Images of Proustian Inversion from Ruskin

Abstract

John Ruskin played a seminal role in Marcel Proust’s literary career, and knowledge of his work profoundly influenced the writing of A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27). Proust subscribed to the Library Edition of Ruskin’s works1 and boasted that he knew half a dozen or so volumes by heart, including his Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854), his work on Tuscan art in the Val d’Arno (1874), and his autobiography Praeterita (1885–89).2 He was one of the first to translate Ruskin and his copiously annotated and eloquently prefaced translations of The Bible of Amiens (1880–5) and Sesame and Lilies (1865) were published in French in 1904 and 1905 respectively. Proust cites Ruskin’s name only four times in the various volumes of his novel (when the narrator embarks on his first trip to the coastal resort of Balbec,3 where he meets Elstir, the fictitious painter whose aesthetic ideas are derived from Ruskin, then twice in connection with Venice,4 and finally on the doorstep of a homosexual brothel5), but he works images from the illustrated volumes of the Library Edition into A la recherche du temps perdu.