In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Proust et ses contemporains
  • Thomas Baldwin
Proust et ses contemporains. By Margaret Mein. Woodstock, Glove House, 2006. xii + 255 pp. Hb.

This book provides an original and detailed examination of the relationship between Proust and an international company of artists and writers: Wagner, Hardy, Gide, Mauriac and T. S. Eliot. The author makes good use of Henri Bonnet and Bernard Brun's critical edition of the Matinée chez la Princesse de Guermantes (which contains the so-called 'Panneau Parisfal') in her attempts to tie composer and novelist together, focusing on the incantations of the Karfreitagszauber ('Die Stund' ist da'; 'Die Zeit ist da') and Proust's 'moments bienheureux'. With regard to Proust and Gide, Mein discusses the latter's (eventual) admiration for the 'circular' structure of the Recherche, suggesting, rather unsurprisingly, that both novelists are purveyors of 'la composition en abyme'. Both stress the importance [End Page 95] of breaking the chain that ties the dog to its own vomit: the true 'génie' is able to shock us 'dans nos habitudes d'œil, d'oreille et de pensée'. The author finds numerous points of contact between Hardy and Proust, including an interest in eyes and the lachrymal, Baudelairean 'passantes', heredity and, most importantly perhaps, the workings of involuntary memory. A passage from A Pair of Blue Eyes, in which time is said to 'close up like a fan' before the character Knight, is the most striking of Mein's many examples. Similarly, the sewing together of Proust and T. S. Eliot's reflections on time present, past and future is convincing. Examining Mauriac's changing view of Proust, the author maps the transition from his 'jugement intransigeant' in 1922 that Proust lacked 'grâce' to his identification in 1932 of a 'pressentiment de la gràce' in Proust's work. Subsequently, in 1942, Mauriac was able to perform another surprising about-turn with regard to his assessment twenty years earlier — thereby recuperating the half-Jewish homosexual for his Jansenist project—by identifying what Mein refers to as 'des points de repère de pureté' in Proust's text. It is not always clear from Mein's analysis whether 'pureté' is a concept we are supposed to accept uncritically. Mauriac is identified, for example, as a writer more skilled than any other in communicating 'l'expression éclatante' of his characters' purity. It is also difficult to see a clear distinction in Mein's text between narrator and author. Even if it is true that Proust's narrator seeks to counter Charlus's 'tendance profanatrice' by identifying himself with Christ in Le Temps retrouvé (and this is a leap of faith that I suspect few critics would be willing to take), does it follow that Proust himself was practising what Mauriac refers to as an 'homéopathie spirituelle' in his final volume? While this is, on the whole, a well-presented text and the French is, for the most part, immaculate, it is surprising to find almost two complete pages of text on the narrator's Christ-like 'resurrections' repeated verbatim in four separate chapters. One supposes that this is the result of an overlap between essays that were not originally intended to stand together in a single volume. These criticisms notwithstanding, this work provides many illuminating observations on Proust and his contemporaries, especially the English ones. [End Page 96]

Thomas Baldwin
University of Kent
...

pdf

Share