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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Marcel Proust stated clearly and repeatedly in his vast A la recherche du temps perdu his determining theory of involuntary memory. Proust's entire work was based upon experiences of total recall from a store of memories unconsciously preserved in the mind. In a paper delivered in 1957 by Dr. Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute are to be found physiological bases for Proust's esthetic experiences. Wilder reported that forgotten experiences were revealed to patients in great detail when electrodes were applied to various parts of their brains. Penfield thus supports Proust's view of a stream of memories (or, as Penfield calls it, a continuous filmstrip) preserving an individual's total experiential responses from childhood onward. The juxtaposition of Proust's statements with those of the neurosurgeon about the nature of this stream of unconscious memories, their relation to conscious memory, and the conditions under which they are recalled throws light upon the validity of Proust's technique.
1 Mme Elizabeth Czoniczer in her most stimulating book, Quelques antécédants d'A la recherche du temps perdu (Droz, 1956) argues cogently that Proust's father and brother, both medical doctors, must have left such texts throughout the apartment, where Marcel Proust could have absorbed their contents.
2 See “La Mémoire involontaire avant Marcel Proust” by Justin O'Brien in Revue de Littérature Comparée (March 1939).
3 Journal, i, 785 (19 juin 1924).
4 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, XLIV,ii (15 Feb. 1958).
