might regard it as a philosophical justification of the art of writing, presented through the history of a consciousness. For, as the growing man turns away from the continual disillusion which is the only result of his attempt to pentrate the reality beyond himself, he more clearly sees that the only reality he can hope to master is his own experience. Thus, to enter into complete possession of the past by the method of which 'Du Côté de chez Swann' is an example is presented not only as the goal to which an 'invisible vocation' was calling a particular person, but in fact also as the highest end of man, la vraie vie' indeed. In so far as literature is based upon that method of evoking the past through an associated symbol (which is at least one of the chief psychological elements in literary creation), it is, according to this underlying philosophy, the supreme activity of life.

This concealed motive it is which differentiates M. Proust's book from all that have gone before. The metaphysician might call it the history of a solipsist. But such a definition would be as misleading as all other attempts to find a philosophical definition for a particular work of literature. For, though M. Proust is in a sense applying a theory to experience, he is doing so by the strikingly novel method of describing the process by which the theory was gradually and inevitably formed in the consciousness which applies it. If, therefore, M. Proust's book ends, as we believe it will end, in its own beginning, it will have a unity-in spite of the apparent discrepancy of certain of the parts-which has never been achieved in a work of literature before; it will be the first book in the world that has been the psychological history of its own creation, and a philosophical justification of its own necessity. It will belong essentially to a new order of literature. And that is what we already vaguely feel as we read it. It is something more than a book in an unfamiliar language, more than a fiction of greater psychological sublety than we are accustomed to. For better or worse, it marks the emergence of a new kind, the arrival of a new sensibility.

This is its uncommon significance. To find an approximate parallel in the history of modern literature we should probably have to go back to Rousseau.

There we should discover the paradox of a man, not primarily a literary artist, whose work revolutionised the literature of the next hundred years. M. Proust likewise is not primarily a literary artist. Nothing could be more significant than the length of the process of his finding his 'invisible vocation.' Like Rousseau, he is ultimately compelled to writing as a satisfaction for his sensibility. The chief point of difference is that, whereas Rousseau was compelled to express his sensibility upon alien themes, M. Proust has been in the privileged position of one who can afford to wait for the truly inevitable occasion. Still, the only work of literature with which 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu' could profitably be compared is the 'Confession' of Jean-Jacques. There is a real likeness between the driving impulses at work in these books; and a careful comparison might enable us to determine the more important differences between the new sensibility of the 18th, and the new sensibility of the 20th century. At all events a century of science has passed between. M. Proust is not preoccupied with finding God, but with finding 'la vraie vie,' though a previous quotation shows that, whereas Rousseau always identified them, he sometimes does so. But, more evidently still, a century of scientific psychology, of astronomical physics, of the biology of Natural Selection has intervened. The last shreds of anthropocentrism have been worn away. Where Rousseau felt his own isolation, and was tormented by the discrepancy between his dream and the reality, and could not reconcile himself to his isolation or his torment, M. Proust can reconcile himself. He accepts these conditions; he formulates them as an actual law of human existence; and the acceptance has been incorporated into the very mechanism of his sensibility. He discerns in the world that which he feels in himself; he is a Rousseau to whom all the hidden causes of his perplexity have been made plain.

And the detailed knowledge of a century of science is at his fingers' ends to help him refine and express his sensibility. How may times does he use the simile of a camera to make more apparent the working of two planes of consciousness! Ce qu'on prend en présence de l'être aimé n'est qu'un cliché négatif ; on le developpe plus

tard.' By that phrase he expresses in a sentence a truth which lies behind a whole section of the fifth volume, 'Les Intermittences du Coeur,' where, for the first time realising the loss of his loved grandmother months after her death, the young man learns that the uniqueness of our most precious experience eludes us till the opportunity of it is lost for ever. Again, when the boy, occupied with the anxiety of obtaining his mother's kiss, waits nervously at the dinner table,

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comme un malade, grâce à un anésthésique, assiste avec pleine lucidité a l'opération qu'on pratique sur lui, mais sans rien sentir, je pouvais me réciter des vers que j'aimais ou observer les efforts que mon grand'père faisait pour parler à Swann du duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, sans que les premiers me fissent éprouver aucune émotion, les seconds aucune gaîté.' And on the same occasion, having to take the kiss in public, he had not even the time or the freedom of mind necessary

'pour porter à ce que je faisais cette attention des maniaques qui s'efforcent de ne pas penser à autre chose pendant qu'ils ferment une porte, pour pouvoir, quand l'incertitude maladive leur revient, lui opposer victorieusement le souvenir du moment ou ils l'ont fermée.'

