Proust 150 — Anthology of the Members

On the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Proust's birth, the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray brought together one hundred and fifty of its members around an anthology project of rare coherence: each of them selected a passage from Proust's work — an excerpt from À la recherche du temps perdu, from the correspondence, from drafts or early writings — and set out, in a few lines, the reasons for their attachment to that text. This volume is at once a collective tribute to the writer and a living testimony to the way his work continues to resonate in minds and sensibilities as diverse as those of his faithful readers.

Jérôme Bastianelli's preface immediately sets out the ambition of the undertaking: not a scholarly anthology in the classical sense, but a spontaneous florilegium, born of the intimate experience of reading, which reflects, in its very diversity, the many faces of Proust — philosopher of time and memory, poet of sensation, moralist of love, incomparable stylist.

Overview

Proust 150 — Anthology of the Members rests on an editorial principle as simple as it is demanding: one hundred and fifty members of the Société, invited to freely choose a text by the writer from across the whole of his work, and to explain their choice. No thematic constraint was imposed on them. The freedom thus granted produced a corpus of remarkable richness: ten excerpts received a double commentary, one of them even having been chosen by three different contributors, testifying to the drawing power of certain passages of the Recherche.

The whole covers the entirety of Proust's work, from Du côté de chez Swann to Le Temps retrouvé, but also extends to the early writings, drafts and essays (Sur la lecture, Jean Santeuil). The florilegium thus assembled reveals the great diversity of Proust's readers — in their geographical origin, their generation, their profession — and offers the chance to see Proust "as he is: admirable and singularly contemporary, one hundred and fifty years after his birth."

Authors and Contributors

Jérôme Bastianelli, president of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, wrote the introduction to the book and devised the project.

Élyane Dezon-Jones, professor emerita at Washington University (Paris), member of the board of directors, took part in proofreading the texts.

Emily Eells, professor at the Université Paris Nanterre, member of the board of directors, contributed to the proofreading and is among the anthology's contributors.

Éric Unger wrote the afterword "Faut-il contracter Proust?", which analyses the distribution of contributions by volume of the Recherche and argues for new forms of access to the work rather than for an abridged version. He was also responsible for the graphic design and layout of the book.

Contents

• Introduction, by Jérôme Bastianelli
• Annotated excerpts, arranged by volume: Du côté de chez Swann, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Le Côté de Guermantes, Sodome et Gomorrhe, La Prisonnière, Albertine disparue, Le Temps retrouvé
• Excerpts from the early writings and essays: Jean Santeuil, Sur la lecture, drafts
• References
• Afterword, by Éric Unger

Bibliographic Information

• Format: paperback
• ISBN: 978-2-492318-10-8
• Price: 12 €
• Publisher: Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray
• Printer: Messages SAS, Toulouse
• Legal deposit: July 2021