Judisk Kultur

Proust: A Jewish Way
Proust du côté juif

Antoine Compagnon, France
Samtal med efterföljande mingel
Tisdag 14 april kl. 19.00
Konstakademien

Biljetter

When the French writer Marcel Proust died at the age of 51, many obituaries highlighted the fact that his mother was Jewish. But Proust’s relationship with his Jewish side was complex and many critics and readers of his masterwork, In Search of Lost Time, perceive signs of self-hatred and even antisemitism in the treatment of certain characters. Antoine Compagnon challenges this widespread misconception in a book entitled Proust du côté juif, which came out in English at Columbia University Press under the title Proust: A Jewish Way. In this ambitious investigation, Compagnon examines Proust’s relations with his mother’s successful and assimilated family, the Weils. He explores how French Jews read and responded to Proust’s masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, in the 1920s and 1930s. By reconsidering Proust’s relationship with his Jewish identity, Compagnon also casts light on French society at the turn of the 19th century, and interrogates issues of cultural difference, integration, and assimilation.

Challenging contemporary critics, Compagnon shows that many Jewish intellectuals and young Zionists admired and vigorously debated the novel, some seeing it as a source for pride in their Jewish identity. He also considers Proust’s portrayal of homosexuality and how it relates to notions of Jewishness. Proust, a Jewish Way brings to light the vanished world of Proust’s first Jewish readers and shows how it can illuminate our reading of the great novelist today.

Marcel Proust once wrote, “There is no longer anybody, not even myself, since I cannot leave my bed, who will go along the Rue du Repos to visit the little Jewish cemetery where my grandfather, following a custom that he never understood, went for so many years to lay a stone on his parents’ grave.” Investigating the origin and significance of this statement, Antoine Compagnon offers new insight into the great author’s underappreciated Jewish side.

Antoine Compagnon is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, professor emeritus at the Collège de France, and a member of the Académie française. He is the author of numerous books on subjects including Montaigne, Baudelaire, Proust, Colette, literary theory, and cultural history.

In cooperation with Marcel Proust-sällskapet.