Supernatural Proust: Myth and Metaphor in 'A la recherche du temps perdu' (review)

This comprehensive and remarkably detailed account of the significance of references to the supernatural in A la recherche du temps perdu attends closely to the ways in which Proust's novel takes up and transforms material from the fields of magic, fairytale, puppet theatre, fable, legend, spiritualism and the occult. It draws strength from the tension between the two very different expressions of critical temperament which it alternately exhibits: the ramifying, exploratory, vein of Proust criticism which follows in the wake of Malcolm Bowie's work in illuminating 'the rich catholicity of Proust's vision' (p. 11) and the unifying psychologistic humanism represented here by Mircea Eliade, ultimately edging closer to the latter as the author concludes that: 'Proust is uncovering the essential syncretism, indeed synchronicity, of human characteristics and societies' (p. 161). The study is a delight when it analyses examples of Proustian alchemy in which the novel takes up this superficially rather unpromising raw material from the supernatural and subjects it to aesthetic transformation, but somewhat disquieting in its readiness to defer to Eliade, Jung, Bettelheim and other 'theorists' of myth such as Max Lüthi (not Lüthe), because this reverses the transformative process, cashing out Proustian gold into a disturbingly simple array of 'patterns', such as 'withdrawal' and 'return' (p. 108), and psychotherapeutically inspired formulations such as 'the desire for closure' (p. 128) and 'the retreat from challenge and change' (p. 128). Overemphasizing the curative power and explanatory potential of myth runs ethical as well as interpretative risks, not just in that the 'patterns' beloved of Jung and company invariably imply profoundly normalizing conceptions of the human life-cycle, but also in that Eliade's involvement with the Romanian extreme right passes unmentioned, as does, in the reading of a passage describing onlookers' reactions to the elderly Swann's nose (p. 80), the fact that this is a paroxystic moment of anti-Semitic nastiness in the novel. The exact weight to be accorded to these two details is a matter for argument but they cannot simply be overlooked. Elsewhere, however, this study succeeds in showing that an emphasis on myth and the supernatural in the novel not only need not impede, but may enhance, engagement with other layers of Proust's text: in a subtle and probing analysis of the transformation of Les Mille et Une Nuits, Proust's ambivalence towards homosexuality is central to the discussion and in an illuminating reading of the several ways in which Odette's superstitiousness is constructed, due consideration is paid to the question of whether this subverts gender stereotypes.