Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 EVERS, Meindert Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2013. 206 pp., £ 29.80, ISBN 978-3-631-62931-4 Li, Shuangyi Published in: Modern and Contemporary France DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 2014 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Li, S. (2014). EVERS, Meindert Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2013. 206 pp., £ 29.80, ISBN 978-3-631-62931-4. Modern and Contemporary France, 22(3), 406-407. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/evers-meindert-prousts-in-search-of-lost-time-the-history-of-a-vocation-frankfurt-am-main-berlin-bern-bruxelles-new-york-oxford-wien-peter-lang-2013-206-pp--2980-isbn-9783631629314(700d125c-d875-44f4-8195-5e8d2c5a4f80).html https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cmcf20 Modern & Contemporary France ISSN: 0963-9489 (Print) 1469-9869 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmcf20 EVERS, Meindert Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2013. 206 pp., £ 29.80, ISBN 978-3-631-62931-4 Shuaggyi Li To cite this article: Shuaggyi Li (2014) EVERS, Meindert Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2013. 206 pp., £ 29.80, ISBN 978-3-631-62931-4, Modern & Contemporary France, 22:3, 406-407, DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 Published online: 14 Mar 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 25 View Crossmark data https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cmcf20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmcf20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cmcf20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cmcf20&show=instructions http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/09639489.2014.889104&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2014-03-14 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/09639489.2014.889104&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2014-03-14 types while the sharp Republican lines betweencitizensandnon-nationalstendto flatten differences between different groups and trajectories. All of this is coherent and convincing although there is perhaps a danger of allowing debates around the Republic and its hidden exclusions to obscure other critical pos- itions coming, for example, from a more radical leftist standpoint.Overall, however, this is a well-argued and informed book that does important work by bringing some relatively neglected but significant areas of film production into view. MARTIN O’SHAUGHNESSY Nottingham Trent University q 2013 Martin O’Shaughnessy http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.870146 Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: The History of a Vocation MEINDERT EVERS Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2013 206 pp., £29.80, hbk, ISBN 978 3-63-162931-4 This book is based on Meindert Evers’s doctoral thesis, originally written in Dutch in1974,revisedandpublishedin1997, and translated into German in 2004. The author firmly grounds his discussion of Proustian aesthetics in the (mainly) European intellectual and artistic history immediately before and during Proust’s time. It is impressive how the author, in barely 10 pages in Chapter I, surveys an extensive cast of thinkers, writers and artists who may have contributed to the fin de siècle spirit. Some are better known than others: Kant, Heinrich von Kleist, Scho- penhauer, Freud, Nietzsche, Louis Cou- perus, Thomas Mann, Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde and Wagner, to name but a few. This section is followed by more detailed ‘influence studies’ between Proust and a few key writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, as well as those involved in the Symbolist movement. However, Evers’s account, which is made from an intellectual historian’s perspective, is necessarily sche- matic, and Proust specialists today may find some of his observations unsatisfac- torily limited, especially given how many monographs on Proust’s relation to the above thinkers and artists have appeared since the 1970s. The flourishing field of Proust studies since the 1970s means that many of the author’s arguments may appear less original today than they were then. Throughout the book, particularly in Chapter II, Evers consistently stresses how Proust is not a decadent or aestheticist writer, which he demonstrates primarily through discussions of Proust’s characters (Swann and Charlus) and three paradig- matic relationships between art and life (around notions of mondanité, contradic- tion and commitment), as well as two informative comparative studies with Mann and Nietzsche. While these various points are very well substantiated with abundant textual analyses, very few scholars today would insist that Proust should be defined primarily as a decadent writer. Taking into account recent scholar- ship on the relation between decadent aesthetics and Proust’s own aesthetic evolution, one may wish that this clear- cut opposition between Proust and deca- dence set up by Evers could be further nuanced, as the author—perhaps rather too absolutely—asserts: ‘Proust, still seen by some as a representative of the fin de 406 Book Reviews http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.870146 siècle, because his novel portrays this time, has none of the characteristics of a decadent author. Proust is radically different. His philosophy differs comple- tely from that of a D’Annunzio, a Wilde, a Couperus, three examples of typical fin de siècle authors’ (134). Chapter III, which explores aesthetic experience (through ‘involuntary memory’, ‘dreaming and awakening’ and ‘modern means of com- munication’), could best serve as a critical introduction to this particular aspect of Proust’s novel, as it has been much more elaborated by later Proust scholarship. The last chapter, which discusses Proust’s ‘modern’ representations of ‘cultural criti- cism’, ‘the Dreyfus Affair’, ‘the First World War’, ‘homosexuality’ and ‘the aristocracy and high society’, could be read in a similar fashion. However, Evers makes a crucial argu- ment in Chapter IV, entitled ‘The Re- creation of Reality: Perspectivism and Metaphor’. The part on Proust’s perspecti- vism is probably the book’s most original contribution to our current Proust scho- larship. The notion of perspectivism is often associated with Nietzsche in philos- ophy and Cubism in art. But Evers first traces Proust’s perspectivist aesthetic to Ruskin and then—rather intriguingly—to Leibniz and hispluralistic andfragmentary visions of the one and only universe consisting of ‘monads’. We have concrete evidence of Proust’s passionate reading of Leibniz’s work (e.g. Monadology). Given the sheer volume and complexity of Leibniz’s philosophy, one may wish this fascinating investigation to be developed further. The book covers quite a wide range of topics; the chapters are relatively inde- pendent of one another and can be read accordingly. Overall, undergraduate stu- dents and lovers of Proust rather than Proust scholars are likely to benefit most from this book, with its almost jargon- free writing style, lucid explanations and resourceful analyses. In fact, one does not even have to have read Proust to follow most of the discussions, as the author rather extensively recapitulates many plots before analysing them. Quotations are all in English accompanied by Proust’s French original in the footnotes (referring to the 1954 Pléiade edition rather than the new Pléiade) with occasional typos and wrong paginations (174–175). SHUAGGYI LI University of Edinburgh q 2014 Shuangyi Li http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104 The Livres-Souvenirs of Colette: Genre and the Telling of Time ANNE FREADMAN London, Legenda, 2012 178 pp., £40.00, hbk, ISBN 978 1-90-654093-7 Thetitleofthebookgivesusamajorclueon theinnovativeapproachdevelopedbyAnne Freadman in her analysis of a particular Colette corpus, the one devoted to auto- biographical writing: Les Vrilles de la vigne, Mes apprentissages, La Maison de Claudine, Sido, L’Étoile Vesper and Le Fanal bleu. Freadman follows the powerful lure of Rimbaldian vieilles vieilleries and its echoes with Colette’s fondness for collecting objects, people and memories. To this must be added a technical aspect, that of the study of the genre of Colette’s writing. Freadman argues that, by largely avoiding Modern & Contemporary France 407 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2014.889104