Marcel Proust

Biography

Marcel Proust was a French author, born to a father of Catholic descent and a mother of Jewish descent. It seems as though many of his childhood experiences had some kind of impact (direct or indirect) on his writing: some family vacations as a youth were spent at Illiers and Auteuil, which jointly became the city of Combray in some his novels. He studied both law and literature in university, and was heavily influenced by political and philosophical thought. For example, in 1899, he encountered John Ruskin’s art criticism (reflecting on the purpose of great art, and how great art can be identified as ‘the greatest number of the greatest ideas’) and it greatly changed how he approached writing. In the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is implied that this “new revelation” led to him producing the first hints of his more mature prose, which appears in his prefaces of his translation of Ruskin’s Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies. He also was actively involved in the Dreyfus affair (French politics were divided by the movement to free Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer wrongly accused of and imprisoned for being a spy), and did so despite being potentially shunned by French society. The Britannica again says that “Although Proust was not, in fact, ostracized, the experience helped to crystallize his disillusionment with aristocratic society, which became visible in his novel.” Several of his great works (and revisions of previous, more lackluster works) were published right around/after World War I.

Proust is famously known for being a writer who prominently explores homosexuality in his novels. Many records point to Proust having strong homosexual desires himself, and it’s highly likely many of his main characters were based on men he was in love with (such as Albertine and Gilbertine). His works are known for being far more character-driven than plot-based. The Britannica states that “The entire climate of the 20th-century novel was affected by À la recherche du temps perdu, which is one of the supreme achievements of modern fiction,” which is a story about raw human experiences that seem to, again, be directly taken from Proust’s own life. It seems that understanding Proust as a human being, with his thoughts/opinions/feelings and other impacts of his life experiences, likely plays a very important part in understanding the thoughts behind Proust’s writing. The stories he writes are reflective of himself.