Rehearing Lost Time: Proust and Mahler

Abstract

Though Proust and Gustav Mahler never met and knew nothing of each other’s work, the parallels between the Proustian novel and Mahlerian symphony offer insights into both genres. Both question their most basic assumptions — about time, subjectivity, and the negotiation of private and public identities — but to explore this parallel requires going beyond a discussion of the function of music for Proust’s novels. It is found instead at the level of literary and musical structure, in terms of the temporal dislocations of narrative and musical form that enable the simultaneous narration of experience and a critical self-reflection upon that experience.