Abstract: The subtle mobile of the Proustian mechanism goes from memory to creation. Before an element can become an event in the novel, it needs to be repeated. In musical terms: starting again from the beginning, da capo. When the repetitions have accrued sufficiently, slowly or imperceptibly, accumulation explodes into an event. It is through these ‘seismic shocks’ that stages of writing are produced, and through its fractures that the ‘self’ is constructed.
