The Maternal Body

Luke Wilkins

Luke Wilkins

27 May 2026 · 1 min read

The Maternal Body

When Marcel Proust was denied a kiss, the longing that remained gave birth to his future writings. Ensheathed by the principles of the mother and unconditional love, we are perpetually reborn.

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time opens with a missing kiss. His mother stays at an evening party and sends word to her son that she cannot say goodnight to him tonight—and thus plunges him into a deep crisis. In the absence of his mother’s kiss, an inner space opens. A world emerges within the child lying awake that becomes the invisible framework for an entire work. The missing kiss becomes the primal scene of poetic productivity. It is not fulfillment but rather absence, longing, even deprivation that unleashes the creative force and the impulse to write. And it is precisely from
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Luke Wilkins

Luke Wilkins

Luke Wilkins (*1979 in Bern) ist freier Schriftsteller, Musiker und Kurator von Diskursformaten.

CategoriesMusingsEnglish Issue 22/2026Ausgabe 20/2026

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