Bottins proustiens

Rights sold
Brazil (Globo)
Italy (Portaparole)

Presentation

Seven titles, fifteen books, about 4 000 pages : In Search of Lost Time is a literary monument, a paper cathedral. It shelters plenty of characters, from the omnipresent hero to the blurred figures of a socialite or of a servant. As early as 1921, when Search hadn’t yet been achieved, a critic had already thought of gathering them in a single book: the author was enthusiastic about the project, but publisher Gaston Gallimard deemed it was too soon.

Although several studies on Proust’s characters have been conducted since then, Michel Erman is the first critic to devote himself exclusively to the almost 200 fictitious persons who inhabit In Search of Lost Time. He follows them within the narration, and shows how Marcel Proust, bit by bit, brings Gilberte, Elstir, Odette, Charlus, Albertine or Swann to the world...

Michel Erman explores also Proustian space and shows that it is far from constituting a mere backdrop. From the hero’s room in Combray to the aristocratic neigborhood’s mansions, from the Norman seaside resort to the City of Venice, all places in the Proust ’s novel are deeply meaningful. Real or imaginary, they merge with people who inhabit them or haunt them.

Michel Erman, a professor at the Université de Bourgogne and a philosopher, has written a biography of Marcel Proust (Fayard, 1994; La Table Ronde, 2018), La cruauté, essai sur la passion du mal (PUF, 2009) and Les cent mots de Proust (PUF, 2013).