Divini elementa poetae : les lieux et leurs noms dans l'ouvre de jeunesse de Marcel Proust

french

2019

volume 13, issue 2

Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

The paper addresses the sense of space in Marcel Proust's youthful work. The collection of Proust's early texts, published in 1896 at the author's expense under the title Pleasures and Days, cemented his reputation as a dilettante, a snob and a salon lion among his contemporaries. This opinion stood the test of time. Even from the standpoint of later readers and critics, there is a striking gap between Proust's first literary attempt and his great work, the cycle In Search of Lost Time. However, as we are trying to show, this gap is not caused by changes in the subject matter (Proustian themes and motifs are already heavily present in his early work), but in stylistic shifts that entail profound changes of meaning. At least a posteriori, we can discern some crucial elements of the Proustian vision in his early prose. These may be particularly noticeable in regard to the young Proust's relation to space: his habit of illustrating distance in time with distance in space; the importance that he attaches to places and the evocative power of their names; the attention he pays to backgrounds and venues; and finally, his fascination with the dissolution of spatial boundaries, a phenomenon that the narrator of the Search for Lost Time experiences in the moments between sleep and wakefulness, while the painter Elstir, the greatest artist among Proust's literary characters, derives an artistic principle from it.

01.04.2020