La psychologie et l’esthétique du voyage : Stendhal & Proust

Abstract

This study aims to present two strategies of writing travel and spatial visions: that of Stendhal who travels the Italian landscapes and that of Marcel Proust. If we bring together Proust’s reflections on the image, on the fleeting impressions, on the movement and on the sensation of speed that the different means of transport provide, we understand that he wants to show in his text all the aspects of both spatial and temporal existence, to which is added the extensive history of his own work where the old texts are introduced into a new temporal aspect, in the temporal plane of creation itself. It is a journey where all facets of the self and the universe are found co-present with themselves. If Stendhal projects his own self into the landscapes he has travelled to become identical with them, the Proustian narrator feeds on everything he sees, tastes, hears and touches, he ends up absorbing the world in him.