ABSTRACT
Falling asleep exposes discourses hidden or suppressed by the everyday consciousness of the individual. Listening in Proust on the other hand is presented as an active process, a reconstructive act of interpretation on the part of the listener to inscribe what the other person is saying within the former's own categories of understanding. Body language is perhaps more revealing, and this chapter to expands on Sarraute's theory of non-verbal dialogue. It looks at how Marcel's conversations with Albertine open up the dialogue of the Narrator with himself. Other people's words force Marcel to look inwards at the working of his own mind in his search, discovery, and repression of what Albertine might be, and the truth about her sexuality and possible lesbian inclinations. The Baudelairean 'correspondance', synaesthesia, between sound and colour is continually at play in the Proustian text.
