Proust and the Arts ed. by Christie McDonald, François Proulx (review)

Presenting a wide variety of essays, this volume proceeds from the 2013 conference at Harvard of the same title, honouring the centenary of Du côté de chez Swann. Its major objective is to expand the interpretation of 'the arts' in Proust's writing to include not only painting, photography, architecture, and music, but also archaeology, fashion, craft, drawing, broader material culture, and even the physicality of books as objects. The reader will find little cohesion across the whole of these diverse chapters, except the unifying premise that authors do not dwell on conventional questions of the attribution between characters in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu and historical artists, composers, and writers. Instead, some authors explore how these identities are fragmented and recombined in Proust's writing to form his own characters. Other recurring themes and approaches include: Proust's Jewishness, queerness, and self-perception; the influence of John Ruskin; genetic criticism; and examinations of Proust relating artworks to personal circumstances or characters. Several chapters develop in such a way as to provoke and encourage new enquiries rather than resolving arguments. Examining Proust's references to Etruscan and Mexican pottery, Nathalie Mauriac Dyer explores how he aligns 'inverts' and servants with 'primitives', while leaving the troubling nature of Proust's ethnographic appropriations unacknowledged. Sophie Duval offers an intriguing interpretation of Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes that deepens the reading of Proust's use of these images, and Susan Ricci Stebbins presents a thoroughly researched essay on 'Ruskin, Proust, and Carpaccio in Venice'. Christie McDonald's chapter begins with a helpful discussion on translating between visual art experiences and language via Diderot. Virginie Greene links the materiality of Proust's cut-and-paste manuscripts to craft, and John Hamilton examines auditory recall in À la recherche through the metaphor of the phonograph, yet curiously does not mention analogous arguments about Proust and photographic technology. Kazuyoshi Yoshikawa notes the influence of archaeological discoveries on Proust's language of remembrance — 'excavating' and 'digging down' to uncover memory (p. 101). The most surprisingly persuasive and original chapters are Suzanne Guerlac's investigation of representations of money and social status through the lens of photography, particularly relating to Odette, and that of Elisabeth Ladenson, who boldly suggests that the famous Marx Brothers dictum that one 'would not want to belong to any club who would have him as a member' can be used to explain Proust's recurring theme of 'impossible desire' (homosexuality and snobbery, specifically; p. 217). François Leriche argues for the corporeality of Proust's interpretation of medieval art, as evidenced in his captioned drawings, and Sindhumathi Revuluri presents a fascinating argument on the ways Proust describes musical performances versus quotidian sounds. The final chapter by Antoine Compagnon utilizes close readings of Proust's correspondence alongside a chronology of the publishing process to argue that Proust first recognized himself as a great writer upon seeing his own galley proofs in 1913. Although the argument may at first appear ancillary, it closely relates to the central plot of À la recherche — the narrator's finally realized identity as a writer.