|
The Paris portrayed in In Search of Lost Time is the Paris of the time known as La Belle Epogue, or the beautiful time. It spans the period roughly from the middle 1880’s to 1914, the beginning of WWI; as the final volume of the novel ends, bombs begin to fall on Paris. La Belle Epoque and Paris are also at the center of Proust’s life, as he was born in 1871 and died in 1922, and as he will never live anywhere other than Paris. La Belle Epoque was not just a time of beauty but of peace and progress, of great innovative works like the Eiffel Tower and the invention of cinema, and of great art like Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Much of Proust’s Paris is still available to the traveler of today, as Rod and I discovered during our visit in the spring of 2005, and as the armchair traveler can see by clicking on the 5 Walks in Paris link. |
|
Paris Then and Now |
|
Paris Then and Now: The Louvre, minus the pyramid, is the same today as Marcel Proust would have seen it in his day. |
|
2005 © Mari Mann All Rights Reserved |