Marcel Proust: In Search of Chemistry in His Work. The Author and His Great Chemical Novel

Abstract

The article analyzes the use of chemistry as a means of communication and imagination in the writings of the famous French writer Marcel Proust (1871−1922). The oldest work in which Proust uses chemistry is the unfinished novel Jean Santeuil from 1895−1900. The author demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of the possibilities of analytical chemistry, including spectral analysis, and drew attention to the risk of morphine addiction. In a collection of texts Pastiches et mélanges from 1919, Proust describes the period Lemoine's affair with the alleged production of artificial diamonds (unrealizable at that time), in which the name of the French chemist and Nobelist Henri Moissan (1852−1907) also appeared. However, we find the greatest representation of chemistry in his life's work, the novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Proust – walking in the footsteps of Johann von Goethe – literally created a great chemical novel. First, we analyze the chemical nature of the so-called Proust phenomenon based on the sensory effect of substances on memory. We identify the volatile organic compounds that are responsible for the effect in the novel. Next, we note all references to chemistry and chemists as such, including alchemy. Third, we observe how the writer masterfully used chemical phenomena and concepts as a metaphorical means to express the feelings and motives of the actions of the novel's characters. Fourth, we provide an annotated overview of chemicals that are introduced in the novel as drugs: acetylsalicylic acid, aminophenazone, atropine, barbital, caffeine, quinine, cocaine, ethanol, morphine, opium, pepsin, phenol, trional, veronal. Proust's personal experience with them is demonstrated by the remarkable details about their effects mentioned in the novel. Finally, we mention the reception of Proust's work by chemists. In addition to reading for pleasure, Proust's work can also play an important communication and inspirational role in chemistry teaching in schools, as well as in the education of the public, and thus help to manage chemophobia. At the same time, it can further strengthen the identity of chemists as an essential part of human culture.

Chemophobia and passion: why chemists should desire Marcel Proust

“…Perhaps, we can trace its roots to his father Adrien Achille Proust (1834–1903), who was a noted epidemiologist and hygienist and professor of medicine at the University of Paris, or to Proust’s younger brother Robert Emile (1873–1935), who was also a doctor, or it may be based on Proust’s personal experience in treating his many diseases. However, the fact is that the wealth of references to chemistry in the novel is so unexpectedly large that it is a cornucopia of chemistry and the work itself can be undoubtedly described as Proust’s great chemical novel, as we have shown in our previous article [ 57 ].…”

“…This also applies to chemistry, which occupies an important place in the novel. For Proust, a good knowledge of chemistry becomes a source of many comparisons, metaphors, and reflections, enabling the writer to better express his artistic vision of the world, depicting the lives of contemporary elites and ordinary people, and giving the reader an unexpectedly perfect insight into the development of human destinies [ 57 ].…”

“…Here are some of the examples of Proust’s mastery of chemistry (we have discussed this issue in detail in our previous article [ 57 ]). All quotations are taken from the Modern Library edition of In Search of Lost Time in six volumes, translated by Scott Moncrieff and revised by Kilmartin and Enright; except for Time Regained , for which a translation by Mayor and Kilmartin, revised by Enright, is used: • Proust demonstrates an excellent knowledge of the Paracelsian principle of dosis sola facit venenum (only the dose makes the poison) by comparing human memory with a chemical laboratory, as: “we find a little of everything in our memory; it is a sort of pharmacy, a sort of chemical laboratory, in which our groping hand may come to rest now on a sedative drug, now on a dangerous poison.” • Proust compares the creation of the groundbreaking but fictional Vinteuil’s Sonata to the scientific achievement of one of the most celebrated chemists of all time: “An audacity … as inspired, perhaps, as that of a Lavoisier or an Ampere – the audacity of a Vinteuil experimenting, discovering the secret laws that govern an unknown force.” • In connection with the said sonata, Proust aptly mentions the importance of laboratory notebooks when comparing Vinteuil’s difficult-to-read scores to solving: “the illegible notebooks in which a chemist of genius, who does not know that death is at hand, jots down discoveries which will perhaps remain for ever unknown.“ • The satisfaction of one of the characters of the novel, Madame de Cambremer, when learning that the two eminent guests of her soiree did not know each other, brought to her lips: “the smile of a chemist who is about to bring into contact for the first time two particularly important bodies.” • Proust uses the chemical process of crystallization to describe the Narrator’s boyish preoccupation with feeding fish: “I procured some bread from our picnic basket, and threw pellets of it into the Vivonne which seemed to bring about a process of super-saturation, for the water at once solidified round them in oval clusters of emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had no doubt been holding in solution, invisible and on the verge of entering the stage of crystallisation.” • With bravura, Proust uses the chemical processes to depict sudden changes in human behavior that seem inexplicable, but are—in fact—the result of a slow accumulation of silent causes.…”