Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
(/pruːst/;[1] French: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November
1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the
monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of
Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past),
published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered
by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of
the 20th century.[2][3]
Contents
Background
Early writing
In Search of Lost Time
Personal life
Gallery
Proust in 1900; photograph by
Bibliography
Otto Wegener (cropped)
Novels
Short story collections Born Valentin Louis
Non-fiction Georges Eugène
Translations of John Ruskin Marcel Proust
10 July 1871
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 1/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Proust's father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist, studying cholera in
Europe and Asia. He wrote numerous articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Proust's mother,
Jeanne Clémence (Weil), was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Alsace.[5] Literate and
well-read, she demonstrated a well-developed sense of humour in her letters, and her command of
English was sufficient to help with her son's translations of John Ruskin.[6] Proust was raised in his
father's Catholic faith.[7] He was baptized (on 5 August 1871, at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin)
and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practised that faith. He later became an
atheist and was something of a mystic.[8][9]
By the age of nine, Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered a
sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers. This village, combined with
recollections of his great-uncle's house in Auteuil, became the model for the fictional town of
Combray, where some of the most important scenes of In Search of Lost Time take place. (Illiers was
renamed Illiers-Combray in 1971 on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations.)
In 1882, at the age of eleven, Proust became a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet; however, his education
was disrupted by his illness. Despite this, he excelled in literature, receiving an award in his final
year. Thanks to his classmates, he was able to gain access to some of the salons of the upper
bourgeoisie, providing him with copious material for In Search of Lost Time.[10]
In spite of his poor health, Proust served a year (1889–90) in the French
army, stationed at Coligny Barracks in Orléans, an experience that
provided a lengthy episode in The Guermantes' Way, part three of his
novel. As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber
whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of self-
discipline. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an amateur,
contributed to his later troubles with getting Swann's Way, the first part
of his large-scale novel, published in 1913. At this time, he attended the
salons of Mme Straus, widow of Georges Bizet and mother of Proust's
childhood friend Jacques Bizet, of Madeleine Lemaire and of Mme
Arman de Caillavet, one of the models for Madame Verdurin, and
mother of his friend Gaston Arman de Caillavet, with whose fiancée
(Jeanne Pouquet) he was in love. It is through Mme Arman de Caillavet,
Marcel Proust (seated), he made the acquaintance of Anatole France, her lover.
Robert de Flers (left) and
Lucien Daudet (right), ca. Proust had a close relationship with his mother. To appease his father,
1894 who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer
position at Bibliothèque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting
considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave that extended for several
years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he did not move from
his parents' apartment until after both were dead.[6]
His life and family circle changed markedly between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Proust's
brother, Robert Proust, married and left the family home. His father died in November of the same
year.[11] Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September 1905. She left him a
considerable inheritance. His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.
Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly confined to his bedroom, sleeping during the day
and working at night to complete his novel.[12] He died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in
1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.[13]
Early writing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 2/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Proust was involved in writing and publishing from an early age. In addition to the literary magazines
with which he was associated, and in which he published while at school (La Revue verte and La
Revue lilas), from 1890 to 1891 he published a regular society column in the journal Le Mensuel.[6] In
1892, he was involved in founding a literary review called Le Banquet (also the French title of Plato's
Symposium), and throughout the next several years Proust published small pieces regularly in this
journal and in the prestigious La Revue Blanche.
In 1896 Les plaisirs et les jours, a compendium of many of these early pieces, was published. The
book included a foreword by Anatole France, drawings by Mme Lemaire in whose salon Proust was a
frequent guest, and who inspired Proust's Mme Verdurin. She invited him and Reynaldo Hahn to her
château de Réveillon (the model for Mme Verdurin's La Raspelière) in summer 1894, and for three
weeks in 1895. This book was so sumptuously produced that it cost twice the normal price of a book
its size.
That year Proust also began working on a novel, which was eventually published in 1952 and titled
Jean Santeuil by his posthumous editors. Many of the themes later developed in In Search of Lost
Time find their first articulation in this unfinished work, including the enigma of memory and the
necessity of reflection; several sections of In Search of Lost Time can be read in the first draft in Jean
Santeuil. The portrait of the parents in Jean Santeuil is quite harsh, in marked contrast to the
adoration with which the parents are painted in Proust's masterpiece. Following the poor reception of
Les Plaisirs et les Jours, and internal troubles with resolving the plot, Proust gradually abandoned
Jean Santeuil in 1897 and stopped work on it entirely by 1899.
Beginning in 1895 Proust spent several years reading Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
John Ruskin. Through this reading, he refined his theories of art and the role of the artist in society.
