“Je préfère la concentration, même dans la longueurˮ Quand la comparaison se fait histoire

This article analyzes the emergence of narrative islands within some Proustian comparisons, where the vehicle undergoes a process of syntactic dilation that stretches its borders and transforms it into an almost autonomous microfiction that seems to wander far from the tenor to be explained. These long vehicles that harbor short narratives represent a locus of three-fold tension: between copia and brevitas; between the general and the particular; between the novel and the essay.