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CARS, TRAINS, PLANES AND PROUSTAuthor(s): Clayton AlcornSource: Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Fall-Winter 1985-86), pp. 153-161Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23532256 .

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CARS, TRAINS, PLANES AND PROUST

Clayton Alcorn

In his excellent study Proust's Nocturnal Muse, William Stewart Bell points

out that the moments conventionally referred to as expériences proustiennes,

or moments bienheureux, are only the most dramatic, the most complete, the

ultimate solutions to the problems posed by time.1 Analogous experiences of

a lower order occur frequently throughout A la recherche du temps perdu,

preparing the way for the final revelations of Le Temps retrouvé. One such

experience is travelling. Georges Poulet has outlined the similarity between

the two, emphasizing the great importance of the voyage in the novel:

. . . toute l'œuvre proustienne est pleine de ces déplacements. Ils y tiennent une place au

moins aussi importante que les souvenirs. Entre ceux-ci et les voyages il y a d'ailleurs une

incontestable analogie. Les uns et les autres sont des événements qui rompent l'inertie du

corps et la paresse de l'esprit. Ils créent un nouveau point de départ en transportant l'être

en dehors du lieu matériel ou spirituel dans lequel il semblait astreint à vivre. Surtout,

voyages et souvenirs mettent brusquement en rapport des réglons de la terre ou de l'es

prit qui, jusqu'alors, étaient sans relation aucune.2

The analogy between travelling and l'expérience proustienne is made

possible by the strong connection between time and space: they are intrin

sically bound, and to conquer one is to conquer both. The temporal aspect of

Proust's work has traditionally been given more attention than the spatial;

again, it is Georges Poulet who has brought the two into better perspective:

"... de même que l'esprit localise l'image remémorée dans la durée, il la loca

lise dans l'espace. Ce n'est pas seulement certaine période de son enfance, que

l'être proustien voit sortir de sa tasse de thé; c'est aussi une chambre, une

église, une ville, un ensemble topographique solide ..." (26-7). Not just a

point in time, but also a point is space. And Proust himself also indicates the

inextricability of the two dimensions in discussing the ways in which the auto

has revolutionized our concept of distance: "Les distances ne sont que le rap

port de l'espace au temps et varient avec lui. Nous exprimons la difficulté que

nous avons à nous rendre à un endroit, dans un système de lieues, de kilomè

tres, qui devient faux dès que cette difficulté diminue."3

153



154 Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Significant elements of the analogy between Proust's moments bienheu

reux and travelling depend to a major degree on the type of vehicle involved

in the trip. Travelling by car offers a kind of similarity to the expérience

proustienne which is different from the similarity found in train travel. Of

course, neither one provides a complete Proustian experience, since travelling

belongs in the lower order of experiences cited by Bell.

The auto has modified our concept of distance by causing a rapprochement

of places which the traveller had thought to be isolated or unreachable from

each other in the course of a day or a half-day. This idea is developed most

fully in Sodome et Gomorrhe when Marcel speaks of his afternoon rides in a

car which he has rented to please Albertine. He refers to a spot called Beau

mont, which, because of the time and effort which the horse-drawn carriage

needed to attain it, seemed very high, very "curious," and essentially unsitu

ated in terms of any known fixed points such as La Raspelière or Balbec. He

always thought of Beaumont as unique and far-off, enjoying "un privilège

spécial d'extraterritorialité" (II, 1005). But the auto, "qui ne respecte aucun

mystère," amazed him one day by passing Beaumont just minutes after leav

ing Incarville on the way to Parvilie (these two towns were familiar to him as

stops on the train he frequently took to La Raspelière). Proust takes pains

to emphasize his astonishment at the proximity of the special, "isolated"

place to the others—the discovery of which he might never have made without

the experience of the auto ride.

