A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: French novelist. Marcel Proust was born into an upper middle class family in Auteuil, near Paris, in 1871, that had strong scientific and artistic interests. His father, Adrien was an eminent Catholic doctor and professor of the Faculty of Medicine, but Proust had a more intense relationship with his witty and cultured Jewish-born mother, whom he adored and depended upon. He grew up in Paris near the Champs-Elysées and from 1882 to 1889 Proust attended the Lycée Condorcet. He seldom left Paris except for childhood holidays with relatives at Illiers, near Chartres or, later, for holidays at the Normandy seaside. Proust did his military service 1889-90 and from 1891-93 studied law the famous Sorbonne at the École des Sciences Politiques. He wrote for the Symbolist magazines and frequented the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the wealthy and aristocratic area of Paris. During the late summer of 1895 he started to write Jean Santeuil, which he lated abandoned. In 1896, he published his first work, an elegantly presented collection of short stories Pleasures and Regrets (Les Plaisirs et les Jours). He also contributed to Le Figaro and in 1892 had co-founded Le Banquet. His life was that of a socialite. Charming people with his wit and wealth, he gained access to salon society, which he was to use as a setitbusng for his book. Proust was plagued with ill health, having asthma from the age of nine. He had his first asthma attack at the age of nine and subsequently suffered badly from it. He was a neurotic, a condition aggravated by his homosexual tendencies and his efforts to conceal them. His father died in 1903 and his mother in 1905. After the deaths of his parents he increasingly withdrew from social life and he became a virtual recluse, spending most of his time in bed writing, in a room lined with cork to exclude noise, with all the windows shut and the air thick with inhalents. His friends were usually summoned to visit him at night. After 1907 he lived mainly in a cork-lined room in his apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann, writing mostly at night. His last public appearance was at the New Year's Eve ball given by the discreetly homosexual Comte de Beaumont in 1921. From 1904-06 he began to translate Ruskin, whose ideas on art and architecture influenced his own. His monumental work, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, (usually translated to Remembrance of Things Past, but more literally In Search of Lost Time), was influenced by the autobiographies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and François Chateaubriand and was not completed, but was published in 16 volumes between 1913 and 1927. He began writing it when he was in his late 30s and was still engaged upon it at the time of his death. The work is in seven sections and collected pieces from Proust's childhood, observations of high class life-style, gossips, recollections of the closed world, where the author never found his place. The key scene is when a madeleine cake (a small, rich cookie-like pastry) enables the narrator to experience the past completely as a simultaneous part of his present existence: "And suddenly the memory revealed itself: The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane". The first volume, Du Cote de Chez Swann (Swann's Way) was published at his own expense in 1913, after Andre Gide advised the Gallimard publishing house to reject it. Gide expressed the view that a socialite like Proust could have nothing valuable to contribute to literature. Proust's housekeeper, Celeste Albaret, thought that the manuscript had not been unwrapped, let alone read. The book was, however, well received, although it did not make him famous. Gide was later to apologise, praising the book fulsomely. The second volume A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919, Within a Budding Grove) won the Goncourt Prize in 1920, marking him as an outstanding novelist. His fame was assured and he gained an international readership. The translation into English by Scott Moncrieff was severely bowdlerised to protect sensibilities. In the later translation by Terence Kilmartin, Proust's homosexual themes are more apparent. Proust is generally regarded, on the basis of Remembrance of Things Past, as the greatest French novelist of the 20th century and pioneer of the modern novel. His work influenced widely authors in different countries, among them Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. His style, long sentences, some of which extend to several pages in length, paved way to Claude Simon's narrative inventions. Proust has later told that he had from the beginning a fixed structure for the whole novel. His fame and influence have grown since his death in 1922. His Remembrance of Things Past was number 4 of the list of the top 100 gay books compiled in the USA in 1999. In 1999 the first volume, Swann's Way was 13th. on the list of sales by Amazon.co.uk, as reported by John Ezard in The Guardian, 23rd. October, 1999, page 3. In 1999 the last part of Remembrance of Things Past was made into the film Time Regained, directed by Raúl Ruiz. This seemed to be at least partly responsible for a revived interest in Proust and his main novel which shot up the book sales lists. |
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