“Dans ce livre, où il n’y a pas un seul fait qui ne soit fictif, où il n’y a pas un seul personnage « à clefs », où tout a été inventé par moi selon les besoins de ma démonstration, je dois dire, à la louange de mon pays, que seuls les parents millionnaires de Françoise ayant quitté leur retraite pour aider leur nièce sans appui, que seuls ceux-là sont des gens réels, qui existent. Et persuadé que leur modestie ne s’en offensera pas, pour la raison qu’ils ne liront jamais ce livre, c’est avec un enfantin plaisir et une profonde émotion que, ne pouvant citer les noms de tant d’autres qui durent agir de même et par qui la France a survécu, je transcris ici leur nom véritable : ils s’appellent, d’un nom si français, d’ailleurs, Larivière.” [Time Regained, 183, 184] Google Translated
(I think this passage may be Proust’s only explicit statement in La Reserche about where exactly the book falls in the spectrum between Fictional Novel and True Autobiography (though, come to think of it, there is at least one other passage that deals with this subject: the one in which the narrator, seeking to give a name to himself, seems to hold it as a matter of indifference whether the narrator is the author himself or not).
The account is perhaps self-serving for Proust to a degree, as he had reason to defend himself against accusations, made by friends, that he had portrayed them as personnage « à clefs ». Perhaps all that’s to be admired here is Proust’s cleverness in casting doubt upon on such claims.
Nevertheless, I find compelling the idea, which is probably only inadvertently implied here (or rather, something I’ve sentimentally inferred) that people only really exist in a fiction when they have selflessly existed in their real lives. That is: that only decency can exist, as it is, and only decent people can exist, as they are, in both real life and fiction; — or again: that decency, whatever its limitations may be, has the extraordinary power of remaining exactly itself both in life and imagination.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 