What do you think?
Rate this book
The Quest for Proust
Марселя Пруста, автора цикла романов "В поисках утраченного времени", по праву называют создателем "самой великой французской книги XX века". Много лет посвятив изучению жизни и творчества Пруста, Андре Моруа написал, пожалуй, самую исчерпывающую биографию знаменитого затворника. Благодаря приведенным в книге Моруа письмам и дневникам Пруста, где последний со всей откровенностью повествует не только о своих творческих прозрениях, но и о гнетущих его пороках, перед читателем возникает полнокровный образ гениального писателя во всем своем величии и земном несовершенстве. На русском языке публикуется впервые.
337 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
3 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
André Maurois
1,086 books255 followersAndré Maurois, born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog, was a French author. André Maurois was a pseudonym that became his legal name in 1947.
During World War I he joined the French army and served as an interpreter and later a liaison officer to the British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty but socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and also became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Many of his other works have also been translated into English (mainly by Hamish Miles (1894–1937)), as they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of Disraeli, Byron, and Shelley.
During 1938 Maurois was elected to the prestigious Académie française. Maurois was encouraged and assisted in seeking this post by Marshal Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowleging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, Call no man happy - though by the time of writing, their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy France.
During World War II he served in the French army and the Free French Forces.
He died during 1967 after a long career as an author of novels, biographies, histories, children's books and science fiction stories. He is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.
During World War I he joined the French army and served as an interpreter and later a liaison officer to the British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty but socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and also became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Many of his other works have also been translated into English (mainly by Hamish Miles (1894–1937)), as they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of Disraeli, Byron, and Shelley.
During 1938 Maurois was elected to the prestigious Académie française. Maurois was encouraged and assisted in seeking this post by Marshal Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowleging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, Call no man happy - though by the time of writing, their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy France.
During World War II he served in the French army and the Free French Forces.
He died during 1967 after a long career as an author of novels, biographies, histories, children's books and science fiction stories. He is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 30, 2023
The most part of this biogaphy of Marcel Proust is devoted to 'À la recherche du temps perdu'. And this is fair because Marcel Proust was born to write it. He spent twenty years collecting material for his magnum opus, then produced its seven parts in seven last years of his life (with the break for the war).
Proust was a well-off socialite craving for friendship, love (but finding only pain and disappointment) and he also was a victim of his extreme sensitivity, lonliness and dependence on others, a constant sufferer, slowly killing himself, a prisoner of his passions, his illness and a sound-proof room. He never stopped working, even on his deathbed and it seems, the only regret he had that he would not be able to finish his masterpiece, an ode to Time and Memory.
The book contains a lot of extracts from Proust's letters and quotations from 'À la recherche du temps perdu' and it was like an encounter with an old friend with whom I know I will meet again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘I had lived a life of idleness and dissipation, of sickness, invalidism and eccentricity. I was embark
ing on my work when already near to death, and I knew nothing of my .trade . . .’
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘Houses, avenues, roads are, alas, as fugitive as the years . It is in vain that we return to the places that once we loved. We shall never see them again because they were situated not in Space but in Time, and because the man who tries to rediscover them is no longer the child or the youth who decked them with the fervour of his emotions.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'So Time does not, as we think it does, die absolutely, but remains incorporated in us. Our bodies, our consciousness, act as reservoirs of Time.' From this arose the central, animating idea of the whole body of his work, the idea that we can set out to discover the Time that seems to have been lost, though really it is there still, ready to take on a new lease of life. This voyage of discovery can be made only within ourselves.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘I can see all that my thought contains as far as its horizon,’ he says, ‘but the only things I really want to describe are those that he beyond . . There are many who refuse to see what lies beyond that horizon. He did not write for them. But the courageous souls who are prepared to dare the adventures of the heart, those men and women who long to know themselves as they really are and not as they ought to be, those who value truth above happiness, and who believe that without truth there can be no happiness, will seek in the ordeals and miseries awaiting them in the new, harsh world of Proust the difficult roads that lead to the goal of a far more beautiful love.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our quest is ended. I have attempted to recapture the story of a man who, with heroic courage, sought, through ecstasy, for truth; who dashed himself against the apathy of men, the mystery
of things, and, above all the obduracy of his own weaknesses; who, having chosen to renounce all else that he might give freedom to the images that dwelt within him, saw, between four bare
walls, in solitude and fasting, in sorrow and in labour, that last door at length fly open at which, before him, no writer had ever knocked; of a man who revealed to us, in our own hearts and in
the humblest of objects, a world so beautiful that one may say of him as he once said of Ruskin: 'Though dead, he still shines for us like one of those extinguished stars whose light yet reaches
us : and, again: 'it is through those eyes, now closed for ever in the grave, that generations yet unborn will look on nature'
(André Maurois)
Proust was a well-off socialite craving for friendship, love (but finding only pain and disappointment) and he also was a victim of his extreme sensitivity, lonliness and dependence on others, a constant sufferer, slowly killing himself, a prisoner of his passions, his illness and a sound-proof room. He never stopped working, even on his deathbed and it seems, the only regret he had that he would not be able to finish his masterpiece, an ode to Time and Memory.
