Living past and time regained Two conceptions of time

Proust and Régnier’s thinking about time can be summed up in the titles of two of their works: the living past and time regained. One proposes an attention to the things and the world that accumulate time within them, while the other brings time back through literature. With the help of other ancient (Saint Augustine) or contemporary (Maeterlinck and Valéry) thinkers, we see how Proust and Régnier place time at the heart of their poetic concerns.