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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Marcel Proust

 

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Marcel Proust : unknown

'Then B. went shopping while I lay on the divan and read Proust, which I continued to do most of the evening, except when I read Ellis's Sunlight on Parnassus" to B. while she was ironing".

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Du Cote de Chez Swann

'I?m glad you like the Shaw. Stanley bought me one of the early editions ? I haven?t read it through yet ? I?m trying to get through Spengler?s second volume of The Decline of the West. Have just finished ? Du cot? de chez Swann?. By the way let me know a list of good modern French novels ? especially novels of ideas ? the Catholic movement, the socialists, etc?'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs

Virginia Woolf to Roger Fry, 6 May 1922: 'I have the most violent cold in the whole parish. Proust's fat volume comes in very handy. Last night I started on vol 2 [A l'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs] of him (the novel) and propose to sink myself in it all day [...] Oh if I could write like that! I cry. And at the moment such is the astonishing vibration and saturation and intensification that he produces -- theres [sic] something sexual in it -- that I feel I [italics]can[end italics] write like that, and seize my pen and then I [italics]can't[end italics] write like that. Scarcely anyone so stimulates the nerves of language in me: it becomes an obsession. But I must return to Swann.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : 

Virginia Woolf to Mary Hutchinson, c. 18 April 1923: 'I am reading Proust, I am reading Rimbaud. I am longing to write.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : 

Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928: 'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : 

Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 21 May 1934: 'So I came back lit the fire; and read Proust, which is of course so magnificent that I cant write myself within its arc'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Sodom et Gonorrhe

'The rest of the time I read Proust. As no one on board has ever heard of Proust, but has enough French to translate the title, I am looked at rather askance for the numerous volumes of Sodome et Gomorrhe which litter the decks.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : unknown

'The parties of Proust gain in fantasy from being read in such circumstances, (I don't mean in the bath, but on deck;) they recede, achieve a perspective; they become historical almost, like Veronese banquets through which flit a few masked Longhi figures, and ruffled by the uneasy impish breeze of French Freud. I re-enter their company after struggling with the Persian irregular verbs.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : unknown

'I meant to have written such a lot, but somehow I haven't; there's always a whale or a murder to look at, (a tortoise or a theorbo!) so I have written a few letters, - precious few, - and read a lot of Proust, and that's all.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Du Cote de chez Swann

18 April 1918: 'I went to Guildford. I don't see how to put 3 or 4 hours of Roger's conversation into the rest of this page [...] it was about all manner of things [...] Occasionally he read a quotation from a book by Proust (whose name I've forgotten), & then from his translation [of the Lysistrata]'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : unknown

'I am reading Proust, and dislike his mentality more and more. I get the sense of that flabby, diseased, asthmatic man, all frowsty in bed till evening, and preoccupied with such contemptible things - nothing but women and snobbery.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : [unknown]

'Maupassant never meant as much to her as Flaubert, or as Proust. She was reading collections of Maupassant's stories in mid-winter at Bowen's Court when she wrote to Virginia Woolf: "I suppose he had sharp sense but really rather a boring mind. You soon get to know his formula, but there is always the fascination: it's like watching someone do the same card trick over and over again. I did feel the fascination so strongly that I wondered if I were getting brutalised myself. There is a particularly preposterous story called 'Yvette'...."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : [works]

'Remember with great pleasure weeks recovering from abortion in 1924 and for once holding my life in suspension, not wanting anything, not even concerned with the future, but perfectly happy reading Proust...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Le Temps Retrouve

Texts from which passages transcribed at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1942-1943) include Marcel Proust, Le Temps Retrouve.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Du Cote de chez Swann

'In his diary (1 March 1922) Forster recorded, while on the boat returning from India, his early impressions of Proust: "Bought Du Cote de Chez Swann at Marseilles and note how cleverly Proust uses his memories and experiences to illustrate his state of mind [...] His work impresses me by its weight and length, and sometimes touches me by its truth to my feelings."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Du Coté chez Swann

I have been re-reading 'Du Côté.' Well, it is marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Anna Karenina'. Well, it is more marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Les Frères'. Well, it is most marvellous. Das ist das.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Swann's Way (Du coté de chez Swann

'I've lately read nothing but Marcel Proust.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Marcel Proust : Swann's Way (Du coté de chez Swann

'In the volumes you sent me I was much more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation.'
[Hence follows another page and a half of commentary on the translation and on Proust in general.]

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

 

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