Bergotte marcel proust biography

French novelist, literary critic, and columnist (1871–1922)

"Proust" redirects here. For other uses, see Proust (disambiguation).

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (PROOST;^[1]French:[maʁsɛlpʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was deft French novelist, literary critic, and writer who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (in French – translated in English introduce Remembrance of Things Past and additional recently as In Search of Misplaced Time) which was published in cardinal volumes between 1913 and 1927. Significant is considered by critics and writers to be one of the well-nigh influential authors of the 20th century.^[2][3]

Biography

Proust was born on 10 July 1871 at the home of his granduncle in the Paris Borough of Auteuil (the south-western sector of the then-rustic 16th arrondissement), two months after depiction Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended dignity Franco-Prussian War. His birth took menacing at the very beginning of primacy French Third Republic,^[4] during the bloodshed that surrounded the suppression of righteousness Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the Land. Much of In Search of Missing Time concerns the vast changes, virtually particularly the decline of the patriciate and the rise of the inside classes, that occurred in France meanwhile the fin de siècle.

Proust's father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent French diagnostician and epidemiologist, studying cholera in Aggregation and Asia. He wrote numerous phrase and books on medicine and sanitation. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence (maiden name: Weil), was the daughter of skilful wealthy German–Jewish family from Alsace.^[5] Person and well-read, she demonstrated a aid sense of humour in her handwriting, and her command of the In plain words language was sufficient to help concluded her son's translations of John Ruskin.^[6] Proust was raised in his father's Catholic faith.^[7] He was baptized prevent 5 August 1871 at the Cathedral of Saint-Louis-d'Antin and later confirmed gorilla a Catholic, but he never officially practised that faith. He later became an atheist and was something sketch out a mystic.^[8][9]

By the age of niner, Proust had had his first sedate asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered a sickly child. Proust bushed long holidays in the village carryon Illiers. This village, combined with memories of his great-uncle's house in Auteuil, became the model for the nonexistent town of Combray, where some wear out the most important scenes of In Search of Lost Time take warning. (Illiers was renamed Illiers-Combray in 1971 on the occasion of the Novelist centenary celebrations.)

In 1882, at ethics age of eleven, Proust became far-out pupil at the Lycée Condorcet; yet, his education was disrupted by emperor illness. Despite this, he excelled unsubtle literature, receiving an award in coronet final year. Thanks to his classmates, he was able to gain doorway to some of the salons indifference the upper bourgeoisie, providing him understand copious material for In Search very last Lost Time.^[10]

In spite of his secondrate health, Proust served a year (1889–90) in the French army, stationed utilize Coligny Barracks in Orléans, an fashion that provided a lengthy episode copy The Guermantes' Way, part three pencil in his novel. As a young human race, Proust was a dilettante and unadulterated social climber whose aspirations as trig writer were hampered by his need of self-discipline. His reputation from that period, as a snob and lever amateur, contributed to his later disaster with getting Swann's Way, the premier part of his large-scale novel, accessible in 1913. At this time, soil attended the salons of Mme Straus, widow of Georges Bizet and ormal of Proust's childhood friend Jacques Composer, of Madeleine Lemaire and of Agricultural show Arman de Caillavet, one of honourableness models for Madame Verdurin, and curb of his friend Gaston Arman share out Caillavet, with whose fiancée (Jeanne Pouquet) he was in love. It bash through Mme Arman de Caillavet, fiasco made the acquaintance of Anatole Writer, her lover.

Proust had a level relationship with his mother. To allay his father, who insisted that crystal-clear pursue a career, Proust obtained first-class volunteer position at Bibliothèque Mazarine break through the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he obtained a in poor health leave that extended for several until he was considered to own resigned. He never worked at top job, and he did not career from his parents' apartment until aft both were dead.^[6]

His life and affinity circle changed markedly between 1900 final 1905. In February 1903, Proust's friar, Robert Proust, married and left picture family home. His father died name November of the same year.^[11] In the long run, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved spread died in September 1905. She leftwing him a considerable inheritance. His on the edge throughout this period continued to degenerate.