Also, in Time Regained Proust's universal protagonist recalls having translated Ruskin's Sesame and
Lilies. The artist's responsibility is to confront the appearance of nature, deduce its essence and retell
or explain that essence in the work of art. Ruskin's view of artistic production was central to this
conception, and Ruskin's work was so important to Proust that he claimed to know "by heart" several
of Ruskin's books, including The Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Bible of Amiens, and
Praeterita.[6]
Proust set out to translate two of Ruskin's works into French, but was hampered by an imperfect
command of English. To compensate for this he made his translations a group affair: sketched out by
his mother, the drafts were first revised by Proust, then by Marie Nordlinger, the English cousin of
his friend and sometime lover[14] Reynaldo Hahn, then finally polished by Proust. Questioned about
his method by an editor, Proust responded, "I don't claim to know English; I claim to know
Ruskin".[6][15] The Bible of Amiens, with Proust's extended introduction, was published in French in
1904. Both the translation and the introduction were well-reviewed; Henri Bergson called Proust's
introduction "an important contribution to the psychology of Ruskin", and had similar praise for the
translation.[6] At the time of this publication, Proust was already translating Ruskin's Sesame and
Lilies, which he completed in June 1905, just before his mother's death, and published in 1906.
Literary historians and critics have ascertained that, apart from Ruskin, Proust's chief literary
influences included Saint-Simon, Montaigne, Stendhal, Flaubert, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
and Leo Tolstoy.
1908 was an important year for Proust's development as a writer. During the first part of the year he
published in various journals pastiches of other writers. These exercises in imitation may have
allowed Proust to solidify his own style. In addition, in the spring and summer of the year Proust
began work on several different fragments of writing that would later coalesce under the working title
of Contre Sainte-Beuve. Proust described his efforts in a letter to a friend: "I have in progress: a study
on the nobility, a Parisian novel, an essay on Sainte-Beuve and Flaubert, an essay on women, an essay
on pederasty (not easy to publish), a study on stained-glass windows, a study on tombstones, a study
on the novel".[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 3/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
From these disparate fragments Proust began to shape a novel on which he worked continually
during this period. The rough outline of the work centred on a first-person narrator, unable to sleep,
who during the night remembers waiting as a child for his mother to come to him in the morning.
The novel was to have ended with a critical examination of Sainte-Beuve and a refutation of his
theory that biography was the most important tool for understanding an artist's work. Present in the
unfinished manuscript notebooks are many elements that correspond to parts of the Recherche, in
particular, to the "Combray" and "Swann in Love" sections of Volume 1, and to the final section of
Volume 7. Trouble with finding a publisher, as well as a gradually changing conception of his novel,
led Proust to shift work to a substantially different project that still contained many of the same
themes and elements. By 1910 he was at work on À la recherche du temps perdu.
Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes,
the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother Robert.
The book was translated into English by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, appearing under the title
Remembrance of Things Past between 1922 and 1931. Scott Moncrieff translated volumes one
through six of the seven volumes, dying before completing the last. This last volume was rendered by
other translators at different times. When Scott Moncrieff's translation was later revised (first by
Terence Kilmartin, then by D. J. Enright) the title of the novel was changed to the more literal In
Search of Lost Time.
In 1995 Penguin undertook a fresh translation of the book by editor Christopher Prendergast and
seven translators in three countries, based on the latest, most complete and authoritative French text.
Its six volumes, comprising Proust's seven, were published in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in
2002.
Personal life
Proust is known to have been homosexual, and his sexuality and relationships with men are often
discussed by his biographers.[18] Although his housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, denies this aspect of
Proust's sexuality in her memoirs,[19] her denial runs contrary to the statements of many of Proust's
friends and contemporaries, including his fellow writer André Gide[20] as well as his valet Ernest A.
Forssgren.[21]
Proust never openly admitted to his homosexuality, though his family and close friends either knew
or suspected it. In 1897, he even fought a duel with writer Jean Lorrain, who publicly questioned the
nature of Proust's relationship with Lucien Daudet (both duelists survived).[22] Despite Proust's own
public denial, his romantic relationship with composer Reynaldo Hahn,[14] and his infatuation with
his chauffeur and secretary, Alfred Agostinelli, are well documented.[23] On the night of 11 January
1918, Proust was one of the men identified by police in a raid on a male brothel run by Albert Le
Cuziat.[24] Proust's friend, the poet Paul Morand, openly teased Proust about his visits to male
prostitutes. In his journal, Morand refers to Proust, as well as Gide, as "constantly hunting, never
satiated by their adventures … eternal prowlers, tireless sexual adventurers."[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 4/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
The exact influence of Proust's sexuality on his writing is a topic of debate.[26] However, In Search of
Lost Time discusses homosexuality at length and features several principal characters, both men and
women, who are either homosexual or bisexual: the Baron de Charlus, Robert de Saint-Loup, Odette
de Crécy, and Albertine Simonet.[27] Homosexuality also appears as a theme in Les plaisirs et les
jours and his unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil.
