Complete Works of Marcel Proust PDF
Preview Complete Works of Marcel Proust
The Complete Works of MARCEL PROUST (1871 – 1922) Contents Remembrance of Things Past SWANN’S WAY WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE THE GUERMANTES CITIES OF THE PLAIN THE CAPTIVE THE SWEET CHEAT GONE TIME REGAINED The Novels in French Other Works in French LES PLAISIRS ET LES JOURS PASTICHES ET MELANGES ARTICLES DE ‘La Nouvelle Revue Française’ CHRONIQUES LA BIBLE D’AMIENS SESAME ET LES LYS © Delphi Classics 2014 Version 2 The Complete Works of MARCEL PROUST By Delphi Classics, 2014 Remembrance of Things Past Proust’s birthplace, Paris Proust’s birth certificate Proust as a child REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST À la recherche du temps perdu This is the title of Proust’s landmark novel, which is comprised of seven volumes. À la recherche du temps perdu is famously known for the concept of ‘involuntary memory’ and the novel’s considerable length. The entire narrative contains nearly 1.5 million words and is classed as one of the longest novels in world literature. Proust began writing the novel in 1909 and continued working on it until his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The structure was established early on, and the novel is complete as a work of art and termed by some critics as a literary cosmos. Proust kept adding new material through his final years, while editing one volume after another for print. The final three volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which existed in draft at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert. The various volumes were published in France from 1913 to 1927. Proust paid for the publication of the first volume, by the Grasset publishing house, after it had been turned down by leading editors, who criticised the manuscript’s longhand state. Many of the novel’s ideas, motifs and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust’s unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The questions raised by homosexuality are pervasive throughout the novel, particularly in the later volumes. The first arrival of this theme comes already in the Combray section of Swann’s Way, where the daughter of the piano teacher and composer Vinteuil is seduced and perverted, and Marcel observes her having lesbian relations in front of the portrait of her recently deceased father. There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust’s sexuality has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust’s close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never admitted this. It was only after his death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence with Proust, made public Proust’s homosexuality. The nature of Proust’s intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not “out and proud,” except perhaps in close knit social circles. À la recherche du temps is considered the definitive modern masterpiece by many scholars, having a profound effect on subsequent writers such as Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce. Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that the novel is now “widely recognised as the major novel of the twentieth century.”
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