Marcel Proust

À La Recherche des Temps Perdu

By Norman Barth

Paris Kiosque - July 2001 - Volume 8, Number 7
Copyright (c) May 2001 Norman Barth - used with permission

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Marcel Proust: born 10 July 1871 in Auteuil, near Paris, France died 18 November 1922, Paris.

Proust is remembered principally for his master work À la recherche du temps perdu (1913 - 1927; variously translated as "Remberance of Things Past" or "In Search of Lost Time"), a six volume novel based on his life, the last two volumes being published posthumously. At the time of his birth, Paris - and France - was recovering from the turbulance surrounding France's humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War, and the worker uprising which followed in Paris. Lasting a few glorious weeks from 18 March 1871 until 28 May 1871 it ended when the last resisting Communards were shot down that morning against the Mur des Fédérés in Père-Lachaise cemetary.

His father - Dr. Adrien Proust - eventual professor of public health at the university and Inspector General of Public Health in France, was Catholic. He is best remembered for control of epidemics by means of the cordon sanitaire. His mother, Jeanne Weil was of a wealthy Alsatian Jewish family. Marcel himself was the first of two children, his brother Robert arriving on the scene two years later. Marcel's first attack of asthma was in 1880. Illness and general sickness and unease was to play a role in the rest of his life. Insomnia kept him awake at night, and he slept, or was unavailable, during most days. At some point the family moved to an apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann where for reasons of dust, pollen and noise, Marcel's windows were always kept closed, the drapes pulled, and the walls of his bedroom lined with cork for sound proofing. A neurotic hypocondriac of sorts, over the years he took numerous medicines, including trional, philogyne, veronal, dial, opium, adrenalin, caffeine, morphine, evatmine, cola, and others for his ailments.

Among the elements of his life there are the following:

• He became an admirer of John Ruskin - writer of art criticism regarding gothic architecture - and translated several of his books into French, including his Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies.

• Prouse called himself the first Dreyfussard when he sided with that army captain convicted of treason. The Dreyfus Affair (1901) was problematic in his family because his father moved in governmental circles, while his mother - also jewish as was Captain Dreyfus - took the side of the convicted man. Emile Zola was to write his famous proclomation J'accuse! concerning the affair.

• In an era before the telephone when letter writing was common, and due to his own proclivities, Proust carried on a lively correspondence. Over 3,000 letters of his have now appeared in print, but many many more await publication.

  Letter from Marcel Proust to Antoine Bibesco.
  

• He attended the Lycée Condorcet until 1888. During that time he edited schoolboy literary magazines.

• At eighteen he met Anatole France - who was later to write the preface for Proust's first literary work - for the first time.

• He joined the Army at Orléans as a volunteer also at eighteen, but was ultimately found unfit for service.

• His first book Les Plaisirs et les jours was published when he was twenty-five in (1896).

• His father died in 1903, his mother two years later in 1905. Both deaths were difficult for him, especially that of his mother, and he set aside literary work for a few months after her passing.

• He had both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, but never married.

Literary criticism has already shown that Proust's earlier writings foreshadowed the masterwork that was to come later. Among these was Jean Santeuil which he started on immediately following the publication of Les Plaisirs et les jours but later abandonned. The first pieces of the first volumn of À la recherche du temps perdu appeared as excerpts in the newspaper Le Figaro in March 1912. Later that year the Nouvelle Revue Française - whose editor was André Gide at the time - rejected the manuscript. Proust submitted the copy to the publisher Ollendorff with a similar result, the editor Humblot turning it down with the now classic remarks:

... perhaps I am dense, but I just don't understand why a man should take thirty pages to describe how he rolls about in bed before he goes to sleep. It made my head swim!

Proust now offered the MS to a new firm - Grasset - guarenteeing to cover costs of publication. Grasset accepted it without - it is said - even reading it.

With its appearence, "Swann's Way" (Du côté de chez Swann) attracted admirers, including Gide and in June and July of 1914, excerpts of Le Côté de Guermantes began to appear in the Nouvelle Revue Française. Finally in August - with World War I starting - publication was shifted from Grasset to the NRF. The next volumn of À la recherche did not appear until 1919. À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs ("Within a Budding Grove") was published in June 1919, together with a reprint of "Swann's Way". On 10 December 1919, with support from Léon Daudet, À l'ombre was awarded the Prix Goncourt literary prize, making Proust an overnight sensation. In September of 1920 he was awarded the Legion of Honnor.

Two more volumes that were to appear during the rest of Proust's lifetime are: Le Coté de Guermantes (1920-21; "The Guermantes Way), Sodome et Gomorrhe (1921-22; "Cities of the Plain"). In May 1922, the day after the appearence of Sodome et Gomorrhe Proust had a serious accident with the mistaken injection of undiluted adrenalin. While not fatal, it left him shattered in the words of one biographer, and within six months pulmonary infection, allergies, and other torturing ailments lead to his death on 18 November 1922, his physician brother Robert and others unable to save him.

Published posthumously are the last three parts of À la recherche: La Prisonnière (1923), Albertine disparue (1925; "The Sweet Cheat Gone") and Le Temps retrouvé (1927; "Time Regained").

À la recherche is a circular novel the full meaning of which only becomes clear with the revelation at its end. Its characters and scenes are largely autobiographical. When he died, Proust's fame was not yet at its zenith. While the passage of time has tempered his renown, À la recherche remains one of the most important literary works of the 20th century, and its authors one of its most important literary figures.

Many of Proust's books are available online.

• In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche...):
  • Swann's Way Vol. I
  • Within a Budding Grove Vol. II
  • Guermantes Way Vol. III
  • Sodom & Gomorrah Vol. IV
  • The Captive & the Fugitive Vol. V
  • Time Regained & A Guide to Proust Vol. VI.
• Biographies of Marcel Proust:
  • Marcel Proust; A Life - Jean-Yves Tadie
  • Marcel Proust; A Life - William C. Carter
  • Marcel Proust - Edmund White

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Norman Barth is the Editor of the Paris Kiosque, and webmaster/creator of Les Pages de Paris. He can be contacted at nbarth@paris.org