Remembrance of Things Past: Exhibition

“REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST”

One of the major concerns by Marcel Proust in his book, “Remembrance of Things Past,” is to show that his artist-hero has lived a creative life of profound personal and social value.Through his hero, Proust returns to his own beginnings and all points in between,
not so much as he personally experienced them, but, as he wished his artist-hero
to profit from them. His character, then, is not the biographical Proust, but a reflective and an artistic Proust who re-experienced the past in the light of Proust’s present knowledge.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom
we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.And so it is with our own past.It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die. “These paintings and drawings are “material objects.”The unfolding of the past through the present and vice versa is an achievement of spatial organization… which Marcel Proust uniquely structured in “Remembrance of Things Past.” It can be described as a cubistic “canvas” with its many criss-crossings of time…

BETTINA MARKS