Marcel Proust: A short literary biography
Auteuil, 10 July 1871 - Paris, 18 November 1922)
"How Proust Can Change Your Life."
Marcel proust would seem an unlikely role model, to say the least. His life was, generally speaking, miserable. He had asthma; he had a severely troubled stomach; his skin was so sensitive he couldn't use soap; he was terrified of heights, of mice, of travel, of too-loose underpants; noise from neighbors drove him nearly mad. He spent his life as a perpetual invalid, passing through a succession of colds and fevers, never breaking away from his clinging mother, with whom he lived until she died. His love life, such as it was, consisted of a series of unrequited crushes on unsuitable
men, and love for just one woman. "Without pleasures, objectives, activities or ambitions, with the life ahead of me finished and with an awareness of the grief I cause my parents, I have little happiness," he wrote when he was 30. After completing all seven volumes of "Remembrance of Things Past," the anxious hypochondriac developed pneumonia and died at the age of 51.
And this is the man from whom we're expected to take life lessons? Well, lessons of a sort. Alain de Botton does in fact attempt to explain "How Proust Can Change Your Life." His engaging new book -- not quite self-help, not quite literary criticism -- explores how a careful reading of Proust can help us to solve such problems as "how to be a good friend," "how to be happy in love" and "how to suffer successfully." For no matter how miserable
Proust made himself, he was always a keen and insightful observer of others. "Infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyze processes which we would otherwise know nothing about," he wrote.
Spoken like a true hypochondriac. But even in those areas of life in which he did not exactly excel -- love, for example -- Proust was able to accumulate considerable knowledge, which de Botton draws forth with cleverness and wit from the novelist's various writings, public and private. Proust wrote with scorn of those who spoke only in clichˇs, in part because he knew how easy it was for stock phrases to substitute for real emotions. An effusive and perhaps
overdevoted friend to many people, he recognized that a sort of amiable insincerity is necessary for friendship -- and that it's often worth the effort it takes to bite one's tongue.
De Botton's book may not, literally, change anyone's life, but it may prompt a few of its readers to have another go at
Proust. Since it's likely more people have watched Monty Python's "All-England Summarize
Proust" competition than have actually finished even one of the volumes of his sprawling, digressive novel, this in itself is something of an accomplishment.
Biography
Marcel Proust was born to bourgeois parents living in Paris. His father was a doctor and his mother came from a rich and cultured Jewish family. Beginning in his childhood and continuing throughout his life, Proust suffered from chronic asthma attacks.
His literary talent became evident during his high school (lycˇe) years. He began to frequent salons such as that of Mme Arman, a friend of Anatole France. Under the patronage of the latter, Proust published in 1896 his first book, Les Plaisirs et les Jours, a collection of short stories, essays and poems. It was not very successful.
Proust had begun in autumn 1895 a novel which he later abandoned in autumn 1899 and never finished. It was finally published in 1952 as Jean
Santeuil. After this second setback, Proust devoted several years to translating and annotating the works of the English art historian John Ruskin. He published a number of articles on Ruskin, as well as two translations: La Bible d'Amiens in 1904 and Sˇsame et les Lys in 1906. The prefaces to these early works anticipate Proust's subsequent stylistic and esthetic development. "Sur la lecture", the preface to Sˇsame, contains themes which recur in Du C™tˇ de chez Swann.
Overcome by the death of his mother in September 1905, Proust set aside his literary pursuits for a few months.
In February of 1907 he published in Le Figaro an article entitled "Sentiments filiaux d'un parricide", in which he attempted to analyze two elements which would be fundamental to his future psychological approach to literature: memory and guilt. Other articles which appeared during the period 1907-1908 are considered to be preliminary to his novel, into which they were later incorporated.
Early in 1908 Proust wrote for Le Figaro a series of pastiches in which he imitated the style of Balzac, Michelet, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve and other prose writers of the nineteenth century.
During this time he began his novel, although he fully intended to continue to write essays of literary, artistic and sociological criticism. One of these was supposed to be devoted to Sainte-Beuve. Gradually, however, all of his planned projects became part of a single larger work. During the summer of 1909 Proust developed the essay entitled "Contre Sainte-Beuve" into a novel which he would continue to write for the rest of his life. In May of 1913 he adopted for this novel the title Ė la recherche du temps perdu.
The first part, Du C™tˇ de chez Swann, was published in November 1913. War delayed Ė l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs until June 1919, but it won the Prix Goncourt in December of that year. For the last three years of his life Proust never stopped working on the novel, and it was during these years that three more volumes appeared: Le c™tˇ de Guermantes I (October 1920), Le c™tˇ de Guermantes II - Sodome et Gomorrhe I (May 1921), Sodome et Gomorrhe II (April 1922).
Proust died of pneumonia on November 18, 1922. The remaining volumes of his novel, which he had finished but not completely revised, were published by his brother Robert, with the help of Jacques Rivi¸re and Jean Paulhan, directors of La Nouvelle Revue Fran¨aise. These volumes were La Prisonni¸re (1923), Albertine disparue (1925) and Le Temps retrouvˇ (1927).
In his own lifetime the merit of Proust's novel was debated by those who perceived its brilliance and those who claimed it was unreadable. Today it is recognized as one of the major literary works of French expression.
