The laws of musical perception in search of lost time

Proust presents the music he seeks to describe as absolute and ineffable. This contradiction disappears, we think, when one correctly grasps the laws of musical perception in the Search. The essence of music (abstract, impersonal, nonspatial) is distinguished from the conditions of possibility of its perception (particular, figurative, discursive). Welcoming musical figuration while revealing its projective and dynamic structure, the Proustian novel is situated beyond the oppositions of its time between formalism and expressionism. He achieves this by weaving a fundamental analogy between musical crystallization and amorous crystallization.