This discovery of the close relationship between two geographical locations

which were heretofore isolated and unconnected in a person's consciousness

is analogous to the unexpected linking of two events which takes place during

the expérience proustienne. The auto has done for space what the expérience

proustienne does for time, or rather, the auto ride produces a phenomenon

similar to that part of the expérience proustienne which demolishes the spatial

barriers between the two moments (workings of the mémoire involontaire

occur only in Paris, but they link that city with Combray, Balbec, Venice, and

so on). During the moments bienheureux, there is a sense of living absolutely

simultaneously in two points of time and space. The present is not erased; it

is, rather, joined to the past in a marvelous, mystical manner.4 In the auto

ride, the union is less perfect: it still requires some time to go from Beaumont

to Incarville, although much less time than the traveller has been accustomed

to. The experience is of a lower order, but its similarity is incontestable.

A second similarity between the car and the mémoire involontaire is found

in the manner in which an arrival by auto, rather than by train, enables one

to become intimate with one's new surroundings in a brief period of time, to



Clayton A /corn 15 5

"get the feel of the place." After telling of his surprise at discovering that

Beaumont is adjacent to Incarville and Parville, Proust elaborates on this

point:

Non, l'automobile ne nous menait pas ainsi féeriquement dans une ville que nous voyions

d'abord dans l'ensemble que résume son nom, et avec les illusions du spectateur dans la

salle. Il nous faisait entrer dans la coulisse des rues, s'arrêtait à demander un renseignement

à un habitant. Mais, comme compensation d'une progression si familière, on a les tâton

nements mêmes du chauffeur incertain de sa route et revenant sur ses pas, les chassés

croisés de la perspective faisant jouer un château aux quatre coins avec une colline, une

église et la mer, pendant qu'on se rapporche de lui, bien qu'il se blotisse vainement sous

sa feuillée séculaire, ces cercles, de plus en plus rapprochés, que décrit l'automobile

autour d'une ville fascinée qui fuyait dans tous les sens pour échapper, et sur laquelle

finalement il fonce tout droit, à pic, au fond de la vallée où elle reste gisante à terre; de

sorte que cet emplacement, point unique, que l'automobile semble avoir dépouillé du

mystère des trains express, il donne par contre l'impression de le découvrir, de le détermi

ner nous-mêmes comme avec un compas, de nous aider à sentir d'une main plus amoureu

sement exploratrice, avec une plus fine précision, la véritable géométrie, la belle "mesure

de la terre." (Il, 1005-6)

The greater familiarity with one's destination afforded by the auto can be lik

ened to the completeness of the expérience proustienne, which recalls totally

every aspect of the past moment. For example, the narrator's limited volun

tary memory of Combray was restricted to his aunt's house and the drame

du coucher, but the Combray provided by the madeleine in the cup of tea is

whole, complete in every detail: "Tout Combray et les environs, tout cela qui

prend forme et solidité, est sorti, ville et jardins, de ma tasse de thé" (I, 48). The above passage about automobile arrivals contains one of several com

parisons Proust makes between cars and trains. In this case, the result is not

very flattering to the trains: the auto gives to the traveller more of a sense of

personal knowledge about the place, more of a feeling of accomplishment.

But if, in travelling by auto, one is more sensitive to the gradual change in

topography, the charm of the train lies in its ability to bring into vivid relief

the difference between the point of departure and the destination, resulting

in a clearer, more satisfying feeling that one has, indeed, travelled:

Ce voyage, on le ferait sans doute aujourd'hui en automobile, croyant le rendre ainsi

plus agréable. On verra qu'accompli de cette façon, il serait même, en un sens, plus vrai

puisqu'on y suivrait de plus près, dans une Intimité plus étroite, les diverses gradations

selon lesquelles change la face de la terre. Mais enfin le plaisir spécifique du voyage n'est

pas de pouvoir descendre en route et s'arrêter quand on est fatigué, c'est de rendre la dif

férence entre le départ et l'arrivée non pas insensible, mais aussi profonde qu'on peut, de

la ressentir dans sa totalité, intacte, telle qu'elle était en nous quand notre imagination




nous portait du lieu où nous vivions jusqu'au cœur d'un lieu désiré, en un bond qui nous

semblait moins miraculeux parce qu'il franchissait une distance que parce qu'il unissait

deux individualités distinctes de la terre, qu'il nous menait d'un nom à un autre nom, et

que schématise (mieux qu'une promenade où, comme on débarque où l'on veut, il n'y a

guère plus d'arrivée) l'opération mystérieuse qui s'accomplissait dans ces lieux spéciaux,

les gares, lesquels ne font presque pas partie de la ville mais contiennent l'essence de sa

personnalité de même que sur un écriteau signalétique elles portent son nom. (I, 644)

