Proust, memory and the Engram.

Abstract

The French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was born at Auteuil, Paris and was a semi-invalid all his life, cosseted by his mother until her death in 1905 when he was 34 years old. His hitherto 'social butterfly' existence was transformed. He withdrew himself from society and lived in a sound-proof flat giving himself entirely to introspection. Delving into the 'self' below the levels of superficial consciousness, he set himself to transforming into art the realities of experience as known to the inner emotional self. In his monumental 13 volume novel, A la recherche du temps perdu, it is evident how no detail ever escapes the amazingly observant eye of the artist, and how his experience is subjected to close scrutiny and a searching analysis. His characters are described in terms of their concealed emotional lives, evolving in a plane that has nothing to do with temporal dimensions.