Blockchain Papers

Adam Watt

‘[N]ous ne cessons d’ajouter à la Recherche (comme Proust le faisait sur ses manuscrits)’, writes Roland Barthes in 1979, ‘nous ne cessons de l’écrire.’1 In the very nearly forty years since these remarks were made, critics, scholars, filmmakers, creative writers, and others, have indeed continued the process of addition and continuation that Barthes identifies.2 It may be, in fact, that we live in a golden age of Proust scholarship. A diplomatic edition of Proust’s Cahiers is underway and work is progressing towards an accessible digital edition of the correspondence; the publication of a new scholarly edition of À la recherche du temps perdu has begun.3 Whilst well-worn paths are still trodden, original, adventurous, and rigorous research continues to illuminate the field.4 Christopher Prendergast’s scintillating Mirages and Mad Beliefs, for example, dismantles critical commonplaces, drawing attention to an intermittent voice, ‘a sotto voce emanation from the margins and often audible only in the tones of ironic indirection’.5 In attuning our ear to this sceptical voice, Prendergast challenges the primacy of redemptive aesthetics that has long been taken for granted in Proust criticism. At the same time, we find recurring reference to Proust in Terence Cave’s Thinking with Literature — an indication of what another critic has called Proust’s plasticity: his ability to be many things to many readers.6 In preparing an état présent on Proust, Proustian questions soon arise about how far back one should reach into the past; about the extent to which things one might assume to be constant and unchanging do in fact continue to evolve and take on new shapes or resonances. Faced with the vast scale of critical and creative responses to Proust it seems judicious to focus principally on work produced since 2013. This is a relatively recent cut-off, but it is made for compelling reasons. The year 2013 marked the centenary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann, the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, and as such there was a considerable spike in scholarly publications that year.7 Among these was the landmark edited volume Marcel Proust in Context, the final section of which, ‘Critical Reception’, consists of six chapters spanning topics from the critical reception of À la recherche during Proust’s lifetime to critical responses, translations, and adaptations up to 2012.8 The current état présent, therefore, picks up from this point and identifies six areas for consideration: correspondence, biography, and genetic criticism; philosophy; the arts; intertextual, contextual, and thematic studies; modernism; and creative responses. Before beginning, it is worth noting a trio of recent essays that merit inclusion on reading lists for those broaching Proust for the first time. Marion Schmid’s wide-ranging chapter ‘Marcel Proust (1871–1922): A Modernist Novel of Time’ attends accessibly to a variety of features of À la recherche and is especially clear about the novel’s double internal focalization.9 Also using the question of time to structure a wonderfully lucid essay, Michael Lucey provides an excellent survey of Proust’s stylistic, formal, and thematic innovations in his chapter ‘Becoming Proust in Time’.10 Lastly, Edward Hughes’s characteristically insightful chapter on ‘The Renewal of Narrative in the Wake of Proust’ casts a comparative gaze across narrative practice in French fiction in the middle to end of the twentieth century, giving a useful account of Proust’s legacy to later writers.11 In Proust among the Stars, Malcolm Bowie seeks to steer attention towards what he calls the ‘dazzling procession of Proust’s paragraphs’ and away from the fascinating yet ultimately ‘thin thread of Proust’s biography’.12 That thread, however, is a resilient one with considerable allure. William C. Carter’s authoritative biography, first published in 2000, was reprinted with corrections and a new preface for the Swann centenary in 2013.13 Jean-Yves Tadié, author of the standard French life of Proust, has supplemented his contribution with Proust et ses amis, published in 2010, and Le Cercle de Marcel Proust, a two-volume edited collection of essays on Proust’s acquaintances: together these three volumes substantively enhance our appreciation of the relationships (both enduring and fleeting) Proust maintained as his novel took shape.14 Despite the crowded field, a major new biography was published in French in 2015, Jérôme Picon’s Marcel Proust: une vie à s’écrire.15 This is an extensive account, drawing above all on Proust’s correspondence, including discoveries of the last two decades and, in particular, the revised dating of certain letters included in the 2004 selection edited by Françoise Leriche.16 Picon’s book is a work of considerable scholarship, but lacks the narrative finesse of the accounts of Carter or