Seeing what you saw

Only by art can we emerge from ourselves, can we know what another sees of this universe that is not the same as ours and whose landscapes would have remained as unknown to us as those that might be on the moon. Thanks to art, instead of a single world, our own, we see it multiply, and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds will we have at our disposal, more different from each other than those that circle in the void...
Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Time Regained

And so why "escaping" into a book, or wandering randomly in a museum, can be the best thing for me when I am distressed. But it would be a mistake to think that Proust is simply suggesting subjective differences here, or that all we are to get is another point of view.

Deleuze covers this point very well in Chapter 4 of his Proust and Signs by explaining that "each subject expressed the world from a certain viewpoint. But the viewpoint is the difference itself, the absolute internal difference. Each subject therefore expresses an absolutely different world. And doubtless the world so expressed does not exist outside the subject expressing it...But the world expressed is not identified with the subject...It is not reducible to a psychological state, nor to a psychological subjectivity, nor even to some form of a higher subjectivity".

Which then brings me back to Proust, who is so clear to each of us that we want to explain him, our vision of him, to everyone else. "These worlds that we call individuals, and which without art we would never know" he says and I wonder if I know you better because your frustration reminds me of Bloch, your desire of Andrée, or your grace of the Queen of Naples. I wonder if I see what was painted or imagine a painting that conforms to what I am capable of seeing. Likely your Proust is different from mine so that he knows the secret of all our hearts and whispers them to us as we read. Proust goes on endlessly, a pleasure for some, not for others and having read him through again I saw something else, as he wanted, and I saw myself, somewhat differently from last time, because I find myself through art too.