Proust and the Invisible

Here goes what Ramon Fernandez says about Proust. Translation will follow:

"...Il semblait aspirer la réalité contenue dans la chambre, dans l'instant, dans moi-meme; et l'èspece d'extase qui se peignait sur son visage était bien celle du médium qui reçoit les messages invisibles des choses..." "...il posait un chef-'oeuvre partout où ses yeux s'arrêtaient..."

"... He seemed to aspire the reality contained in the room, in the instant, in myself; and the type of ecstasy that appeared on his face was that of a medium receiving invisible messages from things." "... He'd see a masterpiece everywhere his eyes looked at something..."

Proust and the Resurrection of the Flesh

     Proust has been considered agnostic, because he does not declares directly to have faith in God. Taking agnostic to be the same as unbeliever, or even doubter, I wonder how people can hold this view before considering this great writer's objection to indoctrination, and still expect him to objectively assert faith, instead of transmitting it; instead of enabling the reader to directly experience it within himself. Proust does not have faith, he is faith. 
   As he reports his own humbly personal experience of timelessness,  in Le Temps Retrouvé, for instance, he transmit the reality of spirit. When he talks of his narrator, the man wrenched off the chronology of time, he says that such man can only find his pleasure and nourishment in the essence of things, "... un être qui n'aparaissait que quand, par une de ces identités entre le present et le passé, il pouvait se trouver dans le seul milieu ou il pût vivre, jouir de l'essence des choses, chest-`a-dire en dehors du temps". (a being who only appeared when, by one of these identities between present and past, he could find himself in the only environment where he could live, enjoy the essence of things, that is, outside time.)"
   Always recognizant of the physical dimension through which he reaches the bliss of atemporal reality, Proust is careful to maintain the concreteness of it in the picture, reporting, as the source of his experience's bliss, the irruption, in the present, of a particular sensation that was first felt in the past, and identifying past and present in timelessness.
    As heavenly and as spiritual as this experience is, it is by no means  reached by the mind or by willed thinking, since the first thing to trigger it off are the sensations that enter our being through our body, and whatever causes them in the course of action is given by life, by what is in our way and we inadvertently stumble upon, and not by our conscious will. (This element of fate, or apparent randomness, in this sense, is what makes me think that Proust inadvertently treats what is provoked by a sensation, as well as the experience of timelessness ir causes, like a synchronicity between our subjective world and the external one; a connection of meaning. Since the communication between heterogeneous realities, or their coincidence, is mystical, like the physical element in the spiritual experience  Proust had, I think that besides its mystical dimension, Proust's epiphany, by giving priority to the concreteness of the physical over the disembodied insights of intellect in the reaching of essence, points to physicality's relevance in the spiritual realm, where it would be ever present, like flesh resurrected. 
   In a few words, the resurrection of the past, as it comes to be experienced in the present, is also a resurrection of the physical.
   Thus, Proust maintains the element of time in timelessness itself, when he says,  Tant de fois, au cours de ma vie, la réalité m'avait deçu parce que, au moment `ou je la percevais, mon imagination, qui était mon seul organe pour jouir de la beauté, ne pouvait s'appliquer `a elle, en vertu de la loi inévitable qui veut qu'on ne puisse imaginer que ce qui est absent. Et voici que soudain l'effect de cette dure loi s'était trouvé neutralisé, suspendu, par un expedient merveilleux de la nature, qui avait fait miroiter une sensation- bruit de la fourchette et du marteau, même inégalité de pavés- `a la fois dans le passé, ce qui permet `a mon imagination de la goûter, et dans le présent òu l'ébranlement effective de mes sens par le bruit, le contact, avait ajouté aux rêves de l'imagination ce dont ils sont habituellement dépourvus, l'idée d'existence et, grâce `a ce subterfuge, avait permits `a mon être d'obtenir, d'isoler, d'immobilizer- la durée d'un éclair- ce qu'il n'appréhend jamais: un peu de temps `a l'état pur. L'être qui était rené en moi quand, avec un tel frémissement de bonheur, j'avais entendu le bruit common `a la fois `a la cuiller qui touche l'assiette et au marteau qui frappe sur la roue, `a l'inégalité pour les pas des pavés de la cour Guermantes et du baptistère de Saint-Marc, cet être là ne se nourrit que de l'essence des choses, en elles seulement il trouve sa subsistence, ses délices. (So many times in my life reality disappointed me because, as I perceived it, my imagination, which was my only faculty to appreciate beauty, could not be applied to it (reality) by virtue of the inevitable law that we can only imagine what is absent. But suddenly, the effect of this harsh law was neutralized, suspended, by this wonderful expedient of nature, which made a sensation-noise of the fork and of the hammer- sparkle at the same time in the past- permitting my imagination to taste it- and in the present, where the effective shaking of my senses by noise, contact, had added to the dreams of the imagination what they are usually devoid of, the idea of existence, and thanks to this subterfuge, had allowed my being to obtain, to isolate, to immobilize - in the duration of a flash - what it never apprehends: a bit of time in a pure state. But let a noise already heard, an odor once breathed, be heard again, both in the present and in the past, real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, immediately the permanent and usually hidden essence of things is liberated and our true self which, sometimes for a long time seemed dead, awakens, comes alive by receiving the celestial nourishment which is brought to it. A minute freed from the order of time recreates in us to feel it the man freed from the order of time. The being who was reborn in me when, with such a thrill of happiness, I heard the sound common both to the spoon hitting the plate and to the hammer hitting the wheel,  and felt the same inequality for the steps of the cobblestones of the Guermantes courtyard and the baptistery of Saint-Marc, this being only feeds on the essence of things, in them alone it finds its subsistence, its delights.)