Tadié. Two shorter lives also appeared just before Picon’s: my own Marcel Proust in Reaktion Books’ ‘Critical Lives’ series, which seeks to explore how Proust came to write À la recherche and to plot the parallel tracks of his declining health and his ever-expanding novel; and Benjamin Taylor’s Proust: The Search, which appears in Yale’s ‘Jewish Lives’ series.17 More recently still, Évelyne Bloch-Dano, biographer of Proust’s mother, has published a partial biography focusing on Proust’s childhood.18 In parallel, various periods of his life have received renewed attention with the publication of newly discovered correspondence. Michel Schneider’s L’Auteur, l’autre: Proust et son double (2014) is a book-length study eked out of previously unseen but ultimately rather thin manuscript materials: a handful of letters and an essay of just over four pages in length, ‘L’Esthétique de Marcel Proust’, written by Proust in 1921. The essay, Schneider argues, ‘est un document passionnant pour comprendre le regard que Proust porte sur son œuvre à la toute fin de sa vie’.19 Schneider’s book contains insights of a psycho-bio-critical nature, but the ‘auteur’/‘autre’ dichotomy becomes somewhat strained over very nearly three hundred pages. The Lettres au duc de Valentinois, dating from 1920, were published in 2016, shortly after the high-profile publication of the Lettres à sa voisine, a collection of twenty-three brief missives sent by Proust to his neighbour, the wife of an American dentist in boulevard Haussmann, between 1908–09 and 1919.20 In addition to these discoveries, the scholarly accessibility of Proust’s correspondence will soon be greatly boosted by a collaborative project that is making digitally available some two hundred of Proust’s letters relating to the First World War, with an anticipated launch date of 11 November 2018.21 At times in Proust’s letters the initial shapes of ideas or scenarios are tested out, weighed up. Proust’s multifaceted, iterative processes of drafting, expanding, and refining his material continue to receive a great deal of attention, above all from the scholars associated with the ‘Équipe Proust’ based at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM) in Paris, directed by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer. A flavour of the breadth and insights of recent genetic criticism is richly in evidence in the special number of the journal Genesis edited by Mauriac Dyer for the Swann centenary: Proust, 1913, the entirety of which is free to access online.22 Much of the material discussed here pertains to the major project of the ‘Équipe Proust’, the ongoing preparation and publication of a complete edition of the Cahiers 1 à 75 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France.23 The annually published journal of the ‘Équipe’, the Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, edited by Mauriac Dyer, provides insights and sidelights on the work of the scholars associated with the team and the monthly seminars it runs (for the transcription of Proust’s cahiers as well as related academic papers and symposia).24 Although the high cost of the ongoing edition of Proust’s Cahiers makes its volumes inimical to most individual budgets, the full and cost-free digital accessibility, via the Gallica platform, of the Bibliothèque nationale’s ‘fonds Proust’, the manuscript cahiers, notebooks, loose pages, proof-copy, paste-ons, and so forth that are the central focus of the genetic endeavour, means that anyone with an internet connection can now access high-definition reproductions of the ink-and-paper origins of Proust’s novel.25 The intersections of Proust’s writings with philosophy have long preoccupied readers and critics. The publication in 2013 of Luc Fraisse’s L’Éclectisme philosophique de Marcel Proust, however, was a genuinely field-changing event.26 A number of influential studies appeared in the preceding years: in particular Joshua Landy’s Philosophy as Fiction, which sheds light on truth, perspective and (self-) deception, and Anne Simon’s Proust ou le réel retrouvé, which lucidly accounts for Proust’s handling of sensory experience.27 Shorter, though important, contributions have been made by Martin Hägglund’s pages on Proust in Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov, which reassess major questions of temporality and desire; by Erika Fülöp in her study of ‘identity and difference’ in À la recherche; and by Jessica Wiskus in the attention she pays to Proust’s phenomenology, through a comparative lens, in The Rhythm of Thought.28 Fraisse’s L’Éclectisme stands out, though, by dint of the sheer breadth and depth of the scholarship upon which it is built. Well over 1,200 pages in length, Fraisse’s study draws abundantly on those texts Proust is known to have read or been exposed to at the Lycée Condorcet, at the Sorbonne, and later in life, as well as those he is likely to have