Proust by matheo.a/ Flickr.com/ Creative Commons
The Morgan Library in New York City is having an exhibition on Marcel Proust, to mark the centenary of the publication of Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s seven-part Remembrance of Things Past series. The exhibition is contained in one small room, and consists of Proust’s diaries, letters he wrote to family and friends, and photographs from his childhood. Remembrance of Things Past is a work of fiction, but draws fundamentally from Proust’s own life— not only from people he met and places in which he lived, but also from the depths of his mind, for example, from personal responses to music and reflections on literature and art. So he drew not only from life but also from thought and opinion, bringing them together to create something completely new in his novels. The exhibition tries to recreate these ways in which Proust lived and worked, by giving viewers the chance to see original documents up close. But it must be extremely difficult to curate an exhibit like this and retain the appeal that the works themselves have had in their readers, or the idea readers have formed of the writer in their imagination. Of course, as readers of Proust we know that his life and his work are inseparable, but could seeing an exhibit where his influences are pointed out actually create a sense of detachment from the work? Or would most viewers take back a fuller idea of Proust and his stories?
I am currently reading Swann’s Way, and many things in the exhibit stuck out for me in the way that they made me reflect on the novel. One of the most impressionable, however, was the fact that Proust was inspired by Giotto’s frescoes of the Vices and Virtues of Padua, and by reading art critic John Ruskin’s writing on these paintings. Proust wanted to structure his novel according to the structure of the Vices and Virtues. The frescoes reminded him of scenes and characters from his ancestral town of Illiers, which was to become the town of Combray in the novel. The fresco of Charity in particular reminded him of his family’s maid. In the exhibition, there were copies of Giotto’s seven vices and virtues along with the information provided so that viewers could see the connection. I was amazed, because Combray seemed so much richer to me now that I could see things I hadn’t before, but also because Proust had been inspired by painting and scholarly writing and used his own eye to turn them into new literature.
But would I have lost something if I hadn’t seen the exhibition? After all, I had noticed painting in Proust’s writing before, but just hadn’t found a specific one to tie it to. So had the exhibition succeeded in educating me, or was it just a collection of tidbits of documentation? I left wondering if one could ever successfully be brought closer to a writer, and what comes out of this closeness in the future.