Generating Life from Literature: Proust in Balzac’s Aquarium

Abstract

ABSTRACT The early drafts of Proust's Recherche discuss the novelty of the relationship between reality and literature developed by Balzac. According to Proust, Balzac infused reality itself with life, just as he infused literature with life, and indeed life with literature. This article explores the multiple valences of the concept of “life”—literary, biographical, and sociobiological—in the Recherche, notably through a reading of the comparison between society and an aquarium in A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. This shows how the Recherche drew on the possibilities for dialogue between literature and science around the notion of “life.”