What we’re about
Proust readings and writing before In Search of Lost Time
This group, since its inception in May 2021, has now successfully read through the entire In Search of Lost Time, twice.
An impressive feat to be sure but it is nothing compared to the act of writing In Search of Lost Time.
How did Proust do it?
No doubt there are clues in what Proust wrote and read before undertaking In Search of Lost Time. Can we find them?
To try and for fun, this reading group is reconvening for 9 discussions, each 1.5 or 2 hours, one per month. To begin sometime in the second week of May.
Proposed readings (all in translation):
1 Selected scenes from Jean Santeuil compared to similar scenes in In Search of Lost Time.
No need to read the entire book. Text will be provided from both Jean Santeuil (taken from https://ia804705.us.archive.org/20/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.40801/2015.40801.Jean-Santeuil.pdf) and from ISOLT
2 Proust's Pleasures and Days (selected short stories, published 1896)
3 “On Reading” (Proust's preface to Ruskin's The Bible of Amiens)*
4 Proust preface to Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies*
5 Against Sainte-Beuve
6 Stones of Venice (by John Ruskin)
7 Letters of Madame de Sévigné
8 Phèdre by Racine
9 François le Champi by George Sand (in English, The Country Waif)
*Both prefaces are contained in On Reading Ruskin
Upcoming events (1)
See all- The Lemoine AffairLink visible for attendees
For this event, Mitch will lead the discussion of Proust’s The Lemoine Affair, a brief, comic work written shortly before Proust began the not-so-brief ISOLT.
The Lemoine Affair is a collection of nine pastiches, each written in the style of a different writer, including Balzac, Flaubert, Saint-Simon, Sainte-Beuve, and others. Each pastiche gives a different perspective of l’affaire Lemoine, where Henri Lemoine, between the years 1905-1909, defrauded the De Beers company and other investors of almost 2M francs by claiming–then demonstrating (in the buff no less)–a technique to fabricate diamonds out of coal.
Proust was one of the investors who lost money.
The physical book is hard to find, so we will be using the digital version from Amazon.
