Some authors seem immortal, others sink into oblivion. After a while, what remains? In his monthly series Should I re-read…?, The duty revisits one of these writers with the help of admirers and attentive observers. Today, place to Marcel Proust (1871-1922), the one that so many people dream of having read, or who arouses a dose of skepticism in front of the enthusiasm of the irreducibleIn Search of Lost Time.
There Research is like a kind of treasure hunt, where the treasure is time and the past is the hiding place”, said the writer Vladimir Nabokov about this novel which many consider to be the most important of the 20th century.e century.
The same qualifiers have been repeated for a long time aboutIn Search of Lost Time : monument, cathedral, Everest of literature, etc. They resonated last year as France celebrated the 100th anniversary of the death of Marcel Proust, which occurred on November 18, 1922 while living in rue Hamelin, in the XVIe district in Paris.
Disguised autobiography for some, literary brick for others, the flagship work of the one who was crowned Goncourt for the second volume (In the shade of the maidens in bloom, in 1919) was largely written in his bedroom. Born in 1871 in the midst of a bourgeois family, this keen observer of Parisian mores gradually withdrew from the world, afflicted by asthma attacks, which did not prevent him from writing and nurturing loves. (including with the composer Reynaldo Hahn) which often turned into lasting friendships. Some of her former lovers have even become veritable double agents, describing to her in minute detail what agitated all of Paris in the salons.
Proust, it’s long, it’s short
Today, what else have Charles Swann, Odette de Crécy, Albertine Simonet, Baron de Charlus and Oriane de Guermantes to tell us? Many things, especially through the eyes of this never-named narrator. “Many people in the literary world believe that Marcel Proust is an author of the nineteenthe century because of his subjects, laments Martin Robitaille, professor in the Department of Letters and Humanities at the University of Quebec at Rimouski. In fact, he is a radically modern writer, discovering things about consciousness and the unconscious, questioning memory and time, great philosophical and existential questions. Let’s not forget that he is a contemporary of Sigmund Freud. For the one who made his correspondence an object of research, Martin Robitaille considers that Marcel Proust offered the world a work “both magnificent in its prose, and without pity on human relations”.
Many clichés surround the figure of the one who will have seen during his lifetime the publication of four of the seven volumes ofIn Search of Lost Time. There is of course the most famous incipit in the history of French literature (“Long time, I went to bed early”), and the power of the madeleine, this little cake which, soaked in herbal tea, is transformed in a time machine.
But what often comes up when it comes to demonizing or venerating Marcel Proust comes down to the length of his sentences. One would have 931 words, a record, while the average is around 34. A reading challenge? No, a jubilant pleasure, according to Bernabé Wesley, professor in the Department of French-language literature at the University of Montreal.
“The Proustian sentence is not long enough, affirms without hesitation this specialist in the French novel of the XXe century before 1945. This is a reproach already formulated by Samuel Beckett, who said that this sentence is based on the principle of superposition of strata of different temporalities within the syntax itself. Beckett complained that the Proustian sentence was too short to represent that. » According to Bernabé Wesley, what is heavy, « is this fashion of saying that one has not read Proust because the work is very intimidating. As soon as you dive into it, there is a real reading pleasure, and, yes, moments of boredom. Gold, In Search of Lost Time, these are especially great moments of emotion. And if there’s one thing that makes me indignant about Proust, it’s the cruelty of certain characters, particularly linked to snobbery and society life. »
Taming Proust, one page at a time
” I received In search of time lost as a gift in 2010, and it took me 10 years to read it, at the rate of ten pages every evening. This is the method of the lawyer Marc Bellemare, former Minister of Justice in the first government of Jean Charest, he who had never considered undertaking this literary marathon. The hundredth anniversary of Marcel Proust’s death has become the perfect pretext to make contagious his admiration for “a novel that describes passion and jealousy in such an authentic and beautiful way”. Last November in Quebec, he organized, at his own expense, a tribute including a concert by Les Violons du Roy at the Palais Montcalm, a reading of the play by Sylvie Moreau, Inside Proust’s head, a series of conferences in which Martin Robitaille took part, as well as an interview with the sponsor of the event, Lucien Bouchard. The latter was also one of Marc Bellemare’s models to dive into the work of the man he describes as “a complicated guy”!
“Proust gave a form of immortality to the Belle Époque, and to Paris, the true center of the world at that time”, underlines the one who is also a patron, and whom the French sculptor Jean-Pierre Raynaud nicknamed his “Medici “. Receive In Search of Lost Time was a turning point for Marc Bellemare the reader, a grace he wishes for as many people as possible, regardless of the book. “What you offer may not be read soon, but by leaving it lying around it may become important to someone during a journey, separation or bereavement. In life, there are spaces conducive to reading. »
For 30 years, creating favorable moments for Proust has been the mission of French filmmaker Véronique Aubouy. First with those around her, she asked everyone to read two pages oflooking, all captured in a sequence shot, fixed camera, in the decor of their choice, noisy or peaceful, urban or rural. Presented at the moment at the Château de Montsoreau-Musée d’art contemporain, in the Loire Valley, Proust read totals 151 hours and 43 minutes to date, and the filmmaker is hopeful of completing this journey within a few years.
A singular and solitary approach – but which has thousands of participants from all walks of life, including actor Kevin Kline and filmmaker Albert Serra – it was a necessity. “Proust had become an obsession, and I wanted to get rid of it,” says Véronique Aubouy on the phone. This book, I know it very well, but I did not want to make it a fiction. However, over three decades, Proust read tells much more thanResearch. “We see a lot of things changing, including the way of reading, and my film becomes a history of video. The images from the first volume resemble blurred childhood memories. »
This is not the filmmaker’s only project, but certainly her most ambitious. Is she worried about running out of time to reach the finish line? “I was never afraid of not finishing it, but of when to finish it, yes. It’s my way of being in the world, and of seeing life in the light of Proust. I started the last volume [Le temps retrouvé]I would like to come to you to include Quebec readers, but once [le projet] finished, I’ll move on. »
Without particular discipline or faithful regularity, the way of immersing oneself in the work of Marcel Proust reflects as much our relationship to the author as to the reading. The writer Charles Dantzig, in Proust oceancould not better sum up our freedom as a reader: “Reading Looking for the wasted timeis to cross the ocean. And it’s very easy, you just have to adapt your breathing. »