowboat'. (*The Spirits*: 168)

a horse in three years; César fantasizes abut killing Madame in a boat. Colomb does not choose to present the events in the order they could have occurred. Instead of introducing Valà-Valà's, Madame's, and César's life experiences in their linear extension and by spreading them over hundreds of pages, she summarizes them in one sentence.

Recording associations, i.e., the activity of memory, with continual movement in time constitutes Colomb's experimentalism with prose narrative. The narrative composition of her selected works does not rely on the plot organized according to the development of a character or an action. What holds the centre of attention is the stirring of associations, the diversity of temporal levels, memory recordings. Colomb's *Trilogy* (i.e., *CE*, *ET*, and *TA*) depends on the relationships between numerous characters, objects, and events. Different ideas are held together without a recognizable connection. What comes into a sharper focus is a sequence itself of various details—conversational snatches, gestures, thoughts introduced to mirror a remembering consciousness. The reader, unable to follow numerous threads, starts to apprehend the figurative meaning that the book conveys. He realizes that the book mirrors the complexity of human memory and imagination processes. The more he reads, the more obvious it becomes to the reader that the logic of composition of the narrative in *CE* and *ET* is as difficult to discern as how our mind operates and relates inconsistent facts, subjects, objects, or phenomena with each other. Various types of temporalities and a discontinuous structure result from the development of the narrative around the memory processes. Objects, events, and characters evoke various associations and memories of different times. Time is laid bare by placing together these associations and recollections. Constant temporal changes display time as the prime mover of the narrative.

The old narrative formulas in terms of plot composition are more present in *ET* than in *CE*. With its narrative sequence, *CE* differs from the novels which contain the elements of a 'sequence of the prototypical narrative.' Such sequence consists of the following elements: 'The initial situation, node, action or evaluation, denouement, final situation'. 65 The reader is never given any indication of the direction a story will lead. The narrative thread rarely develops around some fictive event or plot (Fr. 'intrigue') principles in *CE*. Nor does *CE* offer a characterdriven story generally found in 19th-century novel (for instance in Balzac's *La*

65 Fr. 'Séquence narrative prototypique'. (Adam (1994: 104)) 'Situation initiale, Nœud, Action ou Évaluation, Dénouement, Situation finale'. (Adam (1994), quoted in Baroni (2007: 66))

*Comédie humaine* and Tolstoy's *Война и миръ* [Eng. 'War and Peace']). 'The plot requires the presence of an internal narrative tension, which must be created at the beginning of the story, maintained during its development, and resolved in the outcome'. 66 (Bourneuf et Ouellet (1972: 43), quoted in Baroni (2007: 45)) The narrative tension is generated effectively in the texts where the events are connected by some temporal logic. (Baroni 2007: 55) The lack of arrangement of events in a temporal order explains why the narrative tension works differently in Colomb's novels than those with a linear sequence. As Chapter 1 explained, the narrative tension is not produced by thematic material—generally found in the novels with a linear development of plot; instead, it is achieved through features of discourse in *CE*. Colomb enlarges the scope of fiction. For her, reallife stories do not always have a beginning and an end. They also seldom lead up to a climax. For her, memory and real-life experiences escape linear time. Within her imaginative prose, she voices the idea that the realities of human experiences seldom arrange themselves symmetrically.

Careful and attentive reading is fundamental for comprehending Colomb's novels. The writer prevents her readers from adopting a comfortable stance while stretching their imagination into the vertical axis. The readers not only scan the book made out of memories, but they also follow the memory processes. Since a variety of incidents connected with the story are thrown out in different parts of the text, the reader needs to remember and put them together to come up to an understanding of a unified story. The representation of memory involves the disjointed narrative—a narrative technique that consists of 'throwing the parts out of orderly connection'. (*OED*) Colomb deliberately uses such a narrative to illustrate the way human memory recalls. Through the manyfold narrative, she creates a puzzling storyline and encourages her readers to put different parts together. Various stories are inserted in the main episodes of *CE*. For instance, the characters' brief biographies are often inserted within the description of the two meals. To unlock the puzzle, the reader needs to memorize and put together various connecting elements of the story. Thus, Colomb engages her readers in memorizing and recalling processes.

66 Fr. 'L'intrigue, en tant qu'enchaînement de faits, repose sur la présence d'une tension interne entre ces faits qui doit être créée dès le début du récit, entretenue pendant son développement et qui doit trouver sa solution dans le dénouement'.

# **II. The Aesthetics of Time & the Poetics of Memory in Colomb: in Dialogue With Proust**

# **2.1 Introduction**

For a study of the aesthetics of time the discussion developed in this chapter will mainly focus on the mechanism of memory in Proust's and Colomb's works. Considering the aims of this comparative study and the length of Proust's novel (about three thousand pages), we pay particular attention to the first (*Swann's Way*) and final (*Time Regained*) volumes of *La Recherche*. 67 The episodes of involuntary memory, such as the one of the madeleine or a sequence of involuntary reminiscences in *Time Regained*, are particularly interesting for our analysis because, by reflecting distant eras in each other, they afford what Luc Fraisse calls 'the supreme wealth of psychology in time'. ['*la suprême richesse de la psychologie dans le temps'*.] (1995: 114) These volumes also represent the childhood memories. Furthermore, they are interesting for the analysis of Proust's temporal experimentations. To illustrate how time gets represented in Colomb and *La Recherche*, next to the most famous passages of involuntary memory, this comparative study also focuses on a wide range of other memory events that the complex narrative construction and temporal discontinuities of Proust's novel depend on.

# **2.2 Review of studies on time and memory in Proust**

There is no agreement on the role of memory between Proust's critics. In earlier studies, Gilles Deleuze highlighted 'the secondary role of memory', because, for him, what matters in *La Recherche* is not time and memory, but 'the sign and the truth'. 68 (1964: 66, 70) In his historico-metaphysical analysis of the time-problem,

67 Proust began writing *La Recherche* in 1909. Between 1913 and 1927, the novel appeared in seven volumes: 1/*Du côté de chez Swann*, 2/ *À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs*, 3/ *Le côté de Guermantes*, 4/ *Sodome et Gomorrhe*, 5/ *La prisonnière*, 6/ *La fugitive*, and 7/ *Le temps retrouvé*. The first part, *Du côté de chez Swann* (translated into English as *Swann's Way*), was published by Bernard *Grasset* in 1913. Proust was still editing the final three volumes (*La Prisonnière*, *La Fugitive* and *Le Temps retrouvé*) when he died in 1922. They were published posthumously.

68 Fr. (1) 'rôle secondaire de la mémoire' ; (2) 'l'essentiel dans la *Recherche*, ce n'est pas la mémoire et le temps, mais le signe et la vérité'.

Georges Poulet (*Études sur le temps* humain, *1*, *Mesure de l'instant*, 1968: 364– 404) writes that the 'first instant' at the beginning of Proust's novel is not oriented towards the *'becoming'* ['*devenir*'] or what is 'yet to come' ['*n'est pas encore*'] (*Ibid.*., 364), but towards something that is *no longer* ['*n'est plus*']. (*idem*.). He found the Proustian '*durée*' to be made of 'full-time atoms, sailing far from each other in a sort of empty time, nothingness of oblivion which memories pierce with their intermittent fires'. 69 (Poulet (I: 433); Rocher (1976)) Bernard Brun (1981) and J.-Y. Tadié (1971) locate the proustian notion of memory between aesthetic theory and perception.

Earlier critics have further made the well-known distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory. Involuntary memory is not just a philosophical principle, for Brun, but central to the 'novelistic technique'. (Brun 1981: 12) Beckett qualified *La Recherche* as a 'monument to involuntary memory and the epic of its action'. (1931: 21) But Proust's earlier commentators have seen a Proustian involuntary memory either as a structural, an aesthetic element, or a metaphysical one. Bonnet considers privileged moments in *La Recherche* more as part of Proust's aesthetic system than of a 'general theory of memory'. (1973: 1705) Unlike Bonnet, in his analysis of the Narrator-protagonist's different impressions, Hachez highlights their structural role. (1973: 1703) Quaranta does not neglect the aesthetic role of involuntary memory that the novel's structure and psychological depth relies on. However, involuntary memory is more useful than 'essential, more a vector of the meaning of Proust's work than the explanation of this meaning'. 70 (Quaranta 1997: 108)

The complexity of Proustian memory is now well defined by Geneviève Henrot. By focusing on about a hundred episodes of involuntary memories in *La Recherche*, Henrot defines the mechanism of memory in relation to the Narrator's experiences of suffering and transgression. She also sees the episodes of involuntary memory as 'fictiogenetic', useful in establishing narrative tension in *La Recherche*. (Henrot 2018) A novelistic 'writing of involuntary memory' (Bensussan 2020) is in Gérard Bensussan's centre of attention. His recent study *L'Écriture de l'Involontaire: Philosophie de Proust* (2020) shows that the writing of involuntary 'feeling' allows disclosing time not as the past moment (2020:111) but eternity or 'only this past that was never present'. 71 (2020: 112)

69 Fr. 'atomes de temps plein, naviguant loin les uns des autres, dans une sorte de temps vide, néant d'oubli que trouent de leurs feux intermittents les souvenirs'.

70 Fr. '…elle est plus utilitaire qu'essentielle, plus un vecteur du sens de l'œuvre que l'explication de ce sens; on ne saurait l'y substituer'.

71 Fr. '…seul ce passé qui jamais ne fut présent'.

No longer does Guillaume Perrier's *La Mémoire du lecteur*: *essai sur 'Albertine disparue' et 'Le Temps retrouvé*' (2011) discuss Proustian memory only with regard to the distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory. By drawing his attention to Proust's 'art of memory' (2011: 150) or the practices of allegory, visual memory and mnemotechnics, Perrier studies the reader's 'contextual memory'.

These studies suggest that Proustian memory is a complex notion and there are many ways of reading it. They also show that the subject of time is inseparable from memory as a theme and a structural element. Different types of memory identified in the studies on Proust are also central to our analysis.

# **2.3 Colomb and Proust: The novelists of memory**

Colomb and Proust represent the memories of childhood as the most powerful. Proust famously invokes vivid memories of the Narrator's childhood in Combray, an initial part of the first volume of *La Recherche*. The young Narrator's emerging awareness of the world, himself, and the people around him are described through the eyes of the adult Narrator who remembers. Immediately after the opening scene of awakening in *Combray*, he deliberately reflects on his childhood sufferings for being sent to bed without receiving a goodnight kiss from his mother on the nights when Monsieur Swann came to visit and his mother's late-night reading of *François le Champi*. The episode of the madeleine—the most famous instance of involuntary memory—immediately intervenes and the images of 'all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the waterlilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea'. (*Remembrance* I: 51) ['[*T*]*outes les fleurs de notre jardin et celles du parc de M. Swann, et les nymphéas de la Vivonne, et les bonnes gens du village et leurs petits logis et l'église et tout Combray et ses environs, tout cela qui prend forme et solidité, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de thé*'.] (*La Recherche* I: 47)

