Est-ce qu’on pourrait se tromper? est-ce qu’on ne reconnaîtrait pas entre mille les pas de sa petite bécasse? Qu’elle me permette de la déchausser avant qu’elle aille se coucher, cela me fera bien plaisir’” (3:586). In answer to her question whether or not he recognized her gait, he unwaveringly replies: “‘Naturellement. In Roland Barthes's last re-reading of A la recherche du temps perdu the illness and death of the grandmother was for him the central and most moving event: “Sa mort, discursivement centrale, en fait articule ce qui s’écrit avant: tout ce qui concourt au portrait de la grand-mère, dès le jardin de Combray, participe à cette sorte de concret éminent, d’émotion violente, de pitié, de ‘compassion’ qui dresse le moment de vérité” ( Préparation du roman 158). It is noteworthy that three of these roles are family oriented: Albertine as sister, daughter, and mother figure. Yet it is Albertine who is called upon to play more than one part, as the narrator explicitly tells us in a revealing passage of La Prisonnière where the anxious hero wants to hold on to her all at once “comme une maîtresse, comme une soeur, comme une fille, comme une mère aussi du bonsoir quotidien de laquelle je recommençais à éprouver le puéril besoin …” (3:619). In describing his relationship with Albertine, the narrator repeatedly compares his most intimate feelings for her to similar ones he felt for his mother (cf. For a discussion of various kinds of impression, including a distinction between happy and unhappy experiences of involuntary memory, the enigmatic episode of the Martinville towers, an emotional paradigm, and different manifestations of temps incorporé, see my Proust and Emotion, chapter 7. All subsequent quotations are from the same edition.

See Jean-Yves Tadié's edition of A la recherche du temps perdu (1987–1989) for some telling passages: La Prisonnière 3:765 and 876–77 and, in Le Temps retrouvé, the long narrative segment devoted to several experiences of involuntary memory at the Matinée Guermantes (4:445–64 especially 445 and 457).

For a discussion of empathy as identification, simulation, and imaginative substitution see Murray Smith's Engaging Characters, chapter 3.

A number of artistic texts – including literary works, music, and painting – fulfill a similar function in the hero's life. The close ties between life and art in fostering such empathetic understanding are highlighted throughout the novel through the mother's and grandmother's recurring references to the Letters of Madame de Sévigné – a favorite sounding board for similar experiences in their own lives.

Un heros sans pitie 1989