Evan Trimble
Chapter 2: Elstir’s paintings and Marcel


During his sojourn in Balbec, Marcel’s vision of the world is profoundly affected by the paintings of Elstir. In these paintings, Marcel encounters a recreated world where familiar objects appear as though for the first time. While discovering the world anew, Marcel also recovers past impressions of experiences he had forgotten. Elstir’s recreation and Marcel’s remembrance are fundamentally intertwined: the barrier to each is the same conceptuality of habitual language and understanding. This conceptuality is defeated by metaphor, which, in combining disparate contexts of linguistic association, forces the interpreter beyond habitual modes of perception. “Interpreter” is intentionally vague as though this chapter deals with visual representation and reception, the overarching interactions between art-piece (painting, song, text) and interpreter are similar. The particular interest of painting is the ability it offers the viewer to see the world “such as it is, poetically.” This capacity of vision arises from Elstir’s metaphoric approach to representation, wherein he does not actually represent reality, but instead recreates it. Metaphor’s ability to recreate our vision of things resolves the apparent paradox of how figurative language such as metaphor can provide a more direct perception of the world than ordinary, mimetic representative strategies of realism.
In the Balbec episode, art’s power lies in its ability to effect a transformation or transcendence of the viewer’s conceptual worldview. The viewer no longer sees things through a conceptual veil, but instead acquires a capacity of direct perception, which Marcel later describes as seeing things “in the order of our perceptions”. Through the course of the Recherche Marcel discovers that the only means of escaping this conceptual barrier is through art. This view of art’s function is similar to that outlined by Henri Bergson in Le comique de caractère:
What is the object of art? If reality came and directly struck our senses and our consciousness, if we could enter into immediate communication with things and with ourselves, I strongly believe that art would be useless, or rather that we would all be artists, for our souls would vibrate in continuous unison with nature. […] Between nature and us, what do I say? Between us and our own consciousness, a veil is interposed, a thick veil for the common people amongst us, and a light veil, almost transparent, for the artist and the poet. What fact has woven this veil? Was it by malice or by friendship? We had to live, and life requires that we apprehend things in the relationship that they have with our needs.

“Que est l’objet de l’art? Si la réalité venait frapper directement nos sens et notre conscience, si nous pouvions entrer en communication immédiate avec les choses et avec nous-mêmes, je crois bien que l’art serait inutile, ou plutôt que nous serions touts artistes, car notre âme vibrerait alors continuellement à l’unisson de la nature. […] Entre la nature et nous, que dis-je? Entre nous et notre propre conscience, un voile s’interpose, voile épais pour le commun des hommes, voile léger, presque transparent, pour l’artiste et le poète. Quelle fée a tissé ce voile? Fut-ce par malice ou par amitié? Il fallait vivre, et la vie exige que nous appréhendions les choses dans le rapport qu’elles ont à nos besoins.” (485-9)

In Bergson’s view, we fail to see the world directly because we see things only as they relate to our needs. Art forces the viewer to see beyond utilitarian concerns, beyond a subjective sense of the cause and effect relationships between self and the world, and to instead apprehend the world simply, directly.
Art defeats the habitual vision of daily life in one of two ways. When it forces a reconfiguration and expansion of the linguistic concepts used in its interpretation, art simply effects a transformation of the viewer’s worldview. In these instances, art, while eroding an old set of relationships between subject and object, replaces them with a new, expanded set of relationships. This is similar to what Bergson describes, when speaking of Rousseau, he says that art can introduce us to a new emotion (1009). In these instances, we are not talking of seeing things purely “in the order of our perceptions”, but of seeing them within a different context, which is to say we see them as defined by a different set of relationships. More radically, art forces the viewer entirely outside of the conceptual constraints of language, producing an aporia whose resolution is only ever partial. In these cases, art has a very disarming quality; its presentation of the world effaces the subjective constraints of the lens through which the viewer typically sees. There ceases to be a lens, we are no longer talking of a way of seeing; instead, it is a direct vision, unmediated by any concerns of the subjective self. The change in worldview effected is more dramatic, it is not simply a transformation of worldview but its transcendence. Where art simply effects a transformation, , the first lens is exchanged for another, and it is quite correct to talk of a new way of seeing. At what point this new way of seeing becomes itself an aspect of the viewer’s subjectivity, of her subjective constraints is an important question, but it will be addressed in subsequent chapters.

Meeting Elstir
Elstir is first mentioned by Marcel in something of an aside after Marcel has begun reading The Letters of Madame de Sévigné while riding on the train to Balbec. It is a book his grandmother has given him to read during the voyage, and he has only just begun reading when he stops to contemplate the mistaken readings of others who are tricked by purely formal particularities that relate to the era, and to life in the salon (I, p.653). In contrast to them, he says of his grandmother:
But my grandmother, who had come to [Madame de Sévigné] from within, by the love of her own, for nature, had taught me to love true beauties, that are completely other. They soon hit me all the more so that Mme de Sévigné is a great artist of the same family as a painter that I would meet in Balbec and who had such a profound influence on my vision of things, Elstir. I came to realize at Balbec that it is in the same manner as him that she presents things to us, in the order of our perceptions, instead of first explaining them by their cause.

Mais ma grand’mère, qui était venue à celle-ci par le dedans, par l’amour pour les siens, pour la nature, m’avait appris à en aimer les vraies beautés, qui sont tout autres. Elles devaient bientôt me frapper d’autant plus que Mme de Sévigné est une grande artiste de la même famille qu’un peintre que j’allais rencontrer à Balbec et qui eut une influence si pronfonde sur ma vision des choses, Elstir. Je me rendis compte à Balbec que c’est de la même façon que lui qu’elle nous présente les choses, dans l’ordre de nos perceptions, au lieu de les expliquer d’abord par leur cause.” (I, 653)

This brief paragraph outlines a complex connection between the true beauties realized in art and their capacity to effect a transformation of the viewer’s perception, thus allowing him to see the world as it is. The passage begins with an enigmatic notion of coming “from within”. What is this the inside to? What is the corresponding outside to the implied binary? There are two possibilities. In close proximity in the sentence, there is the demonstrative pronoun “this” (celle-ci; replaced by the square-bracketed ‘Madame de Sévigné above). “Within” is then inside of Madame de Sévigné, which in the context should be understood as the book entitled The Letters of Madame de Sévigné. In this sense, the “inside” is the interior (underlying, essential,?) truth of the art in question. The second possibility is that Marcel’s grandmother has come to Madame de Sévigné from within herself. We might understand this as arising from her consciousness, or alternately as from within an inner, personal aspect of mind, not determined by the exterior conceptual fabric of social norms. In this sense, the grandmother’s reading is clearly opposed to those of the faulty readers whose mistakes set up the conjunctive “but” that begins the sentence. The possibility that a part of the transformation of vision arises from within the viewer raises a paradox. How are we to understand a view of art as capable of removing the constraints of the viewer’s subjectivity, and yet as also dependent on the participation of the viewer (“from within”) in order that their own subjectivity be effaced? The suggestion is that art reveals the exterior world to its viewer, unadorned by the projected codifications of conceptual thought, while also revealing to the viewer impressions from his past experiences.