One enters the railway coach, a rather close, albeit not terribly confining

environment, at a particular station. Nothing essential changes during the trip,

except the coach's location, but upon stepping outside, often through the

very door by which one had entered, one has the clear sense that the world

surrounding the coach is completely different. The coach is somewhat like

the human body during the expérience proustienne: the intense feeling that

the subject is in a new location (although retaining the sense of one's present

location, as we have seen)—that one has instantaneously been transported to a

different world—is a central element in the operation of involuntary memory.

So the auto trip enables one to discover surprising geographical connec

tions between two locations thought to be far apart, and it can also give to

the traveller a more complete knowledge of the place he is visiting than the

train can; but the train is better able to produce a sense that one's environ

ment has changed, that the world is different. Coexisting difference and simi

larity, as well as a sense of sensual completeness of the experience, are all key

elements of the expérience proustienne. Thus, in a complementary way, train

travel and auto travel provide different analogies to the moments bienheureux.

In Le Temps retrouvé, after the narrator's three experiences of mémoire

involontaire in rapid succession have enabled him to feel real happiness and to

sense that the source of that happiness, the source of what he calls "non une

sensation d'autrefois mais une vérité nouvelle" (III, 878), lies within himself, he realizes that these sensations are a kind of sign or message that needs inter

preting. And the only complete interpretation of them is to be found by using

them as the basis for a work of art:

En somme, dans un cas comme dans l'autre, qu'il s'agît d'Impressions comme celle que

m'avait donnée la vue des clochers de Martinville, ou de réminiscences comme celle de

l'inégalité des deux marches ou le goût de la madeleine, il fallait tâcher d'Interpréter les

sensations comme les signes d'autant de lois et d'idées, en essayant de penser, c'est-à-dire

de faire sortir de la pénombre ce que j'avais senti, de le convertir en un équivalent spiri

tuel. Or, ce moyen qui me paraissait le seul, qu'écait-ce autre chose que faire une œuvre

d'art? (Ill, 878-9)

Now art is intimately associated with the expérience proustienne-, one is

tempted to say that for Proust, the moments bienheureux make art necessary.



Clayton AIcorn 15 7

It is also closely connected with travelling, and with the modes of travelling

under consideration here.

Indeed, the subject of art, beauty and esthetics arises directly or indirectly

in all of the passages which treat at any length the attributes of a particular

mode of transport. But art and travelling are in no case more closely linked

than in the three major passages in the novel in which Marcel spies airplanes

in the skies above him. The major difference between airplanes and the other

means of transport is that Marcel never travels in one: they remain for him

objects of dreams, hopes, and a bit of envy (directed toward the aviator), as

the trains to Balbec or to Venice are before he actually travels on them. It is

perhaps because of this that the scenes involving airplanes are the most emo

tionally charged and intense of any discussions of modes of travel. A bit para

doxically, one of them also resembles more completely than any experiences

with autos or trains the genuine expérience proustlenne.