   In a few words, l'homme affranchi de l'ordre du temps, (the man liberated from the order of time) the  timeless man, who tastes the celestial nourishment brought to him, is, if for less than one minute, in the place where physical sensations can be real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, that is,  is in paradise. 
Putting it differently, if physical sensations are real without being in the chronological present,  ideal and yet concrete, they do exist in a higher dimension. 

    Looking from another angle, a physical reality that doesn't pertain to the order of time can only be a resurrection of the physical. In the same way,   the "instant" of time that is out of chronology, as Proust says, à l'état pur (in a pure state) is transcendent concreteness, or, resurrected existence.  
   The narrator, posited by Proust as the timeless subject, he who can only find his subsistence in the essence of things, our real self, in the writer's words, is the self who experiences this flash of paradise through the resurrection of his own sensations. It is our own  soul, and insofar as it keeps a dimension of concreteness, which is the seal of individuality, it is our own individual soul.

Proust and Mysticism

    One cannot ignore  Proust's mysticism in his assertion that the book one should write has already been written for one within oneself, and one's task should be that of looking inside and bring it to light.  This would be, for Proust, not just the discovery of one's real life, but a work of art. To talk about the implications of identifying this task to a work of art, and to something that has an ethical/religious dimension, I will begin by emphasizing how Proust viewed art.

   "Art for art's sake", the principle he believed in, following Ruskin, implies the transcendent quality of what values in itself and not in relation to anything else. Hence, Oscar Wilde, another adept of  this principle, proudly declares, "All art is quite useless."  

   A work of art is useless in the sense of finding its validity by being what it is and not by serving a function ahead of itself.  Usefulness is bondage to time: an object of use is only a means through which something else is accomplished down the line.  Meant for the fulfillment of a goal, what is useful has no intrinsic value. 

   Those who do not accept that art exists for its own sake only see it as contextual, transitional, and relative. The value of it from this angle would be purely historic. But although a work of art is made in a historical context, its cohesion, coherence, and uniqueness, account for a wholeness that transcends any context. 
   There can be no enslavement nor relativizing of what is whole; of the in itself, to use Kantian language. "Art for art's sake" means art as noumena, something beyond the limits of time and, in this sense, preexisting the artist- like Proust's "already written" book inside of him- and post existing him, that is, maintaining, throughout time, its same, transcendent quality.
   To fulfill the task of bringing this book, which is hidden deep inside one, to light,  means, for Proust, to make the work of art that expresses one's timeless and individual truth.  

   And he not only equates the genesis of it to an act of artistic creation, but  gives this genesis, or this bringing  of it to light, the ethical/religious quality of obliging that which is one's transcending truth- like a heavenly design-  when concluding that art is the real final judgment.  That is, the judgment based on who obliged his/her transcendent truth vs who didn't. 

   The miracle of art is to bring transcendence to the order of time; to link temporality and eternity, materiality and spirit.  By unveiling what is for one, and yet preexists one, art unveils what has always been; what can only have been willed by God.