The separation between misperception and a true perception of the phenomenal world (nature) forms the basis for the aesthetic theory that is developed through the course of Marcel’s encounters with Elstir and his art. The heart of the matter is the appreciation of “true beauties” and the capacity of vision that this appreciation bestows. Though this is clearly stated when Marcel says that his grandmother taught him to “love true beauties, that are completely other”, its meaning remains a mystery. The explanatory, “that are completely other”, though suggestive is in no way definite. It implies an opposition, but to what? Two ideas we have already encountered come to mind: other than social (not socially constructed) and other than self. At the very least, what is “completely other” is by its complete alterity also completely different. If the reference point is assumed to be the experiences (memories) of the perceiver, then to be completely different is to be entirely new. True beauties, therefore, have as a condition that they be unfamiliar. However, one can also choose a different reference point. The “other” may simply be an opposition to our normal ways of seeing. In Bergson’s terminology, this means a capacity of vision beyond the utilitarian calculus that determines our day to day life.
In both cases, the important common element is the sense of unfamiliarity. It is this unfamiliarity that gives rise to the new capacity of vision that Marcel speaks of when he talks of the “painter that I would meet in Balbec and who had such a profound influence on my vision of things, Elstir.” (I. p.653) The placement of Elstir’s name in this sentence is important as its syntax mirrors that of the sentence on true beauties (“…true beauties, that are completely other”). In the first case, there is a tension between the apparently self-evident clarity of true beauties and the explanatory “completely other” that follows. These true beauties now become as mysterious as the appended phrase that one hopes might explain them. In the same way that the explanatory, “that are completely other” was set of from its sentence, separated by a comma and dangling on the end, Elstir’s name is also separated from the rest of the sentence. Though a small point, these breaks in the natural metonymic connections of reading have important logical consequences. Elstir comes to occupy a crucial yet enigmatic place in the world of the Recherche: though he has an astute perception of reality, he is also disconnected from the world as it is commonly known.
In a crucial scene in the painter’s atelier, Marcel explains his experience of Elstir’s paintings by an analogy to metaphor, “I could discern that the charm of each one [painting] consisted in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry we name metaphor.” (I, 835) In a number of other passages centered on Elstir, his art and Marcel’s experience of the two, the words “metaphor”, “poetic” or a variant (poetic, metaphoric, etc.) frequently appear. Each of these scenes is of interest for the hints they give about how art (in these cases painting) can transform a viewer’s vision of the phenomenal world. Though Marcel describes this transformation by analogy to metaphor, the actual properties of painting are more than analogically similar to metaphor. Looking at the scenes as a whole, it is clear that Marcel believes that painting has a central, metaphorical component.
Though no direct definition of metaphor ever appears in the Recherche, the following passage contains an important discussion of the metaphoric effects of Elstir’s art. Marcel has just entered Elstir’s studio for the first time and having described the studio itself, he now describes Elstir’s marine paintings:
Naturally, what he had in his studio, was for the most part marines taken here, at Balbec. But I could discern that the charm of each one consisted in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry we name metaphor, and that, if God the Father had created things by naming them, it was in removing their name, or in giving them another, that Elstir recreated them. The names that designate things respond always to a notion of the intelligence, foreign to our genuine impressions, and they force us to eliminate from them all that does not return to this notion.

“Naturellement, ce qu’il avait dans son atelier, ce n’était guère que des marines prises ici, à Balbec. Mais j’y pouvais discerner que le charme de chacune consistait en une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore, et que, si Dieu le Père avait créé les choses en les nommant, c’est en leur ôtant leur nom, ou en leur en donnant un autre, qu’Elstir les recréait. Les noms qui désignent les choses répondent toujours à une notion de l’intelligence, étrangère à nos impressions véritables, et qui nous force à éliminer d’elles tout ce qui ne se rapporte pas à cette notion” ( I. p.835)

The phrase, “in removing their name, or in giving them another”, captures an essential part of the work that metaphor does, and also points to the two ways in which Elstir recreates the objects he represents. In the first type of recreation, Elstir’s paintings remove the names of the things they depict. In doing so, the objects represented are forced outside of language. On the other hand, Marcel also suggests we understand the effect of metaphor as the bestowal of a new name. In this instance, instead of pushing the represented objects outside of linguistic understanding, Elstir’s paintings force an expansion of language, making a new perception possible within language. Names are important for their role as place-holders within language. For each speaker, they are a proxy for an assortment of knowledge (the signified) about the named item. In removing or changing the names of what he represents, Elstir removes or alters the connections to other signs in the language. For Marcel, names do not pick out the real world. The signifieds (notions of the mind) to which they are linked obscure the referents to which they are both supposed to refer. In removing names then, in pushing represented objects out of normal linguistic relations, metaphor pushes its perceiver beyond the normal conceptual framework of signs. What Marcel suggests then, when he talks of Elstir removing the names of objects, is that Elstir’s paintings represent things in such a way as to force us to look at them as though for the first time.
That Marcel should discover metaphor as a way past the constraints of linguistic understanding is paradoxical. How can metaphor, which at its basis is a complication of linguisitic relations—is rightly referred to as figurative [discussion of figure and form?] language—how can it be more mimetic than non-figurative language? The answer is two-fold. The first part of the answer, as discussed above, lies in the way metaphor works: it does not put things into relation based on the standard linguistic and conceptual structures. Instead, it combines two ideas (or more) so as to create a conceptual conflict. In effect, the worldview that underlies our conceptual understanding—the relationships between signifieds—is broken.
Marcel’s explanation of metaphor as the removal or substitution of names occurs within a revealing context. He says, “if God the Father had created things in naming them…”. The comparison to God the Father is important because it points to the fundamental way in which metaphor more accurately captures the phenomenal world. Elstir, and artists more generally, are being compared to the creator. Their works, to the extent that they are metaphoric, are more mimetic because they are creative instead of representative. It does not matter that Elstir’s paintings do not physically alter the world. It is enough that they alter our perception of it. It is in this fundamental sense of creativity as (re)creation that Elstir’s paintings effect Marcel. As it is known to our awareness, the physical world has been altered. The separation between representation and represented, between constructed and real, is collapsed. To call Elstir’s paintings mimetic is even to miss the target: in recreating things, in presenting objects so that the viewer experiences them as though for the first time, Elstir presents them with the same directness as the phenomenal world. His paintings do not refer to notions of the mind, but instead recreate impressions of the phenomenal world. In breaking the bond between sign and signified, his paintings render them both useless, and bring the perceiver closer to pre-conceptual perception. That figurative language such as metaphor should actually be more mimetic than regular language would appear to reverse our normal conception of things, but this is what Marcel discovers.
One of the art’s principle functions in the Recherche is to force us out of our habitual ways of seeing, to force us beyond conceptuality and into an appreciation of things as they appear to us. In a small aside about what it is that makes a photograph admirable, Marcel says:
Since the beginnings of Elstir, we have known what we call ‘admirable’ photographs of countrysides and towns. If we seek to specify what the amateurs designate in this case by that epithet, we will see that it ordinarily applies to any singular image of a known thing, an image different from those that we habitually see, singular and yet true, and that because of that is for us doubly gripping as it astonishes us, makes us leave our habits, and at the same time makes us re-enter ourselves in reminding us of an impression.

“Depuis les débuts d’Elstir, nous avons connu ce qu’on appelle ‘d’admirables’ photographies de paysages et de villes. Si on cherche à préciser ce que les amateurs désignent dans ce cas par cette épithète, on verra qu’elle s’applique d’ordinaire à quelque image singulière d’une chose connue, image différente de celles que nous avons l’habitude de voir, singulière et pourtant vraie, et qui à cause de cela est pour nous doublement saisissante parce qu’elle nous étonne, nous fait sortie de nos habitudes, et tous à la fois nous fait rentrer en nous-même en nous rappelant une impression.” (I. p.838)

This is the description of seeing a familiar object as if for the first time. The importance of originality for great art is contained in the difficulty of creating a “singular image of a known thing”. The idea of a habitual mode of vision suggests that we see things in a particular way most of the time. Our habitual vision is the result of accrued ideas and experiences, both of which are stored in memory and re-enter our consciousness only through language. It is a world where we do not understand things as they are so much as we understand them to be instances of particular concepts. Because what we see is conditioned by our ideas and previous experiences, referentiality to the actual phenomena of the exterior world fails. Our habitual view becomes a veil onto which we project and in turn see the conceptual schema we have already internalized. Mimesis is thus restricted to the conceptual level of the signified. There is a reflexive edification of both the real world as it appears to us through our habitual mode of seeing, and of our ideas about it. We do not see them to be the same. Language itself constrains our perception.
There is however a twist. Though such pictures (and other great art) present things to us anew, they also “makes us re-enter ourselves in reminding [rappelant] us of an impression.” (I, 839) The word “rappeler” (to evoke, to remind, to recall) has a clear etymological similarity to “appeler”, (to call, to name). Marcel suggests that in renaming things, Elstir’s paintings afford access to past impressions, which though obscured by our conceptual worldview, still linger behind the habitual veil. As Marcel discovers in the madeleine episode, these impressions still exist in a part of his memory. The predominance of linguistic memory obscures these impressions until external stimuli cause them to resurface. The tea-dipped madeleine however causes Marcel to remember linguistically. As he attempts to find the meaning of the impression, which is an attempt to square it with notions of his intelligence, the vividness of the impression fades. The power of Elstir’s paintings is that in recreating what they represent, they provide a new context for seeing the impression that the viewer remembers. It is in the way that Elstir’s paintings force the viewer to re-enter at once the world and themselves. Hitherto lost in conceptuality, the unclothed viewer sees the naked world. (The distinction is a matter of perspective as the two were clothed by the same attire.)
When Marcel first visits Elstir’s atelier, the creative aspect of Elstir’s art is immediately striking. The description of his arrival begins with his ride on the tramway to Elstir’s villa. In an attempt to escape the “luxurious junk of the constructions that are developing” (I, 833) around him, he tries to imagine that he is in the kingdom of the Cimmerians. However his fantasy is of little help as he arrives at Elstir’s villa to find that it is “perhaps the most sumptuously ugly” (I, 833) of the buildings around. Approaching the house, he again finds need to avert his eyes:
It was also in averting my eyes that I traversed the garden that had a lawn—very small like at any bourgeois [house] in the suburbs of Paris—a small statuette of a gallant gardener, glass balls where one gazed at oneself, borders of begonias and a small arbor underneath which rocking-chairs stretched out in front of an iron table.

