Time lost is about to be regained in the writing of the novel. Circular in structure, its end leads us back to its beginning. His novel is architectural rather than linear, like the church of Saint Hilarie at Combray which, conquering location by physical mass, derives its energy from the epochs of time that have seeped into its very cells. The material church, absorbing time, can no longer be divorced from it. Proust s book is such a monument.
Time is a substance as well as a process and all things are immersed in it.
Memory exists outside of time. The beautiful girls at Balbec are not necessarily the hideous, fat dowagers across the room, made monstrous by the years. Their youth dwells, as does our own, within ourselves. It has merely to be recaptured from time where it exists as an eternal moment. The regaining of time is the true quest of mankind.