The World Emerging From A Cup Of Tea

Marcel Proust is one of the most important writer of 20th century in France. In Search of Lost Time is Proust's masterpiece on which he spent all his energy during his life time. In this work,reminiscene is the basic psychological mechanism which carries out the unfolding of the content. Reminiscene is for the search for the lost time-the "psychological time", which is the spiritual subject matter of the book. With the problem of time Proust begins his thinking on aesthetics and philosophy,and he did find what he had explored and pursued. Thus,the exploration of time in In Search of Lost Time is an important way to find the access to understanding this master's arts and thoughts.The first section of this thesis probes into the appearance form of time in In Search of Lost Time. What Proust concerns about is not the drawing of former days, his real interest consists in the truthful form of time passing. The intrinsic performance of the time passes is reminiscene, and the external performance is the senescence of life. Figures are the live carved statues of time, and the "Time Goddess" Albertina is the best illustration. The intrinsic performance of time is reminiscene. In Proust's opinion, only the involuntory memory can open the gate of time, the nature of time exists in this perceptual memory really, it needs synesthesia to touch off the involuntary memory.The second part of this thesis discusses Proust's time conception. Based on involuntary memory, Proust develops a new kind skills of writing, it also marks a new way of the writer to perceive this world. For Proust, psychological time that present and the past can be staggered is the individual's inner experience to time's elapsing which is totally opposite towards the traditional linear physical time. There are some reasons for the formation of Proust's time conception. First of all, Proust is very sensitive. Secondly, Bergson's time philosophy brings a big influence to the forming of Proust's time conception,but his conception is different from Bergson's on some aspects. Finally,his enormous artistic creativity is symbiotic with his disease. Proust's time conception has led revolutionary changes in his literature. Style as a personal languege is the first change,it indicates someone's willing to reconstruct the reality. Second,the inverse of the sequence make In Search of Lost Time much different from the traditional novels.The last part of this thesis aims to explore the reason why Proust take the "time" on a very important role in his masterpiece.Why dwell on the past time?For Proust,to retrieve lost time means going beyond the time to find out the true meaning of life and happiness.Then how to seize the happiness and regain the lost time?In Proust's opnion,the only means to restore of the past time is art,only art can retain the truth and the happiness thereby saving the life which is swallowed up by time.