“C’est aussi en détournant les yeux que je traversai le jardin qui avait une pelouse—en plus petit comme chez n’importe quel bourgeois dans la banlieue de Paris—, une petite statuette de galant jardinier, des boules de verre où l’on se regardait, des bordures de bégonias et une petite tonnelle sous laquelle des rocking-chairs étaient allongés devant une table de fer.” (I, 834)

Upon entering Elstir’s studio, Marcel leaves behind the mundane world of bourgeois equivalences. It is this world similarity and false identity that Elstir transforms in his art. This initial description of the world outside Elstir’s atelier is important as it sets up a sharp contrast with what Marcel finds inside the atelier. On both the ride to Elstir’s, and the subsequent walk through the garden, Marcel feels very nearly attacked by the exceptional ugliness of the exterior world. Initially, he attempts to escape through fantasy, and when that fails, he seeks only to avert his eyes. His reactions establish a clear division between the exterior phenomenal world and his own awareness and conception of the world he inhabits. The signs of bourgeois society do not just codify the world, they digest it and take it over. The coded grid of bourgeois conformity so thoroughly imbues itself into apperances that Marcel feels unable to escape it. He seems to believe, or at least to hope, that if he does not look upon the outside world, if he does not let it enter his visual field, it will not really exist. Vision is thus constitutive of existence. However this existence is clearly split between a sense of interior and exterior that is the product Marcel’s conceptual projections onto the phenomena of reality. The world outside Elstir’s studio has been overtaken by the conceptual structures of society, and the transition to the interior of Elstir’s studio, signaled by a conjunctive “but”, is very clear:
But after all of these first impressions of suburban ugliness, I no longer paid attention to the chocolate stucco of the moldings when I was in the atelier; I felt perfectly happy, for because of all the studies that were around me, I sensed the possibility of elevating myself to a poetic understanding, fertile in joys, of many forms that I had not isolated until just then from the total spectacle of reality.

Mais après tous ces abords empreints de laideur citadine, je ne fis plus attention aux moulures chocolat des plinthes quand je fus dans l’atelier; je me suis sentis parfaitement heureux, car par toutes les études qui étaient autour de moi, je sentais la possibilité de m’élever à une connaissance poétique, féconde en joies, de maintes formes que je n’avais pas isolées jusque-là du spectacle total de la réalité. (I, 834)

In the structure of the sentence, Proust emphasizes the primacy of impressions. The “first impressions” are followed by the sense of their “suburban ugliness”. The French word “sentir” for “feel” appears twice in this passage. Marcel characterizes his discovery more in terms of sense and perception than in a conceptual framework. Marcel feels “perfectly happy” and feels “the possibility of elevating himself to a poetic understanding”. The difficulties of translating the word ‘connaissance’ point to the complexity of Marcel’s experience and its subsequent effects on him. ‘Connaisance’ can mean any of ‘knowledge’, ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’. It thus combines a sense of content (knowledge), a mental faculty (understanding) and a state of mind (consciousness). This multi-valence eases the conceptual divide between the process of understanding that produces knowledge and the awareness of both the process and its product. Though Elstir’s art recreates exterior phenomena it also defeats the structure of subject and object that underlies the divide between interior and exterior. Instead, Marcel is able to perceive “the total spectacle of reality” with its “many forms that [he] had not isolated until just then.” (I, 834) As the conceptuality of Marcel’s previous worldview fades, the divide between his awareness and exterior phenomena—a divide that is reified by language—is softened. It is the recreation of exterior phenomena that Marcel emphasizes when he speaks of recognizing forms that he had not previously isolated “from the total spectacle of reality,” and yet as an experience of recognition it involves an element of consciousness, and it is in this sense that art makes us “re-enter ourselves in reminding us of an impression.” (I, 838) It is Marcel’s enigmatic suggestion of a poetic understanding that makes this possible. As before in the analogy of metamorphosis to metaphor, it is Elstir’s ability to defeat the conceptuality of habitual language and understanding that opens up a new world of vision to Marcel. It is important that Marcel’s sense of ‘poetic understanding’ remains just that, a sense. In doing so, it resists resolution into conceptual terms.
The expanded perception that Marcel gains through Eltir’s art begins with Elstir himself. When Marcel enters the studio there is a strong focus on Elstir as the progenitor of the new vision of reality that Marcel acquires. He says, “at the moment that I entered, the creator [Elstir] was in the process of finishing (achever), with the brush that he was holding in his hand, the form of the sun at its setting. ” The structure of this sentence establishes a temporality for Marcel’s experience and thus emphasizes the sense of a world coming into being. In particular, the emphasis on the particular moment of entry, and substitution of ‘creator’ for ‘Elstir’ underscores the sense of a new world coming into being. There is an implied analogy between Elstir as artist and God as the creator, one that is echoed two paragraphs later in the explanation of metaphor as being like God the Father removing names (cited above). The sentence also contains an ambiguity that forces the confluence of representation and referent. The word “son” (his, its) can refer to the sun or to Eltir’s painting of the sun. The alternate parsing of the phrase is “the form of the sun to his painting.” From his position as creator, and the ability of his paintings to float between representation and primal referent, Elstir gains an almost physical power. With the brush in his hand he reorders our understanding of the exterior, physical world. He does not simply reproduce our conception of what is there, but instead attempts to recreate our pre-conceptual perception. Elstir does not simply paint a sunset, instead he paints “the form of the sun at its setting .”
Marcel talks more explicitly later on of the importance that Elstir push himself outside of a conceptual view of things:
The effort that Elstir made to divest [dépouiller] himself in the presence of reality of all the notions of his intelligence was all the more admirable than that man who before painting makes himself ignorant, forgetting everything by honesty (for what we know does not belong to ourselves), had precisely an exceptionally cultivated intelligence.

“L’effort qu’Eltisr faisait pour se dépouiller en présence de la réalité de toutes les notions de son intelligence était d’autant plus admirable que cet homme qui avant de peindre se faisait ignorant, oubliait tout par probité (car ce qu’on sait n’est pas à soi), avait justement une intelligence exceptionnellement cultivée.” (I, 840)

The word ‘dépouiller’, translated as ‘divest’, also means ‘to strip clothing from’ or ‘to denude’. The word-order of the sentence is indicative of the relative positions of Elstir as artist, reality, and concepts (“notions of his intelligence”). This opposes the usual order of the conceptual world of subject, concept, reality. It is also an interesting instance of the way in which metaphors in Proust’s text can work in the same way as the metamorphoses engendered by Elstir’s paintings. Our normal, conceptual understanding of the world gains many of the connotations of clothing. “Notions of the intelligence” become garments, objects that we manufacture ourselves, to protect us from direct contact with the real world, and to construct personal and social identity. (A reader may well add many more connotations, though the degree to which they fit is determined by context.)
Elstir’s direct contact with reality enables him to create anew the viewer’s perception of it. Unconstrained by the categories of ordinary conceptuality, he fundamentally reorganizes the relationships among the elements he represents:
Artistic genius behaves in the manner of those extremely elevated temperatures that have the power to dissociate the combinations of atoms and to group them following an absolutely contrary order, responding to another type. All that artificial harmony that the woman imposes on her traits, and that each day before going out she oversees their persistence in her mirror, charging the inclination of the hat, the smoothing of the hair, the good-naturedness of the gaze, so as to assure the continuity, this harmony, the glance of the great painter destroys in a second, and in its place he creates a regrouping of the woman’s traits, so as to give fulfillment to a certain feminine and pictorial ideal that he carries in himself.