These experiences are connected to the essential moments of the book and develop later new significance. Various scholars have recognized the Narrator's agony of awaiting his mother's kiss as Proust's preparing the ground for a deeper exploration of obsessive love. Geneviève Henrot compares the Narrator's jealous love for his mother to the one for Albertine. (1991: 45–46, note 21) The Narrator's relationship with Albertine and Swann's love for Odette, for Howard Moss (1966 (1962): 51) and Luc Fraisse (1995: 116) symmetrically complement each other. George Sand's book *François le Champi* is important to the representation of memory and time in *La Recherche.* It is a source of reminiscence, connecting two moments from the Narrator's boyhood and adulthood. They occur at the beginning and the end of *La Recherche.* The first moment gets represented in his little room at Combray, on the famous evening of the 'bedtime drama', and the second moment—in the Prince of Guermantes' library. Near the beginning of Combray, this scene follows the description of the magic lantern and the mention of Geneviève de Brabant, who later turns out to be the Guermantes' medieval ancestor. 72 That time, 'incomprehensible title' gave George Sand's book 'a distinct personality and a mysterious attraction' for the Narrator. As he had never read any novelist before George Sand, he 'imagine(d) that *François le Champi* contained something inexpressibly delicious.' ['*imagin*[*ait*] *dans François le Champi qualque chose d'indéfinissable et de délicieux*'.] (*Remembrance* I: 44; *La Recherche* I: 41) Some three thousand pages later, the adult Narrator sees *François le Champi* again on the bookshelf and recalls his first contemplation of the book and his being fascinated by the discovery of the world of fiction. This reminiscence reveals the change of the Narrator's personality and vision in time. 'That book my mother had read aloud to me almost until morning at Combray, retained for me all the charm of that night' ['*ce livre que ma mère m'avait lu haut à Combray presque jusqu'au matin, avait-il gardé pour moi tout le charme de cette nuit-là*']. (*Remembrance* IV: 151; *La Recherche* IV: 463) Yet, it 'did not appear to me a magical pen as it so long did to my mother before she modeled her literary tastes on mine' ['*ne me semblait pas du tout, comme elle avait paru si longtemps à ma mère avant qu'elle modelât lentement ses goûts littéraires sur les miens*']. (*Ibid*.) The adult Narrator feels that the 'the former groupings of my thought but even the aim of my life and perhaps that of art were illuminated' ['*retrouvé* (…) *non seulement les tâtonnements anciens de ma pensée, mais même le but de ma vie et peut-être de l'art*']. (*Remembrance* IV: 151; *La Recherche* IV: 465) in time. No longer does *François le Champi*, just as the projections of the magic lantern, seem to the adult Narrator so mysterious as in his boyhood. In his boyhood, he misinterpreted the legend of Geneviève de Brabant. 73 'This

72 '…telle personne dont j'avais fait la connaissance dans le monde était cousine de Mme de Guermantes, c'est-à-dire d'un personnage de lanterne magique'. (*La Recherche* IV: 462) | '…a particular individual whose acquaintance I had made in society was the cousin of mme de Guermantes, that is to say, the cousin of a personage on a magic lantern slide'. (*Remembrance* IV: 150–151)

73 'Le château et la lande étaient jaunes et je n'avais pas attendu de les voir pour connaître leur couleur car, avant les verres du chîssis, la sonorité mordorée du nom de Brabant me l'avait montrée avec évidence'. (*La Recherche* I: 9) | 'This castle was cut off short by

was an old childish impression with which my memories of childhood and of my family were tenderly associated'. ['*C'était une impression bien ancienne, où mes souvenirs d'enfance et de famille étaient tendrement mêlée*'.] (*Remembrance* IV: 151; *La Recherche* IV: 462) No longer are the Guermantes wrapped for him in mystery at the end of *La Recherche*. Despite the temporal gap between the original experience and its reminiscence and the changes of his personality over time, the adult Narrator feels that the child he used to be is not forever buried in oblivion. 74 Nevertheless, regaining Combray within himself does not imply a nostalgia-driven moving back to childhood,75 which Proust represents as the 'age of names and beliefs' (Fraisse 2014: 21), of false appearances and mystification, 'which makes us not merely regard a thing as a spectacle, but believe in it as in a unique essence' ['*qui nous fait non pas considérer une chose comme un spectacle mais y croire comme un être sans équivalent*'], (*Remembrance* I: 71; *La Recherche* I: 65) preventing the Narrator of 'Combray' from seeing people and things as they are.

The memories of childhood appear as the main theme in *CE* and *ET* as well. The title '*Châteaux en Enfance*' highlights that childhood serves as a theme of profound importance. The novel appears as a treasure trove of memories from childhood. Colomb herself admitted how her memories of childhood served her as myths of creation. (2019 (1962): 1372) Remarkably, the novel *CE* was initially entitled *Les Chemins de Mémoire* to highlight the importance of memory in the book. (*TCC*: 726) Not only in *CE*, but *ET* too the themes of time and memory hold central places. The memories of childhood provide comfort to the protagonist against the harsh realities of adulthood in *ET*. But the novel also suggests

75 Henrot suggests that 'the Proustian memory is not so much a journey from the present to the past as the invincible intrusion of the past into the present'. (1991: 205)

a curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the transparent ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through a slot in the lantern'. (*Remembrance* I: 10)

74 'Si je reprends, même par la pensée, dans la bibliothèque, *François le Champi*, immédiatement en moi un enfant se lève qui prend ma place, qui seul a le droit de lire ce titre: *François le Champi*, et qui le lit comme il le lut alors, avec la même impression du temps qu'il faisait dans le jardin, les mêmes rêves qu'il formait alors sur les pays et sur la vie, la même angoisse du lendemain'. (*La Recherche* IV: 464) | 'If, ever in thought, I take up *François le Champi* in the library, immediately a child rises within me and replaces me, who alone has the right to read that title *François le Champi* and who reads it as he read it then with the same impression of the weather out in the garden, with the same old dreams about countries and life, the same anguish of the morrow'. (*Remembrance* I: 152)

that obsession with the past keeps us from the truth of the present and provokes further pain.

Both Colomb and Proust focus on a process of artistic creation, invention. The opening lines of *CE* are about 'the canvas on which she was embroidering… the alphabet'. ['[*L*]*e canvas où elle brodait* … *l'alphabet*'.] (*CE*: 747) The allusions to writing, alphabet, and canvas, frame the text as an artist's workspace where the protagonist wishes to be the hand that turns memories into a book. With 'the alphabet of Jenny, Sophie or Eugénie' ['*L'alphabet de Jenny, Sophie ou Eugénie'*] (*CE*: 871), Colomb speaks aloud her concern with a novel composition, of turning memories into words. 76 However, these metatextual allusions to artistic creation do not structure her novels. By contrast, the story of the Narrator becoming a writer constitutes the essential axis of *La Recherche*: 77 'invisible vocation of which these volumes are the history' ['*la vocation invisible dont cet ouvrage est l'histoire*']. (*Remembrance* II: 122; *La Recherche* II 691) The Narrator's moments of enthusiasm and despair parallel the movement of the narrative. In *Combray*, the impression given by the steeples of Martinville inspires the young Narrator to write. At other times, he lives the moments of disappointment78 and

76 The next chapter compares Woolf and Colomb. While focusing on fresh insights, lyrical and poetic techniques utilized in Colomb's and Woolf 's novels, it shows that their novels are not merely created on the basis of intuitive writing. It further sheds light on a delicate re-working of Colomb's spontaneous writing based on memory.

77 Genette summed up three thousand pages of *La Recherche* in three words: '*Marcel devient écrivain'*. ['Marcel becomes a writer'.] (1972: 237)

78 (1) '[P]uisque je voulais un jour être écrivain, il était temps de savoir ce que je comptais écrire. Mais dès que je me le demandais, tâchant de trouver un sujet où je pusse faire tenir une signification philosophique infinie, mon esprit s'arrêtait de fonctionner, je ne voyais plus que le vide en face de mon attention, je sentais que je n'avais pas de génie ou peut-être une maladie cérébrale l'empêchait de naître'. (*La Recherche* I: 170) | '[S]ince I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or that perhaps some malady of the brain was hindering its development'. (*Remembrance* I: 188–189) (2) 'Combien depuis ce jour, dans mes promenades du côté de Guermantes, il me parut plus affligeant encore qu'auparavant de n'avoir pas de dispositions pour les lettres, et de devoir renoncer à être jamais un écrivain célèbre. Les regrets que j'en éprouvais, tandis que je restais seul à rêver un peu à l'écart, me faisaient tant souffrir, que pour ne plus les ressentir, de luimême par une sorte d'inhibition devant la douleur, mon esprit s'arrêtait entièrement de penser aux vers, aux romans, à un avenir poétique sur lequel mon manque de talent

counts himself among those 'who have no aptitude for writing' ['*qui n'ont pas de dispositions pour écrire*']. (*Remembrance* I: 189; *La Recherche* I: 171) As a consequence, 'utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever' ['*découragé, je renonçais à jamais à la littérature*']. (*Remembrance* I: 190; *La Recherche* I: 171) The Narrator's discovery of his artistic calling extends until the end of Proust's novel. Unlike *CE*, the Narrator's artistic creation is off-stage. As Proust himself suggests, we are not told that he becomes a writer at the end of the day. 79 (*Corr*. *III*, 1920: 306)

The Narrator's aspiration to write marked by the moments of illusion and disillusionment, his slow and long learning process full of mistakes and obstacles (extending over seven thick volumes), is essential to the nineteenth-century coming-of-age novel. 80 The representation of a complex personality in the changing social world, the use of cyclic structure, and numerous reappearing characters in *À la Recherche* have been seen as evident marks of kinship with Balzac. 81 Proust twists or inverts chronology, but does not abandon 'classical time [which] has no other figure than that of a destroyer of perfection (Chronos and his scythe)'. (Barthes 1972 (1954): 20) As in the work of his nineteenthcentury predecessors such as Balzac, Flaubert, and Baudelaire, 'in Proust […] the object is the vehicle of melodrama; it decays, vanishes, or recovers a final glory, participates in short in a veritable eschatology of matter'. (*Ibid*.) Antoine Compagnon's excellent study *Proust entre deux siècles* has confirned that Proust pays tribute to the intellectual and artistic movements of the *fin-de-siècle* period.

m'interdisait de compter'. (*La Recherche* I: 176) | 'How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the Guermantes way, and with what an intensified melancholy, did I reflect on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regrets that I felt for this, as I lingered behind to muse awhile on my own, made me suffer so acutely that, in order to banish them, my mind of its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the face of pain, ceased entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my lack of talent precluded me from counting'. (*Remembrance* I: 194)

For the exposition of his innovative thoughts on sensory experiences, the phenomena of voluntary and involuntary memory, Proust has not chosen an entirely experimental form of writing. He tells the story with the utmost accuracy, offering long and linear sentences. In *La Recherche*, the limits of temporal experimentations are clearly defined, and at various instances, except for the temporal and spatial gaps between the episodes, the events follow temporal order. 'A pleasant succession of scenes, paintings, portraits, digressions of all kinds, skilfully linked by the unsurprising thread of a "coming-of-age novel" attract the reader's attention almost immediately'. 82 (Genette 1966: 58) A Proustian sequence is marked by temporal progression and an identifiable beginning and ending whether it describes the Narrator's line of reasoning, a conversation or a series of events such as a memory of the bedtime scene in *Swann's Way*, the Narrator's visit to Elstir's studio at Balbec and the dinner with M. de Norpois described in *Within a Budding Grove*, the long dinner party scene at the Guermantes (*The Guermantes Way*), etc.

If Proust's novel does not entirely revolve around the flowing reminiscences and remembrances, Colomb's narrative mainly follows the impulses of memory. The narrative line in *La Recherche* is much more chronological than in Colomb's novels. Her sentence is often intuitive, springing from an immediate intuition and situation:

Une demi-heure après le père *était mort*. Régula *vint* de Varsovie, le fils d'Angleterre *embarqua* en toute hâte, il *aida* à porter le cercueil, ses bretelles *étaient* mauves à dessins ton sur ton. Ils *voyaient* à côté d'eux le jeune mort d'*autrefois*, l'enfant de treize ans tué par les chevaux sur la colline, il se *tenait* debout, sa petite poitrine couverte de terre, ses mains épaisses gercées par les premiers froids. 83 (*ET*: 956–957)

Le directeur m'*offrait* pour l'année prochaine de meilleures chambres, mais je m'*étais attaché* maintenant à la mienne où j'*entrais* sans plus jamais sentir l'odeur du vétiver, et dont ma pensée, qui s'y *élevait* jadis si difficilement, *avait fini* par prendre si exactement les dimensions que je *fus obligé* de lui faire subir un traitement inverse quand je dus coucher à Paris dans mon ancienne chambre, laquelle *était* basse de plafond.

