Marcel Proust was a French writer whose work is among the most prominent and influential in 20th century literature.
Marcel Proust was born in Paris, France, on July 10, 1871, he was the eldest son of Adrien Proust, a prestigious epidemiologist and Jeanne Weil. In 1880 he had his first asthma attack, a condition that would no longer leave him and for which he received continuous care from his mother.
Proust completed his secondary studies at the Condorcet high school, where he consolidated his vocation for letters and after completing his military service in 1889 in Orleans, he attended classes at the University of the Sorbonne and at the École Livre de Sciences Politiques.
During his youth, he led a worldly life, publishing his first work in 1896, a collection of stories with a decadent style. In 1905, after the death of his mother, Marcel Proust became depressed, feeling lonely and his health deteriorating, living secluded at home, working at night and drinking coffee in large quantities.
Between 1913 and 1927 he wrote a series of novels called “In Search of Lost Time” consisting of seven installments, the last three published posthumously, the second being awarded with the Goncourt, “In the shadow of the girls in flower” ( 1919).
In full social isolation, Marcel Proust devoted himself entirely to his work, the last volumes being published posthumously by his brother Robert. Proust died in Paris on November 18, 1922.
The importance of Marcel Proust’s work lies in the psychological development of the characters and in their philosophical concern for time, which he treated as both a destructive and a positive element.
His main works are:
On Swann’s Road (1913)
In the Shadow of the Blooming Girls (1919)
The World of Guermantes I and II (1922)
Sodom and Gomorrah I and II (1923)
The Prisoner (1925)
Time Regained (1927)
And these are some of Marcel Proust’s best thoughts:
“The people are disturbed to see them cry, as if a sob were more serious than a hemorrhage.”
“It has been said that the highest praise of God is in the denial of the atheist, who finds the Creation perfect enough to be able to do without a Creator.”
“Like everyone who is not in love, he thinks that you can choose the person you love based on endless deliberations about their advantages and disadvantages.”
“There are no vices that do not find complacent support among high society, and the distribution of a castle has been upset to make a sister sleep near her sister when it has been known that she did not love her only as a sister.”
“It is worth wondering if there is no more duplicity in certain popular classes than in high society, which undoubtedly reserves rude phrases for our absence, but whose attitude towards us would not be insulting if we were sorry.”
“Each social class has its pathology.”
“The true voyage of discovery is not about looking for new paths but about having new eyes.”
“At a certain age, a little out of self-love, a little out of mischief, the things we want most are the ones we pretend not to want.”
“Desire forces us to love what will make us suffer.”
“Our heart is the age of those it loves.”
“Sometimes we are too willing to believe that the present is the only possible state of affairs.