Le génie artistique agit à la façon des ces témperatures extrêmement élevées qui ont le pouvoir de dissocier les combinaisons d’atomes et de grouper ceux-ci suivant un ordre absolument contraitre, répondant à un autre type. Toute cette harmonie factice que la femme a imposée à ses traits et dont chaque jour avant de sortir elle surveille la persistence dans sa glace, chargeant l’inclinaison du chapeau, le lissage des cheveux, l’enjouement du regard, d’en assurer la continuité, cette harmonie, le coup d’oeil du grand peintre la détruit en une seconde, et à sa place il fait un regroupement des traits de la femme, de manière à donner satisfaction à un certain ideal féminin et pictural qu’il porte en lui. (I, 861)

In Marcel’s view, artistic genius works by unraveling the normal structures of human conceptuality. The example of Odette (the woman in the painting described above) is representative of the worldview conditioned by habits of social representation. Marcel’s metaphor of atomic reorganization is more than a figurative description of what the artist does. Elstir does not simply represent known entities in a different configuration. His art is to recreate things by forcing the viewer beyond the conceptual surface. In the passage above, Odette, through her daily rituals of grooming, constructs her appearance in accord with a particular social concept of femininity. She imposes this construction onto the underlying phenomena of the world, attempting to obscure her own traits from view. Her appearance has little to do with real phenomena and is instead an expression of shared concepts. In taking apart the artificial harmony that Odette constructs, Elstir presents her anew such that she is at once unrecognizable and yet familiar:
Now fallen, situated out of her own type where she strutted about invulnerably, she is but any regular woman, in the superiority of whom we have lost all faith. This type, we make so much in it [?], not only the beauty of an Odette, but its personality, its identity, that in front of the portrait that has denuded her of it, we are tempted to cry out not only: “How it makes her ugly”, but: “How there’s little resemblance!” We have difficulty believing that it is her. We do not recognize her.

Maintenant déchue, située hors de son propre type où elle trônait invulnérable, elle n’est plus qu’une femme quelconque, en la supériorité de qui nous avons perdu toute foi. Ce type, nous faisions tellement consister en lui, non seulement la beauté d’une Odette, mais sa personnalité, son identité, que devant le portrait qui l’a dépouillé de lui, nous sommes tentés de nous écrier non pas seulement: “Comme c’est enlaidi!”, mais: “Comme c’est peu ressemblant!” Nous avons peine à croire que ce soit elle. Nous ne la reconnaissons pas. (I, 862)

Through Elstir’s painting, “Odette” ceases to exist. This is not however Odette as physical entity, but Odette as a social construction, and it is the latter which give meaning to the name “Odette”. In his painting, Eltsir has so thoroughly recreated Odette that her former name is inapplicable. Elstir’s recreation of Odette has emptied her former name of any meaning with respect to the perspective presented by the painting. As Marcel says, Elstir’s portrait unclothes Odette of her identity. For Odette at least, identity and social appearance are synonymous. Formerly, Odette “strutted about invulnerably,” inviting a superficial interaction with the facade she projected while at the same time protecting herself from genuine recognition. Odette’s identity is so much a part of the conceptual fabric that the person in the painting seems no longer to be her. Despite this dissimilarity, Marcel still recognizes the figure as Odette (863). This implies that Elstir’s painting still captures a genuine impression of Odette, despite that he actively undermines her projected appearance to an extent that she is superficially unrecognizable.
In other paintings, instead of obliterating the identity of what he represents, Elstir expands it. Upon seeing a still-life of Eltir’s depicting some roses, Marcel feels that Elstir has enhanced the entire family of roses:
In part only [??], Elstir not being able to look at a flower without first transplanting it into that interior garden where we are forced to always stay. He had showed in this aquarelle the apparition of the roses he had seen and that without him we would have never known; of the sort that we can say that it was a new variety that this painter, like an ingenious horticulturist, had enriched the family of Roses.

A demi seulement, Elstir ne pouvant regarder une fleur qu’en la transplantant d’abord dans ce jardin intérieur où nous sommes forcés de rester toujours. Il avait montré dans cette aquarelle l’apparition des roses qu’il avait vues et que sans lui on n’eût connues jamais; de sorte qu’on peut dire que c’était une variété nouvelle dont ce peintre, comme un ingénieux horticulteur, avait enrichi la famille des Roses. ( II, 943)

Elstir begins his painting of the roses by transplanting them into a different world. He takes them out of the exterior, conceptual world of habitual projections. Instead, he looks inside to his own impressions, using his memories of other roses he has seen to represent these roses in a particular way. It does not simply matter that he knows of other roses, it is that he has seen them. Insofar as he is an artist, Elstir’s perspective is particularly important because he is more adept at seeing beyond the conceptual surface. Elstir imbues his aquarelle with his impressions of other roses, expanding and enriching the viewer’s awareness of the category “rose”. Marcel describes the painting Elstir creates in a similar manner to his description of the sunset painting he first saw upon entering Elstir’s studio. Just as his earlier painting showed the form of the sun, this painting shows the apparition (also: appearance, manifestations, emergence) of roses. This is clearly pre-conceptual. It is the roses coming into being, distinct from other phenomena, but still part of the “total spectacle” of reality.
Over and again, Marcel returns to the ways in which Elstir captures the totality of phenomenal world. It is a view of art similar to the traditional notion of romantic poetry. Poetry in this view both captures and creates a world. For Marcel, this ability to at once reflect back to the viewer her impressions of the world, and to also reinvent the world she knows is the pinnacle of artistic achievement. It is painting’s ability to both reveal to us our impressions and yet also recreate our worldview that makes it metaphoric. Looking at great art, the viewer experiences a dual movement towards both the inside and the outside. The veil of conceptuality between the two fades, and the demarcation is partly lost. Such experiences are not unique to the observation of painting (or great art generally), but, as Marcel says, they are not a common part of our experience: “the rare moments when we see nature such as it is, poetically, it was of those that the oeuvre of Elstir was made. ” (I, 836) The paradox of seeing nature, “such as it is, poetically” provides an enigmatic answer to the earlier paradox of how metaphor more directly presents the world to us than ordinary language. Marcel’s apparent characterization of nature as primally poetic is not simply a metaphor. The claim he makes is more explicit, this is nature “such as it is.” Further, “poetically” in the cited phrase above is an adverb that describes the action of seeing, not an adjective describing nature itself. Thus, in order to see nature “such as it is,” we must learn to see poetically.
While looking at the painting of the port of Carquethuit, Marcel goes into a lengthy description of how Elstir’s paintings force us to see poetically. In the painting, Elstir mixes the signs of different elements, forcing the viewer out of the conceptual constraints that normally establish clear demarcations between the different parts:
It was for example by a metaphor of this genre—in a painting representing the port of Carquehuit, a painting that he had finished in the last few days and that I observed at length—that Elstir had prepared the esprit of the spectator in employing only marine terms for the small town, and only urban terms for the ocean. [...] In the foreground of the beach, the painter had the wisdom habituate the eyes to not recognize a fixed frontier, a absolute demarcation, between the land and the ocean. [...] If the whole painting gave this impression of the ports where the sea entered the land, where the land is already marine and the population, amphibious, the force of the marine element exploded everywhere.

