‘Un homme qui dort, tient en cercle autour de lui de fils des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes. Il les consulte d’instinct en s’éveillant et y lit un seconde le point de la terre qu’il occupe…mais les rangs peuvent se mêler, romper.’ This is precisely what the reader witnesses within the first part, we are thrust through a string of associative memories of his earliest recollections of Combray. Looking backwards Marcel sees a succession of different selves, each inhabiting his own world with its own atmosphere and sensations which is encompassed by the sentence above. The reader is able to identify with the narrator as an onus is placed upon the actual act of rememberance, rather than the outcome of this journey.
This shown in the incident with La Madelaine, where the concern is the transient nature of memory; ‘Je bois une seconde gorgée où je ne trouve rien de plus que dans la première, une troisième qui m’apporte un peu moins que la seconde.’ Here we see that the focus is not on the actual memory, rather it is on the process of recovering the memory which is adaptable to the readers own experiences. This concept of a search for an involuntary memory poses some problems as an active search negates the involuntary status of the memory, is it not rather just subconsciously sought? This transience is also related to the narrator’s understanding of the physical world around him, not just the concept of memory;
‘Peut-être l’immobilité des choses autour de nous leur est-elle imposée par notre certitude que ce sont elles et non pas d’autres, par l’immobilité de notre pensée en face d’elles.’
This illustrates the idea of being in a state of limbo when without full command of memory, Proust here draws together the concept of the physical world and our perception of it through memory, and his reality. This incident can be seen as a microcosm of the book, with Marcel exploring his past through memories in order to make sense of his current reality.
However, he describes the way that imagination can have effect on perceptions and memories, just as he constructs an imaginary world around him out of an amalgamation of memories;
‘…tandis qu’autour de lui les murs invisibles, changeant de place selon la pièce imaginée, tourbillonnaient dans les ténèbres.’
We note the importance of memory to the individual as Marcel has to construct a reality around himself from any memories that seem familiar, ‘Sa mémoire…lui présantait successivement plusieurs des chambres où il avait dormi.’ This process is, essentially, the narrator trying to escape the world of imagination and doubt that surrounds him, ‘il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce don’t parlait l’ouvrage,’ by discerning the reality around him, a process that the reader is subjected to as his memory trickles back. In this first part, we are guided through the temporal realm, ‘Je me demandais quelle heure il pouvait être…Bientôt minuit,’ the physical ‘j’appuyais tendrement mes joues contre les belles joues de l’oreiller’ and psychological realms ‘le reste des humains m’apparaissait comme bien lointain auprès de cette femme que j’avais quittée,’ by the narrator. In the narration past and present merge, reality appears in half-forgotten experiences.
If the past is so essential in defining the present then Proust’s comment on the individual and their place in society holds more weight; ‘notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres.’ Not only is this a comment on the relationship between social identity and the self, but a critique of the rigidity of society at the time in its judgments. Therefore, one’s present reality or personality is defined purely by those around us and their knowledge of us, and that identity varies according to company.
A manner in which the reader is pulled into his own introspection is that Proust conveys a communication of feeling with little sentimental comment, and the detachment with which, paradoxically, the drama is conveyed. Marcel’s adult critique and voice merges with the narration of his childhood desires and thoughts; ‘…le plus grand désir que j’eusse au monde, garder ma mère dans ma chamber pendant ces tristes heures nocturnes.’ Through this layering of narrative voices, Proust conveys a reality that is both present and undeniably blended with not only his memories, but his voice from the past. Marcel recalls subjective emotional states in a rather objective manner, thus allowing the reader to analyse, not only the recollections as beings themselves, but also the way in which Marcel recounts them in his present reality. Furthermore, it is this technique that turns the mirror towards the reader, rather than to Marcel.
"A book is the product of a different self from the one we manifest in our habits, our social life and our vices," Proust wrote in his answer to the French critic Sainte-Beuve, who tried to understand writers by investigating their private life and environment. Therefore, in Combray and throughout his psychological exploration of memory, Proust is not simply recounting his own personal experiences, but from a ‘different self’, one which also encompasses the shared experiences of the reader. This goes some way in explaining how ‘Combray’ acts as an optical instrument with a view to making the reader a reader of his own self, not simply the self portrayed within the book.