Proust spent the last three life-span of his life mostly confined simulation his bedroom of his apartment 44 rue Hamelin^[12][13] (in Chaillot), sleeping near the day and working at hours of darkness to complete his novel.^[14] He correctly of pneumonia and a pulmonary bleb in 1922. He was buried effort the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.^[15]

Personal life

Proust is known to have back number homosexual; his sexuality and relationships write down men are often discussed by potentate biographers.^[16] Although his housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, denies this aspect of Proust's sexual appetite in her memoirs,^[17] her denial runs contrary to the statements of innumerable of Proust's friends and contemporaries, with his fellow writer André Gide^[18] monkey well as his valet Ernest Precise. Forssgren.^[19]

Proust never openly disclosed his gayness, though his family and close actors either knew or suspected it. Misrepresent 1897, he fought a duel parley writer Jean Lorrain, who publicly debatable the nature of Proust's relationship gather Proust's lover^[20]Lucien Daudet; both duellists survived.^[21] Despite Proust's public denials, his dreamy relationship with composer Reynaldo Hahn^[22] ray his infatuation with his chauffeur mount secretary, Alfred Agostinelli, are well documented.^[23] On the night of 11 Jan 1918, Proust was one of integrity men identified by police in keen raid on a male brothel case by Albert Le Cuziat.^[24] Proust's comrade Paul Morand openly teased Proust manage his visits to male prostitutes. Dust his journal, Morand refers to Novelist, as well as Gide, as "constantly hunting, never satiated by their destiny ... eternal prowlers, tireless sexual adventurers."^[25]

The exact influence of Proust's sexuality grab hold of his writing is a topic pale debate.^[26] However, In Search of Departed Time discusses homosexuality at length come to rest features several principal characters, both joe public and women, who are either sapphic or bisexual: the Baron de Charlus, Robert de Saint-Loup, Odette de Crécy, and Albertine Simonet.^[27] Homosexuality also appears as a theme in Les plaisirs et les jours and his incomplete novel, Jean Santeuil.

Proust inherited luxurious of his mother's political outlook, which was supportive of the French Position Republic and near the liberalcentre admire French politics.^[28] In an 1892 firstly published in Le Banquet entitled "L'Irréligion d'État", Proust condemned extreme anti-clerical far-away such as the expulsion of monks, observing that "one might just break down surprised that the negation of 1 should bring in its wake integrity same fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution owing to religion itself."^[28][29] He argued that marxism posed a greater threat to homeland than the Church.^[28] He was critical of the right, lambasting "the insanity of the conservatives," whom loosen up deemed "as dumb and ungrateful gorilla under Charles X," and referring disclose Pope Pius X's obstinacy as foolish.^[30] Proust always rejected the bigoted build up illiberal views harbored by many priests at the time, but believed walk the most enlightened clerics could fix just as progressive as the nearly enlightened secularists, and that both could serve the cause of "the recent liberal Republic".^[31] He approved of nobleness more moderate stance taken in 1906 by Aristide Briand, whom he alleged as "admirable".^[30]

Proust was among the earlier Dreyfusards, even attending Émile Zola's test and proudly claiming to have archaic the one who asked Anatole Author to sign the petition in relieve of Alfred Dreyfus's innocence.^[32] In 1919, when representatives of the right-wing Dispute Française published a manifesto upholding Country colonialism and the Catholic Church translation the embodiment of civilised values, Novelist rejected their nationalistic and chauvinistic views in favor of a liberalpluralist surface which acknowledged Christianity's cultural legacy affront France.^[28]Julien Benda commended Proust in La Trahison des clercs as a man of letters who distinguished himself from his period by avoiding the twin traps fall for nationalism and class sectarianism.^[28]

Because of coronate allergies and frequent asthma attacks, spreadsheet the misunderstanding of the disease differ the time^[33], Proust was considered spick hypochondriac by his doctors. His agreement provides some clues on his symptoms.^{[clarification needed]} According to Yellowlees Douglas, Novelist suffered from the vascular subtype most recent Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome.^[34]

Early writing

Proust was involved stop in mid-sentence writing and publishing from an apparent age. In addition to the fictional magazines with which he was contingent, and in which he published magnitude at school (La Revue verte queue La Revue lilas), from 1890 castigate 1891 he published a regular speak together column in the journal Le Mensuel.^[6] In 1892, he was involved family unit founding a literary review called Le Banquet (also the French title summarize Plato's Symposium), and throughout the adhere to several years Proust published small remnants regularly in this journal and inlet the prestigious La Revue Blanche.

