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Marcel Proust, writing and the arts by Claudine Canetti
***The Bibliotheque Nationale de France (French National Library) devoted its last exhibition of the century to Marcel Proust, casting a fascinating light on the origin of the monument to French literature represented by his 3,000 page novel «A la Recherche du Temps Perdu» (Remembrance of things past) and on the relationship of the author with all forms of art on which he drew to depict the end of a world, at the junction of two centuries.***
THE biggest exhibition ever devoted to Proust, organised in collaboration with the Orsay Museum in an area of 900 m2, presents the writer's imaginary museum, dealing with all the arts which inspired him. from painting to fashion and including sculpture, architecture, music, literature and theatre. The exhibition comprises 350 items including about a hundred paintings. The origin and the culmination of «Remembrance of things past>>. this cathedral-book which was written over 14 years, are revealed in the light of his 4 notebooks and 95 hand-written school exercise-books, with all the alterations, annotations and famous strips of paper stuck on top of one another by Celests Albaret. Proust's house-keeper, some of which are up to two metres long. All this is presented in a moving wall of manuscripts in a display case in which the heart of Remembrance beats. The itinerary through the exhibition. leading to that final wall is punctuated by four essential aspects of Proust's life: his family culture, his artistic culture, the culture of his time and the figures of creators in his work.
His family culture was dual: Literary on his mother's side and medical on his father's. It was through his greatly loved mother, Jeanne Proust, whose death in 1905 was to be a tragedy for him. that young Marcel discovered literature through, for instance, the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Madame de Sevigne's Letters and George Sand's Francois le Champi, which is lengthily evoked in Remembrance. It was also his mother who helped him. for five years, to translate John Raskin, the English art critic who was to play such an important part in his discovery of are and in drawing up his philosophy of art and of aesthetics, a recurrent theme in his work. Through his father Adrien Proust, a doctor and hygienist and a professor at the Faculty of Medicine. Marcel, who, at the age of ten, had his first attack of asthma, a disease from which he would die in 1922 at the age of 51. had access to medical knowledge which is largely evoked in Remembrance, in particular concerning neurasthenia.
Proust's artistic culture, which was essential throughout his life, enables us to visit his imaginary museum which begins with his discovery of the Louvre, that of French religious art and Venice thanks to Ruskin, that of Italian painting (Giotto. Botticelli.
Mantegna. Carpaccio, Titien and Veronese) and, above all. all of Flemish and Dutch painting. Indeed, one of the key passages in Remembrance is the description, which has since gone down in the history of literature, of Vermeer's View of Delft and its famous small area of yellow wall with an awning. It is while contemplating this work in an exhibition, considered by Proust as the most beautiful painting in the world and the ideal symbol of beauty is art, that, in the novel, the
writer Felicien Bergotte dies. One of Proust's last outings before his own death was to go and see this painting again in an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume museum in 1921, and one of his main characters. Swann, a highly cultivated art-lover, works on a book about Vermeer from Delft which he will never complete. This artistic culture is intimately linked to all the figures of creators omnipresent in Proust s novel of whom the three main ones are the painter Elstir. the com-
poser Vlnteull and the writer Bergotte. Elstir would seem to be a contraction of the names of the American painter Whistler, whom 'Proust greatly admired. and the French Paul Helleu. In fact. Elstir, who painted In several different ways (symbolist like Gustave Moreau, Japanese-style like Whistler and Impressionist like Claude Monet) symbolises modern painting, that is to say. for Proust. Impressionism.
Vlnteull. also inspired in Proust by several models including Camille Saint-Saens, Cesar Franck and Gabriel Faure, personifies musical creation in the novel. References to the famous little phrase of his sonata for violin and piano and also his sep-tuor form part of the pieces of anthology in Remembrance. The main model for Bergotte is Anatole France whom Proust admired greatly but his name seems to have been inspired by the philosopher Bergson. Numerous other writers, of whom Proust often made a pastiche, figured in the Imaginary library of the novelist who did not generally keep books. They include Racine, Balzac. Saint--Slmon, Baudelaire, Stendhal and Flaubert. One should also note his correspondence with Andre Gide who in 1913, refused to publish Du cote de chez Swann (Swann's Way) for the Galli-mard publishers. The book finally came out at Proust's own cost with the Grasset publishers. Gide was later to say that this was one of the most bitter causes of remorse in his life. Proust was also friends with a large number of writers such as Jean Cocteau. Francois Mauriac and Colette.
The exhibition also shows the importance, for Proust, of the culture of his time whether it be history (the Dreyfus affair whose first supporter he wanted to be and the 1914-1918 whr) or the progress of modernity (the automobile, the birth of aviation, the telephone. Sarah Bernhardt at the theatre or Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian ballet). Jean-Yves Tadie. the author of the book Proust, la cathe-drale du temps (Proust, the cathedral of time), published in Gallimard's De-couverts series, points out the Proust was not a high-society writer, but a philosopher of society. He was a great admirer of Balzac of whose work he wrote a pastiche in 1908 with a Ibu man Comedy consisting of 500 rc.H nr imaginary characters coming from .ill walks of life.
A remarkable CD-Rom (brought out by Gallimard Multimedia) and constructed like a real interactive programme, acts as an extension to the exhibition. It presents Proust’s life and work, combining eye-witness accounts. chosen extracts, pictorial documents. music and files on various themes.