The book contains a lot of extracts from Proust's letters and quotations from 'À la recherche du temps perdu' and it was like an encounter with an old friend with whom I know I will meet again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘I had lived a life of idleness and dissipation, of sickness, invalidism and eccentricity. I was embark
ing on my work when already near to death, and I knew nothing of my .trade . . .’
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘Houses, avenues, roads are, alas, as fugitive as the years . It is in vain that we return to the places that once we loved. We shall never see them again because they were situated not in Space but in Time, and because the man who tries to rediscover them is no longer the child or the youth who decked them with the fervour of his emotions.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'So Time does not, as we think it does, die absolutely, but remains incorporated in us. Our bodies, our consciousness, act as reservoirs of Time.' From this arose the central, animating idea of the whole body of his work, the idea that we can set out to discover the Time that seems to have been lost, though really it is there still, ready to take on a new lease of life. This voyage of discovery can be made only within ourselves.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘I can see all that my thought contains as far as its horizon,’ he says, ‘but the only things I really want to describe are those that he beyond . . There are many who refuse to see what lies beyond that horizon. He did not write for them. But the courageous souls who are prepared to dare the adventures of the heart, those men and women who long to know themselves as they really are and not as they ought to be, those who value truth above happiness, and who believe that without truth there can be no happiness, will seek in the ordeals and miseries awaiting them in the new, harsh world of Proust the difficult roads that lead to the goal of a far more beautiful love.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our quest is ended. I have attempted to recapture the story of a man who, with heroic courage, sought, through ecstasy, for truth; who dashed himself against the apathy of men, the mystery
of things, and, above all the obduracy of his own weaknesses; who, having chosen to renounce all else that he might give freedom to the images that dwelt within him, saw, between four bare
walls, in solitude and fasting, in sorrow and in labour, that last door at length fly open at which, before him, no writer had ever knocked; of a man who revealed to us, in our own hearts and in
the humblest of objects, a world so beautiful that one may say of him as he once said of Ruskin: 'Though dead, he still shines for us like one of those extinguished stars whose light yet reaches
us : and, again: 'it is through those eyes, now closed for ever in the grave, that generations yet unborn will look on nature'
(André Maurois)
Want to read
October 26, 2017This week, I'm at a conference in Le Mans, and we're staying at the Mercure on rue de Chanzy. Pretty much the first thing I noticed when we checked in was the large marble plaque on the wall opposite the reception desk. It contained a familiar paragraph in French that started with the line
Well, I thought no more of it until the following morning, when my taxi was late arriving. Having nothing better to do, I started examining the list of war dead inscribed on the wall of the foyer. Towards the bottom, under "Victims of bombardments, 1944", I found the name... Marcel Proust!
What on earth is going on? Proust died in 1922, in Paris. Of course, it's perfectly possible that someone else with the same name was killed in Le Mans two decades later. But then why do they have a plaque with the opening of A la recherche de temps perdu prominently displayed in the next room, without a word of explanation?
Conspiracy theorists, I hope you're already all over this.
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure."Pourquoi Proust?" I asked the receptionist, who didn't seem to have the slightest idea what I was talking about. I pointed at the plaque, but she just shrugged.
Well, I thought no more of it until the following morning, when my taxi was late arriving. Having nothing better to do, I started examining the list of war dead inscribed on the wall of the foyer. Towards the bottom, under "Victims of bombardments, 1944", I found the name... Marcel Proust!
What on earth is going on? Proust died in 1922, in Paris. Of course, it's perfectly possible that someone else with the same name was killed in Le Mans two decades later. But then why do they have a plaque with the opening of A la recherche de temps perdu prominently displayed in the next room, without a word of explanation?
Conspiracy theorists, I hope you're already all over this.
