The Unveiling of Proust

Marcel Proust comes to Light:
Like all, or most, human beings, the sculpture of Marcel Proust, made by Edgar Duvivier, took nine months of gestation, from the conception of its idea to its inauguration. Nine months of anxiety through the vague and slow communication with local authorities in Cabourg (Proust's Balbec); nine months of uncertainty:
What if the French people didn't appreciate this type of accessible, life size sculpture- instead of something on a pedestal-and with which one can interact? What if they only liked the traditional way of turning the sculpted person into a monument to be looked up at from below, being above the direct reach of people?
I shared Edgar's concern because his emails to France would takes weeks and weeks to be answered. "When will the inauguration be?" " Where will you place "him"?
One should be ready for any kind of receptivity from people anywhere but, lo and behold, the returning of Proust to Cabourg was blessed.
Following the warm speech of Tristan Duval,  who was the current mayor of Cabourg and of the writer and Proustian authority, Gonzague Saint Bris - who confessed he'd already seen the statue prior to its unveiling and found it a magnificent work that shows both the inner and the communicative character of Proust. 

Questioning how it had been possible that a dandy, who was ill and bedridden while writing The Search, could have aroused passion in the whole world, Gonzague brilliantly concluded that it wasn't for writing about general subjects, but because he got closer and closer to himself by going deeply within, no-holds-bar. In his absolute authenticity, Proust resonated with people of all nationalities.
 The Proustian approach to oneself involves the search of one's profound self, that which, ignored by most, concerns the essence of each one, that which is promised and sought after by meditations of all types, transpersonal psychology, Junguian psychology, and New Age's doctrines.
With the typical daring of French intelligence, which in my opinion uniquely weds the intimate and the transpersonal, passion and intellect, M. Saint Bris passed from the historic, psychological and factual dimension, to that of spirit: Declaring the inauguration to be a moment of World Communion, he concluded that Edgar, with his ancient, French family name, had been chosen from above by Proust himself, to make his sculpture and take him back to Cabourg.
The statue is endowed with life not just for its elegant similarity to Proust, but also its interactive nature, the wonderful and dynamic possibility for people to be personal, with it.
Life, in interaction, concerns the requesting of not only the observation of the spectator, but his immersion in or participation in the work. Like it happens in Contemplative Interaction- the contemporary art of installation- the spectator contemplates the artwork, at the same time as his immersion in it is  what allows this work to reveal itself, transforming him into spectator and agent at the same time. Interaction is a communion of he who acts and he who reflects.
 Edgar's sculpture gives the spectator the opportunity to interact with it in a personal way: the possibility, really, of re creating it. Each person can take a selfie in whichever way he/she wants; each becomes unique through the particularity of his/her participation, equally making, through it, the sculpture to be reborn. For, in its generosity to give each spectator the chance to add something of him/herself, the sculpture eternally reveals itself. It is constantly created anew and constantly re creates, like an expression of the essence of life.
It is with great joy that we thus see the generosity of Marcel Proust being propagated through that of Edgar in the statue he gave life to and now lives in Cabourg. It  echoes the immense grace of Proust in writing a book whose readers  would be also the readers of themselves, as he stated it, that is, would be able to make the revelations of Proust's sublime intelligence, their own.
I think M. Saint Bris was right, when thinking that Proust chose Edgar Duvivier to resurrect his likeness and expression. When we returned to the hotel late at night, we saw many people taking their particular selfies with the sculpture, including a couple passionately kissing by its side. Would it be inspired by the passion of Proust himself? Or by the passion that he arouses? I bet!

Proust and the Real, Transcendent Reality

   Looking at this photo of Marcel Proust,  I remember, from his angelic expression, Iris Murdoch declaring that,  Proust writes like an angel. 

Not only does Proust write like an angel, but he uses  frequent metaphors about the angelic nature, in his poetic descriptions about what he sees. The delicacy and purity of the passage in which he mentions the pear trees in flower he saw in the "accursed" city, while waiting for Saint- Loup and the latter's maitresse,  even led him to wonder whether those were not really angels!
This alternation of a higher reality with the one we take for granted and is in front of our eyes happens often throughout The Search, and makes, in my opinion, some of the highest peaks of this novel. I say amen to flowers being angels, after I read Proust's angelic description of them.
Note that, in this passage, he mentions Mary Magdalene's mistaking Jesus for a gardener, her confusing  the  resurrected one for a mere mortal man. By this, Proust makes a parallelism between our usual, commonsensical view of flowers as mere plants, and our overlooking their angelic nature.
The  passage I am referring to was supposed to be happening around Easter, which certainly contributed to Proust's  mention  of Jesus resurrected. 
Resurrection is another frequent theme through The Search, whether taken metaphorically- as death of an old self and rebirth into a new one- or botanically, like in the passage Proust writes, when thinking about his work to be written, that he, as a seed, must die so that the fruit can grow out of "him", what actually did happen. Proust is essentially Christian because he is self-sacrificial to the core, and he is an angel because he did channel the angelic nature.

From Imagination to Contemplation to Absoluteness

     Right at the start of reporting his train trip to Balbec, Proust says that it would then be made by car, (on le ferait sans doute aujourd'hui en automobile).  He explains that a car can make the voyage more realistic, because it allows the traveller to be closer to the path and intimately follow the several ways through which  the surface of the Earth changes. However, the pleasure of a trip, according to him,  is not that of getting out of the vehicle one is traveling in and stoping whenever one wants, but of rendering the spatial diversity between one's departure and arrival  imperceptible,  so as to be able to feel it in its totality and intact. Just as it was in our thought, when our imagination took us from the place where we live to the heart of our destination.  This leap in space, for Proust,  felt less miraculous when covering a distance between two cities step by step, than when directly uniting two distinct, individual places on Earth. He points out that the individuality of each is represented by the train stations, which are not part of the cities but contain the essence of their personality. 

Preferring to go from one essence to the other, by leaving "intact" the distance between them, that is, by being removed from the diversity one experiences when covering this distance inside a car, Proust expresses his search for absoluteness, that which is whole independently from what led to it. 

Essences, or absolutes, cannot be relative to anything. They are "truths" in themselves and can only be accessed by contemplation, a mode of mind that is alien to considerations of causality, utility, and transiency- the main categories of reality. Our awareness of them spring from our respect, or reverence, to their endlessness. 
   Each train station, as the essence of a city, is everything one could possibly think and expect of this city at once, that is, regardless of temporality. Essences, the source of awe, are above ordinary thought and its sole concern for material reality. 

By conveying that when one transports oneself in imagination from the place one lives to the heart of a desired destination and keeping intact the distance  between them, one travels from one essence to the other, Proust identifies imagination, as the seat of essences, and contemplation, as a recognition of what is above reality.

 He expresses the same search for absoluteness,  when criticizing the showing of a painting along with trivial objects surrounding it. According to him,  such display, unlike what happens in museums, detracts the artist's act of mind that precisely isolated  his work from the real, and eradicates the uniqueness of such work. Making relative, in other words, that which should be absolute.

  Like Kant, Proust does not believe that what is objectively considered reality is ultimately real. But, unlike Kant's giving transcendence to practical reason by admitting free will in the realm of ethics, that is, freedom of choice to obey the categorical imperative against all one's possible inclinations and above all determinism, the Proustian mind finds this same freedom in accessing  the transcendence of essences, by imaginative and contemplative thought .