{"id":1453,"date":"2014-05-10T15:38:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-10T20:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonsolusblog.wordpress.com\/?p=1453"},"modified":"2024-07-16T18:18:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T18:18:43","slug":"proust-and-the-great-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/2014\/05\/10\/proust-and-the-great-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Proust and the Great War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selected Letters at the University of Illinois<\/h3>\n

by Fran\u00e7ois Proulx<\/a>, Assistant Professor of French<\/p>\n

\n

This online exhibition is part of The Great War: Experiences, Representations, Effects<\/span><\/a>, a campus-wide initiative marking the centenary of World War I.\u00a0(Read more about this exhibition<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was experiencing professional success and private heartbreak. Swann\u2019s Way<\/em>, the first volume of his novel In Search of Lost Time<\/em>, had appeared in November 1913, to largely positive reviews. Prestigious publishers who had previously turned down the novel now approached Proust to acquire the rights<\/a> to its remaining volumes. Yet Proust found himself unable to work following the death of his driver Alfred Agostinelli, a man he \u201creally loved\u201d and \u201cadored<\/a>.\u201d Meanwhile, the European powers were marching toward war.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Letter from Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser, 2 August 1914<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a letter to his financial advisor Lionel Hauser written the night of August 2, 19141<\/sup>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0mere hours before Germany formally declared war on France \u2013 Proust foresees the atrocities to come:<\/p>\n

\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

In the terrible days we are going through, you have other things to do besides writing letters and bothering with my petty interests, which I assure you seem wholly unimportant when I think that millions of men are going to be massacred in a\u00a0War of the Worlds<\/em>\u00a0comparable with that of Wells,2<\/sup>\u00a0 because the Emperor of Austria thinks it advantageous to have an outlet onto the Black Sea.3<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He fears that one of these victims will be his younger brother, the doctor Robert Proust, who was\u00a0mobilized<\/a>\u00a0on August 2 along with over three million Frenchmen:<\/p>\n

\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

I have just seen off my brother who was leaving for\u00a0Verdun<\/a>\u00a0at midnight. Alas he insisted on being posted to the actual\u00a0border.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In closing, Proust reflects further on the impending war:<\/p>\n

\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

I still hope, non-believer though I am, that some supreme miracle will\u00a0prevent, at the last second, the launch of the omni-murdering machine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

But I wonder how a believer, a practicing Catholic like the\u00a0Emperor Franz Joseph<\/a>, convinced that after his impending death he will appear before his God, can face having to account to him for the millions of human lives whose sacrifice it was in his power to prevent.<\/p>\n

With all my heart\u00a0and very sadly yours<\/p>\n

Marcel Proust<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Robert Proust<\/a>\u00a0survived the war, and was decorated\u00a0for his courage in caring for the wounded under enemy fire. Marcel Proust left for the coastal town of Cabourg<\/a> in September 1914, but soon\u00a0returned to Paris where he remained for the duration of the war, enduring air raids<\/a> and seeing the city\u2019s social and cultural life first halted, then transformed<\/a>. Due to his ill health, he was exempted from military duties, but many of his friends enrolled and fought, some never to return<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The war provided Proust with an unforeseen opportunity to greatly expand his novel: the three volumes announced when\u00a0Swann\u2019s Way<\/em>\u00a0appeared in 1913 had grown to five when\u00a0In the Shadow of Young Girls In Flower<\/em>\u00a0appeared in 1919. After Marcel\u2019s death in 1922, Robert Proust oversaw the publication of posthumous volumes until 1927, bringing the total number of volumes to seven. The final volume,\u00a0Time Regained<\/em>, includes many scenes set during and after the war, which Proust could not have imagined when he first conceived the novel in 1908.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>This online exhibition was designed in collaboration with graduate students enrolled in the seminar \u201cFrench 574: Marcel Proust.\u201d Students have selected and commented on the following letters:<\/p>\n

October 1914: Proust to Reynaldo Hahn, and March 1915: Reynaldo Hahn to Proust<\/a> (by Anne-B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Guillaud-Marlieu)<\/p>\n

March 1915: Proust to Louis d\u2019Albufera<\/a> (by Nick Strole)<\/p>\n

April 1915: Madeleine Lemaire to Proust, and\u00a0February 1918: Jacques-\u00c9mile Blanche to Proust<\/a> (by Malyoune Benoit)<\/p>\n

May 1915: Proust to Madame d\u2019Humi\u00e8res<\/a> (by Paola Pruneddu)<\/p>\n

July 1915: Proust to Robert de Montesquiou, and Robert de Montesquiou to Proust<\/a> (by Peter Tarjanyi)<\/p>\n

July 1918: Proust to Louis Brun<\/a> (by Laura Furrer)<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois houses over 1,100 letters to and from Marcel Proust, making it the largest collection of Proust\u2019s letters in the world. This unique collection was built to support the remarkable work of Philip Kolb<\/a>, who spent decades editing Proust\u2019s vast correspondence. Today the collection continues to grow in collaboration with the Kolb-Proust Archive for Research<\/a>: in 2013, sixteen new letters<\/a> were acquired.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

1. Marcel Proust,\u00a0Lettres<\/em>. Edited by Fran\u00e7oise Leriche. Paris: Plon, 2004. 696-698. The date of this letter was\u00a0established\u00a0by Philip Kolb.<\/h5>\n
2. The War of the Worlds<\/em> (1897), a novel by H. G. Wells. The manuscript<\/a> of this novel is part of the University of Illinois\u2019s extensive archive of H. G. Wells papers<\/a>.<\/h5>\n
3. Marcel Proust,\u00a0Selected Letters<\/em>. Volume III. Edited by Philip Kolb. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. 274-275. (Translation modified)<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Selected Letters at the University of Illinois by Fran\u00e7ois Proulx, Assistant Professor of French This online exhibition is part of The Great War: Experiences, Representations, Effects, a campus-wide initiative marking the centenary of World War I.\u00a0(Read more about this exhibition)   At the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, Marcel Proust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,25,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","category-marcel-proust","category-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5499,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/5499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}