Proust's description of the art of the novel

Playing with the idea that art "holds the mirror up to nature," Flaubert famously described the novel as like a mirror held up on a highway - reflecting, therefore, not just nature, that is, one scene or person, but an entire society in movement and transition. Marcel Proust takes that simile in a different direction in one of the great sections of "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower," as his narrator, Marcel, describes his meeting with the great novelist whom he deeply admires, Bergotte. There are many powerful and memorable images in this sequence of the novel, and particularly striking if somewhat expected is his disappointment at seeing that Bergotte is a very ordinary-looking, even homely, guy and that in fact his dinner-table conversation is at best enigmatic and perhaps dull. But then Proust uses this encounter as a springboard from which he leaps into a deep and somewhat weird, even for Proust, discussion of what literature is. Bergotte, in his his quizzical fashion, says (or M interprets what he says) that the artist must make a mirror of himself - and the idea that Proust conveys here is, first, that the artist need not be an extraordinary personality but must have almost an invisible or transparent personality along with the ability to reflect what is all around him, and, second, that the surrounding world in itself need not be "interesting" or dramatic or historic - all that is necessary is for the artist to reflect the world, whatever it is, accurately and completely - this very transformation of action into words is the essence of literary art - and perfect description of Proust's art in particular.