Writing Time: Marcel Proust’s Optics

Chapter three chronicles Marcel Proust’s quest to remake the novel by finding a way to capture the passage of time through writing. Beginning with his first attempt at the novel, and examining Proust’s unfinished and largely understudied Jean Santeuil, this chapter begins by revealing Proust’s highly fragmentary approach to writing. Continuing from Jean Santeuil to Proust’s second, and significantly more illustrious, À la recherche du temps perdu, it goes on to reveal where Proust honed his approach to fragmentary writing by turning to his experiences with media (and specifically optical devices that predate film). Following its discussion of Proust’s abandoned novel, the chapter goes on to document Proust’s understanding of optical media and their ability to capture the passage of time by combining fragmented views, as discussed at length in his Recherche. From here, it goes on to examine the drafts of both Jean Santeuil and la Recherche, and to show how Proust’s approach to fragmentary writing crystallized—both in its methods and its literary ambitions—through the lens of optical media.