30
RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
of the carriage of the Marquise de ViUeparisis and that of the trees them-
selves. Marcel recognizes the pleasure which fills him as that connected
with certain creative processes; he now knows that it is his duty
to deliver the trees of their secret, but as with the hawthorn, the time is not
yet ripe. The trees gesture, they want to communicate with him, but he is
incapable of replying. The experience marks him deeply and advances him
one step further on his road toward creation. The trees are assigned an
active role here; they convey their wish to communicate, while the pink
hawthorn seemed rather coquettish, wanting to keep its secret from the
young boy, unwilling even to let him suspect its existence.
Proust gives this moment almost religious implication. When he realizes
his failure to come to the aid of the trees the young man experiences a
feeling of betrayal as if he had denied his God. The religious overtone is
important, for it lifts art to the plane of religion, implying that Marcel’s
guilt can be redeemed only through art itself. The theme is taken up later
in the death scene of Bergotte, who achieves eternity through his works.
It is obvious that this experience of the trees is an aborted involuntary
memory; to Proust, involuntary memory behaves as grace does according
to Christian thought. Involuntary memory is an inexplicable phenomenon
which touches man without warning, reason, or explanation. At this par-
ticular moment Marcel should find an expression comparable to his im-
pression, he should raise the impression of his senses to an artistic expres-
sion. It is precisely this search for an expression which occurs in the
creation of a symbol, for a symbol exists only when an exterior object is
consciously set as an equal to an inner experience. The artist is the libera-
tor of the objects around him, just as Marcel, had he reached his maturity
at this point, would liberate the trees. Hc who is predestined as a creator
of the world should find the secret name hidden under the appearance of
the objects, the name which in turn expresses the essence of the object.
Nature is an object divested of any essence until it has been called to life
by the artist. This is, as Marcel realizes, not an easy task, for it demands the
concentration of all his faculties.
Artistic creativity in its most elementary stage, as Proust shows it here,
is a strained observation by the poet of a particular object around him, a
search for its true name which consists, to be sure, of the union of the outer
and inner reality. Observation is a key word, for the artist has to know
the object, possess it to its most minute detail. Had Marcel been able to
unveil the secret of the trees, he would have found that symbol which of
course is much more than a mere image, and which partakes of the language
of the absolute. Hence Marcel’s feeling of guilt and despair at the end of the
scene, for he knows that unless he acts now he will lose the secret of the
trees forever.