Identité humaine et vieillissement dans une lecture du Temps retrouvé de Marcel Proust

In Time Regained (volume 8 of Remembrance of things past), during an afternoon party at the house of the Princesse de Guermantes, Marcel Proust met people he had not seen for a long time. The transformations of faces and features linked to old age seem to be a costumed ball and Proust experiences “difficulties in putting the required names to the faces around him” and in recognizing them. “Certainly, some women were recognisable because their faces had remained almost the same and they wore their grey hair to harmonise with the season like autumn leaves. But in others and in some men, their identity was so impossible to establish - for instance between the dark voluptary one remembered and the old monk of now - that their transformation made one think, rather than of the actor's art, of that of the amazing mimic of whom Fregoli remains the prototype”. But a fugitive impression or an effort of memory, abstracting “the natural feature from the travesty”, commonly allows recognition of persons. “One starts with the idea that people have remained the same and one discovers that they have got old. But if one starts by thinking them old, one does not find them so bad”. Despite changes, recognizing people allows one to refer to a past time which is not forgotten. Such is the “regained time”, which, from the past deeply hidden to the present, does tell a life in which we can reach the oldest memories. The course of life is not seen anymore as a decline caused by the wreck of Time. It is seen as an ascending path even if this ascent is also seen as an increase in one's fragility and weakness. Old age, described by Proust, can be interpreted as a permanent identity meaning “selfhood”, beyond changes which only affect “sameness” and preserve the unceasing link of each person with one's past. The human being, so weak in space, withdraws all his contribution to his place in time. This is why Proust is so fascinated by the feeling he has, regarding old age, which proves a permanent self maintaining its identity despite transformations over time, but also on the way to death which will set one free from Time.