Read
August 5, 2022"What Proust enjoyed most were the long days of reading spent at the 'Pre-Catalan’, a diminutive park so called by Uncle Amiot who owned it, a garden lying on the far bank of the Loir, enclosed by a most beautiful hedge of hawthorn, at the far end of which Marcel, seated in a rustic arbour which stands there still, could enjoy the deep silence of the countryside broken only by the golden sound of church bells. There he read George Sand, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Balzac. 'No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived as those we had regarded as not being lived at all : the days spent wholly with a favourite book ' (Proust)
=====
Excellent documentary of Proust, although the opening line about having anti-semitic friends is misleading. Proust was Jewish (via his mother) and was as a defender of Dreyfus. That is not to say that anti-semitism wasn't prevalent in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVen3...
My great adventure is really Proust. What is left to be written after that?
-Virginia Woolf
After I read A La Recherche Du Temps, I said “this is it!” And I wished that I had written it myself.
-William Faulkner
======
The famous madeleine moment....
"No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disaster innocuous, its brevity illusory…. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal."
=====
Excellent documentary of Proust, although the opening line about having anti-semitic friends is misleading. Proust was Jewish (via his mother) and was as a defender of Dreyfus. That is not to say that anti-semitism wasn't prevalent in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVen3...
My great adventure is really Proust. What is left to be written after that?
-Virginia Woolf
After I read A La Recherche Du Temps, I said “this is it!” And I wished that I had written it myself.
-William Faulkner
======
The famous madeleine moment....
"No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disaster innocuous, its brevity illusory…. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal."
May 18, 2018
After nearly 70 years, The Quest for Proust, published first in French in 1949 and in translated by Gerard Hopkins in 1950, André Maurois’s biography and study of Marcel Proust and his great novel, remains surprisingly fresh and remarkably quite relevant. Maurois uses the voluminous correspondence and both published and unpublished recollections of Proust’s family and friends to create an portrait of the great writer.
The book is arranged in three parts. In part one Maurois presents a biography of Proust’s life from birth up to the time he takes his first hesitant and halting steps into literature and begins In Search of Lost Time; encompassing the first forty years of his life.
Next he provides three short, incisive essays that tries to get to the shape and scope of the massive novel. In the first essay on Time, Maurois briefly sketches out how Proust used the concept of Time to create an overarching theme upon which to build his story. Love in both its internal and external shapes and forms is the subject of the second essay. For Proust all forms of love, whether for relatives, friends, and intimates, have beginnings, and they undergo various stages of growth, and, eventually, these loves have various kinds of an endings. Finally, in the wonderful third essay, Maurois demonstrates the role that humour plays throughout the novel. “Proust’s comic themes are of two kinds: those that are a permanent part of human nature, that have frightened and consequently amused mankind from the beginning of recorded history, and those that were peculiar to his period, his world, and his temperament” (244). These three essays stand alone and can be read without bothering with the more biographical material.
In the final part of The Quest for Proust, Maurois takes us through the final years of the writer’s life and work. Proust is often regarded as a hypochondriac and an eccentric. Health issues, especially asthma and related complications, certainly plagued him throughout his life. He is best remembered as a bed-ridden insomniac who took drugs to help him sleep during the day and a coffee-fuelled workaholic who wrote and rewrote, edited and re-edited his novel throughout the night in his cork-lined room. Maurois describes in some detail how Proust’s lifestyle in the final years of his life was really the result of both his obsession with completing his great work and by his fear that he would die before it was completed. Proust’s great work is both completed and uncompleted, but it lives on. While the vast majority of humans will pass through a brief existence and not even leave their names behind as a reminder to no one, Proust has left a legacy that will last until there are no more humans left to read his great novel.
The book is arranged in three parts. In part one Maurois presents a biography of Proust’s life from birth up to the time he takes his first hesitant and halting steps into literature and begins In Search of Lost Time; encompassing the first forty years of his life.
Next he provides three short, incisive essays that tries to get to the shape and scope of the massive novel. In the first essay on Time, Maurois briefly sketches out how Proust used the concept of Time to create an overarching theme upon which to build his story. Love in both its internal and external shapes and forms is the subject of the second essay. For Proust all forms of love, whether for relatives, friends, and intimates, have beginnings, and they undergo various stages of growth, and, eventually, these loves have various kinds of an endings. Finally, in the wonderful third essay, Maurois demonstrates the role that humour plays throughout the novel. “Proust’s comic themes are of two kinds: those that are a permanent part of human nature, that have frightened and consequently amused mankind from the beginning of recorded history, and those that were peculiar to his period, his world, and his temperament” (244). These three essays stand alone and can be read without bothering with the more biographical material.
