Seeing Yourself in Others’ Blindness: Learning from Literature as Epitomized in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

Abstract

Recognizing yourself in literature can not only help you to get a clearer grasp of what you already think and feel. It can also deeply unsettle your vision of yourself. This article examines a hitherto neglected mechanism to this effect: learning by way of seeing yourself in others’ blindness. I show that In Search of Lost Time epitomizes this phenomenon. Confronting characters oblivious to their old age makes the protagonist realize that he, too, has aged without noticing it, and invites readers to analogous insights. The paper contributes to the discussion on how you can learn from literature and adds a twist to Marcel Proust’s claim that the purpose of literature is that readers recognize themselves in it.