The literary genius of Proust, at least in part, is his ability, while drawing illuminating connections between the inner and outer world or otherwise making metaphor, to also have rather profound ideas expressed within each part of the metaphor, so that each of the thoughts expressed and connected could stand on its own as a worthwhile statement.

To put it another way, a standard metaphor is an expression in which two things are put side by side in order to illumine on of the two elements. For instance, if I compared the process of being in love to the digestion of a cow, the process of being in love is (presumably) illumined, while the digestion of a cow is not, but, being fixed, is used to "ground" the "artistic" or "floating" idea of the process of being in love. Proust's metaphor (though he also uses more normal metaphor) is often a comparison of two things not "fixed," which creates the effect of a dual illumination.

Of further note is the fact that this use of "dual" metaphor may help the narrative to achieve the phantasmic quality so fitting for a roman fleuve, especially one so concerned with memory, and, as Proust himself puts it somewhere in vol. 3, the phantom of the real (the phantom of Albertine). While most literature is like a ship moored by the hempen threads of metaphor to "the real world," Proust, by using what I am calling dual metaphor, allows himself to be more at sea, or at least more frequently at sea. Perhaps, however, this is the seed of one of his flaws: creating prose tortured by the weight of innumerable observations stacked upon each other or more precisely inserted into one another.

Another somewhat unrelated aspect of Proust's writing is what could be called the literal metaphor. What I mean by that is that the metaphor is based upon a somewhat literal correspondence, especially in structure, if that makes sense (this correspondence does not, I think, conflict with my comments on dual metaphor above). This type of metaphor is somewhat akin to allegory, but shortened and never as explicit. Proust is the master of this type of metaphor, however, and so he pulls it off without being too forced. Furthermore, he can be excused because his metaphor is of value, in that the process reveals what could not otherwise be expressed, which, I suppose, is perhaps the value of metaphor and the basis, or rather the evidence, of poetic knowing (mentioned in my first post).