In the final part of The Quest for Proust, Maurois takes us through the final years of the writer’s life and work. Proust is often regarded as a hypochondriac and an eccentric. Health issues, especially asthma and related complications, certainly plagued him throughout his life. He is best remembered as a bed-ridden insomniac who took drugs to help him sleep during the day and a coffee-fuelled workaholic who wrote and rewrote, edited and re-edited his novel throughout the night in his cork-lined room. Maurois describes in some detail how Proust’s lifestyle in the final years of his life was really the result of both his obsession with completing his great work and by his fear that he would die before it was completed. Proust’s great work is both completed and uncompleted, but it lives on. While the vast majority of humans will pass through a brief existence and not even leave their names behind as a reminder to no one, Proust has left a legacy that will last until there are no more humans left to read his great novel.
May 1, 2017
Slowly reading Maurois’ Quest for Proust, and enjoying it very much. Maurois meanders with purpose, sometimes doubling back, as he tries to explain and layer his understanding of Proust and his work. I also feel I have space and time to go off and read up more: so I’ve read a little of Swann’s Way, and some of his Proust’s Miscellaneous Writings which he references a lot - also translated by Gerard Hopkins - written mostly if not entirely before he started À la recherche du temps perdu; and about episodes which he occasionally presents somewhat enigmatically – like a duel. I don’t know whether sometimes he’s maintaining a certain sense of delicacy over Proust’s homosexuality and leaving people to read between the lines (this was written in the 50s), or whether that's unfair, and not all was known at the time. Anyway, its great - I'm finding it quite exciting.
Also, funny: I was watching an old documentary with Richard Feynman - The World from another point of view on the weekend, and there’s a bit where he’s discussing how he can always have better conversations with other scientists, and doesn’t find it easy talking to playwrights and such, that he doesn't learn much. Then he stops himself, with a smile, and says:
Hah! It was strange and delightful having Maurois’ name come up in a completely unexpected context – and it all seems to fit in with too Proust too.
And then one more thing (promise) - there was a letter which brought Bachelard to mind. Marcel Proust to Jean de Gaigneron:
I'm a happy bunny.
-----
I'm now nearing the end of of Quest for Proust, and I have to say I'm somewhat blown away by Maurois and Proust. Both are wonderfully humane and eloquent. I was a bit apprehensive about how Proust's homosexuality would be discussed, but I needn't have worried. There are some wonderfully moving quotes from Proust's notebooks on love and the vicissitudes of being homosexual in his times, the longing, the despair, the secrecy - but more so, just the universality of our experiences.
And apropos the pushing back of boundaries and questing for an understanding of the unknown, a quote from Proust.
-----
Finished. I couldn't recommend it more, and will definitely move onto À la recherche du temps perdu.
Also, funny: I was watching an old documentary with Richard Feynman - The World from another point of view on the weekend, and there’s a bit where he’s discussing how he can always have better conversations with other scientists, and doesn’t find it easy talking to playwrights and such, that he doesn't learn much. Then he stops himself, with a smile, and says:
I take it all back. I take it all back. There are certain kinds of men in every field that I can talk to as well as I can talk to a good scientist. I met a historian, a writer of history from France once, and had a marvellous conversation with him. Maurois, his name was, André Maurois. And then I met an artist, Robert Irwin, who’s a very important artist in Los Angeles, in modern art, and I could talk to him at the same depth of excitement.
So I take it all back. If you give me the right man, in any field, I can talk to him. I know what the condition is: that he did whatever he did as far as he can go, that he studied every aspect of it, that he has stretched himself to the end. He’s not a dilettante in any way. Therefore he’s up against mysteries all the way around the edge. We can talk about mystery and awe. That’s what we have in common.
Hah! It was strange and delightful having Maurois’ name come up in a completely unexpected context – and it all seems to fit in with too Proust too.
And then one more thing (promise) - there was a letter which brought Bachelard to mind. Marcel Proust to Jean de Gaigneron:
"When you speak to me of cathedrals, I cannot but feel touched at the evidence of an intuition which has led you to guess what I have never mentioned to anybody, and here set down in writing the first time – that I once planned to give each part of my book a succession of titles, such as, Porch, Windows in the Apse, etc…"
I'm a happy bunny.
