136
JOSEPH FRANK
Proust is so winning and ingratiating, the iIIuminations he provides so
numerous, his prose so lucid and felicitious, that one finds it hard to
resist accepting his point of view uncritically as definitive. To do so,
however, would be a serious mistake. For Mr. Shattuck's interpretation
is really a concealed polemic that leads him unduly to exaggerate (and
even to misinterpret) certain key aspects of the Proustian universe.
Mr. Shattuck's most solid contribution to Proust criticism is made in
the earlier sections of his book. Here he focuses on the predominance
of optical imagery among the luxuriance of metaphor that is one of the
greatest delights of the Proustian style. This preference for optics is
more than a casual idiosyncracy or the result of Proust's fascination
with the then-new discoveries of photography and the cinema. Rather, it
is through the imagery of optics that Proust will ultimately succeed in
expressing the personal conquest of time that is the final goal and purpose
of all his literary endeavors. Such optical imagery, as Mr. Shattuck
notes, becomes increasingly important in the final volume,
Le temps
retrouve,
when the narrator of the book, after a long period of seclusion,
returns to a world he has almost forgotten. And the revelation that
overwhelms him at this time is his discovery of what Mr. Shattuck
acutely calls "the optics of Time."
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