The selection of their letters in the Houghton exhibit (up through April 28) are from 1894 to 1912, a period in which Proust made the transition from social butterfly to serious writer. That was 1894, and “Swann’s Way” was nearly two decades in the future. When the two met, and became lovers, Proust was 22 and Hahn was 19. They are part of the decades-long correspondence Proust had with composer Reynaldo Hahn. This semester, Marcel Proust (pictured) will be at the center of an online art show, a photography exhibit, a concert, a film series, and an international conference of literary scholars.įor one, there is the rare collection of more than 125 letters given to the Houghton Library in 1994. But Proulx and others have uncovered an unusual share of Proust riches at Harvard, which together illuminate the artist’s life and times and his path to greatness. Proust wrote and rewrote, said Proulx, with savage attention.Ĭambridge is a long way from Paris, where the asthmatic writer composed his magnum opus - largely in pajamas, in bed, and late at night. All around the spliced yellowing pages, painstaking revisions in his tiny hand swarm like bees.
To prove it, the young scholar pointed to the centerpiece artifact of “Private Proust” in the Houghton’s Amy Lowell Room: a framed galley proof from the second volume of Proust’s masterpiece, “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” (1919). “That’s unfair,” said Proulx of this common misrepresentation. Their class of 22 graduate students and undergraduates will read excerpts amounting to half of “In Search of Lost Time,” which Proulx described as “the Mount Everest of French literature.”īut his long novel does not mean Proust was, as some of his critics said, merely gabby, or a man of leisure whose lazy prose just wandered, as a rich man might from party to party. Proulx is teaching French 165 this semester with co-organizer Christie McDonald, Smith Professor of French Language and Literature and professor of comparative literature. Proulx is co-organizer of “Proust and the Arts,” the April conference, and of the events promised in a related website, which in sum give a sense of all of Proust’s worlds. “It’s a novel of one man’s apprenticeship as an artist.” “Swann’s Way” is also an artifact of the memories, reflections, and artistic influences that shaped Proust - “the worlds he learns from, and goes beyond,” said the young scholar. Its eventual size is partly a memento of World War I, which stalled the French publishing industry, giving the dreamy, discursive Proust more time to write.įor all its length, the plot is simple, said François Proulx, a lecturer in Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature.
“In Search of Lost Time” - first known as “Remembrance of Things Past” - eventually filled seven volumes, ranged over 4,000 pages (in the Modern Library edition), and brought to literary life something like 2,000 characters. Marcel Proust, how does Harvard love thee? Let me count the ways: an exhibit of rare letters, now on display at Houghton Library, and, coming later this semester, an online art show, a photography exhibit, a music concert, a film series, and a late-April international conference of literary scholars.Īll this affection and attention - a sort of Proust spring at Harvard - is inspired by the 100th anniversary of “Swann’s Way,” the first volume of the novel that grew to be the longest ever written.
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