82 Fr. 'Agréable succession de scènes, de tableaux, de portraits, de digressions de toutes sortes, habilement liée par le fil sans surprise d'un 'roman de formation'.

83 Eng. 'A half-hour later, the father was dead. Régula came from Warsaw, the son from England rushed home, helped to carry the coffin, his braces mauve with designs in matching tones. They noticed, alongside, that dead boy from long ago, that thirteenyear-old child killed by the horses on the hill, now he was standing there, his little chest covered with dirt, his thick hands chapped with the first cold spells'. (*The Spirits*: 14) (The italics are mine.)

Il *avait fallu* quitter Balbec *en effet*, le froid et l'humidité étant devenus trop pénétrants pour rester plus longtemps dans cet hôtel dépourvu de cheminées et de calorifière. 84 (*La Recherche* II: 305)

In this passage, the description of the scene—Ulysse's father's funeral—evokes an association, namely, a brief story of the child killed by horses. The story is introduced in one sentence. It will no more be recalled in *ET*. The two stories are interconnected by the idea of death. The interconnection between the stories suggests that Colomb does not reject the mind in the writing process. The rational level of knowledge is also used in turning memories into words. Therefore, her writing cannot be considered merely spontaneous. However, she allows the creating writing process to happen without the usual restrictions imposed by rational thinking. Her text comprises an intuitive level of knowledge. She records the associations brought to mind by a memory of the funeral of Ulysse's father. The two stories of funerals appear intuitively assembled in the given passage. The narrative mainly follows the memory of the funeral of Ulysse's father. Later it is interrupted by the association deriving from the recollection of the father's funeral. The association comes alive by giving freedom to the imagination. Instead of establishing boundaries to her mind, Colomb creates this and other pieces of her texts by recording the associations that emerge from writing her memories down.

Proust develops the passage around similar events: the Narrator's stays in the hotel room in Balbec, a memory of a strange aspect of his old room in Paris, the departure from Balbec. He creates the shifts in time otherwise than by recording the associations in his long sentences. The change of verbal tense creates sudden shifts in time perspective. We see the uses of *plus-que-parfait* (*ET*: '*était mort'* ; *La Recherche*: '*était attaché'*, '*avait fini*', '*avait fallu*'), *imparfait* (*ET*: '*étaient*', '*voyaient*', '*tenait*'; *La Recherche*: '*offrait*', '*entrais*', '*élevait*', '*était*') and *passé simple* (*ET*: '*vint*', '*embarqua*', '*aida*'; *La Recherche*: 'fus obligé, '*dus*') tense pairs. Proust's use of *plus-que-parfait* tense form ('*avait fini*') shows a move in

84 The first-person pronoun in the second paragraph is maintained in the translated text. 'The manager offered to reserve better rooms for me next year, but I had now become attached to mine, into which I went without ever noticing the scent of vetiver, while my mind, which had once found such difficulty in rising to fill its space, had come now to take its measurements so exactly that I was obliged to submit it to a reverse process when I had to sleep in Paris, in my own room, the ceiling of which was low.

For we had had to leave Balbec at last, the cold and the damp having become too penetrating for us to stay any longer in a hotel which had neither fireplaces in the rooms nor central heating'. (*Within a Budding Grove*, 1016) (The italics are mine.)

time and space. If in Colomb's passage we read stories of death at different times, Proust's use of *plus-que-parfait* in the second paragraph is revealing the departure, what is no longer. His somewhat unusual use of present time adverbs ('*je m'étais attaché maintenant*') with the *plus-que-parfait* verbal tense also indicates the temporality of habit. In these lines, Proust's and Colomb's narratives rely on the literary representation of memory rather than on a realistic description. '*Jadis*' transports the reader from Balbec to Paris; the time advebs '*autrefois*' (*ET*) and '*jadis*' (*La Recherche*) both refer to an indefinite time in the past. These passages of Colomb and Proust show hesitations in memory through the abundant use of commas. Proust avoids using the first-person pronoun in the second paragraph: the ellipsis helps avoid a monotonous narration of successive events or realistic representation, leaving it to the reader to infer the omitted events.

What is obvious about Colomb's novel is its fragmentary quality. While only by giving up a vantage point of observation in favour of a microscopic examination of Proust's work that can we see its inherent discontinuity. (Fraisse 1988: XIV–XV) The almost linear or teleological development of narration in Proust's text still makes room for the gaps in the chronology due to the self-analysis of a remembering character who does not cease to change over time, because 'every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which immediately preceded it, if not from them all'. ['*Chaque être est détruit quand nous cessons de le voir*; *puis son apparition suivante est une création nouvelle, différente de celle qui l'a immédiatement précédée, sinon de toutes*'.] (*Remembrance* I: 979; *La Recherche* II: 270) A new state of being is born on the fragmentation and forgetting of the old self. The rebirth may happen if we undergo 'in a real sense the death of the self, a death followed, it is true, by resurrection, but in a different self' albeit followed by a resurrection, but a resurrection in the form of a different self' ['*une vraie mort de nous-m*ê*mes, mort suivie, il est vrai, de résurrection, mais en un moi différent*']. (*Remembrance* I: 722; *La Recherche* II: 32)

The fragments of memory feeding the non-linear narrative of Colomb's novels often create the sense of a lasting experience. (See 3.8 *A story within Colomb's leitmotif & Woolf's 'moment*') Whereas the lack of continuity characterizing the self and the experience weighs on Proust's text and the vision of the world that opens to the Narrator and the reader. A Proustian fragment is what 'pulverizes the duration, the consciousness, the reality, and of course the life of the Proustian hero – not the fragment which cuts out the sentences written by Proust'. 85 (Fraisse 1988: 3) Discontinuity is more apparent in the first part *Swann's*

85 Fr. '…pulvérise la durée, la conscience, la réalité, et bien sûr la vie du héros proustien – non le fragment qui découpe les phrases écrites par Proust'.

*Way*. 86 The description of void and confusion and the waking subject's uncertainty regarding time, space, and self violate the chronology in the opening pages of *Swann's Way* the most. It is when the insomniac feels 'more destitute than a cave dweller' ['*plus dénué que l'homme des cavernes*']. (*Remembrance* I: 5; *La Recherche* I: 5) and unable to hold 'the chain of hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host' ['*le fil des heures, l'ordre des années et des mondes*']. (*ibid*.) until he comes up with the idea to use memory to 'piece together the original components of (his) ego' ['*recompos(er) peu à peu les traits originaux de (soi)'*]. (*Ibid*, 6) The apparent discontinuity of Proust's book, which lasts until *Within a Budding Grove*, also depends on the narrative voices that alternate and overlap. Combray is seen from different angles and by different characters. (Picon 2004: 220)

Introducing new characters or the changes that characters undergo subsequently alter the course of events in *La Recherche*. For instance, the appearance of Albertine, Ilaria Vidotto suggests, significantly disturbs the development of Proust's three volumes, altering thematic and structural direction of the rest of the novel; nonetheless, the author manages to bind different volumes internally by setting up an intricate network of analepses and prolepses. (Vidotto 2019: 52)

However, the first-person narration confers compositional unity to Proust's novel. Except for the third-person narrative in the second part of *Un Amour de Swann*, Proust's entire novel develops around the reflective consciousness of '*je*' or '*I*'. 87 Tadié writes: '*la création romanesque de Proust s'appuie sur deux*

86 Genette illustrates the disparity between the order of the narration and the temporal sequence of the narrated events in *Swann's Way*. He lists seven moments: the first refers to the opening scene and the Narrator's sleeplessness, the second dealing with another sleepless night in the Narrator's childhood at Combray, when he suffered from 'the drama of his going to bed', the third bearing the episode of the *madeleine*, the fourth referring to the Narrator's return to Combray, the fifth moment referring to another sleepless night preceding the story of Swann's love, the sixth one dealing with Swann's love experiences, and the final seventh moment referring to the Narrator's stay in Paris and his love for Gilberte; see Genette (2005: 122). According to Genette, apart from these moments, the story follows a chronological development. This chronological alignment does not exclude, though, the presence of numerous anachronisms, namely, *retrospections* and *anticipations*. (*Ibid*., 123) The text, for Guillaume Perrier, does not structure the reader's perception of time. It is up to the reader to reconstitute the temporal order of the story in *La Recherche* through various announcements and reminders; see Perrier (2011: 81).

87 The pronoun *I* does not apply to a person always identical to himself. Instead, *I* 'corresponds to a unique being each time.'. (Benveniste, 1966: 252) According to Benveniste,

*formes essentielles: le je et le temps*'. (1971: 282) The 'I' is both Narrator and protagonist. The difference between the two instances is temporal: on the one hand, we have the present moment of the narration, on the other hand, the past time of the lived experience. (*Ibid*., 32.) Doubling the narrative voice obscures an origin and a point of view of the first-person retrospective statements. The distinction between Narrator and protagonist, Perrier suggests, can be made from the point of view of 'contextual memory': the protagonist or a character does not address and remind anything to the reader while the Narrator does. (Perrier 2011: 48) Representation of memory processes affecting the narrative linearity in Colomb's novels takes on solid shape via the first-person narration in *La Recherche*. The nonlinear structure of Colomb's novels is due to the absence of a distinct remembering consciousness who delves into the past and deliberately retrieves his/her past experiences with the help of memory. The absence of the narrator, who can filter his thoughts subsequently leads to the simultaneous recording of memory processes in *CE* and *ET*. 88

Proust follows a pre-established plan to tell a story. A telescopic view seems more relevant for Proust than a microscopic study of different phenomena as we learn from the Narrator at the end of *Time Regained*. Colomb is not always guided by the plan. The idea that her novels were the fruit of intuitive writing and elaborated without following any particular plan was articulated by the writer herself. Why should writing follow any plan when life does not, she wondered.

Catherine Colomb ? Elle est vraiment impossible à comprendre. Il y a un tel fouillis de personnages… À la quinzième page, on ferme le livre, on renonce. […] Savez-vous pourquoi ? Elle ne se comprend pas elle-même. Elle écrit au hasard, sans plan, sans but. […] Mais pourquoi comprendre ? […] La vie est-ce qu'elle agit conformément à un plan ?89 (Colomb (2019 (1964): 1657))

Bientôt je pus montrer quelques esquisses. Personne n'y comprit rien. Même ceux qui furent favorables à ma perception des vérités que je voulais ensuite graver dans le temps, me félicitèrent de les avoir découvertes au 'microscope', quand je m'étais au contraire servi d'un télescope pour apercevoir des choses, très petites en effet, mais parce

'I signifies "the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing *I*." This instance is unique by definition and has validity only in its uniqueness'. (*Ibid*.)

88 See 1.4 *The old and new narrative formulas: Colomb's two modes of writing* and *3.7 Simultaneity of multiple time frames*.

