Architecture of memory

images of time and vocation in Du côté de Chez Swann, by Marcel Proust

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of images in abysm (mises en abyme) in the volume Du côté de chez Swann, by Marcel Proust (1871–1922), showing how such figures function as symbolic miniatures of the narrator’s memorial experience and as expressions of the work’s own narrative procedure. Through a reading of the magic lantern, the scallop-shaped madeleine, the stained-glass windows, and the tapestries of the church of Combray, it is observed that these elements organize, on a reduced scale, mechanisms of projection, repetition, temporal superimposition, and aesthetic transfiguration characteristic of Proustian writing. In each of these images, a specific space becomes the support for the emergence of multiple temporalities, recomposed by memory and imagination. The analysis further shows that Combray constitutes a microcosm of the novel, in which the interplay of digressions, readings, and evocations anticipates the birth of the narrator’s literary vocation. It is thus concluded that the mise en abyme surpasses the condition of a mere formal device and asserts itself as a compositional principle of the architecture of remembrance in Proust.