C’est par exemple à une métaphore de ce genre—dans un tableau représentant le port de Carquethuit, tableau qu’il avait terminé depuis peu de jours et que je regardai longuement—qu’Elstir avait préparé l’esprit du spectateur en n’employant pour la petite ville que des termes marins, et que des termes urbains pour la mer. [...] Dans le premier plan de la plage, le peintre avait su habituer les yeux à ne pas reconnaître de frontière fixe, de démarcation absolue, entre la terre et l’océan. [...] Si tout le tableau donnait cette impression des ports où la mer entre dans la terre, où la terre est déjà marine et la population, amphibie, la force de l’élément marin éclatait partout; (I, 836-7)

The demarcations between land and sea, and their associated elements, are lost as Elstir substitutes one for the other. Though Marcel calls this a metaphor, it could also be described as a metonymic reconfiguration of the represented elements. The land elements take on a marine aspect because of their proximity to the sea. The perception of the land is created by the context of representation. The power of the ocean overtakes the distinct separation between it and the land. However, following Marcel, we can also see Elstir’s painting as a metonymic exchange that rises to metaphoric proportions. Elstir’s painting then carries the dual sense that that the sea is the land, and the land is the sea. This is not a factual claim, but a metaphoric trick that defeats our conceptual categories, forcing the viewer see nature poetically. The goal is to see things both distinctly and in their totality. Marcel’s description of the Carquethuit painting continues at length. He recounts the many ways in which conceptual demarcations are defeated by Elstir’s painting. Towards the end, some of the painting elements resolve into an understanding of what he sees:
The intelligence next made a same element of that that was, here black in a storm effect, farther off all of a color with the sky et also varnished alike, and there white from sun, of fog and foam, so compact, so earthly, so circumventing [??] of house, that we thought of some stone road or a field of snow, on which we would have been scared to see a ship tower above a steep slope and dry [?] like a car that snorts in coming out of a ford, but at the end of a moment, in seeing on the high and uneven solid plateau some staggering [?] boats, we understood, identical in all these diverse aspects, to be still the sea.

L’intelligence faisait ensuite un même élément de ce qui était, ici noir dans un effet d’orage, plus loin tout d’une couleur avec le ciel et aussi verni que lui, et là si blanc de soleil, de brume et d’écume, si compact, si terrien, si circonvenu de maisons, qu’on pensait à quelque chaussée de pierres ou à un champ de neige, sur lequel on était effrayé de voir un navire s’élever en pente raide et à sec comme une voiture qui s’ébroue en sortant d’un gué, mais qu’au bout d’un moment, en y voyant sur l’étendue haute et inégale du plateau solide des bateaux titubants, on comprenait, indentique en tous ces aspects divers, être encore la mer. (I, 837-8)

The resolution is however only partial. Though Marcel recognizes the diverse aspects of the sea as being part of a whole, the totality does not obscure the impressions. The concept of “sea” that Marcel’s intelligence brings to bear cannot contain all of what he observes in the painting. Proust shows this in the text protracted description between the initial phrase, “the intelligence next made a same element of that that was,” and its resolution, “identical in all these diverse aspects, to be still the sea.” In addition, part of the resolution maintains the paradox that sustains poetic vision. The sea cannot really be “identical in all these diverse aspects.” It is at once of a type that we conceptually recognize as the “sea”, and yet also so various in its manifestations that impressions of it can differ greatly. The ability to distinctly perceive, and yet maintain an awareness of the total specatacle of reality lies at the foundation of Marcel’s conception of art. In a description of a painting similar to the port of Carquethuit (that may in fact be Carquethuit, but the painting is not identified), Marcel describes the effect as “that multiform et powerful unity .” This again captures the paradox of both seeing difference and recognizing identity at the same time. Elstir’s paintings capture the distinctness of phenomena, and yet they also achieve a coherence in the underlying impression, together achieving a view of the world as it appears to our perception.
The worlds that Elstir creates are grounded in his own impressions of reality. Because of this his paintings can expand the viewer’s notions of how the world appears. This is the creative power of Eltir’s painting, and also of art more generally. There are thus as many possible worlds as there are great artists:
To succeed at being thus recognized, the original painter, the original artist procedes in the manner of the occultislts. The treatment by their painting, by their prose, is not always easygoing. When he is finished, the practitioner says to us: Now look. And thus the world (that was not created just once, but as often an original artist came to pass) appears to us entirely different from previously, but perfectly clear. Women passe in the street, different from those of other times, because they are Renoirs, these Renoirs where in the past we refused to see women [?]. The cars are also Renoirs, and the water, and the sky...

Pour réussir à être ainsi reconnus, le peintre original, l’artist original procèdent à la façon des oculistes. Le traitement par leur peinture, par leur prose, n’est pas toujours agéable. Quand il est terminé, le practicien nous dit: Maintenant regardez. Et voici que le monde (qui n’a pas été créé une fois, mais aussi souvent qu’un artiste originel est survenu) nous apparaît entièrement différent de l’ancien, mais parfaitement clair. Des femmes passent dans la rue, différentes de celles d’autrefois, puisque ce sont des Renoir, ces Renoir où nous nous refusions jadis à voir des femmes. Les voitures aussi sont des Renoir, et l’eau, et le ciel... (II, p327)

In a crucial scene in the painter’s atelier, Marcel explains his experience of Elstir’s paintings by an analogy to metaphor, “I could discern that the charm of each one [painting] consisted in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry we name metaphor.” (I, 835) In a number of other passages centered on Elstir, his art and Marcel’s experience of the two, the words “metaphor”, “poetic” or a variant (poetic, metaphoric, etc.) frequently appear. Each of these scenes is of interest for the hints they give about how art (in these cases painting) can transform a viewer’s vision of the phenomenal world. Though Marcel describes this transformation by analogy to metaphor, the actual properties of painting are more than analogically similar to metaphor. Looking at the scenes as a whole, it is clear that Marcel believes that painting has a central, metaphorical component.
Though no direct definition of metaphor ever appears in the Recherche, the following passage contains an important discussion of the metaphoric effects of Elstir’s art. Marcel has just entered Elstir’s studio for the first time and having described the studio itself, he now describes Elstir’s marine paintings:
Naturally, what he had in his studio, was for the most part marines taken here, at Balbec. But I could discern that the charm of each one consisted in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented, analogous to what in poetry we name metaphor, and that, if God the Father had created things by naming them, it was in removing their name, or in giving them another, that Elstir recreated them. The names that designate things respond always to a notion of the intelligence, foreign to our genuine impressions, and they force us to eliminate from them all that does not return to this notion.

“Naturellement, ce qu’il avait dans son atelier, ce n’était guère que des marines prises ici, à Balbec. Mais j’y pouvais discerner que le charme de chacune consistait en une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore, et que, si Dieu le Père avait créé les choses en les nommant, c’est en leur ôtant leur nom, ou en leur en donnant un autre, qu’Elstir les recréait. Les noms qui désignent les choses répondent toujours à une notion de l’intelligence, étrangère à nos impressions véritables, et qui nous force à éliminer d’elles tout ce qui ne se rapporte pas à cette notion” ( I. p.835)

The phrase, “in removing their name, or in giving them another”, captures an essential part of the work that metaphor does, and also points to the two ways in which Elstir recreates the objects he represents. In the first type of recreation, Elstir’s paintings remove the names of the things they depict. In doing so, the objects represented are forced outside of language. On the other hand, Marcel also suggests we understand the effect of metaphor as the bestowal of a new name. In this instance, instead of pushing the represented objects outside of linguistic understanding, Elstir’s paintings force an expansion of language, making a new perception possible within language. Names are important for their role as place-holders within language. For each speaker, they are a proxy for an assortment of knowledge (the signified) about the named item. In removing or changing the names of what he represents, Elstir removes or alters the connections to other signs in the language. For Marcel, names do not pick out the real world. The signifieds (notions of the mind) to which they are linked obscure the referents to which they are both supposed to refer. In removing names then, in pushing represented objects out of normal linguistic relations, metaphor pushes its perceiver beyond the normal conceptual framework of signs. What Marcel suggests then, when he talks of Elstir removing the names of objects, is that Elstir’s paintings represent things in such a way as to force us to look at them as though for the first time.
That Marcel should discover metaphor as a way past the constraints of linguistic understanding is paradoxical. How can metaphor, which at its basis is a complication of linguisitic relations—is rightly referred to as figurative [discussion of figure and form?] language—how can it be more mimetic than non-figurative language? The answer is two-fold. The first part of the answer, as discussed above, lies in the way metaphor works: it does not put things into relation based on the standard linguistic and conceptual structures. Instead, it combines two ideas (or more) so as to create a conceptual conflict. In effect, the worldview that underlies our conceptual understanding—the relationships between signifieds—is broken.
Marcel’s explanation of metaphor as the removal or substitution of names occurs within a revealing context. He says, “if God the Father had created things in naming them…”. The comparison to God the Father is important because it points to the fundamental way in which metaphor more accurately captures the phenomenal world. Elstir, and artists more generally, are being compared to the creator. Their works, to the extent that they are metaphoric, are more mimetic because they are creative instead of representative. It does not matter that Elstir’s paintings do not physically alter the world. It is enough that they alter our perception of it. It is in this fundamental sense of creativity as (re)creation that Elstir’s paintings effect Marcel. As it is known to our awareness, the physical world has been altered. The separation between representation and represented, between constructed and real, is collapsed. To call Elstir’s paintings mimetic is even to miss the target: in recreating things, in presenting objects so that the viewer experiences them as though for the first time, Elstir presents them with the same directness as the phenomenal world. His paintings do not refer to notions of the mind, but instead recreate impressions of the phenomenal world. In breaking the bond between sign and signified, his paintings render them both useless, and bring the perceiver closer to pre-conceptual perception. That figurative language such as metaphor should actually be more mimetic than regular language would appear to reverse our normal conception of things, but this is what Marcel discovers.
One of the art’s principle functions in the Recherche is to force us out of our habitual ways of seeing, to force us beyond conceptuality and into an appreciation of things as they appear to us. In a small aside about what it is that makes a photograph admirable, Marcel says:
Since the beginnings of Elstir, we have known what we call ‘admirable’ photographs of countrysides and towns. If we seek to specify what the amateurs designate in this case by that epithet, we will see that it ordinarily applies to any singular image of a known thing, an image different from those that we habitually see, singular and yet true, and that because of that is for us doubly gripping as it astonishes us, makes us leave our habits, and at the same time makes us re-enter ourselves in reminding us of an impression.

