Elliot’s Reading week of 5-2-21: Proust biography

 Elliot’s Reading week of 5-2-21: Proust biography 

George D. Painter’s definitive biography of Marcel Proust - Proust: The Early Years (1959) - is definitely a not a book meant to introduce Proust to new readers; it’s a book only for those who have read (and loved) Proust’s novels. And for those (of us) who have, it’s a tremendously rewarding read.  Yes, we get more detail than we’d ever imagined, more than we thought any biographer could assemble and master — All of Proust’s family members and friends, all of the hundreds (it seems) whom he’d encountered on his social cycle: It’s hard going at times, keeping all those titled members of the nobility in mind. But we get the overall picture, which in some ways surprises us. Yes, Proust was a spoiled rich kid who spent far too much time and money trying to rise in social class and to observe the mechanisms of the intellectual and social life of the French nobility ca. 1900. Yet: It’s also clear that Proust paid close attention to everything and everyone and spent the latter half of his life (accounted for in vol 2 of this bio) re-creating the scenes, moments, quips, terrors, insights of his youth. In other words, whether he (or his beleaguered parents) knew it or not, he was always working. A few of the great insights in Painter’s work include: Proust didn’t just “draw on” the people and places of his youth, but re-created, re-imagined, and re-constructed all the time. Each character in the Search is based not on one person alone but on elements drawn from many. Similarly, none of the people MP knew in his youth is the source for one character only: All of the people of his youth provide elements for many Search characters. It’s extremely difficult to explain the precise qualities of the Search, but Painter makes a few attempts, and he does particularly well in thinking about Proust and Time, discussing - briefly and almost aphoristically - how for Proust memory is not a matter of description but of evocation: a scene, a moment, and object from the past, when recollected, allows the writers, and reader, to pass through a portal and perceive the world in a new way: the steeple seen at sunset in the distance, the famous Madeleine and tea, the red shoes of the duchess. He neither wasted time nor did time waste him, to paraphrase another author. Further, it’s amazing how hard MP did work on his writing, even before he retired to his bedroom to write the Search: He wrote several books (early passes at the Search) plus much criticism and journalism. The Search, to my surprise, didn’t come all of a piece from an amateur author: MP was a professional for many years. Also, the range of people he knew in his youth - including a # of famous authors, painters, composers (Mallarme, Debussy, et al) - is amazing, and shouldn’t have been surprising but did surprise me. Also, the suffering he endured - not only built and uneasiness about his sexual desires but also, and primarily, his serious breathing problems, his constant need for attention, coddling, and pity - all very sad. The image of him in layers of fur and thick scarf at his brother’s wedding is terribly sad. Painter’s work is also valuable for capturing and preserving numerous quips and examples of the extremely dry wit of the drawing room (and of the Guermantes). And what a riot Proust must have been!- entertaining his friends from his bed/dressing room, as he worked or talked through the night and slept in daylight (at one point getting up very early, at 2 in the afternoon). It’s obvious that Proust had many insights that he shared with friends about all of the arts and, to some degree, about current events (and much gossip). He must have been great to know - and we do know him, through the Search obviously. Also, he traveled quite a bit within the Continent, and we can see in certain passages how he transformed his family locales to the famous imaginary settings of Combray and Balbec. And the brief account of MP’s hilarious interlude as a librarian - a job he held for years without ever, it seems, putting in a day’s work - is insightful and sounds like a page from Borges. Has any other writer come close to what Proust achieved? I have a lot of respect for those who today write auto fiction (have read the complete Knousgaard), and they are moving and insightful, often, but without the complexity and psycho- physiological insights that we get from Proust; the closest to him, oddly, is I think Seabald, who understands how scenes, moments, places can open us up to undiscovered and elusive modes and passages. I’ll cite, though, two shortcomings in Painter’s: First of all, it’s sad to see his many references to Proust’s homosexuality as a perversion, as if it’s a malady or illness from which he should have tried to recover; Painter doesn’t make a big deal about this, and I sense he’s softened his own view to make this volume perhaps more likely to be published (a la Proust), but still - these passages are disturbing today, 60 years down the line. Also, any contemporary biography of this magnitude today would have much more and much better selection and use of photographs, including perhaps some taken to illustrate places today, and much better use of maps, of Paris, Illiers, and other Proustian locales.