Proust and the search for the absent scene: the writing deviation in the prisoner and the fugitive

Abstract

This article analyzes the composition of two volumes of In Search of Lost Time (À La recherche du temps perdu, 1913-1927), by Marcel Proust: The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, published posthumously in 1923) and The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, published posthumously in 1927), as derivation of the literary writing deviation that, in turn, is a resulting from the homosexual behavior deviation of certain characters of Proust’s work. The narrative focus of the work is done from the influence of two homosexual scenes with components of sadomasochistic perversion observed by the narrator in his childhood and youth, which lead him to elaborate imaginary scene putting his companion, Albertine, as a protagonist of one homosexual deviance scene. Due to this scene the narratives of The Prisoner and The Fugitive originate a writing which is structured in the ambivalence, since they are developed through the narrator’s imaginary jealousy and are also constituted by the alternation among the real scenes of his relation with Albertine and the fictional scenes elaborated by jealousy, through the narrator‘s unsuccessful attempts to compose the absent scene, the scene that never really happens but it ends up being realized as literary work.