Le role de l'odeur et de la perception olfactive dans 'Combray' de Marcel Proust

The present study examines the problem of the olfactory perception and the sense of smell in Marcel Proust’s “Combray”, first part of the novel A la recherché du temps perdu. After a brief historical introduction to the position of the sense of smell in French literature, the first part of this study focuses on a detailed grammatical and lexical analysis of all the manifestations of the olfactory perception in “Combray”. A close examination of the main nouns, adjectives and verbs that form the lexico-semantic field of the sense of smell leads to preliminary conclusions about the significance of the role which olfactory perception plays in Proust’s narrative of “Combray”. The first part of the study also shows how, owing to the lack of more specialized vocabulary for designating the sense of smell, the metaphor becomes the principal tool for conveying olfactory phenomena.

The second part is dedicated to an analysis of the themes related to the olfactory perception. This part considers different functional aspect of the text (hero, narrator, character, “décor”) in relation to olfactory perception and the sense of smell. The main focus of this part of the study is the reciprocal relation between the olfactory sensations and the emotions of the hero: pleasure, suffering, joy, happiness. The analysis of this relation reveals that the olfactory sensations play an essential role in the early aesthetic awakenings of the hero.

Thanks to the fact that the olfactory sensations of the hero are closely related to his emotions, this study comes to a conclusion that smells surpass the limits of their simply descriptive function in the text and become part of its narrative. The study also suggests that the origins of final aesthetic revelations of the involuntary memory related to the olfactory perception could be found in the early olfactory experiences of “Combray”.