Proust, Marcel (1871–1922)

French novelist and critic. His immense autobiographical work A la Recherche du temps perdu/Remembrance of Things Past (1913–27), consisting of a series of novels, is the expression of his childhood memories coaxed from his subconscious; it is also a precise reflection of life in France at the end of the 19th century.

Born in Auteuil, Paris, Proust was a delicate, asthmatic child; until he was 35 he moved in the fashionable circles of Parisian society, but after the death of his parents 1904–05 he went into seclusion in a cork-lined room in his Paris apartment, and devoted the rest of his life to writing his masterpiece. Posthumous publications include the novel Jean Santeuil (1957), which seems to have been an early sketch for A la recherche, and Contre Sainte-Beuve/By Way of Sainte-Beuve (1954).

In A la recherche the atmosphere is indefinite, and the story line incoherent. Proust's attitude to time and place follows that of the philosopher Henri Bergson: he recalls every detail of his childhood as if the past still existed, and as if events did not happen but exist, that is, people come to events, they do not occur. Proust denies the existence of the human soul and sees reason or intellect as an instrument which constructs errors and delusions. He believes that the only real substance of human feeling lies in sensation. Occasionally through the turmoil of sensations comes something possessing a special quality: the physical world falls away and an impression of eternity penetrates into the feelings. The delusions of time, space, and self vanish; humanity is in le temps retrouvé and has discovered the meaning of life.

Proust's importance rests not only on his philosophy; his precision of detail has also attracted much attention. He possesses brilliant psychological insight and shows great artistry in his creation of characters and incidents. His writing exposes and illuminates subtle mental processes in a way that has never been surpassed, and his original style has had a great influence on the 20th-century novel.