In Search of Lost Time Readers Group

Proust's Paris

Coming soon for 2026, a series of events that will focus on the artistic and fashionable life of Paris during the Belle Époque, with discussions on the music and the art that Proust knew, admired, and incorporated into ISOLT.

Val will host discussions on the composers Fauré, Debussey, Wagner, and others, linking music selections to themes in ISOLT.

In addition, David will lead a discussion of Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, pairing paintings in the Karpeles book with the corresponding passages in ISOLT.

For fun and the love of (high-brow) gossip and also of course to understand the origins of the Duchesse de Guermantes, we will read and discuss Proust's Duchess by Caroline Webber.

Dates and details to follow.

If anyone is interested in hosting an event that touches on the historical, political, biographical, artistic, social, or cultural aspects of Paris during or slightly before Proust--perhaps like WWI--please contact us.

-Linda

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