Metaphor in M. Proust’s Artistic World: From the Being of Art to the Art of Being

Abstract

The article deals with the functions of metaphor in the artistic world of M. Proust. In the context of the novel sequence In Search of Lost Time, metaphor becomes a mechanism to implement involuntary memory, which allows to combine the present (impressions) and the past (memories). Metaphor, given by the associative connection between impressions and memories, becomes the main constructive law of the artistic model of reality created by the French writer. The multifunctionality of metaphor correlates with the three forms of the subject of consciousness that appears in the context of the artistic whole of the novel sequence as an author, a narrator and a character. The author organizes the work of involuntary memory, based on the metaphor; the narrator balances what has been fished out of the past against the present with the help of experience associations; the character experiences the impressions by going through discoveries and disappointments. Proust’s lyrical epos gives the subject the ability to move beyond the hellish circle of the present into timeless dimensions. The novels created by the author and the character, intersect creating the effect of full being, allowing the subject of creative consciousness to recover its identity by overcoming painful contradictions of individual existence in the artistic creativity as in the dialogical interaction with the other. By using the formal and the hermeneutical methods with the emphasis on the philosophy of dialogue, the article explores the peculiarities of metaphor functioning at the macro- and microlevels. The former allows to construct the experimental picture of the world at the intersection of different time-space spheres that correlate with each other due to the spiritual and intellectual efforts of the subject. The latter allows us to consider the artistic image based on metaphor the core of the modernist writer’s artistic style and the way to the new concept of artist and art.