encountered or become acquainted with. Fraisse not only constructs an incremental picture of Proust’s philosophical apprenticeship and development (alongside familiar tutelary figures such as Alphonse Darlu, Paul Janet, Gabriel Séailles, and many, perhaps less familiar, others from his readings) and provides suggestive accounts of the philosophical sources or underpinnings of various scenes from À la recherche; he also provides a rich and discerning account of the philosophical and philosophically inflected reception of Proust’s work (by Proust’s contemporaries as well as critics and thinkers including Anne Henry, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, and Anne Simon). L’Éclectisme philosophique de Marcel Proust is an exceptional work of erudition that will remain a touchstone in the field for generations of scholars. Fraisse’s work combines intellectual history, reception studies, and textual criticism; a good many insights have been yielded by shorter publications contributing to one or other of these fields in the years since 2013. Jennifer Rushworth and Anna Elsner have fruitfully brought Jacques Derrida’s thought to bear on readings of Proust’s novel.29 Anne Simon’s Trafics de Proust, though less ambitious in scope than Fraisse, is every bit as accomplished in its handling and analysis of material. With perhaps a nod to Michel de Certeau, Simon modestly describes her sparkling central chapters as ‘quatre butinages différents’.30 From this foraging among the writings of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze, and Barthes emerges a Proust who is ‘un référent majeur de leur façon de s’envisager et d’envisager l’exercice de la pensée’.31 Over and again Simon demonstrates persuasively and with great critical sensitivity how Proust’s work becomes ‘une référence en puissance, à tous les niveaux — narratif, thématique, lexical ou rythmique’.32 Like philosophy — and like Proust’s novel — the arts are a house with many rooms, and this is reflected in the volume and diversity of material published in relation to Proust and the arts. The popular appeal of this domain is evinced by the recent re-issue, in paperback, of Eric Karpeles’s Paintings in Proust, whilst a more scholarly and, indeed, authoritative account of painting in Proust is found in Kazuyoshi Yoshikawa’s Proust et l’art pictural.33 Richly illustrative of the range of original responses Proust’s relations with the arts still provoke is the recent edited volume Proust and the Arts.34 Artists and topics are attended to here that one might expect in such a volume — Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Gustave Moreau, John Ruskin, Vittore Carpaccio, Richard Wagner, photography — but also others that refresh and rejuvenate a field one might have thought quite saturated.35 There are essays relating to archaeological discovery; fashion; Proust’s own drawings; Émile Gallé’s work in glass; book art and illustration; acts of listening; and, remarkably and entertainingly, Proust and the Marx brothers. Additionally, readers will garner much from the similarly stimulating Proust et les arts décoratifs,36 and from the wide-ranging Proust and the Visual.37 Sophie Basch’s sumptuously illustrated Rastaquarium: Marcel Proust et le ‘modern style’ is a hugely impressive work of cultural-historical scholarship that adds yet greater nuance to our understanding of the layers of reference Proust built into his work and their polyvalence within it.38 Dance is a minor art in À la recherche and has received little attention until recently. Áine Larkin’s chapter on ‘Theatre and Dance’ in Marcel Proust in Context surveys the cultural-historical context and attends to the most important relevant scenes in the novel, whilst a recent article by Schmid explores resonances between the radical changes in dance in the early twentieth century and Proust’s writing of À la recherche.39 Francine Goujon has considered similar material, tracing Proust’s encounters with the ballets russes and the of of a likely based on in his and in the novel is Schmid’s excellent of Roland Proust, les du Schmid and new with their Proust at the de Proust, at hundred pages of has made a incremental contribution to the combines of Proust’s of and towards and of the of his novel, with analysis of adaptations of À la also attends to questions of and recently there has been a spike in critical in Proust’s relation to the art as a of the by of of Proust the of the in after the of de and in The a number au temps du un including an article by and his The and for a or two the over Proust in for the first have also been made in our understanding of the of photography in Proust’s Larkin’s Proust is a standard reference now and has been by a range of other out related and In to Additionally, through a of and a has the study of photography to the and of Proust, Barthes, and a also in years have a of to about the of in Proust’s A