The first of these scenes occurs during a horseback ride at Balbec. Marcel

recognizes, unexpectedly, a location used by Elstir as a background for two

"admirable watercolors" which he, Marcel, had studied some time before at

the home of the Guermantes. This very recognition triggers a process that

bears some resemblance to his moments bienheureux:

Un instant, les rochers dénudés dont j'étais entouré, la mer qu'on apercevait par leurs

déchirures, flottèrent devant mes yeux comme des fragments d'un autre univers: j'avais

reconnu le paysage montagneux et marin qu'Elstir a donné pour cadre à ces deux admira

bles aquarelles, "Poète rencontrant une Muse," "Jeune homme rencontrant un Centaure,"

que j'avais vus chez la duchesse de Guermantes. Leur souvenir replaçait les lieux où je me

trouvais tellement en dehors du monde actuel que je n'aurais pas été étonné si, comme le

jeune homme de l'âge anté-historique que peint Elstir, j'avais, au cours de ma promenade,

croisé un personnage mythologique. (Il, 1028-9)

So the airplane's appearance is carefully prepared by an association not only

with a mythological setting but with a completely unexpected sense of having

instantaneously travelled to another world ("en dehors du monde actuel").

Thus, Marcel is already in a supercharged emotional state when he perceives

the approach of the first plane he has ever seen:

Tout à coup mon cheval se cabra; il avait entendu un bruit singulier, j'eus peine à le maî

triser et à ne pas être jeté à terre, puis je levai vers le point d'où semblait venir ce bruit

mes yeux pleins de larmes, et je vis à une cinquantaine de mètres au-dessus de moi, dans

le soleil, entre deux grandes ailes d'acier étincelant qui l'emportaient, un être dont la

figure peu distincte me parut ressembler à celle d'un homme. Je fus aussi ému que pou

vait l'être un Grec qui voyait pour la première fois un demi-dieu. Je pleurais aussi, car

j'étais prêt à pleurer, du moment que j'avais reconnu que le bruit venait d'au-dessus de

ma tête—les aéroplanes étaient encore rares à cette époque—à la pensée que ce que j'allais




voir pour la première fois c'était un aéroplane. Alors, comme quand on sent venir dans

un journal une parole émouvante, je n'attendais que d'avoir aperçu l'avion pour fondre

en larmes. (Il, 1029)

Certainly Marcel is telling us that his experience is analogous to that of the

poet and the young man in Elstir's paintings—even to the momentary vague

fusion of the plane's wings with the bust of the pilot, as if man and gigantic

bird were one, in the same manner as the centaur is the joining of man and

horse. Simply put, the plane is the stuff of which modern mythology is made.

And, as he will do in a later scene at Versailles, Proust ends with a comment

on the liberty which the plane represents—a liberty which Habit and Routine

have stolen from him:

Cependant l'aviateur sembla hésiter sur sa voie; je sentais ouvertes devant lui-devant

moi, si l'habitude ne m'avait pas fait prisonnier—toutes les routes de l'espace, de la vie; il

poussa plus loin, plana quelques instants au-dessus de la mer, puis prenant brusquement

son parti, semblant céder à quelque attraction inverse de celle de la pesanteur, comme

retournant dans sa patrie, d'un léger mouvement de ses ailes d'or il piqua droit vers le

ciel. (Il, 1029)

The importance of the airplane to Proust is underscored by the role of

Elstir and his paintings in this experience. To most readers Elstir probably

represents primarily modern art, based on contemporary subjects. In fact, as

Roger Kempf reminds us, it is Elstir who has taught Marcel to see the specific

beauty to be found in contemporary events and in modern objects.5 The

painter, as erudite as he is talented, shows the young man that beauty exists

not only in the work of the great masters of the past but also in the world

around him today, with the ultimate result that, as Marcel tells us, he modi

fies his attitude:

. . . maintenant, tout ce que j'avais dédaigné, écarté de ma vue, non seulement les effets

de soleil, mais même les régates, les courses de chevaux, je l'eusse recherché avec passion

pour la même raison qu'autrefois je n'aurais voulu que des mers tempétueuses, et qui

était qu'elles se rattachaient, les unes comme autrefois les autres, à une idée esthétique.

