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Proust face a l'heritage du XIXe siecle: tradition et metamorphose

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 68; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/fs/knu139

1468-2931

Sarah Tribout-Joseph,

French Literature and Critical Theory

This volume is the result of two conferences: ‘Proust face à l'héritage du xixe siècle: filiation et ruptures’, held in Kyoto at the Institut franco-japonais du Kansai in November 2010, and ‘Proust et le xixe siècle: tradition et métamorphose’, hosted by the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 in December 2010. There are twenty-two papers in the collection and a two-page foreword, but what is slightly disappointing is the absence of any general introduction or biographical notes on contributors. Papers are presented in the order in which they were given, yet the reason behind this ordering is unclear. What does bring the volume together, however, is the fact that the authors have adopted a predominantly if not exclusively genetic approach to Proust's works. The papers differ in scope — the more ambitious ones successfully exploit the genetic approach by combining it with other approaches, most notably influence studies — and they cover a range of the arts. As a whole, the volume offers a reassessment of how Proust connects with tradition and the nineteenth century, how he anticipates the twentieth, and, perhaps most interestingly, what is missing from his vision and engagement with his times and the nineteenth century more widely. As one would expect, there is coverage of Proust and the composer César Franck and major writers such as Balzac, Flaubert, and Baudelaire. Mireille Naturel's interesting paper identifies similarities in writing techniques between Proust and Flaubert. Kazuyoshi Yoshikawa analyses Proust's importance as an art critic and surveyor of the century, explaining that ‘la critique d'art du xixe siècle en France était assurée surtout par des écrivains qui se faisaient de “l'argent de poche’” (p. 133). Both Jean-Yves Tadié and Antoine Compagnon take a similar approach to this much-studied author, deciding to examine not what Proust had to say on a given subject, but rather what he did not say and what is conspicuous by its very absence. For Compagnon, ‘le xixe siècle est surreprésenté dans le roman de Proust, mais il y a aussi d'immenses trous’ (p. 167), and in his most insightful contribution, ‘L'Autre xixe Siècle’, he proceeds, as he says, ‘à rebours’ to try to identify what is missing. Thus he notes the almost total absence of Stendhal and the partial engagement with Baudelaire; he leads us to Courbet's missing Normandy beaches and questions how it is possible that Proust could not have known either Courbet or Géricault. Compagnon concludes that neither the fin de siècle nor the nineteenth century nor its movements existed for Proust, suggesting that the author was clearly too close to his times. Thus the volume's aim to reassess Proust and his relationship with the nineteenth century is a legitimate one. Despite the fragmented presentation, the collection as a whole offers excellent coverage both thematically and in terms of the range of Proust's writings, from his juvenilia to his correspondence via his manuscripts and their varied status.