Marcel Proust facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Marcel Proust
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Proust in 1900
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| Born |
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
10 July 1871 Auteuil, France
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| Died | 18 November 1922 (aged 51) Paris, France
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Notable work
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In Search of Lost Time |
| Parent(s) | Adrien Achille Proust Jeanne Clémence Weil |
| Relatives | Robert Proust (brother) |
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Marcel Proust (born July 10, 1871 – died November 18, 1922) was a famous French writer. He is best known for his very long novel, In Search of Lost Time. This book was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. Many people consider Proust one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
Contents
Marcel Proust's Life Story
Early Life and Family
Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871, in Auteuil, a part of Paris, France. This was just after the Franco-Prussian War ended. His childhood happened as France was forming its Third Republic government. His famous novel talks a lot about the big changes in French society during this time. For example, it shows how the old noble families lost power and the middle class became more important.
Proust's father, Adrien Proust, was a well-known doctor. He studied diseases like cholera and wrote many books about health. Marcel's mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, came from a wealthy family. She was very smart and loved to read. She even helped her son translate books from English. Proust was raised Catholic, but he later became an atheist.
Childhood and Education
When he was nine years old, Proust had his first serious asthma attack. After that, he was often sick. He spent many holidays in a village called Illiers. This village, along with memories of his great-uncle's house, became the inspiration for "Combray" in his novel. Combray is a very important place in In Search of Lost Time. In 1971, the village of Illiers was even renamed Illiers-Combray to honor him.
In 1882, at age eleven, Proust started school at the Lycée Condorcet. His illness sometimes made it hard for him to attend classes. Still, he was excellent at literature and won an award in his last year. Through his school friends, he met people from wealthy families. These experiences gave him many ideas for his novel.
Young Adulthood and Health
Even with his poor health, Proust served one year in the French army from 1889 to 1890. This experience later became a part of his novel. When he was young, Proust enjoyed social events. He spent time in fancy "salons," which were like social gatherings hosted by important people. These gatherings helped him meet many interesting characters. He used these experiences in his writing.
Proust had a very close bond with his mother. To please his father, he took a volunteer job at a library in 1896. However, he never actually worked there. He lived with his parents until they both passed away.
His life changed a lot between 1900 and 1905. His brother got married and moved out in 1903. His father died later that year. Then, in 1905, his beloved mother passed away. She left him a large inheritance. During this time, his health continued to get worse.
Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly in his bedroom. He would sleep during the day and work on his novel at night. He died in 1922 from lung problems. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Marcel Proust's Writings
Early Works
Proust started writing and publishing when he was young. He wrote for school magazines and a regular social column in a journal. In 1892, he helped start a literary magazine called Le Banquet. He published many short pieces in this and other well-known journals.
In 1896, a collection of his early writings was published. It was called Les plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days). This book included a foreword by a famous writer, Anatole France. It also had drawings by Mme Madeleine Lemaire, who hosted one of the salons Proust often visited. This book was very fancy and cost twice the usual price.
That same year, Proust began working on a novel that was later published in 1952. It was called Jean Santeuil. Many ideas that appeared in his later masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, were first explored in this unfinished book. For example, it talked about how memory works. After Pleasures and Days didn't do very well, Proust stopped working on Jean Santeuil by 1899.
Influences and Translations
Starting in 1895, Proust spent several years reading the works of writers like Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. This reading helped him develop his ideas about art and the role of an artist. Proust believed that an artist's job was to look closely at nature, understand its true meaning, and then explain that meaning in their art. Ruskin's ideas were very important to Proust. He even said he knew several of Ruskin's books "by heart."
Proust decided to translate two of Ruskin's books into French. His English wasn't perfect, so he worked with his mother and a cousin to help him. When asked about his method, Proust famously said, "I don't claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin." His translation of The Bible of Amiens was published in 1904. It was praised by critics. He finished translating Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies in 1905, and it was published in 1906.
In 1908, Proust's writing really started to develop. He published writings that copied the style of other authors. He also began working on different pieces that would later become part of a project called Contre Sainte-Beuve. This project was meant to be a novel. It focused on a narrator who remembers his childhood. It also criticized a literary critic named Sainte-Beuve. Many parts of this unfinished work later appeared in In Search of Lost Time. By 1910, he was fully at work on his great novel.
In Search of Lost Time
Proust started writing À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) in 1909. He was 38 years old. This huge novel is about 3,200 pages long and has more than 2,000 characters! Famous writers like Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century."
The first part of the novel was initially turned down by a publisher. A famous writer named André Gide advised against it. He later apologized to Proust, calling it one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Finally, the book was published because Proust paid for it himself.
Proust died before he could finish editing the last parts of his novel. His brother, Robert Proust, helped publish the final three volumes after Marcel's death.
The book was translated into English by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. It was first called Remembrance of Things Past. Scott Moncrieff translated most of the volumes, but he died before finishing the last one. Other translators completed it later. When the translation was updated, the title was changed to the more accurate In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, a new translation of the entire book was started. It was published in 2002.
Personal Life
Proust was interested in politics. He supported the French Third Republic, which was the government of France at the time.
He was also one of the first people to support Alfred Dreyfus in the Dreyfus Affair. This was a very famous legal case in France. Dreyfus was a Jewish army officer wrongly accused of treason. Proust even went to the trial of Émile Zola, a writer who defended Dreyfus. Proust was proud to have asked Anatole France to sign a petition supporting Dreyfus's innocence.
Images for kids
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Jean Béraud, La Sortie du lycée Condorcet
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102 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris, where Marcel Proust lived from 1907 to 1919
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Robert de Montesquiou, who inspired the character Baron de Charlus in À la recherche du temps perdu
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Mme. Arman de Caillavet
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Grave of Marcel Proust at Père Lachaise Cemetery
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See also
In Spanish: Marcel Proust para niños
- Little Miss Sunshine, an American movie where Steve Carell plays an ex-Proust professor.