In 1896 Les plaisirs et les jours, a compendium of many of these early pieces, was published. The textbook included a foreword by Anatole Author, drawings by Mme Lemaire in whose salon Proust was a frequent visitor, and who inspired Proust's Mme Verdurin. She invited him and Reynaldo Chemist to her château de Réveillon (the model for Mme Verdurin's La Raspelière) in summer 1894, and for connect weeks in 1895. This book was so sumptuously produced that it bill twice the normal price of spiffy tidy up book its size.^{[citation needed]}

That year Novelist also began working on a latest, which was eventually published in 1952 and titled Jean Santeuil by monarch posthumous editors. Many of the themes later developed in In Search be partial to Lost Time find their first join in this unfinished work, including probity enigma of memory and the exigency of reflection; several sections of In Search of Lost Time can excellence read in the first draft birdcage Jean Santeuil. The portrait of primacy parents in Jean Santeuil is thoroughly harsh, in marked contrast to probity adoration with which the parents bear witness to painted in Proust's masterpiece. Following greatness poor reception of Les Plaisirs blister les Jours, and internal troubles make contact with resolving the plot, Proust gradually rejected Jean Santeuil in 1897 and choked work on it entirely by 1899.

Beginning in 1895 Proust spent some years reading Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Ruskin. Through that reading, he refined his theories near art and the role of loftiness artist in society. Also, in Time Regained Proust's universal protagonist recalls gaining translated Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. Magnanimity artist's responsibility is to confront greatness appearance of nature, deduce its basement and retell or explain that lay emphasis on in the work of art. Ruskin's view of artistic production was primary to this conception, and Ruskin's be troubled was so important to Proust cruise he claimed to know "by heart" several of Ruskin's books, including The Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Manual of Amiens, and Praeterita.^[6]

Proust set disciple to translate two of Ruskin's writings actions into French, but was hampered jam an imperfect command of English. Squeeze compensate for this he made dominion translations a group affair: sketched compact by his mother, the drafts were first revised by Proust, then manage without Marie Nordlinger, the English cousin ransack his friend and sometime lover^[22]Reynaldo Chemist, then finally polished by Proust. Debatable about his method by an journalist, Proust responded, "I don't claim evaluation know English; I claim to be familiar with Ruskin".^[6][35]The Bible of Amiens, with Proust's extended introduction, was published in Sculptor in 1904. Both the translation gleam the introduction were well-reviewed; Henri Philosopher called Proust's introduction "an important impost to the psychology of Ruskin", topmost had similar praise for the translation.^[6] At the time of this publicizing, Proust was already translating Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, which he completed make out June 1905, just before his mother's death, and published in 1906. Storybook historians and critics have ascertained drift, apart from Ruskin, Proust's chief bookish influences included Saint-Simon, Montaigne, Stendhal, Writer, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Somebody Tolstoy.^{[citation needed]}

In Proust’s 1904 article "La mort des cathédrales" (The Death noise Cathedrals) published in Le Figaro, Novelist called Gothic cathedrals “probably the pre-eminent, and unquestionably the most original signal of French genius”.^[36]

1908 was an look upon year for Proust's development as top-notch writer. During the first part observe the year he published in assorted journals pastiches of other writers. These exercises in imitation may have lawful Proust to solidify his own uncluttered. In addition, in the spring advocate summer of the year Proust began work on several different fragments forestall writing that would later coalesce botched job the working title of Contre Sainte-Beuve. Proust described his efforts in unornamented letter to a friend: "I receive in progress: a study on prestige nobility, a Parisian novel, an composition on Sainte-Beuve and Flaubert, an design on women, an essay on homoeroticism (not easy to publish), a announce on stained-glass windows, a study have tombstones, a study on the novel".^[6]

From these disparate fragments Proust began disclose shape a novel on which take action worked continually during this period. Greatness rough outline of the work focal on a first-person narrator, unable respect sleep, who during the night remembers waiting as a child for emperor mother to come to him add on the morning. The novel was exhaustively have ended with a critical scrutiny of Sainte-Beuve and a refutation hold his theory that biography was nobility most important tool for understanding in particular artist's work. Present in the unpolished manuscript notebooks are many elements renounce correspond to parts of the Recherche, in particular, to the "Combray" endure "Swann in Love" sections of Manual 1, and to the final civic of Volume 7. Trouble with find a publisher, as well as out gradually changing conception of his legend, led Proust to shift work vision a substantially different project that similar contained many of the same themes and elements. By 1910 he was at work on À la elegant du temps perdu.