89 Eng. 'Catherine Colomb? She is undoubtedly impossible to understand. There is such a mess of characters… On the fifteenth page, we close the book. We give up. […] Do you know why? She doesn't understand herself. She writes haphazardly, without a plan, without a goal. Does life follow a plan?'.

qu'elles étaient situées à une grande distance, et qui étaient chacune un monde. Là où je cherchais les grandes lois, on m'appelait fouillera de détails. 90 (*La Recherche* IV: 618)

Since the protagonist of *La Recherche* is 'in search for the truth', as Proust defines his work, to gain access to hidden meanings the reader needs to remember bits of the story dispersed on numerous pages. The memories cannot shape a story in Colomb's novels. The title of the novel *Châteaux en Enfance*' [Eng. Castles in Childhood] may be interpreted as to allude to the unattainable past and inaccessible memories as the idiom 'Castles in the air' suggests unrealistic hopes, unachievable daydreams. (expressio.fr) The memories of some ideas, looks, and reflections are repeated many times in *CE* and *ET* to remember the other elements related to them. But these recollections do not always lead towards the generation of a story. The memories might even add new elements to the narrative, which, in their turn, would provoke new recollections and lead the initial idea to a new direction. Therefore, the reader of *CE* and *ET* is not more certain about some details at the end of the book than he/she is at the beginning. For instance, the scene of Jenny's death is repeated five times in an altered form within *CE*. This scene is described in the opening episode as well as in Chapter V, Chapter VII and in the beginning and at the end of Chapter VIII. The repeated scenes contain slight variations to add a few more specific details to the initial story. However, the opening scene is richer in the details about Jenny's death and funeral than the rest of the episodes. The original story is about a girl who starts to have a fatal headache when embroidering the canvas in a convent and about a delay in reporting Jenny's illness to the parents by a certain messenger. The opening scene further informs us of Jenny's death and funeral; of a certain lady taking a night-train from Germany to attend the girl's funeral but who would be one day late. We are told that 'Jenny dropped the canvas where she was embroidering in tiny cross-stitch two little tender green pine, a pink Chinese dragon, the alphabet, a number of years of her short life', and that she died because of a 'severe headache'. ['*Jenny laissa tomber le canevas où elle brodait à minuscules points de deux petits sapins vert tendre, un dragon chinois rose, l'alphabet, les chiffres de ses brèves années ; elle se plaignit d'un violent mal de tête'*.] (*CE*: 747) The reader is no longer certain about the identity of the young dead

90 Eng. 'I was soon able to show an outline of my project. No one understood it. Even those who sympathized with my perception of the truth I meant later to engrave upon my temple, congratulated me on having discovered it with a microscope when, to the contrary, I had used a telescope to perceive things which were indeed very small because they were far away but every one of them a world. Where I sought universal laws, I was accused of burrowing into the "infinitely insignificant" '. (*Remembrance* IV: 274)

in the other chapters. In Chapter V, it is not obvious who went to find Jenny's or Sophie's parents at dawn, to tell them that their daughter was dying. ['*[O]n ne sait qui vint chercher ses parents à l'aube, leur dire que Jenny—ou Sophie ?—se mourait*'.] (*CE*: 815) In Chapter VII, it is again uncertain whether it was Jenny or Sophie who embroidered a Chinese dragon on a fine canvas. ['*Jenny ou Sophie, qui brodait sur un fin canevas un dragon chinois*'.] (*CE*: 871) In the final Chapter VIII, a young dead is referred to as any female—let it be 'Jenny or Sophie or Louise'—who 'embroiders an alphabet'. ['*Jenny, ou Sophie ? ou Louise ? assise sur un tabours dans une maison des fées, brodant un alphabet*'.] (*CE*: 883) Thus, the first lines might bring less confusion and leave fewer conflicting ideas than the final lines of the book. Time passes between these episodes. Memory loss is the consequence of the passage of time; even the name of the girl who embroidered the alphabet is forgotten by time.

In Colomb's fictional universe, nothing can stop the flow of time. The memories are forgotten with time. The more time passes, the more the stories of Jenny, Alphonse, Marguerite are forgotten. The people who died a long time ago can only be recalled by an epithet, by some detail. The various images represented in *CE* are pale, almost imperceptible as if borrowed from a dream or the far past. Even the memories of central character Galeswinthe, of her physical portrait, are blurred by night, by time. Galeswinthe, the mother of the baptized child, is among the last characters appearing in the text. She only appears at the end of the first chapter. The introduction of Galeswinthe to the reader is preceded by the description of physical appearances, biological ties, and short stories of numerous characters attending the dinner. She can only be recalled by the sight of the 'forest of fir trees' ['*forêt de sapins*'] (*CE*: 755), but a long wait is only followed by the quick and short appearance of Galeswinthe. Her physical appearance can hardly be remembered: 'The country was still covered with numerous fir trees mixed with aspens and beeches; a lady in a long skirt stood motionless under the pines, on an old faded postcard'. ['*Le pays était encore planté de sapins nombreux mélangés aux trembles, aux hêtres ; une dame à jupe longue se tenait là-bas immobile au pied des sapins sur une ancienne carte postale pâlie*'.] (*CE*: 755) Thus, different parts of Galeswinthe's and other characters' stories are displayed out of orderly connection as the narrative moves forward or draws back.

If Colomb releases information about the character sparingly via fragments, the fragmented vision of time in *La Recherche* depends greatly on Proust's presenting of different characters with multiple identities. 91 Proust makes a flow

91 Luc Fraisse (1988) explores the role of fragment in Proust's aesthetics and the discontinuity of characters in *La Recherche*. Edward Bizub (2006) studies Proust's investigation of a succession of alternate lives, that is, the division of consciousness, in the context of the advances in experimental psychology.

of time perceptible by providing a moment-by-moment account of his characters' experiences to reveal how people change over time. For instance, the vulgar Biche frequenting the Verdurins' salon in '*Un Amour de Swann*' reappears as Elstir in *Within a Budding Grove*, whose Balbec painting studio appears to the Narrator 'like the laboratory of a sort of new creation of the world in which, from the chaos that is everything we see, he had extracted, by painting them on various rectangles of canvas'. (*Remembrance* I: 892) Charles Swann is at first introduced as a minor character—a family friend whose evening visits displease the Narrator in Combray. As a central character, there is 'the Swann of the Jockey Club' ['*Swann du Jockey*'] (*Remembrance* I: 465; *La Recherche* I: 423) a desired guest 'to Twickenham or to Buckingham Palace'. (*Remembrance* I: 465; *La Recherche* I: 424) We also come to know the aesthete Charles Swann, the jew Charles Swann, the lover of "the *demi-mondaine*" (*Remembrance* I: 208; *La Recherche* I: 185), 'Odette's husband' ['*mari d'Odette*'] (*Remembrance* I: 465; *La Recherche* I: 423) or the one who leads his 'second life' ['*une seconde vie*''] (*Remembrance* I: 465; *La Recherche* I: 424) not among 'the brilliant society in which he himself had moved before his marriage, but former connections of Odette's'. ['*non pas des gens les plus brillants qui formaient sa société avant son mariage, mais des relations antérieures d'Odette.*'] (*Remembrance* I: 466; *La Recherche* I: 424).  'Like certain other jews, [Charles Swann] had contrived to illustrate in turn all the successive stages through which those of his race had passed, from the most naïve snobbery and the crudest vulgarity to the most exquisite good manners'. ['*comme certains israélites, (Charles Swann) avait pu présenter tour à tour les états successifs par où avaient passé ceux de sa race, depuis le snobisme le plus naïf et la plus grossière goujaterie jusqu'à la plus fine politesse*'.] (*Ibid*.) A permanent renewal of Proustian characters' personality, social status, names, and of the looks the Narrator casts on their sexual orientation contributes to the fragmented vision of their lives. If Charlus is considered to be Odette's lover in *Swann's Way*, in *Sodom and Gomorrah*, he turns out to be a homosexual. The Narrator in 'Combray' calls Odette the 'lady in pink' when he meets her while visiting his uncle Adolphe. She is referred to as a copy of Botticelli's Zéphora in '*Un Amour de Swann'*. 92 In *Within a Budding Grove*, Odette is disguised as a young man in Elstir's portrait of Miss Sacripant. In the

92 When Swann visits Odette for the second time: 'Debout à côté de lui, laissant couler le long de sens joues ses cheveux qu'elle avait dénoués, fléchissant une jambe dans une attitude légèrement dansante pour pouvoir se pencher sans fatigue vers la gravure qu'elle regardait, en inclinant la tête, de ses grands yeux, si fatigués et maussades quand elle ne s'animait pas, elle frappa Swann par sa ressemblance avec cette figure de Zéphora, la

opening of *Swann in Love*, she is introduced as a former courtesan Odette de Crécy, admitted to Mme Verdurin's salon. Later she transforms herself into Mme Swann. After Swann's death, she became the Comtesse de Forcheville and the mistress of Guermantes. Albertine is the most complex and elusive of Proust's characters. She is introduced as 'a being scattered through space and in time […] a series of events in which we can shed no light'. ['*un être, disséminé dans l'espace et dans le temps* […] *une suite d'événements sur lesquels nous ne pouvons faire la lumière*'.] (*La Recherche* III: 612) The character's portrait is never fixed or final in *À la Recherche*.

Proust's building of a series of moments from the character's life is only apparently discontinuous. In his works *L'Espace Proustien* and *Études sur le Temps Humain*, Georges Poulet rightly suggests the juxtaposition of *moments* of *time* in Proust's novel. Reappearances of characters in an extended description of their changing personality and social traits reveal the permanent continuity of consciousness which evokes them and of '*other self*'. (Bizub 2006: 120) which may culminate in genuine self-identification and aesthetic creation. Unlike Swann, who cannot fit together Odette's different moments, the Narrator, finding his vocation as a writer at the end of the novel, thinks of 'notion of the embodiment of Time, the inseparableness from us of the past that [he] now had the intention of bringing strongly into relief ' ['*notion du temps incorporé, des années passées non séparées de nous qu'[il a] maintenant l'intention de mettre si fort en relief*']. (*Remembrance* IV: 278; *La Recherche* IV: 623)

Proust's modern way of presenting the character's life as fragments is far more consistent than Colomb's. *La Recherche* is famously long and rich in characterization. To the study of the character Charles Swann Proust dedicates the whole part *Swann in Love* in *Swann's Way*. Colomb does not provide much information about her characters. With little time available, the readers of *CE* cannot discover the characters' experiences across many pages as in Proust; rather through few words or vignettes. For instance, all they know about one of the main characters Jämes Laroche is that he is always in a hurry and fantasizes about meeting real

fille de Jéthro, qu'on voit dans une fresque de la chapelle Sixtine'. (*Remembrance* I: 219) | '[S]tanding there beside him, her loosened hair flowing down her cheeks, bending one knee in a slightly balletic pose in order to be able to lean without effort over the picture at which she was gazing, her head on one side, with those great eyes of hers which seemed so tired and sullen when there was nothing to animate her, she struck Swann by her resemblance to the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's daughter, which is to be seen in one of the Sistine frescoes'. (*Remembrance* I: 243)

queens. They learn that Jämes, who is quite good-looking and working in the banking industry, often reveals an exaggerated sense of his importance and believes himself to be superior to others. All these details are articulated within the following few lines, which sometimes recur in the course of the novel: 'I only have time, he whispered towards the end of Estelle's concert, pulling out his watch like a white rabbit and staring at it: ho! ho!  ['*Je n'ai que le temps, murmurait-il vers la fin du concert d'Estelle en tirant sa montre comme le lapin blanc et en fixant dessus le regard de son front plissé et de ses yeux d'anthracite : ho ! ho ! je suis en retard ; je vais, ajoutait-il en élevant un peu la voix et en enjambant le syndic grand et gros comme une montagne, je-vais-baisier-la-main-de-la-reine'*.] (*CE*: 750) An epithet or two is sufficient to introduce '[Élise's] crazy mother-in-law with her bust planted on askew like a cactus' [*'[S]a belle-mère folle, le buste planté de travers comme un cactus'*.] (*CE*: 771) and Gustalof, 'a silent cousin returning from Russia, turned into a mujik'. [*'*[*U*]*n cousin silencieux rentré de Russie, transformé en mujik'*] (*Ibid*.)  Long after Mme de Goson's death, one will see in the windows of tobacco shops her portrait sharply stained with the wonderful 1890'. ['*Mme de Goson au nez rond de quelque côté qu'on le regardâ, décolletée comme une grosse merveilleuse, les cheveux en bouclettes sur le front ; longtemps après la mort de Mme de Goson, on verra dans les vitrines des magasins de tabac son portrait fortement coloré de merveilleuse 1890*'.] (*CE*: 807) Mme Goson's present and the future (after her death) are told in these lines. Unlike Proust, Colomb shrinks the moments and knots them together. She resists telling a story and dries her texts out of those elements that help the chronological progression of the narrative. As a result, Proust's and Colomb's readers follow different paces. Meticulous descriptions of the scenes, events, or experiences of the characters generate suspense in *La Recherche*. Such examples of suspense are particularly evident in *Swann's Way*, when Swann, filled with jealousy and suspicion, cannot discern the truth about Odette's deeds; or when the Narrator is awaiting his mother for a goodnight kiss in his family's Combray house. While the climax is delayed and there are long suspenses in *La Recherche*, the scenes are offered without a space break in *CE*. Colomb's readers are confronted by the dizzying speed of development of motifs, ultimately experiencing a sense of vertigo.

