Proust, Marcel, << proost, mar SEHL >> (1871-1922), was a French author. His seven-part novel À la recherche du temps perdu, known in English as Remembrance of Things Past, is a masterpiece of literature. The novel’s title has also been translated as In Search of Lost Time. It consists of Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Cities of the Plain, The Captive, The Sweet Cheat Gone, and The Past Recaptured.
Remembrance of Things Past is filled with vivid characters and provides a panorama of French high society in the process of change. It is a study of love, jealousy, marriage, and the evils of the age and describes the growth of the narrator, Marcel, into a mature artist. Marcel, except in one episode, is both participant and observer. He tells his story with frankness, intelligence, sensitivity, irony, and humor. The work has brilliant dialogue and offers original and profound observations about music, art, writing, theater, and criticism. Proust compared the novel’s structure to that of a cathedral, whose diverse parts form a whole, or that of a musical composition in which themes are introduced, abandoned, and resumed.
To Marcel, reality remains elusive. It is constantly changing, because the passing of time alters not only his own perspective, but also the nature of what is perceived. He finally recognizes that reality is not external but something stored in the depths of one’s unconscious memory. There it is preserved from the changes of time, but is accessible only in rare and happy moments. These moments are made possible by a variety of sensual experiences. The most famous example is that of the “madeleine,” a small cake that brings back his childhood when he dips the cake into a cup of tea and tastes it. This enables him to live two moments in time together, and this defeats time itself. Artists can reveal reality to humanity because their sensitivity lets them dig deeply into their own unconscious memory.
Proust began writing Remembrance of Things Past in 1908, but he could not find a publisher. He finally published Swann’s Way in 1913 at his own expense. Both the author’s poor health and World War I delayed the publication of later volumes until 1918. Proust continually revised the novel, and the last three parts were not published until after his death on Nov. 18, 1922.
Velentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871, in Paris. During the 1890’s, he wrote stories and magazine articles that were noted for their elegant but artificial style. His unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1895-1899, published 1952), has characters and incidents that foreshadow his major novel. Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908-1910, published 1954) is a collection of critical essays that reveals Proust as a highly sensitive critic with theories on the arts that were far in advance of his time.
See also French literature (The early years).