Proust inherited much of his mother's political outlook, which was supportive of the French Third
Republic and near the liberal centre of French politics.[28] In an 1892 article published in Le Banquet
entitled "L'Irréligion d'État", Proust condemned extreme anti-clerical measures such as the expulsion
of monks, observing that "one might just be surprised that the negation of religion should bring in its
wake the same fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution as religion itself."[28][29] He argued that
socialism posed a greater threat to society than the Church.[28] He was equally critical of the right,
lambasting "the insanity of the conservatives," whom he deemed "as dumb and ungrateful as under
Charles X," and referring to Pope Pius X's obstinacy as foolish.[30] Proust always rejected the bigoted
and illiberal views harbored by many priests at the time, but believed that the most enlightened
clerics could be just as progressive as the most enlightened secularists, and that both could serve the
cause of "the advanced liberal Republic".[31] He approved of the more moderate stance taken in 1906
by Aristide Briand, whom he described as "admirable".[30]
Proust was among the earliest Dreyfusards, even attending Émile Zola's trial and proudly claiming to
have been the one who asked Anatole France to sign the petition in support of Dreyfus's
innocence.[32] In 1919, when representatives of the right-wing Action Française published a
manifesto upholding French colonialism and the Catholic Church as the embodiment of civilised
values, Proust rejected their nationalism and chauvinism in favor of a liberal pluralist vision which
acknowledged Christianity's cultural legacy in France.[28] Julien Benda commended Proust in La
Trahison des clercs as a writer who distinguished himself from his generation by avoiding the twin
traps of nationalism and class sectarianism.[28]
Gallery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 5/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Grave of Marcel
Proust at Père
Lachaise Cemetery
Bibliography
Novels
In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously
translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927)
1. Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913)
2. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated as
Within a Budding Grove) (1919)
3. The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes originally published in two volumes) (1920/1921)
4. Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe originally published in two volumes, sometimes
translated as Cities of the Plain) (1921/1922)
5. The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, also translated as The Captive) (1923)
6. The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, also titled La Fugitive, sometimes translated as The Sweet
Cheat Gone or Albertine Gone) (1925)
7. Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé, also translated as Finding Time Again and The Past
Recaptured) (1927)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 6/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Non-fiction
Pastiches, or The Lemoine Affair (Pastiches et mélanges – a collection) (1919)
Against Sainte-Beuve (Contre Sainte-Beuve: suivi de Nouveaux mélanges) (published
posthumously 1954)
See also
102 Boulevard Haussmann, a BBC production set in 1916 about Proust
Albertine, a novel based on a character in À la recherche du temps perdu by Jacqueline Rose
London 2001
Céleste, a German film dramatising part of Proust's life, seen from the viewpoint of his
housekeeper Céleste Albaret
Involuntary memory
Le Temps Retrouvé, d'après l'œuvre de Marcel Proust (Time Regained), film by director Raul
Ruiz, 1999
Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, a novel by Kate Taylor that includes a fictional diary written
by Proust's mother
"Proust", an essay by Samuel Beckett
Proust Questionnaire
Swann in Love, film by the director Volker Schlöndorff, 1984
La captive, film by the director Chantal Akerman, 2000
References
1. "Proust" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/proust). Random House Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary.
2. Harold Bloom, Genius, pp. 191–225.
3. "Marcel Proust" (https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/white-proust.html). The New York Times.
Retrieved 13 October 2016.
4. Ellison, David (2010). A Reader's Guide to Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time'. p. 8.
5. Allan Massie – Madame Proust: A Biography By Evelyne Bloch-Dano, translated by Alice Kaplan
(http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/massie_10_07.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090
212151419/http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/massie_10_07.html) 12 February 2009 at the
Wayback Machine – Literary Review.
6. Tadié, J-Y. (Euan Cameron, trans.) Marcel Proust: A life. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 7/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 8/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
Further reading
Aciman, André (2004), The Proust Project. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Adorno, Theodor (1967), Prisms. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Adorno, Theodor, "Short Commentaries on Proust," Notes to Literature, trans. S. Weber-
Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
Albaret, Céleste (Barbara Bray, trans.) (2003), Monsieur Proust. New York: New York Review
Books
Beckett, Samuel, Proust, London: Calder
Benjamin, Walter, "The Image of Proust," Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken
Books, 1969); pp. 201–215.
