The Phenomenon of Memory in Leonardas Gutauskas’ Novel A Wolf-Teeth Necklace and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

Abstract

This study explores the phenomenon of personal memory as human experience in two modernist novels: Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and A Wolf-Teeth Necklace by Leonardas Gutauskas. Using the phenomenological approach of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edward Casey, Gaston Bachelard and Paul Ricoeur, the article aims to discuss the various interpretations of memory and its effect on human existence. Proust’s prose provides one possible context for analysing Gutauskas’ novel, confirming that no literary phenomenon is born in an artistic vacuum. A typological comparison between In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) and A Wolf-Teeth Necklace (1990) is also possible due to the cultural influence of Proust as a person and artist on Gutauskas’ writing. Both authors dedicate a great deal of attention to the theme of living personal memory, which belongs to the subjective reality of human experience. Both protagonists demonstrate how closely their sensory memory is linked to childhood living spaces (Combray for Proust’s character and Vepriai in Gutauskas’ case), attributing a privileged meaning to human existence. In both novels, childhood experiences re-emerge through sensory memories, such as the indelible scents of hawthorn (Proust) and water lilies (Gutauskas). Taking on the meaning of sacred closeness (Communion), these familiar sensations embody the protagonists’ spiritual, sensory and emotional relationships with their loved ones. The reflective narratives of Proust and Gutauskas revolve around the living memory of the main characters’ mothers and grandmothers – their true spiritual home. Both authors also focus on the subject of memory as aesthetic vision, with sunlit images of stained-glass windows emerging as living sensory memory in the childhood recollections of the protagonists. The effect is further reinforced by each of the writers exploring the phenomenon of objects as symbols in their novels. Proust and Gutauskas’ characters see books as corporeal things and believe that reading, a corporeal process, can bring back the past. Reflections on previous experiences also extend to the relationship between life and art: both Proust and Gutauskas’ protagonists are introduced to the world and magic of beauty (art) by their grandmothers. In Proust’s writing, sensory memory is transformed into art, saving the main character from meaningless existence, as only literature can keep the past alive and ensure continuity. The same is true for Gutauskas’ novel, where sensory memory morphs into an intense creative search and rescues the protagonist. This highlights the harmonising efforts of both characters/narrators to turn life into art and literature. Both Proust and Gutauskas acknowledge the power of art to immortalise the memory of those close to us.