Abstract

The essay reexamines the famous scene from Proust’s ›In Search of Lost Time‹ about the death of the writer Bergotte. In pointing out that the notorious ›patch of yellow wall‹ Bergotte claims to have discovered in Vermeer’s ›View of Delft‹ does not exist in the real painting, the article’s aim is to show that the scene is not to be read as an autobiographical recollection, but rather as a reflection on ›mimesis‹, i.e. on the transcendental conditions of perception and representation. As such, it can be considered to have in large measure inspired the reorientation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological oeuvre towards a new ontology. On the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s recently published lecture notes, the essay locates the common concern of the writer and the philosopher in the idea of remembrance not as a derivative phenomenon, but as an originary mode of givenness.