(I, 897)

Nevertheless, in this scene we are reminded that the young Elstir went

through a "mythological period." And earlier in the text, during Marcel's first

visit to Balbec, there is revealing commentary on this mythological period and

on its meaning. Marcel begins by expressing his disappointment in the plain

ness and apparent lack of beauty of the aging Madame Elstir; he is surprised

to hear her husband call her, with obvious sincerity and affection, "ma belle

Gabrielle." But it is Elstir's mythological paintings which eventually give him



Clayton AI corn 15 9

the solution to this puzzle: Elstir's wife holds for him a kind of beauty that,

during this so-called "mythological period" of his youth, he had sought to

create with an all-consuming fervor:

Plus tard, quand je connus la peinture mythologique d'Elstir, Mme Elstir prit pour moi

aussi de la beauté. Je compris qu'à un certain type idéal résumé en certaines lignes, en

certaines arabesques qui se retrouvaient sans cesse dans son oeuvre, à un certain canon, il

avait attribué en fait un caractère presque divin, puisque tout son temps, tout l'effort de

pensée dont il était capable, en un mot toute sa vie, il l'avait consacrée à la tâche de dis

tinguer mieux ces lignes, de les reproduire plus fidèlement. Ce qu'un tel idéal inspirait

à Elstir, c'était vraiment un culte si grave, si exigeant, qu'il ne lui permettait jamais d'être

content; cet idéal, c'était la partie la plus intime de lui-même: aussi n'avait-il pu le consi

dérer avec détachement, en tirer des émotions, jusqu'au jour où il le rencontra, réalisé

au dehors, dans le corps d'une femme, le corps de celle qui était par la suite devenue

Madame Elstir et chez qui il avait pu—comme cela ne nous est possible que pour ce qui

n'est pas nous-mêmes-le trouver méritoire, attendrissant, divin. (I, 850-1)

Proust finishes by explaining that now, the older Elstir is tired of seeking to

bring this beauty out of himself and is content, perhaps even grateful, to find

it incarnated in another; that is why he finds his wife so beautiful.

Of the three great artists Proust gives us—Bergotte, Elstir, and Vinteuil—

Elstir has the greatest influence on Marcel: it is he who teaches him the most,

in his conversations, in his art, and in the way he has lived his life. Elis single

minded, fervent effort to create this beauty, or to give a physical form to the

ideal he felt within himself ("la partie la plus intime de lui-même") is the same

effort that Marcel has already begun to make, sporadically and unsuccessfully.

So the airplane's connection with Elstir's art, especially in such an emotional

way, its further connection to myth, and the realization of the significance of

Elstir's mythological period, show indisputably that for Proust the airplane is

much more than a machine which carries people from one point to another:

it contains meanings and connotations which speak to his very soul.

In the passage already cited concerning the automobile's revolutionizing

our concepts of distance, Proust makes a clear connection between this proc

ess and artistic conceptions: "L'art en est aussi modifié, puisqu'un village, qui

semblait dans un autre monde que tel autre, devient son voisin dans un pay

sage dont les dimensions sont changées" (II, 996-7). The second appearance

of an airplane in the novel gives us a concrete example of this kind of modifi

cation of our concept of distance, along with a suggestion-a very strong sug

gestion-of its effect on art. While Marcel and Albertine are visiting Versailles,

an airplane flies overhead and the noise of its engine has a profound effect

on Marcel. Like the earlier scene, the passage is charged from the beginning

(although not so heavily) with emotional esthetic experiences: before the




plane appears, Marcel is deeply moved by the beautiful blue sky, and thinks

of his grandmother, who also appreciated such beauty:

Le ciel était tout entier fait de ce bleu radieux et un peu pâle comme le promeneur cou

ché dans un champ le voit parfois au-dessus de sa tête, mais tellement uni, tellement

profond, qu'on sent que le bleu dont il est fait a été employé sans aucun alliage, et avec

une si inépuisable richesse qu'on pourrait approfondir de plus en plus sa substance sans

rencontrer un atome d'autre chose que de ce même bleu. Je pensais à ma grand'mère qui

aimait dans l'art humain, dans la nature, la grandeur, et qui se plaisait à regarder monter

dans ce même bleu le clocher de Saint-Hilaire. Soudain j'éprouvai de nouveau la nostalgie

de ma liberté perdue en entendant un bruit que je reconnus pas d'abord et que ma grand'

mère eût, lui aussi, tant aimé. C'était comme le bourdonnement d'une guêpe. (Ill, 406)

Even though Marcel does not know at first what the sound is, it has already

affected him with a sense of nostalgia for "lost liberty," reminiscent of the

comment he made in the first airplane scene that all the paths of space and

life are open to the aviator, as they would be to him, if he were not the pris

oner of Habit.