Voluntary memory and the prolepses and analepses, which change the movement of the narrative and provoke the accelerations of pace, are intertwined with the architectural complexity of *La Recherche* and *CE* or *ET* respectively.

Forgetfulness (associated with voluntary memory and Colomb's abundant uses of prolepsis and analepsis) affects the readers' experience of time as they make their way through the novels. 'Contextual memory' or memories formed during reading is central to understanding and discerning the metaphysical and aesthetic significance of Proust's three-thousand-page book and even his long sentences. 93 (Perrier 2011) The reader directly shares with the Narrator (who is also the protagonist of his own story) a feeling of a temporal gap between the narrative recalls and the textual antecedents.  For instance, in *Sodom and Gomorrah*, the reader and the protagonist unexpectedly discover Albertine's close ties with Mlle Vinteuil and her lesbian friend whom we meet in Combray. 94 The looks the protagonist casts on Albertine during his Balbec stays and at this later moment are incomparable. The protagonist thinks that time's passing could not have brought such a big change. ('*Des années plus nombreuses auraient pu séparer les deux images sans amener un changement aussi complet*'). (*La Recherche* III: 583) In Part I of *The Guermantes Way* the protagonist learns that Charlus Morel is a son of his great uncle's former servant. Léa's letter reveals to Charlus her intimate relations with Morel and to Swann, Forcheville's with Odette. (*La Recherche* III: 720) Deleuze explains that 'truth is never the product of a prior disposition but the result of a violence in thought'. (1964: 12) The truth derives from the long-delayed explanation in *La Recherche*, because 'the Search is always temporal, and the truth always a truth of time'. (*Ibid*.)

The flow of time can also be indicated indirectly, by a symbolic element. A yellow stain on a photograph signals death, as well as the failure of technological

93 Leo Spitzer (1928) studied Proust's sentence.

94 Albertine unexpectedly lets the protagonist know: 'Vous vous rappelez que je vous ai parlé d'une amie plus âgée que moi, qui m'a servi de mère, de soeur, avec qui j'ai passé à Trieste mes meilleures années et que, d'ailleurs, je dois dans quelques semaines retrouver à Cherbourg, d'où nous voyagerons ensemble (c'est un peu baroque, mais vous savez comme j'aime la mer), hé, bien! cette amie (oh! pas du tout le genre de femmes que vous pourriez croire!), regardez comme c'est extraordinaire, est justement la meilleure amie de la fille de ce Vinteuil, et je connais presque autant la fille de Vinteuil'. (*La Recherche* III: 499)| 'You remember my teling you about a friend, older than me, who had been a mother, a sister to me, with whom I spent the happiest years of my life, at Trieste, and whom in fact I'm expecting to join in a few yeeks at Cherbourg, where we shall set out on a cruise together (…). Well, this friend (…) is the best friend of your Vinteuil's daughter and I know Vinteuil's daughter almost as well as I know her'. (*Remembrance* III: 701–702)

inventions to resist the passage of time. Time is materialized into a stain on Mme Angenaisaz's photograph: "'I wonder why this photograph has a shadow over there in the corner?" Said Adolphe to Elise. "Look, Mrs. Angenaisaz is very dark. I know black clothes … but in short …" ' ['« *Je me demande pourquoi cette photographie a une ombre, là dans l'angle* ? *» dit Adolphe à Elise. « Regarde, Mme Angenaisaz est toute sombre. Je sais bien que les habits noirs*… *mais enfin*… »'.] (*CE*: 851) The stain anticipates Mme Anganaisaz's death. While the practice of using photographs for the creation of lasting memories is doubtful, the antique objects, such as '*armoire genre Walter*', '*la lampe de cuivre*', '*les chaises Louis XIV*' convey the meaning of time in *CE*. These objects are distributed along with technological inventions (i.e., tramway, washing machine, typewriter, photograph) in the text. The antique objects matter because of their age rather than because of their usefulness.

The photograph of the protagonist's grandmother that Saint-Loup takes in *Within a Budding Grove* also signals death and time's passing. The difference between photography and Proust's conception of memory is obvious by reading the episode of the protagonist looking at his grandmother's photograph during his second stay at Balbec, after the passage of 'intermittences of the heart' in *Sodom and Gomorrah*. A sudden and unforced memory triggered by the protagonist's attempt to take off his boots in his hotel room at Balbec reproduces his grandmother's face in all its vividness. By contrast, her photograph only provides an abstract visualization and gives the protagonist the feeling of temporal alienation: 'She no longer knew me, I should never see her again. We had not been created solely for one another; she was a stranger to me. This stranger was before my eyes at the moment in the photograph taken of her by Saint-Loup'. ['*Elle ne me connaît plus, je ne la reverrai jamais. Nous n'avions pas été créés uniquement l'un pour l'autre, c'était une étrangère. Cette étrangère, j'étais en train d'en regarder la photographie par Saint-Loup*'.] (*Remembrance* III: 237; *La Recherche* III: 172) In *Within a Budding Grove*, the grandmother is photographed in a fine coat and a wide-brimmed hat to shade the signs of her poor health and to leave her grandson her joyful portrait. At the time the Narrator interprets her behavior as coquetry and 'childishness'. However, contrary to her grandmother's intentions, neither can the photograph conceal her illness, nor can it provide a faithful image of her health state: 'the photograph, still profiting by the ruses which my grand-mother had adopted, which succeeded in taking me in even after they had been disclosed to me, showed her looking so elegant, so carefree, beneath the hat which partly hid her face, that I saw her as less unhappy and in better health than I had supposed'. ['*La photographie, profitant encore des ruses qu'avait eues ma grand'mère et qui réussissaient à me tromper même depuis qu'elles*  *m'avaient été dévoilées, me la montrait si élégante, si insouciante sous le chapeau qui cachait un peu son visage, que je la voyais moins malheureuse et mieux portante que je l'avais imaginée*'.] (*Remembrance* III: 242; *La Recherche* III: 176) Rather, the Narrator and her mother cannot see the photograph without thinking of death:

Et pourtant, ses joues ayant à son insu une expression à elles, quelque chose de plombé, de hagard, comme le regard d'une bête qui se sentirait déjà choisie et désignée, ma grand'mère avait un air de condamnée à mort, un air involontairement sombre, inconsciemment tragique, qui m'échappait mais qui empêchait maman de regarder jamais cette photographie, qui lui paraissait moins une photographie de sa mère que de la maladie de celle-ci, d'une insulte que cette maladie faisait au visage brutalement souffleté de grand'mère. 95 (*La Recherche* III: 176)

Barthes defines the act of being photographed as '*une micro-expérience de la mort*' ['a micro-version of death'], (1980: 30) because what a photograph captures is '*ni un sujet ni un objet, mais plutôt un sujet qui se sent devenir objet*' ['neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object']. (*Ibid*.) The photograph conveys an image of someone 'under sentence of death' in *Sodom and Gomorrah*. Contrary to Proust's conception of memory, the photography represents an irreparable loss and 'triggers a new stage in Marcel's mourning'. 96 (Eissen 1987: 64)

Another example of Proust's using a photograph to represent the passage of time is given in *Within a Budding Grove*. An old photograph of the 'little band' of adolescent girls reminds the Narrator of his first 'impression of the group, but the group itself that had been lacking in clearness' 'in those earlier years when they appeared for the first time before (him)'. 97 (*Remembrance* I: 881.) In the photograph, 'their childish troupe already presents the same number of participants as later feminine procession (…); but one cannot recognise them individually in it save by a process of reasoning, making allowances for all the transformations possible during girlhood'. ['(…) *leur troupe enfantine offre déjà le même*

95 'And yet, her cheeks having without her knowing it an expression of their own, leaden, haggard, like the expression of an animal that senses it has been chosen and marked down, my grand-mother had an air of being under sentence of death, an air involuntarily sombre, unconsciously tragic, which escaped me but prevented Mamma from ever looking at that photograph, that photograph which seemed to her a photograph not so much of her mother as of her mother's disease, of an insult inflicted by that disease on my grandmother's brutally buffeted face'. (*Remembrance* III: 242–243)

*nombre de figurantes, qu*e, *plus tard leur cortège féminin*; (…) *mais on ne peut les y reconnaître individuellement que par le raisonnement, en laissant le champ libre à toutes les transformations possibles pendant la jeunesse*.'] (*Remembrance* I: 882; *La Recherche* II: 180.) The photograph may only matter when the reality it represents no longer exists. 98 'Who could now have recognised in them, scarcely and yet quite definitely beyond the age at which one changes so completely, an amorphous, delicious mass, still utterly childish, of little girls who, only a few years back, might have been seen sitting in a ring on the sand round a tent'. ['*Qui eût pu reconnaître maintenant en elles, à peine mais déjà sorties d'un âge où on change si complètement, telle masse amorphe et délicieuse, encore tout enfantine, de petites filles que, quelques années seulement auparavant, on pouvait voir assises en cercle sur le sable, autour d'une tente*'.] (*Remembrance* I: 881; *La Recherche* II: 180) Albertine is among those girls, but her identity is vaguely discernable: 'one would have distinguished a pair of eyes that sparkled more than the rest, a mischievous face, flaxen hair, only to lose them again and to confound them almost at once in the indistinct and milky nebula'. ['[*O*]*n n'eût distingué deux yeux plus brillants que les autres, un malicieux visage, des cheveux blonds, que pour les reperdre et les confondre bien vite au sein de la nébuleuse indistincte et lactée* ?'] (*Ibid*.) In the novel, each time the Narrator sees Albertine, he is amazed to see her transformations. 99 The snapshots cannot capture the idea of her metamorphosis which is more meaningful than any of Albertine's portraits at any moment. Unlike Colomb's and Proust's conception of memory, the photograph is insufficient to show the complexity and elusiveness of existence. Creation

98 'La photographie acquiert un peu de la dignité qui lui manque quand elle cesse d'être une reproduction du réel et nous montre des choses qui n'existent plus'. (*La Recherche* II: 123)

99 'Quand j'arrivai chez Elstir, un peu plus tard, je crus d'abord que Mlle Simonet n'était pas dans l'atelier. Il y avait bien une jeune fille assise, en robe de soie, nu tête, mais de laquelle je ne connaissais pas la magnifique chevelure, ni le nez, ni ce teint et où je ne retrouvais pas l'entité que j'avais extraite d'une jeune cycliste se promenant coiffée d'un polo, le long de la mer. C'était pourtant Albertine'. | 'When I arrived at Elstir's a few minutes later, I thought at first that mlle Simonet was not in the studio. There was certainly a girl sitting there in a silk frock, bareheaded, but one whose marvelous hair, whose nose, whose complexion, meant nothing to me, in whom I did not recognise the human entity that I had extracted from a young cyclist in a polo-cap strolling past between myself and the seay. Nevertheless it was Albertine'. (*Remembrance* I: 930–931; *La Recherche* II : 225) 'Peu de temps après, (…) je fus abordé sur la digue par une jeune fille portant un toquet et un manchon, si différente de celle que j'avais vue à la

implies not a too realistic depiction of reality that the photography may afford but a translation of memory.

