Home > Marcel Proust

1 Biography

Proust was born in Paris, the son of a famous doctor. His mother was Jewish, his father Roman Catholic; he was raised within a Catholic culture. His father's family was from the Beauce region, around Chartres, and throughout childhood he spent each summer in the village of Illiers. This would later be fictionalized in In Search of Lost Time as "Combray", and the village and the surrounding countryside is described extensively in the first two volumes. The village was renamed Illiers-Combray in honour of this on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations.

At the age of 9 he suffered his first asthma attack, which nearly killed him. He became very sickly, and sometimes hypersensitive to light and noise. He spent most of his life in the bed of his Paris apartment because of his asthma and extremely sensitive skin and stomach. His curative trips to seaside resorts, most often CabourgCabourg is a commune of the departement of Calvados, in the Basse-Normandie region, in France. Its postal code is 14390. The INSEE code is 14117 Population : around 3,500 inhabitants during winter ; 40,000 during summer. Famous for being Marcel Proust's f ( Calvados), formed the basis of the fictional town of Balbec.

His principal work is the lengthy In Search of Lost Time. Proust died before he was able to revise the drafts and proofs of the later books, the last three of which were published posthumously. In "Jean Santeuil", Proust describes his portrait by painter Antonio de La GandaraAntonio de La Gandara ( December 16, 1861 June 30, 1917) was a painter, pastellist and draughtsman. He was born in Paris, France, but his father was of Spanish ancestry, born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and his mother was from England. La Gandara's talent whom he much admired.

Proust's In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of Western imaginative literature. This cycle of 7 novels, spanning ca. 3,200 pages and teeming with more than 2,000 characters, has provoked Graham Greene to say that Proust was the greatest novelist of the 20th century and Somerset Maugham to call it the greatest fiction to date. Proust's multifaceted vision is enthralling. He was a satirist and a nanoscopic analyst of introspective consciousness, a chronicler and theorist of Eros, exploring nuances of human sexuality, a wise and ethical writer. He was the creator of more than forty unforgettable characters who continue to resonate in the world's literary consciousness. Above all, Proust's central message is the affirmation of life. Contrary to the opinion voiced by some of his contemporaries and critics, Proust's great work teaches that life's "purpose" is not to be sought in artistic artefacts: life is not fulfilled when a painting or a novel is completed, but when it is transmuted, in the very course of quotidian living, into something "artistic" or spiritually mature and wise.

Proust's work shows a heavy influence from TolstoyLeo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy ( September 9, 1828 some sources say August 28 November 20, 1910) was a Russian novelist, reformer, and moral thinker, notable for his influence on Russian literature and politics. As a count, Tolstoy was a member of the Russian, evidenced in the views he gives on artMona Lisa Although today the word art usually refers to the visual arts, the concept of what art is has continuously changed over centuries. Perhaps the most concise definition is its broadest—art refers to all creative human endeavors, excluding actions, some of the ways in which he models psychology and social interaction, and in certain episodes such as the trip to Venice (cf. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina). In turn, Proust is often compared with German writer Thomas Mann. Homosexuality is a major theme, especially in The Guermantes Way and subsequent books. Proust himself was homosexual, and had a long-running affair with pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn. Regarding writing style, Proust loved the works of John Ruskin, and translated them into French. He claimed, also, that In Search of Lost Time was his attempt at writing a French incarnation of The Thousand and One Nights.

Proust died in 1922 and is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.