Thesis Proposal 2
In À La recherche du temps perdu, Proust establishes a world where things rarely exist separately. Instead, people and objects are created by their placement, both in time and in space. In a different time, or a different place, both person and object are different. There seems to be no underlying exteriority—no outside reality—to the world envisioned by Proust. Perception is almost always figured through metonymic associations, both in the world described and in the text on the page, and it is always the product of the subjectivity of the perceiver. The experiences of each character become the reality they each inhabit. Thus, the characters in the Recerche exist in different spheres. These spheres are dynamic, changing with both time and place. The only means of connection or of escape that is offered is art, “par l'art seulement nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n'est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu'il peut y avoir dans la lune.” Somehow, art allows us to see through the contraints of our own subjectivity. The essential quality of art is the particular faculty of vision it bestows. To experience art is to acquire vision and to be able to both see the world as it is, and also to recognize the plurality of worlds that are seen by others.
The central question of my thesis is this: How does art manage to escape the metonymic contingencies of time and space and instead exist as a metaphoric unity? The idea of a “metaphoric unity” requires further explanation. In À L’ombre des jeune filles en fleurs, the charm of the marine paintings in Mme de Guermantes’ atelier are due to “a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry is called metaphor”. In particular, the marine painting by Elstir has a “multiform and powerful unity”, despite being built on a metonymic connection between the land and the sea. The paintings of Elstir give access to a certain quality of vision through which one sees “nature such as it is, poetically”.
In answering this question I also want to explore the place of vision in the Recherche and its relation to subjectivity. To do so will necessarily involve an analysis of the distinguishing characteristics of vision as apart from the other senses. From the beginning of the Recherce, vision occupies a perculiar and important spot. In the first scenes of Du côté de chez Swann, Marcel undergoes a progressive awakening that begins with sight. At first, he has not yet developed a sense of self as subject, and though he can now see—having seperated himself from the subjects of his books—the objects of his perception are incomprehensible to him, they appear to his esprit as “a thing without cause”. The sound of the whistling trains, “like the song of a bird in the forest”, signals the return of his ability to hear. Though there now seems to be a distinction between inside and outside, it is not yet definite. The sounds of the trains are “more or less far away”, and do not establish definite points of reference. Instead, they elicit dream like images of a voyager, and the relationship between the unfamiliar experiences of the voyager’s explorations and the indelible imprints they will leave on his memory. The bounds of Marcel’s physical sense of self are more firmly established as he (re)gains the faculty of touch with the feeling of “his cheeks against the beautiful cheeks of the pillow that, full and fresh, are like the cheeks of our childhood”. And yet, this already signals the beginning of Marcel’s processes of metonymic (and metaphoric) description as his method of bringing the world into being. The pillow has beautiful cheeks because of its contigent, metonymic connection with Marcel’s own cheeks, which are then in turn understood metaphorically in relation to the pillow’s cheeks. Marcel does not (re)gain taste and smell for some time, but already the processes of metonymy and metaphor, by which the worlds of the Recherche come into being, have been unleashed. These processes are often realized as experiences of synesthesia that blur the boundaries between metonymy and metaphor (Ullmann). Metaphoric connections often culminate a process of metonymic connection, and yet they usually refer back, establishing a circularity that appears to coincide with the bounds of particular worlds, which we might also characterize as perpsectives of experience.
My research will necessarily involve the analysis of description. In the interest of arriving at a theoretical sense of what it means to describe, or to render something in description, I will conclude my proposal with some thoughts on description: To describe is to attribute qualities to something, it is to make it (that something) an object of thought and a subject of discourse, and in doing so, to diffenrentiate it from other things—to make it no longer some thing, but a particular thing, distinguished as an individual entity, or, as part of a larger group that is different from other groups . Above all, description is expansive in nature. It enlarges the footprint that a particular entity occupies in our imagination. At its basis, description is the creation of difference, without which a particular thing could not be perceived to exist. We have then the two fundamental qualities of description, expansion and differentiation. Again, it is important to understand differentiation in a broad sense. We might say of object y that it is like object x, and though we are certainly establishing a similarity between the two, what we are essentially doing is conferring upon object y the properties of object x, thereby making object y distinct from other non-x objects.