The flow of time with its destructive effects is expressed from the opening episode in *CE*. Jenny's death brings forward the ideas of rupture and disorientation. They last alongside the episodes of the christening banquet, Marguerite's marriage, and the reception for the Shah. The idyllic atmosphere, which, in general, characterizes the christening banquet, is broken by the depiction of the cemetery. Death supersedes a celebratory mood when the tombs of Jämes Laroche's ancestors, who is the main actor in one of these episodes, are described amid the baptism:

[Émilie Févot] vit, levant les yeux, les convives du baptême debout sur la première terrasse, appuyés des genoux au mur bas : le bel Adolphe, le pasteur au bonnet d'Ecossais, Walter Angenaisaz qui avait fait ce singulier mariage, grandes figures qui cachaient la maison et, vues d'en bas, atteignaient le toit. […] L'érable-sycomore lassait tomber ses graines qui tournoyaient comme des hélices ; l'air était sans mouvement, sur la pelouse fleurissaient les roses de septembre, la lumière touchait pour la première fois dans l'année les feuilles charnues de la pervenche du bosquet ; à travers les arbres éclaircis on apercevait le cimetière sur sa colline et le monument des Laroche, restés fidèles au cimetière du village, eux qui auraient pu occuper dans celui du bourg la meilleure place près de la baignoire romaine. 100 (*CE*: 748–9)

These lines bring to mind the '*Bal de têtes*'—the final scene of the *matinée chez la princesse de Guermantes* in *Time Regained*, which also symbolises the triumph of ageing and death over life. Pale images, imperceptible, shadowy characters, stained photos, forgotten names and stories, multiple references to deaths,

réunion d'Elstir que reconnaître en elle la même personne semblait pour l'esprit une opération impossible'. | 'Shortly after this, (…) I was accosted on the front by a girl wearing a little toque and carrying a muff, so different from the girl whom I had met at Elstir's party that to recognise in her the same person seemed an operation beyond the power of the human mind'. (*Remembrance* I: 936; *La Recherche* II: 231)

100 Eng. '[Émilie Févot] saw, looking up, the guests of the christening banquet standing on the first terrace, leaning their knees on the low wall: the handsome Adolphe, the pastor in the Scottish bonnet, Walter Angenaisaz who had made this singular marriage, big bodies, which hid a house view and reached the roof when seen from below. […] The sycamore maple let its seeds, which whirled like propellers, fall. The air was motionless. The September roses were blooming on the lawn. The light touched the fleshy leaves of the periwinkle grove for the first time in a year. Through the shining trees, one could see the cemetery on a hill and the monument of the Laroche who remained faithful to the village cemetery, those who could have occupied the best place in the town cemetery, near the Roman baths'.

tombs, and cemeteries are among those numerous elements which materialize time in *CE*. The images, characters, objects, places—they all contain memories. These memories are quickly recorded when recalled not to forget them or not to lose a path amongst bonds, networks of associations that the evocation of images, characters, objects, and places produce. There is a search for an escape from time, a desire to defeat time and achieve permanence by inventing a story. But the memories cannot shape a story in *CE* because the novel suggests they are forgotten in time. The form of her novel corresponds to Colomb's vision of time. *CE* outlines the power of time and its capacity to freeze memories. The memories can only be recalled by details rather than in details in *CE*.

The section discussed Proust's and Colomb's representations of memory and time. The following sections will highlight the elements they include in their writings for creating the effects of memory functioning. They will only focus on common elements through which Proust and Colomb reveal principles of memory. These elements include Colomb's associations and Proust's reminiscences, which will be analyzed in the next section. I will show how associations and reminiscences produce multilinear narratives, helping us observe the aesthetics of time in their novels.

## **2.4 Associationism vs. reminiscences**

This chapter explains why *CE* and *ET* need to be considered as novels of memory and time and what they share with and how they differ from *La Recherche —* a novel which is also considered as the treasure trove of memories and is literarily 'in search of lost time'. I will demonstrate that the selected novels represent memory in action and give way to a temporal complexification of the narrative. The mechanism of the association will be considered as one of the major common elements in the comparative reading of memory within Colomb's and Proust's works. The studies of *La Recherche* by J.P. Houston (1980), R. Debray-Genette (1980), Genette (1980), and *The Trilogy* by Seylaz (1972, 1973) and Favre (1993) integrate the analysis of a mechanism of association. However, Colomb's and Proust's works have not yet been discussed together in this perspective.

*CE* and *ET* allow the reader to observe the memories, the mental processes being operated by association. Association is 'sensory perception or idea [which] may be associated with something from the past'. (Cuddon 1979: 60) Proust's work focuses on the sensory perceptions which derive from objects and places from the past.

However, *La Recherche* is also best known for the representation of *reminiscences*. Proust's eminent critic Gilles Deleuze recognized the superiority of the reminiscences over the mechanism of association. 101 In his 1964 study, he discussed the value of reminiscences, yet without explaining how the reminiscences differ and go beyond the mechanism of association. In their critical contributions, Corboz (1962), Favre (1993), and Seylaz (1972, 1973) focused on the participation of associations of ideas in the narrative development within *The Trilogy*. However, our understanding of the mechanism of association in Colomb's work remains limited. More precisely, we need to evaluate whether associations derive from voluntary or involuntary imagination. We will also define the role played by associations in expressing the reality of time within Colomb's novels.

In the study of associationism and reminiscence, I observe how the associations of ideas and reminiscences are related with and involved in the expression of time in Colomb's and Proust's works. This analysis hypothesizes that both Proust's reminiscences and Colomb's associations convey the meaning of time. We will see that the difference lies in the fact that Proustian reminiscences translate into re-experiencing the event which occurred a long time ago and is forgotten at present, while Colombian associations consist in mingling separate moments together to form a single entity. Associations fuse separate memories, while involuntary reminiscences alone allow regaining the past by finally discovering and living '*l'être en soi du passé*' ('the past's being as past'), in its 'truth' and its fullness that has never been lived before. (Deleuze 1964: 72)

To proceed to the comparison, I start with the definition of the terms. The reflections assembled in the following section define such terms as *association* and *reminiscence.* They show the implications of the concepts in such fields as philosophy and psychology. Understanding the meaning of association and reminiscence in these disciplinary spheres will help us explain the notions in Colomb's and Proust's literary texts. Once the terms are defined, we continue by studying the complex nature of Colombian associationism before paving the way for a comparative analysis of Colombian associations and Proustian reminiscences.

101 According to Gilles Deleuze, 'La réminiscence pose plusieurs problems qui ne sont pas résolus par l'association des idées'. ['Reminiscence poses several problems which are not solved by the association of ideas'.] (1964: 71)

# **2.5 Definition of terms**

#### **2.5.1 Association**

The Oxford English Dictionary defines association as 'an idea or recollection, linked in the mind or memory with some object of contemplation, and recalled to the mind in connexion with it'. (Simpson 1989, I: 718) It follows that activation of memory through some object produces association. A Dictionary of Literary Terms explains that association represents the 'shared connection between an object and ideas', and 'any sensory perception or idea may be associated with something from the past'. (Cuddon 1979: 60) In both cases, association derives from attributing some idea to an object. But how exactly does an object evoke an association?

The term *association* derives from Latin *associātiōn-em*, meaning to unite, ally. (*OED*) Laws governing the spontaneous movements of thought and the principle of the mechanism of these movements started to attract the attention of the ancient metaphysicians in Egypt, Greece, India, and Palestine. (Coleridge 2004 (1817): Chapter V) In Greek philosophy, Aristotle defined association as a group of 'ideas [which,] by having been together[,] acquire[d] a power of recalling each other; or every partial representation aw[o]ke the total representation of which it had been a part'. (*Ibid*.) Aristotle named five causes occasioning associations: connection in time (i.e., simultaneity), space (i.e., vicinity), interdependence (cause and effect), likeness, and contrast. (*Idem*.) 17th-century philosophical studies enriched Aristotle's analysis of association. (*Idem*.) In his *Biographia Literaria* (1817), Samuel Taylor Coleridge traced the history of the 'law of Association' from Aristotle to Hartley and defined association as a shared connection between ideas and objects. (Coleridge, 2004 (1817): Chapter V) Coleridge claimed that our knowledge about the laws of association was more detailed in the 17th and 18th centuries. He referred to the lectures of Sir James Machintosh affirming that such philosophers as Thomas Hobbes and David Hartley went so far as to discover 'the laws that direct the spontaneous movements of thought and the principle of their intellectual mechanism'. (*Ibid*.)

A strong emphasis on association and mental concepts during the 17th and 18th centuries stemmed from developing empiricism as a systematic approach to philosophy in the works of the British philosophers John Locke (1632–1704), George Berkeley (1685–1753), David Hartley (1705–1757), and David Hume (1711–1776). 102 Association of ideas was a key concept for the British empiricists.

102 The names mentioned in this paragraph are quoted in Simpson (1989, I: 718)

The philosophers developed theories of *associationism* in order to reveal how complex mental processes arose from simple sensory experiences. In Locke's, Berkeley's, Hartley's, and Hume's epistemology, association mainly described the mental activity. During the 17th and the 18th centuries, the term association meant a mental concept, a sense of connection in the mind between objects and ideas that had some relation to it (such as by Locke (1690), the English poet Johnson L., P., Cowley (1779), among many). (Simpson 1989, I: 718)

In the 18th century, the Scottish Common Sense Realism (founded by Thomas Reid and maintained by his successors: Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton) started to rethink the empiricism of Locke, Hartley, and Hume. (Redekop 2004: 212) The Scottish philosophers suggested that Associationism activated the memory processes. They doubted the truthfulness of the empiricist theory according to which the impressions endured on the brain. Unlike the empiricists, Reid maintained that the *self* did not depend on memory and did not share anything with its past. Instead, it existed as an independent substance. 103

Coleridge, who at first admired Thomas Hartley, later turned out as a critic of empiricists. In Chapter V of his book *Biographia Literaria*., Coleridge also noted that our perceptions are governed by 'an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it'. (Coleridge, 2004 (1817): Chapter VII.) Interestingly, the canvas also appears in *CE* several times. The canvas might be echoing Coleridge's idea that our perceptions are often involuntary, produced without our interference, by a mechanism of their own. Yet, Coleridge then dismissed the empiricists' view of imagination as mechanical, non-rational activity. Ultimately, he adopted the look of such German philosophers and Romantic writers as Kant, Schiller, Schelling on the role of the will, which has the power 'to control, determine and modify the phantasmal chaos of association'. 104 It follows that associations are not merely free thoughts. Instead, they follow the dictates of the will, of the rational brain.

In Psychology, the doctrine suggesting that mental phenomena might be accounted for by association of ideas is called associationism. (Simpson 1989, I: 719) Psychologists often combine associationism with hedonism. Hedonism describes why events connect with one another. It explains that 'bonds are forged

103 The reflections set out in this paragraph were borrowed from Reid (1915).

104 There are notes and comments on the works of such German philosophers and Romantic writers as Schiller and Schelling in Colomb's note-books (Fr. *carnets*) currently conserved at the Centre for Research in French Swiss Literature (CRLR). The comments in a way suggest that Colomb was aware of Schillerian and Schellingian versions of association and imagination.

by pleasant experiences, broken by painful ones'. (Audi 1996: 51) Associationism contributes to non-rational, non-intelligent processes. (*Ibid*.) The associationists, such as Hume and Mill among philosophers, Skinner and Thorndike among psychologists, believed that 'people thought as they did, not because of rational connections among thoughts, but because thoughts associatively bonded'. (*Ibid*.) Hence, the psychologists mainly adopted the empiricists' view of association according to which association stemed from mechanical rather than voluntary or intelligence-based imagination. Davies explained that the mechanism of association relied on the impression rather than on the will. He called *associationism* 'a mechanism by which one thought automatically called up another close to it, on the basis of the impressions left in the mind by the force of external events working upon the senses. Establishing physical channels along the nerves and brain, the memory of sensory experience would set going a train of thought'. (Davies 2002: 175) Thus, association is closely linked with the phenomena of memory and recollection. Our minds retain strong impressions, which produce a train of thoughts. Hence, the association consists of chaining the thoughts.

