2022, the Proust year

“You really should read Proust, it’s magnificent!”
“But nobody cares about Proust!”
“Never read it, I only know the famous madeleine!”
“Proust… it’s an inimitable style, it’s 300 pages to talk about a bedroom!”

Such were the reactions I received from my colleagues when preparing this article! Marcel Proust’s work seems to fascinate, bore or intimidate… in any case, it elicits contrasting opinions.

To mark the centenary of the writer’s death (November 18), the BCUL – site Riponne is honoring Proust with a thematic selection aimed at both enthusiasts and neophytes, those who have never read Proust or who have fallen asleep with book in hand.

Living between two centuries (born in 1871, died in 1922), Marcel Proust is the author of a work of considerable scope, to which he tirelessly devoted many years of his life: À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Published by Grasset from 1913 to 1927, the text is impressive: divided into seven volumes, it runs to a total of 2,400 pages and features hundreds of characters. Until his death at the age of 51, Proust never stopped reworking, correcting, developing and rewriting this text of complex structure and chronology.

Using long sentences (they contain twice as many words as other writers!), digressions (he liked to retranscribe the movement of his characters’ thoughts), images and metaphors, he deals with themes such as love and jealousy, homosexuality, snobbery and society, humor, the passage of time… By depicting the history of two great families of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie, he paints a portrait of his contemporaries that is nonetheless transposable to our own times. Reading Proust, we can all, at any age, find echoes of our own lives.

That’s why we encourage you to discover or rediscover Proust through our thematic selection, to be found at the BCUL – site Riponne from October 24 to November 19, 2022.

Source : Jean-Yves TADIÉ, “PROUST MARCEL – (1871-1922)”, Encyclopædia Universalis [online], accessed October 24, 2022. URL : http://www.universalis-edu.com/encyclopedie/marcel-proust/
Image : Jacques-Emile Blanche, Portrait de Marcel Proust, en 1892, oil on canvas, H. 73,5 ; L. 60,5 cm, ©Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt(https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/oeuvres/portrait-de-marcel-proust-25604)