Reflections on Death in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu

Abstract

This article explores the links that exist between the experience and the mystery of death in À la recherche du temps perdu and some of its fundamental mechanisms, such as the dismantling of habit, concrete sensuality (as that of recognizing a familiar flavor) and involuntary memory, among others. Thus, I am proposing the classification of death according to its individual or collective dimension and concerning artistic creativity and the temporality of the work of art. To analyze the rebellion before the death of the author himself, the narrator and the different characters, as well as the complex relationships among them, I take the figure of Scherezade and that of the romantic hero, giving special attention to the enigma of death for the character of Bergotte. I will also resort to the fertility of comparing the treatment of death both by Proust and several philosophers, such as Epicurus, Plato, Barthes, Heidegger, Bergson, and Wittgenstein.