And for a final example we may choose the part played by the Duchesse de Guermantes' tree, which needs to be fertilised by an insect, in the explication of the psychology of the closing pages of Le Côté de Guermantes,' and the writer's declaration :

'Mes réflexions avaient suivi une pente que je décrirai plus tard et j'avais déjà tiré de la ruse apparente des fleurs une conséquence sur toute une partie inconsciente de l'œuvre littéraire.'

Such are some of the typical contributions of the science of the 19th century towards the expression of a sensibility shaped by its larger knowledge.

But, in endeavouring to analyse the singular impression which M. Proust's work makes upon us and to isolate the elements which produce the effect of novelty, in trying to investigate and assess its deeply-rooted originality, we are in danger of neglecting the more

immediately accessible qualities of a book which exhibits at least as many beauties as it conceals. It needs no second reading to appreciate the subtlety of psychological observation, the ironic detachment of the writer's vision of high Parisian society. If the dinner-party at the Guermantes' is a masterpiece in a not wholly unfamiliar genre, in the description of the musical evening at Mme de Ste Euverte's the same lucid irony is perceptibly lifted to a higher plane and made to subserve a complex emotional effect. And, though the biting wit which flashes home again and again through the narrative of 'Le Côté de Guermantes' is of the very highest order in its kind, though the semi-satirical portrait of the bien pensant ambassador, M. de Norpois, at the beginning of A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles' is perfect, they yield in impressiveness to the certainty of the single touch with which, in the description of the grandmother's illness, M. Proust sounds the note of the tragedy of death. When the grandmother has had a paralytic stroke in the Champs Elysées, and the boy suddenly sees 'son chapeau, son visage, son manteau dérangés par la main de l'ange invisible avec lequel elle avait lutté,' we feel we are in the presence of a great writer indeed. And besides the command of tragic simplicity, and wit, M. Proust has also the gift of humour. To appreciate this picture of life in the kitchen it is necessary to know that it was an established convention that the servants should not be disturbed at their lunch.

'Déjà depuis un quart d'heure, ma mère qui n'usait probablement pas des mêmes mesures que Françoise pour apprécier la longueur du déjeuner de celle-ci, disait:

""Mais qu'est-ce qu'ils peuvent bien faire, voilà plus de deux heures qu'ils sont à table.”

'Et elle sonnait timidement trois ou quatre fois. Françoise, son valet de pied, le maître d'hôtel entendaient les coups de sonnette comme un appel et sans songer à venir, mais pourtant commes les premiers sons des instruments qui s'accordent quand un concert va bientôt recommencer et qu'on sent qu'il n'y aura plus que quelques minutes d'entr'acte. Aussi quand les coups commençaient à se répéter et à devenir plus insistants, nos domestiques se mettaient à y prendre garde et estimant qu'ils n'avaient plus beaucoup de temps devant eux et que la reprise du travail était proche, à un tintement de sonnette

un peu plus sonore que les autres, ils poussaient un soupir et prenant leur parti, le valet de pied descendait fumer une cigarette devant la porte, Françoise, après quelques réflexions sur nous, telles que "ils ont sûrement la bougeotte," montait ranger ses affaires dans son sixième, et le maître d'hôtel, ayant été chercher du papier à lettres dans ma chambre, expédiait rapidement sa correspondance privée.'

But it is not these qualities, rare and valuable as they are, which make 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu' the most significant of contemporary works of literature. They are precious qualities, but they are in a sense superficial, and they might be outweighed by the undoubted obscurity, the awkward complication of language, in large portions of the book. It is something much more than a dark narrative with frequent gleams of beauty; it is a book with at least one of the qualities of permanence, an animating soul. It is maintained by a high and subtle purpose, informed by a view of life as a whole; and, because this secret fire glows steadily within it, we feel the radiance through the most forbidding pages long before we are able to detect its source. One consequence of this is that, though M. Proust's language is sometimes alembicated to a point of grotesqueness, he has style; we might more exactly apply to him a phrase which he himself has aptly used of a great predecessor, Stendhal, and say that his work has 'la grande ossature du style,' a thing of infinitely more importance than limpidity or beauty in the detail of expression. M. Proust's style, in this larger meaning, is as new and profoundly original as is the sensibility to which it owes its being.

J. MIDDLETON MURRY.