Marcel Proust (in Pere Lachaise Cemetery)
N 48° 51.784 E 002° 23.706
31U E 455635 N 5412410
A French intellectual, novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of Remembrance of Things Past
Waymark Code: WMTZ5
Location: France
Date Posted: 10/12/2006
Views: 128
The son of well-to-do bourgeois parents, Proust was born in the southern sector of Paris's then-rustic 16th arrondissement at the home of his mother's uncle. His birth took place during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and corresponds with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of Remembrance of Things Past concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de siècle.
Proust's father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a famous doctor and epidemiologist, responsible for studying and attempting to remedy the causes and movements of cholera through Europe and Asia. He was the author of about 20 books on topics throughout medicine and hygiene, as well as countless articles; as such, he was a model to Marcel. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a rich and cultured Jewish family. She was highly literate and well-read.
By the age of nine Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered by himself, his family and his friends as a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers. This village, combined with aspects of the time he spent at his great-Uncle's house in Auteuil became the model for the fictional town of Combray, where some of the most important scenes of Remembrance of Things Past take place. (Illiers was renamed Illiers-Combray on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations).
Despite his poor health, Proust served a year (1889–90) as an enlisted man in the French army, stationed at Coligny Caserne in Orléans, an experience that provided a lengthy episode in The Guermantes Way, volume three of his novel. As a young man Proust was a dilettante and a successful social climber, whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of application to work. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an aesthete, contributed to his later troubles with getting Swann's Way, the first volume of his huge novel, published in 1913.
Proust was quite close to his mother, despite her wishes that he apply himself to some sort of useful work. In order to appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer position at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave which was to extend for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he didn't move from his parents' apartment until after both were dead (Tadié).
Proust was homosexual, having a long-running affair with the pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn.
His life and family circle changed considerably between 1900 and 1905. In February of 1903 Proust's brother Robert married and left the family apartment. His father died in September of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September of 1905. In addition to the grief that attended his mother's death, Proust's life changed due to a very large inheritance he received (in today's terms, a principal of about $6 million, with a monthly income of about $15,000). Despite this windfall, his health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.
Proust spent the last three years of his life largely confined to his cork-lined bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died in 1922 and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Begun in 1909 and finished just before his death, Remembrance of Things Past consists of seven volumes spanning some 3,200 pages and teeming with more than 2,000 characters. Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century", and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the "greatest fiction to date". Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the last volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother, Robert.
Description:
Begun in 1909 and finished just before his death, Remembrance of Things Past consists of seven volumes spanning some 3,200 pages and teeming with more than 2,000 characters. Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century", and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the "greatest fiction to date".
Date of birth: 07/10/1871
Date of death: 11/18/1922
Area of notoriety: Literature
Marker Type: Headstone
Setting: Outdoor
Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 09:00 - 17:30
Fee required?: No
Web site: Not listed
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