special of edited by Proust and for the in questions about and and the of all of as found in Proust’s work is also important to recent study Proust, and which that by how was to in time and in Proust’s time, one might a more to Proust’s away from readings of in Proust as an access to by and by Anne for the iterative of the as illustrative of the of the associated of which we find in Proust’s novel not just in scenes of The marked in focus and between study and Proust de la more the diversity of responses to the same of Proust’s the and is and in a volume of and reading in Proust’s his correspondence, and in the writing of Proust’s time. is an authoritative account of the and development of the scenes relating to in À la recherche and a contribution to Proust’s relations to the and critics of his time. Proust de la is an important that we still have much to from the study of and Proust’s correspondence as an initial to what he was reading or exposed and from the accessibility of the Gallica platform, may yet have discoveries to in relation to sources and so that may have to this or that or of scholars with a about or in or to Proust’s novel, du Proust et ses sources is an The volume by Fraisse written or in the between the early and 2010, and through essays on a range of from de and the de to contemporaries such as and Anna de and later including and recent Proust, and an important, in Proust to a of the relations between Proust and but also provides fascinating analysis of the reception and of Proust’s novel in how and scholars the of the novel as its of and the study of seeks in to what has called between a recent in Proust studies is the attention to the and between Proust’s writings and those of Proust is a yet œuvre and in particular, through a of and some has this The publication of de in a number of that the of Proust in to with his writing in the that and Proust, like others, the of scholarship has this and a range of in which the writing and thought with Proust’s of in and Proust is a and impressive work of comparative scholarship that that and are and of and practice have been exposed by The intersections of Proust and the first up in Richard research over forty years have been in a of an edited Proust et les that has renewed attention is the First World now have an excellent range of sources to to Proust and his novel within the context of the years to from of made to the of the novel to the of the to studies of Proust’s and during the is one of the that across the of the First World and the of the by the is encountered one to Proust’s in this since its is a critical with in the study of in French within the French Modernist studies, however, is a field a great deal of critical material, by scholars in or comparative A handful of studies have and are in scholarship on Proust, such as The of which contains a insightful chapter on and the in A recent work of finesse and critical is which Proust Nathalie and Much scholarship, however, not it on to the or of those on Proust, which is a since there is a good deal of in the it seems that relatively little Proust criticism — — is read by those who as scholars Proust example, in his recent of from to de a stimulating section on the of in the development of the aesthetics in Proust’s A compelling is made, but it have been and by reference to important, work by Jacques or by in Proust, and find similar in which is principally a study of and read with and through especially the writings of William A Proust’s writing on with the two though not original yet pays to work on Proust and philosophy the only critical to Proust that is is In recent major the has been rather insightful chapter on et and its to with and figures in the edited volume in his contribution to of the Modernist his chapter on and the French with to Proust, with his with in and with the that À la recherche is a work that ultimately one just how this Proust that essay, he is more the of another by in The of which provides a more account of Proust’s in the in over the full of his creative Lastly, it is via a of and life that attends to Proust as a and in his recent of pages relating to Proust do not previously about À la their in the as it on questions of and and and a to this French author as a in a the and that in to À la a but number of creative responses have the domain in recent as to and with À la recherche from Anne novel and others, which and to Proust in responses have also appeared that questions for research about shapes and for Anne The is at a critical to and relations in Proust’s novel and an of scholarly towards more extensive of is an of critical and thought the critical essay and the were related writes and, indeed, in Christopher yet more radical The Proust in and out as from to and responses may not be the of criticism but how we read and with À la recherche; also the fact of Proust’s and his as Anne Simon has ‘un à une de de ou