'À la recherche du temps perdu' en France et en Allemagne (1913-1958): 'Dans une sorte de langue étrangère . . .' (review)

Positing the interrelation of literature, criticism, and their sociohistorical context, Pascale Fravalo-Tane, in this carefully researched three-part study, takes Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu as a site of cultural exchange, observing how its reception reflects evolving literary culture and Franco-German relations. After the Introduction's engaging survey of reception theory, Part I, analysing the period 1913-1926, begins with an examination of Proust's efforts to refute mischaracterizations and orient his work's reception; Rilke's affinity for Proust's largely underappreciated work before À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs's controversial 1919 Prix Goncourt win; and responses — French and international — that the win provoked, including plans for a German translation, which was aborted partly because of Franco-German political tensions. Chapter 2 explores misrecognitions of the novel's genre and how Proust's style was or was not accepted, inside and outside of France, as reflective of French mentality or as supranational, transcending political obstacles. Chapter 3, describing criticism by Crémieux, Pierre-Quint, and Curtius, explores their insights, errors, cleavages between French and German approaches, and how Curtius, aiming to promote this text of transnational potential, gave a reading still deemed perceptive, unlike his French counterparts' psychologically focused, excessively biographical ones. Chapter 1 of Part II, covering the years 1926-1945, examines complications surrounding the German translation and how converging political, economic, and literary factors yielded an unsuccessful reception, while French enthusiasm for Proust's work declined as a result of the backlash against the homosexuality theme and the work's generic uncertainty. Chapter 2 investigates how French Proustian criticism's diversion from aesthetic to psychological and moral evaluations engendering engaged literature ideology motivated accusations of obsolescence and decadence, a critique also of the Right, while Germany met Proust's work with ambivalence or anti-Semitically motivated rejection. Chapter 3 investigates advances and limitations of the first genetic study of Proust's novel by Feuillerat, and the emergent recognition of its fictional, not autobiographical, status in Abraham and Ferré; it also describes more sophisticated, stylistically informed German readings, including Auerbach's and Spitzer's, and German critics' frequent Proust-Bergson associations attaching Proust to German idealism or supranational culture. Chapter 4 focuses on Benjamin and Hessel's translation principles and Benjamin's struggles in this endeavour, comparing his and Proust's formulations of concepts like memory and time. Chapter 1 of Part III, analysing 1945-1958, examines debates over whether Proust's work had value for postwar Germany in modelling introspective truth-seeking, and mounting concerns about its relevance in France. Chapter 2 extols the Geneva School's rigorous criticism, describing Poulet's evolving analyses of Proustian time, then explores Jauss's innovative integrated study of form, genre, and temporal representation bridging French and German criticism. Chapter 3 describes the complicated acquisition history of the publication rights for Rechel-Mertens's translation, the translation's reception, and Adorno's 'Kleine Kommentare'. The author accuses Adorno of taking interpretative liberties to fit his negative dialectic theory but admires the depth it brought to Proustian criticism. The Conclusion synthesizes this thorough, well-structured study's findings and indicates vicissitudes in Proustian criticism after the period examined, noting its reinvigoration in Germany in the 1980s and in France with the rise of structuralist and genetic criticism. Proust, Fravalo-Tane concludes, will continue inspiring theoretical and literary innovation.