-----
I'm now nearing the end of of Quest for Proust, and I have to say I'm somewhat blown away by Maurois and Proust. Both are wonderfully humane and eloquent. I was a bit apprehensive about how Proust's homosexuality would be discussed, but I needn't have worried. There are some wonderfully moving quotes from Proust's notebooks on love and the vicissitudes of being homosexual in his times, the longing, the despair, the secrecy - but more so, just the universality of our experiences.
And apropos the pushing back of boundaries and questing for an understanding of the unknown, a quote from Proust.
"I can see all that my thought contains as far as its horizon, but the only things I really want to describe are those that lie beyond ..."
-----
Finished. I couldn't recommend it more, and will definitely move onto À la recherche du temps perdu.
Read
March 5, 2025„Odnieśliśmy nagle wrażenie – pisze Jaloux – że był bardzo daleko od nas, nie tylko dlatego, że umarł, ale dlatego, że żył życiem głęboko różnym; dlatego że świat poszukiwań, wyobraźni i wrażliwości, w którym żył, nie był naszym światem; dlatego że cierpiał na osobliwe niedomagania i że jego umysł, aby się posilić, potrzebował wyjątkowych cierpień i rozmyślań niezbyt dostępnych człowiekowi”...
„Pogrzebano go, ale przez całą noc żałobną w oświetlonych witrynach książki jego, ułożone po trzy, czuwały jak anioły z rozpostartymi skrzydłami i zdawały się symbolem zmartwychwstania tego, którego już nie było”.
„Pogrzebano go, ale przez całą noc żałobną w oświetlonych witrynach książki jego, ułożone po trzy, czuwały jak anioły z rozpostartymi skrzydłami i zdawały się symbolem zmartwychwstania tego, którego już nie było”.
October 25, 2019
This vividly titillating and informative biography would not be here for us to read, if Marcel Proust had not had such expressive and perspicuous friends (and foes). We would not be reading it with joy and sadness if Proust had not had such a mania for correspondence, socialising and detail. It would be altogether unthinkable to suggest that we could scour its rich soil, an enjoyable horticultural endeavour in itself, for the finest detailed seeds, buds and weeds, if the painstakingly analytic and inquisitive mastermind's life and works had not been analysed by a variety of fervent and Proustianly painstaking literary researchers, dilettantes and, of course, M. Maurois himself. Much like In Search of Lost Time, as we have had the pleasure of knowing it, would not have come about, if Proust had had more luck with the publishers, if his originality would've been appreciated more back in the day, if the war had not started, if Proust had not been bed-ridden, family-ridden, friend-ridden, lover-ridden, time-ridden... in other words, what a chaotic concatenation of circumstances have we to thank for this unqualified joy!
This here biography was written by someone who clearly had literary talent in him as well. Maurois was also very clearly a critic. These characteristics, when conjoined with a most natural desire to erect a thousand pantheons for the genius of Proust, brought about a beautifully written, multi-faceted and satisfactorily comprehensive story of our favourite big girl's blouse. We're presented with a portrait of a real human being, who had fatal flaws and the most beautiful gifts. Sure, some of the letters included herein aren't exactly riveting, and Maurois could sometimes explains things in a dubiously convenient manner, meaning that his answer to some of the criticism aimed at Marcel's way wasn't always very convincing. But these are mere trifles which don't ultimately affect the overall score. I mean, I did yawn during Proust's magnum opus too!
The Proust we're given through this tome is a very, very relatable character to myself. He was sickly , overly sensitive, interested in the way people talk and act in society, had a supreme love for art (one which a mere peasant such as I could but hope to attain one day) and an overall style of knowing what he wants and at the same time not really caring (this mostly relates to his dress). He was also an extremely detail-oriented and aware person, rather self-obsessed to a certain degree (without bordering on narcissism), somewhat obsequious around people (but even that seemed to be carried out as a social game), generous to the hilt (this, I have never been), bloody melancholy (!), constantly carrying a sense of impending doom around him... But he could also be genuinely enthusiastic about things in a way which resembled childishness.
Look at the picture on the cover. At first sight, it looks like an oily dandy, who's feeling incredibly vain because someone has promised to paint him. He tries to assume a carefree, even important mien, yet fails to look genuine.
