Proust and Benjamin: the Invisible Image

Benjamin\u27s essay Zum Bilde Prousts questions the status of the image even as it leafs through the possibilities and variations that form it—as photograph, figure, representation, disappearing trace or promise of creation. As the image of Proust\u27s novel, Benjamin\u27s text takes up the elements of A la Recherche du temps perdu (poetic language, autobiography, critical commentary) in the terms of Benjamin\u27s theory of allegory reflected through the Proustian strategy of reading and writing. Zum Bilde Prousts examines the traditional markers of art and life, locating Proustian recherche—and Benjamin\u27s image—in the deep waters beyond them. Through an interpretation of Benjamin\u27s image of Proustian ecstasy (the descent of the mystic) and the images unfolded Au Temps Perdu (Benjamin\u27s mystical station of nineteenth-century allegory), Benjamin\u27s essay sollicits a new reading of time and eternity, memory and ecstasy. The final illumination of Proust\u27s artful night indicates the decisive turn toward writing at the spot where Niles of language come together—the point of convergence of the image and its invisibility