“Depuis les débuts d’Elstir, nous avons connu ce qu’on appelle ‘d’admirables’ photographies de paysages et de villes. Si on cherche à préciser ce que les amateurs désignent dans ce cas par cette épithète, on verra qu’elle s’applique d’ordinaire à quelque image singulière d’une chose connue, image différente de celles que nous avons l’habitude de voir, singulière et pourtant vraie, et qui à cause de cela est pour nous doublement saisissante parce qu’elle nous étonne, nous fait sortie de nos habitudes, et tous à la fois nous fait rentrer en nous-même en nous rappelant une impression.” (I. p.838)

This is the description of seeing a familiar object as if for the first time. The importance of originality for great art is contained in the difficulty of creating a “singular image of a known thing”. The idea of a habitual mode of vision suggests that we see things in a particular way most of the time. Our habitual vision is the result of accrued ideas and experiences, both of which are stored in memory and re-enter our consciousness only through language. It is a world where we do not understand things as they are so much as we understand them to be instances of particular concepts. Because what we see is conditioned by our ideas and previous experiences, referentiality to the actual phenomena of the exterior world fails. Our habitual view becomes a veil onto which we project and in turn see the conceptual schema we have already internalized. Mimesis is thus restricted to the conceptual level of the signified. There is a reflexive edification of both the real world as it appears to us through our habitual mode of seeing, and of our ideas about it. We do not see them to be the same. Language itself constrains our perception.
There is however a twist. Though such pictures (and other great art) present things to us anew, they also “makes us re-enter ourselves in reminding [rappelant] us of an impression.” (I, 839) The word “rappeler” (to evoke, to remind, to recall) has a clear etymological similarity to “appeler”, (to call, to name). Marcel suggests that in renaming things, Elstir’s paintings afford access to past impressions, which though obscured by our conceptual worldview, still linger behind the habitual veil. As Marcel discovers in the madeleine episode, these impressions still exist in a part of his memory. The predominance of linguistic memory obscures these impressions until external stimuli cause them to resurface. The tea-dipped madeleine however causes Marcel to remember linguistically. As he attempts to find the meaning of the impression, which is an attempt to square it with notions of his intelligence, the vividness of the impression fades. The power of Elstir’s paintings is that in recreating what they represent, they provide a new context for seeing the impression that the viewer remembers. It is in the way that Elstir’s paintings force the viewer to re-enter at once the world and themselves. Hitherto lost in conceptuality, the unclothed viewer sees the naked world. (The distinction is a matter of perspective as the two were clothed by the same attire.)
When Marcel first visits Elstir’s atelier, the creative aspect of Elstir’s art is immediately striking. The description of his arrival begins with his ride on the tramway to Elstir’s villa. In an attempt to escape the “luxurious junk of the constructions that are developing” (I, 833) around him, he tries to imagine that he is in the kingdom of the Cimmerians. However his fantasy is of little help as he arrives at Elstir’s villa to find that it is “perhaps the most sumptuously ugly” (I, 833) of the buildings around. Approaching the house, he again finds need to avert his eyes:
It was also in averting my eyes that I traversed the garden that had a lawn—very small like at any bourgeois [house] in the suburbs of Paris—a small statuette of a gallant gardener, glass balls where one gazed at oneself, borders of begonias and a small arbor underneath which rocking-chairs stretched out in front of an iron table.

“C’est aussi en détournant les yeux que je traversai le jardin qui avait une pelouse—en plus petit comme chez n’importe quel bourgeois dans la banlieue de Paris—, une petite statuette de galant jardinier, des boules de verre où l’on se regardait, des bordures de bégonias et une petite tonnelle sous laquelle des rocking-chairs étaient allongés devant une table de fer.” (I, 834)

Upon entering Elstir’s studio, Marcel leaves behind the mundane world of bourgeois equivalences. It is this world similarity and false identity that Elstir transforms in his art. This initial description of the world outside Elstir’s atelier is important as it sets up a sharp contrast with what Marcel finds inside the atelier. On both the ride to Elstir’s, and the subsequent walk through the garden, Marcel feels very nearly attacked by the exceptional ugliness of the exterior world. Initially, he attempts to escape through fantasy, and when that fails, he seeks only to avert his eyes. His reactions establish a clear division between the exterior phenomenal world and his own awareness and conception of the world he inhabits. The signs of bourgeois society do not just codify the world, they digest it and take it over. The coded grid of bourgeois conformity so thoroughly imbues itself into apperances that Marcel feels unable to escape it. He seems to believe, or at least to hope, that if he does not look upon the outside world, if he does not let it enter his visual field, it will not really exist. Vision is thus constitutive of existence. However this existence is clearly split between a sense of interior and exterior that is the product Marcel’s conceptual projections onto the phenomena of reality. The world outside Elstir’s studio has been overtaken by the conceptual structures of society, and the transition to the interior of Elstir’s studio, signaled by a conjunctive “but”, is very clear:
But after all of these first impressions of suburban ugliness, I no longer paid attention to the chocolate stucco of the moldings when I was in the atelier; I felt perfectly happy, for because of all the studies that were around me, I sensed the possibility of elevating myself to a poetic understanding, fertile in joys, of many forms that I had not isolated until just then from the total spectacle of reality.

Mais après tous ces abords empreints de laideur citadine, je ne fis plus attention aux moulures chocolat des plinthes quand je fus dans l’atelier; je me suis sentis parfaitement heureux, car par toutes les études qui étaient autour de moi, je sentais la possibilité de m’élever à une connaissance poétique, féconde en joies, de maintes formes que je n’avais pas isolées jusque-là du spectacle total de la réalité. (I, 834)

