LE FUGITIF. FUIR LA VÉRITÉ DANS LA « RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU »

Everyone knows that Proust's Recherche is the history of an artistic vocation, the history of a quest of truth. Truth, however, is not easily found and hides itself. The novel 's hero hides himself, he flees during three thousand pages to avoid to face his mission. This article aims to analyze this flight and it is structured in three parties: the flight in friendship, the flight in love and the flight from literature, the last attempt of Marcel to indulge in divertissement, wasting true time for urbane life. Only at the moment when sorrow and mourn lead him in the obscurity of the self, the novel's hero can take upon himself his artistic duty. In effect, if Albertine is the Fugitive , if it is she who physically disappears, it is Marcel who keeps on to flee in his fugue, in the double meaning of "flight" and of "a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts". This last meaning is only possible in the night of sorrow and in the desert of absence.