The association technique represents an integral part of a Psychoanalytic therapy. Such a therapy is called the Free Association Method. The method was suggested by S. Freud in 1892. The free association technique is used to help patients discover their unconscious thoughts and feelings by expressing freely their thoughts, without any discrimination. (Bloch 2011 (1991): 96)

If we try to sum up the above-mentioned reflections in different disciplinary spheres, we can draw the following conclusions. In Greek philosophy, Aristotle thought that one idea may awake another idea through association. The empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, Hartley, and Hume defined association as a mental process, which derived from sense experiences. The empiricists' version of association was non-voluntary. Some associationists, namely the philosophers Hume and Mill and psychologists Skinner and Thorndike, shared the idea that thoughts bonded associatively rather than by logical connections between them. Coleridge criticized such a view of association. He defined the association as a will-based process.

In the end, these various reflections form two groups. While the empiricists and the associationists maintain that associations develop independently of the rational brain and have a mechanism of their own, the Scottish Common Sense School of Psychology and Coleridge—based on the theories of German philosophers and Romantic writers—claim the opposite: that the associations derive from reasoning and are controlled by the rational faculty of the brain.

## **2.5.2 Reminiscence**

The word reminiscence derives from the Latin *reminiscentia*, which means 'remembrance, recollection'. (Online Etymology.) The doctrine of reminiscence, as translating Greek *ἀνάμνησις* (anamnesis), represents the theory of the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 429–327 BC) that knowledge originates before birth. According to Plato, the soul recovers knowledge from a former existence before it enters a new body. (Audi 1996: 620–22) For Plato, the soul did not die, and humans are exposed to the 'Forms' in their different existences. His theory of Forms is introduced in his first dialogue, *Phaedo*. (Audi 1996: 621) 'Forms' are the essences of various abstract objects. The 'Forms' may exist as ideas, independently of the objects. According to Plato, we come to know that a painted portrait of somebody is called a man because the colour on the canvas resembles a man. The portrait on the canvas and a true man share essences that Plato defined as 'Forms'. For Plato, the Forms are changeless, transcendent to space and time. Unlike Socrates, who thought that the dead lost consciousness, Plato suggested that knowledge was retrieved from a former existence through recollection or reminiscence. (*Ibid.,* 620)

On the grounds of Plato's Theory of Forms, the knowledge that the pigment on the canvas is a man does not derive from experience, but by retrieving this knowledge from our former existence through reminiscence. (Matsumoto 2009: 787) The theory further implies that we learn by recollecting some past fact or experience, which is temporarily buried in our subconscious memory and can be reactivated 'through questioning'. (Audi 1996: 620–22)

In Psychology, reminiscence is defined as a vague recollection of some events that occurred in early childhood. (Matsumoto 2009: 787) Unlike recollection, reminiscence is only remembered partially and confusedly. (*Ibid*.) Proust's almost contemporary Freud stresses the influential role of reminiscence in his studies of memory. (Auroux 1990: 2230) Reminiscence is intimately related to traumatic memories in Freud. In his *Studies on Hysteria* (1895), Freud maintains that 'Hysterical patients suffer largely from reminiscences'. Bergson, like Freud, estimates that the past psychic life does not disappear: our memories are conserved and form our conscious mind. Both think that the past continues to influence our present state of being. Bergson explains that only few reminiscences are retrieved from the past so that they do not flood us in our present existence. 105 (Bergson 1911 (1896))

105 The connections between Bergson and Proust are discussed in the fourth chapter, *The Philosophy of time*.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines reminiscence as 'the action of recovering knowledge or fondly recalling memories by mental application'. (*OED*) Reminiscence is also the act of 'retrieving of a thing, at present forgotten, or but confusedly remembered'. (Simpson (1989, I: 590)) Hence, reminiscence is something that serves as a reminder of what is buried deep in our memory.

To conclude, ancient philosophers, such as Plato, believed that the soul or consciousness did not die and knowledge from our former existence could be regained through reminiscence. Like Plato, Bergson and Freud shared the idea that the memories from the past did not disappear and were preserved in our minds. If Plato hypothesized the immortality of the soul, Freud and Bergson alluded to the immortality of our past psychic life. Plato believed that knowledge did not die; Freud and Bergson thought that past experiences influenced our present existence. All these various theories suggest that reminiscences are conserved in our memory and when given a chance can be reactivated.

# **2.6 Colomb's associationism**

Associations play a dynamic role in the production of various narrative threads within *CE* and *ET*. A wide range of recollections springs from memory with the subtle mechanism of the association at work. They emerge from some new elements which appear little by little in the text. In *CE*, these elements might be an object: '[Elise's lamp] swayed imperceptibly on the ceiling like a ship lamp. But only one lamp would sink into the ground without breaking, one of the frail Galeswinthe in the grove'. ['[*La lampe d'Elise*] *se balançait imperceptiblement au plafond comme une lampe de navire. Mais une seule lampe s'enfoncerait dans le sol sans se briser, celle de la frêle Galeswinthe dans le bosquet*'.] (*CE*: 778) The same object, a lamp, brings together two characters Galeswinthe and Elise, who are not related otherwise. It is used to create a new association. A single word, 'char', connects two long meals in *CE*: 'The Angenaisaz watched those moving dots on the lakeside road, Jämes' little yellow chariot, Mr. and Mrs. Louis' groaning victoria, a carriage of the Cottens' old maid'. ['*Les Angenaisaz regardaient ces points mouvants sur la route au bord du lac, le petit char jaune de Jämes, la victoria gémissante de M. et Mme Louis, la calèche de la vieille demoiselle de Cottens*'.] (*CE*: 794) The Anganaisaz were attending the christening banquet. As for Jämes, Mr. and Mrs. Louis, and the Cottens' old maid, they were invited to the reception for the Shah. Using the word '*char*' allows moving the reader's attention from the reception to the dinner: '[Clotilde] swaying her head as if pulled on a chariot. The christening chariot stood at the end of the terrace'. ['[*Clotilde*] *oscillant de la tête, comme tirée sur un char. Le char du baptême,* [*était*] *arrêté au bout de la*  *terrasse*'.] (*CE*: 799) Clotilde, Jämes's wife, attended the reception for the Shah together with her husband.

In other cases, the connecting element might well be a character or a family tie: 'Walter married [Liesel] for her beauty and immediately regretted it. […] Liesel's father, the rich miller, sometimes came from his chalet with a hundred windows to a grocer at Babeli who ran from her room at the back of the shop where she wrote to her son in Madagascar'. [*'Walter épousa [Liesel] pour sa beauté et s'en repentit aussitôt. [*…*] Le père de Liesel, le riche meunier, s'en venait parfois de son chalet aux cent fenêtres chez Babeli l'épicière qui accourait de sa chambre au fond de la boutique où elle écrivait à son fils dans Madagascar*'.] (*CE*: 762) These sentences derive from the associations emerging from family ties: the reader learns that Walter married the miller's daughter Liesel. The sentence that follows carries a new idea; it informs of a habitual activity of Liesel's father. The new association leads the reader to discover the other family experience, namely, the mother-son relationship.

Some associations also stem from a comparison: 'Emilie Févot could not blush, she had thick skin just like Mrs. Louis Laroche who was sitting in the middle of her sofa in the salon of the Graces right now'. ['*Émilié Févot ne réussit pas à rougir, elle avait la peau épaisse comme Mme Louis Laroche, en ce moment assise bien au milieu de son canapé dans le salon des Grâces*'.] (*CE*: 789)

In *ET*, we see how a new idea might be brought in:

Et il baptisa le petit missionnaire Dogodela, car rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, disait en 1910 le professeur qui ressemblait à Anatole France, rien ne se perd, pas même les noms des jeunes mortes qui tombent lentement à terre comme les volants d'autrefois, leurs plumes roses plantées dans un socle de velours et de cire maintenu par la petite soutache dorée qu'elle reclouait minutieusement avant de la relancer dans nos mains enfantines. 106 (*ET*: 963–964)

The phrase '*rien ne se perd*' [Eng. 'nothing gets lost'] evokes different associations: it refers to Benjamin's purpose for baptizing the missionnaire Dogodela; the text further informs that the idea '*rien ne se perd*' belongs to a certain professor who looked like Anatole France. This idea is doubted because we read

106 Eng.  (*The Spirits*: 24)

that the names of the young dead might be forgotten. Bringing in a new idea or a phrase contributes to the progression of the narrative.

Associations invite new ideas in the text, ultimately leading to the development of a narrative in a new direction. Every time a new element appears, the previous idea is abandoned, interrupting the progression of narrative.

Il ouvrit les vitraux, montra les collines couvertes des habitations des poules pareilles à des séries d'armoires sur pilotis ; les poules se promenaient par bandes, seule la Fanchon se détachait et, rêveuse, picorait des choses invisibles dans la terre fraîchement remuée qui attendait un mort par minute et qui allait être frustrée d'Abraham qui tombe de la corniche à cet instant même, mais il pèse si peu que jeté par César qui la veille —la messagère le vit—enleva une pierre sous la fenêtre peinte…107 (*ET*: 969–70)

In the first sentence, the words: 'hens' [Fr. '*poules*'], 'soil' [Fr. '*terre*'], 'the dead' [Fr. '*mort*'] and 'Abraham' play key role as they give birth to new associations. They link together possible sequences by association. The 'hens' are the reminders of 'soil'; the 'soil', in its turn, reminds of the 'dead'. The word 'dead', in its turn, is a reminder of Abraham. The link between the 'dead' and Abraham stems from the concrete experience: the text suggests that Abraham might be dead because he fell from the 'cornice'. In this example, the new association sprung from the privileged elements: 'hens', 'soil', 'dead', and Abraham, hinder the advancement of the narrative. The associations thus play two contradictory roles at once: they help the progression of narrative, but they also lead the story to a dead-lock, and thus to interruption.

As a consequence, if we have to define a logic behind the fragmentation of her texts, Colomb's experiments fall into two large categories: into the aesthetics of disjunction (disintegration) and the aesthetics of juxtaposition, i.e., the condition of two or more things being placed side by side (compression, wave-like flow, stream). Where there is a method of disintegration/disjunction used, gaps break up the narrative (loosely joined fragments). Such a method may be regarded as one of *cut-up*. There are all those disjointed pieces that fit together. The latter may be regarded as the one that seeks wholeness.

107 Eng. 'He opened the stained-glass windows, pointed to the hills covered with henhouses resembling a series of wardrobe closets on piles; the hens were strolling about in groups, only Fanchon had broken away and was dreamily pecking about at invisible things in the freshly overturned earth that expected a corpse per minute and that was going to be frustrated with Abraham, falling from the cornice at this very instant, for he weighs so little that, dropping into the void because César, the evening before—the messenger had seen him—had removed a stone beneath the painted window…' (*The Spirits*: 32)

Associations produce 'digressions' in Colomb's texts. The 'digression' is a stylistic device used to delay the narration. It is 'a part of speech where the author moves away from the subject to narrate an anecdote, a memory, depict a landscape, an object of art, among many, and to give them an unexpected development. It's a story on the fringes of history'. 108 (Morier 1981: 365) More recently, in Randa Sabry's theoretical and historical study, the 'digression' is understood as a literary and rhetorical device. Although the digression delays the narration with its disconnections from the main topic that halt a rhetorical order, it becomes rhetoric in responding to the questions introduced in the text. (Sabry 1992) Colomb's narrative frequently includes the digression materials. While certain ideas might emerge with some quality in common, other incidents are often loosely tied. For instance, the episodes that *CE* (Jenny's death) and *ET* (anonymous voices accusing César of Abraham's fall from the tower of Fraidaigue) begin with do not turn into a complete story. These episodes are not even organically related to the other parts of the novels.