In the structure of the sentence, Proust emphasizes the primacy of impressions. The “first impressions” are followed by the sense of their “suburban ugliness”. The French word “sentir” for “feel” appears twice in this passage. Marcel characterizes his discovery more in terms of sense and perception than in a conceptual framework. Marcel feels “perfectly happy” and feels “the possibility of elevating himself to a poetic understanding”. The difficulties of translating the word ‘connaissance’ point to the complexity of Marcel’s experience and its subsequent effects on him. ‘Connaisance’ can mean any of ‘knowledge’, ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’. It thus combines a sense of content (knowledge), a mental faculty (understanding) and a state of mind (consciousness). This multi-valence eases the conceptual divide between the process of understanding that produces knowledge and the awareness of both the process and its product. Though Elstir’s art recreates exterior phenomena it also defeats the structure of subject and object that underlies the divide between interior and exterior. Instead, Marcel is able to perceive “the total spectacle of reality” with its “many forms that [he] had not isolated until just then.” (I, 834) As the conceptuality of Marcel’s previous worldview fades, the divide between his awareness and exterior phenomena—a divide that is reified by language—is softened. It is the recreation of exterior phenomena that Marcel emphasizes when he speaks of recognizing forms that he had not previously isolated “from the total spectacle of reality,” and yet as an experience of recognition it involves an element of consciousness, and it is in this sense that art makes us “re-enter ourselves in reminding us of an impression.” (I, 838) It is Marcel’s enigmatic suggestion of a poetic understanding that makes this possible. As before in the analogy of metamorphosis to metaphor, it is Elstir’s ability to defeat the conceptuality of habitual language and understanding that opens up a new world of vision to Marcel. It is important that Marcel’s sense of ‘poetic understanding’ remains just that, a sense. In doing so, it resists resolution into conceptual terms.
The expanded perception that Marcel gains through Eltir’s art begins with Elstir himself. When Marcel enters the studio there is a strong focus on Elstir as the progenitor of the new vision of reality that Marcel acquires. He says, “at the moment that I entered, the creator [Elstir] was in the process of finishing (achever), with the brush that he was holding in his hand, the form of the sun at its setting. ” The structure of this sentence establishes a temporality for Marcel’s experience and thus emphasizes the sense of a world coming into being. In particular, the emphasis on the particular moment of entry, and substitution of ‘creator’ for ‘Elstir’ underscores the sense of a new world coming into being. There is an implied analogy between Elstir as artist and God as the creator, one that is echoed two paragraphs later in the explanation of metaphor as being like God the Father removing names (cited above). The sentence also contains an ambiguity that forces the confluence of representation and referent. The word “son” (his, its) can refer to the sun or to Eltir’s painting of the sun. The alternate parsing of the phrase is “the form of the sun to his painting.” From his position as creator, and the ability of his paintings to float between representation and primal referent, Elstir gains an almost physical power. With the brush in his hand he reorders our understanding of the exterior, physical world. He does not simply reproduce our conception of what is there, but instead attempts to recreate our pre-conceptual perception. Elstir does not simply paint a sunset, instead he paints “the form of the sun at its setting .”
Marcel talks more explicitly later on of the importance that Elstir push himself outside of a conceptual view of things:
The effort that Elstir made to divest [dépouiller] himself in the presence of reality of all the notions of his intelligence was all the more admirable than that man who before painting makes himself ignorant, forgetting everything by honesty (for what we know does not belong to ourselves), had precisely an exceptionally cultivated intelligence.

“L’effort qu’Eltisr faisait pour se dépouiller en présence de la réalité de toutes les notions de son intelligence était d’autant plus admirable que cet homme qui avant de peindre se faisait ignorant, oubliait tout par probité (car ce qu’on sait n’est pas à soi), avait justement une intelligence exceptionnellement cultivée.” (I, 840)

The word ‘dépouiller’, translated as ‘divest’, also means ‘to strip clothing from’ or ‘to denude’. The word-order of the sentence is indicative of the relative positions of Elstir as artist, reality, and concepts (“notions of his intelligence”). This opposes the usual order of the conceptual world of subject, concept, reality. It is also an interesting instance of the way in which metaphors in Proust’s text can work in the same way as the metamorphoses engendered by Elstir’s paintings. Our normal, conceptual understanding of the world gains many of the connotations of clothing. “Notions of the intelligence” become garments, objects that we manufacture ourselves, to protect us from direct contact with the real world, and to construct personal and social identity. (A reader may well add many more connotations, though the degree to which they fit is determined by context.)
Elstir’s direct contact with reality enables him to create anew the viewer’s perception of it. Unconstrained by the categories of ordinary conceptuality, he fundamentally reorganizes the relationships among the elements he represents:
Artistic genius behaves in the manner of those extremely elevated temperatures that have the power to dissociate the combinations of atoms and to group them following an absolutely contrary order, responding to another type. All that artificial harmony that the woman imposes on her traits, and that each day before going out she oversees their persistence in her mirror, charging the inclination of the hat, the smoothing of the hair, the good-naturedness of the gaze, so as to assure the continuity, this harmony, the glance of the great painter destroys in a second, and in its place he creates a regrouping of the woman’s traits, so as to give fulfillment to a certain feminine and pictorial ideal that he carries in himself.

Le génie artistique agit à la façon des ces témperatures extrêmement élevées qui ont le pouvoir de dissocier les combinaisons d’atomes et de grouper ceux-ci suivant un ordre absolument contraitre, répondant à un autre type. Toute cette harmonie factice que la femme a imposée à ses traits et dont chaque jour avant de sortir elle surveille la persistence dans sa glace, chargeant l’inclinaison du chapeau, le lissage des cheveux, l’enjouement du regard, d’en assurer la continuité, cette harmonie, le coup d’oeil du grand peintre la détruit en une seconde, et à sa place il fait un regroupement des traits de la femme, de manière à donner satisfaction à un certain ideal féminin et pictural qu’il porte en lui. (I, 861)

In Marcel’s view, artistic genius works by unraveling the normal structures of human conceptuality. The example of Odette (the woman in the painting described above) is representative of the worldview conditioned by habits of social representation. Marcel’s metaphor of atomic reorganization is more than a figurative description of what the artist does. Elstir does not simply represent known entities in a different configuration. His art is to recreate things by forcing the viewer beyond the conceptual surface. In the passage above, Odette, through her daily rituals of grooming, constructs her appearance in accord with a particular social concept of femininity. She imposes this construction onto the underlying phenomena of the world, attempting to obscure her own traits from view. Her appearance has little to do with real phenomena and is instead an expression of shared concepts. In taking apart the artificial harmony that Odette constructs, Elstir presents her anew such that she is at once unrecognizable and yet familiar:
Now fallen, situated out of her own type where she strutted about invulnerably, she is but any regular woman, in the superiority of whom we have lost all faith. This type, we make so much in it [?], not only the beauty of an Odette, but its personality, its identity, that in front of the portrait that has denuded her of it, we are tempted to cry out not only: “How it makes her ugly”, but: “How there’s little resemblance!” We have difficulty believing that it is her. We do not recognize her.

Maintenant déchue, située hors de son propre type où elle trônait invulnérable, elle n’est plus qu’une femme quelconque, en la supériorité de qui nous avons perdu toute foi. Ce type, nous faisions tellement consister en lui, non seulement la beauté d’une Odette, mais sa personnalité, son identité, que devant le portrait qui l’a dépouillé de lui, nous sommes tentés de nous écrier non pas seulement: “Comme c’est enlaidi!”, mais: “Comme c’est peu ressemblant!” Nous avons peine à croire que ce soit elle. Nous ne la reconnaissons pas. (I, 862)

Through Elstir’s painting, “Odette” ceases to exist. This is not however Odette as physical entity, but Odette as a social construction, and it is the latter which give meaning to the name “Odette”. In his painting, Eltsir has so thoroughly recreated Odette that her former name is inapplicable. Elstir’s recreation of Odette has emptied her former name of any meaning with respect to the perspective presented by the painting. As Marcel says, Elstir’s portrait unclothes Odette of her identity. For Odette at least, identity and social appearance are synonymous. Formerly, Odette “strutted about invulnerably,” inviting a superficial interaction with the facade she projected while at the same time protecting herself from genuine recognition. Odette’s identity is so much a part of the conceptual fabric that the person in the painting seems no longer to be her. Despite this dissimilarity, Marcel still recognizes the figure as Odette (863). This implies that Elstir’s painting still captures a genuine impression of Odette, despite that he actively undermines her projected appearance to an extent that she is superficially unrecognizable.
In other paintings, instead of obliterating the identity of what he represents, Elstir expands it. Upon seeing a still-life of Eltir’s depicting some roses, Marcel feels that Elstir has enhanced the entire family of roses:
In part only [??], Elstir not being able to look at a flower without first transplanting it into that interior garden where we are forced to always stay. He had showed in this aquarelle the apparition of the roses he had seen and that without him we would have never known; of the sort that we can say that it was a new variety that this painter, like an ingenious horticulturist, had enriched the family of Roses.

