ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how child figures point to the limits against which the work of Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, and Louise Bourgeois is constructed. It examines how the child figure enables the construction of narrative over the atemporal gap between life and art, structuring what Blanchot calls the temps du recit. Like Proust's child figure, Worstward's child is defined by the opposition between solitude and the company of adults. Worstward Ho minimizes the link outwards to the world of human and especially family relationships, so vividly portrayed in Proust. Where Beckett's Worstward seeks to divide figures — from each other and into pieces — Bourgeois multiplies. Bourgeois and Beckett's own child images produce parallels between the origins of art, the origins of life and the origins of memory. Bourgeois's red gouache paintings repeat images of the child within the family, and are like young children's paintings themselves.