After finishing his description of the plane's appearance, Proust speaks of

the "beauty" of the sound of an airplane engine. Now "beauty" is a word

which Proust would not use in an offhand manner. In this case, his point is

that the source of the beauty is a device which has, specifically, modified the

concept of distance. He suggests that the plane's engine, signifying as it does

the possibility of a faster journey than had been possible until then, represents

to the first generation to hear it a freedom from the restraints of time, as the

train whistle had represented the same freedom when the railroads were new:

"Peut-être, quand les distances sur terre n'étaient pas encore abrégées depuis

longtemps par la vitesse comme elles le sont aujourd'hui, le sifflet d'un train

passant à deux kilomètres était-il pourvu de cette beauté qui maintenant, pour

quelque temps encore, nous émeut dans le bourdonnement d'un aéroplane à

deux mille mètres..." (Ill, 407). Here we have two essentially utilitarian

sounds-one designated as a warning, the other a result of the functions of

a machine—which Proust finds beautiful to the extent that they represent a

freedom from servitude to time. The difference between them and art, of

course, is that they eventually lose much of their evocative power—yet more

victims of that old enemy Habit—and great art does not. But in the same way

that these sounds suggest a modification of our concepts of distance they sug

gest a modification of our conception of beauty, and thus of art, as Proust

explained in his discussion of automobile rides.

There are of course many other examples of the relationship between trav

elling, the expérience proustienne, and art and beauty. In some cases, there



Clayton AIcorn 161

are similar experiences occurring in different modes of transportation (such as

the phenomenon of inanimate objects, like the steeples of Martinville seen by

the young Marcel in Dr. Percepied's carriage, seeming to move according to

the twists and turns of the vehicle's path; for a discussion of this see Poulet,

pp. 96-105). At other times Proust speaks of experiences particular to one

form of transport, which for him contain an esthetic value, the highest value

in his eyes. As with all other elements in his work, Proust used the vehicles

therein purposefully and after much consideration. He was fortunate to live

in a time of great developments in travel. He saw their importance not only

to society but to the human spirit, and exploited them magnificently in his

great novel.

Dept. of International Communications

& Culture

State University College at Cortland

Cortland, NY 13045

1. William Stewart Bell, Proust's Nocturnal Muse (New York, Columbia University

Press, 1962). 2. Georges Poulet, L'Espace proustien (Paris, Gallimard, 1963), p. 92.

3. A la recherche du temps perdu, 3 vols. (Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,

1954), II, p. 996. All subsequent page references incorporated in the text are to this edi

tion.

4. "... la cause de cette félicité,... je la devinais en comparant ces diverses impres sions bienheureuses et qui avaient entre elles ceci de commun que je les éprouvais à la

fois dans le moment actuel et dans un moment éloigné, jusqu'à faire empiéter le passé sur le présent, à me faire hésiter à savoir dans lequel des deux je me trouvais; au vrai, l'être qui alors goûtait en moi cette impression la goûtait en ce qu'elle avait de commun

dans un jour ancien et maintenant, dans ce qu'il avait d'extra-temporel, un être qui n'ap

paraissait que quand, par une de ces identités entre le présent et le passé, il pouvait se

trouver dans le seul milieu où il pût vivre, jouir de l'essence des choses, c'est-à-dire en

dehors du temps" (III, 871 ). 5. Roger Kempf, "Sur quelques Véhicules," L 'Arc, No. 47 (1971 ), p. 50.



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