A GLANCE AT PROUST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 934, 5 July 1957, Page 13

A GLANCE AT PROUST

MARCEL PROUST AND DELIVERANCE FROM TIME, by Germaine Brée; Chatto and Windus, English price 21/-. GREAT number of books have already been written about this extraordinary genius and his exorbitant masterpiece A La Recherche du temps perdu, a work by which Paris in the years after World War I regained at a bound its literary’ pre-eminence (its artistic supremacy one conjectures has not been disputed in modern times). Proust carefully exposes the inner nerves of feeling as an epicure peels a peach, It is true that sometimes the emotion appears unimportant (just as in New Zealand the peaches have no flavour, being’ grown for appearance). In such case the skill in peeling has to be sufficient reward. Professor Brée’s commentary is competent and the discussion on a high artistic level. Why does not some commentator deal with Proust’s year in the Army? Did the 74th Orleans Regiment ever have so unmilitary a soldier? Years later he himself — answering one of these amusing questionaires: Your fayourite character in ° fiction, favourite colour, etc.-replied to the query as to what was in his opinion the most extraordinary event in military history by saying, "My voluntary enlistment in the (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued trom previous page) Army." He was rejected, however, for service in World War I, but in France’s desperate need of man power was reboarded about once a month. It happened through a clerical error that he was ordered one day to report at Les Invalides at 3.30 a.m. He obeyed. It occasioned him little surprise; indeed, he found it somewhat appropriate. He

died in 1922.

F. J.

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