A wide range of digressions posits the primacy of the parts over the whole. New words (such as '*robe*', '*char*', '*mouchoir*', '*poules*') bring forward new ideas. The digressions might be different associations, which have some word in common: 'Frightened, César and his little brothers were sitting on their beds and listening to stones thudding down on the white roses which, the night before, were hesitating at the edge of the young coffin. "Tell us, César, are those dull sounds we're hearing, waves?" ' ['*Effrayés, assis sur leurs lits, César et ses petits frères écoutaient alors les bruits sourds des pierres tombant sur les roses blanches qui, la veille, hésitaient au bord du jeune cercueil.* « *Ces coups qu'on entend, est-ce les vagues, dit César ?* »'] (*The Spirits*: 4; *ET*: 950) The synonym '*coups*' replaces the '*bruits sourds*' appearing in the first sentence. The words alter the direction of the narrative. The synonym of '*bruits sourds*', which is '*coups*' in the given case, starts to get used in a new context. We have to do with the associations emerging by the law of analogy. The synonyms '*bruits sourds*' and '*coups*' link two moments. The word '*coups*' no longer refers to the sound of falling stones caused by demolishing a tower by Armand. It refers instead to César's hearing the sound of the waves' washing up on the banks of a lake. The reference to some other sound thus abandons the previous story (Armand's demolishing of a tower). This style creates the effect of time in its slow motion.

108 Fr. 'Digression : partie du discours où l'auteur s'éloigne du sujet, pour narrer une anecdote, un souvenir, dépeindre un paysage, un objet d'art, etc., et leur donner un développement inattendu. C'est une histoire en marge de l'histoire'.

The other types of digressions consist in the analepsis and prolepsis included in the narrative as numerous characters attending the two-family meals emerge. A recourse to analepsis and prolepsis by Colomb, to introduce digressions, is also strongly anchored in Proust's narrative. The digressions allow to represent the passage of time and a kind of 'symmetry' between events in *À la Recherche*. 109 'An analogical digression' links, for Geneviève Henrot, 'the Narrator's jealousy for his mother to all the other great jealousies of the novel: Swann's for Odette, the protagonist's for Albertine,' Charlus' for Morel, Saint-Loup's for Rachel, etc. (1991: 45)

Insignificant details gain more space in Colomb's texts than historical events. A few words sum up some historical or family events. No more than one line is devoted to the mentions of the wars: 'Germany suddenly allying with Russia and Japan hit Europe'. ['[*L*]*'Allemagne s'alliant soudain avec la Russie et le Japon déferla sur l'Europe*'.] (*CE*: 756) and the Suez Canal construction: 'Uncle Alphonse going to build the Suez Canal with Lesseps'. ['[*L*]*'oncle Alphonse, allant construire avec Lesseps le canal de Suez*…'] (*CE*: 758) While the negligible element—be it an object or a look—can appear and reappear in the text. When these details are recalled, they immediately suggest others to which they might be somehow related.

Associations can also stem from Colomb's uses of syllepsis—a figure of speech when a word is used to exemplify various connotative meanings it contains. (*OED*) In the instances, such as: '*Mélanie porta la main à ses seins houleux où voguait parfois un petit bateau*',110 [Eng. 'Mélanie brought her hand to her tumultuous breasts, where a little boat sometimes drifted'.] (*ET*: 1027; *The Spirits*: 111) she reinforces the rhetorical effect of the word '*houleux*' [Eng. 'tumultuous' or 'billowy'] by using it for the definition of Mélanie's 'breasts' [Fr. '*seins*'] and the sea. Furthermore, she compares the sunset, the end of a day with the light cut by the 'scissors' of the scissor-tailed swallow to capture reality by metaphors and add in the effect of surprise: '*L'air et le ciel au-dessus du dîner de baptême, coupés le jour par les vifs ciseaux de l'hirondelle*'. [Eng. 'The air and the sky above the christening banquet, the day cut by the sharp scissors of the swallow'.] (*CE*: 769) The syllepsis carries the story to a different path. '*Vague*' may thus be regarded

109 Proust's abondant uses of analepsis and prolepsis in 'Autour de Mme Swann', for Vidotto, structurally binds the characters and events of *Within a Budding Grove* to the rest of the novel, see Vidotto (2019: 51–64). For the study of prolepsis and analepsis in *La Recherche*, see Gérard Genette, *Figures III*. (1972.) For the study of digression, see Bayard (1996).

110 The underlining is mine.

as digression material: '*Benjamin admirait avec crainte Madame* […]. *C'était un vague cousin, ce Benjamin ; remué de germains, et si frêle et si petit qu'il ne faisait pas plier la branche de l'arbre généalogique* […]. *Benjamin cherchait dans le terrain vague qui jouxte leur jardin des casseroles pour en faire des tam-tams*'. ['Benjamin stood in awe of Madame […]. This Benjamin was a sort of distant cousin several times removed, and so small and frail that it wouldn't be he who would make the branch of the genealogical tree sag […]. In the vacant lot that ran alongside their garden, Benjamin would look for pots that he could use as tom-toms'.] (*ET*: 960; *The Spirits*: 19–20) In this example, the reader experiences the 'syllectic' effect of the word '*vague*' [Eng. 'distant']: at first, it refers to distant biological ties between Madame and Benjamin; on a second occasion, it expresses 'vacant'. The syllepsis contributes to inserting the digressions in the text. These insertions may sometimes be irrelevant. The absence of the insertion would not hinder reading comprehension. Besides, a variety of meanings that the words contain are not noticeably correlated. The link between the 'vacant lot' and the 'distant cousin' is not absolute. Yet, the word 'distant' stresses that the weak family ties have a deserted, sterile land as their effect.

It is remarkable that Colomb pointed at the similarity of words and objects. She compared the alignment of words in a sentence to the arrangement of objects in a moving house. 'Starting a move into a new house is easy. The objects are arranged by categories. Then, like words looked for too long. They make a strange appearance'. ['*Le début d'un déménagement est simple ; les objets sont rangés par catégories ; puis, semblables à des mots considérés trop longtemps, ils prennent un aspect étrange*…'] (*CE*: 887) At first, objects organized by category might look familiar to the eyesight. But after some time, they change into something new, just as the words would were they robbed of their original meaning. As Colomb tries to enrich the expressive value of the words by placing them in different contexts, the reflection on the arrangement of objects echoes her own experience of creating a literary text.

Recalling memories by association is the widely used process in *La Recherche* as well. However, the ways association of ideas develop in Proust and Colomb differ. In *La Recherche*, the associations are more coherent than in Colomb. Unlike in *CE and ET*, Proustian associations are also systematically based on the analogy, which is not a mere aesthetic principle but also the instrument of an artist's vision. Using analogy establishes a relationship between 'sensations' and 'memories' located on different temporal planes: 'What we call reality is a relation between those sensations and those memories which simultaneously encircle us'. ['*Ce que nous appelons la réalité est un certain rapport entre ces sensations et ces souvenirs qui nous entourent simultanément'*.] (*Remembrance*

IV: 155; *La Recherche* IV: 468). The 'analogical' in Proust means 'ontological', Julia Kristeva suggests. (1994: 270–271) Connecting 'two differnt states of being together for ever in a phrase' ['*enchaîner à jamais dans la phrase les deux termes différents*'] (*Remembrance* IV: 155; *La Recherche* IV: 468) is needed to come close to the terms of art. Elstir's 'employing, for the little town, only marine terms, and urban terms for the sea' ['…*n'employant pour la petite ville que des termes marins, et que des termes urbains pour la mer*'] (*Remembrance* I: 894; *La Recherche* II: 192) in his seascapes has as its effect 'a sort of metamorphosis of the objects represented, analogous to what in poetry what we call metaphor'. [' (…) *une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle qu'en poésie on nomme métaphore*'.] (*Remembrance* I: 892; *La Recherche* II: 191)

Recognizing similar structures between two objects with different temporalities is the principle of '*liaison*' in Colomb and the process of analogy in Proust. Anne Simon does not think of the Proustian 'extra-temporality' as the absence of time, rather as a '*liaison* of meanings which make sense only in relation to each other'. (2011: 12) Only, if '*liaison*' in *CE* prevents the story from obtaining a finality (see *1.3.1 The mechanism of 'liaison'*), the teleological development of narration in *La Recherche* leads to the discovery of involuntary memory as a principle of art and the Narrator's development of his vocation as a writer. 111 The Narrator of Combray discovers that 'what lay hidden behind the steeples of Martinville must be something analogous to a pretty phrase'. ['(…) *ce qui était caché derrière les clochers de Martinville devait être quelque chose d'analogue à une jolie phrase*'.] (*Remembrance* I: 197; *La Recherche* I: 179). At the end of the book, he learns that 'the truth will only begin to emerge from the moment that the writer takes two different objects, posits their relationship, the analogue in the world of art to the only relationship of causal law in the world of science and encloses it within the circle of fine style. In this, as in life, he fuses a quality common to two sensations, extracts their essence and in order to withdraw them from the contingencies of time, unites them in a metaphor, thus chaining them together with the indefinable bond of a verbal alliance'. ['[*L*]*a vérité ne commencera qu'au moment où l'écrivain prendra deux objets différents, posera leur rapport, analogue dans le monde de l'art à celui qu'est le rapport unique de la loi causale dans le monde de la science, et les enfermera dans les anneaux*

111 Anne Simon rightly suggests that Proust links the 'inability to feel to the absence of literary vocation'. (RTP, IV: 433–4434, 444) A series of reminiscences in *Time Regained* is essential to the Narrator's discovery of the true meaning of literature; see Simon (2011: 44).

*nécessaires d'un beau style, ou même, ainsi que la vie, quand, en rapprochant une qualité commune à deux sensations, il dégagera leur essence en les réunissant l'une et l'autre, pour les soustraire aux contingences du temps, dans une métaphore, et les enchaînera par le lien indescriptible d'une alliance de mots*'.] (*Remembrance* IV: 155; *La Recherche* IV: 468)

*La Recherche* structurally relies on a network of resemblances between different objects. 112 Proust's 'comparisons, through its formal characteristics' (Proust's sentences are marked by abondant uses of '*comme*') and 'figurative functioning based on analogy', comes close to 'a metaphor.' (Vidotto 2020: 10) The analogy becomes a metaphor into the 'domain of style'. (Fraisse 1995: 77) *La Recherche* ends with the discoveries of 'analogical miracle' (*Remembrance* IV: 141) and the Narrator's discovery of his vocation as a writer. The analogy triggers and preserves, via metaphor, the fleeting experiences of involuntary memory.

# **2.7 Colomb's associations vs. Proust's reminiscences**

This secion examins Colomb's associations and Proustian reminiscences with focus on both differences and similarities. Proust defines the reminiscences as 'resurrections of memory'. (*Remembrance* IV: 146) A classic example of Proustian reminiscence is the madeleine experience represented in *Combray* (*Swann's Way*). Most of the reminiscences are exposed in the final volume, but they occur throughout the entire novel. 113 Proust seems to assign to reminiscence a vital role in recognizing the links between different selves morphing into different shapes across time. Immediately before this instance of involuntary memory, Proust's narrator alludes to the Celtic belief in metempsychosis that through some animal, plant or object we may enter into contact with the dead. 114

112 The structure of *À la Recherches*, for Luc Fraisse, 'is a conceptual structure, made of analogies, contradictions, resemblances, oppositions, succession, assimilations'; see Fraisse (2013: 403).

113 Samuel Beckett (1931) lists eleven reminiscences—'fetishes' (36) of involuntary memory. Howard Moss included 22 reminiscences in his study; see Moss (1966 (1962): 101–21.) This list is significantly improved by Geneviève Henrot (1991).