Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume One

“For a long time I used to go to bed early.”

The opening line of the novel creates an immediate separation between the past and the present. The past tense indicates insomnia has not always been part of Marcel’s life. Despite this change, the past hangs so heavily over Marcel’s present that the old experiences inform his present.

“So much did I love that good night that I reached the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.”

For Marcel, time is not objective. Emotion influences time to such an extent that the wait for his mother’s goodnight kiss can feel like infinity. He infuses the moment with such an emotional significance that he seeks to delay her arrival, hoping to unburden himself of the anxiety that the kiss will not come again. The anxiety in anticipation of the kiss and the fear that it might arrive too soon illustrate the elastic way in which Marcel perceives time, depending on his emotional state.

“I was conscious that it was not connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savors, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs.”

Marcel dips a small cake in tea and feels overwhelmed by a rush of emotion. The moment is a shock to Marcel, but it clarifies his existence. He has always been a sentimental person and now he is attuned to the relationship between his senses and his sentimentality. He explores the sensation, plunging deeper into the relationship between his emotional past and his physical present.