Although Proust uses a great many psychological elements in his work, particularly in regard to the role of memory and dreams, his greatest originality lies not in his psychology nor in his observations on art, but in his form and style. His sentences and paragraphs, lengthy and complex, are musical, leading the reader where memory and inspiration freely carry the author.

His details are exhaustive, yet his elaborate use of metaphors and symbols suggests another reality. His descriptions of people and places are so exact that they come alive. Illiers-Combray appears in the distance as the train approaches it, and the reader sees every detail as the narrator saw it some hundred years ago. The jeweled stained glass windows of the parish church sparkle as precious gems through the pages of the narrative.

In Proust's work, nothing really happens, but for him the most important events in life...