Bernard de Fallois was the student who, whilst working on a thesis on Proust 📚 in the early 1950s, was…
Translated from French.
Bernard de Fallois is the student who, whilst working on a thesis on Proust 📚 in the early 1950s, was introduced to Suzy Mante-Proust, the writer’s niece, by André Maurois, himself the author of the famous “In Search of Marcel Proust” 🔍 published in 1949 and the husband of Simone de Caillavet, also known as Mademoiselle de Saint-Loup. Are you following? 😅
Bernard de Fallois, then, discovers some unpublished manuscripts at Proust’s niece’s house, which she had inherited. Three manuscripts, in particular: that of a first novel on which Proust worked between around 1895 and 1900, which Bernard de Fallois went on to publish under the title “Jean Santeuil” in 1952. ✔️ Next, the manuscript of an essay on literary aesthetics interwoven with a conversation with his mother: this is “Against Sainte-Beuve”, the project through which Proust developed what was to become a diptych, “In Search of Lost Time” and “Finding Time Again”. B. de Fallois published “Against Sainte-Beuve” in 1954. ✔️✔️
The third manuscript had to wait much longer to be read by the public: it is the “Seventy-five folios”, which is, to date, the oldest fair copy of “In Search of Lost Time”. This manuscript was thought to have been lost for a long time. B. de Fallois had kept it… and @editions_gallimard published it upon his death in 2021. ✔️✔️☑️
Bernard de Fallois thus established himself as the “foremost Proust scholar” during that pivotal post-war period, a time when Sartre and the existentialists were launching scathing attacks on Proust the bourgeois, the rentier, the socialite and the snob. 🤵🏻♂️ The manuscripts he published gave a considerable boost to Proustian studies: Henri Bonnet, Jean-Yves Tadié, Antoine Compagnon and others followed in his footsteps.
His work in popularising and analysing the subject is profound, well-researched and illuminating. 👌🏻✨
⬇️ Read more in the comments! ⬇️
#MarcelProust #RTP #proustagram #BernarddeFallois #LucFraisse #Bibliothèqueproustienne #Merci #Proust #ContreSainteBeuve #JeanSanteuil
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