Abstract
Goethe with his elective affinities, Stendhal with his cristallisation, are among Marcel Proust's forerunners in the use of scientific analogies in fiction. In our time, D. H. Lawrence has made his readers familiar with electricity as an analogue for the passion of love. But it seems safe to say that no writer has ever made more varied and skillful use of metaphors from science than Proust. This is the more remarkable because A la Recherche du Temps perdu is better known for the allusions to painting and music than for the allusions to science. Admirers like André Maurois, Camille Vettard, and Jean Mouton content themselves with citing a few examples. A study of Proust's analogies from the sciences is interesting for several reasons. There is, for one thing, the question of Proust's scientific culture. Another question is the value of these analogies for clarification of the phenomena described. A third point of interest concerns their artistic value. Do they come up to the ideal of the author who wrote: “Je crois que la métaphore seule peut donner une sorte d'éternité au style … ”? What is the function of these metaphors in the novel conceived as a work of art?
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