“... une apparition surnaturelle”: Window-motif and framing strategies in Mörike and Proust

Abstract

During the first half of the 19th century, the window emerged as a striking motif in art and literature. At the turn of the 20th century, framings and borders became essential once again. This article discusses the window-motif as a pattern of imagination, which seems particularly significant for authors between two ages – Mörike between the Napoleonic era and the Restauration in Germany, and Proust between 1900 and the First World War in France. Framing, or window-making, can be considered as a nostalgic gesture in periods of transition. It preserves the past in an area of idealization and constructs the hereafter despite its actual concealment – such as drawing a quasi-transcendental frame around the object. This article illustrates the evocation of real windows, but also explores their function as a textual strategy. Two of Mörike’s object poems, An einem Wintermorgen, vor Sonnenaufgang and Mein Fluß, exemplify the figural code being superimposed on the literal meaning to open up a view to a mysterious world. In Proust, the window-motif is correlated with the poetics of the mémoire involontaire. Time is treasured in objects, which grants a vision of the fulfilled past, but first and foremost seems to be regained in atmospheric moments created by syntactical structures – “between the words,” as evidenced in Du côté de chez Swann and referring to the defigurating dynamics of Proustian irony.