Bersani: metaphor

“The novel is, moreover, about this continuity, or rather it creates it: the metaphorical connections the narrator now establishes among the different moments of his life gives a psychological unity to what he had felt was the history of discontinuous personalities.” (6-7)

discussion of God and naming on page 208

“Robert Brasillach points out that involuntary memory is a sort of metaphor; Marcel’s temporal illusion when he tastes the madeleine is somewhat like the optical illusions which Elstir paints. [see Bersani 263n36] In both cases something is identified with the help of something else, is, actually, first of all experienced as something else. [...] in involuntary memory the metaphor is temporal, and Marcel’s impressions of the present moment are, very briefly, impressions that belong to a moment from his past. The verbal translation of involuntary memory is necessarily metaphorical.” (225)

“By making the various incidents in his work metaphors for one another, the narrator makes them all metaphors for his particular perspective on reality. Poulet speaks of this ‘reciprocal intelligibility’ among originally distinct episodes; analogies establish patterns that bring together apparently isolated moments [see 264n52].” (236)