Growing up, Proust was influenced by his highly educated parents (father a doctor and author, mother, literate and cultured), his school’s literary magazines as well as salons of lead bourgeoisie. The political changes occurring during his upbringing also influenced his work In Search of Lost Time, “One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.” (Volume Two, 282) as the rise of the middle class in France was in progress, as well as the intended separation of Church and State to where he found “If there is one thing more difficult than submitting oneself to a regime it is refraining from imposing it on others” (Volume Four, 676). The Third Republic “…organized these culture wars in order to create a large body of loyal republican citizens whose new patriotism would shield them from the dictates of the Church or the seductions of the monarchies and authoritarian dictatorships”, something which Proust was strongly opposed to as he argued against the separation of Church and State in articles he published (Chaitin 4). During Proust’s periods of ill health, he retreated to the village of Illiers where he undoubtedly had much time to spend reading. It is said that Proust’s town of Combray in In Search of Lost Time was based on Illiers, in combination with memories of his great-uncle’s house, and later on, his volunteer position at the Bibliothèque Mazarine also gave him opportunity to indulge in heavy reading. Love was an undeniable theme in Proust’s writings, such as in Volume Two of In Search of Lost Time when he exclaims “When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able to contain it within ourselves” (253) and continued through the series into Volume Four “The mistresses whom I have loved most passionately have never coincided with my love for them.” (IV 718). This theme also segued into the more personal aspects of his life in Volume Five like his homosexuality “It is the homosexuality that survives in spite of obstacles, shameful, execrated, that is the only true form, the only form that corresponds in one and the same person to an intensification of the intellectual qualities.” (270).
It is in On Reading Ruskin that Proust delves into detail concerning the nature of reading, and as a great reader/writer himself this offers much ethos to his essay. In Proust’s essay he taps into the mind of a typical book lover, noting details on the attitude and approach of a reader such as how the reader has “…only to take the trouble of reaching for on the shelves of libraries and then savoring passively in perfect repose of mind and body” (118). He also notes relations between the reader and recollections of reading such as when he would “…slip into the dining room, not to eat, but to read.” (100) and when his parents would summon him from his trance saying “Come, shut your book, we’re going to have lunch” (101). He is able to access the ability of creating classic works by relating to the common person and the shared feelings that every lover of reading possesses when becoming entranced by words on a page “…my reading resumed immediately” (103). The description of such human qualities transcends time thus establishing his works as classic.
Interesting Links:
How Proust Can Change Your Life (6 parts to it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9dwwVvGfVQ&feature=related
Works Cited
Bucknall, Barbara J.. Marcel Proust revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Print.
Carter, William C.. Proust in love. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Print.
Chaitin, Gilbert D.. Culture wars and literature in the French Third Republic. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2008. Print.
Hodson, Leighton. Marcel Proust, the critical heritage. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.
Kerbel, Sorrel. The Routledge encyclopedia of Jewish writers of the twentieth century. [Pbk ed. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Lamos, Colleen. Deviant modernism: sexual and textual errancy in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.
Luebering, J. E.. The 100 most influential writers of all time. New York, NY: Britannica Educational Pub. in association with Rosen Educational Services, 2010. Print.
Mavor, Carol. Reading boyishly: Roland Barthes, J. M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D. W. Winnicott. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.
Proust, Marcel. On reading. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Print.
Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. In search of lost time. New ed. London: Vintage, 19961992. Print.
Twentieth century literature: a scholarly and critical journal : Volume One April, 1955-January, 1956.. New York: Kraus Reprint Corp., 1965. Print.