In Search of Lost Time
A Proustian tour of France

Article and Photo by Susan Sanford

The Caen Cathedral in France.

Being in two places at once made my return to Caen quite special. Perhaps I wasn’t exactly in two places at one time. More accurately, two persons—both me—were in one place at two times. Or three persons if you count Marcel Proust, and I do.

Looking through the arched entrance of the castle of William the Conqueror toward the Cathedral of St. Pierre in Caen, Normandy, I am transported back to this very scene 36 years before; it is dusk, then and now, and the fading light creates the illusion that the cathedral is not three-dimensional, but rather a flat backdrop painted on the sky.

Proust, my metaphorical companion on this journey, in his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, explores the relationship of time and memory to present reality.

Near the beginning, the narrator bites into a madeleine pastry dipped into a cup of tea and is instantly and vividly transported back to the village of his childhood:

…so in that moment all the flowers in our garden…and the water lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. (I,64)

I stand in a place I have longed to return for many years. So engulfed am I by memories of studying abroad in Caen that I am here in the now but also there, a former me in this very spot.

I chose Kalamazoo College in 1962 because I figured the year-round plan would enable me to fulfill my desire to travel and, indeed, study abroad in Caen in 1964-65 became one of the defining experiences of my life. My opportunity to return came during a tour of Paris and Normandy. To bypass the museum-and-cathedral route, we designed our tour around the life and writing of Proust. He used the places of his own life as locales in his writing; it is thus possible to visit the actual sites so finely and minutely described in his novel. Proust’s meditations on the nature of time, memory and the past not only infused our visits to the sites related to his life and writing but also renewed and connected me to my own past in Caen.
Our exploration started in Paris. Proust’s life and writing centered on the neighborhood near the Champs Elysées in the 8th arrondissement. Walking the streets of Proust’s neighborhood, it is never difficult to imagine the author amidst the 19th century architecture that formed the backdrop of his life.

Our route to Cabourg on the Normandy coast, “Balbec” in the novel, brought us to Caen and to my own “search for lost time.” I have sought out the castle of William the Conqueror and that wonderful vista of the cathedral. The castle walls offer a panoramic view out over the city, dominated by the two abbeys built by William the Conqueror and his wife Mathilda as penance for marrying each other despite their kinship (they were first cousins).

On the campus of the Université de Caen, I am drawn to the cafeteria. Today there is a broader and more welcoming entrance; the old enclosed stairway is now only a vivid memory of being herded into a pack of students so dense I had a panic attack. Once one of the “K” women, as we were called, entered the cafeteria with a scarf on her head, and the French students threw bread at her, shouting, “Chapeau! Chapeau!” And every time I taste yogurt, unflavored and sweetened with white sugar, I remember my first taste ever, here in this cafeteria.

At the foreign study office, we inquire if André Heintz, the foreign study director in 1964, still lives in town. We are amazed to learn that, although retired, he is still active in the program. He invites us to lunch the next day in the faculty dining room with some other English-speaking faculty members. He is warm and gracious, delighted that we had thought to look him up. I doubt that he could really remember me among so many until he asks, “Didn’t they used to call you Sue (a nickname I have not used since college days)?” I am stunned!

After lunch, he takes us on a tour of the World War II museum, Le Mémorial de Caen. His personal reminiscences of the war in Normandy breathe life into the exhibits. Heintz donated several items, including his sister’s coat and bullet-pierced dispatch case—she had been shot at while carrying a message by bicycle. Heintz had helped convey information about the position of four 155-mm German gun emplacements to the Allies prior to the Normandy invasion, using a radio set concealed in a large tomato soup can (also on display in the museum). Twelve kilometers offshore, battleships destroyed the guns, one with a direct hit. Years later, the British captain who had received the information recalled the story to some friends. “I only wish I knew who had given us that terrific information,” he said.

“I can tell you exactly who that person was,” exclaimed one of his listeners. “That was André Heintz, my teacher at the Université de Caen.”

I feel the expected nostalgia for my “lost” youth. However, I also feel a chagrin that I was then so unaware of the value of getting to know a person such as Monsieur Heintz. Proust reassures me that we could not be who we are today without having been who we were then. My youthful indifference contributes to the delight of this surprising day with Heintz.

Walking these streets after so many years combines in a strange alchemy: the student I was with the woman I am, one moment a middle-aged tourist, the next an exuberant student once more. Driving past the park near the river, we pass the horseback-riding pavilion, and I shout, “I rode horses there!” I had completely forgotten, yet memories return in a flood—the irascible instructor, learning to ride English-style, crying on my last day there.

Our itinerary ends in the tiny town of Illiers, near Chartres, where Proust spent vacations as a child visiting his aunt. This is the town so vividly recalled when the narrator dips his pastry into a cup of tea. Called Combray in the novel, the town has now officially changed its name to Illiers-Combray, hoping to capitalize on Proustian tourists. Ourselves excluded, none were there during our visit.

All the strands of our wanderings in this Proustian time-warp—the landmarks of his novels, my return to and re-discovery of Caen, and the delight of being in France—have braided into a satisfying and seamless whole, but time has one last trick to play on us.

Only upon our arrival at the airport to return home do we realize that Europe has changed to daylight savings time one week earlier than the U.S. We have missed our plane! Nothing can slow time to a crawl as effectively as a 24-hour airport wait for the next flight. Time that, only yesterday, vanished like my own mercurial youth, now, as Proust wrote, “multiplies the hours by the minutes” in its glacial progress. Still, this shocking deceleration gives me time to listen to what Proust has been whispering to me. We seem to lose the moments that make up our present even in the effort of trying to grasp them.

Later, in other circumstances and different rhythms, the bittersweet taste of a moment thought lost surprises us with a newfound joy. This is the gift that Proust has given me: to appreciate and enjoy my past as the foundation of my present self, and to have the faith that future time will renew the fleeting present to me yet again. AV

Susan Sanford attended Kalamazoo College from 1962-1965. She has never lost her love of travel and is now a freelance writer living with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons in Seattle, WA.