Proust's Way

by François Mauriac

The thinking and suffering of the author of Remembrance of Things Past are intimately exposed in these letters to Mauriac. Mauriac, François 1885-1970, French writer. Mauriac achieved success in 1922 and 1923 with Le Baiser au lépreux and Genitrix (tr. of both in The Family, 1930). Generally set in or near his native Bordeaux, his novels are imbued with his profound, though nonconformist, Roman Catholicism. His characters exist in a tortured universe; nature is evil and man eternally prone to sin. His major novels are The Desert of Love (1925, tr. 1929), Thérèse (1927, tr. 1928), and Vipers' Tangle (1932, tr. 1933). Other works include The Frontenacs (1933, tr. 1961) and Woman of the Pharisees (1941, tr. 1946); a life of Racine (1928) and of Jesus (1936, tr. 1937); and plays, notably Asmodée (1938, tr. 1939). Also a distinguished essayist, Mauriac became a columnist for Figaro after World War II. Collections of his articles and essays include Journal, 1932-39 (1947, partial tr. Second Thoughts, 1961), Proust's Way (1949, tr. 1950), and Cain, Where Is Your Brother? (tr. 1962). Mauriac received the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Genres: French Literature, Literature, France, Biography

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

François Charles Mauriac was a French writer and a member of the Académie française. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." Mauriac is acknowledged to be one of the greatest Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book were more about Marcel Proust, whom I revere, and less about Jacques Riviere, about whom I know next to nothing, I would have given it five stars. François Mauriac was one of the greatest French writers of the 20th Century. Therefore, it is fascinating to see what he thought of Marcel Proust.

As a devout Catholic, Mauriac criticized Proust when he describes the bad influence he had on Jacques Riviere as "literarywork in its most dangerous form, Marcel Proust's, which has no other object than itself, and whose analysis pulverizes and destroys the human personality."

And yet Mauriac is profoundly fascinated and moved by Proust's great novel:

The integral history of a young life, of its loves, its friendships, its weaknesses, its intellectual or religious crises, offers the vast proportions of the history of the ideas and customs at a certain epoch as they are reflected in a single spirit. And a long old age would not be enough to complete the account or to exhaust its drama.

Proust's Way is well worth reading until it switches to Riviere. Unless you know the man, you might well be excused for putting the book down at this point.

[Jazzy Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching insight into the life of Proust.

[Fred R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mauriac is telling and accurate in describing Proust's odd combination of profound insight and moral degeneration through solipsism, but unfortunately his comments are brief, and wedged within a lot of extraneous material.