A visual image, a scent or a taste lets memories and sensations emerge from our past. The most famous example in his book is the “Madeleine” episode where he experiences an awakening upon tasting a Madeleine dipped in tea. Proust's theory of involuntary memory and voluntary memory is not far from what Freud used to call memory and conscience - in fact, both of them have played an important role studying and theorizing about the connection between psychic suffering and memory. This article aims to think over the connection between dreams and involuntary memory, my intention being to affirm that dreams are very similar to involuntary memory. Both of are not influenced by our reasoning capacity, as most of the times we dream are not rational, instead a sort of a twisted reality. Sometimes in dreams we happen to recall things that actually happened in our real life; other times our dreams are better and represent a happier version of our ordinary life.
Are we really sure that by dreaming a twisted or an unknown reality we are not recalling memories from a previous life? What Proust experiences by eating the Madeleine or what we call Deja vu? I don't think we could ever give an objective and rational answer, but we are free to believe an irrational explanation. The only way to do this is by setting ourselves free from reasoning and by feeling free to abandon our feelings.
“To release the essence of sensations by constituting them, to detract them from time's contingency, in a metaphor.”
This is the aim of the French author Marcel Proust as like as Baudelaire and other symbolists.The writer is convinced that the duty of an artist is to reveal and not to create, to get the hidden parallelism. According to Proust, sensations and things are immersed in a temporary and ephemeral state and they are submitted to time, that overwhelm and destroy them. It's about engaging a fight with time and to protect our inner self-legacy. Only in memory a man can understand the unceasing transformations of things, people and feelings.
In his masterpiece “The Research of Lost Time”, Proust explains about the concept of the involuntary memory and the voluntary memory.