A Missing Boulevard in Versailles: Reading Time in Proust

Abstract

LINEAR TIME CHARACTERIZES HISTORIES. Not only the anonymous stories of cities and countries, but also individual histories-biographies. In Proust: The Early Years, George Painter describes Proust being driven through Illiers (Combray) with his ageing father. The carriage grates slowly on the cobblestone square. Father points at a small shop front, the store where grandfather sold candles and tapers. Son nods acknowledgment. A twist of smoke diffuses above the roof's single chimney. Father remembers rarely having coal. (3) It is a long way from these store-top rooms to the modern Paris apartment they live in. But the carriage can never be pulled far enough to be away. Departure, teleology, arrival, project, progress; the words surround linear time. Their temporality depends upon an unbroken continuity stretching between beginning and end. Nietzsche calls this cursive time. It is the time of writing. The temporality a sentence pursues in conveying meaning.