ANTHROPOLOGY OF MEMORY, SEMIOTICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF TIME: VARIANTS OF INTERPRETATION OF PROUST'S NOVEL
Abstract
The article explores the philosophical dimensions of Marcel Proust's novel “In Search of Lost Time” through the prism of the ideas of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Paul Ricoeur. The main focus is on the analysis of anthropological aspects of memory, time, and subjective experience, which allow the text to be interpreted not only in literary terms but also from philosophical, hermeneutic, and semiotic perspectives. The article examines how Bergson’s concept of duration and his critique of linguistic means influenced the structure and aesthetics of Proust’s novel, which becomes a form of expression of inner time and the deep mechanisms of involuntary memory.
Proust's poetics is analyzed as a kind of philosophical study of time, in which the literary text serves as an instrument of anthropological cognition. Deleuze's interpretation reveals the semiotic dimension of the novel, focusing on the ‘signs’ through which the path to truth unfolds: signs of secularity, love, sensuality, and art. The problem of the Other, another key aspect of the study, appears as an insoluble hermeneutical task, where the subject is constantly trying to decipher signs that remain ambiguous or deceptive.
A separate analytical block is devoted to the interpretation of the novel according to Ricoeur, who focuses on the narrative and temporal constitution of experience. In the light of Ricoeur's hermeneutics, Proust's novel is seen as an act of reconstructing life history, where memory and fiction create a space for symbolic reinterpretation of the past.
As a result, Proust's novel appears as a multilayered philosophical canvas, which is simultaneously an attempt to overcome the limitations of language, a tool for deciphering the signs of the Other, and an act of artistic comprehension of time. Accordingly, the work functions as an instrument of cognition - not only of the past, but also of the future, as a space of meaning-making through the sign structures of memory and experience.
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