PROUST AND MYSTICISM

One cannot ignore the mystical dimension of Proust's assertion that the book one should write has already been written for one within oneself, and one's task should be that of bringing it to the light of consciousness. 

   "Art for art's sake", the principle Proust believed in, following Ruskin, implies the transcendent quality of what values in itself, and not in relation to anything else; what is absolute. Hence, Oscar Wilde, another adept of  this principle, proudly declares, "All art is quite useless"  

A "useless" work of art is something that is valid by being what it is and not by serving a function or having a goal beyond itself.  

   Usefulness is bondage to time: what is useful is only a means through which something else is accomplished.  Meant for the fulfillment of a goal ahead of itself, what is useful has no intrinsic value. 

   Those who do not accept that art exists for its own sake see it as contextual, transitional, and relative. The value of it from this angle would be purely historic.

   But there can be neither enslavement nor relativizing of what is whole in itself.  "Art for art's sake" means art as noumena. It is beyond the limits of time and, in this sense, it preexists us- like, according to Proust, the book "already written" for us- and post exists us, maintaining, throughout time, its same, transcendent quality.
 

 To fulfill the task of bringing to light the book that has been "already written" for one and is hidden deep inside means, for Proust, to make the work of art that expresses the essence of one's life,  or, one's real life.  Equating its discovery to artistic creation, he also gives it the ethical dimension of fulfilling what is truest and transcendent in us, like willed from above. Like our own soul. He thus thinks of art as the real final judgement. 

   The miracle of art in bringing transcendence to the order of time is to link temporality and eternity, materiality and spirit.  By unveiling that which is and has always been, art gives shape to the divine designs for each artist.