What Marcel undergoes as he wakes up is a process of expansion and differentiation. Description is in some sense constitutive of subjectivity in the Recherche. It is the process by which subjects become aware of their surroundings and of their relationship to them. The ambiguity of “their” and “them” in the last sentence is indicative of this process. Both subject and object change with each other, neither one can be seen as outside the system, as the cause of the changes undergone by the other.
The central question of my thesis is this: How does art manage to escape the metonymic contingencies of time and space and instead exist as a metaphoric unity? The idea of a “metaphoric unity” requires further explanation. In À L’ombre des jeune filles en fleurs, the charm of the marine paintings in Mme de Guermantes’ atelier are due to “a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry is called metaphor”. In particular, the marine painting by Elstir has a “multiform and powerful unity”, despite being built on a metonymic connection between the land and the sea. The paintings of Elstir give access to a certain quality of vision through which one sees “nature such as it is, poetically”.
In answering this question I also want to explore the place of vision in the Recherche and its relation to subjectivity. To do so will necessarily involve an analysis of the distinguishing characteristics of vision as apart from the other senses. From the beginning of the Recherce, vision occupies a perculiar and important spot. In the first scenes of Du côté de chez Swann, Marcel undergoes a progressive awakening that begins with sight. At first, he has not yet developed a sense of self as subject, and though he can now see—having seperated himself from the subjects of his books—the objects of his perception are incomprehensible to him, they appear to his esprit as “a thing without cause”. The sound of the whistling trains, “like the song of a bird in the forest”, signals the return of his ability to hear. Though there now seems to be a distinction between inside and outside, it is not yet definite. The sounds of the trains are “more or less far away”, and do not establish definite points of reference. Instead, they elicit dream like images of a voyager, and the relationship between the unfamiliar experiences of the voyager’s explorations and the indelible imprints they will leave on his memory. The bounds of Marcel’s physical sense of self are more firmly established as he (re)gains the faculty of touch with the feeling of “his cheeks against the beautiful cheeks of the pillow that, full and fresh, are like the cheeks of our childhood”. And yet, this already signals the beginning of Marcel’s processes of metonymic (and metaphoric) description as his method of bringing the world into being. The pillow has beautiful cheeks because of its contigent, metonymic connection with Marcel’s own cheeks, which are then in turn understood metaphorically in relation to the pillow’s cheeks. Marcel does not (re)gain taste and smell for some time, but already the processes of metonymy and metaphor, by which the worlds of the Recherche come into being, have been unleashed. These processes are often realized as experiences of synesthesia that blur the boundaries between metonymy and metaphor (Ullmann). Metaphoric connections often culminate a process of metonymic connection, and yet they usually refer back, establishing a circularity that appears to coincide with the bounds of particular worlds, which we might also characterize as perpsectives of experience.
My research will necessarily involve the analysis of description. In the interest of arriving at a theoretical sense of what it means to describe, or to render something in description, I will conclude my proposal with some thoughts on description: To describe is to attribute qualities to something, it is to make it (that something) an object of thought and a subject of discourse, and in doing so, to diffenrentiate it from other things—to make it no longer some thing, but a particular thing, distinguished as an individual entity, or, as part of a larger group that is different from other groups . Above all, description is expansive in nature. It enlarges the footprint that a particular entity occupies in our imagination. At its basis, description is the creation of difference, without which a particular thing could not be perceived to exist. We have then the two fundamental qualities of description, expansion and differentiation. Again, it is important to understand differentiation in a broad sense. We might say of object y that it is like object x, and though we are certainly establishing a similarity between the two, what we are essentially doing is conferring upon object y the properties of object x, thereby making object y distinct from other non-x objects.
What Marcel undergoes as he wakes up is a process of expansion and differentiation. Description is in some sense constitutive of subjectivity in the Recherche. It is the process by which subjects become aware of their surroundings and of their relationship to them. The ambiguity of “their” and “them” in the last sentence is indicative of this process. Both subject and object change with each other, neither one can be seen as outside the system, as the cause of the changes undergone by the other.
posted by E at 12:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home