MARCEL PROUST - IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME
By: Fereshteh Priou
April 2020
The perils of the coronavirus have ushered in an era of self-imposed quarantines and voluntary confinement. In such times, it feels fitting to reflect on the impact of diminished social contact. As inherently social creatures, we crave the company of others; periods of isolation—or worse, total disconnection—run counter to our natural inclinations.
Proust lived much of his later life in a similar state of hermetic seclusion. He spent his final years in a cork-lined apartment on Boulevard Haussmann, which shielded him not only from the noise of the bustling street but also from dust, pollen, and other irritants that worsened his severe asthma. He had come to recognize that his earlier years of frenetic social climbing and late-night parties among the Parisian elite were a hindrance to his great ambition: becoming a serious writer. He therefore withdrew from society to devote himself fully to his work.
Proust was also a pronounced germophobe. According to his devoted housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, in her memoir Monsieur Proust, he kept a long metal box filled with formalin solution in which he disinfected letters before opening them. The world of coronavirus precautions that has become familiar to us was, in many ways, the world Proust inhabited—though he faced it largely alone, without the communal commiseration we experience today. His extreme caution was often viewed as eccentricity; society mocked him for lining his walls with cork. He endured his anxieties and suffering in solitude, with little sympathy from others. The very society ladies who had snubbed him in his youth later sought invitations to visit the now-famous author. He consistently refused them. They assumed it was due to newfound arrogance after winning the Prix Goncourt, but the real reasons were his terror of illness and his growing aversion to the superficial social life he had once pursued so eagerly.
Solitude, when embraced, can be a pleasant and enriching experience. It offers the chance to reflect deeply and reconnect with parts of the psyche that social distractions often obscure. Gatherings and constant interaction can deprive us of those quiet, introspective moments from which genuine spiritual or intellectual insight arises. Although Proust led a solitary life, he was not a lonely one. He wrote with obsessive intensity during his years of isolation. According to Céleste, he added the word “Fin” to the final page of his manuscript only months before his death. He saw the silver lining in his circumstances, famously noting: “When life walls you in, intelligence finds an opening.”
Proust’s writing bears the unmistakable imprint of an introverted, solitary mind contemplating the complexities of human existence. Though In Search of Lost Time is filled with social scenes and interactions, his most profound observations often emerge from moments of detachment and pure observation.
Proust’s last trip outside Paris occurred in 1914, when he suffered a severe asthma attack during his annual visit to Cabourg—the Normandy resort that inspired the fictional Balbec. From 1914 until his death in 1922, he rarely ventured out. One notable exception was a dinner on May 18, 1922—exactly six months before he died—at the Hôtel Majestic on Avenue Kléber. The gathering, hosted after the premiere of a Stravinsky ballet, honored Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Among the guests were James Joyce and Pablo Picasso. This legendary evening is the subject of Richard Davenport-Hines’s book Proust at the Majestic.
Proust died at age 51, shortly after venturing out for another dinner with friends and contracting pneumonia. Photographs of him on his deathbed show not the elegant, mustachioed dandy of earlier years, but a heavily bearded man—visual testimony to his long isolation and abandonment of regular grooming. These days at home, many of us can relate.
In the end, Proust transformed the constraints of his solitary existence into something enduringly beautiful. His masterpiece reminds us that even in confinement, the mind can find openings—and create worlds.
Article by: Fereshteh Priou - April 2020