Proust studied paintings diligently, in the Louvre, in Florence, in Padua, where he was absorbed by Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena chapel, and in Venice. The power of association is emphasised when the Narrator is in the company of a loved one, his mother, Odette, Albertine, even Françoise, the servant who is compared with Giotto’s Justitia, though this is not a comparison one would have made for oneself. Indeed all the comparisons are made for one, and they are made in such a way as to render them almost three-dimensional, certainly more visible to the reader who will thenceforth carry them in his head. The association with images is also an association with memory, both voluntary and involuntary, which is the overriding theme of the novel.

Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure. It was probably those early nights which engendered the Narrator’s reminiscences. These were supplemented by those pictorial details and comparisons which occur more rationally in the self-conscious light of day. In an age when multiple choices devalue inward-dwelling experiences, Proust’s novel is an object-lesson in obsessive fidelity to the parameters of his own heroic enterprise. Thus this compilation, which might, at the outset, have seemed a simple exercise, has expanded into a grand overview of the novel, Proust and the Narrator sharing the task of reminiscence in a new form of acquisition. With over 200 illustrations this is a book which no Proust addict can afford to miss.

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