Then, the second impressions come flooding in. The lips, which hitherto were almost like stationed for a rent boy's good-night kiss, suddenly form into a modest and mildly benign smile, without detracting from the fullness of the kissers. The moustache, seemingly hastily drawn with a block of charcoal, seem to repose contentedly under the vase-like nose, long and respectable. The eyes, in which a glimmer of vanity was just seen, suddenly look at you with dark, weary yet friendly calm under the drooping eyelids. The other eyebrow continues to play the chevalier, yet the other imprints a shade of ingenuousness on the person's face. In the final analysis, we see a man, who keeps a veneer of foppery but doesn't want to sacrifice his love for aesthetics and tenderness for a mere sham. We see a pair of eyes, who could pierce even statues with their incisiveness, but which, instead of wounding the target, would make it bleed nothing but truth and beauty.
This here biography was written by someone who clearly had literary talent in him as well. Maurois was also very clearly a critic. These characteristics, when conjoined with a most natural desire to erect a thousand pantheons for the genius of Proust, brought about a beautifully written, multi-faceted and satisfactorily comprehensive story of our favourite big girl's blouse. We're presented with a portrait of a real human being, who had fatal flaws and the most beautiful gifts. Sure, some of the letters included herein aren't exactly riveting, and Maurois could sometimes explains things in a dubiously convenient manner, meaning that his answer to some of the criticism aimed at Marcel's way wasn't always very convincing. But these are mere trifles which don't ultimately affect the overall score. I mean, I did yawn during Proust's magnum opus too!
The Proust we're given through this tome is a very, very relatable character to myself. He was sickly , overly sensitive, interested in the way people talk and act in society, had a supreme love for art (one which a mere peasant such as I could but hope to attain one day) and an overall style of knowing what he wants and at the same time not really caring (this mostly relates to his dress). He was also an extremely detail-oriented and aware person, rather self-obsessed to a certain degree (without bordering on narcissism), somewhat obsequious around people (but even that seemed to be carried out as a social game), generous to the hilt (this, I have never been), bloody melancholy (!), constantly carrying a sense of impending doom around him... But he could also be genuinely enthusiastic about things in a way which resembled childishness.
Look at the picture on the cover. At first sight, it looks like an oily dandy, who's feeling incredibly vain because someone has promised to paint him. He tries to assume a carefree, even important mien, yet fails to look genuine.
Then, the second impressions come flooding in. The lips, which hitherto were almost like stationed for a rent boy's good-night kiss, suddenly form into a modest and mildly benign smile, without detracting from the fullness of the kissers. The moustache, seemingly hastily drawn with a block of charcoal, seem to repose contentedly under the vase-like nose, long and respectable. The eyes, in which a glimmer of vanity was just seen, suddenly look at you with dark, weary yet friendly calm under the drooping eyelids. The other eyebrow continues to play the chevalier, yet the other imprints a shade of ingenuousness on the person's face. In the final analysis, we see a man, who keeps a veneer of foppery but doesn't want to sacrifice his love for aesthetics and tenderness for a mere sham. We see a pair of eyes, who could pierce even statues with their incisiveness, but which, instead of wounding the target, would make it bleed nothing but truth and beauty.
April 2, 2021
Небольшая книга-биография с большим количеством цитат из переписок, небольшим анализом эпопеи и полезным именным указателем. Ссылок на книгу Селесты Альбаре тут нет, как и нет упоминаний об Агостинелли.
November 3, 2018
Una imperdible travesía entre el tiempo recobrado de este magnífico analista de la vida.
May 12, 2024
Otroligt välskriven och informationsspäckad biografi om Marcel Proust, min inkörsport till hans romansvit om Tiden. Året med Proust, hur ska det gå och hur mycket tid kommer gå åt?!
May 31, 2022
Lovely, elegiac biography and tribute to the master of memory. Maurois' lyric treatment does him justice.
February 23, 2025
No lo conseguí en otra editorial y realmente es muy difícil de leer este libro con letra pequeña y apretada. Es una bella biografía, que no simplifica al personaje, lo complejiza. Es como siempre, muy claro narrativamente y lo presenta como un genio literario pero también una persona con relaciones personales interesantísimas, influencias literarias clave y sin dejar de lado el proceso creativo para la escritura de En busca del tiempo perdido, para la cual transformó su vida interior en literatura. Una lástima no se reedite este libro porque sufrí con esta edición vieja de Austral.
Read
June 20, 2008I must skim this book to recall what I think about it.
November 12, 2016
I went to Venice that I might, before I died, approach, touch, and see incarnate in palaces, crumbling yet still standing and flushed with pink, Ruskin’s ideas
-Proust
-Proust
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews