Proust, the Metaxy, and Transcendence

Abstract

This paper explores how Marcel Proust, in his long novel *In Search of Lost Time,* presents at explicit length an account of human existence that shows it to be a simultaneous participation in both time and eternity, and that one of Proust's intentions is to show, in the mode of literary art, that any human existence and any work of profound literary art can only be revealed to have a unified narrative meaning, as a whole, because human conscious existence participates in eternal reality. In this regard, Proust presents a vision of existence that corresponds to Eric Voegelin's philosophical account of human life as "existence in the metaxy," that is to say, existence as always lived in the "in-between" of immanence (world) and transcendence (eternity). On the other hand, Proust is careful not to "personalize" transcendence, the dimension of eternity, that he affirms humans to participate in - he never refers to it as "God." Some reasons for this, drawn from examination of the novel's long account of Proust's development (though Proust and the novel's Narrator are not precisely identical), are explored. They include Proust's experiences of and descriptions of "love," and his confessed unconcern for any "notion of justice." Given the Proustian existential development and anthropology both implicit and explicit in the novel, it is not surprising to find that experiences of "the eternal"--though conducive in the novel to experiences of deep "joy" - are never experiences of an "I-Thou" encounter with a divine reality. None of this detracts from the importance of Proust's masterly "modern" presentation of human life as only making sense if we understand it as a simultaneous participation in worldly and timeless meaning.