A demi seulement, Elstir ne pouvant regarder une fleur qu’en la transplantant d’abord dans ce jardin intérieur où nous sommes forcés de rester toujours. Il avait montré dans cette aquarelle l’apparition des roses qu’il avait vues et que sans lui on n’eût connues jamais; de sorte qu’on peut dire que c’était une variété nouvelle dont ce peintre, comme un ingénieux horticulteur, avait enrichi la famille des Roses. ( II, 943)

Elstir begins his painting of the roses by transplanting them into a different world. He takes them out of the exterior, conceptual world of habitual projections. Instead, he looks inside to his own impressions, using his memories of other roses he has seen to represent these roses in a particular way. It does not simply matter that he knows of other roses, it is that he has seen them. Insofar as he is an artist, Elstir’s perspective is particularly important because he is more adept at seeing beyond the conceptual surface. Elstir imbues his aquarelle with his impressions of other roses, expanding and enriching the viewer’s awareness of the category “rose”. Marcel describes the painting Elstir creates in a similar manner to his description of the sunset painting he first saw upon entering Elstir’s studio. Just as his earlier painting showed the form of the sun, this painting shows the apparition (also: appearance, manifestations, emergence) of roses. This is clearly pre-conceptual. It is the roses coming into being, distinct from other phenomena, but still part of the “total spectacle” of reality.
Over and again, Marcel returns to the ways in which Elstir captures the totality of phenomenal world. It is a view of art similar to the traditional notion of romantic poetry. Poetry in this view both captures and creates a world. For Marcel, this ability to at once reflect back to the viewer her impressions of the world, and to also reinvent the world she knows is the pinnacle of artistic achievement. It is painting’s ability to both reveal to us our impressions and yet also recreate our worldview that makes it metaphoric. Looking at great art, the viewer experiences a dual movement towards both the inside and the outside. The veil of conceptuality between the two fades, and the demarcation is partly lost. Such experiences are not unique to the observation of painting (or great art generally), but, as Marcel says, they are not a common part of our experience: “the rare moments when we see nature such as it is, poetically, it was of those that the oeuvre of Elstir was made. ” (I, 836) The paradox of seeing nature, “such as it is, poetically” provides an enigmatic answer to the earlier paradox of how metaphor more directly presents the world to us than ordinary language. Marcel’s apparent characterization of nature as primally poetic is not simply a metaphor. The claim he makes is more explicit, this is nature “such as it is.” Further, “poetically” in the cited phrase above is an adverb that describes the action of seeing, not an adjective describing nature itself. Thus, in order to see nature “such as it is,” we must learn to see poetically.
While looking at the painting of the port of Carquethuit, Marcel goes into a lengthy description of how Elstir’s paintings force us to see poetically. In the painting, Elstir mixes the signs of different elements, forcing the viewer out of the conceptual constraints that normally establish clear demarcations between the different parts:
It was for example by a metaphor of this genre—in a painting representing the port of Carquehuit, a painting that he had finished in the last few days and that I observed at length—that Elstir had prepared the esprit of the spectator in employing only marine terms for the small town, and only urban terms for the ocean. [...] In the foreground of the beach, the painter had the wisdom habituate the eyes to not recognize a fixed frontier, a absolute demarcation, between the land and the ocean. [...] If the whole painting gave this impression of the ports where the sea entered the land, where the land is already marine and the population, amphibious, the force of the marine element exploded everywhere.

C’est par exemple à une métaphore de ce genre—dans un tableau représentant le port de Carquethuit, tableau qu’il avait terminé depuis peu de jours et que je regardai longuement—qu’Elstir avait préparé l’esprit du spectateur en n’employant pour la petite ville que des termes marins, et que des termes urbains pour la mer. [...] Dans le premier plan de la plage, le peintre avait su habituer les yeux à ne pas reconnaître de frontière fixe, de démarcation absolue, entre la terre et l’océan. [...] Si tout le tableau donnait cette impression des ports où la mer entre dans la terre, où la terre est déjà marine et la population, amphibie, la force de l’élément marin éclatait partout; (I, 836-7)

The demarcations between land and sea, and their associated elements, are lost as Elstir substitutes one for the other. Though Marcel calls this a metaphor, it could also be described as a metonymic reconfiguration of the represented elements. The land elements take on a marine aspect because of their proximity to the sea. The perception of the land is created by the context of representation. The power of the ocean overtakes the distinct separation between it and the land. However, following Marcel, we can also see Elstir’s painting as a metonymic exchange that rises to metaphoric proportions. Elstir’s painting then carries the dual sense that that the sea is the land, and the land is the sea. This is not a factual claim, but a metaphoric trick that defeats our conceptual categories, forcing the viewer see nature poetically. The goal is to see things both distinctly and in their totality. Marcel’s description of the Carquethuit painting continues at length. He recounts the many ways in which conceptual demarcations are defeated by Elstir’s painting. Towards the end, some of the painting elements resolve into an understanding of what he sees:
The intelligence next made a same element of that that was, here black in a storm effect, farther off all of a color with the sky et also varnished alike, and there white from sun, of fog and foam, so compact, so earthly, so circumventing [??] of house, that we thought of some stone road or a field of snow, on which we would have been scared to see a ship tower above a steep slope and dry [?] like a car that snorts in coming out of a ford, but at the end of a moment, in seeing on the high and uneven solid plateau some staggering [?] boats, we understood, identical in all these diverse aspects, to be still the sea.

L’intelligence faisait ensuite un même élément de ce qui était, ici noir dans un effet d’orage, plus loin tout d’une couleur avec le ciel et aussi verni que lui, et là si blanc de soleil, de brume et d’écume, si compact, si terrien, si circonvenu de maisons, qu’on pensait à quelque chaussée de pierres ou à un champ de neige, sur lequel on était effrayé de voir un navire s’élever en pente raide et à sec comme une voiture qui s’ébroue en sortant d’un gué, mais qu’au bout d’un moment, en y voyant sur l’étendue haute et inégale du plateau solide des bateaux titubants, on comprenait, indentique en tous ces aspects divers, être encore la mer. (I, 837-8)

The resolution is however only partial. Though Marcel recognizes the diverse aspects of the sea as being part of a whole, the totality does not obscure the impressions. The concept of “sea” that Marcel’s intelligence brings to bear cannot contain all of what he observes in the painting. Proust shows this in the text protracted description between the initial phrase, “the intelligence next made a same element of that that was,” and its resolution, “identical in all these diverse aspects, to be still the sea.” In addition, part of the resolution maintains the paradox that sustains poetic vision. The sea cannot really be “identical in all these diverse aspects.” It is at once of a type that we conceptually recognize as the “sea”, and yet also so various in its manifestations that impressions of it can differ greatly. The ability to distinctly perceive, and yet maintain an awareness of the total specatacle of reality lies at the foundation of Marcel’s conception of art. In a description of a painting similar to the port of Carquethuit (that may in fact be Carquethuit, but the painting is not identified), Marcel describes the effect as “that multiform et powerful unity .” This again captures the paradox of both seeing difference and recognizing identity at the same time. Elstir’s paintings capture the distinctness of phenomena, and yet they also achieve a coherence in the underlying impression, together achieving a view of the world as it appears to our perception.
The worlds that Elstir creates are grounded in his own impressions of reality. Because of this his paintings can expand the viewer’s notions of how the world appears. This is the creative power of Eltir’s painting, and also of art more generally. There are thus as many possible worlds as there are great artists:
To succeed at being thus recognized, the original painter, the original artist procedes in the manner of the occultislts. The treatment by their painting, by their prose, is not always easygoing. When he is finished, the practitioner says to us: Now look. And thus the world (that was not created just once, but as often an original artist came to pass) appears to us entirely different from previously, but perfectly clear. Women passe in the street, different from those of other times, because they are Renoirs, these Renoirs where in the past we refused to see women [?]. The cars are also Renoirs, and the water, and the sky...

Pour réussir à être ainsi reconnus, le peintre original, l’artist original procèdent à la façon des oculistes. Le traitement par leur peinture, par leur prose, n’est pas toujours agéable. Quand il est terminé, le practicien nous dit: Maintenant regardez. Et voici que le monde (qui n’a pas été créé une fois, mais aussi souvent qu’un artiste originel est survenu) nous apparaît entièrement différent de l’ancien, mais parfaitement clair. Des femmes passent dans la rue, différentes de celles d’autrefois, puisque ce sont des Renoir, ces Renoir où nous nous refusions jadis à voir des femmes. Les voitures aussi sont des Renoir, et l’eau, et le ciel... (II, p327)