La petite musique du style: Proust et ses sources littéraires by Luc Fraisse (review)

Lieux de mémoire and the subsequent readings of Darrieussecq’s magical-realist Le pays appears less certain.Throughout,however,the author calls to attention the ways in which, through effects of focalization, polyphony, repetition, and syntax, the narratives at hand problematize and particularize the rituals they depict (discussion of Bon’s Mécanique, centered on the narrator’s technology-obsessed father, is a fine example). Further shielding Duffy from charges of social-scientific reductionism is a lengthy conclusion foregrounding the ‘passage à l’écriture’ as a ritual experience itself. Accessibly written, this book will be valued by readers who seek a vantage point on the contemporary French novel that goes beyond the shibboleths of postmodernism, minimalism, and les écritures de soi. Conceived as part of social process, writing rightly emerges as a mediating term between individual aspiration and collective constraints. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Fraisse, Luc. La petite musique du style: Proust et ses sources littéraires. Paris: Garnier, 2011. ISBN 978-2-8124-0270-8. Pp. 697. 49 a. Fraisse’s book consists of a lengthy introduction followed by more than twenty essays exploring the relations between Proust and other authors who influenced him. Fraisse’s critical approach is the study of the sources of Proust’s inspiration. His method differs greatly, however, from that of Gustave Lanson and other critics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose pursuit of literary sources is now considered superficial. Fraisse analyzes Proust’s sources the better to understand the unique nature of Proust’s own mind and creativity. He argues that Proust, like other great writers, derived from the literary predecessors whose works he read only those elements that enabled him to elaborate a worldview and a creative process that were already latent in him. He accorded significance to his readings to the extent that he found in them echoes of concepts and images that he was articulating in his own mind. Fraisse explicates what he considers the essential characteristics of Proust’s genius as he takes us on a tour of the authors Proust wrote about in his letters, notebooks, and essays. What Fraisse looks for is the ways each author somehow adumbrated,even if indirectly, the literary values Proust considered most important. As enunciated by Fraisse, these include the realization of the hidden spiritual meaning underlying visible reality. Like Baudelaire, Proust believed that the world about us is a forest of symbols containing spiritual forces waiting to be liberated by our perception of them. Proust also thought that it is in the unconscious depths of the human psyche that we come into contact with this unseen spirituality. The artist’s role is to bring these visions to the surface of consciousness to give them a permanent form and make them accessible to others. Proust also laid the greatest emphasis on the need for a coherent structure in an extended literary work and was often dismayed at the failure of his early readers to recognize the cathedral-like construction of his novel, where the complexity of its 220 FRENCH REVIEW 87.1 Reviews 221 diverse elements is meant to contribute to an integral whole. Proust also stressed the conceptual underpinning of all great works but long wrestled with the problem of expressing a philosophy of life and art within a work of fiction. Proust agreed with Poe’s ideal of a literary work being constructed according to a pre-conceived plan but had a more organic conception of a unified whole that grows in time as its form gradually defines itself in the author’s mind. Proust shared Nerval’s belief in the creative power of the unconscious. He also found in Nerval’s ability to express his vision in both verse and prose the encouragement to write a work that is both a novel and a discourse on esthetics. From Homer, as well as from Virgil and Dante, Proust derived the theme of the descent into the underworld as a necessary rite of passage for the hero to attain salvation. For Proust, these lower depths symbolized both the unconscious, into which one must plunge in order to attain truth, and the temps perdu periods of love...