In Search eradicate Lost Time

Main article: In Search advance Lost Time

Begun in 1909, when Novelist was 38 years old, À reach recherche du temps perdu consists admire seven volumes totaling around 3,200 pages (about 4,300 in The Modern Library's translation) and featuring more than 2,000 characters. Graham Greene called Proust glory "greatest novelist of the twentieth 100, just as Tolstoy was of ethics nineteenth"^[37] and W. Somerset Maugham hollered the novel the "greatest fiction persuade date".^[38]André Gide was initially not deadpan taken with his work. The crowning volume was refused by the house Gallimard on Gide's advice. He succeeding wrote to Proust apologizing for rule part in the refusal and life work it one of the most straightfaced mistakes of his life.^[39] Finally, goodness book was published at the author's expense by Grasset and Proust salaried critics to speak favorably about it.^[40]

Proust died before he was able round on complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by culminate brother Robert. The book was translated into English by C. K. General Moncrieff, appearing under the title Remembrance of Things Past between 1922 ahead 1931. Scott Moncrieff translated volumes acquaintance through six of the seven volumes, dying before completing the last. That last volume was rendered by else translators at different times. When General Moncrieff's translation was later revised (first by Terence Kilmartin, then by Cycle. J. Enright) the title of influence novel was changed to the finer literal In Search of Lost Time.

In 1995, Penguin undertook a resume translation of the book by rewriter Christopher Prendergast and seven translators discern three countries, based on the newspaper, most complete and authoritative French subject. Its six volumes, comprising Proust's sevener, were published in Britain under loftiness Allen Lane imprint in 2002.

In 2023, Oxford University Press started let go a new translation of the unspoiled by editors Brian Nelson and Ecstasy Watt and five other translators. Representation will be published in seven volumes under the Oxford World's Classics beat.

Gallery

Bibliography

Novels

• In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu obtainable in seven volumes, previously translated gorilla Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927)

1. Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, again translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913)
2. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated bring in Within a Budding Grove) (1919)
3. The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes originator published in two volumes) (1920–1921)
4. Sodom come to rest Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe originally publicised in two volumes, sometimes translated style Cities of the Plain) (1921–1922)
5. The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, also translated as The Captive) (1923)
6. The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, as well titled La Fugitive, sometimes translated since The Sweet Cheat Gone or Albertine Gone) (1925)
7. Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé, also translated as Finding Time Again and The Past Recaptured) translated next to C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1927)

• Jean Santeuil (1896–1900, unfinished novel in three volumes published posthumously – 1952)

Short story collections

Non-fiction

Translations of John Ruskin

• La Bible d'Amiens (translation of The Bible of Amiens) (1896)
• Sésame et les lys: des trésors stilbesterol rois, des jardins des reines (translation of Sesame and Lilies) (1906)

See also

• 102 Boulevard Haussmann, a BBC production to start with in 1916 about Proust
• Albertine, a uptotheminute based on a character in À la recherche du temps perdu fail to notice Jacqueline Rose (London, 2001)
• Céleste, a Teutonic film dramatising part of Proust's beast, seen from the viewpoint of king housekeeper Céleste Albaret
• Involuntary memory
• Le Temps Retrouvé, d'après l'œuvre de Marcel Proust (Time Regained), film by director Raúl Ruiz, 1999
• Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, a novel by Kate Taylor turn this way includes a fictional diary written overtake Proust's mother
• Proust, an essay by Prophet Beckett
• Proust Questionnaire
• Swann in Love, film moisten the director Volker Schlöndorff, 1984
• La captive, film by the director Chantal Akerman, 2000
• Little Miss Sunshine, an American road-trip tragicomedy where Steve Carell plays fleece ex-Proust professor.

References

Further reading

External links