It should be also considered that, in often placing the truth of the heart over that of facts, ie. the intensity of a subjective state over that of objective reality, the Proustian text asserts the value of authenticity over facts; individual essence, above transience.
In believing that there is an individual truth to each of us (some are lucky to discover "the hour of truth" before that of death, in the Proustian text) he identifies this truth to the life we did live but ignored. To the book that has already been written, inside of us. We have to decipher what is inwardly deep and at the same time transcends us: What turns out to be our work of art, our authenticity, and our soul.
Proust gives the reader the opportunity of experiencing the divine presence by him/herself, instead of indoctrinating the latter with conceptualizations of it. He doesn't spell the letters G, O, D, because he doesn't need to. Proust is all words and, at the same time, the overcoming of them.
In his text, he takes the readers by the hand through his deepest spiritual experience, allowing them to make this experience their own, and to soar high above, with him. But if he'd indoctrinated faith, he would have committed, to quote his words, a grand indelicatèsse. He would have written a book that would be like an object with a price tag on, to use his own metaphor when talking about books with theories.
Metaphors, which often appear in Proustian descriptions, assert nothing directly and thus escape the one sidedness of concepts. They are transmitted from heart to heart, and not from intellect to intellect. Like Proust's departing from the most personal and concrete element, his individual experience, in a confessional style that is the pure generosity of sharing his best self, is also transmitted from heart to heart. The poetic exuberance of the search for "his" truth shows that the depth of one's real self is beyond particularity because it is paradoxically ultimately individual; it is one's soul.
Proust's sentences, like his text as a whole, have the cosmic circularity that makes them self-sufficient. In this sense, the circularity of these sentences and that of the whole Proustian text reflect each other, like Jung's representation of the Self, in which an inner, small dot in the middle of a circle, reflects the whole of the circumference and is reflected by it.
Proust gives the reader the opportunity of experiencing the divine presence by him/herself, instead of indoctrinating the latter with conceptualizations of it. He doesn't spell the letters G, O, D, because he doesn't need to. Proust is all words and, at the same time, the overcoming of them.
In his text, he takes the readers by the hand through his deepest spiritual experience, allowing them to make this experience their own, and to soar high above, with him. But if he'd indoctrinated faith, he would have committed, to quote his words, a grand indelicatèsse. He would have written a book that would be like an object with a price tag on, to use his own metaphor when talking about books with theories.
Metaphors, which often appear in Proustian descriptions, assert nothing directly and thus escape the one sidedness of concepts. They are transmitted from heart to heart, and not from intellect to intellect. Like Proust's departing from the most personal and concrete element, his individual experience, in a confessional style that is the pure generosity of sharing his best self, is also transmitted from heart to heart. The poetic exuberance of the search for "his" truth shows that the depth of one's real self is beyond particularity because it is paradoxically ultimately individual; it is one's soul.
Proust's sentences, like his text as a whole, have the cosmic circularity that makes them self-sufficient. In this sense, the circularity of these sentences and that of the whole Proustian text reflect each other, like Jung's representation of the Self, in which an inner, small dot in the middle of a circle, reflects the whole of the circumference and is reflected by it.
The use of metaphor, as well as the intimate report of the narrator's personal life, are equally fundamental traits of Proust's style, and equally point to his faithfulness to the physical dimension of reality, of his departing from the small and apparently simple to the great; from brief facts, to the endlessness of essence, from amorality to sanctity, from matter to spirit.
Through the Proustian "lenses" the reader sees, in his own self, depths that he would never have been aware of before.
And in identifying individual truth to essence and to artistic creation, Proust transmits the divine presence, the sublime reality above factuality.
And in identifying individual truth to essence and to artistic creation, Proust transmits the divine presence, the sublime reality above factuality.
Here are examples of the evocation of religious dimension, through the poetic beauty of Proust's words:
In Le Côte de Guermantes, after a long, descriptive passage of pear trees that the narrator contemplates, he compares their white flowers to angels, mentioning even a biblical story: Ces arbustes que j'avais vu dans le jardin, en les prenant pour des dieux étrangers, ne m'étais-je pas trompé, comme Madeleine quand, dans un autre jardin..... elle vit une forme humaine et "crut que c'était le jardinier? Gardiens des souvenirs de l'age d'or, garants de la promesse que la realité n'est pas ce qu'on croit, que la splendeur de la poésie, que l'éclat merveilleux de l'innocence peuvent y resplendir et pourront être la recompense que nous nous efforcerons de mériter, les grandes créatures blanches....... n'était-ce pas plutôt des anges?
The miracle of beauty is its power of exclusivity: a reality that dims everything around it. With nothing to be added nor detracted from it, beauty admits of no randomness, like the materialization of something that precedes it, like a divine plan. As the visible dimension of faith, it is sheer existential reassurance. Pledged to the atemporality of essences, to their beauty, Proust speaks for God and shares the divine presence undogmatically.
This presence is also expressed when he describes Swann thinking about la petite phrase, and comes up with the breath- taking conclusion: Peut-être est-ce le néant qui est le vrai et tout notre rêve est-il inexistant, mais alors nous sentons qu'il faudra que ces phrases musicales, ces notions qui existent par rapport `a lui, ne soient rien non plus. Nous périrons, mais nous avons pour otages ces captives divines qui suivront notre chance. Et la mort avec elles a quelque chose de moins amer, de moins inglorieux, peut-être de moins probable.
By not asserting directly the existence of an after life, Proust, yet again, leaves the implication of it to be experienced by the reader by suggesting that death cannot put an end to ces captives divines, these messengers of God: Swann n'avait donc pas tort de croire que la phrase de la sonate existat réellement. And, ...ele appartenait pourtant `a une order de créatures surnaturelles..."
The poignancy of what Proust transmits is, much beyond a proof or an assertion of divine existence, an experience of its reality.
Identifying, as mentioned again, artistic creativity to the truth of essences' dimension, the timelessness of the divine, Proust doesn't indoctrinate anything. With the same humbleness and generosity, he offers the reader, instead, the experience of such identification, when eloquently saying:
... au fond the quelles douleurs avait-il (Vinteuil) puisé cette force de Dieu, cette puissance illimitée de créer?
Divine presence and that which is the source of creativity, our highest self, are at one, giving us the precious clue to fulfill God's ways to one and each of us.
By not asserting directly the existence of an after life, Proust, yet again, leaves the implication of it to be experienced by the reader by suggesting that death cannot put an end to ces captives divines, these messengers of God: Swann n'avait donc pas tort de croire que la phrase de la sonate existat réellement. And, ...ele appartenait pourtant `a une order de créatures surnaturelles..."
The poignancy of what Proust transmits is, much beyond a proof or an assertion of divine existence, an experience of its reality.
Identifying, as mentioned again, artistic creativity to the truth of essences' dimension, the timelessness of the divine, Proust doesn't indoctrinate anything. With the same humbleness and generosity, he offers the reader, instead, the experience of such identification, when eloquently saying:
... au fond the quelles douleurs avait-il (Vinteuil) puisé cette force de Dieu, cette puissance illimitée de créer?
Divine presence and that which is the source of creativity, our highest self, are at one, giving us the precious clue to fulfill God's ways to one and each of us.