Bernard, Anne-Marie (2002), The World of Proust, as seen by Paul Nadar. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press
Bersani, Leo, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (2013), Oxford: Oxford U. Press
Bowie, Malcolm, Proust Among the Stars, London: Harper Collins
Capetanakis, Demetrios, "A Lecture on Proust", in Demetrios Capetanakis A Greek Poet in
England (1947)
Carter, William C. (2002), Marcel Proust: a life. New Haven: Yale University Press
Carter, William C. (2006), Proust in Love. New Haven: Yale University Press
Chardin, Philippe (2006), Proust ou le bonheur du petit personnage qui compare. Paris: Honoré
Champion
Chardin, Philippe et alii (2010), Originalités proustiennes. Paris: Kimé
Compagnon, Antoine, Proust Between Two Centuries, Columbia U. Press
Czapski, Józef (2018) Lost Time. Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp. New York: New
York Review Books. 90 pp. ISBN 978-1-68137-258-7
Davenport-Hines, Richard (2006), A Night at the Majestic. London: Faber and Faber
ISBN 9780571220090
De Botton, Alain (1998), How Proust Can Change Your Life. New York: Vintage Books
Deleuze, Gilles (2004), Proust and Signs: the complete text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press
De Man, Paul (1979), Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke,
and Proust ISBN 0-300-02845-8
Descombes, Vincent, Proust: Philosophy of the Novel. Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press
Forssgren, Ernest A. (William C. Carter, ed.) (2006), The Memoirs of Ernest A. Forssgren:
Proust’s Swedish Valet. New Haven: Yale University Press
Genette, Gérard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. Press
Gracq, Julien, "Proust Considered as An End Point," in Reading Writing (New York: Turtle Point
Press,), 113–130.
Green, F. C. The Mind of Proust (1949)
Harris, Frederick J. (2002), Friend and Foe: Marcel Proust and André Gide. Lanham: University
Press of America
Hillerin, Laure La comtesse Greffulhe, L'ombre des Guermantes (http://www.comtessegreffulhe.f
r/), Paris, Flammarion, 2014. Part V, La Chambre Noire des Guermantes. About Marcel Proust
and comtesse Greffulhe's relationship, and the key role she played in the genesis of La
Recherche.
Karlin, Daniel (2005), Proust's English. Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0199256884
Kristeva, Julia, Time and Sense. Proust and the Experience of Literature. New York: Columbia U.
Press, 1996
Ladenson, Elisabeth (1991), Proust’s Lesbianism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. Press
Landy, Joshua, Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust. Oxford: Oxford
U. Press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 9/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
O'Brien, Justin. "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes", PMLA 64:
933–52, 1949
Painter, George D. (1959), Marcel Proust: a biography; Vols. 1 & 2. London: Chatto & Windus
Poulet, Georges, Proustian Space. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press
Prendergast, Christopher Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic (http://press.princeton.ed
u/titles/10020.html) ISBN 9780691155203
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1992), "Epistemology of the Closet". Berkeley: University of California
Press
Shattuck, Roger (1963), Proust's Binoculars: a study of memory, time, and recognition in "À la
recherche du temps perdu". New York: Random House
Spitzer, Leo, "Proust's Style," [1928] in Essays in Stylistics (Princeton, Princeton U. P., 1948).
Shattuck, Roger (2000), Proust's Way: a field guide to "In Search of Lost Time". New York: W. W.
Norton
Tadié, Jean-Yves (2000), Marcel Proust: A Life. New York: Viking
White, Edmund (1998), Marcel Proust. New York: Viking Books
External links
Marcel Proust (https://curlie.org/Arts/Literature/Authors/P/Proust%2C_Marcel/) at Curlie
BBC audio file (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548wx). In Our TIme discussion, Radio 4.
The Kolb-Proust Archive for Research (https://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/kolbproust/). University
of Illinois.
Works by Marcel Proust (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Proust,+Marcel) at Project Gutenberg
Works by Marcel Proust (https://fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Proust%2C%20Marcel) at
Faded Page (Canada)
Works by Marcel Proust (http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#letterP) at Project Gutenberg
Australia
Works by or about Marcel Proust (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3A%2
2Proust%2C%20Marcel%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Marcel%20Proust%22%20OR%20creat
or%3A%22Proust%2C%20Marcel%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Marcel%20Proust%22%20O
R%20creator%3A%22Proust%2C%20M%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Marcel%20Proust%2
2%20OR%20description%3A%22Proust%2C%20Marcel%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Ma
rcel%20Proust%22%29%20OR%20%28%221871-1922%22%20AND%20Proust%29%29%20AN
D%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Marcel Proust (https://librivox.org/author/4253) at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 10/11
26/06/2021 Marcel Proust - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust 11/11