Marcel Proust’s centenary will also be celebrated in Toulouse
Jean-Jaurès University, in Toulouse, will offer, on September 28 and 29, a symposium on Marcel Proust. Many publications also honor the great writer.
Isabelle Serça had delighted us with “Proust et le temps”, an astonishing dictionary of which she had been the director (read our edition of September 6). The literature professor from Toulouse completes the system at Jean-Jaurès University, where she teaches, with “Proust (in one page)”, a “polyphonic” symposium bringing together, she summarizes, “Proustians, France and abroad, scientists, artists, a double bass, madeleines and parentheses…”
The period is propitious since this year we celebrate the centenary of the disappearance of Marcel Proust and of the intimidating monument that has become his “Search for lost time”. Editorially, this leads to the publication of many books. The most beautiful is “Monsieur Proust” (Editions Seghers, 256 pages, €23.90), adaptation in the form of a graphic novel from the book of memories by Céleste Albaret, who was the writer’s governess from 1913 until her death in 1922. The former dandy then lived recluse in his apartment, devoting most of his time , bedridden, writing his immense work. The portrait made by her employee is full of tenderness for a man whose kindness, attentive listening and humor she praises. Corinne Maier has very fluidly condensed the initial work, published in 1973. As for Stéphane Manel, he multiplies the angles of approach and goes from black to color to describe, far from the myth, the touching being that could be Fart.
Publisher of “La Recherche” after an initial hesitation, Gallimard is at the forefront of the centenary with a salvo of brilliant releases in its Folio pocket collection. We read in priority the biography of Jean-Yves Tadié, great specialist of Proust, in a version revised and corrected by the author, for whom Proust was a man “drawing his greatness from what he writes, because he an all sacrificed” (2 volumes in box, 1,520 pages, €21). The writer thus defined what can be called a mission: “True life, life finally discovered and clarified, the only transformed life is literature”.
“When I die, the whole world reads me”
Also to be tasted, “Proust, Prix Goncourt”, by Thierry Laget, subtitled “A literary riot” (356 pages, €8.40). Because, rewarded in 1919 for “In the shade of the young girls in flowers”, the writer was attacked by the press, insulted and threatened. He had the great fault of being rich and worldly and of not having fought in the war because of asthma. To finally discover, “When foreign writers read Proust” (592 pages, €10.60), an unpublished anthology where we meet Edith Wharton, Stefan Zweig, Virginia Woolf, Umberto Eco and many others. Enough to confirm what Proust had predicted to Céleste Albaret: “You will see, when I am dead, people will read me, yes, the whole world will read me.”