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Marcel Proust
There are some writers that have made such a unique contribution to literature and to art that they are considered among the best, if not the best, and not just in their own country, but in the world. Such a writer was Marcel Proust. He has been called the greatest novelist of the 20th century, and the novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, compared to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. But Michelangelo was known as “The Divine”, while Proust was called a hypochondriac, a dilettante, a homosexual and a mama’s boy. All of these things were true, to a certain extent, and when the first volume of In Search of Lost Time (Swann’s Way) was published in 1913, Proust’s friends were shocked that he had produced such a masterpiece. As Marcel himself said, there was not just one Proust, but many, and his many selves were often paradoxical and antithetical to each other. He used the ways of a hypochondriac to make people, mostly his mother, give him special treatment, yet he had his first asthma attack at age nine and struggled with ill health until his death at age 51. He was a social-climbing dilettante yet spent the last ten years of his life as a virtual recluse, shielded from the outside world by the cork-lined walls of his bedroom. He was a homosexual who wrote and spoke as if he deplored homosexuality. And he was a mama’s boy who used the love and anguish of that relationship as a springboard for the novel’s deep and enduring truths about all forms of love and devotion and life and art.
But do we really need to know anything about the writer to understand, or even appreciate, the work itself? Remembrance of Things Past, or as it is more accurately titled now, In Search of Lost Time, is often described as a semi-autobiographical work, so can’t we just read the books to know the man? No, in answer to both questions, but…yes. Although Proust only peripherally identifies the “Narrator” in Lost Time as himself, the book closely parallels his life, possibly a better phrase would be reflects his life (as some key things are reversed, as if seen in a mirror). And at the risk of sounding dramatic, Proust gave this life- mentally & physically- to the service of writing these volumes. He gave the novel his life and in return, it gave him immortality. Proust was aware of this “bargain with the devil” he’d made, and when he wrote fin at the end of the novel, he told his housekeeper/companion “Now I can die”…and shortly afterward, he did. Knowing something of the life of this man can help illuminate the world of Lost Time, as a reading of Lost Time illuminates not just Marcel’s life but all lives, our own included. That’s one of the reasons why this work is regarded as one of the world’s best, and why it is as relevant to us now as it was then and as it will continue to be in the future. |
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2006 © Mari Mann All Rights Reserved |