Luc Fraisse

Université de Strasbourg & Institut universitaire de France, France

[email protected]

 

The false recognition or sensation of déjà vu: experiential issues in Proust’s novels

This study analyses an episode from Marcel Proust’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), the second volume of his novel cycle À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), in which the nameless hero experiences a sensation of déjà-vu, akin to false recognition. While riding in the carriage of one of his grandmother’s friends, he sees a tree-lined avenue that he believes he recognises even though he is seeing it for the first time: the trees seem to beckon to him, reminding him of something to be found, which he is unable to identify. A review of nineteenth-century philosophical and psychological studies on such a phenomenon reveals the intense research on the subject that was carried out in Proust’s circle. The novelist made a choice among all the interpretations, while using the psychic phenomenon to serve the specific aims of his novel, namely the hidden journey of an artist’s vocation. A recently unearthed draft shows that Proust’s interpretation of the phenomenon, which diverges from Bergson’s contemporary views, anticipates its modern explanation by cognitive psychology – a partial analogy with a scene previously experienced and then forgotten.

Key words: false recognition; memory; psychophysiology; theory of the novel; artistic vocation; the unconscious