PROUST, MARCEL (1871-1922), French man of letters, was born in Paris on July so, 1871. His father was a professor of medicine, and his mother was of Jewish extraction. He was edu cated at the lycee Condorcet, and about 1892 he was for some time associated with Leon Blum, Louis Mirhlfeld and Tristan Bernard on the Revue Blanche, a periodical conducted by a select group of intellectuals, mostly Jewish. Becoming a favourite in the salons—especially those of Mme. de Caillavet and Madeleine Lemaire—he wrote a number of society love-stories (collected in 1896 under the title Les plaisirs et les jours) distinguished by their psychological subtlety. He also attained reputation as a clever writer of pastiches. He became an enthusiastic admirer of John Ruskin and translated several of his works into French, in cluding the Bible of Amiens, to which he contributed a valuable preface.
In 19o2 Proust's health began to fail. Thenceforward he was reluctantly obliged to lead an extremely retired and careful life, and for many years it looked as if he had altogether abandoned lit erature, in which his name hitherto had not been known outside a small circle of friends. He was reading and writing a great deal, however. The interminable discursiveness of Ruskin, which French readers do not suffer gladly, was to him a constant source of delight, and Saint-Simon, ever one of his favourite authors, exerted a powerful influence upon him at this time. Thus it came about that, having unlimited time at his disposal, he embarked upon a long and leisurely work, full of minute detail, in which was im prisoned, as in a net, his whole experience of life; in which the salon life he loved was revived in all its details and observances like the court life in Saint-Simon's memoirs ; in which the people he had known provided the materials for new, fuller and richer characters (M. de Charlus, for example, is a blending of three dif ferent people of Proust's acquaintance), and in which the author sought out and lived the past over again. Hence the general title given to the 15 volumes of the series, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913, etc.).
This lengthy work had almost been completed when Proust published the first part, Du cote de chez Swami, in 1913. The freshness and minuteness of the recollections of childhood at tracted some attention, but none the less Proust, who had had to publish the first part at his own expense, had difficulty in finding a publisher for the second, L'ombre des jeunes files ene fleurs. When it did appear its qualities were at once appreciated by Leon Daudet, whose enthusiastic articles, followed by the award of the Prix Goncourt in 1918, brought Proust's name prominently be fore the public, and he was read, discussed and criticised every where. Two more parts appeared during Proust's lifetime—Le cote de Guermantes and Sodome et Gomorrhe, both in 1921.
When he died in Paris, Nov. 18, 1922, he left three parts still in manuscript—La prisonniere, published in 1924, Albertine Disparue (1926) and Le temps retrouve (1926).
Proust's influence, especially since his death, has been con siderable. He introduced into the novel an analytic method which has a superficial resemblance to that of Meredith, but is more properly comparable with that of Freud. That the name and no tion of time should appear in the general title of his great work. is not without significance. By a curious coincidence he was re lated by marriage to Bergson, the philosopher of "creative time," and the term "creative time" aptly describes the psychological time which Proust explores, seeks and recovers. His people are never given as "characters" in the fashion of La Bruyere or Bal zac ; they are always in process of development, change and con tinual creation.
Part of Proust's success was due to the very thing that is likely to tell against his lasting reputation, viz.: the fact that his char acters, beginning with the "I" of the book, are exceptional, an erotic and mysterious group having little in common with the generality of mankind. This is true not only of Sodome et Gomorrhe and Proust's emphasis upon homosexuality, but also of the idle life and ultimate nothingness of the people of his world, their lack of all interests other than those of social life, and the indifference that the ordinary reader must always feel as to their fate. On the other hand, there will be a taste for Proust so long as there is a taste for pyschology as an end in itself, and so long as the play of memory, the searching and brooding that pertain to the conquest of the past, afford to some men a sufficient reason for living or a romantic manner of not living. The following translations by C. K. Scott Moncrieff appeared in English: Swann's Way (1922) ; Within a Budding Grove (1924) ; The Guermantes Way (1925) ; Cities of the Plain (trans. of Sodome et Gomorrhe) (2 vols. 1927) ; The Captive (1929). (A. T.) See Marcel Proust, an English tribute, collected by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1923) ; Jacques Riviere, Marcel Proust (1924) ; L. Pierre Quint, Marcel Proust, sa vie, son oeuvre (1925, Eng. trs. 1927) ; Benoist-Mechin, La Musique et l'immortalite dans l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust (1926) ; R. Dreyfus, Marcel Proust a dix-sept ans (1926), and Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust (1926) ; G. Gabory, Essai sur Mar cel Proust (1926) ; Marcel Proust, by various writers, with bibliog raphy (1926) ; P. Souday, Marcel Proust (1927) ; R. Fernandez, Les Cahiers de Marcel Proust (1927) ; and Clive Bell, Proust (1928). His Lettres inedites were published with a preface by Camille Vettird in 1926. Chroniques, a selection of his articles chiefly from Le Figaro, was edited by R. Proust (1927).