À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927)
Seven-volume novel of the narrator's life, society and art, ending in the recovery of lost time through memory
Literature · Novelists
Marcel Proust
1871–1922 · French
Modernism
Marcel Proust was the French author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), a seven-volume novel published 1913–1927 that explores memory, time, love, art and high society. Its episode of the madeleine dipped in tea is the classic illustration of involuntary memory. A chronic asthmatic, he wrote much of it in a cork-lined bedroom in Paris.
How to spot them
- ▸The madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea; involuntary memory
- ▸Combray, Balbec, Swann, Odette, Albertine, the Baron de Charlus, the Guermantes
- ▸Cork-lined bedroom at 102 Boulevard Haussmann
- ▸Prix Goncourt 1919 for À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
- ▸'Remembrance of Things Past', C. K. Scott Moncrieff's title taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; the Proust Questionnaire
Key works
Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way) (1913)
Volume 1, published at his own expense by Grasset; contains the madeleine episode and 'Swann in Love'
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower / Within a Budding Grove) (1919)
Volume 2, winner of the Prix Goncourt; the narrator meets Albertine at the seaside resort of Balbec
Le Côté de Guermantes (The Guermantes Way) (1920–1921)
Volume 3, the narrator's entry into aristocratic society
Sodome et Gomorrhe (Sodom and Gomorrah) (1921–1922)
Volume 4, treating homosexuality, notably the Baron de Charlus
Le Temps retrouvé (Time Regained / Finding Time Again) (1927 (posthumous))
Final volume, in which the narrator resolves to write the book we have read
Les Plaisirs et les Jours (Pleasures and Days) (1896)
Early collection of stories and prose poems, with a preface by Anatole France
Jean Santeuil (1952 (posthumous))
Abandoned early autobiographical novel, a precursor to the Recherche
Key ideas
- Involuntary memory: a sensation such as a taste can revive the past more fully than conscious recollection
- Time, habit and jealousy distort love; people are revealed differently over the years
- Art is the means of recovering lost time and giving life meaning
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Auteuil, Paris; his father Adrien was a distinguished doctor and epidemiologist
- •Suffered severe asthma from childhood and lived increasingly as a nocturnal recluse
- •The later volumes are La Prisonnière (1923), Albertine disparue / La Fugitive (1925) and Le Temps retrouvé (1927)
- •Swann's Way was rejected by several publishers, including the Nouvelle Revue Française, where André Gide later admitted his error
- •Translated John Ruskin, including The Bible of Amiens (1904)
- •Fought a duel with the writer Jean Lorrain in 1897; neither was hurt
- •A Dreyfusard during the Dreyfus Affair
- •Buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Jean-Yves Tadié — Marcel Proust: A Life
- Samuel Beckett — Proust