SOURCE: Danius, Sara. “The Aesthetics of the Windshield: Proust and the Modernist Rhetoric of Speed.” Modernism/Modernity 8, no. 1 (January 2001): 100-26.

In the following essay, Danius explores Proust's use of photographic and cinematic techniques to heighten sensory perception in his essays and fiction.

J. M. W. Turner once depicted a harbor seen against the light.¹ He showed the drawing to a naval officer, who remarked that the ships had no portholes. “No, certainly not,” Turner replied and told the naval officer that if he would look at the ships against the sunset, he would find he could not see the portholes. The naval officer retorted that the artist surely must have known they were there. “Yes,” said Turner, “I know that well enough; but my business is to draw what I see, and not what I know is there.” Where the painter's eye perceives sun-drenched vessels, the naval officer...